Archive for the Series Category


Ghost in the Shell Manga Volume 1, 2nd Ed.

September 27th, 2005

Blah, blah, blah.

No seriously – does anyone on a military mission talk this much!? ^_^;

So, waaaay back in the dawn of time, I had a copy of Ghost in the Shell in Japanese – you know, the version with the gratuitous lesbian sex scene left in. I sold it for a fair amount of $ because, at the time, the version put out by Dark Horse had removed those pages and you know how crucial to the plot they were – people freaked.

Time has moved on and I was killing an afternoon over at Anime Castle, torturing Bill, the owner (who is a seriously decent dude and we at Yuricon and Onna! owe him a great deal of thanks. In fact, I nabbed a fun toy prize for some lucky contest winner while I was there,) I saw the *2nd* editions for volume 1 and 2 and thought, “why not?” So here I was faced with actually reading the thing.

It’s four days later and I’m still not finished. Let me put this into perspective – I can complete a 200-page novel in about an hour and a half of uninterrupted reading. Four days of reading this thing and I’m going slower, and slower, and…..

It’s not even that they talk too much – it’s the typeface. It’s killing me. I *know* that the convention on lettering comics is ALL CAPS. I *know* that the convention is to fill the word balloons as full as one can (and with Masamune Shirow, it’s kind of inevitable anyway,) but seriously – this lettering is KILLING my eyes. I read two pages and have to stop.

I saw the original GiTS movie way back, when everyone else as old as I am did, and I wasn’t impressed. I loved the idea, but the movie was really dull, IMHO. And I feel much the same with the original manga. It’s such a cool idea, I wish someone had *done* something with it.

I wasn’t really interested in GitS until the first TV series, “Stand Alone Complex: 1st Gig”, and even then I found the end kind of a cop-out. The movie “Innocence” was, like the first movie, nothing more than a series of quotes strung together with visually rich, but essentially meaningless, imagery. I liked it, but not as a movie. It read like an attempt at playing Umberto Eco, without his ability at tying the links together to make a coherent whole. It was gorgeous, but left no real impression.

Of all of the GitS franchise, the one I liked the best was “Stand Alone Complex: 2nd Gig”, entirely because at the end, we’re left with a Major that one can actually *see* taking the route we were shown in the “Innocence” movie. For that, and that alone, I think the 2nd Gig was worth watching.

I’m also quite besotted with the Tachikoma. :-) When they pull that prank (if you’ve seen it, you know which one I mean…) on Batou, it made the entire franchise worth its existence. ^_^

But we don’t care about this! We want to know if the sex was worth the book! you scream.

No, don’t be stupid. It’s pointless fanservice. Mostly it’s the springboard for a goofy gag with Batou. But if you’re the kind of person who thinks that 3 pages of shiny unrealistic women having porn sex is worth shelling out $30 – then get thee over to the Yuricon Shop and buy thee copies of Yuri Monogatari 2 and 3. Two books for the same price…and twice the meaningless sex. ^_^

By the way – in case you’re wondering, I love the Major and I actually do like GitS for what it is. Great art? I don’t know. Groundbreaking? Let’s wait another 40 years and decide. A powerful idea and a popular franchise? Yes, 100 times yes.

Ratings:
Art – The hair! The HAIR!!! 6
Characters – 7
Story – 7
Yuri – 4 It’s all of three pages out of 300.

Overall – I rate it a 7. It’s not going to be my “go back to” book, but I like the whole group enough to keep trying.

One last thing – Dark Horse, with a book this thick, the binding is REALLY crappy. You needed to vent it or make it stronger. I’m not even through with reading it once and it’s starting to crack.





Yuri Manga: Kannazuki no Miko, Volume 2

September 20th, 2005

Well, I know you were all waiting with bated breath to read my opinion on this final installment of the Kannzuki no Miko series.

As you may remember, I found the anime to be superficial, devoid of meaning and tedious, but marginally distracting. I reviewed it several times with increasing incredulousness – primarily because, while the series made absolutely NO sense at all, many people, mostly male, seem to feel that Kannzuki represents the height of yuri. This story was indubitably colorful, had lots of action and noise and sound and light, but it simply made no sense. That a senseless 13 episode miniseries that had no plausibility, not internal consistancy and utterly pointless rape should be seen by any minority of viewers as the *epitome* of the genre I have labored to promote is simply…exhausting.

Folks – there is good Yuri out there. With plots, and character development, etc. Drawn by women for women. This is real Yuri, not the parody of several genres tossed with a light dressing of Yuri so it sells.

Yamaji Ebine
Takashima Rica
Tadeno Eriko
Morishima Akiko
Hayahiya Shizuru

These women draw and write Yuri – with plots, characters, genuine expression of lesbian love and desire. Look for them – read them – learn what good Yuri is.

Okay, that rant having been concluded, let’s turn our eyes towards the work in question.

We left Himeko having just been raped by Chikane. This was used in the anime as well, where the explanation for the act was to make Himeko hate Chikane, as she’s becoming an orochi.

In the manga the act is complicated by the fact that it seeems to be tied into Chikane and Himeko’s existence as Miko of Moon and Sun, respectively.

In reality, it is fairly obvious that the people who comprise Kaishaku, like most people, have absolutely no understanding at all of the emotional damage rape does. In this expert text, Himeko wonders if it really happend, gets a twinge of pain in her abdomen, is horrified, but when Chikane seems like her usual self, is fine. Fine? Oooookkkkkkkaaaaaay…..

Then follows pretty much exactly the same nonsense that occurred in the anime. Lots of mecha fights, which *still* make no sense, since we are never really given any motivation for the Orochi respresentatives. In my mind, there should at least have been one flashback to explain the how/why of becomming a homicidal kubi, but that’s just me, always looking for, you know, plausibility, in a story.

BTW, kubi mean “neck” and the scanlators translate it that way, but in our language we’d probably call them a “hand” rather than a neck, as in hired hand, or ranch hand. After watching the anime and reading the manga, I am still entirely puzzled as to the kubi’s exstence at all. Why were they there? What were they hoping to do? Shoot things, okay…but why? I like the idea of shooting things too, but I can, at least, tell you *why* I’d like to pop you. Sister Miyako is hot, but the rest, *especially* Tsubasa, are a complete yawn. Tsubasa’s only reason to exist seems to be to pander to fans of long-silver-haired boys. Hmmm – I guess if we see the kubi as pandering to random fetishes, they make more sense. Okay. That works for me.

The climax of the manga and anime are similar, but not *quite* the same. Chikane explains that her behavior (violent rape, emotional torture and criminal passive-agressiveness) was meant to save Himeko from a fate worse than fate. In the anime, Chikane accepts an eternity that consists of a rather shorter period of time than eternities are wont to be, alone on the moon.

In the manga, Himeko comes with Chikane, rendering all of Chikane’s violence and abuse pointless, because apparently it would take MORE than that to make Himeko hate Chikane. One can only boggle.

In an epilogue which does not exist in the anime, Chikane and Himeko are born as incestuous twins who apparently live happily ever after.

Ratings:
Art – 8
Story – 2
Characters – 6
Yuri – 9 (I cut off a point for the complete and utter lack of understanding of the dynamics of women in love/lust.)

Overall – 6

Honestly – this could, really, have been an excellent story. Given time, back story, character development and a modicum of internal consistency, it could have been decent. But it wasn’t. Not really.





Yuri Anime: Stellvia. Volume 5

September 16th, 2005

The reason this review took so long to get to was simply that I had a really hard time finding this volume! Amazon had it on backorder and at Otakon, not a single vendor had a copy by the time I got to go shopping. It was really irksome. (Amusingly, at the Geneon booth, the sales guy tried to sell me Vol.6, but I kept saying I wouldn’t get it until after I had Volume 5. He was like, “But you’ll need it eventually.” ^_^)

Let’s get right to it, shall we? This volume has a lot of good things, but I’m about to start with the bad.

The art. Where do noses go when they aren’t on faces? Is there a graveyard of lost anime noses? The art is *so* inconsistant in this volume. The older characters are fairly treated, but the main characters…ecch. It definitely looks like we had more than one group doing the art – and one of them sucked. Specifically the group handling Shima and Arisa.

There’s a scene in the second episode (which otherwise has better art than the first) on the volume where the girls are teasing Shima about Kouta. Shima and Arisa are all over the room, while the background characters are all stock still for nearly the entire scene, with fixed faces. Obviously, they didn’t bother animating anyone who wasn’t absolutely necessary. And it looks it. Awful, awful, awful.

The other major bad thing is Kouta. He’s heading into major idiot savant mode and from this point on, I really don’t like him. He’s so…removed…about people, and about Shima in particular. So while she’s growing, and trying harder and harder to reach him, he’s just being a nothing. But he’s a main character, so we have to watch him being a nothing all the freakin’ time! It’s downright distressing.

But that’s about it for really, really bad.

On the good side, all the little relationships are starting to mature – there’s a fair amount of time given over to taciturn Akira and runty Jojo. The volume starts them off on a rough foot, but they really get to spend some quality time onscreen. And along the way, they have a couple of short, but quite meaningful and interesting, scenes. With really good dialogue and everything.

There are some moments in this volume that approach excellent – particularly the political fragmenting of the humans involved in the different aspects of this “war.” People who feel its necessary vs people who feel its a plot by the military, vs people who think its a hoax, vs people who think war would be fun. With our current situation here in the US, it reads as quite realistic.

The most well-executed scene is towards the very end, when the war becomes a reality for our young characters. Seeing a battle, in which “our” forces take a thorough and fatal beating, through Shima’s eyes is quite painful, even as it is exceptionally well-executed.

For our Yuri couple, Yayoi and Ayaka, there is only one scene towards the beginning – but it’s a good one. ;-) With a short, fanservicey, flashback to when they originally met, we get a tearful and emotional reunion between them. Otherwise they are never seen together…but later when Arisa teases Yayoi about Pierre (who has a openly-acknowledged crush on her) Yayoi basically says that he has no chance. Everyone laughs and moves on. They know he has no chance – they just think it’s cause he’s a doofus and Yayoi is a lady.

Ratings:
Art – yucky to not too bad
Story – fun, interesting, emo
Characters – real
Music – doo-doo-doo

Overall – just watch it

In general, this volume is good, solid space opera fare. The aliens are bugs, humans are torn over what to do, and the kids…are kids. All in all, a good story that stays good with ocassional moments of excellent and awful.





Yuri Anime: Madlax, Volume 3

September 12th, 2005

Madlax, Volume 3 Sometimes you get a craving and nothing but sociopathic women with guns can fill it.

Volume 3 of Madlax is both wonderful…and frustrating. Wonderful, because all the connections start coming together, leading you forward towards who knows what. It’s also frustrating for the exact same reasons – you keep feeling like everything is going *somewhere* but you’re just not getting quite enough info to piece it all together.

For me, the volume is very satisfying, as it focuses primarily on the character of Vanessa Rene, whose efforts to find out exactly what’s going on bring her into contact with Madlax, and with Enfan, thus knitting together the three great variables in the story: Who is Madlax, and how did she get those mad assassinatin’ skillz; what on earth is Enfan’s relationship to the civil war in Gazth-Sonika; what does Margaret have to do with any of this?

None of these questions is answered, of course – but Vanessa actually articulates the first two – and the third is implicit in the storyline. Bee Train isn’t giving anything away in this anime, we’re going to have to work for our payoff here. When I watched this part the first time around, I was skeptical that we would get *any* payoff, but now I know we will, and I’m content to let the story play itself out.

In writing the above, I just realized that watching Madlax is a bit like watching a play by Chekhov – you have to let the characters repeat their particular bete noir over and over until the threads all ravel and it begins to make sense. You can’t rush it, or guess what will happened/has happened. You just have to wait.

On the yuri side, I love this volume for what it doesn’t say. There’s still the weird vibe between Vanessa and Eleanor, which makes me think that they slept together, but don’t have a “relationship” per se. Eleanor would be hard work – her focus is so single-minded, that to make her notice her existence, Vanessa would have to do something irrevocable and awful. Vanessa ain’t no dummmy – she lets whatever is between them stay as whatever Eleanor makes it.

When she meets Madlax, its obvious that Vanessa is resonating to something within her – there’s an obvious desire to connect with this mysterious girl, and maybe protect (or perhaps treasure) her a little. There’s a very, very slight yuri feel there, but I think that’s because they are strangers and Vanessa doesn’t yet know who/what Madlax is or how to approach her. I don’t have any difficulty in believing that Vanessa would sleep with Madlax, if she thought that would be a good idea for them both. We know, with 20/20 hindsight, what the thing she feels in Madlax is, but as she doesn’t know herself – and never does learn – it leaves an interesting edginess between them.

As for Madlax, she clearly sees the relationship between her and Vanessa as a mirror image of Vanessa’s interpretaton: she’s the prince protecting Vanessa, the princess. We’ve already seen that Madlax isn’t afraid of sex and, once again, I think Madlax could well sleep with Vanessa, if she felt that it was the thing to do.

Will they, do they? I don’t think so. But that edge between them is fascinating and titilating.

And there’s Rimelda. This volume could be entitled “The birth of an obsession” and I think it’s a beautiful thing. ^_^ I’m not usually fond of obsessive relationships, but again, I know what’s coming and this one works for me.

Ratings:
Art – 5. It’s very inconsistent, with that BT tendency to have really bad people on top of really lovely backgrounds
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Music – 8
Yuri – 6, with loads of possibility

Overall – 8.

Madlax is a story that remains intriguing and fun, as long as you don’t need it to “make sense.”





Maria-sama ga Miteru Drama CD 5 – Rosa Canina

September 8th, 2005

Apologies for the long delay! Lots of things happened, including me growing another year older, and not a day wiser. ^_^

I actually listened to the Maria-sama ga Miteru, Rosa Canina Drama CD ages ago, but am just getting around to telling you how wonderful it is. And this time, it’s very easy to tell you why – Noto Mamiko, the voice actress for Shimako, really gets to shine in this version of the story.

Chalk it up to the fact that the anime aired out of order and that the Rosa Canina arc was moved up slightly in the episodes, but Shimako’s character seems particularly watery in the anime version of this arc. Maybe because the actresses were only just getting warmed up by the time the anime was over. In any case, in this Drama CD, Shizuka (now much more blatantly hitting on Sei, now that we know that *everyone* knows about her) is even more mysterious and cool, and Shimako has a hell of alot more backbone.

I bought this Drama CD as a “special box set” and got two little dolls as extras – little SDs of Yumi and Sachiko. They now stand, with quiet grace and charm in front of my Maria-sama ga Miteru collection on my new shelves! (I know, I should let go of the shelf thing…but they are SO great! I am going to put this in writing – thank you Charlie Lawler for the fabulous shelves. I love them!!! Now I will move on, but I make no promises that I won’t mention them again. )

There’s little else I can say about this story that wasn’t in either anime or manga (except that the manga has some internal monologuing by Shimako that exists nowhere else). If you like Noto Mamiko’s voice – and how could you not? – this is a great way to spend a few more hours having it tickle the inside of your ear. ^_^

The only down side – we *still* didn’t get the scene of Shizuka’s classmates cheering her on.