Archive for the Series Category


Yuri Anime: 2×2 Shinobuden, the Nonsense Kunoichi Fiction

November 3rd, 2004

After nearly two weeks of turning the yuri goggles on full power and still having to squint, I need to write about something with *actual* yuri in it.

2×2 Shinobuden, the Nonsense Kunoichi Fiction, is just the thing to cure my “where’s the yuri?” blues.

The plot of Shinobuden can be summed up in two words – “Wackiness ensues.” While this is not my favorite plot in the universe, Shinobuden is a cute example of this very tired breed.

Shinobu is a young, well-endowed female ninja (the Kunoichi of the title) in training. She lives in a compound with a host of male ninjas and their master, a yellow ball with the name of Onsokumaru. The combined intelligence and maturity of all the ninjas and Onsokumaru appears to be about that of a 12 years old boy. The guys are all typical incompetent peverts, Shinobu is the typical sweet, clueless innocent. Wackiness ensues.

The yuri interest is Shinobu’s friend Kaede. For a change, Kaede is not engaged in a one-sided love for Shinobu, it’s the other way around. Shinobu hopelessly tries to entice Kaede to, you know, get closer, so they can, you know, be better friends, but Kaede’s a bit stuffy and doesn’t seem to be even remotely interested. In fact, she seems downright turned off by the idea of snuggling with Shinobu. Kaede is, however, the only really intelligent and competent character in the show, so when she comes over, wackiness ensues.

(There is one other seemingly intelligent and competent character, the master of the female ninja school, but as we learn that she is in love with Onsokumaru, her “intellgent” score drops pretty low on my scale. And *why* Shinobu doens’t go to the all-girl school is not really explained in the middle of all the wackiness ensuing.)

Poor Shinobu is really quite sweet and innocent so, although her desire for Kaede is apparent, it’s not like she’s going to come right out and be blunt. And, let’s be real, this is all played for laughs anyway. If one watches this show hoping for the girl to get the girl, one is deluding one’s self. :-)

This series gets filed under cute, sweet, goofy parody yuri.

Ratings:
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Art – 7
Music – 7, but highly sticky
Yuri – 8

Overall – 7. If you like farce and slapstick, this is a winner. Me, not so much.

My favorite bit of the entire show is the end credits which is done with puppet animation. I think that it’s exceptionally well done and funnier than the rest of the show.





New Anime Season Autumn 2004 – Mai HiME

October 28th, 2004

Mai Hime feels like a game that has been turned into an anime, or an anime that will shortly be turned into a game.

Tokiha Mai seems to be a reasonably normal young lady. She and her sickly younger brother are traveling by ship to go to an exclusive school. On the way, a young girl is rescued from drowning by Mai. She is followed by an older girl who seems to be trying to kill the young girl. Mai finds herself involved in a huge fight that ends up destroying the ship.

In the next few episodes, as we rush to introduce every one of the gazillion characters in the cast, we learn that Mai has special powers, as do many of the girls in this school – including both the young, feral Mikoto and uber-cool, Kuga Natsuki. Mai learns that, along with Mikoto and Natsuki, she is a HiME (Highly-advanced Materalizing Equipment…which makes about as much sense as it sounds) and is prone to manifesting shiny energy bands about her limbs, floating and shouting “Arrrrh!” as she pours forth magical/bad science energy and defeats the whatchamcallit bad ceature which, in this case seem to be called Orphen.

There’s lots of Digimon-type creature fights in this anime, which are good, if you like the kid-and-his or her-monster-type story. I do, so I’m happy enough.

And the characters aren’t bad. Mai doesn’t have too many bad habits yet, nor much of a personality, really. But Natsuki’s bad-ass-ness and uber-cool, which is probably masking social retardation of immense proportions is fun – and she rides a motorcycle, which automatically means she’s a lesbian. You know the rules. ^_^

Mikoto gets lots of fanservice Yuri groping in, but she’s so feral, it means about the same as if your cat sticks his claws in your chest.

There’s a ton of suggestive undertones in the three girls’ interactions with some of the older characters, particularly Shizuru – who is either quite hedonistic, or just loves teasing poor Natsuki to ruffle her. Either way, Shizuru is currently my favorite character.

The most open yuri in the series is the entire closing credit sequence – and that may or may not have anything at all to do with the actual story. The jury is still deliberating.

There seems to be a character stereotype for anyone and everyone in this series, so if you don’t mind watching a show in which character development will take place between giant creatures fighting, and a plot that is clearly a marketing tool for a game, you’ll like Mai HiME just fine.

Ratings:

Story – 7
Characters 8
Art – 7
Music – 7
Yuri – 6

Overall – 7

Goofy fun with Yuri subtext – turn your Yuri goggles way up and see what happen.





New Season Anime Autumn 2004 – Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha

October 27th, 2004

Mahou Shoujo Ririkaru Nanoha, i.e., Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha has, quite literally, reinvented the wheel.

Young Nanoha find herself filling the role of collector of magical items when her predecessor, upon being defeated, turns into a ferret. Nanoha inherits both ferret and magical wand and heads off to collect the whatevers which appear to be Miyazaki demon-y things that have invaded the immediate area…one at a time.

Nanoha defies mahou shoujo convention by having not only *two* completely functional parents, but an older sister and brother – and he has a completely functional girlfriend, the older sister of Nanoha’s friend Suzuka. It’s all *so* functional and normal that I find I spend every episode waiting for the other boot to drop. :-)

Nanoha’s two friends, the aforementioned Suzuka and Arisa provide the only glimmer of yuri hope in this completely normal, without any weirdness (except for the creatures attacking the town that no one ever notices) series. Yes, I know they are young, and *yes* I know that I’m being silly, but I feel that Arisa and Suzuka, when off camera, are likely to be holding hands and proclaiming their like for each other.

The plot has not quite developed yet in the mere four episodes I’ve seen, and the cast of characters is hardly complete – the official site has a rather large page devoted to the myriad people we should expect to see. It looks as if we’re in for about another four major players (some of whom actually looks lightly older than 9 and vaguely more interesting to me) to be introduced before things take off. In the meantime, we watch while Nanoha collects whatsits with the help of her highly merchandisable wand Raging Heart…or not, as she’s foiled by her mysterious counterpart in black and *her* highly merchandisable wand, Bardiche. Honestly, I find the wands to be the most intriuiging characters.

Will this become another Card Captor Sakura? I can’t say for sure – CCS didn’t take off until Episode 8, but the art in CCS was alot nicer than in Nanoha. and the voice cast was miles above any other in quality. OTOH, I’ll keep an open mind. With one exception – the hair in Nanoha drives me batty. They all have early 80’s tufts that swtich from side to side depending on the angle we see them at. Even the ferret. (OK, not the ferret, but everyone else.) Also, I’m at a loss to explain why everyone in Suzuka’s family has lavender hair, including the maids. Other than these minor gripes, Nanoha is just fine.

2007 note: The Yuri did get better with time. If you’re here from a later Okazu post, you’ll know it did. :-) Even though, at the time, I didn’t care for it.

Ratings:

Story – 6
Characters – 7
Art – 5 (that hair really gets me)
Music -6
Yuri – 0

Overall – 6

Everyone is so *normal*…it’s creepy.





Kannazuki no Miko – New Yuri Anime Season Autumn 2004

October 20th, 2004

So, I got good news and bad news, which do you want first? ^_^

The new anime season is well underway in Japan, and I notice that almost everything I’m watching right now is shounen, that is, targeted towards a male audience. Even the magical girl anime (which are legion this season) seem to be made much more for the boys than the girls – there’s a hard line to the art, and a hard edge to the fanservice, which is looking a little desperate these days. It’s almost as if all the anime running now is an allergic reaction to the slow pace, soft focus and emotional content of Maria-sama ga Miteru.

The Yuri out there looks a little thin right now – unless you’re one of those folks who holds that two women or more in any series, in any set-up, equals Yuri. Even wearing the Yuri goggles, there’s not a whole lot o’hope for us Yuri fans. (On the other hand, there’s plenty of stuff to watch if you’re just into girls, period. But I will get to that later on.)

The front-runner right now in the Yuri category is, hands down, Kannazuki no Miko. Based on a manga series drawn by Kaishaku, the artist team who created Steel Angel Kurumi and UFO Princess Walkure, we are certainly in for loads of Yuri fanservice, with or without the goggles.

Before I get into the, haha, plot, I want to discuss a totally irrelevant thing – the romanization of the series’ name. The official website romanizes it as “Kannaduki” and I’ve seen “Kannadzuki” as well as my preference, “Kannazuki.” Here’s why they are *all* right:

The second character in the first word is “tsuki,” the moon. As a second character this is *usually* romanized into “zuki”, as in Mizuki. But it is more properly “dzuki” since the “ts” of the individual form of the word would mutate into the softer “dz” for a combined use. BUT – and here’s where it gets complicated – the Japanese rarely acknowledge the existence of paired consonants, so they ignore the second consonant of the pair, leaving us with a “d”. Hence, all of the three spelling variants are correct. But I personally prefer, “zuki” because that’s how the combined “tsuki” is most commonly spelled. Got it? Good. ^_^ Now, on to the actual story.

This anime has a very strong Yuri beginning, which bodes badly for the rest of the season. ^_^ Dark Chikane and blonde Himeko not only share a birthday, they seem to share an affection for each other. They also, surprise, surprise, share a fate. Cool, rich, uber-competent Chikane is a priestess of the moon while bubbly and sweet Himeko is a priestess of the sun. They will be combating the forces of darkness in the form of 8 stars, the first one of which turns out to be their friend and close companion, the uber-competent, popular boy Ookami Souma (and what a name to live up to that is!)

The first episode nets Chikane a long look at Himeko’s chest, a gratuitous grope and in the last moment, a big-ass kiss. Souma may be Himeko’s champion and protector, but it’s Chikane’s arms Himeko falls into at the least little thing. And so far, this seems to be the pattern in every episode, which works for me. ^_^

Plot-wise, this anime is downright silly. Magic, schoolgirls and mecha *can* work fine together to make a colorful anime, but I’m not sure they work well together to make a good story. My initial read of this is that Geneon and Gainax got together to “fix” the problems in Marimite – you know, like not enough fanservice and no mecha. ^_^

Chikane and Himeko are Hatsumi and Hazuki (there’s that “-zuki” thing again) from Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito lookalikes. It would be nice to see Chikane get the girl where Hazuki failed. And there is no doubt at all in my mind that Chikane and Himeko actually have the hots for one another. Chhikane acts all cool about it, but she’s overtly burning for Himeko. And I don’t think Himeko would kick Chikane out of bed, if you know what I mean. She was surprised to be kissed, but she’s not complaining, either.

The bad guys are laughable, but the nun with the glasses is hot, and Corona, the idol-type bad girl, is voiced by Ueda Kana, Marimite‘s Yumi. ^_^

So – storywise, this’ll get repetitive by ep. 8 – assuming you don’t think it already is by Ep. 3 – and if it lasts longer than 13, it’ll be boring as hell, but I’m going to watch because I live in hope that Chikane and Himeko will, hahahah, live happily ever after. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 7 (the still art for this is *gorgeous* but the anime is messy)
Plot – 4
Characters – 6 (Other than Chikane and Himeko, it’s like watching Gundam or Transformers, with cardboard cutout characters and mecha)
Music – 6
Yuri – 9

Overall – a shaky 7

Yamibou meets Gundam – there’s very little here for an intelligent audience, but I like it anyway. It’s like a pleasant temporary frontal lobotomy. ^_^





Maria-sama ga Miteru Drama CD: Ibara no Mori

October 19th, 2004

The fourth Maria-sama ga Miteru Drama CD set, Ibara no Mori! Whee!

This two-CD set covers the third novel of the series, Ibara no Mori/Shiroki Hanabira, which correspond to Episodes 10 and 11 of the first season of the anime – in other words, Sei’s lesbian angst arc.

I now have a complete Yamayurikai set of dolls on my desk at work. I feel better about that. ^_^ (Youko has a really strange look on her face, like she’s about to say something…Sei just looks smug, like she’s gotten away with something and you’ll find out later – to your chagrin.)

The first CD in the set is Ibara no Mori, aka Forest of Thorns. There’s a fair bit of conversation that was left out of the anime and Yoshino is WAY over the top a few times, but the manga is closer to the drama CD than the anime was. There’s STILL stuff missing from the manga, but nothing important. Nonetheless, the Drama CD makes a nice addition to the level of detail, as always. The voice performances are, as expected, very good, but…

The second CD is Shiroki Hanabira, which means White Petals. This is almost exclusively voiced by Toyoguchi Megumi, as Sei narrates the story of how she fell in love with, and lost, Shiori. To say that she does a superlative job is a wild understatement. I was simply breathless during some of the scenes. In fact, I think I can say that this Drama CD may well be the best voice acting I have ever heard *ever* in any medium.

Shinohara Emi was simply amazing as Youko – much better than she was in the anime, and the Former Rosa Gigantea was voiced by one of the most skilled seiyuu in the business, Takayama Minami. She was superb. Nakagawa Akiko was much better in this CD as Shiori than she was in the anime – I expect it’s because she has a bigger part, and we get to know her better. My jaw was hanging open all through the second CD of this set. It was simply brilliant. This was 10’s all the way around.

The *only* complaint I can even find to have on this set was the Foley. The sound engineering was simply awful, especially in the second CD. I don’t know if they were so enamored of the voice acting that they forgot to do it until the last second or what, but I have honestly never heard such bad Foley outside an incredibly low budget kung-fu flick.

Ratings:

Character – 10
Story – 10 (to be fair, teen angst doesn’t *usually* appeal to me, but done this well…)
Voice Acting – 10
Yuri – 10
Overall – 10

If you can understand even a little Japanese, you should get this CD set. This is *the* must-have Marimite item so far.