Archive for the Series Category


I’m in Love With the Villainess Manga, Volume 1

March 31st, 2021

If you’re reading this, you’re probably aware that this particular isekai series has been given a lot of space in Yuri fandom’s head these days. With the successful light novels (Volume 1 and Volume 2 of which are available in English, Volume 3 on the way in July and Volume 1 through Volume 4 out in Japanese), a 5th place win in the recent survey asking what series fans want most to see as an anime, as announced at AnimeJapan, I think we can just agree to call this series an iconic series for Yuri in the early 2020s. ^_^ This point is key to today’s review, because this series, written by inori, with character designs by hanagata, has almost instantly become important to us. This emphasis will become relevant shortly, as we take a look at Volume 1 of the I’m in Love With the Villainess manga which was released this week digitally on Global Bookwalker.

Like the LNs on which the manga is based, we begin with Ohashi Rei, a worker at a company who finds herself reborn in to the world of her favorite otome game where she, as the protagonist, is finally free to romance the villainess, Claire François. There are a lot of things to like about this series. Much of fandom is thrilled to have an openly (and as it goes on, increasingly) queer Yuri work. I’m delighted to have an isekai work that addresses social and income inequities, government accountability, as well as surfacing gender and sexuality minority issues. Additionally, I really like that the protagonist is an adult, so their thoughts about these issues aren’t too simplistic. All of these things are part and parcel of why this particular series has made such a huge splash in Yuri fandom.  The fact that fandom has embraced this series with such passion is, in part, why the editing issues that lead to a excision of a passage in the first Light Novel (which has been restored already in digital editions) caused such a major uproar.  As I discussed in my recent article about Queer Representation, when we get more and better representation in media, we become more demanding, not less.

I really enjoy the manga iteration of this story overall. The art seems more lively/less moe than the original LN art, and there’s enough inconsistency in that art to highlight the comedy aspects. The nudity is entirely egregious, but it is also relevant to the story…not because the nudity itself is important, but what it says about the character. This is the core of the passage which had been deleted, in fact; the motivation of why Rae is the way she is. Those of us who have read past Volume 2 of the LNs will understand that this feels so long ago and almost irrelevant, but it had an impact on readers who were just beginning to love the story. To be perfectly honest, I assumed the story was originally a “comedy” that just morphed into a drama, and never felt Rae’s behavior needed explaining. But that’s just me.

Which is why it pains me to say this: The translation for the manga is not, in my opinion, very good. (Ironic, as I was just accused of being an apologist for Seven Seas last week. ) Jenn Yamazaki does such lovely work on the Light Novel translation.  Rae and Clarie’s voices are clear and appropriately translated.  As I read this manga volume, I became increasingly uncomfortable with the translation here. Given how absolutely critical Claire’s awareness of herself as a daughter of the nobility is to this story, some of the things that she says are crude, things said about her are uncouth and, ultimately in one of the final pages, she is seen to say, “bloody commoner.” 

I hate to be that person, but I am about to be that person. Not only is that not what she says in Japanese, which was 「本当にこの平民は・・・」 and not what is implied,  which I understood more as, “Really, this commoner is [just so]…”, it is wholly, unpleasantly vulgar. I  do not know if this was a failure of translation or editing, but it left me feeling absolutely bereft.

I’m with Rae. Claire high-handed arrogance is incandescent and her descent from that arrogance is a magnificent story which does not deserve greasy fingerprints of vulgarity. It left me thinking that neither translator nor editor care about this story and that is something I have not felt about a Seven Seas book in a very long time.  As I said at the beginning, this series has become important to us. It needs to be important to Seven Seas as well. I was so distraught at Claire saying “Bloody commoner” I woke up this morning and immediately composed an email to Seven Seas, letting them know what I would be saying here, so they were not blindsided. This translation did not feel as if it was done with love.

Surely one might assume that someone there would have thought to go over this before releasing it this week, after the problem last week?  A deleted passage is a problem that is fixable. An entire volume translated by someone who missed the point entirely may be fixable, but could have been prevented, if someone had been paying attention.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Characters – 9
Story – 8 It will improve over time. ^_^
Service – 5 Nudity and bathing
Yuri – 10

Overall – 8, with 1 off for the translation, which makes it a 7

If you don’t care about “voice” the way I do, it might not rub you the wrong way.  And, translation aside, this is still a fun manga, with great expressions and fun art and, of course, a terrific story. I’m still very eager to see the school festival cafe drawn by Aonoshimo-sensei. It was a scene that we all deserve to see realized. ^_^





Otherside Picnic, Volume 4

March 24th, 2021

At the end of Volume 3 our protagonists, Sorawo and Toriko have managed to free themselves from the clutches of an Otherside cult centered around the figure of Toriko’s mentor, Uruma Satsuki. In doing so, they uncover the cult headquarters, a remote building complex called The Farm.

Otherside Picnic, Volume 4 begins with Toriko and Sorawo accompanied by members of the DS and military contractors to clear the Farm of cult-built gates to the Otherside. This gives us a lot of space to encounter weird and threatening situations, and the general aura of not-rightness that contact with the Otherside brings. Sorawo asks DS to gift them the Farm, so they can manage it – and not incidentally, have a salary for doing so. She and Toriko provisionally get control of the Farm, and they hatch a plan.

But first, there some stuff going on that they have no idea what to do with, so they are avoiding what is happening to them…and what is happening between them. First and most pressing, it has been more and more obvious to me and to Sorawo, that the Otherside is targeting her, personally. Originally, she thought it was because of Satsuki, but she’s gone and it hasn’t gotten better. More phenomena are directed at Sorawo, specifically, and it’s clearly linked to her past. Every moment we get more of Sorawo’s backstory, everything about her makes more and more sense. And holy shit.

The second matter is no less pressing. As Sorawo and Toriko relax at a hot spring resort, they get very close to addressing what is building between then, but an Otherside phenomena occurs – a scene which is in my opinion, one of the very best in the books to date. Great use of everyday creepyness to create the Otherside’s signature threatening aura.

At last it is time to put their plan into action – Toriko and Sorawao plan an overnight trip on the Otherside. The preparations were actually quite interesting; soothingly banal, which was was a perfect setup for the final scene of this book in which all of the many issues mentioned here collide in an eerie grand finale. With the sole exception of Japanese writers’ newest grotesque body fetish – which I can live without ever encountering ever again – this ending was as least as least as strong as the Kotoribako and, like that ending, will undoubtedly send us into a whole new direction with the story. Miyazawa’s narrative arcs are tight here. shirakaba’s art in this book is way less goofy and much more moody…I like it. Translator Sean McCann and editor Krys Loh do a fantastic job of communicating unreal, not-things in a way that are the right kind of inexplicable. 

Ratings:

Story – 9
Character – 9
Service – 7 – Onsen bathing and /spoilers./
Yuri – 7

Overall – 9

Now this story is really ready to begin. Otherside Picnic is a beguiling tale of personal trauma intertwined with paranormal horror.

Otherside Picnic is available on Kindle, Global Bookwalker and wherever J-Novel Club books are sold. ^_^





“I’m in Love With the Villainess” Translation Controversy – What Does it Mean For Readers?

March 19th, 2021

UPDATE: Seven Seas has responded to this issue:

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Those portions of the text were removed during the editorial process at the time, but we have since changed how we edit these books to make sure important lines are not lost. We’ll be revising the ebook within the next few weeks to add the cut portions back into the book, and the revision will also be reflected in all future printings of the paperback.

Thanks to everyone who wrote them politely.

SECOND UPDATE: Someone on ANN Forums asked a couple of questions about this post. I have clarified those comments on that forum, if you are interested.

THIRD UPDATE: Setting aside editorial choice for the moment – typographic errors are not a personal attack. There are a lot of moving parts in publishing. There’s no rational basis for assuming either that a company cannot be trusted because a typo occurred OR than there was intent. I read three books this week. I found three typos. I wrote one company and privately told them about the typo, in case it can be fixed. One was in a Japanese book – they have typos, too, and the third was not important enough to care about. I have found errors in books for which I know absolutely more than5 pairs of eyes went over the copy. Typos happen. Being angry about them is just not healthy for either you, or fandom.

****

What a day! I woke up this morning ready to face an AMA on reddit as part of a Women’s Month celebration with my publisher (the thread is ongoing, feel free to drop in). I had a review lined up. 

I almost instantly found myself facing links to a thread on the J-Novel Club Forum, about a potential problem with Seven Seas’ I’m in Love With the Villainess, Volume 1. I’m not quoting the thread here, because after some conversation, the OP calmed down a lot, so I don’t want to make it seem like they are still spitting angry. You can click the link if you want specifics.  The thread title is a fanwank, Seven Seas is not in trouble. I am aware there was a recent issue with a translation that they did and human nature being aligned to pattern-recognition, caused some readers to recognize a pattern. (I’m of the belief that you need three things to form a pattern, but that’s me.) So instead of a review, we’re going to talk about this.

To summarize, there is a passage in Volume 1, where Rae speaks about internalized homophobia from LGBTQ representation in Japanese media, and, as a result, overplayed her love for Claire as hyperbolic comedy.  It was a good passage, and the OP was incensed that it had been deleted. Of course, whenever a fan shouts “censorship!” there’s always a mob of people ready to pull out pitchforks and torches.

I’ve written to Seven Seas to see if they would like to have an official, on the record, response to this, but in the meantime I have a few thoughts I want to share. These are in reverse order to their appearance in my responses on that same forum thread, with some thoughts from Twitter interspersed. Before we talk about appropriate responses to this issue, let us understand the issue itself. Since I never read Volumes 1 or 2 in Japanese, I am coming to this the same as you are.

The OP was comparing the Japanese Volume 1 with the English Volume 1. I pointed out that we, the readers cannot truly know where the disconnect was. It may have been Seven Seas who deleted the scene – which frankly makes no sense to me. GL Bunko may also have sent Seven Seas a bowdlerized copy with that scene deleted, as there has been a serious crackdown on Japanese media freedoms and, while it is hard to imagine that the Abe government would care about a US published edition of a web novel-based light novel, maybe someone at GL Bunko thought it sensible to remove the line.

Secondly, we do not know what decisions were made at Sevens Seas or why. The passage seemed to me to clearly be discussing “representation” like Hard Gay, which was hyperbolic and extreme. If one wasn’t familiar with that sort of “comedy” the passage could be misunderstood. It might have been removed to avoid confusion – if indeed it was removed by Seven Seas.

To be clear – I hope this was a fixable mistake. I thought the missing passage made sense and clarified some of Rae’s early choices…and I genuinely enjoy every glimpse we get of Ohashi Rei in the story. But we may never know what happened, because we may never be able to know. Being fans of a series does not grant us access to the contracts. Unless we are involved in making this particular sausage, we might never know what goes into it. 

We may not know why this happened, but there are something that are 100% under our control. We can always control our response to the controversy. Here I am going to quote from my own comment on the thread:

…ascribing any changes to malicious intent is not all right. Of course you are welcome to not read anything they sell, but what good does that do? Then you don’t get to enjoy the rest of these wonderful books. Tantrums are not the way adults handle problems. Hateful rhetoric leads to hateful behavior…we do not want someone taking their frustration to a KyoAni level. We cannot allow that.

Take moment and write Seven Seas a polite, firmly worded email expressing the problem. Ask them to restore deleted passages. If they get enough feedback, they might (probably will) change their position. There’s no guarantee, but there’s a much better chance than if you rant on a forum. When Viz made some decisions that in aggregate seemed very trans- and homophobic, I and a lot of folks wrote them and asked for the decisions to be fixed…and they were. They even fixed an issue that had hurt someone for decades, when their deadname had not been removed from a credit. THAT is how we make change, not harmful rhetoric. We know where that leads.

There is no place in Yuri fandom for hate of any kind.

So I’m asking you all, as another fan of ILV, don’t speak of this as an attack on you or on fandom. It’s a very unhealthy way to think of anything. We don’t need to be angry. We can be disappointed and let Seven Seas know.

Yuri fandom must remain a friendly, welcoming and intelligent place. If I have to physically wrangle individuals back from a ledge, I will. ^_^

Additionally, some well-meaning person tagged the creator on Twitter and dragged them into this mess. Please don’t tag creators when you’re posting about unpleasant stuff. It’s so hard being a creator, it’s a terrible feeling to have someone dump some problem you can’t do anything about in your lap. I hate getting a notification that says, “Hey @OkazuYuri, what do you think about this?” What do I think? I think the person who tagged me is a jerk, frankly. Is it my problem to have an opinion on? Can I do anything about it? Do you do this in real life? Why? Are you 12? “Hey, Jim, what do you think about the argument two other people are having in the bar?” Don’t do this.

Lastly, please consider this:

We can and should approach media critically, not with an angry, entitled attitude.

So, what does this deletion mean for us, fans and readers of I’m in Love With the Villainess? It means, we have the opportunity to show ourselves as the best, most thoughtful, kind and loving fandom. We can write Seven Seas, politely, thank them for their LGBTQ content and express disappointment and concern that some content was left out of Volume 1 and if at all possible, ask if it can be restored in the Kindle version and future printings.

That is what we can – if you feel strongly about it, should – do, whenever you feel that there is an issue.

 





Watashi no Oshi ha Akuyaku Reijou. Volume 4 (私の推しは悪役令嬢。)

March 15th, 2021

Watashi no Oshi ha Akuyaku Reijou., Volume 4 (私の推しは悪役令嬢。) is a wild ride of a novel that has more twists and turns than the newest roller coaster at your local amusement park. It was awesome.

At the end of Volume 3, we left Rae and Claire in the Nur Kindgom, having made a heck of an impression on the despotic rule of Nur, Queen Dorothea, in a battle against the Demon Rulers. They also made an impression on the Demons.  Both of these are understood to be ambiguous in nature and will surely come to a head. But first, we have some much more important stuff to deal with….

…including an Iron Chef-like cooking contest between the greatest chefs of Nur, and Rae and Claire’s 6-year old daughter Aleah. And a formal ball. Also a act of incredible magical skill handled by their other 6-year old daughter, Mei. Rae and Claire help foment rebellion, change the diet of the entire army, solve a murder mystery and three other mysteries, only one of which was in the least predictable. Then a kidnapping. And then, about 2/3 of the way through this book, the story slams down on us with a vengeance.

Inori carefully weaves their way through the various plotlines and pulls out exactly the right ending for the book. It could not have been handled better without making concessions to what we knew of everyone.

This felt like a long book, and we had a number of new characters, several of which are undoubtedly going to be key in Volume 5. It was no surprise that I like Hilde, the hyper-competent bureaucrat with a monocle, but almost despite myself, I also like Frida, the Princess’s “Merikan” friend.  This story still remains wholly queer and deeply rooted in social and political activism. This volume takes some time to get there, but when it does, it does.

Every single one of my questions from Volume 3 were answered, save one, and that clearly is going to be a plot in Volume 5. There are a lot of loose ends yet to be tied up. I’m constantly fighting with myself whether to read the chapters on inori’s Pixiv Fanbox or not but I have chosen to not do so, and hope you will respect that by not spoiling anything for me, as I have tried to not overly spoil this for others. Thank you. ^_^ I still have hope that two of the things left undone will be done by the end of the series and one other new thing also gets followed through with, but I admit that this last is simply because I really like Dorothea and want to see more of her.

The art was the best so far of the series. I’ll never adore moe-fication of characters like Dorothea, but I felt that everything in this book was way more finished and solid than in previous books and a few of these were extra lovely. (I did mention the formal ball, yes?) ^_^

Volume 3 is slated for a July release in English, which feels so far away, and Volume 5 is not yet listed in Japan, but I remind you that Volume 3 and Volume 4 are available in Japanese on US Kindle. They are so worth it.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 9
Characters – 10
Service – Yes. Still perfectly okay.
Yuri – 10
Queer – 10

Overall – 10

Oh, the boot I kept waiting to drop in V3? It dropped in V4. And it wasn’t a main plot point, just one more crazy arc that lead somewhere else entirely and was even worse and better than I imagined.

If you’d like spoilers or have read it and want to shout with me about it, please join me on the Okazu Discord. ^_^





Otherside Picnic Anime

February 14th, 2021

Miyazawa Iori has rather quickly entered the landscape of Yuri creators in recent years. With a lead story in the Yuri issue of SF Magazine in 2019, followed by the J-Novel licensing Side by Side Dreamers, and then the outstanding science fiction novel series, Otherside Picnic, Miyazawa has set a whole new sets of benchmarks for Yuri in a very short time.

The Otherside Picnic novel series has been fascinating. With an overt mix of Japanese netlore, science fiction, action and horror tropes and a big scoop of Yuri on top, I’ve enjoyed all of the novels so far. My reviews and others’ are all on Okazu in the Otherside Picnic category. Sorawo and Toriko are unusual as characters, compared with my usual fare. The post-apocalyptic unpredictability of the Otherside/UBL and its interactions with this world, give the series a Jorge Luis Borges-ish sensibility that I genuinely appreciate.

Otherside Picnic follows the adventures of college student Sorawo, as she find herself in an alternate reality that is embedded within locations in and around Japan. In this “Otherside,” Sorawo meets attractive Toriko, and finds herself traveling back and forth to the Otherside to gather artifacts for money, and help Toriko find a person who has gone missing on the Otherside…a person who clearly is more than just a friend.

It was with some trepidation that I saw the first key visuals of the Otherside Picnic anime. What was a darkish story about two young adults had already been given much-too moe illustrations in the books, and now it was the moe that was getting the focus, not the dark, not the deep, not the Russian science fiction, not the action, not the creative thinking around the creatures of the UBL. I won’t lie. I was deeply disappointed. Now that I have managed to watch the anime, which is streaming on Funimation.com, I’m still a little disappointed.

The first reactions I read of the anime seemed to focus on the translation, which chose “wiggle-waggle” for kune-kune. That didn’t bother me, as くねくね means wavy, or wriggling. I think the distaste there was the typical otakuish preference for the exotic other. I can see both sides and frankly glad they didn’t go with something like “The Wriggler”.  That is not the problem. ^_^; The problem is that they completely punted on animating the kune-kune, which are, based on the original description, very similar to the monsters of Side-by-Side Dreamers – a sort of familiarly shaped thing, but made of streamer-y parts. Something between those flappy advertising tube men, and the A-jin. The Otherside Picnic manga from Square Enix is way closer to my idea of what they ought to look like than the anime, which just…didn’t bother. The detailed burned-out buildings in the background look great. I wish they had given the same care to anything in the foreground.

Instead of a pleasantly befuddlingly creeping psychological horror, the anime is a comedy-action series, in which running and screaming takes up all the space the “what the ever-loving fuck reference is that?!?” of the novels. The pacing makes it impossible to appreciate the well-crafted horrible unrealness, before the screaming starts. For anyone who has come to the anime from the novels, it’s bound to be a little disappointing.  Even more importantly, if you are enjoying the anime, and decide to try out the novels, be prepared to be be actually creeped the fuck out. The anime makes everything so silly and cute, but the books do no such thing.

It’s not that this anime is unlikable. Actually, it’s very enjoyable, and the voice acting has been superb. As Sean Gaffney noted in conversation, Hanamori Yumiri as Sorawo is particular good, as her lack of affect when explaining her not-at-all-usual family life, actually increases the emotional impact. And if you’re not sure whether you might like this story, I’d definitely say give the animation a try….

…with “try” being the operative word. I know I have been banging on this for years, but Funimation is terrible at streaming. Streams cut out, commercials get stuck on loops, subtitles don’t work at all, or work wrong. I want so much for them to do this well, but they don’t. The first time I tried to watch the first episode, it took me 4 *days* to be able to get the whole thing watched and I ended up watching it with no subtitles at all, because the option never appeared. (Not a crisis, as I knew the story and can sort of understand, but that is not the point.) Funimation still gets a ‘D’ on streaming. I fear that a merger between Funimation and Crunchyroll will mean CR loses all of it’s decent streaming to Funimation’s vastly inferior system instead of the other way around.

Ratings:

Animation – 6 Unsatisfying. This COULD have been amazing and it’s just not
Story – 7 – Not as compelling as everything is crunched for time
Characters – 7 Sorawo comes off as more compelling, Toriko less, Kozakura feels even more like an afterthought
Service – 4 The key visual art was creeperish, and the moeification of the characters is itself a distracting bit of pointless service
Yuri – 5 Implicit and explicit in places and part of the overarching plot.

Overall – 7

So far at least, the anime feels like a children’s version of the novels. Goofy funhouse screaming rather than creeping psychological horror. Not bad in any way, just not good in the way the novels are good.