Archive for the Series Category


Yuri Anime: Bloom Into You (English)

October 24th, 2018

Another good reason to take a look at HIDIVE is Bloom into You, simulcasting on Fridays. In no way is that a general statement – the Bloom Into You anime is a surprisingly excellent entry into the list of recent Yuri anime. (2018 is going to actually be a fun year to write up that top anime list!)

Because I have detailed every single concern I have ever had with the manga in previous reviews, I’m going to just set them aside. Not because the anime addresses them, but because the anime gives us additional layers and nuance to the story. I didn’t expect that…and I liked it.

The story is pretty much done straight from the manga. This is very typical in a Kadokawa series that runs in Dengekoi Daioh magazine. Traditionally, the anime runs through the first couple of manga volumes to stimulate interest in an ongoing series. It would thrill me to know that we were going to get to the point of the school play in Volume 6, but I do not expect it. ANN lists 12 episodes, which sounds about right for the typical Kadokawa marketing plan. 

As ever, I find myself watching Sayaka, here voiced by Kayano Ai – who seems to be a regular in many of the popular Kadokawa series. The anime really plays up her longing looks at Touko and the laser-like intensity with which she regards Yuu. For her, the animation really amps up the tension. 

The animation itself is all right. The faces strike me as having weirdly pointed chins which reflects the art of the first volume, but not the better art of later volumes. Backgrounds are given more detail than people, as is the way these days, but I feel the gap here is less pronounced. Body movements (and clothing motions) seem better animated than I expected and the backgrounds aren’t that hyper-realistic that makes the characters seem out of place. I do have one very sincere complaint, however. The eyes are animated strangely and yet, are constantly the focus of close-ups. I don’t mind that the faces are not exceptional well-drawn – I deeply mind that we’re forced to zoom in on them over and over. Dear gods, visual media directors, please stop doing every scene in close-up. For pity’s sake, back the fuck up.

Overall its balanced, if not brilliant, animation, with way too many close-ups on strangely drawn eyes.

Those of us following the manga won’t be in for any surprises regarding the plot, but if you haven’t been reading the manga I can actually recommend the anime as a solid place to start. And, man, does that feel good to be able to say. When I was at Yuriten and saw the poster for the anime, I actually groaned inside. After the last couple of Yuri anime that I could not recommend and frankly wish were wiped out of the collective consciousness, it feels really good to add another Yuri romance to Asagao to Kase-san among the recommended Yuri anime to watch for 2018.

Ratings:

Art – 7 -1 for the eyes, so 6
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Yuri – 5 + 1 for Sayaka, so 6
Service – 1 on principle

Overall – 8

I was delighted to find the anime quite enjoyable. I hope you’ll give HIDIVE a trial and see for yourself.

 





Yuri Anime: Cutie Honey Universe (English)

October 22nd, 2018

I finally had a chance to sit down and finish up the Cutie Honey Universe anime, streaming on HIDIVE (where apparently all the Sentai Films series stream, finally!) And, well, honestly, I think it was a darn near perfect iteration of this classic magical-girl adventure. The main story echoes the original manga pretty closely through the first half. Honey’s father is killed, Saint Jogakuen is attacked by Panther Claw, many people die. But in the second half, the series takes a new tack…and I really like it.

For one thing, in this version we get the very gay Aki Nastuko we’ve always deserved. Seduced by Inspector Genet, in love with Honey, this Na-chan is the right one. It was with no surprise, therefore, that we couldn’t keep her. :-(

Inspector Genet / Sister Jill was perfect. Perfect. Obsessed, evil, manipulative…absolutely perfect.

I’ve been watching Cutie Honey for a couple of decades and I’m gonna have to say – this was exceedingly close to what I would call the “ultimate” Cutie Honey. It doesn’t even end with the school in smoking ruins and dead bodies everywhere, so that has to count for something. 

Ratings:

Art – 10 
Story – 10
Characters – 10
Service – 10
Yuri  – 9

Overall – 10

While I still have dreams of butchy Na-chan of Cutie Honey-a-Gogo! and Honey getting together, Cutie Honey Universe runs a close second.





Rose of Versailles Manga, Volume 14 (ベルサイユのばら)

October 21st, 2018

Begun in 1972, in the pages of Margaret magazine, Riyoko Ikeda’s historical epic of the French Revolution has finally come to an end. The final chapters of Rose of Versailles, Volume 14 (ベルサイユのばら), follows the last of the players on the stage of this drama.

The volume follows Rosalie, the commoner rescued from poverty and death by Oscar Francois de Jarjayes, and given entré into French noble society, adopted by a lady of Marie Antionette’s court and, finally, happily married to former thief, now revolutionary Bernard Chatelet. As the final days of the revolution wear on, the revolutionaries turn on one other and Bernard is caught and killed.  Rosalie and her son escape Paris with the the help of Girodel and eventually find their way to Sweden, where Hans Axel von Fersen’s star has ascended. Given shelter in Fersen’s home, his sister Sophie is not overjoyed to have them there, but is kind enough.

Rosalie’s son Francois (named after Oscar) enters university, where he is befriended by Fabian Nobel and is kept closely informed of revolutionary thinking in their adopted country. When the young king of Sweden falls from his horse, rumors say it was an assassination attempt – and that Fersen was involved. 

Tensions rise as the Swedish people demand an end to royal rule, Fabian and Francois are caught up in the riots. Francois saves Fabian, but Fersen is pulled from his carriage and beaten to death by a lynch mob. A few months after his death, his name was cleared and Fersen was given a state burial.

The book ends with the succession of Swedish King Oscar 1 in the mid-19th century. Rosalie, now an old woman, reminisces about the people she loved and lost, including her beloved Oscar. That’s the only Yuri in this book – her eternal affection for the woman who changed her life and for whom she fell, very hard.

She dies peacefully and is reunited once again with her husband, Bernard. 

With that, the last person involved in the narrative of Rose of Versailles passes out of even the fictitious realm of existence. 

It helped – as it always does- to have Wikipedia open as I read this volume. Today’s review is brought to you by the entry on Hans Axel von Fersen. And, in the way the universe has of giggling at me, one of Marie Antoinette’s necklaces was unveiled just yesterday for the first time, (this video is in French) before it was auctioned off. Here’s another article (in English) about the jewelry that will be auctioned.  I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to imagine just how many people these jewels might have fed when you look at what they go for now. 

As we look back at 40+ years of Rose of Versailles, I think it’s safe to say that was exactly the story – we were never supposed to sympathize with Marie Anthoinette. The nobles could have, at any time, simply eased up on the commoners and would have almost immediately averted a revolution, but they never even considered it. As we sit precariously balanced in between rapacious capitalism and oligarchy, we’re looking at a mirror, however darkly tinted, not all that much distorted. It’s not a fun place to be, when we are reminded that even the heroes of this story died ugly.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 8 Strikingly historical when it can be
Characters – 8 I always liked Rosalie

Overall – 8

Rose of Versailles is over, but history moves on. And there are so, so many tears in both.

 





Yuri Manga: Yagate Kimi ni Naru, Volume 6 (やがて君になる)

October 18th, 2018

In Yagate Kimi ni Naru, Volume 6 (やがて君になる), the story comes to a climactic moment, with an expected twist.

It is, at last, time for the school festival and with it, Touko’s Student Council is putting on an original play, finally fulfilling her late sister’s unrealized dream. Unusually, we are allowed to see the entire play, including the scene where Sayaka plays amnesiac Touko’s now-forgotten lover. Immediately rumors begin to spread, but they move though the scene to the conclusion of the play; in which the protagonist decides against choosing any of her former lives, instead preferring to create a new self into which she can grow. The play is a rousing success. Touko’s parent’s reaction to it all is very interesting, and I hope we’ll be privy to a conversation between Touko and her family discussing that reaction.

But, as far as the main story goes, there’s only one reaction Touko cares about. When she and Yuu finally have a moment alone, Yuu makes heartfelt confession – she can no longer remain the same as she was, as she had promised. And, more devastatingly, she has realized that she is in love with Touko.

Touko, who had resigned herself to keeping their relationship in stasis, is thrown into a high state of confusion. Where they will end we cannot say (well, okay, obviously we can. It was abundantly clear from the first page of this series it was meant to be a romance. As I noted in my review of the first volume back in 2016, “The first [criticism I had of V1] is that it is presented as a romance. The story is apparently that we’ll side with Touko as her sincere feelings for Yuu are eventually returned.” So, yeah, obviously it has been heading in this direction from the very beginning. Which I’m still kind of sad about. I would really have preferred to have Yuu as a rare aromantic manga protagonist. Oh well.

Setting that aside, as a romance goes, this story is taking time to alleviate my concern that Yuu would be swayed merely by the force of Touko’s affection for her. That, at least, has not manifested. 

Now Yuu and Touko will have to see if their feelings can match one another’s, and then see if they can build a relationship on those feelings.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 8 
Characters – 8
Yuri – 5
Service – 1

Overall – 8

The play was actually quite good – as well as terrifyingly accurate.

In the meantime, I’m still watching Sayaka, whose role in the play has effectively outed her to the whole school. I hope she will find her way through all this. (I am currently reading another novel by Iruma Hitoma, I’m ever more concerned for her novel, I hope they are up to conveying her as fully developed character.)





Ghost in the Shell: Global Neural Network Anthology (English)

October 11th, 2018

This past weekend at NYCC I had the very sincere pleasure of sitting in on the Ghost in the Shell: Global Neural Network Anthology panel featuring Alex de Campi, David Lopez, Genevieve Valentine, Brendan Fletcher and editor Alejandro Arbona, Moderated by Kodansha USA’s Ben Applegate, it was an hour-long celebration of the joy of being able to contribute to the iconic Ghost in the Shell canon.

Immediately after the panel, I went and bought the book at the Kodansha booth – it sounded that good. And, having read it, I can say with all honestly that it is that good. 

Ghost in the Shell: Global Neural Network is not an attempt to copy the original Ghost in the Shell manga. Only one entry has art that is reminiscent of Shirow’s work, while the other stories consciously reach for a out-of Japan look. Giannis Milonogiannis offers a consciously manga-like effort, with many notable nods to the original, including chibi characters  (as de Campi pointed out in the panel.) Lopez focuses on China for a more realistic look;  Brent Schoonover went full-on American comics for Valentine’s moving look at the remnants of The United States in the GitS universe (a story in which Section 9 never appears, but is nonetheless brilliant.) And LRNZ’s art is recognizably European for the final story that, in many ways, is one of the most profoundly Shirow-esque stories of the post-original-manga variations, right up there with Ghost in the Shell: Innocence.

None of the stories have the hyper densely crammed word balloons of the original and I frankly do not believe we in the west will ever truly be able to capture that until GitS is transformed into a neural network-shared media stream. Then we will understand Shirow’s point, I think.

Aside from that, I felt that every story in the anthology really grabbed onto one or more aspects of the original and ran with it. Issues of access to information, healthcare, safety; the meaning of identity in a world were you can be  – and are – multiple people; the meaning of borders, of ageing, of family all were highlighted in extremely smart ways. Every story took these concepts and delved into them for the rest of the world, people outside Section 9 and outside the borders of Japan.

There were no stories I didn’t like, although, of course, your mileage may vary. But the thing I found the most refreshing was that the members of Section 9 sounded like the people I remembered from the manga. Snarky-funny, loyal to each other, but always joking, picking on one another, poking at each other like siblings. That was the thing I loved best about Section 9 and it was fully represented here. 

The final story, “Star Gardens” by Brendan Fletcher and LRNZ focuses deeply on identity – the idea that Kusanagi is all the personas she has shown us over the decades, not one or another but all of them at once – and this really rang true for me especially in the light of Innocence, when Kusanagi no longer exists as a physical entity. This story also has a magnificent panel where we see the many fragments of Kusanagi from the movie, the manga, the TV series, the OVA, even the recent live-action movie, simultaneously. It was a fantastic image, which spoke volumes about the range of the canon and how we each have our own idea of the “real” Kusanagi. This story also contains an homage to the lesbian sex scene of the original manga, but with more meaning and emotion contained in those few panels that the original, where it was meant to be gratuitous.

Every story had strengths and weaknesses and, for any fan of the larger body of Ghost in the Shell I think this must be considered a meaningful addition to the canon, as Shirow has overseen and approved all of it. 

Ratings:

Art – 9 Variable, but I say damned good.
Stories – 9 Also damned good.
Characters – 10  Listening to everyone bust Batou’s chops made me so happy.
Service – 4 Some, but not half of Shiro’s ass fetish.
Yuri – 3 There’s a thing, yes.

Overall – 9

If you only like one version or another of Major Motoko Kusanagi, it might miss you, but if what draws you to Ghost in the Shell is the larger questions of identity and access, memory and reality and perception, it’s a must-read.