Archive for the R.O.D. Category


Yuri Light Novel: R.O.D., Volume 2

December 5th, 2009

I write about many things here at Okazu, but above all, I write about love.

There are, obviously, many types of love. Love of family, love of friends, love between comrades, love as an obsession. And in so many of these reviews, I deal with love that can’t easily be expressed in simple terms.

In the second Read or Die Light Novel, we find Yomiko and Nenene in this space. They aren’t “in love” with one another, but they clearly need one another and love and care for one another. They are each other’s most important person, but they are not lovers. More than friends, less than lovers, more than family.

This is all in the small spaces in between the larger issues like the opening of the world’s largest bookstore, the subsequent terrorist attack, the appearance of Mr. Gentlemen and lots of running around.

R.O.D novels have a very specific genre pattern – goofy beginning, serious plot with loads of violence, Nenene in danger, evil bad guy, happy reunion between Nenene and Yomiko, then Yomiko goes home to her shrine to her dead lover Donny and the book ends.

This volume had exactly what I wanted out of it – a few moments where we had glimpses of the affection Yomiko and Nenene feel for one another, a moment where Yomiko is cooler than cool and Yomiko saving the day and beating up the bad guy.

The plot isn’t really important. If you’ve read or watched Towering Inferno, just add John Smith as a terrorist and you’re pretty much there. ;-) Now add Yomiko walking out of the burning building and standing in front of an unhappy and worried Nenene, sitting there holding her knees until she realizes it’s Yomiko, then leaping to her feet, crying as she embraces the other woman. There, that’s this book.

Ratings:

Art – 4
Story – 6
Characters – 7
Yuri – 2
Service – 2

It wasn’t until I was almost done with the book that I realized that I was picturing John Smith from Mai Otome, not the John Smith from the R.O.D.-verse. Not like there’s that much of a difference.





Yuri Light Novel: R.O.D., Volume 1

October 2nd, 2009

The reason I didn’t post yesterday was that I was hustling to finish this novel so I could write about it today. ^_^;

Most ROD fans are familiar with the anime – the OVA and the later R.O.D. the TV series. Fewer have read the two manga series, R.O.D. and Read or Dream. Each of these occupies a slightly different version of the ROD-verse, which the TV series neatly tied together in a strange, but amazingly satisfying package. Amazingly, because we end the series with many unanswered questions…but it’s perfectly all right that they remain unanswered.

Well, I had one question that I was NOT all right with not having the answer to. “What happened in the novels?” was an itch I couldn’t scratch any other way than by reading them. I obtained the entire series in pieces some years ago and there they sat on my shelves, visibly taunting me with their bright yellow spines. Hah hah, they seemed to say, you have no idea what happens inside us – and the pictures don’t help at *all*! Hah!

So, at last I have finally read the first light novel of the R.O.D. series.

The book begins with a really creepy scene as Joker confronts a book thief and Yomiko is introduced in the skankiest way possible, practically orgasming as she “confirms” a book’s provenance. Then a fight breaks out and it is revealed that she has super strange skills with paper.

Immediately, the book takes a right turn into a plot that you will basically recognize as the plot from the first volume of the R.O.D manga. Yomiko arrives at a school to become a teacher in order to meet and save genius teenage author Sumiregawa Nenene. The bad henchguy is different – where the manga has a fire wielder, the book has a guy called Scissorhands (because of his…you got it, right?) who had previously battled the former The Paper, Yomiko’s deceased mentor and lover Donny Nakajima. Yes, they were lovers.

Crazed fan “Paul S.,” who kidnaps Nenene, is all the same as in the manga. With extra creepy nuttiness thrown in for good measure.

Here’s the key differences – Nenene doesn’t kiss Yomiko upon meeting her, although she is still writing a different novel with each hand. There is way more actual violence in the novel, because Scissorhands cuts limbs off people.

When Nenene and Yomiko spend one quiet night together, there is a real sense of them actually thinking they might like one another, until the next morning Scissorhands blows it all to pieces. However, when Yomiko arrives to rescue Nenene, she actually does confess her love for the girl. We know this is what she meant by “Suki” because the narrator helpfully tells us so. “After this confession of love,” the books says….

Most importantly, the ending of the book makes it VERY, VERY, VERY clear that the emotion goes both ways. So if you weren’t really quite sure about Nenene and Yomiko the answer is – yes, they like one another.

Here’s the other thing of note that the anime leaves a little gray. In this version, Yomiko did definitely kill Donny, in order, she says, to become The Paper. As she so succinctly puts it, “He chose me over books – I chose books over him.”

Having finally read this thing I find myself liking Yomiko more than I ever have. She is very disturbed, that is clear. Her bibliomania is an advanced Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, yes. But despite the first chapter, once she meets Nenene, she becomes instantly sweeter, more human and more sympathetic. By the end, when Nenene finds and reads Yomiko’s farewell letter to her, I found myself saying “awwww.” Because it was a really sweet letter.

And, at the end of the book, when Nenene follows Yomiko to England, because she can’t get Yomiko – not The Paper, but the woman behind the title – out of her mind, I finished the book with a big ass grin on my face.

Definitely, positively not High Art. It’s full of service and the art really focuses on the insanity of the characters, as it does in the manga. But now I know what happened and I finally really like Yomiko. I just like her better with Nenene than without her. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 4
Story – starts at 4 but ends at 8
Characters – same
Yuri – 5
Service – 5

Overall – If I had stopped halfway, 5, but by the end, 8

I liked the end so much that I immediately pulled the next one down and stuck it on the pile of “things to read.” But today my order from Japan came in (a mere 34 hours after I placed it…) and so now it will probably be another 5 years until I get to it. ^_^





Yuri Manga: Read or Dream, Volume 4 (English)

May 15th, 2007

Once again, I have the pleasure of thanking Ted for his sponsorship of today’s review! Yay Ted!

What is there to say about Read or Dream, Volume 4 that hasn’t been said already? I mean that literally, since I reviewed the story in some detail two years ago. ^_^

Here are links to the first and second parts of the Japanese edition review. (There are many spoilers, since I was reviewing the Japanese-language edition for people who I expected did not know the language.)

As with all the other English-language volumes of Read or Dream, Volume 4 is translated well enough that you get the humor, the irony, the adventure and the latent sexual tension. There’s nothing to complain about (except the lack of honorifics.) If anything, this volume reads the most smoothly of all of them. It’s reproduced exactly the same as the others, with no color pages, and the story that originally ran on the cover under the dust jacket translated in pages at the end of the book.

So, really, there’s nothing to be said about Volume 4 that hasn’t already been said…except this. When mail comes and Anita receives a copy of Hisami’s book, Maggie also receives a letter…from overseas. And blushes mightily, when Michelle assumes it’s a love letter. Since it is clearly from Faye, from way back in Volume 1, we can smile and think, why yes, yes it is.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 8
Character – 8
Yuri – 7

Overall – 8

The big downside is *still* no Nenene. I want a new series with grumpy, grown-up Nenene and her biggest fan, Yomiko, traveling post ROD The TV. Waaah. (OK, OK, I admit it…I wrote it already in a fanfic.





Yuri Manga: Read or Dream, Volume 3 (English)

March 19th, 2007

The fantastic and wacky happenings in Read or Dream, Volume 3 have not been altered from when I originally reviewed the Japanese edition, so please click that link for an overview of plot, character, and random references to Betty Davis…and now that I look at it, Kojak, as well. ^_^

So, as the story hasn’t changed, let’s focus on the reproduction to English. In this and this alone, the volume takes a pretty bad hit. The original has a dust jacket, underneath which is a short story on the cover of the book proper. As there is no dust jacket in this version, that story is reproduced in the book in black and white. Not deadly, but…the lack of color pages means, no cool Paper Sisters mini-poster page, which I very much like, and more importantly, the lovely color reproductions of the novel covers are turned into a totally skanky black and white page which is hard to see. It sort of killed the joke, too. I liked it better when we were allowed to make the connection ourselves between those shockingly shoujo novel covers and the ROD The TV anime series.

Let me try to explain why I feel so strongly about what is, in reality, one stupid color page.

In the anime, the one single thing that fills the entirely of the first 13 episodes is that Yomiko is NOT there. Her absence is a constant presence, if you will.

In the manga, in *this* volume particularly, there is also a person whose non-existence sort of fills up the empty spaces. That person is famous author Sumiregawa Nenene. In this volume, the fact that the beginning of the anime is reproduced almost exactly, but that the author is NOT Nenene pretty much shapes the whole story – and the story to come in the next volume.

So the color page with those novels by Nishizono Haruhi instantly brings to mind the fact that she was the author that debuted right after Nenene, won the same award as Nenene, and constantly pops up in the anime to be a thorn in Nenene’s grumpy side. Those covers also bring up memories of Haruhi’s irritating little sister pimping her sister’s books in Anita and Hisa’s class. In other words, those novel covers are memory markers. They provide a link to key moments and people in the anime. And those novel covers are reproduced in the *beginning* of this volume of manga, where they can ping those memories before you even start reading what will turn out to be a cool alternate universe reading of those very same situations and characters.

In the English edition, those novels are reduced to a comment that these are some novel covers drawn for the anime by the artist for this manga and placed in the back of the book. Thus losing every bit of tension, of anticipation, of memory that they stimulated.

I am just about 100% sure that no one but me cares, but I really think Viz blew it on that. That color page may not have been intended to be the stimulant it was…but I like to think that Japanese artists, writers and publishers *are* that intelligent. Sadly, Viz was not. Boo on them.

Ratings:
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Art – 8
Yuri – 4
Service – 7 (lots of ass shots…what’s with *that*? Maggie in a suit.)

Overall – 7 (one point off the original score for Viz missing a great opportunity to up the quality of their reproduction and get the point of that page.)

This and Volume 4 make great reading. I really enjoyed the direction the story takes here, and I don’t think it gets weaker in the next volume. Another enjoyable afternoon read.





Yuri Manga: Read or Dream, Volume 2 (English)

February 27th, 2007

I originally reviewed the Japanese edition of Read or Dream, Volume 2 in 2004 and found it, like all of the Read or Dream series, amusing, but not deep. This is rather meaningful, because the TV series had been so very deep, and the manga will, in future volumes, head in that direction as well.

But in the meantime, this volume remains fun, slightly silly, comedy action fare with a little dash of romance.

The stories are, of course, the same as they were in the Japanese volume, so none of my comments on those are any different. Please read the 2004 review (linked above) if you want a synopsis of the stories.

The reproduction quality is quite high, sans the color mini-poster included with the Japanese volume. The honorifics have not been added in, as I had hoped they might be, since the current trend in translated manga seems to be more on the side of keeping them.

Like the ROD The TV Anime, the heroine is Anita, a character who annoys me a lot less now than she did at the very beginning of both anime and manga. Since the character has not changed, it must be me. ^_^

Ratings:

Story – 8
Characters – 8
Art – 8
Yuri – 4

Overall – 8

For overall goofy fun, this is not the best of the Read or Dream/ROD series, but it’s still an afternoon’s solid entertainment.