Way back, I read a book whose entire plot revolved around the fact that the two main characters did not communicate with each other in any meaningful way. Take that same story and transport it to Astrea Hill and you’ve basically got the plot of Volume 4 of Strawberry Panic.

In this volume, Nagisa finally learns the whole story about Shizuma’s past. But instead of the truth freeing her, she decides that she can’t live up to the perfection of Shizuma’s lost partner. The truth, instead of bringing them together, drives an enormous wedge between them.

In the wake of the flashbacks and intense emotional loss, the only character other than Shizuma and Nagisa who gets a piece of the action is Miyuki – who has to face the loss of not one, but *two* objects of affection. Everyone else in the story is relegated to background noise while we watch the tension build between the main pair.

Nonetheless, this volume is plenty Yuriful. We learn that even if Shizuma didn’t *love* Kaori, her feelings at least included physical attraction. (I’m never going to stop thinking that making love outside is not, perhaps, the best choice for the terminally ill.) There’s Shizuma’s hurtful – but brutally truthful – kiss with Miyuki. And, of course, we get to enjoy the bathtub playtime of our resident EPLs, Kaname and Momomi.

But most of all, this volume is filled with fraughtness and tension as we wade through the high emotion and drama that makes up Shizuma’s backstory. We then watch Nagisa put herself, Shizuma, Tamao, Miyuki and her fan club through hell as she wallows knee-deep in some good, old-fashioned self-pity.

*This* is the volume that all the fans who consider this series to be a beautiful romance are thinking of. It has all the classic memes of a million gothic romances, but as the storm howls around Shizuma and Nagisa at the summer house, I prefer to think this series is the direct descendant of that fateful scene from Cream Lemon Escalation at Naomi’s summer house – at which Rie learns the even more shocking truth about her beloved Naomi. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 8
Characters – 7
Yuri – 8
Service – 5

Overall – 8

Once again, my sincere thanks to that collective of Okazu superheroes, Media Blasters, for this volume and for being a fabulous bunch of people. And once again, I didn’t notice anything especially annoying with their adaptation, other than the continuing lack of “onee-sama” as an honorific. ^_^ It’s nice to be able to put a MB DVD in the player and know that neither the translation nor subtitles will subtract from the experience. Keep up the good work!

If the Strawberry Panic anime had begin with what is now Volume 3, I think that I just might, maybe, have liked it a lot more than I originally did.

It’s true that if the series began at the beginning of Volume 3, we wouldn’t have been treated to 11 episodes of *absolutely nothing* in which Nagisa is ever so cute as she remains confused and out-of-place, and we probably wouldn’t have seen Hikari cry a couple of times. Certainly we wouldn’t have been treated to Amane riding up on her horse, saying practically nothing, then riding away. And of course, we would have missed all those almost-kisses that so delighted us through the first half of the series, as Shizuma teased Nagisa.

Episode 12 picks up with as significant an episode as we’re likely to find in this series, as Tamao symbolically ties a ribbon onto Nagisa’s arm “for protection.” Like Chekov’s gun on the wall, you just know that this has to play a part and so it does when, after Shizuma and Nagisa have admitted feeling lonely when the other isn’t around, they “fall” into the pool and kiss while the ribbon symbolically unties and floats free. Afterward, in Shizuma’s room, Shizuma begins to have her way with Nagisa, but a memory of Kaori brings her up short, allowing Nagisa to escape back to her own room.

Meanwhile, Kaname and Momomi step up their “seduce Hikari to break her up with Amane, and make Amane depressed so she won’t run for Etoile” campaign. This is the source of the infamous and utterly hilarious “Global Warming” scene, which is no less fabulously stupid than the first time I watched it. The entire series peaks at that moment, I think. Everything afterward is simply denouement. LOL (If you can stop laughing long enough to listen to the rest of Kaname’s monologue, it carries on, no less amusing than the beginning.)

From this point on, the entire series takes a turn. Amane and Hikari go on a romantic date, only to have Hikari return home to find Yaya crazed with desire, the result of which is that she is the object of a sexual attack for the second time in one day. Rough day for Hikari. This is followed by an episode in which Hikari and Yaya make up. Good thing for Yaya that Hikari is another Himeko.

And then suddenly, it’s time for the school festival and the play, a time-honored subject of pretty much every anime ever. And yet, these final episodes of the volume are probably the best in the entire series. They have a good plot – actual grasp of and use of character and a pretty good climax, if you ignore the utter absurdity of our resident EPL duo’s “plot” to take Amane down. Since absurdity is practically the raison d’etre of this series, by now we’d better be sucking this series down with handfuls of salt – preferably adorning the rim of colorful glasses holding margaritas. :)

And just in case we don’t yet really get that this is a Yuri series, with Yuri, we are treated to several bath scenes involving nekkid Kaname and Momomi doing Yuri things.

Last note – I was warned by the folks at Media Blasters (who I once again have to thank for this review copy) that this volume was full of typos but, if there were any, I missed them. In fact, the quality of the DVD was so consistent and decent, that I just barely remembered to even mention it – which for this kind of thing is the highest praise. In a nutshell, the technical aspects of this DVD were so good that I never noticed them. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 8
Characters – 7 (towards the end, 8)
Yuri – 9
Service – 7

Overall – 9

I’m going to pretend that I used the above French terms in honor of the “Nagisa studies French” episode, but in reality, it was just coincidence. ;-)

I’m sitting on my beloved sofa, watching Strawberry Panic, Volume 2 and two things occur to me. One, it feels like this a very, very old series, one that I haven’t watched in a million years, and two, every time the story tries to be serious – or heaven forfend, menacing – it’s a total laugh riot.

Then a third thing occurred to me as I watched it, which needs a bit of a lead-in.

Sometime in the past few months, I was in discussion with the president of another manga company and we got on the topic of companies and their flexibility re: acknowledging mistakes and fan sentiment. The other President confidently told me that “fans don’t like it when you change things mid-series” to which I replied quickly that, speaking as a fan, if you did it wrong the first time, then yes, yes we do like it. It means you listened to what we had to say and responded. For instance, Right Stuf is making a very good effort to not only listen to fans’ concerns about the Yamayurikai members titles, but to be responsive and let people know that they have been heard. They clearly had a subtitle track all ready to go, but are creating a second one. They didn’t have to do that. We could have watched the first track, bitched that the anime companies *still* don’t get us, and moved on.

Which brings me to Strawberry Panic. When I reviewed Volume 1, I expressed some major misgivings about both the quality control and the translation of the series. I forwarded my review to Media Blasters. (As I have said many times, I think the folks at MB are wonderful. I’m not *trying* to be a nag. I’m trying to help…but I kind of wondered if they appreciated it or not. You know, like, “thanks for constantly pointing out our inadequacies Erica, you dumb so-and-so!” ^_^) I also wondered if the reason that MB’s work was sometimes so sloppy was because no one really ever cared about them. Like the kid in class whose parents don’t really care if he’s got clean clothes or not. Well *I* care about MB’s work, especially when it applies to my beloved Yuri, so I feel like I’m making sure MB combs their hair and puts on clean underwear before they send out a DVD. lol

All of this a roundabout way to say that Strawberry Panic Volume 2 is the BEST work I’ve ever seen from Media Blasters. The translation is nearly seamless, there are no typos and best of all, they listened to my complaints and are no longer translating “oneesama” as “Big Sister.” NOW it sounds okay. “Shizuma-oneesama” “Chiyo-chan” “Hikari-san” etc, etc.

Thank you to everyone at Media Blasters for listening. And thank you for sending me this disk for review! Now…can I ask you for *one* more thing? LOL Can we also have the opening and ending themes in romaji too? It can be at the same time as in English, or alternated, one English, one Japanese. Either way is fine. Thanks. ^_^

Now, on to the series. This volume basically covers three main issues, with some side stories thrown in. One – Hikari and Amane like each other. Two, Shizuma and Nagisa realize that they have actual feelings for one another. And third – and most important – Kaname and Momomi are barking mad.

This third point was really the best part of the anime. Kaname’s plan to thwart Amane from pursuing the Etoile title (which she has repeatedly said that she doesn’t want) is nothing short of brilliant – she’ll force Hikari to love her instead, so she doesn’t think about Amane. Which might actually work, if she wasn’t such a ham-handed creep. Well, you know what they say – if subtlety and charm takes too long, just rape her. That’ll work.

…

What’s worse, Kaname is totally tedious about it. There she is, holding Hikari down and instead of actually doing anything, she’s going on and on about how, after Hikari has her as a lover she’ll never look at Amane again. Yes, she continues, she an amazing lover. Yup, really and truly. No one’s better… Have I mentioned how good she is? She did – like five times. Without so much as even vaguely attempting to do anything. Kaname, Kaname, you’re a crappy rapist.

Also amusing was the episode that blatantly ripped off Marimite’s “Rainy Blue,” cleverly titled “Hydrangea.” If you take the ane/imouto argument tension out of Rainy Blue, and turn the focus on the lost umbrella, so that it no longer represents the loss of everything important in Yumi’s life, but instead is merely a lost umbrella, that sort of is what “Hydrangea” was about. With alot of “shared umbrella of love” fantasies thrown in. (The wife says, “For all you umbrella fetishists out htere – this is the episode you’ve been waiting for!”) My favorite moment is where Shizuma thinks that her umbrella is too big for two people, because she and Nagisa don’t have to huddle underneath it.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 7
Characters – 6
Yuri – 7
Service- 7
Umbrellas – 10

Technically, this volume was a pleasure to watch. A good translation can’t make a bad series better, but it can keep a mediocre series mediocre. Content-wise, this series is still a bowl of derivative anime crack; a cheap shot that makes for a few moments of fun.