Here are my final thoughts on Strawberry Panic as I expressed them on Zyl’s most excellent blog Hontou ni so omou?:

Considering the fact that this story is really no more than a collage of recognizable scenes, stereotypes and conventions taken openly from other series, I have to say, I thought it turned out pretty good.

There’s no denying that Strawberry Panic wasn’t brilliant, but considering that it was meant to be trashy, it pulled out a few moments of dignity and elegance out of the trash heap.

As stolen memes go, using the (admittedly obvious) one from The Graduate for the final episode made a satisfactory semi-resolution.

Yes Miyuki and Tamao are still doomed to lives of loneliness and alcoholism, but as clones of Youko and Tomoyo that was their fate from the very beginning. In other news, the Shizuma x Nagisa, Amane x Hikari, Kaname x Momomi and in a surpising late entry Yaya x Tsubomi pairs all live *happily ever after!* or some reasonable facsimile thereof, until bad fanfic writers kill one of the pair off in a heavy-handed attempt to create crisis and re-pair the other with someone else.

But I digress.

No, SP is not a diamond in the rough, but let us call it an attractive riverstone, washed suprisingly clean and shiny by the many, many, MANY tons of water that has flowed downstream from clearer and cleaner sources. ^_^

…

Considering that I began watching this anime with something akin to loathing, I might have to retract the “not brilliant” comment. It must be some kind of decent/funny/entertaining for me to have 180’ed so thoroughly. I’m not sure if it’s a case of the story becoming real and richer despite itself – as parodies are wont to do, just ask any fanfic writer – or the writers managed to find something unique to play with within the framework of the openly stolen memes. I’m inclined towards the former, as I’ve read many a story that started as a 2-dimensional parody/ripoff that suddenly morphed, without the author being really cognizant of the moment of change, into a decent-ish story.

There’s a great scene in Dorothy L. Sayers Strong Poison where mystery author Harriet Vane is bemoaning that very thing to a only-partially sympathetic Lord Peter Wimsey. He, quite rightly, insists that if a writer is going to write anything worth reading then, when the moment comes, s/he must shed the potboiler facade and *write* – conscience be damned. I’d like to think that that was happened here.

What began as thin, barely 2-dimensional trash developed a personality, while never losing that sense of “what can we steal this week?” So, let’s call Strawberry Panic the clever, fun-to-be-around street whore of a Yuri series that it is. ;-)

It’s halfway through it’s run and I thought that the Strawberry Panic! anime warranted a second look.

When I was in high school, I took a creative writing class. I have long ago forgotten the teacher’s name, but I have retained two things from that class – the word “transmontaine” and an exercise that we were assigned. Our teacher told us to look through our record collections, take phrases from the songs and construct a poem. I remember this exercise very clearly, because in every case but one it was *instantly* apparent which song the writer had used. They hadn’t taken phrases – they had taken whole lines. The one exception was mine. I was the only one in the class who had understood that one could take a *phrase* someone else had created and make something unique and original from it. This is very possibly the beginning of my “career” as a fanfic writer – but that isn’t why I bring this up.

I bring this up, because in the course of writing my weekly snarky “stolen meme” report on the Yuricon Mailing List, pointing out the exceedingly obvious – and not so obvious – symbols and concepts taken from popular yuri anime and manga series, it dawned on me that Strawberry Panic is exactly the same thing as my now long-lost (and thank heavens for small favors for that!) poem.

Is Strawberry Panic derivative? Yes.

Is it laughable? Absolutely.

Is it pandering? Indubitably.

But is it fun? *Now* I say yes.

At half-way, the characters have taken on decided characteristics of their own, the story pretty much fixed one of my major issues with Kannazuki no Miko and with the exception of the lead, Nagisa, everyone has become sort of human. Sort of. I’m not saying this is high art, but as parody goes I’m beginning to like it.

I started liking this anime for something very stupid and small. When they changed to the summer uniforms, Shizuma took to wearing the single most unattractive cardigan EVER over her uniform (because heaven knows that it’s too chilly inside that old wooden building in the blazing summer heat.) That stupid sweater – so ugly, so old-ladyish, made me really begin to like Shizuma. Think about it – this is the schools’ star among stars. She is the height of cool and style…and here she is schlubbing around in a mucky gray cardigan with a yellow stripe. How…uncool. I love it.

Then, just as if the writers actully understood how to put a story together, they resolved one of the several love polygons in the series, smack dab at mid-way through. Just like you should. They ended it in a really funny and bizarre way, which has changed many geeks’appreciation of ineffective pickup lines forever.

And so, halfway through the season, I find myself in the camp of “It’s utter trash – but it’s *fun* utter trash.” And for the first time in ages, I find myself laughing at a parody. Thank you, writers of Strawberry Panic, thank you makers of ugly sweaters and thank you global warming. You’ve saved this anime for me.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Characters – 7
Story – 7 (the bits they didn’t steal from other series, that is)
Music – 7
Yuri – 9
Service – 6

Overall – 7

Oh, but the new ending sequence! Truly WTF. I thought the first one was bad, but this one is positively nightmarish. Shudder.

I’ll do my best to make today’s post simple and straightforward, so you have less room for cognitive dissonance, but I have little hope of you all following the logic. So, with a deep breath and a dash of desperation, I bring you the first of the Spring 2006 Yuri Anime Season reviews.

I first encountered Strawberry Panic as a series of short stories published in Dengeki G’s Magazine. (These have now been collected into a single volume, which is NOT the same as the first volume of the manga.)I reviewed these stories as a whole in January 2004. These stories were all short, plotless vignettes. Each one gave the briefest glimpse into a “Yuri coupling” (the phrase used on the original website which is now gone) between two girls who attended one of three schools – the same schools with untransliteratable names as those in the anime.

Because Dengeki G’s is a magazine for fanboys who play dating sims and h-games with characters that all look unpleasantly young (and who, I am sure, call out “oniiii-chaaaan” at every opportunity,) in every short story, we meet a horribly lolified girl who does something exciting like trip and scrape her knee, or fall inexplicably into a pond, or make lunch. In each of these vignettes, the older, admired/desired girl is cool only by comparison with her partner who looks 6 years old. At the end of every vignette, we read a breathless thought of love, or perhaps a scandalous confession of like or, in some case, even a quick peck on the cheek! Shock!

Now here’s the part where you have to work hard to follow me. *Based on the aforementioned stories*, the anime is not that bad.

Don’t get all hairball on me – I am not saying that the anime is not bad or – heaven forfend – good. I am saying, in what I hope is a clear and concise manner that given the utter craptasticness of the stories from which the idea came, the anime is less horrible than I expected.

The anime, while moe (duh) and distinctly derivative of Maria-sama ga Miteru, and school uniform fetishy, and just plain stupid, is still better than I imagined it would be, because for however bad the Strawberry Panic anime is – it is *still better than the original stories.* (And incidentally, better than the manga, as well, in which Nagisa is one of those horrible creatures who refers to herself in third-person.)

Okay. So, I’m the only person on this continent whose expectations for the Strawberry Panic anime weren’t disappointed. But I had an a priori understanding of how dire it was going to be.

Now, let’s get the actual review over with quickly. Strawberry Panic is written for the lowest common denominator, will have as many cliche’s as possible crammed into each episode and the Yuri equals fanservice. This is a classic use of Yuri as a sales tactic. Yuri is the fetish du jour here.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Characters – 4
Story –
Music – 6
Yuri – 8
Service – 8

Overall – 6

Will I watch it, since it’s such crap? Hell, yes! I find crap as amusing as the next person. But the first person who tries to, say compare Strawberry Panic with something decent like Strawberry Shake Sweet, which is Yuri by a woman for women (and men), will be shunned.