Archive for the Staff Writer Category


The Marble Queen, by Anna Kopp and Gabrielle Kari

March 9th, 2025

Book cover of the Marble Queen. It shows Salira, a dark skinned woman with long black hair, standing behind Amelia, a pale skinned woman with ginger hair. Salira is holding a sword, as Amelia is reaching for her. By Luce, Staff Writer

Princess Amelia of Marion has always struggled with anxiety, something that only increases under the strain of pirates bombarding their country’s trade ships. Struggling for resources, she agrees to be married off to the highest bidder, hoping to be useful to her country. That bidder turns out to be from Iliad, a mysterious country across the sea that little is known about, and it’s actually the Queen, Salira. Amelia must face this new situation, her own growing feelings for Salira, her anxiety, and a murky political plot if she wants to survive this new marriage.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a reader wanting representation for a minority orientation/gender/race shall hold that rep to high standards, and may well be disappointed.

When there isn’t a lot of something, we get excited about seeing it at all. Queer rep isn’t as rare as it used to be, and I’m very happy about that, but certain areas of queer rep are still underrepresented – cis gay and lesbian rep, while not mainstream, have a good number of options in books nowadays. In manga, BL is booming, and Yuri isn’t far behind, and we’re seeing more of it each week. But queer stories in other genres is still quite rare. Fantasy, for example.

That is to say, The Marble Queen, by Anna Kopp and Gabrielle Kari, had such potential. It sounded so promising on paper: a princess wracked with anxiety goes to another land, marries a queen and find her place in the world. Romance. Fantasy. The cover looks really pretty and enticing. So I ordered it, knowing very little more about it.

I don’t often ask for less plot, but here I am. This book tries to do too much in too few pages. It’s about two hundred pages long, which is plenty for some stories, but not for the one they tell here. A clearer focus on the unique, interesting story they had – a princess with anxiety learning to cope with it and getting to know her new partner and herself better – would have meant that we could relate to these characters more deeply, and thus cared more about them. But because the political intrigue plot is there, they don’t have the time or page count. Touching scenes where the two start break down their walls around each other and start to fall in love get squashed, and so feel a bit flat.

The magic is sort of explained… but for once, it didn’t actually need to be. The beauty, and strength, of visual storytelling media is that you can have visual metaphors, and they don’t need to make sense. They started with these, with Amelia’s anxieties emerging on the page as thorny vines and grasping hands, but then made it a real phenomena visible to the outer world. Yet this is only used once, when Salira has a nightmare.

Amelia could have shown her numeric talents and discerning eye by finding the embezzlement, but it not being part of a larger plot. Or having the larger plot solved from within Iliadi, rather than having a few pages of exile. Salira could have shown her skill with the sword in other ways. All in all, it was so rushed at times it was hard to tell what was even happening.

I would love this book over a short series, or at least a graphic novel twice the length, with enough room to breathe with the characters. I wanted to root for Amelia and Salira to win over the nation. But the political plot weakened a great premise. Especially having just read a duology involving a similar type of political plot, except there were nine hundred pages of writing to deal with all the machinations that this story was not afforded.

I did enjoy this book. The art, while not standing up to the standard of the cover, is decent at portraying the characters, and the emotions do come through. Amelia felt real enough to connect to, and Salira cool enough to admire. The background are often single colours in the small panels, which works to a degree, but does leave it feeling a bit empty at times. The sound effects, possibly influenced by manga, seem a bit odd – most of them just aren’t needed, as it’s clear in the panel what’s happening. Minor vague spoilers, but labeling a body with ‘dead’ makes it funny, rather than dramatic, as likely intended.

Overall, it was a fairly fun read, but it could have been great. It was a little like reading a children’s novel as an adult – it works, it’s serviceable, but you need more depth.

Ratings:

Story: 5
Art: 6
Yuri: 9
Service: 1 (Salira is very cool. But other than that, there’s no service at all.)

Overall: 5

I really hope these authors/artists both continue to make art and grow with it. Unfortunately, this just didn’t quite hit the mark. (Edit: forgot to put my name on it, I’m Luce!)





I Want To Love You Till Your Dying Day, Volume 1

February 27th, 2025

In front of a ruined wall and a bright blue sky two girl in blue Japanese-style school uniforms hold hands and smile into the camera. The taller girl, with wavy blonde hair has a bandage on one cheek. The smaller girl, with long, lush punk hair flying in the breeze, holds a wildflower in her hand.Did you read The Promised Neverland and think “I wish this had more yuri?” If so, I Want To Love You Till Your Dying Day, Volume 1 might just be the series for you. Newly available in English from Kodansha USA; “Love blossoms amid bloodshed in a new enthralling dystopian yuri manga.” This series began in the printed Comic Yuri Hime magazine in 2018 but has subsequently switched to an online serialisation via the Yuri Hime Pixiv site. 8 volumes are currently available in Japan, Kodansha are aiming to release the first 5 volumes in English by October this year.

Content warnings: gore, child soldiers including deaths of.

Set in a mysterious orphanage where children born with magical talent are trained as weapons to be used by the military in a war against an unknown enemy, thoroughly average student Sheena wakes up to find her roommate has been killed in battle the previous day. Any short lived excitement about having a room to herself is almost immediately snuffed out when a strange new student arrives. “Mimi” is rumoured to be a secret weapon, immortal and under the supervision of the mysterious school nurse. Now however, she has been assigned to Sheena’s class and is her new roommate. Gone are the days of blending into the background as this curious new student has latched on to Sheena and captured the attention of most of the school as well.

This is very much a volume of exposition. Lots of threads are dangled, but I am interested enough to stick around and see where this is going. Unfortunately, Mimi does precisely nothing for me. I’m not a fan of the naive loli murder machine schoolgirl trope, and she is mentioned to be 10 years old at one point which is just a little on the ick side for me. Sheena is much more interesting to me, and at this point I’m more invested in her since she seems like she might actually die at some point. She clearly struggles with using magic and fighting, and to me that just makes her more real and human than the overpowered 10 year old who can just kill everything in her path with little resistance and a smile on her face. I’m also very interested to learn more about Ari and Seiran, 2 side characters who are implied to be a couple.

Overall, there’s more to like than dislike here. The magic adds a bit of a fantasy twist to the scifi story and hopefully all the threads in this volume will gradually come together as the series progresses. I will be reading the next volume to find out.

Ratings:

Art – 6.5 Perfectly adequate Yuri Hime house style.
Story – 6.5. At the moment, I’m more interested in the scifi than the yuri.
Characters – 5. Mimi is currently the least likeable character for me. I hope her backstory will make her more interesting when it’s revealed later on. And I wish she was older.
Yuri – 2. Some clandestine hand holding between side characters and kisses disguised as CPR/magical revival.
Service – 3. The mystery nurse with gravity defying breasts is as much as we get. Thankfully no Made in Abyss vibes here.

Overall – 6 but with potential.





Project A-ko 2, 3, and 4 Blu-Rays

February 19th, 2025

A Blu-ray cover, a girl with a lot of red hair, in a yello tank top over white -t-shirt runs full speed, while a little girl in pink dress with a flower in her blond hair hangs on. A cool beauty with long blue hair and a glowering man with purple hair in the background.by Matt Marcus, Staff Writer

In the wake of the success of the original Project A-ko film, A.P.P.P. released three sequels, all of which now have Blu-Ray releases from Discotek. All three—running for around 50 minutes compared to the original’s 80—felt a little too scant to review individually, so I’ve opted to combine my thoughts here (much like their previous DVD release from Central Park Media, subtitled Love & Robots).

Project A-ko 2: Plot of Daitokuji Financial Group

Three weeks have passed since the end of the first movie. The defeated alien ship remains perilously perched upon the military command tower at the center of Graviton City, but now it’s been converted to a glitzy shopping mall and recreation center. Of course, this is cover for Captain Napolipolita and her henchwoman D to raise funds for repairs, after which they intend to fulfill their original mission of returning the lost alien Princess C-ko to her home planet.

But this time, the villain is the military industrial complex, in the form of B-ko’s weapon’s dealer mogul father Hikari Daitokuji (or, as I like to call him, Phoney Stark). He sees the alien ship as a goldmine of advanced technology he’d like to steal and exploit for his own ambitions, and so the Plot of the Subtitle are his machinations trying to hoodwink the defense force into doing the dirty work for him. (Notably, he’s been stealing mecha designs from B-ko.)

Meanwhile, our main trio are simply looking forward to a summer break of fun. They end up obstructing both the aliens and B-ko’s father’s schemes, mostly by blowing everything up. Graviton City is left a smoldering ruin again, but life goes on.

All of the elements of the first film are here. The A-ko/B-ko/C-ko triumvirate continue their schtick. There’s a decent amount of mecha and exploding shit. Surprisingly, the non-mecha fanservice is relatively tame; I found the fully-animated scene of A-ko changing into a bathing suit without exposing herself particularly funny, as if it were an intentional troll to those seeking more cheap thrills. Honestly, the funniest bit was how the Alpha Cygnans painted C-ko’s face on the front of their ship, goofy open-mouth grin and all.

The extras are notably sparser than those for the first film (no extra documentaries or feature commentaries this go ‘round). The only unique bonus are screenshots from the PC-88 casino game collection tied to the film, which included several scenes lifted from the film but drawn in that classic 8-bit style.

Overall – 6

Project A-ko 2: Plot of Daitokuji Financial Group Blu-ray available on Amazon and Crunchyroll

 

A red-haired girl in a red dress and a blue-haired girl in hakama and gi glower at each other over their shoulders. Behind and above a gaping blonde with a flower in her hair and a boy in black.Project A-ko 3: Cinderella Rhapsody

This film is based around Spring Break, and every girl in Graviton High School is thinking about romance. A-ko becomes obsessed with a dress she can’t afford, and starts working at a fast food restaurant to save up. B-ko is still using her posse to stalk her, and of course the two are still fighting before school every day. C-ko is starting to feel neglected by A-ko, 

All of this is thrown out of whack when C-ko runs into the street and is nearly run over by a hunky-yet-gormless guy named Kei. A-ko falls for him immediately, followed by B-ko, while the whole time, Kei has caught feelings for C-ko. So much for the Yuri.

Hijinks ensue, which culminates with a destructive showdown in the fancy hotel atop the yet-again-renovated alien ship, which is now a theme park. As the chaos expands, the commander of the defense force decides to neglect his duties this time (off screen, no less), so a group of under-cover protective public works employees mobilize, which turns into a cavalcade of mecha and sentai winks. They even included a cameo by BaBe, the idol duo who sing the film’s theme song “Get A Chance!” (The English Version plays over the credits, the lyrics of which are basically inscrutable.)

In the end, everyone’s heart gets broken. Kei confesses his love to C-ko, who harshly rejects him, while A-ko and B-ko see their fantasies shatter along with the floor of the hotel. Everything resets back to the status quo again. Hooray.

This one definitely feels like a step up from the previous film, but having the central conflict shift to center on Kei was honestly a bit deflating even if, as the trivia notes say, this would have been expected by the audience at the time. I know that the joke is that his cool surface image is actually the result of being too shy to talk, but it’s not quiet a strong enough joke to hang an entire plot on. I also wish more came out of the extensive mobilization scene; having Graviton City secretly be a hotbed of superheroes and super robots could have been used more for the comedy besides “look, an off-model reference!”

As with the previous release, the bonuses are relatively slim, though the trivia section is always a fun treat. I did notice one omission, though, which led me down a bit of a rabbit hole. In the film, we see a brief segment of a porn flick, where a girl with short blue hair (and no clothes) is about to, uh, impose herself on a red-haired girl. The scene is interrupted by the mobilization call (somehow within the movie!) by a girl with orange pigtails. Turns out, these three are the animated versions of an idol group Lemon Angels, a multimedia project that was an offshoot of the Cream Lemon hentai series, much like what Project A-ko began as. Seems like an odd thing to leave out from the otherwise exhaustive trivia notes, especially since they are even explicitly credited.

Overall – 7

Project A-ko 3: Cinderella Rhapsody is available on Blu-ray from Crunchyroll and Amazon.

 

Red haired girl in a school uniform, blue-haired girl in black dress and cowering little blonde girl with a flower in hair are backed by a mecha that looks like the redhead, a pair embracing in wedding clothes of a guy with brown hair and a teal-haired girl.

Project A-ko 4: Final

The aptly-titled fourth film of the mainline series is about two impending threats: a new alien invasion, foretold by ancient inscriptions found in Iraq, alongside the teacher Miss Ayumi’s engagement to…Kei??!?!

Out of all of the sequels, this one has the strongest set-up for farce. Phoney Stark is back as the facilitator of the omiai between Miss Ayumi and Kei. Since he is basically in charge of the military, he orders them to protect the bride and groom from terrorist threats (read: B-ko, who is back on a rampage to steal Kei for herself). This provides cover for the defense force to mobilize against a massive alien fleet that is approaching earth (circumventing the cowardice of the commander who bailed in the previous film).

A-ko is, for her part, is also trying to wreck the wedding, again leaving C-ko feeling abandoned; in fact, her crybaby friend begins to fear that A-ko and B-ko’s love of fighting is going to turn into feisty romance, leaving her alone. When it turns out the fleet is helmed by C-ko’s long-lost mother, C-ko decides willingly to leave. (We are led to believe that Ayumi is tied to the aliens, but that turns out to be a fakeout.) A-ko and B-ko fail to take her back, only for C-ko to unceremoniously show up at A-ko’s door the next day, having changed her mind on leaving. C-ko asks A-ko not to fight B-ko anymore, to which A-ko happily agrees.

To be honest, this one might be my favorite of the bunch. Seeing A-ko and B-kos fights become so regular that even their friends see it as just another ordinary morning got a good chuckle out of me. C-ko getting Yuri-goggles was a fun twist that I wish the movie leaned more into. Still, the plot AGAIN is centered around Kei, who is even less charismatic here than in the previous film.

The extras here match what we saw in the previous releases. Would you know that there are a lot of Lupin cameos??

Overall – 7

Project A-ko 4: Final Blu-ray is available on Amazon and Crunchyroll.

 

All in all, none of these films reach the heights that the first film did, and in some cases detract from it (*cough* Kei *cough*). That said, if you wanted to see more bubble-era OVA hijinks chock full of parody, none of these are an awful time.

 

Matt Marcus is a cohost of various projects on the Pitch Drop Podcast Network, as well as the writer for the blog Oh My God, They Were Bandmates analyzing How Do We Relationship in greater depth.





Sheep Princess in Wolf’s Clothing, Volume 4

January 29th, 2025

A wolf girl in a trenchcoat, laden with packages, smiles as she is pulled along down a street by a sheep girl in a cute denim jacket and fluffy pink skirt.In volume 3, we saw Aki confess both her feelings and her concerns about their ability to make a relationship work to Momo, and Momo saying it was her problem to deal with convincing her family and the world. So they are now officially in a relationship! Even if no one can know… but those close to them can probably guess.

In Sheep Princess in Wolf’s Clothing, volume 4, we have Momo sneaking in affection for Aki in every spare moment, and a bit more on Aki’s back story. Kiku overhears Sakaki discussing their past, and that Sakaki might like her? Momo and Aki go to a book signing of Momo’s favourite author, who looks a bit familiar? Finally, a new recruit making friends with Aki sparks jealousy in Momo.

We finally get a bit more on Aki’s past, although it’s still somewhat vague – she ‘lost everything’, but we don’t really learn much more than that. We also see her first romance, and how it failed because Aki couldn’t communicate her feelings well. I actually appreciate that both of the leads have experienced love and loss of that love before, though in different ways, which informs their current attitudes towards their relationship. Ruminating on how her passiveness and inactivity ruined her previous relationship, it spurs Aki on to be more proactive in this one, albeit you can still tell it’s difficult for her. That said, she’s still not good with saying her feelings directly – something that will be addressed next volume, given the ending.

The foray into Sakaki and Kiku’s back story was nice to have, and honestly fits them both pretty well. It was actually interesting to see the difference between the rural discrimination versus the non-issue her white fur (possibly albino) is in the capital, where there are all sorts of animals and it doesn’t stand out. It felt a little simplistic that one person’s acceptance means more acceptance in a small community, but maybe it can be that simple? I don’t know, honestly.

I’m not a fan of jealousy plotlines, but I guess they had to have some sort of cliffhanger (more of a mild bump in the road really, this will have nothing but a happy ending and possibly something like a wedding judging by the Volume 5 cover). It’ll be solved with a conversation I’m sure, which will be in the next one: the fifth volume will be the last one, and it’s coming out in a month or so, so not long to wait. Then fluff. All the fluff. Possibly some fluffy sex.

Ratings:

Art: 8 – fluffy as always!
Story: 5 – plot? What plot? All fluff.
Service: 1
Yuri: 10 – yuritopia ahoy

Overall: 7

As usual, enjoyable, pleasant, pretty unremarkable. Given the start of the series and Momo’s comments, I’m guessing the service quotient on Volume 5 may way go up.





The Night Of Baba Yaga

January 26th, 2025

Bright red book cover, with white letter than read The Night of Baba Yaga, Akira Otani. On the lower portion, a blood-stained girl with yellow whites of her eyes and red irises, stares at us as if looking over a wall.by Matt Marcus, Staff Writer

CW: Rape (both attempted and implied), incest, violence, gore, misogyny, transphobia

The Night of the Baba Yaga came on my radar by way of a skeet from the Read Japanese Literature podcast as a part of Pride Month. A queer author’s English debut about an ass-kicking bodyguard and her charge, a yakuza princess? Sounds like a bloody good time! I just had one major concern: in the seedy male-dominated world of organized crime, how much will sexual menace play a role in the story for our protagonists?

Turns out the answer is a lot!

It begins right away too. Our POV character Yoriko Shindo is kidnapped off the street by a gang of goons working for a local high-level boss Genzo Naiki and is immediately forced to strip to “prove” that she’s a woman. (Genzo made sure to add a crack about trans women here for good measure.) Already the vibes are rancid, and it does not get any better from there. Put more succinctly, in the 116 pages of this book, the phrase “raped to death” was used three times.

This all kicks off because Genzo is in need of a bodyguard for his 18-year-old daughter, however he is too psychotically protective of her “virtue” to trust any of his men to do the job. Luckily for him, Shindo just happened to pick a fight with some of his men that night. After being subdued, she is pressed into service on the threat of…well, you know. Bad stuff.

Shindo is, of course, a social castoff with a strange background. She’s half-foreign, was raised by her grandparents, which included bizarre (and, to be honest, abusive) training that made her a formidable fighter. She isn’t just capable of throwing fisticuffs—she relishes the thrill of it. She’s quippy and feisty. We are supposed to think that she’s cool, but she’s a little too cool.

Our yakuza princess in question, Shoko, has had her life completely controlled by her father. Her mother ran off with one of Genzo’s subordinates some ten years prior, and while the boss continues to hunt for his absent spouse, he has groomed Shoko to be something of a direct replacement. (Do we find out that this is more literal than we’d like? Yes, yes we do.) 

Now, what could have salvaged this story is the rapport between Shindo and Shoko. This is a classic pairing: a rough-and-tumble low-class scrapper and an uptight, sheltered girl who cannot escape her circumstances. Of course they are going to clash at first, but eventually emotional walls will come down, trust will be built, and eventually love will bloom.

That isn’t what we get here. The story barely spares any words on building their relationship. Shoko hates Shindo’s guts on sight, and they share maybe two scenes together before a turning point, where Shoko saves Shindo from being gang raped by a group of Genzo’s men. After that, Shoko can no longer hold her steely façade in front of Shindo, but at no point I would say that they emotionally bonded at all.

There is one specter lurking in the background of the story: an associate of Genzo’s who is described as a complete pervert for torture, particularly of the sexual kind. The first of two twists in this book is that this man is Shoko’s fiancé. None of this makes sense considering how protective and possessive Genzo is of his daughter, but fuck it, we need a Big Bad, so why not this guy? Shindo, out of some sense of duty, decides that she can’t let Shoko be married off to this pervert, so they end up running off together, much like Genzo’s wife and henchman had done years prior. (Oh, and in the process Shindo gets to repay the favor by saving Shoko from being raped by her father too. Symmetry!)

The last section of the book is where most of the queer themes show up, as the two begin living life together under false personas. Their bond turns into something of an “honor-bound” queer platonic relationship with a little bit of Gender thrown in. To be honest, it wasn’t well seeded prior to the end of the book, and the series of vignettes we do get are pretty scant. It is the only element of the book that isn’t heavy-handed.

The second twist to the story is one that I will not spoil, but my reaction to it was less “oh, that’s neat!” and more “oh, ok.” The ending tries to wrap the story with a dramatic showdown, but it feels under-baked.

The one lone bright spot for me were the fight scenes, particularly the first one. They were all properly visceral and well-choreographed. With the title and Shindo’s love of dogs, I was expecting a certain amount of John Wick influence, but I was pleasantly surprised it comes through strongest when Shindo is breaking bones.

Sam Bett is credited with the translation, and I think overall he did a good job of it. There is one line of dialogue that I found particularly groan-worthy (hint: it includes the phrase “thunder thighs”), but I assume that the source material carries most of the blame for it.

All in all, this is very much a novella that really badly wanted to be an exploitation film. If you are looking for a grimy crime family story with a dash of queerness, then you should let this Baba Yaga haunt you for an evening or two.

Rating:

Overall – 6 For the number of severed sex organs presented to us for our trouble

As a shoutout, I read this book through The Japan Foundation via the Libby iOS app. There isn’t any yuri manga available in the catalogue at this time of writing, but there are queer-themed books and such that may be of interest. Best part is that it’s free for those in the US and Canada, so long as you have a library card.

Matt Marcus is a cohost of various projects on the Pitch Drop Podcast Network, as well as the writer for the blog Oh My God, They Were Bandmates analyzing How Do We Relationship in greater depth.