Archive for the Yuri Anime Category


Yuri Anime: Yuru Yuri (English)

July 6th, 2011

I would like to begin this review with a sincere apology to the fine people at Ichijinsha. I know that a lot of work and energy went into the making of Yuru Yuri and I wish, I truly do, that I could have liked it. But, I did not. If you habitually like the kinds of anime and manga I dislike, If you love series like Lucky Star and A Channel, then do not read this review, just hurry over to Crunchyroll and watch Yuru Yuri – you’ll love it.

I have spent more than a decade promoting Yuri, highlighting series that focus on women in love with one another, pointing out over and over that “Yuri” is not, really, anything like the fantasies creepy loser guys have about girls. Yet with Yuru Yuri, the creators go right to Fanboy territory, then crawl slowly steadily down to wallow in the most banal, most creepy possible tropes. I’m genuinely frustrated by the choices made here.

Yuri Yuri is the story of four girls who hang around and do nothing. These four are all very typical moe types, so forget having any kind of personality. Less than 5 minutes into the anime, there were already 4 underwear gags, the main character had forgotten that school started that day (which is totally likely if you have no family or friends, live in a box and have no media access, I suppose.)  The entirety of the second half of the episode is a systematic destruction of the protagonist’s ego. As a *joke*. Because making fun of a friend until they cry is absolutely hilarious, as we all know.

At 8 minutes in, I had a crisis and almost gave up watching altogether. It was so horrible, so tedious, so completely un-fun. My number one criteria for entertainment is that it ought to, you know, entertain me. Watching Yuru Yuri was the anime equivalent of a dentist’s appointment.

There is “Yuri” of course. Of the most excruciating kind. Kyoko likes to look at panties and wants to possess the cute loli. Chinatsu, the loli, crushes on Yui, the moe equivalent of the cool princely character. And let’s not forget the implication of a deep, pathological, stalking sister complex Akari’s sister appears to have for her. That’s always good for a laugh.

The one thing that really wasn’t terrible was Crunchyroll’s subtitling. It’s not perfect, but it was definitely one of the least objectionable jobs I’ve ever seen from them. So that, at least, is something positive to note.

I’m sorry, Namori-sensei. I’m sorry, editors of Comic Yuri Hime. I’m sure that Yuru Yuri will be very successful, but I won’t be watching. As much as I want it to succeed, I actually like the anime less than I do the manga. And I don’t like the manga very much at all. I came into the anime with very, very low expectations and this managed to not meet any of them.

In the end, Kyoko described this series best when she described the protagonist Akari with “A lack of outstanding qualities is your most outstanding quality.”

Ratings:

Art – 5 If you like moe you will probably think it a 6 or 7
Characters – 4 See above
Story – 3 See above
Yuri – There is no real affection, love or desire here. Just gags.
Service – 10

Overall – 4

Pain upon realizing that Comic Yuri Hime‘s first “Yuri” anime ever is everything I have fought to get rid of, in order to be able to tell stories of women in love with one another – 100





Breaking News: Yuru Yuri to Simulcast on Crunchyroll

July 2nd, 2011

Anime Expo continues with more Yuri-friendly news, as YNN Correspondent Bruce McF points out, with Crunchyroll’s announcement that namori’s slice-of-life with some slight Yuri flavoring series, Yuru Yuri,  has been added to their simulcast line-up.

Bruce suggests one and a half Hip, Hip, Hoo…rays. ^_^





Revolutionary Girl Utena Anime Box Set – Volume 1 Disk 2 (English)

June 9th, 2011

Revolutionary Girl Utena: Student Council Saga Limited Edition SetOne of the most amazing things about Revolutionary Girl Utena is that the heavy-handed symbolism, which was left without specific meaning quite on purpose, can effectively mean anything you want it to mean. As a result, whether you say the series is about adolescence and maturity, or delusion and reality, or hope and despair, or kangaroos and elephants, you are quite correct.

Disk 2 is about all those things. It’s also about one huge whopper of a lie.

This disk begins with the end of Miki’s arc, in which we learn that Kozue’s perspective on Miki’s childhood trauma is quite different – this will remain the case throughout the series. Kozue’s wounds are never Miki’s. And, for the first time, we are able to see the lie in effect…and just how much somebody else’s problem it is for everyone in the series.

This arc is followed by an episode that, based on a short conversation on Twitter, seems to have made quite an impact on fans. As I put it to my wife, in a series full of weirdness, Nanami episodes are profoundly weird. In episodes that include aggressive elephants, Touga boxing a kangaroo and exploding curry and personality switching, the thing that *I* noticed the most was that Miki and Utena have the closest thing to a “normal” conversation that we’ve seen so far in the series, as they discuss Nanami…and even then it’s not all that normal.

And then we move on to Juri. Beautiful, athletic, smart Juri. Juri the jaguar, in whose presence even the teachers quake. Juri, voiced magnificently by Mitsuishi Kotono and who was for many, the first lesbian Yuri character they ever saw in anime. Her episode still wrang me dry. It hurt to watch her so angry – eternally so, as we never really know what will become of her. Hurt, betrayed, too smart to not know what the real problem is. Too angry to not lash out at Utena who does not yet understand that kind of pain. She will, but not yet.

As I watched this disk I realized that the entire series up to this point is predicated upon a single lie. There will be more lies later, but right now – there is one. Saionji and Miki believe – or hope – that it is true. Juri presumes it is a lie, but then Utena defeats her and she will have to lie to herself to continue to presume it is a lie. Touga…well, Touga will come later.

The lie is simple and has already been repeated so many times that probably you don’t think of it as a lie by the second disk.

The lie is…

…that whomever is engaged to the Rose Bride can command her utterly.

Think for a second. When has Anthy ever done *anything* Utena wants her to? She can’t even get Anthy to stop calling her “Utena-sama.” At this point, Anthy isn’t even hiding herself in the lie, because no one around her can see the lie even exists. They all believe or pretend to believe that it is a truth. Anthy simply does whatever best suits the situation to bring about the outcome desired by the End of the World.

Utena’s one real wish for Anthy won’t be expressed for some time to come and it won’t be realized for even longer – so, then, what *does* being engaged to the Rose Bride mean? To find that out, we must keep watching.

I am reminded that Revolutionary Girl Utena did many anime-viewers a harm by being so absurd, so surreal and so amazing – practically Dada-esque in its complex simplicity – that nothing was able to come close for years to some. Maybe, nothing has really come close yet.

True story – I was watching the Utena movie for the first time with a 15 year old who knew nothing of the story. We had rented it from a Japanese video rental store. It was raw. We watched it transfixed and, when the roses began to overflow the dueling ground she turned to me with huge eyes and asked, “This is what anime is all about, isn’t it?” “Yes,” I said. “This is what it is all about.”

Ratings:

Art – 9
Characters – 10
Story – 10
Music – 10
Yuri – 8
Service – 3
Voice acting – 10

Overall – 10

Revolutionary Girl Utena – *this* is what it’s all about.





Breaking News: Yuru Yuri Anime

March 26th, 2011

Namori-sensei’s Yuru Yuri from Comic Yuri Hime has been officially given the go for an anime series.

On the one hand, I’m happy for Comic Yuri Hime editors, who have been working for this for a while. And I’m happy for fans of Yuru Yuri. But on the other hand, it is quite possibly the least interesting series running in Comic Yuri Hime in my opinion and I can’t feel especially excited about it. It’s a very formulaic, moe schoolgirl story with a bare veneer of Yuri, so that should cement its popularity with fans of Hidamari Sketch, K-ON! and other cute girls being cute, cutely-type series.

I am glad because this is the first Yuri Hime anime and I hope desperately and probably pointlessly that if this does well, they will then try to animate something I like better. But in reality, anything I like is going to be less ambiguous and therefore probably less popular/successful. ^_^

In any case, congrats to Namori-sensei and the folks at Ichijinsha!

3/27 Update: Yuri Yuri anime website is live.





Houkago no Pleiades Anime

February 1st, 2011

When I first started writing about anime, I can absolutely guarantee that I never expected to be writing about an anime created by the company Subaru. But here I am, doing that very thing.

Subaru (the car company, yes) has teamed up with Gainax to create a short 4-part anime called Houkago no Pleiades (放課後のプレアデス). All four episodes are available on Youtube. The channel design is cute and astronomical in theme, which fits the anime and the sponsor. Subaru is Japanese for what we call the Pleiades.

The story is a simple one – a schoolgirl named Subaru uses a key to get into a rooftop garden where she meets Minato, a boyish girl. The run-down garden has been magically transformed into a paradise.

The same magic accompanies Subaru when she finds her best friend Aoi with a number of other girls, all in “magical” attire, in a sumptuous club room – with an alien creature as club president.

Subaru joins the club, has her magical transformation, but flubs her first mission and gives up the star they gathered to the baddy…who is clearly Minato. Subaru and Aoi have an argument about Subaru’s membership in the group, but they make up with confessions of like.

In a final confrontation, Subaru defeats Minato, but promises to look for her. Minato bequeaths her ugly grey cardigan (c.p., Panic, Strawberry; Shizuma’s ugly grey cardigan) to Subaru who we later see wearing it.

The final credits include still art from a variety of artists that really drive the point home that the club is composed of one of each “type” required by moe fans these days. ^_^ And Subaru is color-coded pink so the girls watching will naturally like it, as we all know girls react on a cellular level to pink.

I want to thank 16_nikki on Twitter for the heads up about this series. I was told that it is 60% Yuri in order to motivate me to watch it – I think that might be a fair estimate. It’s short, but there’s still plenty of space to fill in a relationship between Subaru and Minato and a best-friend-y thing with Aoi. I’m sure at least *one* doujinshi circle will pair them all up, since we all know that twin-tail tsunderes and Nadesico beauties can’t resist the competent leader and the genki forward.

As a magical girl series, Houkago no Pleiades hits all the typical notes. The costume and accouterments designs by Gainax are cute, familiar and ever so slightly innovative. There’s nothing in the series a little kid couldn’t watch, but the lingering looks at thighs reminds one that Gainax is still a male gaze kind of shop. Aside from the shot of the Pleiades at the beginning of each episode and the car key Subaru uses to unlock the garden, the company has kept themselves out of the way of the story.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 7
Characters – 7
Yuri – 4
Service  – 1

Overall – 7

This anime isn’t going to ring chimes all over the world, but I’m betting you’re gonna see more of this kind of thing as time goes on. If two of Japan’s major exports – anime and cars – team up, we could see a whole new “soft power” wave headed at us in the days ahead.