Archive for the Yuri Anime Category


Shin Koihime Musou Otome Tairan Anime (English)

June 13th, 2010

Koihime Musou, and Shin Koihime Musou were evidently popular enough to spawn another sequel, Shin Koihime Musou Otome Tairan.

In this third season, the main players of Ryuubi’s camp take to the roads once more, traveling around, taking lots of baths, fighting, eating, performing in plays, meeting random challenges and misunderstanding basic bodily functions in ways that give rise to seedy, embarrassing innuendo. Just like the other two seasons.
It’s almost amazing when the story bothers to actually take on a chapter of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms because it so much prefers to be doing something else. Anything else. However, where the second season and the OVA pretty much threw out the original formula of a mix of service and Romance for all service and little story, this third season has recaptured three of the qualities that made the original not intolerable.
1) The sense of humor. In many senses there are two senses of humor on display during this season – the sophomoric, isn’t it *hi-larious* when girls trip and we see their underwear kind and the “god, this is so dumb that I might as well throw myself into it and make it work” kind. The former is on display with every episode, and the latter shows through every once in a while and usually makes me laugh out loud.
2) Fighting. It’s hard to remember, in the middle of all those baths and breast jokes that these characters are meant to be the great military heroes of the age. (I weep for Zhang Fe every time Rin-Rin talks.) We’re getting a bit more fighting in this series than I remember in the last one and I, for one, approve.
3) Yuri. You knew that had to be here, or why would I bother writing this review, right? In Season 1, Chou’un/Sei was very gay and Sousou/Karin had a thing for Kan’u/Aisha. In Season 2, I think there was a teeny bit of Sousou and not much of of anything else.
This season we had a nice episode of Sonken x Ryomou (approved) and also a very silly reason for Gien having feelings for Ryuubi. Chou’un seems to care more about bamboo shoots than girls this season, but there’s always time. And Koukin and Sonsaku are an item, which is less awful than it sounds. :-)

What amuses me most about this season is that it pretty obviously has been altered for a broadcast, non-DVD release. Bathing suits are drawn on, as are fog, steam, bright lights and other clever but obvious ploys to cover the nekkid women. This amuses me and annoys.  It reminded me of the last Tenchi series showed on Cartoon Network, where they sat in a bath and drank, like orange juice, with painted on clothes. It was so lame and obvious.

Because this is Koihime Musou, for every scene in which there is a fight, there are three where they bathe and two where they sing or dance or play dress up; you have to watch this with pretty low expectations. Do that, and you’ll find that this anime is basically ice cream sundae level of bad for you – not so bad every once in a while, but you wouldn’t want too much at once.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 6
Characters – 6
Yuri – as high as 7 from time to time
Service – 9

Overall – 6

What actually galls me about this kind of series is not that the girls get naked all the time, but that it’s always played so coyly. If we’re going to look at breasts and crotches fine, but does it *have* to be so peeping tom-ish? Can’t we just looks at breasts and crotches and have done with it?




Yuri Anime: Heartcatch PreCure

May 3rd, 2010

Okay, okay, calling Heartcatch PreCure “Yuri” is just wishful thinking at this point, but 13 weeks into it, this classic magical girl anime leads the pack for this season.

First of all, I must give a shout out to Komatsu-san, who has been gently trying to get me to love PreCure as much as he does for some time now. I watched the original PreCure (free on Crunchyroll!) which was fine, and liked what I read of Splash Star, but Max Heart and GoGo 5! were unwatchable in my opinion, and Fresh PreCure was…okay. Nothing really hooked me. Because of Komatsu-san, I checked out the website for the new series, but wasn’t very impressed with the art. But when he gave me a few of the episodes to watch, I found myself humming the opening theme for about a week. That’s *usually* a good sign that I enjoy an anime series.

And then Yuri popped on the screen and I was officially hooked. I mean that literally and figuratively, by the way. One half of the Yuri couple is cleverly named Yuri. The naming sense in this series is a nailbat of obviousness, as you will see.

The stars of Heartcatch are Hanasaki Tsubomi, whose parents run a flower shop and who becomes Cure Blossom. (Ow!) Her next door neighbor, best friend and partner in Precure, is Kurumi Erika, whose mother designs clothes and whose father is a famous photographer and whose sister, Momoka, is a famous fashion model. Erika becomes Cure Marine.

They are opposed by monkey-like mooks, tools of the Desert something-somethings. No one watches PreCure for the bad guys. They are totally forgettable…until Dark Cure, with her gothy one tattered batwing and one laser-beam eye and angst enough for a gaggle o’preteens shows up.

By herself Dark Cure is moderately amusing. So end-of-the-world and all that. But the screen heats up when, while facing down Cure Blossom and Cure Marine, Dark catches sight of…a girl. This girl is slightly older than the current PreCure, totally untransformed – and the two of them stare fixedly over PreCure’s head for a long time. The girl is Tsukikage Yuri (Ow! Watch that name bat, will you?!) voiced by Hisakawa Aya, which I think is a knowing nod to the adult portion of the audience for this series. (Dark is voiced by Takayama Minami, who you might remember as the former Rosa Gigantea, Sei’s onee-sama, in Marimite.)

So, okay, I was watching this scene thinking, “yeah, I can get into this.” But it was really icing on the cake.

There were a number of things that set this series apart from other PreCure and from other magical girl series. Firstly, Tsubomi’s grandmother had formerly been a Cure, which I think is a great touch. It gives Tsubomi a mentor and a source of info that isn’t passing for a stuffed animal during school hours. And both Erika and Tsubomi have dreams of the epic battle between Dark and a previous guardian, Cure Moonlight. Because I am not 4, it was instantly obvious that Yuri is/was Moonlight and that there’s a whole arc in whatever lay between her and Dark. I am tempted to write a fanfic of what *I* think that story is, before the series goes and ruins it for all of us. lol

Did I mention that Dark carries around half of Moonlight’s gem that broke during their epic battle? Well she does. Yuri carries the other half, of course, which means we’ll get a double redemption at some point.

Oh, and I completely forgot, the Student Council President is a cross-dressing girl. This is covered early on and it was pretty obvious that she was a girl (well, obvious to me, but I am not 4).

Yuri is also, just to make sure the doujinshi artists have a multitude of choices, best friends with Momoka, Erika’s sister.

Taken as a whole, I’m still making up about 97% of the Yuri in my head, but for a kiddy show, there’s enough to keep me watching for the rest of the season.

Ratings:

Art – 7 It took me a while to get used to it, but when you get into the right headspace, Yuri is attractive enough.
Story – Monster of the Day, blah blah.
Characters – 8
Yuri – 5 as long as there’s ambiguity
Service – 1

Overall – 7

I’ll never love PreCure as much as I do Sailor Moon, but Heartcatch is at least in the same folder in my head now.





Yuri Anime: Blue Drop, The Complete Collection

April 8th, 2010

Man, does this series have one of everything. It’s got an alien race of women and a Japanese schoolgirl and a loyal crewmember and a vengeful crewmember who lost her lover in an accident that couldn’t have been prevented. It’s got a character who writes fanfic and a character who is not what she seems. There’s one complicated family situation and one set of deceased parents who were killed by the unstoppable accident. And the alien and the girl have met before as a result of the unstoppble accident.

It has a sneering bad guy who can take the blame for everything.

It’s got noble sacrifice, and tragedy and drama and a play within a play and a school play that eerily echoes the real situation and comedy and fun and friendship and love.

It has moe 2-D animation and the ships are in 3-D CGI which give them a sort of cool unworldliness.

It has thoroughly likable characters and a story that ends ironically, but it definitely ends.

It has good and bad and moral ambiguity and questionable decision-making and two women who fall in love, so it doesn’t really matter if it all makes sense. But for the most part – it all makes sense.

Blue Drop: The Complete Collection is a fun watch from beginning to end. It’s well presented, complete in one box and with no significant extras. Totally worth a watch whether you’ve read the original Blue Drop manga or not.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Yuri – 5
Service – 1

Overall – 8

Given the watchability of this story, I’m even more bummed by creator Yoshitomi Akihito’s decent into mediocrity in his recent manga work. I think he needs to return to this world once more and have a little fun.

My sincere gratitude is once again directed at Okazu Superhero Daniel P. for his sponsorship of today’s review and his ongoing support of Yuri. ^_^





Yuri Anime: Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne, Volume 2 (English)

February 24th, 2010

To fully enjoy Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne, it might be useful to prepare yourself with a few simple steps:

1) Spend a few moments speaking with someone under the age of 17. Preferably female and preferably Goth and very weary of the world.

2) Read something insanely trashy.

3) Watch a 10-hour marathon of any sitcom that pairs a slobby guy with an attractive wife.

Or, failing that,

Take your brain out of your head for safekeeping.

Once you’ve done this simple – but crucial – bit of preparation, you’re almost ready to watch this series.

Let me give you one warning before you start to watch Volume 2: Do Not Try To Make Sense Of This Story

Sure, you can make sense of it, but the story is *so* much better if you don’t try. Just go with it.

There, now you’re ready to watch Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne.

Where in Volume 1 time moved slowly, it fairly flies in the second volume. We’re no longer moving a year or a few at a time. Now we are taking decade-long leaps into a futuristic landscape which may seem silly on the face of it (Aquarium floors and ceilings? Really?) but makes a lot of sense if you pay the slightest attention to human nature. (Yes, because we *can*.)

Maeno Kouki has passed out of Rin and Mimi’s timestream, but his descendants are still in their care. Kouki’s son Teruki starts off as an ass, but turns out to be a dependable guy in the end. It’s his daughter, Mishio, who caps off the series and in doing so, changes everything. Rin and Mimi saved Kouki, and saved and protected Teruki, but Mishio is in fact the one who saves and protects Rin and Mimi, repeatedly. When Rin, who has lost her memory as a result of a rather extreme death, is attacked by Laura, it’s Mishio that provides a distraction. Mimi leans on Mishio when she cannot control herself when in the vicinity of Angels.

As the climax approaches (a word that is eminently suitable for this series, don’t you think?) Apos finally reveals all the pieces of the puzzle we were missing and we learn that the puzzle is pretty stupid. ^_^  But that’s okay, because we know this: Rin is the good guy and will win.

And she does, of course.

In the end, we see Rin, Mimi and Mishio as an alternate family of three women bound by thousands of years of fate and who all care deeply for one another.

Yuri in this volume is mostly on Mimi, which annoyed the Rin fans, but I thought it made more sense, really. We’ve known since the first episode that Rin had a man in her life, and we knew that she saw lesbian sex only as a form of payment. Mimi’s relationships with her informers appear a bit more ambiguous. For a moment or two, she even seemed like she may have liked one of them – although since Kugamiya Rie played the role, her reaction was typically passive-aggressive.

Which brings us to the extra on this volume. The four main female voice actors were gathered together to discuss this series and they were surprisingly frank about how working in such an “adult” horror worked for them. This interview took place at the end of Episode 2, I would have dearly loved to see them interviewed again after the final episode. I have a feeling that their opinions might have been a little different. Or not. :-)

I guess the question has to be – was it good?

The story is silly, it panders to a dozen fetishes, it’s violent and gross and sometimes plain old dumb. The art was alright, but was not stellar, even the music was overwrought. But. I think it was entertaining and had characters that exceeded their surroundings. Rin was admirable, Mimi was likeable, Apos was unbearable, Laura was…persistent. Kouki and his descendants didn’t suck.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 4
Characters – 9
Yuri – 8
Service – 23.8

Overall – 8

Yes, it was good.

It is once again my sincere pleasure to thank Okazu Superhero Eric P. for his sponsorship of today’s review (and the review of Volume 1, which I belatedly realize did not credit him. That has been corrected.)

If you would like to be added to the Okazu Hero’s Roll, just pop over to the Yuri Wish List and purchase something for review! The you too will be my Hero. :-)





Yuri Anime: Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne, Volume 1 (English)

February 4th, 2010

2010 continues to be a year of wonder for Yuri fans, as we now have an inordinate amount of good and bad Yuri and Yuri-ish anime to watch in English.

Inexplicably among them, Funimation picked up Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne which has one of my top 2 most favorite opening themes ever right now. “Retsu no Matataki” from Air Master is the eternal winner, but “Alsatia” just cracks me up every time I listen to it.

Let’s get the most important thing out of the way first: Mnemosyne, greek goddess of memory, pronounced: \ni-ˈmä-sə-nē. Thank you, Merriam-Webster.

In Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne we meet Rin, an investigator of things as small as missing cats and as large as international terrorism and her sidekick Mimi. Rin and Mimi can die, but they can’t stay dead and are, therefore, immortal.

The first episode covers their meeting with Maeno Kouki, a young man with no memory. Their adventure brings them into contact with a corrupt pharmaceutical company, enemies in advanced stages of psychosis and zombie-like test subjects. And a missing cat.

This leads into an episode about a missing stamp and a missing brother who is actually an angel and an episode about a military cover-up and a lethal disease.

Time passes quickly in this series. We jump years from episode to episode. Rin, Mimi and their dog Genta, don’t change, but Maeno ages and technology changes, which are cues for the passing of time that are far more powerful than the opening marquee telling us what year it is.

In every case, the story is deeply strange, full of intensely bloody violence and physical and emotional sadism the likes of which I have never seen before in anime. This is not a series for the light-hearted or light-stomached. It’s not graphically represented. It’s just…obvious.

I know it probably makes me a terrible person, but I love how Rin is tracked over the years by Laura, who single-mindedly kills her over and over and over. I also like how Rin’s deaths become progressively more extreme. You think they can’t beat blowing her up with a bomb but…you’re wrong. Of course, Laura isn’t the real enemy – the real enemy is Apos, voiced perfectly by Ishida Akira.

Apos is a source of much confusion and consternation for viewers….personally, I view almost all the plot complications as handwaves that must be accepted in what is not exactly the most logical or well-constructed plot ever written. Since the story is largely a vehicle for pandering of about 70 kinds, if you’re gonna stress about Apos, then you probably shouldn’t watch this series.

Personally, I loved hearing Noto Mamiko voice Rin. This is probably as close as fans will ever get to hearing her actual speaking voice in a role. And Kagamiya Rie probably broke a few brains as Mimi. She was awesome.

The DVD comes with an extra commentary for episode 2, in which the American director and voice actors are just about as infantile as you’d expect. The word “boobs” is bandied about frequently and references to lesbianism are almost all in the “girls gone wild” sense. Despite that, I laughed once or twice anyway. :-)

There is BDSM and violence and sexual violence, straight sex and lesbian sex and more violence in this series. It’s not for the kiddies and probably not for most normal people. I liked it. :-)

Ratings:

Art – this series is a good reminder that not everything looks better on a large screen – 6
Story – Oh, come *on!* It’s a 4, maybe 5, but if you’re watching it for the story, you have completely missed the point.
Characters – 9
Yuri – 8
Service – 23.8

Overall – 8

Yes, I know my ratings make no sense. Neither did this anime.

Many, many thanks to Okazu Superhero Eric P. for making today’s review possible!