Archive for the Yuri Anime Category


Yuri Anime: Kaleido Star, Volume 3 (English)

July 7th, 2008

Yuri fans hit paydirt with Volume 3 of Kaleido Star, in which Layla suddenly comes to the conclusion that Sora is her important partner. (Finally!) And we get to spend moments here and there noticing that Anna is acutally quite hunky and cool and that Mia is besotted, although more of that will come later. lol

We start the volume with a little time wallowing in Anna’s backstory, then we spend not nearly enough time as Layla and Sora bond over their “Amazingly Hot New Production” (the amusing title of the episode) – in which they star as pirates fighting in a storm, while the ship/swing bursts into flame below them. Seriously, if you do not want to see *that* you are clearly beyond help.

To cap off the volume, we get a painful episode where we learn that Carlos is in love with Sara, even though he treats her like crap (ah, beautiful Japanese-style heterosexual love.)

Nothing against the straights, but, I’m sticking with Sora and Layla fighting with swords on a swinging, burning pirate ship. Are you with me? Yar!

Rating:

Art – 8
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Yuri – 2
Service (oh yes, less Fool for a change, too) – 3

Overall – 8

This volume is one of those moments where you remember why you’re watching this stuff in the first place. ^_^ And it’s all due to the kindness and generosity of Ted the Awesome that I was once again able to wallow in the Yuri goodness that is Layla and Sora. Ted, you are indeed Awesome. ^_^





Yuri Anime: Puni Puni Poemy

July 1st, 2008

So, maybe you’re sitting around watching some of your older anime and thinking, “Gee, I really like Excel Saga, but I wish it had more mindless Yuri and made less sense.” Well, lucky for you, there’s Puni Puni Poemy (aka Puni Puni Poemi).

I get PPP. I really do. Because there have been days after I finished writing a really intense story or completed a series and I’ve lost my mind, too. You can’t really stop it – it’s like an allergic reaction. You need to get rid of the toxins somehow. In my case, I parody my own work and clearly, Nabeshin does, too. ^_^

So, there’s a girl called Poemi who calls herself by the name of her seiyuu, Kobayashi, and who, after much tragedy, learns that when she skins a dead fish and holds the skeleton aloft, she becomes a powerful magical girl. It may seem a little strange at first glance, but when you think about it, it’s really no more strange than accepting a locket from a talking Moon Cat or listening to your stuffed animal, or praying to God, or putting Saint Lipliner on. You get my point. ^_^

So, Poemi fights the bad guys and in the end, the story wasn’t about her at all, but about her very, very, very gay best friend Futaba. Which reminds me to point out that IMHO, the very funniest of all the gags in the entire anime is the Aasu sister’s names. They are in reverse numerical order. The oldest is “Mutsumi,” (6th) and the youngest is “Hitomi” (1st). That their parents thought ahead to name them in reverse order absolutely slayed me. It makes me giggle just thinking about it.

There are a lot of internal and external gags in PPP, and even more hyperactive activity, much of which makes no sense whatsoever. That’s okay, like most allergic reactions to more serious work, it’s not really for you – it’s for the people in the studio to let it allllll out.

If you don’t mind tasteless service, self-referential humor and hideous sight gags, Puni Puni Poemy is quite funny. My thanks once again to Ted the Awesome for providing many laughs by sponsoring today’s review!

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 6 (you’re not watching it for the plot, anyway)
Characters – 6
Yuri – 6
Service – 8

Overall – 6

Futaba is very gay.





New Season Summer 2008 Anime: Ikkitousen: Great Guardians

June 24th, 2008

Ikkitousen returns, with bigger breasts and less sense than ever before. Moving on from merely double D size, Ikkitousen is now a hefty GG (ostensibly for Great Guardians, but duh, we’re not so stupid as to have missed the point. )

Ikkitousen:GG is a slightly alternate universe for Ikkitousen, which basically means nothing to us at all except that Ryoufu is no longer dead and her hale and hearty heart, which beats once again in a hefty chest, is set against Ryomou as her rival. Not a rival *for* anything particular (yet!) just someone to slam around in as many fights as possible.

My beloved Ryomou, sadly, is made to obsess over Saji, instead of following Goei with her eyes the way she did in the original series. I don’t mind, since we already know that as anime goes, Saji’s a reasonable lover. Nonetheless, I don’t expect a happy ending for them.

Since Ryoufu was resurrected – so far, anyway – without Chinkyuu, and Ryomou spends her time running after her erstwhile boyfriend, we turn our Yuri-hungry eyes upon our last, best hope and we are relieved, since not only does Kanu still have a raging crush on Ryuubi, she is in fact, turned completely, hopelessly, absurdly gay for her. Kanu Unchou, who once was nobility and power embodied, is now a comedic gimmick of raging lesbian hormones. Works for me. ^_^

Story? Oh, I imagine there will be something that can masquerade as a plot. For now, we are introduced to a new character who adds a whole new fetish to the lineup and, to be honest, it’s a fetish that really needed to be added. We *finally* have a character who will get captured, undressed and almost raped at least once a show and not fight back (yet!). As an added bonus, she will scream “Oniisama!” and “Oneesama!” annoyingly, so the segment of the population that finds that appealing will finally have someone to care about. Phew for them.

Never high art, if you go into Ikkitousen with anything other than resignation and amused tolerance, you are bound to be disappointed. If you were worried that Ryomou may no longer be wearing underwear or that Ryofu’s breasts are somehow not as large as before she died, then you will be mightly pleased at the new series.

Ratings:

Art – Hah!
Story – Snort
Characters – LOL
Yuri – That too
Service – Are you kidding me?

Overall – Not too bad, considering it’s utter crap

I’m almost relieved that this series drops the Romance of the Three Kingdoms tie-in since, in a lot of ways, it just got in the way of the panty shots.

…





Yuri Anime: Maria Watches Over Us Preview (English)

June 19th, 2008

Yesterday, I received a preview copy of Maria Watches Over Us, the Nozomi/Right Stuf US release of Maria-sama ga Miteru. Thank you Right Stuf for the preview! I was warned ahead of time that this preview only included the non-honorific subtitles track. :-)

Before I start to pick nits, let me sum up by saying that even with “Lady Sachiko,” I’d give the translation an 8 out of 10. One of the points lost was for a genuine error that made no sense. The other was for a few translation moments that were not wrong so much as just out of step with fan convention. No points were lost for the things that weren’t wrong, but just felt weird.  After the nit-picking, I’ll touch upon some of the good things, just to balance it all out. ^_^

The Bad:

Unforgivably, Sachiko is translated as telling Yumi that her “scarf” is crooked. That doesn’t even make sense. She says “tie” using the English word, and even if one was going to mistranslate that, “collar” seems the most reasonable mistake. It’s September – no one is wearing scarves, and they call those mufflers anyway. And no one is wearing a fashionable scarf with their uniform, either. Given the many millions of “crooked tie” gags that have beeen propagated across the intertubes, this seems a particularly egregious error. ^_^

The Indifferent:

Both Japanese and American fandoms tend to use and become familiar with certain terms. In several cases, the RS translation isn’t wrong, but it just isn’t the same as the ones we’ve become comfortable with.

“Forest of thorns,” as spoken by Tsutako is rendered “forest of briars.”

“Mother Maria” seemed an odd choice in every language, since one naturally assumes that the translator would choose either English or Japanese. Mother Mary/Maria-sama/Blessed Virgin, whatever. But “Mother Maria” seems like a strange juxtaposition chosen only for its ability to be not instantly identifiable by people looking for things to get outraged about.

I’m pretty used to “Yamayurikai” but here it is translated as “Yamayuri Council.” Not hideously awful, just again, a sort of weird halfway-translated term.

And again, in the song Maria-sama no Kokoro, “Yamayuri lily” is pretty redundant. “Wild lily” or “mountain lily” is surely sufficient.

And while we’re on the topic of “Mother Maria’s Heart” – I don’t care that the correct name for the bird is the bush warbler – I find that amusing in an totally infantile giggly kind of way. lol

The Good:

All the Rosa’s retain their titles. Rosa Chinensis, Foetida and Gigantea are unmarred by attempts at translation. And so are their en bouton. “Rosa Chinensis en bouton petite soeur” graces our TV screen accurately, if unwieldily. ^_^ I absolutely appreciated that. In fact, that was kind of my biggest concern.

The Excellent:

The story itself is something I have not actually watched, or read, in a long time (although I am reading the novels voraciously these days.) So once again I felt that it was very nostalgic to see Yumi dealing with the Rosas for the first time. It’s a very, very amusing story. Sure Sachiko’s a raging bitch, but I love her for it – especially the moment when, after visibly having no recollection of ever having met Yumi previously, she blatantly lies to Youko about how close she and Yumi are…. ^_^

To sum up – there may be some issues even with the inclusion of the honorifics (and I don’t know to what extent honorifics will be included. Will “oneesama-gata” stay “dear sisters” or not? I don’t know for sure. Or will Maria-sama get her honorific back? No idea.) But I think that even with “Lady Sachiko” and “older sisters,” the translation was not *so* heinous that it couldn’t be enjoyed. It would be lovely to be able to give it a 10 out of 10, but with a little more smoothing, a 9 out of 10 ought to be easily obtainable.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 8
Characters – 9
Yuri – 2
Marimite Fan – 100

Translation – 8

Overall – 8

Aside from the usual fannish grinning like a moron, I’m very prepared to fall in love with this series all over again for the fourth time. ^_^





Yuri Anime: Strawberry Panic, Volume 2 (English)

June 16th, 2008

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.