Archive for the Yuri Anime Category


Yuri Anime: Battle Athletes Victory, Volume 6

August 18th, 2005

What the heck are you doing, Erica? I can hear you scream. You have a house full of BRAND-NEW interesting Yuri from Japan, and yet, here you are, reviewing some ancient, hoary old series, which has been available for *ever.*

Well…yes, you are correct. Because I felt like it. ^_^ Let me point you to my review for Volume 3, from back in June. I refer you to that post because, for the most part, if you replace the word “Ichino” with “Kris”, this would basically be the same *exact* review. Which says a lot general crappiness of the writing for this series. Only every third volume is worth watching, but hot DAMN! its worth watching!

So, in Volume 4 and 5 Akari arrives at the Satellite and finds that she is, once again completely, utterly outclassed. And this time the opposition really thinks she’s a bug. On the positive side, she has met her roommates: Anna, whose story is genuinely tedious, but only half of the unpleasant backstory Anna has in the manga, and; Kris. Yay! Kris Kristopher is really the best thing about this series. Voiced by a woman who would one day shake the Yuri world as Tenjou Utena, Kris is hot in every direction, The cow she brings is an unwelcome “funny” addition to the anime, (as is the candy bar-obsessed “Mister Miracle”, Kris’ coach) but really, in every other way, any moment Kris is on the screen is a good moment.

So, we reach Volume 6, and Kris has become as important to Akari as Ichino was (and, I think, more so.) By the time we’ve reached this volume of the anime, Akari is finally in her “striving to succeed mode”, but she can’t quite get it together, because she’s freakin’ obsessing about Kris all the time. And of course, Kris is mooning about, doing the same.

While Kris and Akari dance around each other, we get to see another Yuri obsession in full bloom – the magnificent Mylandah and her object of desire, Lahrri. Mylandah never even *looks* at her opponents, she’s so intent on Lahrri. We’re not supposed to know that this is a love affair gone bad, yet, so I’ll move on. Suffice to say that Mylandah is delightfully violent and psychotic (and we all know how I feel about that…!) while Lahrri is so focused that she can’t see the forest for the trees. They will develop into the only interesting thing about the final arc of the anime, but at the moment, its all just unresolved tension, that hasn’t yet been revealed as sexual. ^_^

Back on the field, Kris breaks her coach’s rule and approaches Akari, kissing her in front of the entire world. It is a very nice kiss, but still pales in comparison to the manga kiss, if only because in the manga both Akari and Kris throw themselves into it. This kiss is just as public, but it is one-sided and they had to go ruin it with a stupid justification. But there ya go. They kiss.

Oh, and Akari gets better and wins. Bleah.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 6
Characters – everyone other than Akari and “Mr. Miracle” – 8. Akari – 5, Mr. Miracle – 2
Yuri – 8

Overall – 7

So, wait, let me summarize all this: It’s really, really gay. Just go watch it already.





Yuri Anime: Noir, Volume 3

August 15th, 2005

Just as a reminder, it’ll be a short week for Okazu, since Otakon is coming up on Thursday. I’ll have my computer, and there’s a small chance that I’ll be updating, but no promises! ^_^

Okay, so despite the fact that my life is nearly 100% Maria-sama ga Miteru right now, I thought I’d move off it for a sec, and harken back to the golden days of yesteryear, when yuri anime existed, and women who carried guns ruled the small screen. That’s right, its time for Noir. (You can use the search feature up on the top of the page to find my reviews of Volumes 1 and 2, because I’m too lazy to look them up for you. Just stick in the word “Noir” and the links’ll be the top ones.)

In this third volume several significant things happen. For one thing, the gradual character development of the second volume is left behind, and the sense that something important is looming just ahead is notched up several, erm, notches. The character Chloe is introduced in this volume and, most importantly, in Episode 10, one of the faceless henchmen actually gets *wounds* when he is shot! And here I have been saying that that never happens. Wrong again, Erica.

Before I comment on Chloe, let me first mention Altena. Altena was a completely wasted character. For someone who got so much build-up through the series, they really never *did* anything with her. She was supposed to have been the other Soldats branch, supporting the “pure,” ritualistic Noir, as opposed to the crime syndicate assassin-for-hire Noir, but they really never managed it. Bee Train has improved at stroy writing since this anime, so I won’t beat it to death, but really, Altena was a waste. Which is a shame, ’cause she might have been cool. (Not as cool as Inccontabile, who I still think would have made a better adversary.)

And then there is Chloe and her spork. (Damn you Dreiser, for destroying my brain with that image!)

Chloe is meant to be creepy and cool and scarily ubercompetent. And fandom seems to agree, overwhelmingly. But I think she’s pretty boring, myself. In the Volume 3 liner notes, we learn that of the four major characters Mirielle and Kirika were created by one woman, Chloe by another and Altena by a third. The three characters designs were integrated for the story. I don’t think it worked, sorry. Chloe would be great in say, ./hack‘s The World, but in France, she seems utterly ridiculous. I realize that I am in a minority of one when I say that Chloe and Kirika together as a couple would not only be horribly unsexy, but utterly, mind-numbingly boring. And don’t get me started on that cape. LOL And it’s a damn shame, because as everyone knows, Chloe’s voice is done by the utterly fabulous Hisakawa Aya, for whom I have nothing but the most immense respect. She does her best to bring some depth to this role, but its a doomed effort, since Chloe really just doesn’t have any. I will say for Chloe that in this volume, at least, she gets some modicum of personality – and we get the glimmer of Chloe’s genuine desire to be paired wth Kirika. So that works whether I like it or not. ^_^

Be that as it may, Volume 3 starts to pick up the action a bit from the slightly slower and more melancholic Volume 2. In general, it’s a great set of episodes, with a hint of the “40 versus 1” that will come in the future, in which Kirika can stand in a open space and not be shot by the several dozen men shooting at her, while she takes them down with a bullet each. Totally realistic. ;-)

Ratings:

Art – 7 (Chloe’s face is often uneven and the people stand out as really bad in front of lovely detailed backgrounds.)
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Music – 9
Yuri – 6

Overall – 8

Watching Noir is like the old potato chip tagline – you can’t watch only one. It simply *begs* for a 26-episode all night carbohydrate and alcohol-laden marathon. Great, goofy, henchmen-slaughtering fun.





Yuri Anime: ROD The TV, Volume 7

July 26th, 2005

In between redoecorating a bathroom in my house, worrking on Onna! and getting ready for a talk last night at Gay Activist Alliance of Morris County, I managed to find just enough time to watch this DVD.

I’m really glad I did, too, because I had either missed or forgotten *so* much of what happens in these final episodes that I had to really pay attention to what was going on – and frequently rewind to catch something I had missed.

In other words – it was excellent.

Most of what I had missed had to do with Wendy, whose motivation makes much more sense to me now. But there had still been a bazillion details I didn’t catch – like the pile of books in the very last scene. They only translate one of them, but if you’ve been paying attention to the show at all, you’ll recognize them all. (And if you’ve read the Read or Dream manga, you’ll have a separate set of symbolism for them. Or the line Yomiko spouts at the end, which is translated as “Paper is in heaven and all’s right with the world.” Which made me laugh and walk into the dining room to tell my wife. Who looked up from her computer and told me that the original phrase “God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world” was first in print in Don Quixote by Cervantes, not in a Keats ode, as I had thought.

There’s two key things here: 1) Yes, we really do have conversations like this in my house and; 2) The Paper/God thing was a pun. Yomiko made a joke. All’s right with the world, indeed.

Did I mention that this volume was excellent?

There were still many things I wanted answered at the end, but none of them were “Why on earth did so-and-so do such-and-such?” More of them were like, “Hmmm, what will happen when Nancy comes back?”

There are simply so many things I want to discuss with people about this series, and 99% of all of it is spoilers, so you all have to run out and get this volume, watch it and come to the Yuricon Mailing List, so we can gab about it until we’re blue! :-)

The *only* things that were not good were the low episode count and the retouched artwork (which in and of itself is fine, it just means that the artwork was crappy the first time around.)

Oh..and the pencil board was actually pretty good! It’s Yomiko looking all submissive and sexy. Unlike Nenene, Yomiko is pretty much a “good girl” so it fits and nothing in the picture squicks. Of the entire batch, this one is probably the best.

Ratings:

10, all the way around.

Everybody has a happy ending – even the bad guys – the cleverness factor would make Terry Pratchett jealous and the writers win, hands down, for being golden in my book.

No pun intended. :-D





Yuri Anime: Kore ha Watashi no Goshujin-sama – This Is My Master

July 14th, 2005


I’m not feeling very vitriolic today, but I guess I’ll review this anime anyway.

Kore ha watashi no goshujin-sama, aka This is My Master or He is My Master, is…. Honestly? It’s a miserable piece of filth.

I have been told by several guys that the manga is *much* cuter and funnier. However, when I glanced at the manga, I saw very little that I personally find anything like funny. I will freely admit that I loathe and despise broad physical comedy that relies primarily on sexual harrassment and peeping as vehicles for humor. And little girl faces on absurdly developed bodies is repugnant.

Two sisters find themselves dependent on a rich kid for a job. Rich kid is a clothing fetishist and makes them wear “sexy” outfits. Wackiness and tons and tons and TONS of general pervy peeping ensues.

The title is pretty accurate though, when read with sarcasm, “*This* is my master”? And I genuinely believe that that is what the mangaka was going for.

Yes, there is yuri. It is one-sided and will go nowhere and is essentially no more than a girl doing the same exact kind of pervy drooling and peeping that the boy is doing, except of course she can get closer during in the bath. She becomes a maid in the household to be close to the object of her affection. If this is the kind of thing you want to see, she is blatantly, obviously openly desirous of the main character whose name I’m not even willing to look up. That’s how good this story is. Izumi, maybe?

Let me slip out of my exhausted and bored distaste into a brief moment of extreme vitriolic hatred. The alligator sexually harrassing the main character is quite possibly the single most disgusting plot complication I have ever encountered anywhere – surpassing even the entire grotesquery of Shusaku Reply, which was a sewer of an anime. I feel a special violence towards anyone who might conceivably find the whole thing amusing or, heaven forfend, sexy.

Ratings:
Art – 6
Story – 2
Characters – 3
Yuri – 8

Overall – 3

To be blunt – if you find this anime “cute” or “funny”, you are probably a “loser.”





Yuri Anime: Gokujou Seitokai

July 12th, 2005

The early summer season of anime has been lame in general, with only a few exceptions, and absolutely *abysmal* as far as Yuri goes.

As I see it, there are exactly two anime with anything approaching real Yuri, and of those I find one so repulsive I simply cannot bring myself to discuss it with any semblance of objectivity. (I will leave it for a later vitriolic rant.) Which leaves us with Gokujou Seitokai.

Thankfully, Gokujou Seitokai is a lot of fun, as well as having at least a little meat for the yuri fan to chew on.

The plot, to quote several wise people, is “about girls at a girls school with girls.” I think that sums it up nicely, myself. ^_^

Miyagami Gakuen is yet another exclusive all-girl elevator school – only there is nothing like 1920’s comportment here! Instead we have a special super highest power student council that runs the school, with a covert operations squad complete with ninja, an assault squad complete with serious heavy-duty nuclear weaponry…and of course, pretty girls.

In the beginning we meet space cadet Randou Rino, a young lady with a deficient frontal lobe and a bizarre, trash-talking puppet attached to her hand. Randou has been sent to this school by the mysterious Mr. Poppet, a penpal of some kind. Of course she ends up joining the Gokujou Seitokai, which is run by the head of the school, the lovely and gentle and a little cracked, Jinguuji Kanade. Kanade is the idol of the school, so there’s a lot of jealousy when she begins to favor Rino. (We eventually learn that there is some connection between Rinou and Kanade, but by episode 14, we have not learned the exact nature of this connection. All we know is that Kanade is definitely, consciously acting as surrogate mother/big sister for orphaned Rino.)

We also learn that the puppet, Pu-chan, is not at ALL what he seems. The obvious gag about Pu-chan being Rino’s alter ego is just…wrong. Let’s put it this way – in the big curry battle episode, we learn that in the past, Pu-chan had an affair with an Indian woman. Not your average puppet, trust me.

So…yuri?

In the beginning there is a really funny episode about rumors of Rino and Kanade having some kind of affair. “Paya-paya” was not in any of the the slang onomotopeia books or lists that I could find before this episode, but I bet it’s in them now. ^_^

Look! I just found this on the Urban Dictionary:
payapaya
Japanese slang for some kind of interpersonal contact, possibly sex. Popularized (to north american anime fans) in Gokujou Seitokai episode 3.
“The president was seen in Rino’s room, they were doing payapaya!”

See?

For me the least likely, yet most interesting, yuri couple would have to be the two Vice Presidents of the Gokujou Seitokai, Nanaho (Assault) and Kuon (Covert.) Really, there’s NO sign of anything between them. I’m making it up, pretty much. But they’d make a great couple and I have Kato/Inspector Clouseau-like scenes of bedroom assault in my head between the two of them that I simply cannot rid myself of. ^_^

We are introduced to an exceptionally strong shinyuu/intense friendship between Rein and Sayuri, which is easy enough to see as something more. It wouldn’t be a stretch to call them a couple.

And plenty of folks have interpreted Nanaho’s feverish devotion to Kanade as love, which it certainly is. I’m not sure it’s desire, but I’ll leave that question to the philosophers.

The one genuine full-blown babydyke character is Izumi Kaori. In the beginning we are led to believe that she is the typical obnoxious overachieving ojou-sama, but pretty quickly we learn that she’s nothing of the sort. In fact, she’s probably the most well-developed character so far and has turned out to be quite intelligent and admirable. Her overt crush on Kanade apparently stems from Kanade’s kindness and generosity in Kaori’s past, but when we get scenes of Kaori imagining herself and Kanade “doing things that she doesn’t know about because she’s a pure maiden” it kind of blows the purity bit right off. ;-) So she’s probably the only “real” lesbian in the bunch.

Ratings:
Art – 7
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Yuri – 6

Overall – 7

Lots of fun, good as brain candy, Gokujou Seitokai is a pleasant, but seriously unserious addition to the yuri collection. It has been licensed by ADV and is being released as Best Student Council.