Archive for the Yuri Anime Category


Yuri Anime: Re Cutie Honey

November 5th, 2004

Let us all get on our knees and worship at the deranged altar of Go Nagai. (Oh, mighty one, we worship you and your totally insane need to give us sweet, innocent, yet frequently naked, heroines.)

Back in July, I reviewed the Cutey Honey manga and Cutey Honey Flash anime, as collected in the Anime Essential Collection. Today, it is my *great* pleasure to review what has been, to me, the most deeply satisfying anime I’ve seen all season. Re Cutie Honey strikes a perfect balance between honestly good and enjoyably bad.

Produced by Gainax In their 20th anniversary year, the animation for Re Cutie Honey feels like Powerpuff Girls meets Batman. More angular than past incarnations, more action-filled (although with less violence, go figure) the new Cutie Honey has changed more than just the spelling of her name.

Like all incarnations of Honey, this OVA begins with an origin episode that establishes the bad science behind Honey’s creation, and her blonde good-girl persona as Kusanagi Honey. In this incarnation, she appears to be an Office Lady in a city government office.

We are quickly introduced to Aki Natsuko (“Na-chan”) a tough-as-nails female cop, who almost instantly dislikes Honey and everything she stands for. For Na-chan, justice is not about flashy costume changes and mass destruction, but grunt work and police procedure – and she resents the damage that Honey’s “justice” leaves behind.

Complicating matters, Honey and Na-chan are next-door neighbors. Honey tries to make amends, and desperately wants to be liked by Na-chan, but the policewoman has worked too hard and long to see Honey’s point of view.

Episode 1 passes with nary a shared look between the two, but in Episode 2, Na-chan and Honey have a blowup, as Na-chan totally rejects Honey’s overture of friendship. The two spend a tearful, melancholic night separated by a single physical wall and a huge emotional one. Honey, rejected and distraught, shuts down in the middle of her next battle, but Na-chan, realizing that Honey actually *needs* love to survive, strips down and brings her back to life in a spectacular use of fanservice.

Episode 3 concludes the highly charged arc between them, as baddie Sister Jill (we’ve lost the original Panther Claw and her gang of mask-wearing baddies) tries to take over the town. Sister Jill desires to possess Honey (as well as, of course, the rest of the world.) It turns out that Sister Jill was also created by Honey’s father, and so is a kind of big sister to Honey, although Jill’s desire for Honey doesn’t seem particularly sisterly, if you know what I mean.

But, of course, love wins the day, as a super butched-up, bristling with weapons Na-chan takes on Sister Jill and with a faux-kiss that was pretty sweet, once again gives Honey the will to survive. The battle ends with a big bang, but I knew that the story wasn’t over, because I’m an old hand at this, and Honey *never* dies.

The epilogue shows us the new improved butchy Na-chan and Honey have gone into business together and appear to be (to discerning eyes wearing their Yuri goggles) a couple. As they ride off to the scene of the next attack, Na-chan in her Akio-red car and Honey on her motorcycle (we remember what *that* means,right?) we can sit back and bask in the knowledge that fanfic writers everywhere are working on their “Honey and Na-chan get it on” fics even as we smile.

Good, bad and indifferent all at once, Re Cutie Honey is a thumbs up for fans would don’t mind taking their Yuri with a shaker or two of parody, perversion and pathos.

Ratings:
Story – 6
Characters – 9
Art – 8
Music – 9
Yuri – 9

Overall – 8.

“Hey, You got your Gainax in my Go Nagai!”
“Hey! Your Go Nagai’s in my Gainax!”
“Mmmm, delicious.”





Yuri Anime: 2×2 Shinobuden, the Nonsense Kunoichi Fiction

November 3rd, 2004

After nearly two weeks of turning the yuri goggles on full power and still having to squint, I need to write about something with *actual* yuri in it.

2×2 Shinobuden, the Nonsense Kunoichi Fiction, is just the thing to cure my “where’s the yuri?” blues.

The plot of Shinobuden can be summed up in two words – “Wackiness ensues.” While this is not my favorite plot in the universe, Shinobuden is a cute example of this very tired breed.

Shinobu is a young, well-endowed female ninja (the Kunoichi of the title) in training. She lives in a compound with a host of male ninjas and their master, a yellow ball with the name of Onsokumaru. The combined intelligence and maturity of all the ninjas and Onsokumaru appears to be about that of a 12 years old boy. The guys are all typical incompetent peverts, Shinobu is the typical sweet, clueless innocent. Wackiness ensues.

The yuri interest is Shinobu’s friend Kaede. For a change, Kaede is not engaged in a one-sided love for Shinobu, it’s the other way around. Shinobu hopelessly tries to entice Kaede to, you know, get closer, so they can, you know, be better friends, but Kaede’s a bit stuffy and doesn’t seem to be even remotely interested. In fact, she seems downright turned off by the idea of snuggling with Shinobu. Kaede is, however, the only really intelligent and competent character in the show, so when she comes over, wackiness ensues.

(There is one other seemingly intelligent and competent character, the master of the female ninja school, but as we learn that she is in love with Onsokumaru, her “intellgent” score drops pretty low on my scale. And *why* Shinobu doens’t go to the all-girl school is not really explained in the middle of all the wackiness ensuing.)

Poor Shinobu is really quite sweet and innocent so, although her desire for Kaede is apparent, it’s not like she’s going to come right out and be blunt. And, let’s be real, this is all played for laughs anyway. If one watches this show hoping for the girl to get the girl, one is deluding one’s self. :-)

This series gets filed under cute, sweet, goofy parody yuri.

Ratings:
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Art – 7
Music – 7, but highly sticky
Yuri – 8

Overall – 7. If you like farce and slapstick, this is a winner. Me, not so much.

My favorite bit of the entire show is the end credits which is done with puppet animation. I think that it’s exceptionally well done and funnier than the rest of the show.





New Anime Season Autumn 2004 – Mai HiME

October 28th, 2004

Mai Hime feels like a game that has been turned into an anime, or an anime that will shortly be turned into a game.

Tokiha Mai seems to be a reasonably normal young lady. She and her sickly younger brother are traveling by ship to go to an exclusive school. On the way, a young girl is rescued from drowning by Mai. She is followed by an older girl who seems to be trying to kill the young girl. Mai finds herself involved in a huge fight that ends up destroying the ship.

In the next few episodes, as we rush to introduce every one of the gazillion characters in the cast, we learn that Mai has special powers, as do many of the girls in this school – including both the young, feral Mikoto and uber-cool, Kuga Natsuki. Mai learns that, along with Mikoto and Natsuki, she is a HiME (Highly-advanced Materalizing Equipment…which makes about as much sense as it sounds) and is prone to manifesting shiny energy bands about her limbs, floating and shouting “Arrrrh!” as she pours forth magical/bad science energy and defeats the whatchamcallit bad ceature which, in this case seem to be called Orphen.

There’s lots of Digimon-type creature fights in this anime, which are good, if you like the kid-and-his or her-monster-type story. I do, so I’m happy enough.

And the characters aren’t bad. Mai doesn’t have too many bad habits yet, nor much of a personality, really. But Natsuki’s bad-ass-ness and uber-cool, which is probably masking social retardation of immense proportions is fun – and she rides a motorcycle, which automatically means she’s a lesbian. You know the rules. ^_^

Mikoto gets lots of fanservice Yuri groping in, but she’s so feral, it means about the same as if your cat sticks his claws in your chest.

There’s a ton of suggestive undertones in the three girls’ interactions with some of the older characters, particularly Shizuru – who is either quite hedonistic, or just loves teasing poor Natsuki to ruffle her. Either way, Shizuru is currently my favorite character.

The most open yuri in the series is the entire closing credit sequence – and that may or may not have anything at all to do with the actual story. The jury is still deliberating.

There seems to be a character stereotype for anyone and everyone in this series, so if you don’t mind watching a show in which character development will take place between giant creatures fighting, and a plot that is clearly a marketing tool for a game, you’ll like Mai HiME just fine.

Ratings:

Story – 7
Characters 8
Art – 7
Music – 7
Yuri – 6

Overall – 7

Goofy fun with Yuri subtext – turn your Yuri goggles way up and see what happen.





New Season Anime Autumn 2004 – Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha

October 27th, 2004

Mahou Shoujo Ririkaru Nanoha, i.e., Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha has, quite literally, reinvented the wheel.

Young Nanoha find herself filling the role of collector of magical items when her predecessor, upon being defeated, turns into a ferret. Nanoha inherits both ferret and magical wand and heads off to collect the whatevers which appear to be Miyazaki demon-y things that have invaded the immediate area…one at a time.

Nanoha defies mahou shoujo convention by having not only *two* completely functional parents, but an older sister and brother – and he has a completely functional girlfriend, the older sister of Nanoha’s friend Suzuka. It’s all *so* functional and normal that I find I spend every episode waiting for the other boot to drop. :-)

Nanoha’s two friends, the aforementioned Suzuka and Arisa provide the only glimmer of yuri hope in this completely normal, without any weirdness (except for the creatures attacking the town that no one ever notices) series. Yes, I know they are young, and *yes* I know that I’m being silly, but I feel that Arisa and Suzuka, when off camera, are likely to be holding hands and proclaiming their like for each other.

The plot has not quite developed yet in the mere four episodes I’ve seen, and the cast of characters is hardly complete – the official site has a rather large page devoted to the myriad people we should expect to see. It looks as if we’re in for about another four major players (some of whom actually looks lightly older than 9 and vaguely more interesting to me) to be introduced before things take off. In the meantime, we watch while Nanoha collects whatsits with the help of her highly merchandisable wand Raging Heart…or not, as she’s foiled by her mysterious counterpart in black and *her* highly merchandisable wand, Bardiche. Honestly, I find the wands to be the most intriuiging characters.

Will this become another Card Captor Sakura? I can’t say for sure – CCS didn’t take off until Episode 8, but the art in CCS was alot nicer than in Nanoha. and the voice cast was miles above any other in quality. OTOH, I’ll keep an open mind. With one exception – the hair in Nanoha drives me batty. They all have early 80’s tufts that swtich from side to side depending on the angle we see them at. Even the ferret. (OK, not the ferret, but everyone else.) Also, I’m at a loss to explain why everyone in Suzuka’s family has lavender hair, including the maids. Other than these minor gripes, Nanoha is just fine.

2007 note: The Yuri did get better with time. If you’re here from a later Okazu post, you’ll know it did. :-) Even though, at the time, I didn’t care for it.

Ratings:

Story – 6
Characters – 7
Art – 5 (that hair really gets me)
Music -6
Yuri – 0

Overall – 6

Everyone is so *normal*…it’s creepy.





New Anime Season Autumn 2004 – Uta-Kata

October 25th, 2004

Utakata: Collection 1This week’s reviews can all be subtitled “Looking for Yuri in all the wrong places.”

Uta-kata is one of the several magical girl series that premiered this season that don’t *really* quite seem to be for girls at all. But, then, I’m not sure who this series is for. (A common refrain this season, I’m sorry to say.)

The plot is thin – Normal girl Ichika finds that her phone charm, given to her by two mysterious pretty boys, is not what it seems. Each charm has several gems – when each gem turns a color, Ichika is granted the blessing of a god and a really, really ugly outfit to transform into.

The blessing is accompanied, one assumes, by the powers granted by the god…but so far I’ve seen very little by way of powers. Instead the uneccesarilly full frontal henshin seems to give Ichika little more than a reason to play dress up and glow a bit. I will freely admit that I am watching this series raw, and so am, perhaps, missing major plot complications…but I doubt it.

The two mysterious bishounen seem to know what’s going on, as does the creepy-cool older neighbor lady who is clearly involved up to her arched eyebrows…but we, the audience have been, so far, kept out of the loop. Ichika’s mysterious magical friend is NOT a stuffed animal/cute creature, at least. Instead we have an aquamarine-hared girl, Manatsu, who *also* knows what’s up, but won’t tell Ichika because…I have no idea. I don’t ever understand the ole “withholding information for your own good” plot complication.

Again, assumably, when all the gems have activated on the two charms (which, placed together would make a yin/yang symbol – very significant, I’m sure) we’ll be graced with a plot…or, at least, we hope.

The supporting cast in this anime is legion. Ichika defies all the usual magical girl stereotypes by having two parents and a gaggle of perfectly normal friends – complete with their own in-jokes, the one thing I actually find enjoyable about this series. I expect her friends will be either be entangled in her magical girl career, or provide the ballast to keep her normal…either one would work in this situation.

I’ve seen folks implying some kind of relationship between Manatsu and Ichika, but I think they must have their yuri goggles turned WAY up to see anything there. In fact, so naive, bland and clueless is Ichika that I’m kind of inclined to think that Manatsu would have to have her pinned to the bed and naked, with her tongue half down her throat to gain her attention – or mine.

As you can see, I am not overwhelmed by this series. The best thing about it is the phone charm, which I would quite like as a toy. ^_^

Ratings:

Story – 5
Characters – 7
Art – 6
Music – 6
Yuri – 1, but only if your REALLY work at it.

Thus far, it has the feel of an exceptionally uninspired bishoujo game. I hope I’m wrong and it blossoms into “Ooh, cool!” but I’m not holding my breath.