Archive for the Yuri Manga Category


Yuri Manga: Transistor ni Venus, Volume 6

October 21st, 2005

Feeling down? A little depressed? Transistor ni Venus is just the ticket. This yuri spy series is so exceptionally goofy that it’d take more than a blue mood to hold out against Enus and her adventures. As always, my deepest thanks to Touko_no_doriru-san for insipring me to read this series!

Volume 6 is a paean to love.

On a planet that looks like a Mediterranean resort, Enus and Eriari encounter a Romeo and Juliet kind of situation. Po, a young aristocrat, and Kurani, are in love. But Kurani’s family and Po’s are not about to let them be happy together, for reasons that are no doubt idiotic. Po’s brother is engaged to Kurani, but she and Po (who is male, btw…straight couples are rare enough in this series that it’s noteworthy) are really, really in love.

Of *course* they end up together, duh. No one suffers in Transistor ni Venus. And they look quite tropical and exotic in their wedding gear. Even young spy in training Eriari finds himself a cute girl. Enus is saddened that she doesn’t have a nice girl, or guy in a pinch, to marry. Shiku, shiku.

The second half of the volume is taken up with a search for cannisters containing something or other of crucial importance. For this job, Enus is teamed up with Professor “Call me Iselin” Suiminkova. Iselin spends every second she is not busy communicating telepathically with her trained dolphins to seduce Enus…or, really, to begin seducing her, the blaming Enus for making her do weird things. Thankfully, Enus and Iselin are captured by the Lizard guys and their pet human Samaja. Samaja and Iselin immediately forget Enus even exists, freeing her to free them all and recover the cannister and get herself the hell out of there.

Enus goes running off to find Mariaana, her usual fallback lover and takes her immediately to bed. She says to Mariaana that she’s glad that they are friends, and Miariaana goes all pouty. Just friends? Lovers, Enus assures her. Just lovers? Enus asks what she’s getting at and Mariaana wonders if Enus would marry her. Hooray! Enus is glad to agree and is ready to take off to do the deed this second, when Mariaana starts coming up with delays. Oh well – at least Enus got Mariaana in bed, and that’s good enough for now.

The outcome? Enus and Mariaana are more of a couple than before, and Enus really, really comes to dislike dolphins.

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

Overall – 8

Now, if this series, and Hayate Cross Blade ever become anime, *then* I’ll be a happy Erica.





Yuri Manga: Aria, Volume 7

October 18th, 2005

Since the Aria anime has just started, there’s a fair amount of interest in this series now, so I thought a review of the manga was appropriate.

For refreshers, you can read my reviews of volumes 1,2 and 3, which are available in English and volumes 4,5 and 6 which you can get from Amazon Japan.

The first 6 volumes are sweet, pleasant and not particularly melodramatic slices-of-life about the adventures of Akari, a gondolier in training on Neo-Venezia. If there’s any weakness in this series it is that we don’t go very deep into any of the character’s, well…character.

Volume 7 remedies this.

Our journey this time begins with a story about vanity. Aika, Akari’s fellow trainee and rich girl heiress, has always prided herself on her beautiful long hair, so when it is accidentally burned and has to be cut, she has to face her own self-image – and her dreams about what she wants to be when she grows up. To bring her to the realization that she has to strive to be herself, her mentor Akira has to resort to some tough love.

The rest of the book follows this lead – spending more time on the trainees (Akari, Aika and Alice of the Aria, Hime and Orange companies, respectively) and their relationships with their sempai; Alicia, Akira and Athena. It’s a nice glimpse a little further beneath the surface of the trainees’ endless admiration for the older women. It’s especially nice to get some extended time seeing Alice grow into more of a person. (To her benefit, she is considerably younger than Akari and Aika and we are apt to forget that in the face of her extraordinary skill as an undine. This time we can see Alice the young woman, instead of Alice the trainee. Trust me – it works.)

Alice and Aika spend some quality time together, as well – yet another angle on the kids. We’re so used to Akari’s outlook, that it’s refreshing to see Akari from the outside, and learn a little bit more about all three in the process.

The final chapter does something new yet again – we get a chapter from inside Aika’s head. And her point of view is significantly different from Akari’s. In fact, for once we get to see Akari through her eyes, which is rather amusing. We end as we began – with Aika’s hair. Only this time, it’s all complicated by love. Because although the other women think her new hairdo is spiffy….there’s Al, who hasn’t seen it yet. Of course, he loves it. ^_^ (But then, he thinks the cat looks spiffy too in her clothes…)

We finsh up with a side story about Akatsuki which shows him at 6 – all very funny if I though kids, or cats, were cute. Which I don’t.

In any case, this volume is, by far and away, the *strongest* volume so far for this enjoyable series. It gives me hope that we’ll get the same treatment for the older undines – more exploration of their pasts, their hopes, dreams and the relationships they have with each other.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Characters – 9
Story – 8
Yuri – 3 (Aika still has that lingering akogare for Alicia, and the way Akira talks about her….I got give it a few points!)

Overall – 8

A really fine story in the tradition of Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou. Great characters, fun times that make you smile. A win all the way around.





Yuri Manga: Bakuretsu Tenshi, Vol. 3

October 16th, 2005

Why couldn’t the Bakuretsu Tenshi anime have been this decent? That’s what I want to know.

In Volume 2, Jo suddenly has to face her past, of which she remembers nothing. People attack her for the very skills she treasures, and Sei and Emi seem to know more about her than she does. Only Meg loves Jo for who she is, but Jo rejects Meg in a fit of grand self-loathing. Her only objective is to learn what she is, and what she was.

If you’re at all familiar with anime and manga in general, you can, of course *guess* what Jo is…a bioengineered killing machine. One of many, and the one that got away. Duh. Does this make her not human? She fights against this concept like many a Boomer before her, but unlike most of the biomechanical killing machines that have gone before, this one has something special. Jo has Meg.

Meg runs off to find Jo and indeed, does find her, in the middle of a battle for her life. Meg (quite unlike the more tedious Meg of the anime) throws herself into the battle and changes the outcome – on several levels. She not only makes it possible for Jo to win, but after seeing the gentle look in Jo’s eyes as she reclaims her partner, her opponent realizes that Jo is, after all, not a killing machine but a human.

But…too bad the evil conglomerate doesn’t think so! They kidnap Meg and, in a sense rape Jo, (rough surgery to reclaim some part that had alot of kanji that I didn’t feel like translating.) Essentially they ripped her spine out.

But Sei comes on the scene and saves Jo, then accompanies her to Evil Conglomerate Inc. HQ where they save Meg, destroy *this* particular weirdo and live happily ever after.

The volume ends with a note that the story continues in the animation Burst Angel – both note and title are in English. I swear to god, I want to be an English consultant to Japanese anime companies, hired to suggest less dorky translations, and to work on the r/l confusion….

In any case, Meg’s love is what saves Jo from a short life of violence and catapults her into a much, much longer life filled with violence.

The biggest problem with the anime, especially after the manga, is how Jo and Meg really *don’t* connect. We see Jo save a suddenly incompetent Meg frequently, and we see Meg snuggle an unresponsive Jo a few times. What a damn shame we don’t get to see the Jo and Meg of the manga appear in the anime – how much better a series might it have been?

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 7
Characters – 7
Yuri – 6

Overall – 7

Better than mediocre, the Bakuretsu Tenshi manga series is far superior to the anime.





Yuri Manga: Yuri Monogatari 3 Available for Pre-order!

September 29th, 2005


It’s official! Yuri Monogatari 3 is now available for pre-order on the Yuricon Shop!

ALC Publishing’s newest all yuri anthology will be shipping out at the end of October. Pre-order directly through the Yuricon shop and you’ll save 30% off the retail price.

YM3 is also ALC’s first to be available not only through the hobby market (y’know, comic book stores…) but also the major book store chains in the US, UK, Canada and Australia!

Feel free to pester your local Borders, Barnes and Noble, Dillons, etc for the newest 100% yuri anthology on the market.

For a brief synopsis of the wonderful stories in the third “Lily Tales” anthology, check out my September 2 post. I’m really very excited about this publication and I think you will be too!





Yuri Manga: Eve no Ringo/Eve’s Apple, Volume 3

September 22nd, 2005

You remember Kirika, don’t you? She was the high school student who wanted, above all else, to be a professional manga artist, in the goofball sex manga series Eve no Ringo, aka Eve’s Apple.. After several rejections, she was hired by the grumpiest, most miserable bastard of an editor ever, to draw S&M comics for a Lady’s Comic publication.

To understand the world she was drawing Kirika tried being a dominatrix, a man, tied up, spanked and learned about car sex and fetishes galore. All to become a better mangaka. Grudgingly, the editor from hell allowed a page or three of Kirika’s work into the magazine – but at the end of Volume 2, she had a long way to go before she could really consider herself a professional.

I found the first two volumes of this series in a used manga store, so I was pretty convinced I’d never ever see the rest of it. I am thrilled to report that I was wrong again. Bizarrely, this series has been *reprinted* and is available through Amazon JP. You can click the picture above to reach this particular volume.

So…what adventures will befall our delightfully, no longer naive young artist, you may ask?

Well…

In Volume 3, Kirika experiences a little remote control vibrator research, thanks to Yurika and the school doctor. During a test, of course. :-)

Kirika’s self-proclaimed beautiful rival Mio, in between sex with her editor and some “assisted studying” with Kirika’s friend and assistant Matsuda-kun, learns a little bit about the appeal of S&M comics. (Matsuda, btw, is filled with remorse immediately afterwards, which I personally find quite irritating – especially as he appears to be an excellent lover. How obnoxious would that be – the best sex of your life and then the guy runs off crying….)

We meet one of Mio’s sempai, another manga artist who is a cool, sexy, stylish woman named Kaoru. Kaoru meets and wows Kirika, (who is a bit swept off her feet by the older woman) but it’s Matsuda who really floats her boat. Matsuda is perfectly okay with this, until midway in the act he discovers that Kaoru is a sexy, stylish and incredibly beautiful *guy*. One more guilt-filled night for Matsuda, I guess….

Kirika decides to visit a fetish shop to play dress up. Of course she drags Matsuda along to get his opinion on her dressed as a dominatrix and a maid. The shop owner turns out to be the sexy sadist from a few volumes ago, who promptly ties her up and proceeds to make her learn a bit more about her needs – in front of Matsuda. Kirika is fascinated by the whole idea of being watched and runs home to incorporate her new knowledge into her art.

While Yurika and Kirika work on Yuri’s new soon-to-be published piece, Matsuda and Miyamae-sensei (the older mangaka who was seriously hardcore from the first few volumes) engage in some “study” for her work. He tries to draw some S&M and it rapidly becomes a Disney-esque fantasy with him and prince and Kikira as princess – as all his work is wont to.

Another kouhai is added to Kirika’s stable, as provincial gang girl Yano appears, with a thick accent and wackified antics, which involve her taking hers and the other girls’ shirt off alot.

Kirika gets yet another assistant when first year student Mai joins the chado club at school and asks if she can, you know, help Kirika in any way. She and Kirika get an intense session in and Kirika is motivated to draw, while Mai is motivated to get Kirika alone in a dark room again.

The final few chapters tell of a big party that the publishing house holds for all the mangaka and editors at an onsen, so we have the usual nudity and sex play – but because these are all people who draw and live S&M, it lack coyness or fanservice, really, and is refreshingly uncloying.

In a freak accident, the editor from hell is hurt and Kirika finds that she’s ALOT more upset about it than she would have thought. She overhears the editor and Miyamae talking about her. When she hears him say that she doesn’t need him, Kirika finds herself unexpectedly hysterical. Matsuda comforts her, but there’s definitely a sense that something deeper than just her need to succeed is going on.

Regardless of the trashiness of the subject, I *really* like this series. because the sex is part of the plot, there’s so little ingenuousness, or immaturity about it. And as Kirika and the others become more mature about human sexuality, so does the series.

It’s still goofy and fun, but if you’re not afraid of it, Eve’s Apple has the least objectification of women I’ve ever seen in any sex-heavy manga.

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

Overall – 7

This isn’t a Yuri story, not really, but its pleasantly omnisexual and has some Yuri service, no goggles needed.