Yuri Manga: Transistor ni Venus, Volume 4

August 5th, 2005

Transistor ni Venus, Volume 4 is one long gag about smoking. Or, more accurately, about how unsexy smoking is.

Enus is assigned to guide and protect Mag, a 21-year old who looks significantly younger, and a professor who happens to be one of the ferret-like sentient race that inhabits the Transistor universe. As usual, they are followed, attacked and generally harrassed by other spies trying to gain the information Mag and the Professor have, but Enus always comes through and saves them. The gag begins when Enus wants to collect an appropriate reward from Mag…who is fine with a little sex, but wants to have a ciggy first. The Professor joins her. Enus goes to sleep infused with second-hand smoke and an attitude.

About halfway through the book, Enus loses Mag and the professor, but picks up Tes, from whom she gets a few kisses, but is almost immediately interrupted by the arrival of rival spy Kara, who promptly steals Tes. We regain Mag and the Professor and the smoking club has now grown by two.

The whole story ends with a big kissfest, but Enus goes to bed alone. I imagine the others are outside for a cigarette break.

As with all the other Transistor volumes, this one is good, wholesome fun trash. The emphasis is on comedy, with a little light yuri.

While I was reading this volume, I showed it and the artbook to a friend who has no interest in anime and she perked right up! “Why didn’t you TELL me about this?” she asked when, of course, I’d been telling her for years.

If you know a lesbian who thinks all this yuri is crap, show her this series – I bet she pays a little more attention. ;-) Partially its the art – the artbook in particularl looks like pin-up art more than manga art. A couple of the pictures would make nice tattoos. ^_^

So the yuri quotient is a little lower in this volume than the others (which I have reviewed previously, use the search feature up top on the left to find the entries) but is still a fun read.

Once again, many thanks to Touko_no_doriru-san for opening my eyes to this wonderful series!

Posted in Transistor ni Venus, Yuri Manga | 2 Comments »


Sorry!

August 3rd, 2005

Okay, really, its been crazy this week. I just don’t have any time to write. I promise a review tomorrow, but today’s a bust.

Just to keep you interested, let me tell you about the stuff I’ll be reviewing in the near future:

Eve’s Apple – Volumes 3,4,5

Maria-sama ga Miteru – Novels 6 and 7, Drama CDs 6 and 7

[ES]Eternal Sisters 2

Kannazuki no Miko – manga Volume 2

Hana no Asuka-gumi – new manga Vol. 2, 3

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou – Vol. 13

Yuri Hime – in detail

Venus ni Transistor – Vols 4-7

and a bunch of other stuff that’s sitting on my cofee table, but I can’t remember off the top of my head.

In the meantime, drop by the Yuricon Mailing list for all your yuri review and chat needs, until I get my act together! See you there!

Posted in Miscellaneous | No Comments »


Aqua Manga Volume 1 and 2

August 1st, 2005


How bizarre…the cover pictures for Aqua on Amano’s website are not the ones on the actual covers.

In any case, my apologies for leaving you so long having to read my whiny, self-indulgent last post. I just didn’t have the energy to write reviews, so I sat around, re-watched Devilman Lady (on the premise that no matter what’s going on in my life, Jun’s problems were infintely worse) and worked on the up-coming Yuri Monogatari 3 which will, gods willing, be premiering at Onna! in October.

But all this has nothing to do with Aqua – which is okay, because Aqua has nothing to do with anything in particular.

Aqua is the two-volume prequel to Aria, which I reviewed in February and May of this year. Aria is being made into an anime which is slated for this fall sometime, for those of you who missed that news on the Yuricon Mailing List.

So, if you are familiar with Aria, then you know exactly what Aqua is like. In these two volumes we meet Akari as she comes to Mars for the first time. Mars, now known as Aqua, has been terraformed and humans have, quite naturally, recreated the same places that they loved on Earth. Or that they destroyed. Either way. :-)

Akari meets and collects almost all of the characters who will return in Aria, so its kind of nice if you want to know about the first time she meets the postman, or Aika. The adventures are sweet and unstressful, there was way too many cats, and everything is pretty.

So, since there’s nothing earth-shaking (or mars-shaking) in the plot, let’s get down to business…Yuri?

Well, Aika’s crush on Alicia is way pronounced, but it is a very schoolgirly crush. So Yuri, no, akogare/admiration, yes. But hey, if you’re desperate, go for it. I don’t care. lol Alicia has, right from the beginning that undefined sensuality that makes her and Akira so much an item later in Aria, and which is probably what Aika is responding to.

So, pretty much, Aqua is more of the same as Aria, or vice versa, since Aqua came first.

It’s not lesbo sex, but its quite pleasant in a back rub kind of way. :-)

Same ratings as Aria.

Posted in Aria | 1 Comment »


Yuricon needs your help!

July 28th, 2005

Hi. I’ve received some news this week that is unlikely to affect Yuricon or ALC Publishing in the long run, but in the short-term we will definitely need all the support we can get.

If you haven’t yet purchased any of our ALC Publications, or you’re looking to buy anime or manga, etc, please consider using the Yuricon Shop. Your financial support is important to keep the yuri events, publications and community that make up Yuricon going.

I’ll be back with more reviews in the next few days, but do please consider making a purchase from the Shop or donating to Yuricon, if you can, in the next few months – it will make a huge difference in our immediate future. Donors who send more than $20 will be acknowledged on our website and in the next ALC Publication.

And thanks so much for all the positive support you’ve shown in the five years since Yuricon was born!

Posted in Yuricon | 2 Comments »


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

Posted in R.O.D., Read or Dream, Yuri Anime | 4 Comments »