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.

Posted in Gokujou Seitokai, Yuri Anime | 2 Comments »


Maria-sama ga Miteru Manga, Volume 4

July 11th, 2005


I love getting my Maria-sama ga Miteru manga fix from Margaret magazine twice a month, but there’s definitely something extra special about getting a whole volume with a complete story in your hands. The down side is, you don’t always get the splash page art (especially if the series has alot of color splashes) but you get wonderful goofy filler pictures where all the magazine blahblah went. :-)

This week I got my paws on the manga of Maria-sama ga Miteru: Rosa Canina. And even though the story only ended a month ago in serialized form, it was amazing how much more I can catch when I read it as one whole continuous story. I guess I’m just not all that good at remembering who’s what where from month to month. LOL

I have actually discussed most of the differences between the novel/manga/anime and Drama CD in my notes from the 4th novel, so I’ll try not to repeat myself too much. Let me just draw your attention to a few things: 1) The manga inserts some internal Shimako dialogue that doesn’t exists anywhere else and which heavily foreshadows her Cherry Blossoms arc; 2) I am steadfast in my belief that Shizuka is coming on to Sei in a big way after the school elections.

Included in this volume is the New Year’s arc, which is marginally more accurate to the novel than the anime, but still changes alot of things. And sadly…we don’t get to see Sei flirting with the miko who was handing out the fortunes. I think that would have been worth a panel, at least. Because the New Year story (Nagakiyono) ran in Margaret before the Student Council election arc (Rosa Canina), that’s the order they appear in the volume, the reverse of the novel. This is a truncated version, since the hatsumode (first shrine visit of the year) scene was done as a short by Hibiki Reine for Cobalt Shueisha Magazine, the magazine where Marimite is serialized.

The only down side to the New Year story in the manga is that we *still* don’t get much of Sayoko, Sachiko’s mother – and she was so *cute*! I think we were ripped. We should demand more Sayoko. (In fact, fans must have done so, because in the one-shot short “Library Book”, which was included in the 19th novel, In Library, we get a bit more of Sayoko as a student at Lillian. And its a REALLY cute story, full of truly obnoxious groan-inducing puns. LOL I did a really crappy, rough translation of the one-shot for the folks on the Yuricon Mailing List. The translation is in the group Files – if you join you can read it and have a good laugh at my expense. :-))

Let’s see, what else is notable…well, the incidental filler art this time is on the theme of “sports”. Sei is given a surprisingly sexy beach volleyball figure. In fact, thinking about it – she’s always drawn really sexy in these incidental art pieces…. Actually, thinking about it – I’m always surprised when any of them look sexy in these pieces. I guess I’m so used to seeing the girls in those awful school uniforms that it’s a system shock to see their figures. LOL And to be honest, the first-years look cute, not sexy. Eriko in racing leathers is quite nice, but Youko’s baseball catcher’s outfit made my wife say, “What is she? A turtle?” LOL

Probably my favorite picture in the whole book is at the end, where Sachiko is feeding Yumi. It’s impossibly adorable. lol

The other thing of note is how the art is changing slightly to reflect the characters as drawn in the anime more. At this point the anime is long over and the manga is on-going, so the artist probably has a little less pressure to conform.

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

As always, another enjoyable entry in the Marimite body of work. It’ll be going up on the Yuricon Shop in the next few days!

Posted in Manga, Maria-sama ga Miteru | No Comments »


Takarazuka: Elizabeth

July 8th, 2005

Yay! Imagine my happy-happiness to not only receive this awesome DVD from Japan about a week after I ordered it, but to find that it plays on my DVD player!

(Special Note: I’m getting alot of interest in this post, mostly because of YouTube. I purchased this DVD from the regular Japanese Takarazuka website through a buying service. It is not a cheap process – you will be paying for the DVD, the buyer’s commission, the shipping to buyer and the shipping to you. I don’t have a special source or website to offer you, I just threw money at the problem.)

And before I say anything else, I want you to know that the virgin watching of this DVD was done with my wife and parents – and Mom was drooling over Death’s clothes too, so it’s NOT just geeks, goths and lesbians. ^_^

You may remember back in April, just as the Yuri Revolution tour was getting underway, I, Serge, Donna and Bruce bailed to go see a Takarazuka show at their Tokyo Theater. If you do not remember, please feel free to read my original gushing report.

Clearly the plot, characters, cool clothes and Deathlings have not significantly changed since I saw this show three months ago, so the original review will stand unaltered.

I was very impressed by the DVD itself though. Not only did it unexpectedly work on my R1 DVD player (I knew it would work on my computer, of course, but this was an added bonus) but it was exceptionally high quality, with a nice little “Program” inside that included cast, crew, synopsis, scenes, songs, and history. All in Japanese of course, but that is hardly an obstacle to fangirly-dom. Even more important was the picture card of Nao looking hunky as Der Tod. Yum. It now lives on my desk at work. ^_^

Every scene/song comes with a title on the screen, so you know what song you’re listening to. I was amazed that I could read about 80% of the song titles. I guess they keep those pretty simple.

The number one win in my book was that the tango between Nao Ayaki and Jun Sena at the very end of the revue portion of the show, was just as sexy as I remember it being. I know this is really fanservice Yuri and not really even that, because we’re supposed to see Death as a guy, but you know – Nao is gorgeous and doesn’t look remotely like a guy, so to my Yuri-goggles-on-low eyes, what you have is two women dancing. And I like it a lot. ^_^

I still want one of those Hapsburg shield mirror things from the finale, too. ^_^

Ratings:
Cinematography – 6 (like all stage shows we have too many close ups and often lose what’s actually going on on the stage)
Music – 7 (sticky Broadway theme stuff)
Story – 10 (If this doesn’t make you love history, NOTHING can)
Characters – 9 (With the exception of Rudolph who is a total pussy)
Yuri – 9

Overall – 8, objectively, but for me and those of my androgynous-women-in-uniform-loving ilk, 10, really.

Posted in Live Action, Takarazuka | 10 Comments »


Live Action: Kekkou Kamen Movie

July 7th, 2005

I was so happy to find a copy of the new Kekkou Kamen live-action movie, even though I was pretty sure that there was going to be no yuri in it.

I have reviewed the Kekkou Kamen anime, manga, and three truly horrible live-action movies, previously.

I had high hopes for the new live-action KK, if only because the new movie version of Cutie Honey had been so decent. Oh well. I guess it was too much to ask that this really trashy series ever be “decent.” ^_^

It wasn’t just that the scenes of Kekkou Kamen on a motorcycle were obviously filmed in front of a bluescreen – or that the “lascivious” behavior of the teachers and their henchmen were of the boring “slavering over a bra” kind. It was more like, it just got gross instead of tacky. Let’s put it this way – this movie actually *stole* the laxative schtick from Weather Woman. Does it really get lower than that?

The plot, such as it was, was not really enough for a real movie, so the middle bit gets kind of unfocused. I thought it was just me, but about 2/3 of the way though the movie, Mayumi breaks the fourth wall and actually speaks to Go Nagai, who pops up in a little bubble on the screen and answers. Clearly they’d lost all momentum by then. I didn’t feel too bad about only half paying attention.

Now – here was the one good thing – the actress playing Mayumi. She was *perfect.* In this version, Mayumi is a transfer student from New Zealand – not too bright, but not stupid; really bad at kanji – but with excellent English, which surprised the hell out of me. She’s not particularly cute, either, but really grows on you. Honestly, she was totally wasted in this movie, which wasn’t even particularly creative with its sort-of-sadistic, quasi-sexual tortures. Nothing even remotely as good as Gestapoko from the anime.

I was definitely bummed at the lack of yuri. There’s plenty of room for it – and its just about the one fetish the movie manages to miss – which, if you think about it could either be good, or bad. lol

The one last major bummer was the crappiness of the theme. In the anime Kekkou Kamen’s theme is sung by Shinohara Emi and is really great. The remake of the Cutie Honey theme for the movie was SO good that I was really hoping for a cool remake for KK’s theme. No dice. The new version is scratchy and whiny and generally suckariffic. Boo hooooo.

Ratings:
Cinematography – hahaha
Music – eh
Characters – Mayumi – wow; Everyone else – shrug
Story – bleh
Yuri – snort

Overall, a resounding noseblow of a movie. If you want to see it, you can borrow my copy.

Posted in Go Nagai, Live Action | 3 Comments »


Live Action: Summer Vacation 1999

July 6th, 2005

Based loosely on Hagio Moto’s Boys’ Love classic, Touma no Shinzo (Heart of Thomas), Summer Vacation has just about something for everyone, except perhaps the hard-core action fan.

The story takes place at an all-boy’s private school during summer vacation. Almost everyone has gone for the summer, with the exception of three boys who are friends and are now living together. Not to long ago a fourth friend of theirs committed suicide, leaving behind a letter to his roommate. In this stereotypical “hothouse” setting several things are driving the boys apart. For one thing, there is more than a little sexual tension between them, as there was between their dead friend and at least one of them.

Into this tense mix comes a new boy, who looks unsettingly like their dead friend. He seems to know all about the likes and dislikes of the dead boy – and to share them – but insists that he knows nothing about him or his history.

Tempers flare, as does sexual attraction and violence, in this unusual and pretty creepy movie.

All the roles in this movie are played by girls. So you get kind of a double-whammy gender bendy thing going, as girls dressed like boys, start to find themselves attracted to each other. They really aren’t good as boys, but they really don’t look like girls either – which *really* works for this movie, let me tell you. The entire story balanced on the edge of life and death, vacation and school, community and isolation, madness and health, and sexual identity and gender. There’s at least one kiss I can remember, maybe more. Nothing explicit, which would have killed the whole story.

I highly recommend this movie for the zOMGWTFBBQ factor – because you really have no idea what’s going to happen through most of it. The end was a little weak, but I have to give it a little credit for not *at all* going where I expected.

Ratings:
Cinematography – 7
Story – 6 (Slow, but creepy and sexy enough to work)
Characters – 8
Yuri – 0 or 8, depending on how you look at it.

Overall – 7

A unique movie and one well worth watching for fans of this classic manga.

Posted in Live Action | 2 Comments »