Yuri at Anime Next

June 16th, 2005

Join the staffs of Onna!, Yuricon and Shoujocon at Anime Next this weekend at the Meadowlands Exposition Center in Secaucus, NJ.

Onna!/Yuricon will have a table in “con row” right outside the Dealer’s Room, and Yuricon’ll have some discount yuri goods on sale – only $5 for yuri doujinshi and translated manga! Let’s call it our 5th anniversary sale, shall we? :-)

We’ll also be offering discounted registration to Onna! – the price goes up on June 20th, so get those pre-registrations in and save!

Join me for the Fanfic Writer’s Workshop at 5:00 PM on Friday, June 17th in Panel Room III, and again for the Yuri Panel on Saturday, June 18th at 7:30PM in Panel Room IV.

Interestingly, this is the only con I’ve attended that had a yuri panel, but no yaoi panel. Has yaoi peaked? Or is Anime Next just not girly enough? (There’s no shoujo or josei panels, or really anything to do with women/girls’ anime or manga at all.) Or maybe everyone’s just waiting to get their fill of women in animation and comics at Onna! lol

P.S. – Extra special congratulations to Yuricon and Onna! staffers Serge and Donna, who are getting married this weekend (their reason to not be working the con…pfft.) Blessings on both of you for a happy life together!

Posted in Events | 1 Comment »


Sister Red, Volume 1

June 14th, 2005

Another first today for Okazu! But a rather bizarre one, I admit. Today I am reviewing Sister Red a manga with absolutely *no* yuri at all whatsoever, except in the most peripheral sense.

Once again, I’d like to offer my gratitude to Touko_no_doriru-san, who gave me both volumes of this manga in Tokyo. Subsequently I have learned that Comics One has translated it into English. Sister Red, Volume 1 is available through Amazon.com.

If it ain’t yuri, then why am I reviewing it? Because it’s the second series by manga artist Hayashiya Shizuru, creator of yuri series Strawberry Shake and artist for the mostly-yuri doujinshi circle, Jesus Drug. It is therefore of interest to me, and perhaps to other fans of her art.

To put it simply, Sister Red is a vampire story, although the word “vampire” is never used.

We are introduced to our heroine Mahito, during a typical school day. Mahito lives with her father and her cousin, Erika who is very like a sister to her. Erika is a little spacey, and has a tendency to be weak physically and emotionally. Mahito loves Erika and is always there to protect her, but is also, deep inside, a little resentful that Erika doesn’t fight back more for herself.

One night, on the way home from school, Mahito decides to take a shortcut home and is promtply hit by a car. As she bleeds into the street, the men in the car see her dying and run off without calling for help. Mahito sees a mysterious woman in a black trenchcoat who says inexplicable stuff about her heart. She closes her eyes – only to find herself at home in bed, with a doctor in attendance. Unfortunately it wasn’t a dream, as she learns when the mysterious woman, Alice, appears again and explains that she has given Mahito part of the heart of Scarlet in order to keep Mahito alive. Because, in fact, Mahito did die because of the accident. Now Mahito is one of the walking undead, and is developing mighty weird powers.

The plot of Sister Red is actually rather complicated – Alice is being tracked by her half brother Yuri who wants the heart back so he can become truly immortal. But who Scarlet is and why Alice has her heart is still a mystery to Mahito at present. In the meantime, she is forced to deal with other Night creatures – some of whom masquerade as human and prey upon real humans. Mahito starts to embrace her powers when another night creature seduces and kills her kouhai, an innocent and sweet girl. (This is the only even vaguely yuri-ish bit in the story, btw, since the creature was masquerading as a girl – and implies that she had her way with the kouhai before killing her.)

It’s a dark story, moody, and really, really violent. Lots of blood and beheaded bodies and mangled body parts and the like, once again showing that Hayashiya-sensei is not afraid of a little gore and random acts of extreme violence. Some of the action scenes are exceptionally well executed – especially in the second fight with Yuri’s first lackey, whose name escapes me at the moment. And I’m not just saying that because she’s an eye-patch wearing kick-ass chick. lol

The only downside is that the character development is a bit rushed, because it’s a short series.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 8
Characters – 6
Yuri – 0.5

Overall – 7

All in all, a dark, creepy, gory, yet fun to read, vampire story from Hayashiya Shizuru

Posted in English Manga, Hayashiya Shizuru | 2 Comments »


Yuricon at Summer Comiket

June 13th, 2005

Quick news item today – Yuricon/ALC Publishing will have a table at Summer Comiket on Sunday, August 14, East Hall 5, Row “Pe”, Table #49a .

Drop by, say hi to Rica Takashima, buy “I Love Yuri” goods and yuri manga from ALC Publishing!

Posted in ALC Publishing, Events | No Comments »


Battle Athletes Victory, Volume 3

June 10th, 2005

Okay, so I was going to do a review of something new-ish, or maybe some cool news, but last night I sat down to do some work to the dulcet tones of the third DVD of Battle Athletes Victory subtitled “Tragedy and Triumph.”

And by the end of the disk I was sitting there repeating, “Oh my god, this so *SO* gay” over and over and over. So I thought I’d share with you. ^_^

If you haven’t watched (or heard of) the Battle Athletes OVA and/or Battle Athletes Victory – you really should give them a try. Neither are as spectacularly wonderful as the still untranslated manga, which I reviewed previously, but still – both are about as Yuri as one can get without it being actually “lesbian.”

First the down side – the main character is more of the “idiot savant” type that I don’t care for. Of practically suicidal low-esteem, Kanzaki Akari waffles from hugely incompetent to impossibly brilliant in a way that bodies just cannot support. So forget realism. And she’s a whiner. The worst bit is, that with the beginning of each arc in the anime, we are subjected to the very same self-esteem issues and behaviors as we did in the previous one, rendering the first volume of every arc dull and irritating. But the ends, in this case, are totally worth the means. In fact I don’t own the first volume of this series and am not going to bother reviewing the second, because I have a low tolerance for whining. But from this point on, the anime gets better in many ways – and is abysmal in only a few, so it works out to be a series totally worth having.

Other than Akari, the characters in this series are mostly all strong women who are driven by the need to perfect themselves in their chosen endeavor, which happens to be sports. (In fact, I find it hard to watch this anime sitting on the couch. I have to get up and exercise while watching, or my brain explodes…).

So, where’s all the Yuri? All OVER the place. In the early volumes Akari follows her mother’s dream and enters into athletic training. She becomes friends with Ichino and, almost immediately, becomes dependent upon her. I won’t kill the plot entirely, but let’s just say this – this DVD is *filled* with Ichino and Akari longing for each other and striving to be together. The climax of the DVD, which is the climax of the this portion of the storyline, is one gigantic confession of love between the two of them – followed by a scene so romantic that Ichino’s kid brother even comments that they are acting like lovers. Trust me. No one could watch this and not see it.

There’s a side thing that will never happen between Ayla and Jessie as well, which has about 30 seconds total to spring to life, falter and fail, which I thought was brilliant. It will be echoed again later in the thing between Mylandah and Lahrri (which, amazingly, will not fail, but I get well ahead of myself.)

Because I know what’s coming up, I’m all gung-ho about watching the rest of this series again. At least Kris isn’t in the sort of denial that Ichino is – she knows Yuri when she sees it too. ^_^

Okay, so, the anime never quite will go as far as the manga, where Kris and Akari kiss in front of the whole world, but its still damn gay.

Ratings:

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

Overall – 8

It’s not the greatest series ever…but oh my god, it’s *so* gay. ^_^

Posted in Battle Athletes, Yuri Anime | 6 Comments »


Yuri:Anime Stellvia, Volume 4

June 8th, 2005

You know what really sucks about Stellvia?

Nothing.

By Volume 4 of Stellvia, the whole space opera plot seems to have disappeared completely, with only the vaguest twinges of something coming in the future. So the writers are at leisure to explore the relationships between people, rather than focusing on external (and, admittedly, somewhat silly and nonsensical) threats from space. As a result, this particular DVD feels much more like a shoujo series than the shounen one it is.

All of the cadets on Stellvia now have to switch to a completely new flight system. Shima, who, with a lot of time and practice, was a decent pilot with occasional flashes of real skill, now shoots to the top of her class as a prodigy. This causes Ayaka of the “Big 4” to peg her as a rival, and to try and stop her meteoric rise. In a pretty nastly little scene, Ayaka sets out to hurt Shima in a joust, and is only stopped because Kouta gets out into space in time to save Shima. We learn that this is not the first time Ayaka has done this – she was the reason Yayoi was injured and held back a year.

This “incident” is the major conflict that drives the entire volume. Shima stresses that Ayaka hates her, even as the episode brings her closer to Kouta. Yayoi is confronted by two wildly conflicting issues – one, she can’t ever forgive Ayaka for what she did to her – and worse, tried to do to Shima – but two, she wants desperately to be able to forgive Ayaka.

In the background of Shima and Kouta’s relationship (which is so utterly, completely NORMAL and not dysfunctional, that it’s a bit disturbing…) we see the development of something growing between taciturn Akira and goofy Jojo, a hint of the space station commander’s crush on the doctor and, of course, Ayaka and Yayoi.

All in all, a very satisfying volume, really.

But let me go back and obsess for a second on Kouta. When I watched this series originally, I really disliked him – and up until now, I have maintained that dislike, because I really find idiot savant characters distasteful. Well, on second viewing I now find that I have no characters in this show to dislike. They are all so damn normal. And real. And not at *all* stereotypical Japanese dysfunctional relationship dorky. I mean, sure the guys are dorky, but like real 16 year old guys – not like emotionally and sexually dysfunctional sociopaths, like so many male characters in anime. (If *I* were a guy, I’d really protest how utterly stupid and pathetic so many male characters are…but I’m not, so I don’t care. But I digress.)

In fact, when Kouta kissed Shima I was so relieved that I almost cried. It was just like real people who do actually touch their boy/girlfriends, hold hands and kiss them and stuff. Wow! Imagine that!

But that leaves me with no one to hate. How irritating. I’m really even having a hard time disliking Linna. Darn these incredibly likable and well-written characters!

Over on the Yuri side of things, Ayaka and Yayoi’s relationship begins here, in a sense. There’s always been *something* between them, but after we learn about the the “incident”, anyone with eyes can see that that’s not all. And the end of the volume is just the beginning for them, as well as everyone else in the series.

Even the art is, for this brief moment in time, very stable and decent…sometimes almost approaching *good.*

Ratings:
Art – 7
Story – 9
Character – 9
Yuri – 7

Overall – 8

So far, Volume 4 of Stellvia has been the best of the breed. I hope that it gets better from here!

Posted in Stellvia, Yuri Anime | 2 Comments »