Notes on the Third Maria-sama ga Miteru novel

March 9th, 2005

The “extra chapter” of the Ibara no Mori novel, is really a whole second section. As Tsutako mentions in the first part of the novel, this section has no illustrations – apparently Girls’ Love is the same as Boys’ Love in the publisher’s eyes. From my own perspective I have learned that it is *a lot* easier to publish gay love/sex in print than in graphics. Words have to be focused on and understood and are, therefore, safer. Pictures are a whole ‘nother issue.

On the Yuricon Mailing List I received a lot of questions about this section, so let me answer them right off – no, Sei does not think about that fact that this was her first kiss, or that it was with a girl. Nor does she reflect on what it might mean to “be gay.” You’ll see, she does acknowledge that that she might have homosexual feelings for Shiori, but the thought that she might “be gay” isn’t really relevant.

Let me interject my own experience and understanding here: I think that, if Sei and Shiori had run away together and found themselves alone and with the opportunity to have a physical relationship, they would have done so. I’ve seen this before – up until a young person kisses another person, they are, like Sei, unsure of just what it is they’re wanting to do. After that kiss – it’s less confusing. ^_^ So I don’t think Sei is being ingenuous. Nor do I think she “is gay.” She may well decide she’s a lesbian at some point in her future (which based on reading future books, she does), but I’m pretty sure she’ll have to fall in love with another woman for it to be something she considers. After all – she’s been going to an all-girl school since she was a child. It stands to reason her initial affinity is for another woman.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think she’s gay. ^_^ For one thing – she has gaydar!

And on that note…onto the notes!

Shiroki Hanabira

1) It was an accident that Sei was there to meet Shiori – she had woken up too early that morning and was at the school too early. Sei tells us that she was not a very social person – she was aloof and anti-social, spending most of her time reading novels by herself.

The first half of this chapter is almost identical to the anime and manga. They cut out only minor descriptions. In fact – very little was changed or cut out of this chapter. I was pretty impressed.

2) In the greenhouse, as Shiori sits by Sei in the warm air, Sei is overcome with the desire to do *something* but she doesn’t know what. Her heart is beating, her body is shaking and all she can think of is that she wants to be in one body with Shiori.

This scene was brilliant, btw – the descriptions of Sei’s reactions and need were, to be blunt, exactly the mirror of my own at that age, in that situation. It was, not surprisingly, a very powerful and sexy scene.

3) The one chapter that was cut out in its entirety was basically a monologue in which Sei recounts her growing infatuation with Shiori:

After the greenhouse, she is obsessed with the need to understand what these feelings are. She couldn’t be sure whether or not it was romantic love – she knew she loved Shiori’s soul, her spirit, but she felt that Shiori’s body was just decoration for the inner self.

Sei reads a lot of love novels, to try and see if this is what she’s feeling – the only thing she learns is that she really comes to hate love novels. ^_^

So, Sei starts looking at books about homosexual love, but she finds nothing that really reflects what she’s feeling. (Again, this jibed with my personal experience – interestingly, *this* novel is quite realistic, which bucks the trend and once again points out that Konno Oyuki is a really good writer.)

Finally, she turns to textbooks on reproduction to figure out why she felt this way, and determines only that something in her is broken – but she’s no closer to understanding what it is, or why.

4) During the planning for the school festival, Sei asks her onee-sama to dissolve their bond, because she has no intention of taking Shiori as a soeur. This scene is in the manga too, not the anime. Her onee-sama says that she did not take Sei as soeur to have Sei take a soeur, she took Sei as her little sister to be by her side until she graduates. I think that this scene very neatly characterizes the White Rose family as we see it, since Sei has a similar situation with Shimako, and Shimako with Noriko.

5) When Shiori rejects Sei’s kiss in the church, her reasoning is that “Maria-sama is watching.” Sei goes cold and walks away, but not before thinking that she had lost to a 2000 year old ghost. This was in the anime and manga…but the next line, that Maria-sama was nothing more than a stone statue, while she herself was living flesh, was left out of the anime. I thought that line was pretty great.

6) As her grades slip, she is called into the teacher’s staff room and asked why, Sei fantasizes about saying, “Because Kubo Shiori broke my heart, what are you going to do about it?”

7) Sei is called to the Guidance Office during the break after exams (her exam results were the worst score she’d ever gotten.) Sei figures that its about the grades and absences, but when she sees that both her homeroom teacher and Shiori’s homeroom teacher are there, she feels sick, because she knows that her relationship with Shiori will come up.

When she’s confronted with the relationship, she turns, not to her homeroom teacher (who brought it up) or her mother (who is quite hysterical by this point) but to the Principal, because she knows that Shiori has stayed with her, and because Sei assumes that she knows that Shiori is a good person.

At the end of the scene, as she’s leaving, the Principal’s final shot about not being part of the people and activities around her is lonely, Sei realizes that, of all the people in the room, only the Principal knew – really understood – what the real relationship between Sei and Shiori was. Obviously, from our perspective, we know why…but Sei doesn’t – all she knows is that her feelings were completely transparent to this woman, and it terrifies her.

8) On the last day of school for the term, a Xmas Eve service is held at the church. Although Sei hasn’t seen Shiori for weeks (and she tells us that although she had put distance between the, her yearning to be with Shiori grew with everyday they were apart), Sei assumes that Shiori will have to attend the service. She’s right – and she sees Shiori there, looking well, and is at peace for a moment.

Later, of course, she wanders back to the church, in hopes of running into Shiori, only to find Shiori waiting there for her. (The scene of Sei and Shiori kissing and planning to run away together is exactly the same in book, manga and anime, with the exception of it taking place behind the church, instead of in front as in the anime.)

9) While waiting for Shiori to show at the train station, (she waits more than 6 hours….) Sei is approached by a drunken guy and an OL who ask if she’s all right. Sei feels tears well up, but she ruthlessly holds them in. The OL and guy hang around and she thinks to herself that this is a special punishment…. (Which, btw, brings me to a difference in manga and novel. In the novel she doesn’t ever equate her feelings for Shiori with punishment for her scoffing at god.)

10) When the third term begins, her onee-sama keeps Sei very busy, so she can’t brood. Sei sucks it up, because she knows that she had slacked for the last two terms.

Sei cuts her hair, because looking at her own long hair makes her think of Shiori’s long hair, so she gets rid of it.

11) Sei finally reads the letter Shiori left her in mid-February, a month and a half after Shiori left her. Afterwards, she thinks about Shiori’s words, and comes to the conclusion that, if they *had* run away, they probably would have had no other choice but to kill themselves, that they really didn’t have a bright future. Sei feels that Shiori has some kind of premonition of that when she came to the station and saw Sei, so she felt she couldn’t go. In retrospect Sei believes that it was better that they both lived.

Interestingly, the book, manga and anime all end this story arc completely differently.

In the anime, Sei joins Yumi as they head to the Xmas party at the Rose Mansion, telling us that it’s her “Happy Birthday.”

In the manga, we see her thinking about all this, and about her parting with her onee-sama who tells her that she will have a soeur of her own…then we see Shimako greet her with “onee-sama” and Sei looks a little surprised, then smiles and greets Shimako.

In the novel, Sei thinks about her onee-sama’s words, about how the “future heals the past” and we are told that, as Sei stares up at a blue sky between the sakura tree’s branches, she has come to believe that those words are true.

(This ending struck me as really poignant, but odd too, because I ended a Marimite fanfic with almost the exact same sentiment before I read this book. How weird is that? )

And there you have it. ^_^

Posted in Light Novels, Maria-sama ga Miteru | 3 Comments »


Notes on the Third Maria-sama ga Miteru novel, Ibara No Mori, Part 1

March 8th, 2005

I’m incredibly busy with work, Onna!, Yuricon in Tokyo and ALC Publishing stuff, so I will be posting this entry almost exactly as it was sent to the Yuricon Mailing List. I hope to catch up a bit in the next few days, but please forgive me while I cheat a bit.

My first thought upon reading Ibara no Mori, (Forest of Thorns) was that Sei’s thoughts – and therefore her sentence structures – are significantly more complex than Yumi’s. (Of course, the irony is that, if this had been written in English, it would have taken me maybe 2 hours to read – it’s really not a long book and I’m a very fast reader.)

I took approximately 10 pages of notes as I read this – really too much for the few changes that were made, but there were so many scenes that were worth noting that I got carried away. ^_^

My initial overview is this – the anime, with some really minor exceptions, was very faithful to the book. The manga was slightly more faithful, but also had changes. One change was in both and I am still slightly perplexed as to why it was made…but I digress.

Was anything major cut out? One scene – one monologue – from Shiroki Hanabira, was. It wasn’t major, really, but it was significant. But other than that, the changes were mostly minor. All in all, the anime (I’m assuming that few of you have read the manga) was pretty much a decent retelling, and captured the story quite well. But after my write up, you can decide for yourself. I’ll do this in two parts, because I have *a lot* of notes. ^_^

When I finished the novel, I thought three things. One, Konno Oyuki is a really good writer. My belief in that grows with every novel I read. She may be writing light novels, but she is no lightweight as a writer. Two, this was NOT an easy novel to read. The second half is really raw, and not at all “light.” I think almost anyone who had a tragic love affair would sympathize with this story…but I’m betting gay and lesbian kids all over Japan who read it were crying their hearts out – this book should be on school’s reading curriculums, I swear. Three, I thanked the gods once again that my story didn’t end the same way as Sei’s – after I finished reading, I went upstairs and kissed my wife and thanked her for not making my first love a tragic one. ^_^

***

I. Ibara no Mori/Forest of Thorns

1) The beginning of the novel is really stark. After the usual history and description of Lillian Academy and the happy Christmas season, the book begins with a really harsh excerpt from the novel “Ibara no Mori” in which the protagonist talks about wanting to die. It’s really effective and shocking.

2) Yumi’s classmate Katsura shows herself to be a full-blown gossip-monger in this novel. She’s been prominent in the background of the other two…but in this one, we can see that she’s really a nosey parker. ^_^

3) Tsutako – Tsutako is *clearly* the author’s favorite character…and she’s rapidly becoming mine, as well. Tsutako has the clearest grasp of human nature of everyone in the book. Because she is outside all the usual connections, and a voyeur, she sees what’s going on around her…because she is a smart cookie, she understands the bigger picture. She was the one who called all the copycat soeur dissolutions “playing at being Yoshino”. She’s your go-to for important exposition.

In the beginning of the book, Tsutako gives Yumi a wonderful meta-discussion tutorial about the world of teen novels, (all of which explains things that happen in the novel we are reading.) For instance, she discusses how often there are novels that are ostensibly teen novels, but are really written for adults. That different genres get different color covers, and that stories with Boys’ Love don’t have illustrations (which later explains why there are none in the Shiroki Hanabira section.) This was a BRILLIANT bit of expository writing.

4) We’ve seen this before, but it’s made plain that, when Yoshino gets excited or angry, she completely falls out of Keigo, (the formal speech level that is used at Lilllian) and calls Rei, “Rei-chan” in public, instead of “onee-sama,” among other slips (BTW, one of the reasons Yumi is always hemming and hawing is because she sucks at Keigo and is hesitant when using it. Also, btw, Sei doesn’t speak in Keigo, unless she’s being ironic.)

5) While discussing the rumors going around the school with Sachiko, Rei and Yoshino, Yumi watches Yoshino go all pouty at Rei. Yoshino complains that Rei never tells her anything, Rei becomes placatory and Yumi thinks, Hey now, you two…this isn’t the time for flirting (sharing sweet nothings). Then Yumi wishes that she could get all pouty at Sachiko. Sachiko then catches her eye and Yumi is mortified (because we all know that her thoughts show on her face….)

6) In a scene that was left out of the anime and manga, Sachiko and Yumi go into the bookstore to buy “Ibara no Mori” – Sachiko accosts a store employee, addresses him in Keigo and asks him to, basically, lead them to the right section, get the book for them, and generally assist them. Yumi wonders if this guy has ever been treated like this before and laughs when the guy starts responding in Keigo – she bets he’s *never* done that before! Yumi spends the scene marveling at Sachiko’s ability to handle “the help” and her general wow-ness.

7) Ah hah! Yuuki, Yumi’s brother, tells Yumi that “a sempai” (we can bet that it’s Kashiwagi, I’m thinking) told him that he looks like a Tanuki (raccoon-dog supernatural thing. You see lots of fan art of Yumi as a Tanuki) and that he is a “natual fool”(in the sense of a jester-type fool.) Yuuki basically lays it down that Yumi and he are the same in that respect…so that’s where the whole Tanuki thing comes from. (Later, Tsutako is, naturally, described as a fox/kitsune.)

8) Yoshino comments to Yumi that Rei told her that last year Sei was a pretty scary person, so she was really surprised to come to school and find that she was different.

9) Sei, on being called into the Student Guidance Room sees Yumi and says, “Oh, I guess we’re being called in about our illicit homosexual relationship?” which is obviously ironic considering the circumstances of the year before. Yumi is, of course mortified, because the entire first-year student body is huddling in the hallway and hears this. I think this line was in the manga, but I’m pretty sure they cut that line out of the anime! ^_^;

10) Sitting at the Yamayurikai meeting just before Sei tells Yoshino and Yumi about Shiori, Yumi is daydreaming, mostly about Sei and the rumors and why there’s a connection at all. She gets hit in the forehead with a balled-up chocolate foil wrapper and looks over to see Sei grinning at her. Sei makes a gesture of 10 fingers, crosses her hands at the wrists, then does 10 again, then touches her face. Yumi is totally confused until Sei writes it down… 10 x 10=100. 100 faces – Hyakkumensou. In other words – everything Yumi is thinking is showing on her face again. Yumi gets all indignant and and draws everyone’s attention to herself by crying out. Of course no one noticed Sei, and she’s hysterical as Yumi gets nailed for misbehaving. ^_^

11) Sei reads 1/2 of “Ibara no Mori” while Yumi and Yoshino are cleaning the council room. When she gets to, presumably, the parts that are going to be more difficult for her to read without reacting, she sends them away. This makes more sense than just sending them away right off. She sends them to the college cafeteria to get ramen. The college cafeteria is pretty far away, and it will take a while to get and eat ramen, so she’s giving herself a good hour or so to read the rest of the book. (Yumi is amazed she can read that quickly at all…but Japanese teen novels aren’t very long and, we learn later, Sei spent *a lot* of time reading when she was younger and less social, so she’s a fast reader.)

This is Yumi’s and Yoshino’s first time eating in a cafeteria, (as opposed to getting food from their milk hall and eating it in their classroom) so it’s like an adventure.

12) After Sei’s confession, Yumi thinks to herself that Sei’s love is like a burning flame, and that Sei must want to stay away from Shiori to keep her from getting burnt.

13) Yumi is filled with a desire (non-sexual – the author bothers to TELL us that) to see Sachiko. Sachiko actually seeks Yumi out and gives her a ride home in her big, black car. Uncharacteristically, Sachiko comes right out and asks Yumi what Sei told her, then interpolates from Yumi’s silence (Yumi is uncomfortable telling Sachiko without Sei’s permission.) Sachiko tells Yumi, again, surprisingly straightforwardly, that she didn’t *know*, but she guessed what was going on. She was Shiori’s classmate, after all and knew that she and Sei were friendly. Then, after Shiori went away, not only did Sei cut her hair, she grew “thin and empty.”

As Sachiko fixes Yumi’s hair ribbon, Yumi decides that she really enjoys the “skinship” Sachiko has with her.

14) During break, when Yoshino invites Yumi over to figure out who “Suga Sei” really is, Yumi watches Yoshino bully Rei into cooperating and comes to the conclusion that Yoshino is “a lion at home and a mouse abroad.” Poor Rei – someone should have told her that the femmes always get their way!

15) And there is an actual *reason* that Cosmos wasn’t giving out the Suga Sei’s bio. Kasuga-san had two reasons for hiding her identity: 1) She is the president of a company, and it wouldn’t really do for her to be writing this book under her real name, and; 2) She was concerned that the readers wouldn’t want the image of an old lady as the author, since it’s obviously a teen angst novel.

Here’s the one thing that was changed for the anime and manga and it REALLY bothered me – in the book Yumi figures out that Kasuga-san is Suga Sei. She just puts two and two together, which makes all the daydreaming about it worthwhile. In the anime and manga, the secret is given away by someone else, which really annoyed me.

16) Finally, for this section of the novel, as Yumi watches Kasuga Seiko and Satou Sei walk away together, she thinks to herself that she is actually *seeing* Yoshino’s time machine – two women, separated by decades, with amazingly similar experiences.

17) This was in the manga, but not the anime, and it was a separate little illustrated manga that ran in Cobalt Shueisha, as well:

After Yumi leaves Sei to walk Kasuga-san to the Principal’s office (and how creepy would it be if you suddenly realized that your school principal, who is a nun, had tried to commit suicide because of a tragic lesbian love affair when she was your age???) Yumi meets up with Sachiko, who gives her a Christmas present of a handkerchief. Yumi is upset because she has nothing to give her onee-sama, but Sachiko tells her that it would be nice if she could have one of Yumi’s hair ribbons – which she takes from Yumi’s hair and ties it into her own. (You gotta give Sachiko credit for being uber-romantic there…)

Yumi and Sachiko walk off to the Rose Mansion hand in hand and Yumi thinks that she is so happy that she almost wants to cry.

And there you have it, my thoughts on the first part of Ibara no Mori.

Posted in Light Novel, Light Novels, Maria-sama ga Miteru | 8 Comments »


Event: Four Special Guests for the Yuri Revolution!

March 4th, 2005

Yuricon is pleased to announce four special guests who will be joining us for our historic Yuri Revolution event in Tokyo, Japan, on April 16, 2005!

Novelist and essayist Mori Natsuko: Mori-san is a popular writer of science fiction and has contributed essays to “Anise” magazine. Her most recent essays for Yuri Shimai have piqued the interest of fans around the world.

Scholar and lecturer Mizoguchi Akiko: Mizoguchi-san has lectured widely on queer identity and yaoi comics, from a uniquely lesbian persepctive.

Yuri manga artist Tadeno Eriko: Tadeno-san returns as a special guest to a Yuricon event for the second time and we’re thrilled to have her join us once again. Tadeno-san is a well-known yuri managaka, whose collection “WORKS,” was translated into English in 2004 by ALC Publishing.

Yuri manga artist Rica Takashima: Author of Rica ‘tte Kanji!?, Rica Takashima made a name for herself with her involvement in Phryne and Anise magazines, and her collection has just gone into a second edition here in the US. It’s very exciting to have her helping out on this historic occasion!

To learn more about the Yuri Revolution tour and event, please visit our Events page or join the Yuri Revolution Mailing List

Posted in Events, Rica 'tte Kanji | No Comments »


Ultimate Girls Anime

March 3rd, 2005

Well, what can you say about an anime whose intitials are “UG”?

Frankly, I think the acronym sums it up nicely. This anime makes me retch. Yes, Silk and Vivienne are into each other, so of course they talk around each other, blush madly in each other’s direction and grab each other’s breasts in the bath. Yes, this is what girls do.

NOT

Gah, this anime is disgusting. The tranformation scenes are cleverly crafted to make anyone with the least little bit humanity left feel filthy.

I don’t care if it has a genuine clear cut Yuri couple – it sucks. If you think it is “cute” or “funny” or “sexy,” this is a major hint that you are a “bottom-feeding perv.”

Posted in Hentai | 2 Comments »


Anime and Manga – A Cultural "Acting Out?"

March 1st, 2005

This is an adaptation of an article I wrote on July 31, 2000 for a website that no longer exists. I was a site administrator at the time, and one of the conditions of my position was to write…publish or perish, in fact. I was cranking out quite a few anime and manga reviews…and no one had a clue what I was writing about. So I received many questions about this “anime” stuff. :-) I thought it was funny to see how little my opinions have changed in 5 years…and I wanted to share with you all. :-)

Here’s my response to the most common question I received, in essay form:

Of course, as I rant and rave about all the anime and manga I consume, I’m eventually asked, “what *is* it about this stuff that you like so much?”

I love that question. :-)

For one thing, if there is a single quality that exists in anime that nearly completely lacks in Western animation, it has to be character development. How many times can we see the gang in Scooby-Doo find that the bad guys wears a mask and was really the old caretaker, before we start to crave something more?

Over the course of a 26-episode series, or a 10-volume comic, the one thing I can practically count on is the emotional growth and complexity of all the characters – not just the hero/ine, but also the bad guy/girl, all the secondary characters and frequently tertiary characters as well.

But that’s not what this article is about. ;-) This article is about all the *other* things I love so much in anime and manga – the qualities that make it so popular, and why it was inevitable that anime and manga be created specifically in a culture where there is a tremendous social pressure to conform.

1) Anime/manga heroes are usually “different.”

It is an axiom here in the west that we are all unique. Not so in Japan, where those who stand out are frequently pressured to conform by schoolmates, coworkers and family. “Pounding in the nail” is the phrase that is used to express the collective desire to keep everyone at the same level. Very often the hero/ine of an anime or manga series is different – too tall, too short, bad at schoolwork, a complete brain. It doesn’t matter much – as long as the character stands out. Conversely, (and somewhat perversely) the character is occasionally average, but the circumstances of the series make them unusual – these series usually are filled with gags as the unwitting hero/ine attempts to seem “normal” as things around them fall apart. And, of course, many series portray a perfectly average hero/ine surrounded by many people of extraordinary looks and/or powers…frequently of the opposite sex.

2) Taboos are not.

Many people assume that anime/manga series are all pornographic. That is not at all the case. While Americans are obsessed with violence, but complete hypocrites when it comes to sex, the opposite is the rule in Japan – they tend to be more sqeuamish about violence than sex. Many of those things that we consider taboo are dealt with in a less Victorian manner in anime/manga.

Up until recent social pressures began to affect the laws of Japan, teenagers in Japan were assumed to be (or about to be) sexually active, and thus series’ directed at them often deal with sex and love in a reasonably direct way. Mind you – this doesn’t mean it’s realistic! From what I’ve seen it pretty much ends up doing what western series do, portraying it as all violins, flowers floating by and hazy lighting, OR nasty dirty demonic sex. There rarely seems to be a happy medium.

Anime and manga often have gender-bending characters. Cross-dressers, gays or lesbians – some of the coolest characters in anime and manga are the bent ones. This does not mean that Japan is more accepting of these qualities in real life – just that it’s less threatening in *theory.* Plus, let’s face it – women look good in ties. ;-) Also, strong emotional, even sexual relationships are considered normal for Japanese kids – relationships that are left behind as part of their childhood when they get older and get married. It goes back to the sex thing – it just isn’t a scary concept.

3) Magic and the occult are everywhere.

Another sticking point for many Westeners – Japan is not a Christian country. Their religion is primarily a shamanic one, centered around fertility and harvest festivals. Does this mean that the average Japanese salaryman believes in magic? No. No more than the average American office worker. But they like to see it in their anime! And so do I.

***

To sum up, from my years watching anime and reading manga, I’ve noticed that many of the themes dealt with in these media are *not* what the average Japanese person wants to cope with. The pressures of remaining in conformation with societal norms are rather enormous. I believe that many of the things that make anime and manga so popular are those very things that make life difficult in Japan. In effect, anime and manga are a giant cultural “acting out” of things that can’t be dealt with easily in real life.

For me, these qualities are some of the most attractive things about this
particular form of entertainment.

***

And there you have it – I’m pretty much *still* watching and reading anime and manga for exactly the above reasons. :-)

And I promise – more reviews coming soon!

Posted in Now This Is Only My Opinion | No Comments »