Drama CD: Koi Shimai 1

May 4th, 2004

Drama CDs are all the rage these days (well, actually, they’ve always been the rage at my house) – not only does every anime have a few floating around, but many more games and manga which have never been made into anime do as well. Of course, there’s a Maria-sama ga Miteru Drama CD (which I will review later this week.) And now, from Sun Publishing, the people who brought you Yuri Shimai, comes Koi Shimai, the first “Girl’s Love” drama CD.

Koi Shimai is the sound drama of the first story of the first volume of Yuri Shimai, the tale of Haruna and Chika and how they met and fell in love. (This story was the printed story in the first volume – not the first manga. The cover is an illustration of Chika and Haruna.) Their story is melodramatic and predictable – pretty much like all the stories in Yuri Shimai, but as it had pretty color pictures, I have to give it a thumbs up.

The CD begins with Chika, as the new kid in school. She’s feeling a little out of her depth when cool upperclassman Haruna shows up and offers to help her. It turns out that Haruna has been sent to find Chika and take her on a tour of the grounds. They get along really well immediately, so Haruna takes Chika to a quiet, pretty spot that she knows. Of course, Chika falls pretty hard for Haruna while sitting with her in this romantic place. So, when Chika falls and Haruna bandages her with her handkerchief, Chika’s in seventh heaven.

But, when she tries to give the hankie back, Chika realizes that she likes Haruna, but the older girl isn’t sure of her feelings. When Haruna offers to tutor Chika, the younger girl thinks things are going well – but her score on the test is so high that she is accused of cheating! Haruna tells Chika that she believes in her – that Chika is her most important person…

The voice actors are pretty good – fairly typical of their kind. Cute girly voice for Chika, polite sweet voice for Haruna, kiddy voice for Haruna’s little sister Akiho (and one of Chika’s classmates) and a deep, cool voice for Hiiragi Touko, the plot complication for the next CD . ^_^

If you can understand basic Japanese – and I mean *basic* – you’ll be able to understand this CD. It’s that predictable.

Nonetheless, how many Drama CDs do you know that are girl/girl romances, with a kiss scene and everything? For that reason alone, Koi Shimai is totally worth having. ^_^

Ratings:
Story – 7
Yuri – 10
Characters – 8
Voice Acting – 8
Music –

Overall – 8

Posted in Drama CDs & Audiobooks, Hatsukoi Shimai, Koi Shimai | 4 Comments »


Manga with Yuri: Haru Yo Koi

May 3rd, 2004

hyk1Haru Yo Koi is one of those perfectly typical shounen manga where there’s a Yuri relationship, sex and all, and you just *know* that it’s going to go south almost immediately in favor of straight relationships…and it does. But, surprise! It seems to have taken a different route, so here’s a quickie review:

Mafuyu is a high school student that has fallen in love with Sae, another girl in their school. After being caught inflagrante delicto with Sae on the school roof, Mafuyu was expelled from school and her parents threw her out, so she’s moved to Tokyo to live with her brother. However, Sae follows her and the three of them live together in an awkward setup. The brother, who is the most genuinely decent guy I’ve ever read in any manga, shoujo or shounen, finds this all unbearable…but for all the right reasons. Heck – I’d be peeved, too.

Sae has given up everything she ever had – friends, family, her home, to be with Mafuyu…but then the story gets horribly predictable. Mafuyu starts to date a guy and leaves Sae alone in the house, where she, in turn, falls for the brother (who has a nice girlfriend, thank you very much.) Typical love polygon, no surprises here.

We follow the brother as his relationship with his girlfriend develops – this is a very refreshing arc, because the progression seems normal – they meet, date a while, eventually sleep together, like each other’s company…you know *real* relationship stuff, without the endless supply of emotional and sexual dysfunction that populates so much manga. He can’t help but feel bad for Sae, and they kind of have something between them…but he has a girlfriend he loves, and Sae was, after all, his sister’s girlfriend. So he declines to take advantage of Sae.

Then we follow Sae – she runs away, so as to not have to deal with all the conflicting emotions she’s feeling. She becomes a hostess and shares a room with another hostess. In the meantime, the brother has asked all his friends to keep an eye out for her, which they do. When one friend finds her, he hides the fact from the brother, and tries to woo Sae, but she’s basically fallen in love with the brother and the resulting chapters are a little tiresome, as the friend lies and cheats and does basically every skanky guy thing he can think of to sleep with Sae. He just won’t get the “no” part of “no.” Eventually he gets it and tells the brother and he and Sae meet. But she says she won’t come back until she’s standing on her own two feet again and knows who she is and what she wants.

And then we turn to Mafuyu to see what she has been doing all this time. She dropped Sae, pretty coldly, for a guy she met at work. And although she’s sleeping with him, its obvious that the two have no connection. On the side, she’s had a skinship with a classmate, but Mafuyu is repulsed by her own behavior, even as she’s kissing the girl…comparing herself to a male character in a dating sim game. When she finds out that the guy she’s dating is cheating, she’s not really even angry – almost relieved. But she’s still in a bad mood.

And then a new, young and good-looking substitute teacher arrives. Nijiko-sensei is popular among the boys, but it’s Mafuyu she pays attention to. When she finds out that Mafuyu’s being cheated on, Nijiko-sensei takes her out for a night of eating, drinking and dancing. Almost immediately, Mafuyu finds herself attracted to her new teacher.

One day, Mafuyu decides to tell the teacher the whole story – about Sae, and the guy, and how she started dating him to prove to herself that she wasn’t gay…but now she realizes that she is. And she tells the teacher that she’s attracted to her – she knows that the teacher isn’t interested, but she, Mafuyu, just wants the teacher to know.

Later that night, Nijiko-sensei pays a visit to Mafuyu at home and confesses that she’s a lesbian and, if Mafuyu graduates and still has feelings for her, she’d be willing to date her. But they have to wait, because it would be more than a little awkward if they were found out while they were still teacher and student. Mafuyu agrees, stunned.

But…Mafuyu breaks the promise, and one day at school, corners Nijiko-sensei and kisses her. Hard.

And that’s where we are, kids – in the middle of a manga that was getting boring, but has suddenly gone all interesting again!

There’s nothing really standout about the series, except the brother’s character: the art’s fine, the story is okay, but that kiss was pretty much worth the whole thing so far. ^_^

Posted in Miscellaneous | 1 Comment »


Yuri Anime: Haibane Renmei

April 29th, 2004

Sometimes a series comes along that is so rare, so special, that it would be worth watching just for itself, without any of the usual hooks one expects in anime or manga. Haibane Renmei is one of those series. It is as worth watching for what doesn’t happen, as what does.

Right off the top, Haibane Renmei has the distinction of being the first anime to be based completely off a doujinshi. Yoshitoshi Abe, well-known for his character designs in Serial Experiments Lain and Niea Under 7 had a vision of a bunch of characters called “Haibane,” (which means “charcoal wings”) one day and collected a bunch of sketches of them into a book called Haibane Renmei, (“Charcoal Wings Federation,) which he published and sold at Comiket in Tokyo. The book became really popular, and people kept asking him who these Haibane were and what they were and so on – and so he drew a little doujinshi about the place they lived, called “Old Home – a sort of “slice of life” of the Haibane. The story had a lot of holes in it – there didn’t seem to be a clear beginning or end, and there were a lot of things that the author didn’t know about, by his own admission, like why they can only wear hand-me-downs, and the like.

These characteristics were, lock, stock and barrel, plopped into the anime of Haibane Renmei. The story doesn’t have a clear beginning, nor are many things explained – in fact, the whole world that the Haibane inhabit is left wide open to the imagination. Because of this, not despite it, Yoshitoshi has managed to design one of the most beautiful and intriguing anime I’ve ever seen. To be blunt, I bawled like a baby through the end, but I never felt manipulated or cheated.

The art is seriously unconventional in many ways, the story line defies description, since it seems to begin sort of in the middle of a thing and go on until it stops. The piece we’re party to are examples of truly fine writing – sweet, whimsical, serious and mature by turn and compelling all the way through. There is a great deal left to know about the world of the Haibane – what comes before, what comes after, where do the come from and where do they go? But I’m inclined, like the people that inhabit the space, to simply accept it for what it is and just enjoy the beauty and poetry of the story.

I can hear you asking, “yeah, but is there Yuri?” My answer has got to be that that depends on how you define “Yuri.” If you mean sex between women, then no, definitely not…. What you can say is that Haibane Renmei is about an incredibly intense emotional bond between two women, one that significantly alters their lives, or at least what we see of their lives. For die-hard Yuri-seekers, I think there is *definitely* a case for calling Reki woman-identified, if not women-loving. Her former intense relationship is also with a woman, and that one is portrayed as being awfully close to love. I’m of the opinion that Reki and Rakka have as close to a love relationship as is possible in the Haibane’s world.

So, despite the fact that it’s not about anything, and nothing really *happens*, and there being no overtly Yuri relationship, Haibane Renmei wins, in my opinion, as one of the hands-down finest anime I’ve ever watched.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Music – 8
Story – 10 The story is breathtakingly well-written
Characters – 8

Overall – 9

This is a must watch for anyone who loves good storytelling.

***

And now, for something completely different – here is *my* interpretation of the events of Haibane Renmei. I don’t claim to be right, or even close – this is just what feel was going on:

POSSIBLE SPOILERS WARNING

Rakka was in love with someone…let’s say, for argument’s sake, that it was another girl. She and the other girl decided to kill themselves so they could be together eternally. The crow symbolizes Rakka’s lover – she “freed” her in a sense, but is also the reason she crashes, and ultimately, she needs to let go of that attachment to her previous life before she can move on.

The world we see is a kind of Purgatory, which is why the Haibane stay there for inconsistent and erratic periods of time – because you’re going to be there as long as it takes to do whatever it is you have to do. Life isn’t bad, it’s not Hell, but it’s not great, either, because its not Heaven. And the people who live there and sort of take care of the Haibane are other people who have not committed a “sin” so much as simply died with their souls in a limbo state…so they expiate their crimes wth service and another lifetime.

What are the Haibane, then? I think that they are children who died under extreme circumstances. The older ones might have killed themselves, or been killed, the younger ones may have died through accident or injury, but whatever the circumstance was, it was a violent death and therefore a “sin.” Perhaps the little kids died without being baptized.

In any case, these children die with what *they* feel is a spot on their souls and end up here. Like they feel partially responsible for their own deaths. If they felt completely filthy, they’d likely end up in some sort of mutually created Hell, so in this case they feel ambiguous about their nature. As they do their “work,” they expiate those sins, cleanse their spirits and eventually have to move on.

So, that would explain why Reki and Rakka bond so closely…perhaps in life they had similar stories, dying on account of the oh-so-popular “forbidden love” and intuiting that they could feel safe with one another. Or maybe they were just falling for each other, who knows? But there they were in Purgatory, where relationships have to be non-sexual, and temporary, because of the nature of the thing.

We can always fantasize about what happens when Rakka goes ober the wall herself, right? Maybe she enters her version of Heaven. meets up wih Reki and they fall in real love and live in eternal happiness. Sounds nice, right? Maybe someone will write a fanfic.

Anyway, so there you have it…*my* interpretation of Haibane Renmei.

Posted in English Anime, Yuri Anime | 2 Comments »


Yuri Manga: WORKS

April 23rd, 2004

100% Yuri Manga for Yuri Fans

Now that you know what it takes to publish a doujinshi, I want to introduce you to ALC Publishing’snewest translated Yuri manga, WORKS, by Eriko Tadeno. Tadeno-san was one of the Guests of Honor at Yuricon 2003, and has already told us that she is planning on being there for Yuricon 2005 in Tokyo, so we’re very glad to be able to introduce her book to Yuri manga fans around the world!

Ever since I first saw it, I felt that WORKS exemplified the kind of Yuri manga I wanted people to be able to read in English. Yes, it can easily be seen as Yuri hentai, or lesbian erotica, or what have you, but to my mind, it’s simply top-notch Yuri manga.

WORKS is an anthology of four stories and three short gag comics that were published in Phryne, Anise and MIST magazines over a period of several years. All of these magazines are now defunct, and the Japanese-language version of WORKS is sold out – so right now the only place you can find these stories are in ALC’s translated version.

As I mentioned in an earlier entry, I define “pure” Yuri as manga with a lesbian storylne, written by a lesbian, for an audience of women. By this definition, WORKS is “pure” Yuri. As Tadeno-san says in her “Freetalk” (written especially for the English-language edition) when she began drawing these types of stories, there wasn’t even any kind of name for what she was doing, and she was one of very few women doing it. And, along wth Rica Takashima and Yamaji Ebine, I think that Tadeno-san is *still* one of the few women out there drawing “pure” Yuri manga.

The stories in WORKS range from the usual sempai-kohai romance, to coming out, to my personal favorite – a two-part office romance, which I particularly like because one of the characters is middle-aged. Look, Ma, lesbians DO live to be older than 25!  (And, in fact, Tadeno-san has drawn many stories with older couples, middle-aged characters, and the usual, younger ages…one more thing I like about her work. It’s *not* all schoolgirls, all the time.)

The art is clean, the stories are fun, the sex is nice – the positives in WORKS are very positive. There are few negatives, however. One of the big problems with anthologies is the feeling that the story stops as soon as it gets started, so the characters can have sex. Well, depending on who you are, that might be seen as a positive. :-) In this case, I began to like some of the characters and would have liked to see more – particularly Takako-san from the “My Sister’s Wedding” and Yuka-san from “I Love You The Way You Are” and “My Sweet One”.

The only other real negative, IMHO, is that the gag comics are really not very funny. But that happens. The guest comic, on the other hand, *is* very funny, but you have to have really read the last two stories closely to get the jokes. No skimming through to the sexy bits. ^_^

My obvious bias aside, I genuinely think that this, along with Yamaji Ebine and Rica Takashima’s works, can be seen as genuinely lesbian Yuri – a rare and precious thing that should be spread through Yuri fandom. ;-)

Posted in ALC Publishing, English Manga | 1 Comment »


Publishing a Doujinshi, Part Four

April 21st, 2004

Part 4

The Final Part (In one sense.)

Okay – you have your graphics files all ready to go. Perhaps you don’t have/can’t afford a publishing program but still want to create a doujinshi. Can you?

Of course you can.

It will take a little longer, because someone still has to do that layout and distillation and if it ain’t you, that means the printer will have to. And *that* means that you’ll have to explain to them what you want, and how you want it, etc, etc.

So, let’s for the moment, assume that you have a CD burned of your publication, in PDF form. You bring it to the printers and you explain that you want X number of copies, and that you want X lb. paper, and Y type of cover. Then you hand it to them and give them a date you need it by. Request a job estimate with those parameters and get it in writing!

The more copies you print, the less expensive your run is per copy. So, if I print 200 copies of my book, each copy may cost $6, for a total of $1200, but if I print 500 copies, each copy may cost $3.50 for a total of $1750. I can sell the second printing for less and still make back the money and then some. These are just made-up numbers – the actual cost will depend on the weight of the paper, the cover stock, how many pages, any extra work the printers put in, etc.

Finding a printer than will do a small run isn’t easy, but don’t get discouraged, they are out there. Using a local printer is a very good idea, because you can run back and forth easily to pick up proofs, deliver corrected pages and to communicate with them face to face. This last is crucial when you are trying to explain the way the book should look.

Remember, your printer doesn’t usually print this kind of thing, so you may need to talk things over with him/her. If you’re doing a Japanese-style doujinshi, you’ll need to convince the printer that the pages are in the right order – please don’t flip them – and that the cover art is labeled correctly, because it will be read “backwards.”

You may, at this point, be tempted to give the printer plenty of time to work on your book – do NOT do this. Printers work on rush jobs all day long for many clients. If you give them too much time, your job will disappear to the bottom of the pile and be forgotten.

So, when you are budgeting your time, give the PDF to the printer at least two weeks before you need it. Minimum. Then tell them you need it in four days. I’m not kidding. This way, when they don’t make the deadline, and it’s a day and half late, you still have a day clearance on the original deadline. You WILL need this extra time, so don’t think you’re being unrealistic.

A proof is the copy of the manuscript that is printed by the printer for you to look over. Also called, I believe, a “blue” in book publishing. Take the proof home and read it very carefully. Do not read the story – look at the words, the pictures, etc. for problems.

If you have an Ed in your life, hand a copy of the proof over to him, again, and let him edit it, again. Anyone else you can rely on for this is good, too. Remember, you cannot ever have too many people to proof or copy edit your book!

If you were the one who made the PDF, at this point, unless a virtual miracle occurred, you’ll need to make some corrections to your document. Remember – you can’t change a PDF. You’ll need to reopen the publishing program and make the changes there, then redistill it – or make the changes on the graphics files and send those to the printer. (In newer versions of Acrobat, you edit directly in the PDF.) Either way, once the changes get to the printer, make SURE you get another proof copy, to make sure that the changes have been made. You may have to do this several times, as you find new and exciting problems. Each time the printer will take a little while to run off the new proof. More days pass.

If there are problems from the printer’s side – a line through the page, the quality of the reproduction isn’t good – don’t be nice. Be firm. Point out the problem, expect it to be fixed. Don’t expect the printer to find the problems for you – they won’t. They don’t care. And if page 50 has a black line running through the middle of it and you don’t catch it – the printer won’t fix it for you, even if s/he does catch it, because it’s not her/his job. (I exclude Sally from Trukmanns from this – she *did* catch and fix several things on our last job. But she was unusual in this.)

At last, you will pass a proof…time will be running out, though and you must continue to express urgency, because I swear to every god I believe in that printers do NOT manage time as do other humans. The printer will eventually send out the job to the binder. Make sure you get a good look at the cover before you send it to the bindery, because that too will have issues and you will need to fix things and make sure the printer is printing the fornt and back cover correctly – not to mention the spine, which may have art of its own. When everything is sent to the binder, you’ve basically gone too far to turn around, so everything has to be as right as possible.

When your books are done, do not expect the printer to call, even if they say they will. Again, give the printer a few days too little, so when they blow the first printing (and they will – there will be issues with the cover flaking, or cracking, or not working) there is still time to get the book before you actually need it.

When you pick up the book, before you go anywhere, check it thoroughly from cover to cover, to make sure that they printed it exactly the way you wanted it. If there are any mistakes you had corrected already, but for some reason were not changed, get the manager and demand a discount on the final product – or a reprint with the changes. Be polite, but firm. There is no reason to accept a finished product that it is not correct.

And then, at last, after weeks of hard work, you will be holding in your hand a finished, bound doujinshi. Congratulations!

And there you have it – a step-by-step intro to publishing a doujinshi. I hope that this has been helpful. When you get yours all done, email me and let me know how it turned out!

Posted in ALC Publishing | No Comments »