Part 3 Terms introduced in earlier entries are in italics, new terms, in bold. So, you have your materials, and you have your hard and software in place. Now you’re ready to go. Let’s assume you’re working with hard copy first. You’ll need to scan your hard copy in. I recommend 400 DPI – although I was reminded by alert reader Chalcahuite yesterday that technically it’s PPI, or Pixels Per Inch, when referring to electronic images. Nonetheless, my scanner has that particular field labeled DPI, and no one I know ever says PPI…but that may be because few of my friends work in digital illustration. ^_^ So, you scan in a picture at 400 DPI, in Black and White. My scanner has three settings for things in B&W (Black and White). B&W Document, makes for *very* sharp contrasts between the black and white areas, and crisp lines…but where there are patterns or screentones or grays, they lose their impact, by being treated as black *or* white. The B&W Photo setting makes everything look a little fuzzy for me and its nigh on impossible to sharpen black lines. So I stick with B&W Image, which means I have to clean up the background whites and blacks a little, because the scan picks up dirt, shadows from other pages, etc. If you have a decent graphics program, cleaning up white areas is a snap. Black areas are a little trickier, because if you use clean up only the black, you don’t really affect the near-black areas…if you use the “select similar” function (or whatever your program has to select similar colors), you run the risk of losing shading and tones. A little trial and error ought to give you a good idea of what will work best for you. Just make sure you SAVE the original and any versions you want to keep. Frequently. Then back them up – in two places, one in a removed location. I’m not kidding. I keep a CD of the current version I’m working with, and I back up on a remote server, as well as have the images in my hard drive. This way if the computer exploded, the work I’ve done isn’t lost – not even if my house burned down. Of course, if *that* happened, I’d be screwed anyway, because no one I know has a computer powerful enough to work on the doujinshi…but that’s a different matter entirely. ^_^ If you’re using a digital file, then cleanup isn’t probably necessary…but you might want to print out each page anyway, to make sure it’s legible and clear. Either way, once your file is ready to go, I suggest saving it as a .tif – TIFs can be read by Macs or PCs, and pretty much every publishing software program can use them. This is more important than it seems, unless you have a semi-professional set-up in your home. When ALC Publishing was working on Rica ‘tte Kanji!?, I was shuttling back and forth between three different computers – one was a Mac and two were PCs. With few problems, I was able to read all the files on all of the computers – and even switch back and forth between Quark versions. However, I would not recommend this as a rule. ;-) I do not recommend typing whole stories in your graphics programs either…no matter how high the resolution, text still looks a little grainy as a graphic file, IMHO. It’s perfectly fine to do your word balloon lettering and background words..but if you are doing an illustrated story, for instance, I would not recommend setting up the page in Photoshop…use your publishing software for that and import the graphics files into that. Which brings me to your publishing software. You’ll need to make a template for your publication. This will involve all the things we’ve talked about so far – the size of the publication, the graphics files, text, etc… Setting up pages was very hard for me, since, as I mentioned a while back, I’m graphically retarded. I have a hard time with spatial perception. So, let me try and explain this simply and hopefully you’ll understand. It’d be alot easier if you all had a Frank Barzaga around to ask, but here’s what I’ve learned so far. You’re making a book. That means you’ll have pages that are on the left side of the binding crease, and pages on the right. Depending on how you plan the book to be read, you’ll be starting with a right or left page. Do this right now – go pick up a book. Any book. Open the cover. The VERY first page you see (assuming you are reading a western-style book) is on the right hand of the page. That is your Page “A”. The gutter, i.e., the white space to the left of the text, disappears into the binding. If you want to see the *very* inside edge of the page, you’d need to break the binding to do it. Flip the page. Now you are looking at Page “B”. B is bound on the right and the gutter is on the right. Kapeesh? You’ll need to set up a template for Page A (right-hand pages) and Page B (left-hand pages.) The rule of thumb in Western-style books is that As are odd-numbered pages and Bs are even numbered pages. Okay – I am NOT going to try and teach you any specific publishing program. I just can’t. It’s too damn complex and they all have their own tutorials. Visit the Quark or Adobe websites and download the tutorials and a demo version and go to it. But do yourself a favor and cultivate a person who has some experience and who can answer frantic, panicky questions at 2AM. That will help alot. For instance, I have a friend Ed, who works at night and spent 12 years as a printer, so he’s my panic button. Get yourself an Ed…they are very useful. ^_^ But I can tell you this – set your template up to reflect the size of your publication, and to allow Page As to have a left-hand gutter (about 1/4 inch of absolutely dead white space that can be lost in the gutter) and page Bs to have the same on the right. If you, or the artist you are working with, doesn’t mind some of the image to be lost in the binding crease, then go for it! Background images and tones don’t need to be seen fully to be understood. If there is significant dialogue or images that are going to be lost in the gutter, you might want to adjust your image within the template, to give it a little gutter space. (Templates aren’t absolutely FIXED. You can alter any given page any way you want…but templates make it a buttload easier on the whole to set up gutters and bleeds. Bleeds are images that come *right* to the edge of the page – in fact, they really go over the edge slightly and are cut off. So you or your artist might want to have pages that have a nice white gutter, but go right the edge of the page or, go from edge to edge or, have white borders around the whole or part of the page. The template will make it easy to drop and image in and adjust it. As an editor-in-chief, I recommend that you vary the page construction, so it’s not all boxes, or all full bleeds – it’s easier for a person to read a story when it varies a little. Also bleeds don’t have to be a whole page – it could be one part of the image and the rest of the outside page edge is white. They do this *alot* in Japanese manga. For instance – maybe you have a spreading tree as background. The branches could bleed off the page in a top panel, but leave uncluttered white space below it for the lower panels. Check out any shoujo manga and you’ll see what I mean. Some pages are screentone from end to end, some are bordered with white, or black (used mostly for flashback) and some are a mixture of all of the above. Once you’ve set up your A and B templates, you can simply plop As and Bs alternatively down into your file – however many pages you’re going to want. Important to remember – you MUST have a total page number that is divisible by 4. 16 if you’re going for offset printing. Unless you’re doing a copy book or something printed off at home, you’ll need to remember that a printer prints things off in sets of four (sixteen for offset printers). To understand this, open up a magazine or newsletter and look at page 1. Page 2 is printed inside Page 1, but Page 3 is a separate piece of paper. If you follow Page 1-2 through the binding you’ll see that on the other side of that pice of paper are printed Pages 71 and 72, or whatever page number they are. Another way to do this is to take any piece of paper and fold it in half, then set it down in front of you like a card. Number the page you see 1, then open it up. Page 2 is on the left, Page 3 on the right and the back cover is page 4. It’s four “pages” but one piece of paper. Printers print this way – one piece of paper at a time, but four pages. Don’t feel pressured to use every page – blank white space is fine on the fist and last pages. So, you set your Page As and Page Bs down – let’s say 36 of them. A/B/A/B. etc., until there are 36 pages total. If you are setting this up to be read western-style, then you can have your software set up automatic page numbering, by setting up a text box and using whatever method that software uses for automatic numbering. You’ll add your graphic file to the page and then, you may want to use the commands to center it, make it fill the page, shift the borders, whatever. That’s all up to you and like I said, I don’t have it in me to teach you how to use a publishing program. Save this often. And back it up. When you think it looks right, print it out and look at EVERY page carefully. Then get about five other people to do that, too. You can never, *ever* have enough proofreaders and editors. Even if you have five editors, there will still be mistakes. Make corrections, import the new files, and re-save and re-backup. When everything looks right, you’ll need to export it as a PDF. Each publishing program does this a little differently, so again, a friend like Ed is a useful thing, when you can’t get Adobe Distiller to work with Quark at midnight. He’s always awake and has the patience of a saint. :-) A PDF is a picture of your document. It is not editable, unless you have the version of Distiller that allows you to unlock a PDF file. So, when you hand your printer a CD with a PDF file, s/he/they will not be able to fix the typo on page three. You’ll need to do that yourself and re-distill the PDF. Most printers can accept large file transfers or emails, which is good, because the average size of a publications is very large indeed. Lastly, some of you may be wondering how exactly one goes about doing all this, when one is publishing something to be read Japanese-style, that is right to left? Well, nothing changes, really. You’ll be placing your pages in backwards, so if it’s a 36-page book, the Page 36 goes into the first document page, and 35 into the second, etc. all the way down to Page 1 as the last page. Unless you have the international version of software, you probably won’t be able to use an automatic page numbering command, but typing in page numbers by hand isn’t hard, especially when compared with everything else you’ve done so far, or everything that’s going to come. ^_^ Which brings us to adventures with the printer. I’ll leave that for the next entry, because I get agita just thinking about it.
Publishing A Doujinshi, Part Two
Part 2
Terms from yesterday’s discussion are in italics, new terms are bold. In case you care. ^_^
I’m going to have to assume that you already have a story or comic that you want to publish, because I can’t get into the mechanics of how to draw a comic here. For one thing, I’m not an artist, and for another, there are many guides on how to do that already, scattered about the Internet and in print. I won’t presume to try and teach you how to create a panel scheme or do toning or anything like that.
I’ll be making one more assumption, too – that you, like me, will be building this doujinshi digitally. Japanese companies are used to working from hard copy, they have many more industries that include hand-drawn illustrations. Here in the U.S., however, almost all our magazine and newspaper art is done digitally and all but the grassiest grassroots publications use a computer program for layout. I actually write from time to time for a newsletter that is laid out by hand, photocopied and hand stapled, but the mailing list is about 200 people, so it’s not surprising…. and the editor for that newsletter is moving towards digital layout, now that he has a computer that doesn’t bite. ;-)
Again, if you’re doing a copy book, then you really *don’t* need expensive equipment – laying out the pages by hand and making a master with white layout tape and your illustrations will be plenty fine. Then you can make copies of the master and staple them. Viola! Instant doujinshi!
If you’re planning on doing something a little fancier, you can still prepare hard copy masters and take them to a copy center for copying and binding. The advantage of this is that you don’t have to buy, learn and clutter your hard drive with graphics programs, and the copy machines at the copy center are probably better than the ones you have at home or school.
But, if you plan on making a perfect bound doujinshi and you don’t have an industrial printer and paper cutting machine in your basement (I’m not saying you don’t…I’m just sayin’ *if*…) then you’ll be laying this out on a computer, probably with a graphics program and some version of publishing software. You’ll also need a reasonably memory-rich computer, with good processing speed and a decent scanner that can handle higher DPIs (dots per square inch – we’ll get to that in a sec) than the usual web graphics.
I used Photoshop 7 as my graphics program. I’m not graphically inclined – in fact, I’m pretty much graphically retarded, but I have very little trouble manipulating text or graphics on this program. When you buy a copy of any of ALC Publishing’s Yuri manga, you’ll see the results – clear text on backgrounds that aren’t visibly manipulated. (It’s not easy when you do a translation, because sometimes you have to cut and paste *teeny tiny* pieces of background to cover kanji, then type in English over it, often with lines and other art in the middle of it all. Next time you buy a translated manga, look for a page with text over a screentone and if you look carefully, you’ll see what I mean!)
I work with my graphics files in layers – and I save them in layers. Yes, it makes for much bigger files, but corrections take 1/10 the time when you only have to retype a single word, or add punctuation to a layer, rather than re-white out a word balloon and retype it all…or worse, redo an entire toned background.
This is one of the advantages of building the page digitally, too, rather than toning and lettering by hand, then scanning it all in as one image.
Regardless, you’ll need a good scanner to convert the hard copy into a digital file. Your scanner should be able to handle at *least* 300 DPI (and if it doesn’t, then it’s horribly outdated and old and you need to replace it anyway.)
DPI stand for Dots Per Inch, and it’s a measure of print quality. Most average web graphics are 72 DPI, but most print graphics are 400, 600, and even 1200 for color photographic-quality print magazines. So you’ll definitely need to have a decent scanner. Do NOT attempt to publish in less than 300 DPI – small text will appear spotty and hard to read, backgrounds will be fuzzy. Unless you don’t care if your book looks professional or not.
ALC’s latest translated Yuri manga, WORKS, was done at 400 DPI and I think it came out pretty clear. More than that and the files are just monstrously unweildy in size, even for my brand spankin’ new computer with lots of extra HD and RAM.
If you are doing digital layout, you’ll need publishing software, too. I’ve used Adobe Pagemaker, which was pretty easy to learn initially, and Quark, which was *not* easy to learn. I published the first volume of Yuri Monogatari on a free trial version of Pagemaker, in fact. LOL When I went to set up Rica ‘tte Kanji!? I used the version of Quark they had at work and if Frank, the graphics guy, hadn’t been there to help, I would have killed myself. However, the new version of Quark, 6.0, is much, much easier to understand. Not exactly for beginners, but I didn’t want to kill myself this time….
Lastly, you’re going to need some kind of program to make your Quark file or whatever into a PDF. Mostly everyone in the world uses Adobe Distiller. The PDF is what you’ll be giving the printer, which means no changes can be made to the pages by the printer. This means you’d better damn well have those layered files around, so you can make a change, save it into a new version, redistill it and hand a new PDF to the printer!
To sum up you’ll need:
Good, memory-rich computer
Scanner that can handle high DPI
Graphics program
Publishing Program
Program to convert to PDF
And finally, we’re off. Next time, we talk about actually putting together the doujinshi.
Publishing a Doujinshi, Part One
Part One
AniLesboCon (ALC) Publishing was born in 2003 with the mission of creating and disseminating high-quality yuri manga (that is, Japanese-style comics with lesbian images and stories) in English.
Last year we published two books: Yuri Monogatari 1, a compilation of nine yuri stories by thirteen artists and writers from seven different countries and; Rica ‘tte Kanji!?, a translation from the Japanese version of the sweet and funny stories of Rica and her girlfriend Miho, by Rica Takashima.
This year, ALC is proud to announce the publication of WORKS by Eriko Tadeno, which now on sale at the Yuricon Shop.
Even as I type, we are also working on this year’s volume of Yuri Monogatari, which is slated for a summer release – and for the fall, Volume 1 of Shoujoai ni Bouken: The Adventures of Yuriko, with illustrations.
So, after three books under my belt, and two more in the making, and as several folks have asked me for advice about this, I thought I’d walk you through the process of publishing your own doujinshi.
Doujinshi is Japanese for a work put together by a like-minded group of people…i.e., a fan work. In other words, a doujinshi is a self-published, or small-press published work. There are many, many groups of people doing this in the American comics field, and several good small comics presses extant. You may want to get in touch with them for their advice, if you want to do American-style comics. I’ll be focusing on Japanese-style doujinshi, with a strong emphasis on the kinds of things you might see at Comiket (Comic Market) in Tokyo.
Let me start by saying this: This is work. Like anything else, if you want your publication to look good, you’ll need either a lot of time, energy and money to put into this, or a stable of friends and employees to help. Both is best. ^_^
First you need to decide what *kind* of doujinshi you are going to be making. Today’s entry will be some thoughts about the things you need to think about before you begin.
On the cheap/easy end of the scale is something called a copy book. This is basically xeroxed pages folded together and stapled, with *maybe* a color copy cover. You can format the pages easily in any graphics program, import them as images into Word, or some other common word processing program – or even copy them directly and cut and tape the pages together in the order you want, then run the pages through a copy machine at work or school. The color copy page is folded and stapled on and you’re good to go.
If you choose a copy book then your costs are going to primarily be: time, for formatting and; materials, for copying. You might have paper costs and ink, if you’re doing this at home, and a saddle stapler will be helpful. If you want to spend a little more money and want it to look nice, you can go to a copy center and have them do it – saves time, costs more. If you’re like me, you can steal both time and materials from work and only have to be careful about doing it out of sight of your supervisor. ;-)
Any type other than a copy book is going to require binding of *some* kind. If you plan on stapling, or having your book spiral bound, then you can go to a copy center. If you plan on making something with a flat spine (called perfect binding) you’ll need to talk to a real print shop. If your book is more than 50 pages, perfect binding looks *much* nicer and more professional – it also costs a lot more.
Unless you want a hard cover book, you’re going to want to look at card stock of varying weights or perhaps textured paper, also of various weights. Weight indicates how thick and heavy (duh) the paper is. I wouldn’t swear to it, but my guess is that a paper’s weight is based on how heavy a standard amount of that paper is… i.e., 20 lb. weight paper (which is standard copy machine paper) would weigh 20 lbs. for a ream, or 1000 pages, or whatever the standard amount of pages is, while 24 lb. paper weighs more for the same number of pages.
Paper will give the book a soft, flexible body, card stock will give it strength and solidity. And of course, your budget will dictate what you can use. If you’re trying to do this on the cheap, a lightweight textured paper, or pale-colored paper can probably go through any home printer and come out looking good…. You can get paper from any paper seller, on- or off-line, for cheaper than buying it at an office supply place, or buying it through a printer. Stationery, art, scrapbook, craft stores have small amounts of different papers you can experiment with to see what works for you.
Okay, next – book size. This is a REALLY important choice, because it will make a difference as to how easy it will be to print and bind. And you’ll need to know it for your page layout, too (that will come later, but you NEED to know before you start what size you’re going to use.)
The standard size in the U.S. for paper is 8.5″ x 11″. We and Canada are just about the only countries in the world that uses this as a standard size. ^_^
If you are making a copy book, then you can just assume you’re folding a standard sheet of paper in half, so each page is 5.5″ x 8.5″. Or, conversely, you’ll be printing on 11″ x 17″ pages and folding *them* in half, so you’ll have a book that is 8.5″ x 11″.
If you truly desire to publish a doujinshi-style book, then your book will probably be one of several sizes, both of which are international standards, but almost never used in the U.S. The usual paperback-sized doujinshi are A5, although you can find doujinshi in all ISO sizes under the sun.
A5 is technically 148mm x 210mm, but in U.S. measurements it’s slightly harder to render: 5.83 x 8.27 inches. Stick with metric, if you can, when setting up your parameters.
If you choose one of the other international sizes, remember this – chances are, your printer (hardware and/or person) will not have ISO size paper to hand, so if your chosen size is bigger than the normal 8.5″ x 11″ sheet, you’ll be paying for very big paper, which will have to be cut down. A5 can be cut down from a standard sheet and is a nice size to read from, IMHO…that’s what ALC Publishing uses. B5 is also common for doujinshi (182 mm, 257 mm/ 7″ x 9-7/8″) and so is A4 (210 x 297 / 8-1/4″ x 11-3/4″), but A4 is larger than our standard page – remember, bigger paper means more expensive.
One last consideration before you start…the paper you will print on should be heavy – i.e., thick – enough to not have art show through when you print it out. Unless you’ve got light strokes and no heavy black areas, regular copy paper won’t be thick enough.
Okay…that’s enough for today. Tomorrow, I’ll depress you with the list of equipment you’ll need. ^_^
A Second Look at Maria-sama ga Miteru
Well, Anime Boston was incredible. Not only did I get to spend time with some very good friends, but met many new ones and got to greet tons of Yuri fans at the Yuri Panel. (I know no one was listening to me much, because everyone was distracted by my Yuri Screensaver o’Death, but I had a good time anyway – and watching the run on the Yuricon table afterwards was amusing and satisfying…almost makes me want to work a little harder getting out more Yuri manga!
I am bleary-eyed and voiceless today and need to sleep, so instead of thinking and doing a review of something, I thought I’d make random comments without context about Maria-sama ga Miteru, which completed its first season of 13 episodes a few weeks ago.
When I wrote about Marimite for the first time in December, I wasn’t sure if I would actually find it as lovey-dovey as everyone seemed to think it was going to be. We all know how reliable fan pairings are as an indicator of canon Yuri. Which is to say, I had little faith that we’d actually see any Yuri at all in the series. Well…I was wrong again, which makes me awfully happy. ^_^
Because there is no plot*, per se, in Marimite, I focused on my initial perceptions of the characters, as I perceived them from the websites and writeups I had managed to see and read. Now, 13 episodes, and several chapters of manga later, I have significantly different perceptions and thoughts, and wanted to share them with you.
Plot is, of course, in the eye of the beholder, but as I see it, Marimite‘s plot is the primary shoujo non-plot, that is, “Normal Girl of average (below average, above average) ability finds herself in not-at-all normal situation, surrounded by people of exceptional ability.” The story follows the personal development of Normal Girl, as she adapts, changes and grows in this situation. In fact, IMHO, this is the primary force behind almost all anime and manga, shoujo or not, and any other plot that happens to occur in a story is just a bonus. ;-)
In any case, here are my character overviews of the Yamayurikai from December, and my current thoughts, starting with the White Rose hierarchy:
The Rosa Gigantea is Satou Sei – another uber-cool character, with a great personality. The En Bouton for Gigantea is a first-year, a very perceptive and forthright (despite her delicate appearance) girl named Toudo Shimako. We learn later that Shimako actually *asked* to be En Bouton. There is no Petite Soeur in this hierarchy, because Shimako is a first-year student.
When I first saw Sei, and her casual touchiness with Yumi (mostly to tease stuffy Sachiko) I would have sworn, and did make public statements to the effect, that I thought that Sei, of all of the girls, HAD to be straight. In my experience in the real world, only straight girls are touchy and huggy and grabby like that…gay or possibly gay girls are too terrified of being found out, usually. Yeah, well, so I was as absolutely wrong as possible. So sue me. ^_^ Sei is probably the only really gay girl on the damn council, and pretty much almost everyone’s favorite. I like her devil-may-care attitude, and the fact that she’s genuinely mature and solid in herself (we can see this, I think, when she tells Yoshino and Yumi about her story, not out of obligation, or to quell rumors, but because she wants the people who she cares about – and who care about her – to know. Since that goes back to the what her onee-sama was trying to teach her, it shows that she’s come a long way. By the end of the series, I felt like she was probably the most seriously mature of all of the Rosas. Tragedy has a way of doing that to a person.
Shimako. After 13 episodes, it’s still hard to put a finger on Shimako. I think she and Sei were and are very alike – easy to be with, but not easy to touch. At the end, we can see that her feelings for Sei definitely run very deep, despite their lack of public…display. But when they are alone together, the masks come off. Shimako seemed very solid and strong, but we could also see that inside she was full of doubt…a very human character and one I look forward to learning more about in the second season, when she chooses her own petite souer. (Look for a continuation of the Rosa Gigantea trend here, hint, hint.)
Next up, the Red Roses:
The Rosa Chinensis is Mizuno Youko – she seems like a really solid person, with a teeny bit of a mischievous nature. Her En Bouton is Ogasawara Sachiko, a moody and mysterious girl. Sachiko does not like many things – including men, ginkgoes and sakura. She is reticent about herself, and in many ways distant, but determined in her desire to have Fukuzawa Yumi as her Petite Soeur.
Oh my god, did I want more Youko, more Youko, more Youko!!!! Calm, controlled, quiet…with Shinohara Emi’s sweet voice, I wanted thirty episodes about Youko, when all we had were snatches. Boo hoo. I felt that her relationship with Sachiko was ignored and I would very much have liked to see a little bit more of that. Also, we got brief glimpses of the fact that Youko, despite her hard-working nature, was not a natural at schoolwork, so it might have been nice to delve a little deeper into Youko’s life – to watch her in her struggles. I want a Youko backstory, dammit!!
Sachiko. She was, for me, very hard to like. In fact, until the very last episode when she admitted to having such a hard time adapting to outside expectations, I wasn’t ever really sure I l really did like her, except for brief flashes (including, I’m sorry to say, as a kindergartner. She was so utterly adorable….) But then I thought about the scene when Yumi asks her to go out on a date and the look on her face is so eager, so excited…so happy, that I realized that Sachiko is a terribly lonely person and that Yumi is the best thing that ever happened to her. I’m sure Youko could feel happy when she graduates, knowing that Sachiko has Yumi taking care of her, and teaching her how to relax and just be happy.
And then there’s Yumi, our protagonist. She is Normal Girl, drawn into not-normal situation. Because she really *is* a normal girl, she spreads her charm and goofiness equally throughout the Mansion, and everyone, very quickly, begins to be comfortable with her. It takes her a little while to be comfortable back, but by the time she’s planning on making nasty chocolates for Sei as revenge, you know she’s cool with it all. ^_^ I love the fact that she makes goofy faces and funny noises and that she genuinely adores Sachiko with every fiber of her being. Their date together was delightful. I’m glad we’ll get more of them in the next year – I want to see them together more.
And finally, the Yellow Roses:
The Rosa Foetida is Torii Eriiko, her En Bouton is Hasekura Rei. Rei is ultra-cool and unflappable and she finds Yumi (the heroine) adorable. Her Petite Soeur is Shimatsu Yoshino, a very sweet and shy-type girl.
Oddly, Rei and Yoshino were the only characters I knew, prior to the anime and manga. I have a doujinshi of the two of them from a few years ago. I like it alot, and in some ways the characters were pretty solid, but I think the art was off a little – especially for Yoshino. But I digress. ^_^
Eriko suffered badly in this series. Because her love interest is a guy, and older, it never comes into the anime at all (which most definitely focused on the girl love aspects.) So she was pretty much shafted. We learn peripherally that she’s naturally good at everything she does, but lazy and laconic by nature. We barely see her at all through the second half of the anime. I hope the manga gives us more of a chance to get to know her, because my image of her is fuzzy and kind of…lame. Like, why did she pick Rei as soeur? They barely seem to talk.
Rei is as advertised – a big, sweet galumph who, despite her boyish appearance is really quite girly. I think they struck a perfect balance between these – Rei in the anime looks like a tall, somewhat boyish girl, but definitely a girl. And her natural girliness felt natural…it never felt forced.
Yoshino was a little harder to understand, but I loved her. Weak from illness, she was forced to be gentle, even though her heart was not at ALL gentle. In alot of ways, I completely sympathized with that…I was a very weak, sickly kid and couldn’t do alot of the things other kids did. But stuck at home, I was reading cowboy and sports books, much like Yoshino’s samurai stories. So, you know, I COMPLETELY understand why, after the surgery, she’s a lunatic. ^_^ She’s just trying out being able to yell at last! I also liked the way that, by the end, she and Yumi were actual friends, not just acquaintances.
The one thing I didn’t like at first was the fast pace of the story, but then a Japanese friend told me that it was done on purpose, to remove it from the usual, long, slow, lingering death of most other shoujo series. Every storyline was short, snappy, touching, funny. It kept the audience interested and alert. Thinking about it that way, I do understand…nonetheless, I’m looking forward to the manga, which has more detail!
All in all, I have to say, I thought the anime adaptation of Maria-sama ga Miteru was really exceptional. I didn’t expect to care as much as I did about the characters – or want to know more. And I find myself wondering about and anticipating with much pleasure, the second season, which will be Yumi’s second year at Lillian. (As an interesting aside, she hasn’t *yet* chosen a petite soeur in the novels…so we can wonder if that news will break during the anime series. ^_^)
And there you have it. The new poster child anime for Yuri was a huge success and we can look forward to more. Yay.
Next entry will be, at last, a discussion of publishing a doujinshi, because I’ve been asked about it a lot. Then back to anime and manga. ^_^
Kekkou Kamen Anime, Manga and Live-Action
My face is masked, but I bare my body for justice!
Kekkou Kamen, misspelled as Kekko Kamen for the anime release, is one more utterly bizarre story brought to you from the warped mind of Go Nagai, the creative genius behind Cutey Honey, Devilman, Mazinger G, Devilman Lady and more. But of all these, Kekkou Kamen wins on several levels – it’s the least plausible (and that’s saying something, if you’ve ever seen or read any of the others!), has the most naked women and is just the most utterly, indescribably *strange* anime and manga I’ve ever encountered. I absolutely love it.
The story takes place at Toenail of Satan’s Sparta Academy, an incredibly strict private high school, where physical and emotional torture are use to motivate the student body to excel. “Toenail of Satan” is the Principal’s actual name, btw. We follow the travails of hapless student Takahashi Mayumi, whose inferior grades and hot body make her a prime target of all the “punshiment specialist”s hijinks. To protect Mayumi, and the other students, a mysterious naked woman has appeared on the scene – she bares her body for justice, she says, but keeps her face covered because she’s embarrassed.
Kekkou Kamen-oneesama, as Mayumi calls her, always comes in the nick of time and uses her Spread Legs Attack to defeat the foe. The foe usually being some drooling pervert of a teacher who is just on the edge of sexually abusing Mayumi or one of the other female stdents. (The boy students appear to be only beaten, not sexually abused.)
And yet, (she says, knowing that after the prevous paragraphs everyone’s lips are curling in disgust,) despite all this, Kekkou Kamen is really incredibly funny. Mostly because it’s so amazingly awful and offensive that to take offense is impossible.
The anime is actually laugh-out-loud hysterical right from the beginning, when the first punishment specialist is “Gestaopoko” a S&M Nazi-themed dom with a whip and questionable fashion sense. Kekkou Kamen defeats her by remembering something she heard – that S&M Queens *really* want to be whipped themselves…. There is tons and tons of Yuri implication and overt Yuriness in the anime, which makes it worth buying. There’s also a terrific moment when the characters blast the fourth wall to hell by telling us that there’ll be more anime if this volume sells well. ^_^ It didn’t and there wasn’t.
The manga is a little more horrible and abusive, but so eyebrow-raisingly weird, that again, its hard to be offended. In the manga, we finally learn who Kekkou Kamen really is…and there is no way you’d ever be able to get it from the anime, so don’t bother…she doesn’t even show up as a character in the anime. Basically, by the end of the manga, every girl in the school is naked and masked and all are claiming to be Kekkou Kamen, but eventually, when she does show up, she does manage to save the day *and* Mayumi, once again. Yuri-wise there’s mostly akogare-type adoration and hero worship on Mayumi’s part, but I don’t really get any strong Yuri sense from that. There’s one totally butchy teacher, with a cross-dressing (and passing) younger sister, but again, the lesbo vibes are low-level at best. A shame too…I think this manga *needs* at least one openly lesbian character. If Go Nagai ever re-does the KK manga for the new century, I hope he adds one. ^_^
That takes us to the original Live-Action movies, of which there are three. These live-action movies were all unremittingly low-budget and poorly acted, with awkward scripts and BAD staging. So, of course, I adore them. The first movie is pretty close the the basic plot of the manga and the guy who plays Toenail of Satan is magnificently bad in the role. He’s perfect. The woman who plays Kekkou Kamen was some JAV star and pin-up, so her playing naked was fine. Her acting is …adequate, but really, who cares? The end of the movie is hysterically bad, and there is some Yuri subtext.
The second movie is the strongest in Yuri…there’s even a little actual girl/girl (not too much, don’t get your hopes up) thing going on, but with lots of subtext and one cool, butchy teacher. The same acting/script/low-budget thing applies to all three movies, so don’t think that they got better as time got on, either. ^_^
The third movie is actually kind of sad and funny, with lots of Go Nagai in-jokes, as Toenail of Satan’s family shows up to visit. Most of them are spoofs of other Go Nagai characters. And Kekkou Kamen falls in love, sadly with a guy, but whatever. There’s a funny scene at an amusement park, as KK tries to eat ice cream through her mask, and the ending, during and after the credits is absolutely insanely funny, as the girls of the school persuade a beaten and defeated Toenail of Satan to come back to the school and start playing soccer with him. As they run down the train platform, T of S’s last act is to plummet off the platform, then reappear, abashed, then he and the girls all share a good laugh. The End. No, really.
And, now, at last, there is a new KK Live-Action movie release to the theaters, which premiered this past week in Tokyo! The trailer makes it look hopelessly artless and fun, even if it has no obvious Yuri.
Ah…the trailer reminded me – I have to mention the *song.* The song that you hear in the trailer, and as the theme to the anime (sung by Kekkou Kamen’s voice actress Shinohara Emi, aka the voice of Sailor Jupiter/Kino Makoto in Sailor Moon, and Rosa Chinensis/Youko in Maria-sama ga Miteru) is amazingly funny. And in the manga, *Kekkou Kamen* herself sings the song as she fights, which makes it just that much better. I’m so very glad that they kept it for this movie, because it’s wonderful and camp and just about defines this whole series in a nutshell.
So, there you have it – Yuri in the anime, a little in two of the movies and not really any in the manga. Enjoy, but probably not. ^_^
