Revue Starlight Anime (English)

February 4th, 2019

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From the moment it began, Revue Starlight (which is streaming on HIDIVE) reminded me of something.

Centered on a group of young women at a Takarazuka-like performing arts school, in which they vie to be cast in one of three successive performances of a muscial called “Starlight,” they find themselves called upon to literally fight for the Top Star position in battles set in the surreal landscapes of their own desires and fears.

And wow, did it remind me of something.

Duels, surreal landscapes, hrm. Uniforms created by impossible machinery…

Now what did that remind me of…?

Oh, yes, I got it! It reminded me, almost immediately, of…Melody of Oblivion. 

Yes, of course, it also reminded me of Revolutionary Girl Utena, but there was something specific about the tone that pinged Melody of Oblivion in my head in a very immediate way, which shared some staff and a lot of theatrical elements with Utena. As it turns out, Revue Starlight shares some staff with Melody, so I’m probably not that far off.

In any case, there was a similar sense of grimness that pervaded the plot of Revue Starlight so, despite the apparent desire to excel, the play the young women are working on is depressing as fuck. We watch them shine, in order to star in a play in which they must fail. And yet, despite that, Revue Starlight was a pretty good anime with a lot of emotion and a soupçon of WTF, in between shiny fight scenes and earworm music, capped off by utterly likable characters.

Yuri here lies primarily in intensely emotional relationships between various pairs of the girls. Futaba and her charge, imperious Kauruko, Mahiru’s overt crush on Karen, the late breaking, but immensely satisfying relationship between Nana and Junna and the even more satisfying rivalry of Maya and Claudine. If the story had been about Maya and Claudine, I would have loved it even more. Maya gets very close to making the series about them a few times and even goes so far as to refer to her rival as “my Claudine.” ^_^ 

By now, if you’ve seen this anime, you’re wondering if I’m going to mention the giraffe in the room. If the role had been an adult man, everything he said would be bizarre and creepy. So it’s a giraffe instead, and comes off as inexplicable and surreal instead of a creeptastic old dude in a series about young women in a school that has no men. So, giraffe.

Of course music plays an important role. The duels are soundtracked by image songs for the character whose arc it is, sung by the voice actress. These are themed to fit both character and the tension that rules the duel. I’ve got the opening theme stuck firmly in my head, but what I ended up liking best was the repetition of the end theme, by the pairs whose story was highlighted in that particular episode. Again, I like Maya and Claudine’s iteration best, but they were all good. And damned earmwormy. I fear I’ll be singing this stuff for days unless I do something to stop it. 

Did I enjoy Revue Starlight? Yeah, I think I did. It was shiniy and singy and fighty and asked for very little commitment from me as a viewer. I mean, I never cared about the main plot tension between the leads, which is not all that surprising, I often find my self preferring supporting characters. But it was definitely worth a watch.

Ratings:

Service – Knees, not thighs. Is that an improvement, when it’s so clearly meant to be a stand-in?

Couple Ranking:

1. Maya and Claudine 
2. Banana and Junna
3. Futaba with someone who appreciates her, not Kaoruko
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282726. Mahiru and Karen
282727. Karen and Hikari

Posted in English Anime | 19 Comments »


SF Magazine, February 2019, Featuring Yuri (SFマガジン2019年2月号 百合特集)

February 3rd, 2019

Last December the Yuri world thrilled at the announcement that for the first time SF Magazine was going to be publishing an issue featuring Yuri stories. SF Magazine, Featuring Yuri (SFマガジン2019年2月号 百合特集) sold out pretty quickly and had to be reprinted, which is very gratifying.

Before I get into the review, I have to tell you something about myself. When I was very young, I read a lot of science fiction. I mean, massive, metric tons, because I read whatever my Dad read and he was a member of the Science Fiction Book Club (remember that?). So my reading was 98% stuff I absolutely positively should not be reading at that age. ^_^

When I was like 9 or 10 my father told me a version of the story Knock by Frederic Brown. I have a standing bet with myself that all scifi collections I read will begin with some iteration of this story. I have never lost that bet. ^_^

When I hit 13 or 14, I remember my enthusiasm for scifi being ground down by, specifically, short story collections. The Best Science Fiction of /year/ collections were full of so much UGH, that after a couple of years of clones killing their originals and lots of rape and dystopia, all by men and mostly white men, I just got bored. I remember vividly the two stories that were the last straws for me. Of them, the one I blame most was an excruciating story by Stanislaw Lem, the punchline of which was “What do you take me for, a Phool?” at which point I walked away from science fiction for approximately a decade, until I found cyberpunk. Last time I read a scifi short story collection, it was likewise full of ugh, although this time by women. ^_^; My experiences with science fiction short stories have not be overwhelmingly positive. ( SF Novels, otoh, have been better than ever in the last few years!)

I am telling you this so you understand some of my ambivalence about this issue of SF Magazine. The rest of my ambivalence is because imagining stories by science fiction fans that were specifically written to be Yuri, caused me to imagine all sorts of new ugh to be experienced. As you may imagine. 

Well, I won the standing bet, but otherwise, the Yuri in this issue of SF Magazine has been interesting and not ugh at all. Your mileage may, of course, vary, but I found the stories mostly to be sweet and a little sad, rather than creepy or gross.

Following  the first few stories and a manga, is an interview with Comic Yuri Hime Editors in Chief Nakamura and Umezawa. I’m very pleased at their discussion of the heterogeneity of the Yuri genre and was delighted that Umezawa also begins the history of Yuri with Yoshiya Nobuko.

This interview is followed by an interview with Tsukimura Ryoue, with whose work I am wholly unfamiliar, so I look forward to learning something about him when I read the interview. (Edit: It turns out he is the screenplay writer for the anime Noir, among others, so it turns out that I am familiar with some of his work, just not his novels.) I was kind of surprised they didn’t do an interview with Fukami Makoto, since his science fiction often includes lesbians. ^_^

Following this is a series of suggested titles for fans of science fiction and Yuri and, whether we consider a series in this list “Yuri” or not fills many of the posts here on Okazu. 

The magazine continues from there with what seems to be more general non-Yuri science fiction. What I have read so far has been quite decent.

Ratings:

Overall – 8

Overall a surprisingly pleasant experience with little that I would call exploitative,. and a lot that I would consider explorative. The February issue of SF magazine has been a fine experience with science fiction short stories featuring Yuri.  ^_^

Posted in Magazines, Miscellaneous | 14 Comments »


Yuri Network News – (百合ネットワークニュース) – February 2, 2019

February 2nd, 2019

100th Anniversary of Yuri

This week we unveiled our 100th Anniversary event! In conjunction with PacSet travel, Yuricon and Okazu will be holding a Yuri-themed tour of  Tokyo and the surrounding area. Read about the 100 Years of Yuri Tour and we hope you’ll join us for this once-in-a-lifetime event and take a list to this week’s podcast about why we call 2019 the 200th anniversary of Yuri!

 

Yuri Manga

Watashi no Kobushi wo Uketomete, Volume 2 (私の拳をうけとめて) continues the yanki x yanki love(?) story by murata. 

Bloom Into You, Volume 6 will be hitting bookstores in English at the end of March.

MURCIÉLAGO, Volume 13 (ムルシエラゴ) is available in Japanese. Whee!

The sequel to Kabi Nagata’s Hitori Koukan Nikki (一人交換日記) is out in Japa and the the English edition, My Solo Exchange Diary, Volume 2, hit she;eves here this month!

And while we’re on the topic, don’t miss Mikan Uji’s one-shot about love at a game development company, Now Loading…! which is out now.

And Yuri Hime is releasing a collection of digital Comics by ED, as Lillium Terarium (リリウム・テラリウム)

 

Other News

ANN reports on the first-ever male PreCure’s voice actor’s feelings about becoming Cure Infini and I gotta say, it’s lovely. ^_^

Boo, Bandai Namco is dropping Sailor Moon Drops game on March 28. Doodyheads. Check out ANN for the details.

Via YNN Correspondent Michelangelo H., here’s a short video on the History of Homosexuality in Film from 2015.

Another ANN report today, as anime voice actors are enjoying the Strong Woman Maker app. That was a few minutes of fun. ^_^

 

Do you have questions about Yuri? Write in and ask and I’ll do my best to address them on the Okazu YNN Podcast! Become a YNN Correspondent by reporting any Yuri-related news with your name and an email I can reply to! 

Thanks to all of you – you make this a great Yuri Network!

Posted in Yuri Network News | 9 Comments »


100 Years of Yuri Tour with Yuricon and Pac-Set Travel

January 31st, 2019

I’ve been promising you something big and amazing for the 100th anniversary of Yuri. Here we go…!

Yuricon, a celebration of Yuri in anime and manga, and Japan travel leader PacSet (PacSet Tours Inc.) have joined forces to launch the first guided trip to Japan dedicated to the Yuri genre of Japanese animation and manga. The trip will take place September 8 -September 17, 2019

We’ll be touring the Kanto area, hitting up sites (like Rei’s shrine from Sailor Moon!) that appear in well-known Yuri anime, shopping in Akihabara, Tokyo Station Character Street, Harajuku and Ikebukuro. The trip will include an overnight stay in Kamakura where Sweet Blue Flowers takes place – and a visit to a hot springs resort. And we’ll be visiting a Shinto shrine festival, where you can enjoy the festival foods and games.  The trip will wrap up with a visit to the Girls Love Fest, a Yuri-only comic market, where you can but parody doujinshi about your favorite couples from popular anime.

This tour will include friendly informal lectures about Yuri, meals with the group, and plenty of time for you to head out on your own and shop. We’re working on getting some guests to join us to speak about Yuri from different perspectives. There will be room parties and plenty of hanging out, chatting about Yuri and eating junk food.  

Okazu Patrons will receive a discount on the trip and special goods when we get there!  

For more details, please see the official press release. 

Share the news with folks on your social media and communities, too. The trip is open to anyone who wants to join us and we’d love to have you there with us celebrating 100 years of Yuri!

Sign up for the 100 Years of Yuri Trip here!

Posted in Events | 2 Comments »


Yuri Visual Novel: Heart of the Woods, Chapter One Demo

January 30th, 2019

“Tara looked at me with more pride than a rainbow flag.” This line made me laugh out loud. ^_^

You know how I always say that Visual Novels are not for me? This is not an arbitrary statement. I don’t have some elitist disdain for VNs (well, in theory, I don’t, but I’ll cop to often finding issues in individual VNs that strike me as…infantile.) But to be clear, the reason I generally don’t like VNs is because they are not good games and they are even worse as novels. Dialogue is often unrealistic and banal and while I actually like the idea of reading a picture book, I still expect the book part to be worth it. Above all other things, I have not yet read a VN where the game mechanics worked and also let me move forward with ease. And, again on my side, I do not wish to choose my own adventure, I want to be told a good story. The decisions are usually either pointless, or so convoluted that I can’t actually get anywhere in the narrative. 

All this said, I was genuinely surprised and pleased at Studio Élan’s Heart of the Woods, Chapter One demo. 

To begin with…the sprites do not look like paper cutouts, flipping awkwardly, blinking convulsively like they have something in their eyes. Yay! Seriously, VN fans, I cannot understand how that does not make you twitchy.

The characters  move a little more naturally and their expressions actually vary, with smooth transitions. That right there, made the whole thing much easier to tolerate. I am a harsh master, though, and will still insist that, if a movement is important enough for it to be described in the text, it should be important enough to visualize. Moving sprites back and forth is fine for proximity, but if you can animate a character touching their face, you illustrate that character touching another character’s arm. I swear, I’m gonna harp on this forever until the entire industry gives in. ^_^ Show and tell. That’s the whole point.

The rest of the illustration, backgrounds and ambience on the game were, IMHO, excellent. There’s a number of small, but significant touches which increase player engagement; motion within scenes, a video recorder toggle, very good sound effects that match well with the visuals.  And the music is top-notch. I was reading the demo while my wife was home and just let the music run, because both of us found it pleasant and not at all repetitive.  Top marks for the music! I’ve got the fully voiced Kindred Spirits next on the list and I cannot express to you how much I am not looking forward to hearing that same 2-minute musical riff over and over again.

Then we come to the story. It’s slow to get going, I’ll be honest, but the payoff was exceptional. There’s a fair amount of setup and atmosphere. And implied but not explicated, backstory. The tensions are clear, but the reasons for them are not, yet.

There’s a lot of Chapter One. So much, that I wish there has been a progress meter as I went along. In some of the slower bits, I would have liked to know how much further along I had in that scene, and in the chapter. This will become especially important to the larger game, since I don’t know how many Chapters there will be – or how long they will be. Chapter One was pretty long, in my opinion.

Above all other things, I really liked that there were no decisions to make. I appear to be a minority of one in this. On the Studio Élan forums, people were bemoaning that there were no choices. The Studio stated clearly that there would be choices in the full version but, they would not change the romance paths.  So, like Kindred Spirits, I think we can look for choices that don’t change the larger narrative. I’m kind of sad that there are any choices, I know I’m alone in this, but I find them utterly exhausting and tedious. Tell me a story. 

I’m not going to talk about the characters, I’ll wait for the full game to do that. I think there will be a lot to talk about, then.

In the meantime,  I recommend the Heart of the Woods Chapter One demo and ask you to look forward to the full version which will be released in the middle of February!

Ratings: 

TBD when the full version comes out, but let’s call it a tentative 8 for now.

I am genuinely looking forward to the full version. That’s should count as a victory for the folks at Studio Élan.

Posted in Yuri Game, Yuri Visual Novel | 4 Comments »