Yuri Manga: Yagate Kimi ni Naru, Volume 4 (やがて君になる)

October 5th, 2017

In my previous reviews of Volume 1,  Volume 2 and Volume 3 of Nakatani Nio-sensei’s series I have expressed, at length, my discomfort with this series as a whole and in specific. I won’t beat that same drum today. And, as the book is available in English now, (Volume 1, Volume 2, and Volume 3 are available in English and Volume 4 will be out in winter 2018 ) you can decide for yourself whether you share my perspective.

In Volume 4 of Yagate Kimi ni Naru, (やがて君になる), a new plot complication enters the ring, which is already quite crowded. And once again, I’m not sure whether it’s there as a tiresome plot complication or a really deeply complex emotional conflict that is given no words with which to be expressed. 

The Student Council is going to perform a play for the school festival. Written by one of Yuu’s classmates, it strikes much too close to the truth for the actor’s comfort, but they put everything they have into the play. They decide to spend a few days at the school in a training camp to practice. This puts Sayaka, Touko and Yuu in close proximity for several tense days as their mutually exclusive desires keep any one of them from breaking the detentes.

More critically for Touko, in the course of the training she meets a man who knew her sister in school. For the first time she’s able to see past the glamour to get a glimpse of the person she’s always been running after, who may not be what she thought.

And most critically, we meet a friend of Yuu’s from school who notes that Yuu’s current level of normal whining about her club activities being so exhausting is kind of refreshing. Natuski notes that when Yuu was on softball team she never seemed to have any opinion about anything and made no decisions.  Now, Natsuki notes, she has an an actual interest. Are we meant to understand this as an important quality in Yuu – a crippling indecisiveness that she’s just now moving past? Or is this just a standard manga handwave, like Hazumu’s inability to make even the simplest decisions in Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl?

I don’t know and you’ll get to decide for yourselves, when Volume 4 comes out in English in February.

I call this the most problematic book I’m currently reading. I just can’t like Yuu or Touko, but I quite like Sayaka  and really want her coming out the other end of this only nominally scathed.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 5 This issue has issues
Characters – 8 
Yuri – 7
Service – 4 Bathing scenes with three girls, two of whom are lesbian.

Overall – 8….

I don’t see a way out for anyone as of yet. I hope to heck Nakatani-sensei has a plan here. I very much want to believe she’s not just jerking us around, but this is a Dengeki series, so I’m really not all that sure.

Posted in Bloom Into You / Yagate Kimi ni Naru, Nakatani Nio, Yuri Manga | 6 Comments »


Yuri Manga: Sweet Blue Flowers, Volume 1 (English)

October 4th, 2017

Third time’s the charm. In 2012, JManga did a digital-only translation. Towards the end of 2014, Digital Manga Publishing also tried putting Shimura Takako-sensei’s new classic Yuri manga out as a digital publication. Now, in 2017 we have what is very likely to be the definitive English-language translation for the series, in omnibus format. Thanks to Jocelyne Allen, Jen Gruningen and the folks at Viz, I think we’re at peak Aoi Hana here in the west.

Sweet Blue Flowers, Volume 1 introduces us to Manjome Fumi and her old childhood friend, Okudaira Akira. They had been very close as children, but when Fumi moved, they fell out of touch. Now, as they both head to different high-end girls’ schools, they’ve met again. 

I was reminded as I read this book that although the opening and the ending are – in my opinion – very weak, the rest of the story is excellent. It’s got surprising depth and breadth. Characters that surround Fumi and Akira are as well-developed as they and as interesting. 

In the first half of this Volume 1 – the original Volume 1 that was, Fumi is charmed, then asked out by an upperclassman at her all-girl’s school. Sugimoto is not her first girlfriend, but may well be the first by her own volition. Their time together is brief, as it becomes very clear that Sugimoto carries a whole host of issues with her and Fumi recognizes that she’s worth paying full attention to.  By the second half of the volume, Fumi has learned a lot about herself, among them that Sugimoto is the third person she’s loved.

The school play gives a chance for the cast of both schools to mix and emotions to be be heightened. Wuthering Heights is an unsurprising allegory for the tensions and passions of the cast to swirl and come together and part, like a storm. 

But by the end of the volume we have Akira and Fumi still friends. Fumi has, in a very rare act in Yuri manga, comes out to Akira. It’s a tempestuous time in their lives, but they both know who each other were – and are – and are there for each other. 

This still, after all these years, stands out as one of Shimura’s most tightly put-together stories. Other series have sort of swirled and eddied around the same material without changing, but we can see the changes to Akira and Fumi and their friends in pretty steady progression, as they encounter, deal with and grow from challenging situations.

This is a series that has many (if not all) the hallmarks of a “S”-era story and in my Very Brief History of Yuri I call it and Maria-sama ga Miteru “S for a new generation.” We can, like Fumi, enjoy the atmosphere of an old girl’s school. We can enjoy the drama that comes along with the hot-house environment. And we get the added advantage of characters with society – friends and families, brothers and parents and teachers who are male and female and a modern sensibility, in which gay people exist, and have lives. This is all so critical to my enjoyment of a manga. We have this series in omnibus form (available in print and digital format) and it, like several other series available right now, will be on my short-list of books that embody the classic concepts of the genre of “Yuri.” 

Interestingly, since the author attempted (unsuccessfully) to visit Yoshiya Nobuko’s home, the grandmother of Yuri gets both a mention in the notes and is attributed as the women who pioneered Yuri in Japanese literature. This is true, but she’s even more important than the note accounted for, because she not only pioneered Yuri, but also a great deal of what we think of as shoujo literature and manga. Yoshiya Nobuko-sensei was the richest woman in Japan in her lifetime. She’s an inspiration and a hero of mine. (Here’s my report of visiting Yoshiya-sensei’s home, from 2013.)

This edition came with a lovely assortment of postcards from the Aoi Hana Meets the Enoshima Electric Railway collaboration event from 2012 (an event reported in excellent detail by Guest Reviewer Bruce P – with pictures!). The book itself is exceedingly well put-together, with those cover flaps that take the place of a dustcover, but allow readers to see all of the cover and flap art. Color pages are included – including the cover of the second volume as a interior color page. Even the font choice matched the original well. And the translation and adaptation are excellent. I really do think this is a “definitive” edition. We’re not likely to get better. There’s very little room for it to be better. 

This is the version we all wanted. There’s no excuse not to buy it and support the author and folks at the publishing companies that brought it to us! Volume 2 will be out in December, 2017.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Characters – 8
Story – 7
Yuri – 7
Service – 1

Overall – 8

Today’s review was brought to you by the kindness and generosity of Okazu Superhero and occasional Guest Reviewer, Eric P.! Thank you Eric, once more, for all your many years of support! 

If you enjoy our Guest Reviews here on Okazu, I hope you’ll help support the Guest Reviewers – the Okazu Patreon is a mere $34/month away from being able to pay our writers. Every dollar will get us closer to that goal. If you’re a regular reader here and have enjoyed Eric’s reviews, I hope you’ll consider supporting Okazu on Patreon so we can pay him for his work! 

Posted in Aoi Hana/ Sweet Blue Flowers, English Manga, LGBTQ, Shimura Takako, Yuri Manga | 4 Comments »


Yuri Anime News: Asagao to Kase-san OVA Coming in 2018!

October 3rd, 2017

The news has come from on high – 2018 will see an Asagao to Kase-san OVA!

The official Asagao-Anime twitter feed and website made the announcement this week. According to the announcement, the OVA will be getting a limited-time theater release in Japan. Cast, staff and screenings will are all still to be announced.

Thank you to everyone who watched the Asagao to Kase-san animation clip on Youtube and who commented there and on Twitter that they enjoyed it. You clearly helped the production committee to make a case that there was an audience for this anime. 

In celebration, Comic Natalie is carrying some of the official Asagao to Kase-san merchandise in their store. (You can use a buying service like White Rabbit or Tenso to buy things from Japanese companies that can’t or won’t ship overseas.)

Now we’ll just have to convince Pony Canyon and the Asagao Anime Production Committee to screen the OVA a few locations in North America.  Chances are most likely that if it screens in North America it will be at an anime convention like Anime Expo (where Pony Canyon sold the animation clip DVD) or Anime NYC. I won’t expect or assume theater screenings near me. I’ll hope that a con I can get to has a screening. ^_^

More importantly, I hope that any OVA DVD/BD has subtitles in English. This seems more likely, as the production committee seems to have fluent English speakers on their social media accounts. Fingers crossed.

In the mean time, please feel free to comment on the Kase-san Twitter feed and let them know you’re looking forward to this OVA!

P.S. – Check out the RTs on the announcement – Pure Yuri Anthology Hirari‘s Twitter feed is still active and sent out a “congrats.” as well as Pony Canyon. ^_^ So cute.

Posted in Kase-san Series, Yuri Anime | 5 Comments »


Yuri Novel: Shoujo Mousouchuu. (少女妄想中。)

October 2nd, 2017

As I read Shoujo Mousouchuu. (少女妄想中。) by Iruma Hitoma, I pondered how I might translate the title, as I do. Is it more like the “Girl of my Delusion” or “The Delusional Girl?” This is not an idle thought, either. How I translate the title could easily affect how I saw the stories in the collection.

A girl in elementary school sees an older girl running by and spends the next decade running after that figure. Having rejected the friend who loves and desires her, she knows that her obsession is unhealthy, but can’t help running after her image of the running girl. A girl on the beach meets another girl with a strange name. They spend time together, and run away together…but are either of them real?

A girl falls in love with her aunt, who only has one eye. The story of the accident looms large, but not as large as the girl’s desire for this woman she can’t stop thinking about. A girl goes to the beach with a friend where they discover love for one another, but it was probably all a dream.

You see my point. Is the girl with the delusion the point or the girl being obsessed about? It’s not that easy to tell, as reality and delusion mix and merge and pull apart repeatedly in these stories. In the first story, Ao meets the running girl several times in her imagination before she encounters her as an adult many years later. And the entire love affair in the last story isn’t real at all. So as we read, we’re constantly being asked to re-evaluate the story and see it through two lenses, one of delusion and the other of reality.

Nothing at all happens. Nothing. Less than nothing. I mean, like Misaki and Shirone go to the beach, meet up in town and one day get on a train, then turn around and come back. The end. So if you’re looking for clear cut stories with beginnings and endings, this may not be the thing for you.  On the other hand…it was a pretty good book, I have to say. Not an easy read, especially when I was tired, but compelling enough that I often read a few pages more than I should have stayed up for.  

Ratings: 

Overall – 8

If you want to read something with a little light Yuri and a frisson of mindfuck, Shoujo Mousouchuu. isn’t a bad choice. 

Posted in Novel, Queer Fiction | 1 Comment »


Summer Reading: What Happened

October 1st, 2017

Well. That was cathartic.

What Happened, by Hillary Rodham Clinton, won’t fix anything. It won’t change the weaponization of social media we saw used so effectively (even now) by Russia and mercenary allies. It won’t change or fix the crushing misogyny and racism that is choking us as a society. It won’t fix that America’s always-flawed system has been irretrievably and possibly irreversibly damaged by the election of the least competent person to run for President in a hundred years to the highest position in the land. It won’t and cannot fix any of those things. Nor does it attempt to do so.

But as a clear-minded and reasonably balanced look at the many factors that loomed large in the 2016 USA Presidential election, this is a book that will be mandatory reading for decades, possibly centuries, to come.

It begins with Clinton thanking and praising so many people; the village that helped her campaign. And it never stops thanking her friends, her supporters, the people she spoke with, who canvassed for her, the press who traveled with her, her peers and coworkers in the government, her friends, family and all the folks who helped her make history as the first-ever female major party candidate for President. That achievement has been wholly ignored by everyone, but it’s an achievement, nonetheless.

Clinton breaks down all the mistakes she made even, and especially, ones she thought she managed to do right that were turned against her. She holds the media and Former FBI director James Comey accountable for their behaviors that contributed, both directly and indirectly, to her loss. And she speaks plainly about the ongoing “active measures” Putin is taking in elections around the western world. We’re seeing it in drives to secession from the successful Kurds to Catalonia, from Brexit to the ridiculous California secession movement – anything to fragment and destablize the west. And of course, she recognizes the decades-long hate campaign against her, personally, from days when she was the Arkanasas’ governor’s wife, through her days as First Lady right through the campaign. But the person she blames the most is herself.

After the stress of election night, she talks about how she put herself back together, about her new activism and about her renewed desire to be and stay active for women and children. Clinton’s voice is so distinct, I don’t know how one could read this book and not hear it as she would speak it.

This was not an easy book for me to read. It hurt – it hurts again right now as I review it. Every round of golf, every racial baiting tweet, every day that incompetent is in the White House, it hurts. Which is why I had to read it. But it also has moments of laugh-out-loud humor. And it ends with love and kindness…and hope.

This is a chronicle of the day the west fell. We all should know what happened.

Ratings:

Overall – 10

The weaponization of social media Clinton speaks of is still in full-force. Before the book even was available, hundreds of 1-star ratings appeared on Amazon and thousands of nasty comments appeared on the 5-star ratings. It’s not just bots – it’s people manipulated by propaganda spread by bots and partisan politics. On my review I commented that I had cried and laughed reading the book. The angry angry person who commented told me that no, I hadn’t. So much anger because of 30 years of lies about a woman who worked so hard to serve her country. It’s terrifying. And we still have to live in it.

 

Posted in Queer Fiction | 4 Comments »