It’s Lucky Box Time on Okazu! – All Claimed –

December 18th, 2015

lb2015Every day on Okazu is fun, admittedly, but this is one of the funnest times of year – it’s Lucky Box time!

“Lucky Bags” are a feature of  New Year’s Day in Japan, where stores sell blind grab bags with you-do-not-know-what in them. ^_^ You have to trust that the store is putting a $200 handbag in a $100 lucky bag.

In the nature of lucky bags, I am doing my annual Lucky Boxes here on Okazu!

For those of you unclear on the idea of a Lucky Box or Grab bag – these are blind bags. You don’t know what you’re getting. There are no refunds, so if you’re not comfortable buying a box of you-have-no-idea-what, then I suggest not participating. I really can’t tell you what is in each box anyway, because I just crammed stuff in as tightly as possible, without regard for what specifically is in each box. ^_^ (Really please don’t buy one if you don’t like getting utterly random things randomly.)

As in previous years, these are medium USPS flat rate boxes crammed full of things like magazines, comics, books, postcards, and manga, media, papercraft, toys, goods, candy and random wtfness I have gotten over the year! This time I will have four boxes, all with *varying degrees* of appropriateness and all with some Yuri and other weird stuff.

Grab boxes are limited to the contiguous 48 states of the USA, because of the shipping, and people who are 21+ only, on principle, so I don’t have to worry about parental approval. Paypal only. Boxes will be first-comes, first served, as they are all jam packed with wtf this year. ^_^

Here is how to claim a Lucky Box. Please read this carefully.

Step 1:

Email me at anilesbocon01 at hotmail dot com with the Subject Line: Lucky Box. Please email me from an email you check frequently.

The body of the email should include your name, shipping address and age. Remember you must be 21+.

Step 2:

I will email you back with my Paypal info. When I receive your payment, I will let you know and we’ll mark the box “Claimed”. If I don’t receive a response or payment in a day or two, I move on to the next person on the waiting list.

Grab Box A – $50 Claimed!

Grab Box B  – $50 Claimed

Grab Box C – $50 Claimed!

Grab Box D – $50 Claimed!

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And there we go, all of the boxes have been claimed. You folks are crazy. ^_^ They’ll be shipped in the next coupla days. Enjoy!

Posted in Miscellaneous | No Comments »


Hayate x Blade 2 (Nyan), Volume 3 Manga (はやて×ブレード2 3)

December 16th, 2015

HxB23-275x394Since 2004, I have been raving about this series and since about 2007 or so, I have taken to commenting that, statistically speaking, we are overdue for a less awesome volume. So far, statistics have been on our side, as Hayate x Blade 2 (Nyan), Volume 3 (はやて×ブレード2 3) is just as ridiculous and magnificent as every other volume of this series to date.

Histugi’s Summer Festival is in full swing, and her unique ideas for an obstacle course are…unique. Regular students take up the sword to defeat Heaven fighters, all interestingly restrained, while their Earth partners make their way through the sports clubs as obstacles to find the buzzers that release the restraints.

In the middle of the chaos Hayate and Nagi face off. But this, we can see, is not the final chapter in this tale. Nagi is the stronger…but she shouldn’t be.  What is really eating at Nagi and why Hayate can no longer stand toe to toe with her twin remains to be explored. And we have to wonder if it’s tied into the reason that their adoptive mother Nagare takes off after their adoptive father, Taiyou, with a knife when she sees him. ^_^

School is back in session and we all know what that means! The Hoshitori is about to commence. New rules, new matchups and more sword-fighting madness is on the horizon. I can’t wait!

The extra chapter was so funny that my wife commented that even not being able to read the Japanese, she laughed at it. You remember back at the winter semester break, Otoha found herself joining a Native American tribe on a buffalo hunt, and meeting a doppelganger for Hitsugi? No? How on earth could you forget that? I mean, it was a buffalo hunt. Anyway, the doppelganger’s name was Sanba, she told Kiji to call her “Sunny.” In the extra chapter here in Volume 3, Sunny and Hitsugi meet and, as you might expect, something amazing happens. In this case, they take off like a rocket ship and fly away together, returning three days later after having raided Tokyo Disneyland, Otome Road and Skytree.

Ratings:

Art – 10 There are more then 40 main characters and I can tell them apart.
Story – 10 Sublime, especially when Hitsugi and Shizuku are going to be shot out of barrels.
Characters – 10 Did I mention that Hitsugi and Shizuku are going to be shot out of barrels?
Yuri – 1 for Jun on principle
Service – 1 for Jun on principle

Overall – 10

Always, always, always Hayate x Blade is a ridiculously silly, ridiculously violent, and ridiculously satisfying read.

 

Posted in Hayashiya Shizuru, Hayate x Blade | 2 Comments »


Yuri Manga: Sayonara Mutsuki-chan (さよならむつきちゃん)

December 14th, 2015

SMc-275x388Let’s start the week off with a reminder that, Pure Yuri Anthology Hirari may have stopped publishing in 2014 but there’s still new Yuri content coming out under the Hirari imprint.

Today we’re looking at Sayonara Mutsuki-chan (さよならむつきちゃん) by Isoya Yuki. This collection is one of Hirari’s smaller size books, and I like the change. The collection looks more adult than the larger B5 volumes.

The collection begins with a young woman saying goodbye to an older woman who is getting married. This is followed by a rather sweet-multi chapter series in which a high school girl falls for and woos the mother of a classmate. The epilogue for this series gives us an usually happily ever after, but it’s the body of the story that really wowed me. Rise falls for Machi, the mother of her classmate Shou. When Machi awkwardly tells Shou that she’s confessed, Shou shows a complete lack of concern and expresses the belief that it’s normal to him.

The final story in the collection is also quite wonderful as a girl conjures up a witch named “Johanssen” while trying to conjure up Scarlett Johansson. ^_^ It’s a quirky little story that I found rather appealing.

The collection includes a little creepy, a little silly and a lot of emotion, with no “Story A” at all. Characters, for all that we have very little time with them, are pretty fully developed…even if the development isn’t what we expect.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 9
Characters – 8
Yuri – 8
Service – 4 – Some bathing and other fetistry

Overall – a strong 8 and a really excellent read

All told a satisfying collection that made some unique  – and sometimes really weird  – bedtime reading.

Posted in Yuri Manga | No Comments »


Western Comic: Wonder Woman ’77 Special #1

December 13th, 2015

51owyA3bWxL._SX323_BO1,204,203,200_TV in the 1970s has the most amazing ability to be beloved in retrospect even though it was largely unwatchable then and absolutely excruciating now. Despite the obvious craptasticness of the the acting, plots, special effects and dialogue, people wax poetic about things that actually made me cringe as a child. One of those things that people love is the Wonder Woman TV show with Lynda Carter. I remember tuning each week and making cringey-face as Diana Prince pretended to be less cool than she was so as to never indicate that she was strong, powerful or much better at the job than the Steve Trevor. In the middle of a feminist wave, I found it to be just short of enraging.

But, there was a female superhero on TV. So I watched the show. Lynda Carter deserves praise. She did her best when the writing mostly threw her under the bus.

Imagine my surprise when people discussed this show as if it was, actually feminist..and good! Really? Diana spent the end of every episode lying so as to never hurt Steve’s feelings or make him feel less than the hero. This was, and is, as far as I’m concerned, pretty much the antithesis of feminism. Maybe if women spoke up about what – and how much – they actually do, and stopped trying to coddle men, there’d be more equality. Maybe. Probably not. ^_^;

In any case, I was flabbergasted that people saw Wonder Woman as a feminist icon and not just a big ball of cheesteastic 70s TV. I watched The Secrets of Isis and Shazaam, too. The fear of the terrible has never been a problem for me. ^_^ Nor am I prone to delusion about the things I enjoy. Remember the three rules of fandom here on Okazu:

Just because you like something, doesn’t mean it’s good.

Just because you don’t like something, doesn’t mean it’s bad.

And just because something is bad doesn’t mean you can’t like it. ^_^

So when it was announced that a special comic anthology was being created to  highlight the show, I was like, yeah, okay, bring it on. Well, Wonder Woman ’77 Special #1 was kinda fun. Yes, it’is super cheesy, with Steve’s low cut dancing outfit and the dialogue, which really does sound like a reflection of the TV show, I kind of enjoyed it, despite myself.  Completely unlike Andy Mangels who writes a companion essay, a man besotted with wonder, as he might say, I liked it for it’s tacky and oh-so-70s self, and not any delusions about a bigger picture.

If you haven’t actually watched the show, but want to see it through the eyes of people who loved it, then definitely get this comic. Diana Prince is a “modern” American woman, she can bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan. She can save the day and never make Steve Trevor question his masculinity. She is a relic from a decade that I am so very glad is now ancient history. I look forward to one day ever getting a…something, anything…that Wonder Woman deserves. (The upcoming pissing contest between Batman and Superman is not going to be it.) But in the meantime, there was a time, a long time ago, when Wonder Woman had her own TV show and it was a lot of fun, but never good. Relive those days in Wonder Woman ’77, if you dare. ^_^

Ratings –

Overall – 8

Posted in Western Comic/Comix | 8 Comments »


Yuri Network News – (百合ネットワークニュース) – December 12, 2015

December 12th, 2015

YNN_MariKYuri Manga

Top story today, Seven Seas continues it’s tradition of licensing only the vilest, least consensual, most dysfunctional stories to be found in Comic Yuri Hime, with NTR -Netsuzou Trap, a series about two girls with boyfriends who have public, mostly non-consensual sex for no goddamn good reason.

I do not discuss this series when I review Comic Yuri Hime, because I do not consider it to be “Yuri” at all.  Along with To Lie Angle, NTR is a story for creepy dudes. This is not a series I want to have anything to do with, and therefore I will not link to it, it will not be added to the Yuricon Store nor will I mention it again. No reviews will be published on this or any Seven Seas materials until they publish some Yuri that isn’t vile. Citrus is bad, NTR is unspeakably awful. I have spent many years making sure people know that Yuri is not just porn. Stuff like this sets us back two decades.

NTR is not  erotic, not melodrama. It’s not a cute story with a lot of service, it’s a unpleasant story about girls cheating on their boyfriends with each other, with one girl coercing the other to have sex with her, chapter after chapter. If you buy it, I will not condemn you, but I will have nothing to do with it. For the first time ever, I recommend against buying a Yuri manga being put out in English.

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Support Good Yuri Comics and Manga – support Okazu!Subcribe with Patreon***

If you rely on translated materials, now is a great time to learn Japanese, so you can read some of the decent Yuri manga being published in Japan.

To wash the bad taste out of my mouth from this news, I’ll recommend Rebecca Silverman’s Best and Most Memorable Manga of 2015 list on ANN, which awards Ikeda Takashi’s Whispered Words the “Sweetest Finale” title. The whole article was worth reading. ^_^

Japanese fans run down their top Yuri Manga for the year in the “Kono Yuri Manga ga Sugoi!“.

And for something much less awful, next week sees Katakura Ako’s Last Waltz (ラストワルツ) hitting the shelves in Japan.

 

Yuri Anime

From YNN Correspondent Day, we have news of savings on holiday sales! “Rightstuf is doing their massive annual sale and several Yuri titles have been included so far. Blue Drop is $11.99, Kashimashi is $12.49, Destiny of the Shrine Maiden is $11.99, Simoun is $9.99, the various Marimite boxes are between $14.99 and $19.99, and Sakura Trick $22.49… and Burst Angel for $15.61 (on Bluray). They also, quite helpfully, have ‘Yuri’ as one of the ‘Theme’ listed in their sidebar for sorting.”

Excellent news, Day, thanks!

ANN reports that the Madoka movie created for the SHAFT “Madogatari” exhibit in Japan is at the core of the new project by the studio. Crunchyroll  News has some of the visuals.

 

Know some cool Yuri News you want people to know about? Become a Yuri Network Correspondent by sending me any Yuri-related news you find. Emails go to anilesbocon01 at hotmail dot com. Not to the comments here, please, or they might be forgotten or missed. There’s a reason for this madness. This way I know you are a real human, not Anonymous (which I do not encourage – stand by your words with your name!) and I can send you a YNN correspondent’s badge.

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

Posted in Yuri Network News | 20 Comments »