What a way to end a week. As most of you probably know, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that marriage equality is the law of the land here in the USA yesterday. What an amazing way to start Pride weekend. I’m blinded by rainbows and practically weak from thanking people for their good wishes.
Here’s random wonderful things, separated by pictures of Yuri couples getting married.. ^_^
Comic Natalie reports that Auri Hirao’s newest attempt at a Yuri manga Oshika Budokan Itte Kuretara Shinu (推しが武道館いってくれたら死ぬ) will follow an idol and her fan. I wonder if it will have any Yuri.
Miman’s manga collection Shoujo² (少女²) hit the streets this month.
The Secret Loves of Geek Girls by Hope Nicholson is an amazing Kickstarter anthology that has quite possibly the most remarkable lineup of contributors ever for a comics, including Margaret Atwood – yes, that Margaret Atwood.
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!
In 2013, Cartoon Network ran a pilot for a possible new series that received rave reviews. As a result, it was launched for a full Season of 49 episodes that same year. In 2014, it was announced that Steven Universe had been picked up for a second season.
The original premise was described as a “magical boy” series because creator Rebecca Sugar, a former writer for Adventure Time, was looking to make something that anyone could enjoy and she was a bit fed up with the gendering of “magical” series.
In fictional Beach City, Steven Universe is a little boy whose mother was a “Crystal Gem”, Rose Quartz, and who now lives with three of his mother’s former compatriots – Pearl, Amethyst and Garnet (above, left to right.) His father lives nearby and runs the town car wash, while Steven trains to be able to use the Rose Quartz gem embedded in his body that he inherited from his mother.
This is all presented with a handwave and a declarative sentence. “Steven is….” But the whole story actually takes all 49 episodes to play out. We learn slowly, over time, as Steven unlocks new abilities and learns new facts about the true nature of the Gems, what his mother was, and what it all means to him.
Steven at the beginning of the series is rather annoying, in the time honored fashion of magical series protagonists. But almost stealthily, he starts to grow and mature. He makes friends with a local girl, Connie, and they two of them have some pretty great adventures together. With Connie at his side, Steven starts to unlock some of his abilities.
Each of the Gems has a distinct personality and skills, as well as magical weapons. Pearl is a bit of a pedant, and a stickler for the rules. Garnet is badass, and Amethyst is an Id on legs, causing chaos as often as shes helps resolve issues. It’s very apparent that all three Crystal Gems care for Steven, for himself and because he is Rose Quartz’s son.
About halfway through Season 1, we start to get an idea that the Gems do develop various levels of intimacy between them. When they are in sync, they can “fuse” into stronger, larger Gems, although clashing personalities can make that dangerous. We know right away that fusion is an act of intimacy, but when Steven manages it for the first time, the look on Garnet’s face – Garnet, who never smiles – is brilliant.
Garnet confirmed my thoughts on fusion with her advice to fused Steven – “You are not one person…or two. You…are an adventure. Go out and make it a good one.”
We also learn that Pearl’s feelings for Rose Quartz went way deeper than just friends. This is confirmed later in the season, when she tells Steven just how much Rose meant to her.
In the season climax, we get another glimpse of fusion being an act of intimacy between gems, but I’m not spoiling that, except to say it involved a kiss (the series forums exploded trying to dismiss or deny it had any meaning, which was hilarious) and a reveal so good I completely did not see it coming at all. (If you know it, please kindly do not spoil it in the comments. If you do, I’ll delete the comment- – it was too good to spoil. ) Some fans are adamant that the Gems are gender neutral, but I’d say that’s not a fixed state, since Rose was able to have a child with a human.
Remember what I said about musicals? I lied. I guess I really like musicals after all. Maybe I only like cartoon and comic-based musicals. I dunno. I do know the music in Steven Universe plays an actual role in the show. It’s not the same kind of singing to one’s self one represented by “Bacon Pancakes”…the songs add meaning and depth, and occasionally critical expository commentary and character development. So, just on the strength of character and storytelling, I’d say Steven Universe is a must-watch. But there’s also music!
It takes no effort at all to see that Steven Universe is probably the queerest cartoon on American television right now. And it’s really good.
Ratings:
Art – 8 Fun and fanciful
Story- 10 Really.
Characters – 9
Service – Not as such, no
Yuri – 5
Overall – 8
I’ve been binge-watching this series this week. It’s really quite good.
It is a hallmark of how predictable Tabisuru Shoujo to Shakukunetsu Kuni(旅する少女と灼熱の国) is, that 20 pages or so before I have completed it, I am writing this review. Or, as I like to describe it to other people, this was written with the help of the “Big Book O’War Novel Tropes.”
Do you remember the end of Madlax? No? Neither does anyone else, so don’t worry. It was a great series, and had a lot of everything, happening all at once, so it’s not surprising that you don’t. Well, the main point to remember is that at the end of the series the entity known as Margaret Burton at the beginning of the series, doesn’t really exist any more.
But her maid, Eleanor Baker, who has been traveling around war-torn Garth-Sonika for ten years, does not know this crucial fact. In those ten years she has been looking for Margaret without success. And it is into her (somewhat fruitless) quest we find ourselves catapulted in the beginning of this Light Novel.
Eleanor is looking for Margaret, without success. 10 years have passed, but she remains undaunted. Right away, this fact depressed the hell out of me. We know Margaret doesn’t exist as such anymore. And here’s Eleanor still looking for her. How depressing is that?
So, while looking for Margaret, she meets Dieu, a woman whose husband wandered off to war ages ago, and has struggled to keep her little cafe running, while being used and abused by local guerrilla fighters. Eleanor brings both hope and despair, but helps Dieu beat off the guerrillas long enough to be reunited with her husband. In addition to kicking guerrilla fighters in the balls, Eleanor cleaned the cafe for many pages.
Eleanor meets Nigel Wingate, a British Intelligence Officer who is too clever for his own good, and with whom she rescues a kidnapped child, Alissam, from a group of kidnappers. We were treated to many pages of the cleaning the filthy kitchen in the kidnapper’s apartments. After this segment, if you did not recognize the Japanese word for “roach” you were not paying attention.
In the third section, Eleanor and Wingate foil more bad guys, this time at a resort casino. We learn that, along with her amazing fighting and cleaning skills, Eleanor also is a casino-class card dealer.
The books ends (will end) with her and Wingate coincidentally traveling together.
There was, of course, as much service as could be crammed into a book that included guerrilla fighters intimidating the owner of a small cafe, kidnappers having kidnapped a female child and casino pool scenes. And, we learn details of cleaning in a war zone, which surely will be useful one day.
I can’t even say this book was bad. It was *exactly* what I expected from the official post-series Madlax novel. “Big Book O’War Novel Tropes” is ever so popular. Which is to say, who else but me and a bunch of freaks would ever read this? ^_^
Ratings:
Art – Meh
Story – Absurd
Characters – Ridiculous
Yuri – Of course
Service – Gobs
Overall – Laughably awful, unless you actually liked Madlax, like I did. Then it’s a depressing, dismal, 3.
On the third and final disk of Sailor Moon Season 1, Part 1, we settle in to a pattern of a sort. Usagi gets involved in a situation – and it takes Sailor Moon to get out of it.
Which leads me to think that if the Generals just stopped targeting Azabu-Juuban, they might have slightly better luck. It’s not like Usagi and the others are gonna hop a train to Akita to deal with a monster outbreak….
This series is not fair to Nephrite at all. Jadeite gets two disks worts of screwing up before he’s decommissioned, and as soon as Nephrite steps up, there’s Zoisite up his nostrils. And then Nephrite does something extra idiotic;, he falls for the normalest girl in the series, Naru. We spend slightly more time on this than you might imagine. Naru is able to see through his glamour almost immediately, which in any other series might indicate that she is meant to be part of the team. But not here. Here, Naru represents the Ur-girl. The non-magical, not-extra stupid, extra-smart, extra-psychic girl, and who, perhaps surprisingly, sees the most clearly.
Tucked in between this drama, we digress for a moment back into the nascent Sailor Moon x Tuxedo Mask romance. For those of us watching Sailor Moon Crystal, which, in taking it’s cue from the manga, is almost single-mindedly focused on their romance, this seems like a small enough nod, in between watching Nephrite struggle against his own idiot Queen, his rivals Zoisite and Kunzite and that damned Sailor Moon.
Ratings:
Art – 4
Story – 6 (Naru and Nephrite actually works better for me than Usgi and Mamoru)
Characters – 6
Yuri – 0 Although we don’t really know what Ami and Rei are up to, as they barely have any screen time ^_^
Service – 1 on principle
Overall – 6
The most ironic episode must surely be the one in which we learn all about how much animators care about making a great anime…even as the already stretched-thin budget of this first season hits a low point. ^_^
Previous Reviews of Sailor Moon, Season 1, Part 1:
Starting off with ANN, they have any number of reports of interest for us:
Aria the Avvenire anime trailer is posted and has characters new and old. Clearly, they feel that we should be over our hurt feelings by now. They are probably right. ^_^
UK fans can look for K-ON Season 2 complete sets from Manga Entertainment. (Presumably, they have previously released Season 1.)
I imagine that some of you will be interested to know that all-female musical troupe Takarazuka is planning a Rurouni Kenshin adaptation.They’ve obviously been successful with recent anime and manga adaptations, which is sort of interesting.
And Blood-C: The Last Mind is getting a stage adaptation. I cannot imagine. In fact, if I were to see it, I am 100% certain, I’d be laughing hysterically into a handkerchief the entire time. Just LOOK at those “evil” faces. Gawd. ^_^
From Senior YNN Correspondent, Erin S, Misunderstood. “A pure hearted warrior is sent on a quest to retrieve an emblem stolen from a local village. Yet this warrior is in for a surprise when she enters the territory of the demoness who stole the trinket.” The comic is available for purchase on Gumroad.
Other News
You know how I’m always encouraging you to read books without pictures, too? ^_^ Well ANN obviously feels the same way, so Gabriella Ekens put together a list of literature that gives insight to Psycho-Pass, from 1984 to Heart of Darkness. Good stuff and worth a read. (As are the books she suggests!)
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!
Erica Friedman is the Founder of Yuricon, ALC Publishing Lesbian Icon. Speaker, Writer, Editor/Adapter, LGBTQ manga tastemaker, 百合人. Proud to be a MLS. Learn more >>
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What a way to end a week. As most of you probably know, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that marriage equality is the law of the land here in the USA yesterday. What an amazing way to start Pride weekend. I’m blinded by rainbows and practically weak from thanking people for their good wishes.
Yuri Anime
