Puella Magi Madoka☆Magica Homura Revenge! Manga, Volume 2 (魔法少女まどか☆マギカ ほむらリベンジ!)

May 4th, 2014

Back in January 2014, I reviewed the first volume of Puella Magi Madoka☆Magica Homura Revenge!, in which we meet Akemi Homura, cycling once again through another version of the story in which she meets Madoka, and desperately tries to keep her from becoming a magical girl. In Volume 2, we pick up as Sayaka and Kyouko face off about which one of them will protect the town.

After Mami’s death, things spiral quickly downward, with Kyouko, Sayaka and Homura in direct competition with one another, despite Madoka’s repeated pleas for them to work together. Sayaka falls first, the victim of over-reaching her limits, Kyouko falls on Walpurgisnacht, leaving Homura alone again to fight…only she finds herself not alone, as Madoka breaks her promise to not become a magical girl.

Madoka and Homura face Walpurgisnacht together (and for once, my timing worked out as I finished this book on Walpurgisnacht, in between dancing with the devil and flying about on my broom) and embrace, as Homura says farewell to Madoka and resets time one more time, to try again and keep Madoka from her fate.

The title is a bit misleading, Homura neither takes revenge, nor has revenge taken on her. This is, more or less, her story, one she has lived over and over again in hopes that she can stop it completely.  And, like so many other iterations of her story, it has no resolution. But for a moment, she and Madoka were able to be together and their hearts were as one.

Ratings:

Art –  6
Story – 7 I was hoping for a stronger ending, but the climax was good.
Characters – Is it just me, or Kyouko gaining prominence with every version?
Yuri – 1 It’s love because the two of them have such strong akashic ties by this point, but I would not say they are “in love”
Service – 1 Almost non-existent, which was kind of nice, especially as I saw some bits of the movie this week at a Japanese bookstore and in less than 5 minutes watched all their breasts bounce at least once and saw a lot of thighs.

Overall – Melancholy, but not bad. 7

Posted in Puella Magi Magica Madoka | 7 Comments »


Yuri Network News (百合ネットワークニュース) – May 3, 2014

May 3rd, 2014

YNN_MariKYuri Anime

Quick recap of this week’s top news: Shoujo anime is hot again.

CLAMP’s wonderful anime Cardcaptor Sakura is getting a Blu-Ray release and the third set of Riyoko Ikeda’s melodrama Dear Brother was fully funded on Animesols, so that will also be available for purchase when it gets a release date.

Sailor Moon Crystal is confirmed for 26 episodes, with a biweekly release schedule.

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Yuri Manga

Niki Smith spotted Eros/Psyche on the Tokyopop Germany website. The artist, Maria Llovet, she tells me, is Spanish, and the book was first published in France. I hope one of our French or German readers will consent to doing a review!

From Pure Yuri Anthology Hirari, March saw the release of Hakoniwa Cosmos (箱庭コスモス) by Kuwata Noriko.

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Yuri Events

Girls Love Festival, the all-Yuri doujinshi show in the Tokyo area, has announced October 19, 2014 as the date for the 12th such event! Good on them for keeping it going. ^_^ Check out the cover for the Sailor Moon Yuri only section, by Amano Shuninta! I’m strongly considering going to this one…hmmm.

Comitia 108 is coming up on May 5th and with it a lot of original Yuri works, as well. Here’s a Pixiv preview of a Yuri doujinshi by Kano and a Yuri doujinshi by Himekawa Yukiko. (You’ll need a Pixiv login to read them…and, just a reminder, they are in Japanese.)

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Other Stuff

Rocket 24 found an artist that imagines the Sailor Senshi as lingerie models. Why not.

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That’s a wrap for this week! 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 | 14 Comments »


Cardcaptor Sakura Anime on Blu-Ray

May 1st, 2014

ccs2 Waaayy back, right after Sailor Moon took the west by storm, almost all of the voice cast were in high demand. A few of them landed in an adorable magical girl anime created by the all-female studio that goes by the name CLAMP…and another blockbuster series was born.

Tokyopop licensed Cardcaptor Sakura, and did a very decent job with it, but it came out just slightly too soon for the big shoujo popularity wave. CCS was infamously licensed for TV as Card Captors, and hacked into pieces, to make the Li Syaoran the lead, instead of the titular character Sakura. I know people who are still angry about that. ^_^

More importantly, this series just had the worst timing ever in terms of the US market. It just sort of disappeared into the gap after Sailor Moon and before Fruits Basket. Then Tokyopop went under and CCS faded away.

But, having hit a major anniversary in Japan, a new premium box set was released there. I’ve had it on my personal wish list of licenses since it was announced and yesterday the news hit – NIS America is releasing a Blu-Ray Premium box set of the Cardcaptor Sakura TV anime, with a dub (that I will never ever listen to. ^_^) I will totally be getting this for a number of reasons:

CLAMP series on Blu-Ray

Yue

Voice actors who win the universe

Gender and age bent relationships up the wazoo

Fabulous story

Did I mention Yue? Really…he’s worth the entire series.

Stolen directly from ANN: The Premium Edition, will be US$249.99, will include all 70 episodes on nine Blu-ray Discs, a 76-page hardcover art book, clean openings and endings, and a collectable slip case. The Standard edition will include three 4-DVD volumes for US$59.99 each. This is slated for an August release.

I know what I’m getting myself as a birthday present.

Posted in Card Captor Sakura | 10 Comments »


Yuri Anime: First Look at Riddle Story of a Devil Anime (English) Guest Review by Eric P.

April 30th, 2014

akumaWelcome to another Guest Review Wednesday here on Okazu. Returning to our community is Guest Reviewer Eric P., with a first look at Riddle Story of a Devil, streaming on Funimation.com for North America and Crunchyoll.com for other countries. Yay!

From Yun Kouga, the creator of Loveless, we get what has been overtly categorized as a Yuri Action series, Riddle Story of a Devil.

The story is set at Myojo Academy, an otherwise ordinary girls’ private boarding school, except for one specific classroom called the Black Class. Only on the surface do the students in said classroom appear to be normal and cordial, but beneath their masks is a group of professional calculating assassins in training, with the exception of one. Their mission is to figure out which student that is, and whoever is the one that kills her will have any personal wish granted, and whoever fails their turn will be “expelled”.

The assassin trainee we focus on, Tokaku Azuma, is as cold and distant as they come, and defiant in going with the flow of the classroom’s friendly façade. She figures it out almost right away that the target is Haru Ichinose who, out of everyone, does not have the smell of a killer, not to mention that she couldn’t betray a more innocently sunny nature (as a side-note, I can’t help but think of Nagisa from Strawberry Panic whenever I see her). As fate would have it, they are roommates, and later on Tokaku finds out about the grisly cuts that are all over Haru’s body. Not only that, but Haru is very much aware that her life is targeted for termination by the other students, even though she attempted to befriend those very people. It rightfully shocks Tokaku that Haru can maintain a cheery personality, even after shedding some light on a horrific past where Haru’s family was murdered because of her (the only explanation given so far is that  her family is part of a clan). Yet she makes it her firm belief and mission that she will graduate from this school alive for her family and live normally. Slowly but surely, Tokaku is drawn to Haru, her personal walls break down, and she sets her own new mission—to protect Haru from the other assassins.

Upon watching the first episode, my primary single thought was, “This is definitely way better than Sakura Trick.” For that reason alone I felt the need to check out the second episode before having an official first impression. As of these first two episodes, it’s definitely your basic anime series meant to be fun entertainment. All in all, it could be what one would mostly ask for from a Yuri Action series, one of which seems to be off to a promising start. The Action part of it has not quite started yet, but that is bound to change by the 3rd episode. Moving at almost the same pace is the Yuri part of it. Unlike most Yuri series, the two lead protagonists are not blatantly lovey-dovey from the get-go. Instead the story chooses to nurture their relationship more gradually, although viewers can still make out the first stages of their nascent bond as they balance out each other’s polar opposite characters.

That is just one of a handful of little things making for interesting hooks to the story. There must be more to Haru’s past than she’s revealed to Tokaku, more to find out how she can be able to emotionally survive through life the way she does, even if there is the chance she is just forcing herself and it may well partly be an act. There is still something behind Tokaku’s past about a temple she was taken to visit by her mom, something that helps abstain Tokaku from being a full cold-blooded killer even though she had chosen the life of an assassin. And the enigmatic Kaiba, Tokaku’s master who had enrolled her in the classroom, is clearly manipulating his trainee in a game bound to be sadistic with his own ulterior motives. I am genuinely curious in finding out what lays ahead in Tokaku and Haru’s journey together, and so far my only real nitpick is Haru annoyingly referring to herself in the third person.

Overall (thus far)-A cautiously optimistic 7

Thank you Eric! I’ve caught up on the first 3 episodes and I too am cautiously optimistic for several reasons. The story has much stronger writing than I expected, even from Kouga-sensei. Here’s hoping it has a strong ending!
Posted in English Anime, Yuri Anime | 6 Comments »


Seiten no Hekigan Manga, Volume 1 (晴天の碧眼)

April 29th, 2014

Natsuki is anti-social. Despite her very best efforts, she has one friend in school and still, after all these months after transferring in, has to turn down requests from her classmates to hang out with them. It makes her grumpy. Also making her grumpy is when the other girls talk about her, or when they leave her alone, and when her mother does nice things for her, and everything about being alive. As Seiten no Hekigan, Volume 1 (晴天の碧眼) opens Natsuki is happiest left to grump by herself on the school roof.

One day, sitting on the roof grumping by herself, Natsuki feels a gross gloopy thing hit her in the face. She’s utterly grossed out, think it’s bird poop or something, when it hits her again, and again. A blue Jell-O-like rain is falling from the sky and Natsuki is freaking, until the blue goop starts to pool and becomes a big blue jelly creature that jumps her. When Natsuki regains consciousness, she’s on the school roof, with a naked girl on top of her, kissing her. Natsuki guesses correctly that the naked girl and the blue creature are the same, that the “kissing” thing was so the creature could read her mind and that the creature is an alien. Points  for Natsuki not being a dingbat.

The blue creature, now an attractive Japanese girl with blue eyes, goes home with Natsuki, where she brainwashes everyone into remembering that Natsuki has a half younger sister, who has been overseas. “Aoi” joins Natsuki’s family all too seamlessly, and Natsuki occasionally wonders if she wasn’t brainwashed as well. Eventually Aoi admits that she was a criminal at home and was sent here as punishment. But, no, Aoi insists, she hasn’t brainwashed Natsuki at all.

The rest of the  volume is taken up with Natsuki and Aoi having a big fight, learning why Natsuki is so angry and them making up. Their affection and  caring about one another develop into genuinely sisterly feelings.  In the final pages, we see another blue goop alien arrive and take on the form of a cat, as the mental background music suddenly turns very ominous.

While the story starts with a kiss, by the end of the first volume, I’d say that it isn’t really “Yuri” at all, but is instead sisterly affection with a frisson of Yuri for readers who are uncomfortable with the idea that women have more layers of relationships than “sex with” or “no sex with” each other.

But the surprising thing is…it’s a pretty good story. Nothing is unique really;  intruder in class draws the attention of the class grump and forces her into society is pretty much the same story as  Zenryaku, Yuri no Sono Yori, among others, (and now that I think about it, the character types are extremely similar, as well) but something about it works for me.

Ratings:

Art – 8 Solid, unexceptional, pleasant.
Story – 8 Same as above
Characters – Surprisingly realistic for all that Aoi is an alien.
Yuri – 1 After that one kiss, it’s all in your head or not
Service – 1 Same as Yuri, after the first scene, there’s basically no service

Overall – 8

I guess Volume 2 will be the inevitable “Aoi has to go back home to her planet” crisis and we’ll see if it holds up under pressure. ^_^

Posted in Miscellaneous | No Comments »