Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Manga, Perfect Edition, Volume 2 (美少女戦士セーラームーン)

February 25th, 2014

Content-wise, Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Perfect Edition, Volume 2 (美少女戦士セーラームーン) is pretty much the straightest volume of any story ever written ever. ^_^

The Earth is being attacked by minions of the Dark Kingdom, and the remainder of Queen Beryl’s Generals are falling at the hands  of the Senshi AND the true identity of the Moon Princess is revealed at last, but if you were just flipping through the manga, you might be hard pressed to tell with all that “Mamo-chan!”ing going on. ^_^;

Usagi’s memories are returned and she is awakened as Princess Serenity. That also means she now knows that she and the Prince of the Earth were fated to be together (which she would have known if she just listened to “Moonlight Densetsu” duh). And Mamoru takes on the role of damsel for the series with gusto being killed kidnapped, brainwashed and stabbed…all by the end of Volume 2.

The formula of minion–>boss–>Big Boss–>>Boss Boss is well established here. We’d better get used to it, because it isn’t going away any time soon.

My last thought about the Generals is that it was better that they were defeated by the Senshi than by Queen Metallia. That always made me crazy in the original anime.

The art gets really busy from the point where they all visit the moon, and after we learn Usagi’s real identity, the story shifts further and further away from the rest of the Senshi to her and Mamoru’s tragic love story.

The end of Volume 2 closes what we think of the first season of the anime and ends with the fateful moment when a small pink-haired child ruins Sailor Moon and all of voice acting forever.  Also the inexplicable and simultaneously under-and over-used magic bag of LunaP.

Ratings:

Art – I really liked it. The repro is crisp as all get out. 8
Story – Messy, but who cares, really? 8
Characters – Ami, Makoto, Rei who? 4
Yuri – 0, The only thing even remotely “Yuri” if you worked hard enough at it was Minako and Ami cheek-to-cheek in  the Christmas-themed color insert.
Service – Still hard for me to parse. Can someone ask an 11-year old niece if anything made her heartbeat faster?

Overall – 8

My takeaway from this volume is this: THIS is why you do not put a cat in charge of your operations.

Posted in Sailor Moon | 1 Comment »


Live Action: Schoolgirl Complex (スクールガール・コンプレックス~ 放送部篇)

February 23rd, 2014

August 2013 saw the premiere of a live-action “Yuri” movie. Called Schoolgirl Complex – Hosoubuhen (スクールガール・コンプレックス~放送部篇), my first and last thought about it was “Well that looks like a Story A.” I have now had a chance to watch it. Here is a transcript of my live-tweeting the first half:

– The movie Schoolgirl Complex has the same cameraman as Sakura Trick. Makes me want to punch someone.

– The problem with this otaku gaze is that it robs the story of any sincerity, turning it into the lamest porn ever bcs there’s no sex.

– So you have girls pulling up socks sllooooowwwwly, not just yanking them up like actual people do.

– It’s so insincere and immature, the live-action film version of chortling over National Geographics 80 years ago.

– One can be an otaku or a fujyoshi without being an immature creep. But the media does not reflect that.

– Buchou is such a wet rag, how did she become the club president?

– Now we’re having a clip episode of the last 23 minutes of the movie! No *wonder* this thing is 95 minutes long!

– Oh, oh, oh! I know what this movie reminds me of! The Live-action Blue: Only not *quite* as bereft and more pervy.

– Every scene is about  90 seconds long, like they are filming an eternal set of trailers.

Then, a scene happened that had me laughing so hard, I forgot to keep tweeting. So let me back up and synopsize.

Chiyuki is a new member of the Broadcasting Club at a girls’ school and during one summer, her and the club president’s feelings for each other threaten to tear the club up. A club member, Kazumi, sees Chiyuki as a problem and tries to throw her out, but Manami, the club president is captivated by her. Another member, Ai has feelings for Manami. During the school festival, Chiyuki goes off with a guy she does not feel she can leave and the Broadcasting Club does its audio play without her. In the middle of the broadcast, Ai breaks down and confesses to Manami, and sort of cutely, the audience is on her side, but she rejects their help. It was an interesting exploration of not adhering to Aristotelian principles of dramatic unity.

Ultimately, with Chiuyki gone, the Broadcasting club continues on.

The scene which had me hysterical comes about 2/3 of the way through. Chiyuki and Manami are being filmed and Ai oozes out a window in the creepiest and funniest manner possible. The look on Chiyuki’s and Manami’s faces were priceless. “What are you doing Ai…?” Manami asks…. It was very The Ring-esque, but also out of nowhere in a movie that had, until that moment, shown no humor whatsoever. As a result it was jarring, if funny.

Other than this one scene, there was nothing honest about the entire movie. We’re thrown into the middle of the sexual tension between Chiyuki and Manami, forced to stare with the creepiest of creepy male gaze at girls who would not be staring at each other that way and generally cast in  the role of pervy voyeur, instead of watching a story of a girls’ school version of Summer Vacation 1999. I was deeply disappointed in the first half of the film, which was a waste of a good opportunity to tell a basic story with any sincerity. It’s not until Ai becomes the focus that it has any heart at all.

The extra is a lengthy combined “making of” and messages from the actresses. They all did their best, with what could have been a much better movie with even a little effort.

Ratings:

Overall – 5

Posted in Live Action | 11 Comments »


Yuri Network News (百合ネットワークニュース) – February 22, 2014

February 22nd, 2014

YNN_MariKYuri Anime

Sabagebu (Survival Game Club) manga is getting an anime. It’s not a “Yuri” anime, but if you remember from my review of it, there is a club member with a raging crush on the lead.

YNN Correspondent Grisznak wanted you to know that Crunchyroll has posted key visuals for the upcoming Akuma no Riddle anime.

This issue of Comic Yuri Hime includes a cast listing for the Inugami-san to Nekoyama-san anime. Here are the leads:

Nekoyama Suzu –  Touyama Nao
Inugami Yachiyo – Uesaka Sumire
Hiiragi Aki – Outsuho Yuka

On Twitter, Funimation announced that Ikkitousen: Great Guardians is now available on XFINITY.

***

Other, Much More Important News

I know all this anime and manga news is good, but this is what you really want to know: Bandai is releasing Sailor Moon pens, that feature the Outers’ henshin wands! Even more importantly, there is a Uranus/Neptune set. I’ll see if I can get a Japanese friend to order those for me. ^_^

***

Other News

A fan made and is auctioning off a Yuri Yuri-themed decorated motorcycle.

The next To Aru Kagaku no Railgun S Light Novel will be bundled with an additional anime disk.

Sailor Moon-themed underwear. Of course there is.

A friend of Okazu, Elizabeth F. has posted an article on Yuri on “The Artifice” for your reading pleasure.

***

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 Miscellaneous, Yuri Network News | 2 Comments »


Yuri Manga: Bousou Girlsteki Mousou Renaiteki Suteki Project, Volume 1 (ボウソウガールズテキモウソウレンアイテキステキプロジェクト(B・G・M・R・S・P))

February 21st, 2014

When I read the first chapter of Kawai Roh’s  Bousou Girlsteki Mousou Renaiteki Suteki Project (ボウソウガールズテキモウソウレンアイテキステキプロジェクト(B・G・M・R・S・P)) in Comic Yuri Hime, I actually was pretty excited for the series. It was an all-girl harem battle! The uber-cool boyish girl versus the feminine girl. It sounded like it was going to be a lot of fun.

And indeed, the premise starts off well enough. Unfortunately, the story handicaps itself right from the start. Beniko, the apparent ojou-sama type, likes one of the underclassmen, but she seems to have become attached to Aoi, the otokoyaku type. Instead of charming Shino away from Aoi, Beniko has hysterical fits and Aoi appears the type of person to trip someone in the cafeteria.

Instead of putting cool, athletic Aoi and beautiful honor student Beniko on equal footing, the two start, continue and end by making snarky asides, trying to cheat and accusing each other of cheating. By the end of the second chapter you sort of desperately flail around looking for someone to like. Shino, the first-year they fight over, is nice, but one-dimensional, a human-shaped stuffed animal. Their mutual friend Kimi seems to have her head on straight, so you sort of glom on to her as a bright point.

The second half of the book completely loses coherence. The student council president is, apparently, the character I expected Beniko to be, but she’s underhanded and manipulative. She coerces Beniko and Aoi to run for the council then makes Beniko be part of her harem through the misuse of a beauty contest.

By then end of the volume, I wanted to go back in time and whisper in the creator’s and editor’s ears to throw all of this out and write a good story.

Ratings:

Art – 5
Story – 4
Characters – 3
Yuri – 7
Service – 1

Overall – 4 and I’m being nice about it.

Seriously disappointing. Of course I had been reading the chapters as they were run in Comic Yuri Hime and have been progressively more disappointed, but I kept hoping that when I read them in a volume, it would all gel, as it so often does. The months in between me reading chapters means I lose threads so, often the stories hold together better when I read them in volume form.  This story was the opposite, it worked worse all together, when I couldn’t forget how nasty Aoi had been or how hysterical Beniko was last chapter.

The best part of this story is the title.

Posted in Yuri Manga | 2 Comments »


Hourai Girls Manga (蓬莱ガールズ)

February 20th, 2014

Sometimes you just need a manga with some bite and no mushy romance will really scratch the itch for adventure. Enough school girls suddenly realizing that they are madly and passionately in love with the back of the person in front of them’s head, or their sempai in debate club. (Do Japanese schools have debate clubs? I have no idea, honestly.) What you need is a grand rope-swinging girl pal/buddy movie, with zombies and pirates and other stuff.

Hourai Girls  (蓬莱ガールズ) is just the manga for you.

Set in a fantasy land that is vaguely 17th century Chinese, with heavy overlays of sorcery, Rinka is a princess and rich girl in name only. Her father, an abusive wizard/warlord, keeps her locked in the house with only her childhood friend YanYan to look after her. YanYan, who is a zombie, called a “soma, has all the best qualities of a rag doll, in that easily detached limbs are also easily re-attacked. As a soma YanYan fits right in with the rest of the household staff, who also appear to be stitched up zombies.

Rinka makes a few attempts at escaping, only to be recaught, and beaten into oblivion by her father, who then rends YanYan into pieces so we can hate him more, then he goes off and chortles over his creepy soma armies. It’s obvious to all of us that he will be the ultimate boss. But in the meantime, Rinka and YanYan have to get out first. And they do.

They decide to head to “Hourai” a probably fictitious land in a children’s book. Rinka learns about money and shopping and YanYan stops her from being arrested about a million times. Because of YanYan’s visible stitches, she is immediately tagged as a soma. The villagers have no good feelings for soma, but when the headman offers to pay them to stop a truly horrific creature who is slaughtering villagers, Rinka and YanYan take the job. They kill the multi-armed, regenerating creature and are paid in money…and a tragic backstory. The creature was the headman’s wife who killed herself after their child was kidnapped and whom he brought back to life, but not humanity, with sorcery. Boo-hoo. Rinka gets a glimpse of the harsh life outside her father’s house, but is not fazed. Off they go…they charter a boat!

The boat captain is a decent guy. He’ll take them as far as he can and he teaches Rinka to water ski. When soma mermen attack the ship, YanYan and Rinka are not surprised to find that Rinka’s father is behind it. They tell him to get lost and head west. Dropped off in the harbor, YanYan is immediately captured for being a soma, by a self-selected police force. Apparently this town has a recent run-in with soma that destroyed both town and citizens. The townspeople also have cute, fluffy dog tails.

The head of the secret police squad thinks Rinka and YanYan are so damn cool and the fact that they are going to Hourai is cool and everything is so coooool!, that he lets them go and off they head to find their Shangri-La. To Be Continued.

YanYan and Rinka are close, but there is no Yuri, or even a hint of such.. This is shinyuu manga, BFFs, best buds, gal pals. There’s no lovey-dovey, but it was still fun.

I found this book in a Book-Off in Tokyo and picked up on a lark. It was a fun…if occasionally creepy…read. But the fact that it was very high pirate fantasy adventure meant no nightmares, even with all those body parts strewn around. I wasn’t going to bother with the next volume, but it looks like it is the end of the series, so maybe I will, after all. You never know when I’ll get that urge to read about besties killing monsters and having adventures together again.

Update: I sure did get around to Volume 2 and…it has a happy ending!

Ratings:

Art – How does one rate zombies and multi-limbed human eating monsters? 7
Story – 8
Character – 7
Yuri – 0
Service – 1

Overall – 8 Itch scratched

Posted in Miscellaneous | 3 Comments »