Bodacious Space Pirates, Anime, Disk 2 (English)

February 17th, 2013

Following on the tail of Disk 1, we reach Disk 2 of Bodacious Space Pirates, on which Marika sets out on her first piracy commission as captain of the Bentenmaru.

The commission starts off lightly, with a request from a Princess of the Serenity household, Gruier, asking the Bentenmaru to track a golden ghost ship, but as the plot progresses, and they confront Serenity battleships, Marika has to face real battles with real consequences for herself and the crew.

The deeper meaning of the Golden Space Ship and the part it plays in Serenity history is presented almost as an afterthought, because this is a space opera and we, like Bentenmaru’s San-Daime, want to see Marika be a cool captain. ^_^

The disk ends on a quiet note, but not really a filler episode, as we’re shown transition in Hakuoh’s Yacht Club and in Ririka’s life, as well as a welcome return to day-to-day life for Marika.

This disk pretty much has it all, adventure, friendship, leadership and other qualities I look for in a story about a “strong female” character.  Bodacious Space Pirates passes what I call the The Friedman Addendum to the Bechdel Test:

Does female character have agency?
Does she have society?
Does she have personality?
Is she merely a female-shaped male hero doing male hero things while being female?

Bodacious Space Pirates passes with flying colors. Marika has agency – she is capable of and given the opportunity to make decisions for herself and others. She has society, the members of the yacht club, and especially her non-space-faring friend, Mami, who wants and needs nothing from her, and who is a very excellent friend.

Marika definitely has personality. We’re shown that and we’re told it. She is quick-witted, hard working, fair, decent, and just evil enough to make a fantastic pirate captain. ^_^

No she does not wear a bodysuit, but the miniskirt would realllllly toe that line except that the anime uses a fair amount of restraint in clothing design and perspective. It’s not that there is no service – the space suits don’t have to be formfitting, for instance, but compared to oh so many other series, the level of service is low.

Available on DVD, Blu-Ray or legal online stream for free (region-blocking may apply), Bodacious Space Pirates passes the Bechdel Test, the Friedman Addendum and is a rollicking good yarn. I’m looking forward to the next disks with relish, since I know that, for once, the added “romance” subplot won’t merely be the usual obligatory stuff. ^_^
Ratings:
Art – 7
Character – 9
Story – 9
Yuri – 1…for now
Service – 5Overall – 9

My hypothetical girl child, along with Legend of Korra and kung-fu lessons, gets this series as a present. ^_^

Posted in Bodacious Space Pirates, English Anime | 9 Comments »


Yuri Network News (百合ネットワーク・ニュース) – February 16, 2013

February 16th, 2013

Yuri Manga

Seven Seas has licensed Centaur no Ayami, a school life series about centaurs. Volume 2, if you remember, goes off the charts with service-y Yuri.

Comic Natalie reports that there will be a Yuru Yuri spin-off, “The Ohmuro Family” which, along with several other Comic Yuri Hime 4-koma titles will run on their upcoming webcomic site Comic Yuri Hime on Nico Nico Douga.

Comic Yuri Hime, May 2013 Issue (コミック百合姫 2013年 05月号) is now up for pre-order on Amazon JP. It will street in March.

Tsubomi has put  new chapters of 4 comics up, and has a nice new top illustration on their webcomic page. Himitsu no Recipe by Morinaga Milk, Eden no Higashitotsuka by Hakamada Mera, Otomo Megane’s Futari and Sugawa Tokushi’s  Zenryaku, Yuri no Sono Yori have been updated.

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Other News

ANN has a new feature which I would recommend to any of you out there who want to understand IP law (in a US context). Part 1 of the The Law of Anime: Copyright and the Anime and Part 2: Copyrights and Fandom are both well worth your time . (Also, if you feel very superior and intelligent about how reform is long overdue, read the comments, too where Sean Thorsden, Esq. says, “yes” to that and then explains why it isn’t happening to your satisfaction.)

And my wife notes that it has been about 5 years since I started to post weekly news updates about Yuri. (My first “This Week in Yuri” was in February 2008). She says, “I think it’s impressive that you’ve had something to report nearly weekly for 5 years.” I have to agree with her on that. So now we have another pin in Yuri’s history, in 2008 it became possible to start writing weekly new reports on Yuri! How amazing is that. ^_^

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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 | No Comments »


Yuri Manga: Collectors, Volume 1 (コレクターズ）

February 14th, 2013

In honor of Valentine’s Day I can think of no better candidate for review than Nishi UKO’s Collectors, from the pages of Rakuen Le Paradis magazine.

Nito Shinobu collects books. Kanzaki Takako is interested in fashion and collects clothes. The two of them love each other very much but, as they both consider their future together, their competing use of space could make living together awkward. ^_^;

With their friend Naomi and “the other one,” the unnamed friend who makes up the fourth in their group, Shinobu and Takako’s life together is detailed in amusingly realistic 4-koma strips or chapter-long stories.

From how they met, to Shinobu hiding from her students at a book store, to going away with friends, to bickering and moments of intimacy, their lives look remarkably like a real life that a real couple might have, rather than the melodramatic extremes of so much manga. For me, Collectors is a refreshing, realistic, fun look at a relationship between women who love each other. Weird huh? I mean really weird. Because there is hardly any manga like this.

Here’s my favorite scene – Shinobu, standing with Naomi and the other one (Okay, let’s just pick a name for her. Put your suggestions in the comments section and I’ll pick one, and send it to Nishi UKO-sensei as a suggestion. ^_^) waiting for Takako to arrive, when  Shinobu says Takako is heading towards them. Naomi asks where, as a woman walks up to them. Takako’s changed her hair color, but Shinobu knows it’s her from meters away. ^_^

They snipe at one another about each other’s collection habits, they have tender moments with hands entwined in each other’s hair, they live and they love. Just like me and my wife, just like you and your girlfriend, just like lesbians whose relationship does not end with a kiss or graduation. This is what after the happily-ever-after really looks like.

Whether you collect glasses, boyfriends, books or clothes, Happy Valentine’s Day from myself and everyone at Yuricon & ALC Publishing!

Ratings:

Art – 10
Story – 10 Life. What could be funnier, more poignant or more interesting?
Characters – 10
Yuri – 10
Service – 1

Overall – 10

As I read this book before bed, I look fondly over the multiple piles of books-to-read next to my bed and smile. I’m on Team Shinobu. ^_^

Go ahead and put your suggestions for Takako’s friend’s name in the comments. ^_^

Posted in Nishi UKO, Rakuen Le Paradis, Yuri Manga | 13 Comments »


Destro 246 Manga, Volume 1 (デストロ246)

February 12th, 2013

Destro 246 (デストロ246) is the newest manga by Takahashi Keitarou, the creator of Jormungand. Where I might summarize Jormungand as an action manga about a group of unrealistically cheerful arms dealers Destro 246 is more or less about a bunch of young female assassin/bodyguards and their underwear.

Let me slack off and re-quote Tomo K. who let us know about this series in the first place:

“The story starts out with a Japanese businessman buying two 17-year-old female professional killers from a South American mafia to avenge his murdered wife and children. In Tokyo, the two bump into Imari, the professional killer from Ordinary, Takahashi’s debut series.

The Yuri part involves Ichigo, a senior-high girl who’s inherited her father’s yakuza business. She has two female bodyguards, Manten and Renka (who’re her classmates as well). The three talk of having threesomes “as the usual thing”, and there are panels where Ichigo fondles one of the bodyguard’s huge boobs, and the bodyguards kiss Ichigo in public as well.

When Ichigo destroys a rival, she keeps the girlfriend of the gang leader alive, and orders her to be their sex slave until she grows up and inherits her father business (then she’ll be forced to hand money over to Ichigo’s organization).”

There’s a lot of fighting and the above female assassin/bodyguards beat the crap out of some guys but in Volume 1 at least, there’s only vague hints of a plot.

So, what is this manga about? I honestly have no idea. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – ?
Characters – 4 Kind of cookie-cutter at this point
Service – 7

Overall – 5

There’s no sense of “competence” here as there was in Jormungand, just magical hand-waves of skill. And awkward angles for upskirt shots because we just can never ever ever have enough of looking at underwear on indifferently drawn female bodies.

Posted in Miscellaneous | 5 Comments »


Lesbian Animation: Strange Frame – Love and Sax

February 11th, 2013

starngeframeI was going to review a manga today. I have it sitting right here. But like the magpie I am, when I see something shiny, I just have to go haring off after it. And so, today’s shiny thing is a movie-length sci-fi animation starring a mixed-race female lead and her DNA-modded female lover, Strange Frame – Love and Sax, by Shelley Doty and G.B. Hajim. (Apparently this animation was shown at DragonCon last year to some acclaim.)

Let me get the single major criticism I have for this movie out of the way – there is not one unique or fresh idea in the whole thing. In fact, about a third of the way through the movie, I hit a moment  when the Huggy Bear pimp cool voice that all the characters were using started to wear on me. That having been said, the story was very comfortable as a result. It was easy to slip into it and easy to get caught up in it. The pull quote on the website says, “A punk version of Blade Runner” but I think that is slightly off the mark. Not far off the mark, though. It’s more like a jazz version of a slightly gritty Fifth Element.

The animation is quite good. It had Eastern European animation vibes, with that smooth oil-painting feel one encounters in European animation of the last decade, with a sensibility that would be right at home in the pages of Heavy Metal magazine. (You know what I mean, right? All the dancing is hedonistic hip-churning, there’s “futuristic” nudity and the drugs are all post-Op Art black light psychedelic posters.)

The voice cast is a delightful mix of  cults, Star Trek (Michael Dorn, George Takei), Farscape (Claudia Black), My Little Pony – Friendship is Magic and a million other cartoons (Tara Strong), Barney Miller (Ron Glass) and Tim Curry who of course has been in everything ever. (And there’s a few other easter-egg voice actors as well.) The cast handles the script deftly. So while every scene is something you’ve seen before, and much of the dialogue is something you’ve heard before (and in a few cases, the writers damn well know it, and are very, very openly stealing from dialogue that has come before) it never feels eye-rollingly done.

The lead, Parker, has a comfy sort of ex-something feel, and her lover Naia is any pop idol ever. As I said, the plot is well-worn and no new ground is uncovered here, but if you’re like me, you eagerly await the day when this story is made as a live action and Parker and Naia are just the leads, not  zOMG a lesbian couple!

You can rent the movie on Vimeo or order the DVD.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Characters – 8
Story – 8
Lesbian – 9

Overall – 8

I hope you’ll give the movie your support – the more of this kind of animation we get, the more we get, y’know? ^_^
Posted in English Anime, LGBTQ | No Comments »