Just a heads up, there’ll be no news report today. As some of you saw on other platforms, I had a massive data crisis last night and, while everything is perfectly fine now, I’m a wreck. ^_^
I’ve got some other things to take care of, but YNN will be back next week with more great Yuri News!
Don’t forget, please feel free to email me with any good tidbits you find out in the wide world – you are the Yuri Network. ^_^
So, I’m not sure if you know about Megami magazine or not. It’s pretty much a full-color anime-focused magazine, carefully crafted to serve the needs of the creepiest FanBoys, with lots of full color pictures of rosy-cheeked school age girls presenting their animated asses, crotches and whatever breasts they have to full view of the readers who, presumably really enjoy looking at pictures of cartoon characters’ crotches, etc. Megami also includes large, full-color posters of pantsless cartoon characters, cartoon characters in wet, clingy skimpy bathing suits and with whipped cream on their faces.
To be blunt, Megami is not to my taste.
But when they put together a Yuri-focused Megami Lily, I had to at least give it a look. Not surprisingly, it’s the /u/ of magazines.
The first 30 pages is filled with Yuru Yuri, and then it’s a pretty predictable series of moe-focused Yuri; Strike Witches, Saki, Tamayura, Makenki, To Aru Kagaku no Railgun, A Channel, Hidamari Sketch of course Maho Shoujo Madoka Magika, followed by some slightly older favorites; Ikkitousen, Aria and Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha.
At the end of this I found myself rather more depressed than elated. Megami Lily really pressed home the fact that Yuru Yuri was exactly the very correct anime to lead off with from Comic Yuri Hime. The anime audience is, apparently only interested in rosy-cheeked, slightly brain dead school girls. I am no longer anything like the anime audience and there is very little anime being made for me.
Once again, I’m thrilled that Comic Yuri Hime is making money hand over fist from Yuri Yuri, but now I realize that a radical shift in anime will need to happen before we see a Yuri anime that doesn’t make my skin crawl.
No more Megami Lily for me. I’m not much interested in looking at cartoon schoolgirls with no pants.
Ratings:
Service – 10
Today, we’re talkin’ ponies.
At New York Comic-Con several people I consider to be good friends insisted I simply must watch the new My Little Pony – Friendship is Magic series. These are people whose opinions and sanity I trust so, when the opportunity presented itself, I began to watch the first episode. While I watched that first episode I live-blogged on Twitter, which was pretty hilarious all on its own, as people started to react to my comments.
Zac Bertschy of ANN called it spot on, when he said that everyone would tell me that I had to watch at least 6 episodes to really get into it. (Meta commentary FTW!) I admit that a few episodes in, I was begining to question my friendships with those aforementioned people. But indeed, around Episode 6, something happened. The dialogue, which always had a bit of snark, turned extra snarky. When they trotted a Pinky and The Brain reference out, I realized that we had been given a series as close as were are gonna get to the old Bugs Bunny cartoons that were written simultaneously on two levels, one for the kids and one for the adults to enjoy.
The lead pony, Twilight Sparkle is, well gosh, she’s me. She’s short-tempered, bookish, too smart for her own good and can’t stop researching stuff. The rest of the ponies are likable, with some really weird personality quirks – Pinky Pie is especially confusing until you realize that she’s not so much a ditz, she’s just a really out-of-the-box thinker. But, what’s really drawing in the Yuri fans is tomboyish Rainbow Dash.
Rainbow Dash isn’t really, specifically tomboyish, except insofar that she’s active and confident in her flying skills to the point of being brash. And she’s got the rainbow as her mane and tail, so duh, she’s obviously gay!
Ratings:
Art – Kind of creative, really. The unicorns use their magic to move stuff around, so there’s no question of need for hands – 8
Characters – 8
Story – Variable. On the most moralistic episodes, it can be an eye-rolling 4, but on the good episodes, it gets up to 8
Yuri – 0, but don’t think I’m not trying
Service – (O_o)
Overall – 8
Unless Twilight and Rainbow get together as a couple, I’m not calling this a “Yuri” series or anything, but for mindless fun, unfortunate morals of the story and a large serving of nasty humor, I guess I recommend My Little Pony – Friendship is Magic.
I posted the winners to our last Yuricon contest, but no on seems to have noticed…and we have winners from the Yuricon AMV Contest to announce, so here’s our big Winners all around post this week:
Last month we did a contest when I reviewed marriage black The contest was to write the first paragraph of a Yuri fairytale. “Once Upon A Time there was… What? Who? Why? Where? You tell us.
Read all the entries!Many of them were very, very good. But, after some soul-searching, here are the winners:
Ali
Val
Ayana Mudou
oh, heck, let’s do four winners:
IGC
Everyone – please email me at anilesbocon01 at hotmail dot com with your addresses and I’ll send you something fun.
***
I’ll get this up on Yuricon later today, but the winners of the 2011 Yuricon AMV Contest are:
Grisnak with Yuri Minds
and
Emily, with All Your Life Haruka
AMV Winners have been contacted.
Thanks everyone and congratulations to the winners!
Kaname saw Miki-sama perform ballet and immediately decided that she would try to enter that refined, beautiful world. So, with only a few years of ballet classes under her belt, she transfers into the elite school at which Miki-sama trains. This is the setup for the title story of Kaname no Etoile (かなめエトワール)
Inexplicably, Miki-sama encourages Kaname, which causes her to be bullied by the second-best student, Sugiura-san, and her fans. To make matters worse, when Kaname is suddenly (and also quite inexplicably) assigned to dance in the competition with Miki-sama, Sugiura is (rightfully, I think) enraged.
But Miki-sama continues to encourage Kaname, despite the other girl’s lack of confidence. They are assigned to dance a pas-de-deux from Swan Lake, Kaname as Odile, with Miki-sama taking the role of Odette. (Which is an interesting idea.) Everyone, even Kaname, is shocked at this choice. Sugiura-san challenges Kaname to a dance-off, which Kaname wins. Sugiura backs off, but the worst is yet to come for Kaname.
Kaname undertakes grueling practice, only to find that Miki-sama is practicing twice as hard. She despairs of ever being good enough. When Kaname quite accidentally, attempting to protect Miki-sama from the unwelcome attentions of the press, slightly injures Miki-sama, she breaks under the pressure and stops going to school.
Walking around a park one day (after being yelled at by her mother to get the hell out of bed) Kaname stumbles upon a crowd watching an attractive young man in a hoodie dancing. Kaname watches, entraced by his moves. When he approaches he and asks her to dance with him, she’s speechless. But, he says, I can tell you love to dance, and so they do, moving together as if they belong together…Kaname is amazed, she’s found her very own prince.
After the crowd has dispersed, the Prince takes her aside for a little talk and cautions Kaname to get back to school and start practicing again…there’s not enough time before the competition. What? How? Kaname cannot understand how he knows, until he pulls down his hood. Her Prince is none other than Miki-sama!
Kaname returns to the school and works herself to near collapse.
Eventually the day of the competition arrives and we finally see Kaname become the black swan that Miki-sama needs to win the competition. But her triumph is short-lived, as Miki-sama announces she’s leaving the school to go to Europe to study. Kaname asks her to not leave, but Miki-sama assures her that she’ll always have her eye on her, and that she looks forward to dancing with her again.
The other stories in the collection are conventional love stories set in high school. All three stories ran in Shogakukan’s Sho-Comi magazine.
If you watched Kaleido Star and hoped that you’d find another series that captured the same kind of rival/friendship tension in regards to performing arts, colored with longing and rich with the potential for Yuri, Kaname no Etoile, short as it is, fits the bill. Miki-sama seems to be as interested in Kaname as she is in her mentor…and, after the scene in the park, our thoughts will naturally stray to the “what ifs” of a future situation. Miki’s street dancing moves give her more personality, too, than we might have otherwise expected from a longingly-admired sempai. At the end of the story, it’s not at all hard to imagine that Miki’s just waiting for Kaname to catch up with her, then they’ll dance off into a bright future together.
Ratings:
Art – Typical shoujo magazine – 8
Story – It could not have been more full of holes if it actively tried. ^_^ 8
Characters – Unrealistic in every way – 8
Yuri – 6
Service – 1
Overall – 8
Why is Miki-sama so encouraging of a younger woman who will one day be her rival for a limited amount of roles? We’ll never know.
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