Maria-sama ga Miteru Special CD, Volume 4

June 20th, 2010

The Maria-sama ga Miteru Special CD, Volume 4 begins with what was a most obvious and silly gag as Nabatome Hitomi introduces herself as Torii Eriko’s VA, followed by Itou Shizuka as Rei, Ikezawa Haruna as Yoshino and then Nabatome-san starts to introduce herself again as the voice actress for Arima Nana to complete the Yellow Rose family roster, but starts to laugh and completely blows the gag. ^_^

This was followed by….sweets! The crackling of plastic and the various “yum” noises will be familiar to anyone who has listened to any of the previous CDs. Also the random conversation about nothing much.

This is followed by the drama Frame of Mind, which really struck home just how *much* Tsutako and Shouko there is in and around the series. Because, we’re *still* not done with them. I keep saying we’ve got all the pieces, but we’re nowhere near the end. ^_^

Frame of Mind covers the mystery of a handful of film cartridges that Yumi received from a 1st-year that say “Takeshima Tsutako” in katakana on them and that Tsutako herself says are not hers. Yumi, Great Detective Yoshino and Tsutako investigate the mystery and find out the criminal was….! We learn that the 3rd-years of the Photography Club are not above hazing the new kid on the block, which will lead into another trick they play in a later story, on the new club president-elect. Man, that Photo Club is tough. ^_^ This story has the added attraction of Yumi’s realization that the Photography Club is not just made up of Tsutako and Shouko.

This drama is followed up by “Souer no Kizuna” where the entire Kibara Family is eerily in synch and they all laugh alot.

Ratings:

Overall – 9

Once more, a hour of fun and another drama to add to the ole mp3 player. When I get the whole series on there, no doubt it will break and I’ll have to start from scratch….. And can you believe that I am *still* not done with the pile of stuff I brought home from Japan three months ago? There’s still a pile of Light Novels and at least two CDs left. Phew.

Posted in Drama CD, Drama CDs & Audiobooks, Maria-sama ga Miteru | 1 Comment »


Yuri Network News – June 19, 2010

June 19th, 2010


I’ll be at AnimeNext this afternoon, wandering around with a bag of goodies to give away (just like a Yuri Santa Claus!) If you see me – I’ll be wearing my black “I Love Yuri” T-shirt – say hello and get…something. No guarantees for quality or worth. If I don’t know you yet, please introduce yourself! Also, if you’re going to be there, please join me at the Promise Sisters’ concert at 4:30 in the Arena. If you’ve been to a Yuricon event any time in the last few years or been to pretty much any con in the NE of America, you know the Promise Sisters. Leanne, Vanessa and Melinda are friends and wow, can they sing!  They’ve won so many karaoke contests that they now perform as a pop idol group. They’ll have some guest singers as well as performing both anime and original songs. I hope to see you there!

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Industry News

You know I don’t go totally off topic too often here, because there are about a zillion people covering the wide world o’manga, and few focusing on Yuri but, there are a few industry round-ups that I really think are worth noting right now.

First of all, thank you everyone who contributed to the comments (here and elsewhere) in a positive and creative way on last week’s post about the Solution to the Scanlation Solution. It’s not at all surprising that many companies are scrambling to be that solution right now.

I wanted to call your attention to this overview of the fallout of the last week. All the links you all need to read have been summed up at The Beat in The Week in Digital: HOLY CRAP. And Matt Blind had a stellar post on the problem with proprietary formats – something he and I were talking about on Twitter, but he and Bruce McF are smarter about it than I am and had a lot more to say.

And, lastly, NPR has a summation of the situation for the uninitiated, that was not only pretty good, but highlights the work of several manga-industry bloggers of note. If you’re not following these blogs…you really should be. Additionally, you can give this article to your significant other/spouse/parent to explain what all the fuss is about.

Really, if the future of digital comics interests you, go read these. We’re in a new pre-Guttenberg press world. We want to be able to read stuff, but the technology isn’t there yet. And companies are hiring as many monks as they can afford to. This is our chance to build the new press.

Thank you for your patience with my digression. Now back to our regularly scheduled Yuri Network News.

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Yuri Anime

Primastea is releasing a new anime, Kuttsukiboshi about two girls on a “risky” vacation. There is a trailer which implies Yuri. It will be service-y without substance, but for the kind of people who like this kind of thing, that will suffice. You can judge for yourself by watching the trailer. The anime ships on August 16th in Japan. The actually amazing thing about the anime is that it was directed, written, and animated by one person. Good bad or indifferent, that makes it worth watching.

Okay, it’s a stretch calling this Yuri, probably, but Queen’s Blade is streaming on Crunchyroll.

Remind me to write about “gatchi Yuri” one day.

(The one thing I absolutely love about Queen’s Blade is that the only things guaranteed to be more infantile and fulls of “boobs” than the series itself are the reviews of the series. My god, do these people read their reviews!?)

So, true to form, 2010 has been a backlash year so far in Japan, with mostly hentai and bouncing breasts on the Yuri anime front.

Thank heavens Maria Watches Over Us, Season 4 is shipping in a few weeks! Miraculously, I have already received my order (thank you friendly little gremlins at RightStuf!) and I will be sure to review it for you in loving detail asap. (Pre-orderers will get a very fetching writing pad as a premium. I bet you all wondered…I know I did!)

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Snatches of Yuri

The novel Vertigo sounds dreadful in every way, so I’m dying to read it. In 2030, public disorder, dystopian future, blah blah, two female cops, fight club, pretend to be a lesbian couple, blah blah. Do want.

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Yuri Manga

There is more info about the planned Yuri Hime move to bi-monthly status. It appears that Yuri Hime and Yuri Hime S will be consolidated into one magazine and released on a bi-monthly basis. This makes excellent financial sense for Ichijinsha and us. They were putting out two quarterly magazines, so we were buy 8 issues a year. Now they will be putting out one bi-monthly, so we’ll be getting 6 issues a year. Both magazines were getting downright huge, so I bet the combined issue is well worth our money. And, I’m kind of glad we’re losing the “for guys”/”for women” gap. We read them both, so….  Although I do admit to being a tad troubled by the current cover of YHS. It might be weird when they try to satisfy both audiences in one magazine.

Hayate x Blade 12 is out in Japan. I know I don’t have to tell you to go get it, do I?

Also, in English, Seven Seas is putting out Hayate x Blade Omnibus volumes, for a very reasonable price. Volume 1 would make a great gift for the wacky kid/lesbian/violent psychotic in your life. Also, more sales is likely to stimulate the possibility of more volumes. Remember – series sell less each volume as a series goes on, so stimulating sales means more money for the company to invest in printing a new volume.

Funniest Yuri news I heard all week is that Senno Knife is putting out a second volume of Lesbian Shoujo-Ai. Read my review of Volume 1 to understand why the news made me laugh. :-)

Of the recent crop of YH Comics, I want to draw attention to Takemiya Jin’s Love Breaker and Amano Shuunta’s sweet guilty love bites. More to come.

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Okazu News

If you take a look  alllllll the way down at the bottom of the right-hand sidebar, you will see a teeny little widget to “Like” Okazu for Facebook folks. Please click. It costs you nothing, feeds my ego and probably doesn’t make a damn bit of difference in the larger scale of things, but I’ll like you more. Thanks. :-)

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Yuri Drama CD

And finally for today, as announced on the obi of the 4th volume of Morinaga Milk’s GIRL FRIENDS, there is an upcoming GIRL FRIENDS Drama CD. Details to follow.

***

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 | 9 Comments »


CANAAN Light Novel, Volume 1 (上)

June 17th, 2010

If you have watched the Canaan anime, you have read the Canaan Light Novel.

The Light Novel is very much a novelization of the anime series, written by a competent writer and enhanced with pleasing pencil art illustrations.

The LN series is in two parts. This first volume is, like the anime it shadows, a nice mix of exposition interspersed with action. We meet young photojournalist Ohzawa Maria and her mentor Mino, see a lot of Shanghai both above ground and below. We learn about the UA Virus,  and a bioterrorism threat by the terrorist group the Snakes, just as Shanghai hosts an International Conference on Terrorism. And we meet Canaan and Alphard, our foils that are the same in every way, except that they are not the same at all.

If you have not watched the anime, you will find no difficulty following the story – it is well told and well-executed. There is a lot of moral ambiguity – governments are terrorists, just as much as the terrorists are and the only truly innocent in the book is the title character, the assassin Canaan. Her synesthesia was one of the most visually striking qualities of the anime – I wasn’t sure it would translate well into text. I’m pleased to note that the author is competent enough to communicate it well. It works.

As I sat down to synopsize the plot, I find that it’s actually too complex for me to do it simply without losing much of its appeal. On the other hand, if you haven’t watched the anime and don’t really care about Canaan a priori, I’m also not sure I could convince you to pick this book up without it.

So I’ll do what I always do and focus on the Yuri. ^_^

Maria and Canaan’s relationship is a difficult one to nail down simply. They love each other – so much so and so obviously so that crazy villianess Liang Qi comments on it. But, then, Liang Qi herself is obsessed with the love of Alphard, the apparent villain of the series. And Alphard is obsessed to the point of monomania with Canaan, someone who she believes stole everything she had, even her name. (I’m still not convinced she’s entirely wrong.)

Canaan is, as I said, an innocent. She absolutely, unreservedly loves Maria and there’s a sense that, were she actually aware of things like “love” in the adult sense, she might actually be “in love” with Maria. But…she is not. Her love is like a child’s, or a puppy’s. Not because she is stupid or childish, but because Canaan does not yet know desire – and there’s no real way to know if she ever will at this point.

Maria’s love for Canaan is less perfect/more human, but is also, at the beginning at least, more admiration. She sees Canaan as something unearthly, like a superheroine. Yes, they are friends, but until she sees what she considers to be a flaw in Canaan, Maria is unable to regard her as an actual human. She is very much a Lois Lane to Canaan’s Superman and ultimately, Maria’s desire to bring them both onto an equal footing is what will drive the plot in the second volume – and change them both forever.

I was very, very vexed with the anime for bringing both of them right up to the moment of recognizing that they love each other, then providing what I saw as a rather lame excuse for “not that way, though.” As the novel has been, so far, an exact duplicate of the anime, I expect no less in the second volume. But, for the moment, Maria and Canaan yearn for each other more as the series puts them through increasingly dangerous situations.

This novel ends with the Snakes’ takeover of the Terrorism conference and Alphard’s plan to infect all of the world representatives with the UA Virus. The final scene in the book is Alphard fighting Canaan in the tunnels below the building.

So, basically, if you liked the Canaan anime and want to re-experience it through a text format, this is a good, compelling action story. If you like action flicks, and want to practice your Japanese reading skills, this book is an excellent choice – it has a fair amount of furigana and even the technical/scientific stuff is not impossible to understand.

I think this novel would have a chance to sell reasonably well, were it to be brought over here in English, as long as the translation was competent. (I don’t know if Seven Seas has a Kadokawa contact, but this would not be a bad match for them. A little Yuri, high gaming interest on account of it being Type-Moon, moe, action. I think they could make it work, since they have decent translators and adapters.)

Ratings:

Art – 8 (the pencil art mitigates what is otherwise typical moe)
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Yuri – ??? You could pretty much put any number on it, from 0 to 10 and be right. Let’s split it down the middle and say 5
Service – 4, but like 85% of that is Liang Qi

Overall – 8

It’s a good read and I’m glad I took a chance on it. Nice mix of character and plot, action and emotion, comedy and tragedy. Kind of the best of all possible worlds for a Light Novel and one of the best of breed I’ve seen in a blatant franchise extender.

Posted in Light Novel, Type-Moon | 3 Comments »


Yuri Manga: Shitsuji Shoujo to Ojousama

June 16th, 2010

What’s not to like about a manga called Butler Girl and Senorhita? (English translation provided by the book cover, so don’t bother correcting me.) Well, sadly, in the case of Shitsuji Shoujo to Ojousama (執事少女とお嬢様) there was way more not to like than one might reasonably expect.

When I opened it up, I had already violated a few of my sanity-preserving expectations rules. I expected it to be light-hearted, I expected it to be fun and for some reason, heavens knows why, I expected it to have a good plot. Probably because of all the potential plots *I* might have chosen, most of them were fun and light-hearted and a fair number were good. So when I started reading and the plot immediately bogged down into depressing and emotionally torturing, I was not pleased. Nor was I amused.

Hinata is a nice, slightly lazy girl whose parents run away to another country to avoid a debt, leaving her behind. She’s offered a position working for the family that sponsors the elite girls’ school she attends, by the chairwoman of the school. She’s not thrilled but, it’s be a maid or live on the street, so Hinata agrees. Unfortunately, she’s a) not going to be a maid and b) not working for the lovely and cultured chairwoman, Tsugeyama Saori. Hinata is going to be a a) butler and b) be working for Saori’s younger sister, star of the school, Saki.

Even more unfortunately, while at school Saki is lovely, gracious and cultured, at home she’s a spoiled, tempermental brat with a sister complex. Hinata is thrown to this wolf, who quickly sees a chance at making someone with no power to fight back miserable…and does. Saki is horrible in every way she can imagine.

At the point where she drags Hinata in wearing long butler morning coat and a collar and chain, I really almost stopped reading. Shades of Maria + Holic and abuse of the weak as “comedy.” Ick.

I will says this for this book, every time it got *just* on the edge of intolerable, it pulled away quickly and found a not-horrible way to solve the problem. It was apparent that the creator had a strong sense of where that line was and why it should not be crossed. Nonetheless, the story kept veering close to that line, over and over. And over.

At school, Saki wants no one to know about the whole butler thing, but still insists that Hinata serve her…which makes it look like they are too close for comfort. The story comes out so at least Hinata’s best friend knows and can help them to preserve the farce.

Saori’s butler, Haruna (also female), tells Hinata that her Number 1 priority is to love her mistress and with that, Hinata works hard at not trying to keep up with Saki’s antics, but to lead her on the path of righteousness. It works. Saki stops acting out so much and starts to appreciate Hinata more. Using the old Cutey Honey maxim that all S&M Queens want, in reality, to be dominated, Hinata starts to dictate the terms of their relationship, all the while wrapping herself in the role of “butler.” In a chapter that should have been touching, but wasn’t really (for a lot of reasons) it becomes apparent that Hinata’s feelings are starting to approach more than just a butler’s love for her mistress.

When Saki’s admirer from another wealthy family, Sorako, arrives, things spiral downward fast, ultimately ending up in a shooting (no, you didn’t misread that – Sorako attempts to murder Hinata)  that makes Saki start to realize that Hinata means something to her after all. And in a grand finale that again, wasn’t really anywhere as near as wonderful as it could have been with loads of icky groping, fake kisses and other tediousness, Hinata becomes the prince to Saki’s damsel in distress.

And then the book ends in a massively unsatisfying non-joke. Sigh.

I spent the entire time it took me to read this ready to stop reading at any moment. With such hi-larious antics as beating up innocent Hinata, random men feeling up Saki in public, school bullying and other yucks, I felt half-brutalized myself through the series. I spent the entire time thinking how it *didn’t have to be this way.*

Ratings:

Art – Moe, of course
Story – Pissed me off
Characters – Coulda been contenders
Yuri – Gatchi Yuri
Service – Obviously

Overall – 4

It could have been a great book, with a fun fantasy setup and a happy/romantic/sexy butler and her mistress ending…only, it wasn’t. And it makes me kind of angry that it wasn’t. There ought to be a law that a love comedy should be free of demeaning sexual and emotional harassment. Sheesh.

Posted in Yuri Manga | 8 Comments »


Yuri Manga: Yuri Pop

June 14th, 2010

Yuri Pop, subtitled Girl*Girl stories, reminds me a lot of playing with dolls. Specifically the little SD characters one gets at arcades, or with candy.u

“Hi, I’m Miharu,” we say, moving the little toy back and forth so you know it’s “talking.”

“Hi,” someone else moves another little piece up and down while they speak in a ridiculous falsetto, “I’m Yuyu. Miharu, I like you.”

“Really?” we reply as if talking to a child, moving the little figurine in our hand. “I like you too!”

Then the two figurines are slammed together and each of us make a “mwah!” noise to indicate that the two plastic figures are now “kissing.”

Reading this book is just like this same scenario, with 10 little dolls. The stories we create are a little different and, because we’re quite creative, some of them are kind of fun. Is Haruka-sempai really stalking Yuki? (No, silly, she just wanted to get to know her better….) And what is with Erika and that white cape? (It looks cool, DUH.)

And in the end, we get all 10 dolls into the story and we have a good laugh and then Mom brings us cookies while we watch cartoons.

More importantly for me, Yuri Pop wins as the only Japanese manga I have ever read that uses the words, “Namby-Pamby” and “Herkimer Jerkimer.” In English. Spelled right. Used right. Which has to win some kind of award, really.

Ratings:

Art – 6, but what do you expect of SD characters?
Story – 8, surprisingly, for variety and fun
Characters – 8
Yuri – 8
Service – 2

Overall – 8

Best page of the collection is the back cover. I stand agape with respect for the sheer freaking whimsy with which this utterly silly collection was built.

Posted in Yuri Manga | No Comments »