I refer to “Story A” here quite often. It is my shorthand for a typical story that encapsulates the standard tropes of what we now think of as a “Yuri” story.
This weekend for my column on Hooded Utilitarian, I trace the history of “Story A” and walk it from the past through to current iterations, in 40 Years of the Same Damn Story, Pt. 1.
Next month I’ll be looking into the origins and iterations of another very typical Yuri trope.
Enjoy!
Uta-Kata is, like Madoka, a dark look at the the concept of magical girls. It begins with the words “Sorry, Ichika,” and the phrase “season of trials,” so if we’re paying even a little attention, we know that we’re not in for a happy ride. And, although our “magic sidekick” is human-shaped, Manatsu says, “Don’t worry, I won’t ask you to sell me your soul or anything,” with the same wide–eyed smiling-without-smiling face Kyubei lies with.
Uta-Kata is the story of a girl, Ichika, dragged randomly into a series of tests in which she gains great power…but loses everything else she likes about herself in the process.
As I watched Disk 1, I pondered why, exactly, this anime left me feeling yucky more than anything else. I’ve come up with a few reasons:
1) The service is a major hurdle. It’s scuzzy. It’s gratuitous. It’s pointless and whole episodes are constructed to create situations to specifically highlight crotch, breast and ass shots. And the underwear. Good heavens, the unending obsession with underwear.
2) The second hurdle is the always awkward, occasionally ridiculous twists of the plots. In the second episode, a male acquaintance becomes physically violent for no real reason, the third episode is a pile of grim and creepy wrapped around “Ichika loses Dad’s watch.” The feeling of grim and creepy continues, but we are also forced to deal with…
3) “I know something you don’t know.” There are 5 main characters in this story and of them four know exactly what’s going on. Guess which one of the five is the only one who doesn’t? If you guessed Ichika, you’d be right.
4) Everyone has *issues* but nothing actually happens. The tagline used for the third episode, “And that’s how everything was resolved. But I was left with a bitter feeling,” is a good tagline for every episode.
5) There is no grand scheme. That is to say, there is a *scheme* but it is given very little context and there does not seem to be a greater plan. In Madoka, we learn why magical girls exist, and what their relationship to witches are. Here, Saya wanders around torturing young people “because.” We just have to accept that some perfectly nice young people will have to be tested…because they do.
6) I’ve saved the biggest hurdle for last. The service is a salacious glance at female characters – undressing them repeatedly for the titillation of the audience. More problematic than this (and let me express that it is quite problematic for me) is the salacious undressing of the girls’ subconscious for the audience’s titillation. This actually creeps me out more than the seriously creepy service. Why is watching Ichika suffering fun? Ick, ick and double ick.
All of this combines for a very unsatisfying first half to this anime. I know it will improve, but I can’t forget what I wrote about it the first time, “the first seven episodes just suck.” And so they do. But, if you can stick with it, as the grim/creepy ratchets up into full-blown dark and gothic, this series becomes something your can – and should – watch.
Ratings withheld until review of Disk 2
Yuri Anime
The big news of the week is the announcement of the first anime from a Comic Yuri Hime series. Namori-sensei’s 4 girls sitting around goofing off, slice of life series, Yuru Yuri (ゆるゆり), which has been thus far collected in 4 volumes, with a 5th just around the corner, will become an anime. The official website has a cover page at the moment, and links to a Twitter feed following the hashtag #yurururi and staff info – with more details being added as they are released, presumably.
YNN Correspondent George R. wants you all to know that the (entirely mediocre) Sengoku Otome manga has finally become a (probably mediocre) anime, Sengoku Otome ~Momoiro Paradox~ . (Be warned, the website has music.) Fans of Koihime Musou are very likely to enjoy this, as it does to the great heroes of the Warring States period what KM did to the great heroes of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, turns them into buxom women and makes them take baths a lot. And, just to really make the point that this is for the he-men women-haters out there, the English title is…ugh….Battle Girls. Could ya just spit?I know, sengoku otome does mean battle grls, but there are ways of translating that less skankily. Crunchyroll is simulcasting this aberration.
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Yuri Manga
I don’t have a link for it yet, but finally, May will see the blooming of Aoi Hana, Volume 6!
Tsubomi, Volume 11 (つぼみ) will hit the streets mid-month in April.
YNN Correspondent Komatsu-san reports that the worldwide revival of Sailor Moon continues with republication of the manga in Germany by EMA.
YNN Correspondent Megan D. also wants to share news with you – Josh Lesnick, creator of webcomic Girly has announced a special hardcover collection of the series, which includes color poster galleries and all sorts of goodies (including figurines of Winter and Otra kissing…which level do you think I bought? ^_^). He’s taking pre-orders through his Kickstarter page. There are only going to be 500 of these printed and they are running $100 for the collection – what you get for this amount is listed in detail on the site. You get more if you “donate” more. There’s just under a month to go. Good luck to Josh hitting that goal!
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Yuri Drama CD
Zaou Taishi and Eiki Eiki’s Love DNA XX (恋愛遺伝子XX ) series from Comic Yuri Hime is being turned into a Drama CD! The cast has been announced:
Aoi: Taketatsu Ayana (Azusa in K-ON!)
Sakura: Hikasa Youko (Mio in K-ON!)
Mizuki: Satou Satomi (Ritsu in K-ON!)
Matsuri: Kotobuki Minako (Tsumigi in K-ON!)
Hmmm, seems to be a pattern here, if only we could see it…
Seriously, this is a business move of pure genius. K-ON! fans in Japan are obsessive, the Yuri-service sells well there. By using these actresses, this gives what otherwise might be a relatively obscure Drama CD a very good chance of selling less like “obscure Drama CD” and more like hotcakes. The CD has a June release date.
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Snatches of Yuri
Citrus (シトラス) is a coming of age story about Shiho, whose future as a pianist is thrown into disarray with the arrival of the beautiful Nanami into their quiet town.
Gekibuno (げきぶの) has a predatory lesbian character in it. Based on the title, I’m going to go out on a limb and say – it’s about the Drama Club. And it has a predatory lesbian character in it.
Predatory….what a perfect lead-in to Shudano no Aria AA (緋弾のアリアＡＡ), a side story manga to an upcoming anime, Aria the Scarlet Ammo. This appears to be about a sempai/kouhai – oneesama/imouto team of moe assassins. Exactly the right formula for the Young Gangan magazine audience.
Transistor Tea Set ( トランジスタティーセット ) is still limping along with only hints of plot, character, Yuri and headless robot maid. Volume 4 is going to be available in May.
I don’t know much about this, but it’s on all the Japanese Yuri blogs – Hime no Tamenara Shineru (姫のためなら死ねる) . Based on the title alone, it sounds awfully dramatic.
Moshikashite Haitenai (もしかして:はいてない) may indeed be a Yuri anthology, but the cover skeeves me. If you buy it and want to review it, let me know.
YNN Correspondent Katherine H. wants to make sure you all know that the 6th volume of To Aru Kagaku no Railgun is out now in Japan. “It’s light on the yuri/appearances by Kuroko (as well as Saten and Uiharu)” she reports, “and heavier on the Touma cameos than I would prefer (as he’s rather dull), but still entertaining.”
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Other News
The apparently tireless Nakamura Ching-sensei has a new manga running in Monthly Comic Bunch (月刊コミック@バンチ), called “Avare Senki.” (アヴァール戦記). This is on top of GUNJO, a new comedic series Chin-Come (ちんコメ) running in Monthly Manga Goraku (週刊漫画ゴラク) and taking on editorial duties with Earthstar magazine on a comic titled “Water Cube.” AND she has some work in Quick Japan 94 (“Bananaman.”) None of this is “Yuri” per se, but if you like her art, you might want to take a look at these.
And in case you missed it, I was part of a Anime3000 podcast on Sailor Moon last week, along with Jordan D. White and Deb Aoki.
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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!
The trail has been long and hard, but we’ve finally arrived!
It is my great pleasure to introduce you all to the redesigned Yuricon website!
There’s still a few things we have to iron out and I’m sure I’ll be tweaking this until my fingers fall off, but we’re pretty much 99% there and I’m pleased as punch with the way it all came out!
The design elements were envisioned by long-time friend of Yuricon, May Young and the custom WordPress theme was created by Lissa Patillo. Both of these women deserve kudos, props and paeans to their skills.
Most of the content is the same, but there are some nice new features. Some of these are more exciting from my perspective than yours, but one feature I’d really like to draw your attention to is the Recent News headlines on the front page. We’ve enabled commenting on those, so if you have thoughts, news, heads ups, kudos or anything else you’d like to share, you can. And we would *love* to hear from you!
We’ll be adding more Japanese content and now that this isn’t weighing on me, I should be able to finish up Saiyuu no Ryouko on the Yuricon Mailing List. ^_^ And speaking of the Mailing List, we’ve got links to all our major social profiles – here, Yuri Studios on Youtube, Facebook, Twitter…so you can connect with us wherever you are.
Again, thanks to Lissa and May and to all of you for putting up with our old look for so long!
Choir (ちょいあ!), Volume 1 was an easily forgettable 4-koma manga centered around otaku activities of a bunch of girls who hang out and do otaku stuff together. It had a Yuri romance and, at the end of the volume, Shousei and Mayuko are indubitably a couple.
I know I read Volume 2, but did not review it here. I believe that was because in Volume 2 the fanservice switched with the Yuri, so that Yuri was pushed to the background and moe lolicon cat-ear-wearing became the focus. In fact, I cannot remember exactly what happened during Volume 2, which is always a sign that it wasn’t very good. ^_^
In Volume 3, Yuri and fanservice collide in a massive matter/anti-matter explosion of drama without content. Given that the premise of the series is “a bunch of girls hang out” and the drama is “they all want the loli” it gets pretty tired, pretty fast. Complicating factors for me is that Shiroyuki and Shousei look so similar that I have to keep checking which one is with Mayuko at any given time.
In the other Yuri affair going on, Mawata is a inconsiderate Dom to Kyouko’s very sensitive Sub, and I found myself repeatedly frustrated and annoyed at the way Mawata treated Kyouko. When Mawata consented to pay attention to Kyouko, they weren’t a bad match, but quite inexplicably, Mawata insisted on pursuing Mayuko.
The tedious fanservice is at red-alert level. If naked moe loli cat-ear-wearing girls is high priority for you…this is the book you’ve been waiting for. They all go to a hot springs so they can be naked for many chapters.
The drama is mostly “everyone in the series pursues Mayuko,” who also drove me crazy with her inconsistent affections. She was not a particularly riveting character and seemed to be appealing to everyone only because she was the loli. In every way she’s just…annoying.
Mayuko and Shousei end up still together although I have to be honest and say, I don’t know how. Shousei is practically a non-entity in this volume and Mayuko treats her terribly. In my review of Volume 1, I wrote, “Mayuko appears to find it amusing to string Shousei along, then push her away. (Run, Shousei, run! Don’t do it!)” and I stand by those words here in Volume 3. Shousei will be better off after she graduates and finds someone less of a tease than Mayuko, Shiroyuki will be better off with anyone than Mayuko, and Kyouko will be better off with someone other than Mawata.
Ratings:
Art – 3, unless you like moe loli with characters that are hard to identify
Story – 6 It’s situation comedy.
Characters – 5 After repeated “treating their partner badly” scenes Mayuko and Mawata drop down to a 3
Yuri – 8
Service – 9
Overall – 6
Isn’t Lesbian Drama hi-larious?
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