Hayate x Blade Manga, Volume 12

September 7th, 2010

Today’s review is going to be shorter than it really should be, but I find words fail me.

It’s like, you remember that day when we all were fighting to get the star of some rogue graduate and there was, like, fighting everywhere and all the upperclassmen were like, “Swoosh!” and “Zam!” and everyone was running around and taking on  the Student *freaking* Council (!) and sometimes they even won and then there were those people who always hang around with that Kurogane kids and they were like fighting like, “Damn!” and they were running and running and the Chairwoman of the school was riding around on a big freaking white horse in armor and was all “THOSE WHO FIGHT WITH ALL THEIR HEART SHINE BRIGHTEST” and there was that avalanche which wiped out nearly everyone and that ninja girl was swinging from tree to tree and Mudo and Kurogane were trying to kill each other and it was all BAM!! and Pow!!! and in the end it was ***** who won the whole thing!

Yeah, it was totally like that.

Ratings:

Hayate x Blade, Volume 12 (はやて×ブレード), which is now available only for JP Kindle, is the most perfect storm of slapstick comedy, intellectual comedy, action and “WTF was THAT?” I’ve pretty much ever seen.

Posted in Hayate x Blade | 4 Comments »


"Read Yuri Manga in Public" Day Contest Winners!

September 6th, 2010

I’ve been gently reminded that I promised to announce the “Read Yuri Manga in Public” contest winners today. Since it’s a holiday here in the US, I thought that would make a terrific post to celebrate everyone who took time out of their day to send in pictures of them reading Yuri Manga in Public!

From Twitter we have Katherine H reading Hayate x Blade at a cafe.

Me reading Hayate x Blade Volume 6

From the Yuricon and ALC group on Facebook, we have Alison G who took her copy of WORKS out for a spin.

Reading Eriko Tadeno's Works

Both of these lovely ladies will be receiving “I Love Yuri T-shirts” for their efforts!

And from the Yuricon Mailing List, comes Grand Prize Winner Mara Papimer, who will be receiving a Amazon Gift Certificate! He chose to air his collection of Yuri – all at once. ^_^ Now that’s my kind of reader!

Thanks to everyone once again. I have to say, that that was such a tremendous amount of fun, I will definitely be doing it again next year (assuming I remember to!)

Happy Labor Day Holiday to everyone of you who have worked hard to support Yuri in every way!

Posted in Contests | 3 Comments »


Shoujo Manga MagazineYuri Watch: Maria-sama ga Miteru

September 5th, 2010

Calling The Margaret (ザ マーガレット)”shoujo” is not correct, I know. I’m just too lazy to come up with another title for this series of “I’m reading magazines for teen and tween girls that have Yuri stories.” Technically, The Margaret is actually josei, as it’s marketed to older teen girls, but since Sean and I are the only ones who care, I won’t belabor the point.(Wait,. yes I will – here’s a fool-proof method to know if a magazine is shoujo or not – does it come with awesome giveaways of bags and jewelry and stationary and stuff? If  you said, “Yes!” – it’s shoujo. If the answer is, “uh, no, all there is is an insert of a mini comic,” it’s josei. Got it? good.)

The real point of today’s review is not to talk about The Margaret, but the newly re-started serialization of the Maria-sama Ga Miteru manga which had ceased publication after Volume 8. The original serialization ended with the graduation of Youko, Sei and Eriko.

The story picks up in what will become Volume 9, in the new term. Yumi, Yoshino and Shimako are all second-years. Sachiko, Rei and Shimako are now the Rosas…and there’s something up with Shimako. She’s been “strange” recently, they all notice. And they have to assume that it is at least in part because of the first-year she’s been hanging around with, Nijou Noriko.

The first thing, Sachiko and Rei decide, is that Shimako needs to cough up her one last secret, because it’s bothering her. And so they concoct an annoying plan to “out” Shimako as the daughter of a Buddhist Priest.

The plan they create is still ham-handed after all this time. But I’m reminded of something as I read it. A “year” later in story time, Shimako will be sitting with Yumi and Yoshino, cheerfully telling her friends the very, very last piece of her incredibly complicated family situation. She’ll be smiling and laughing – and enjoying the carpish gaping of the other two as she spills the beans. So heavy-handed, yes, and obnoxious, yes, but now looking back, I think Rei and Sachiko may have been *right.*

The manga shifts from Noriko’s point of view right to Yumi’s and we get to relive the whole irritating thing over again, this time knowing full well that Yumi, at least, thought they were sandblasting a cracker.

Also in The Margaret magazine is “Bushido Sixteen,” a girls’ kendo sports drama, which has all the requisite sweat and tears and guts and rivalries and good stuff. And there’s way less non-con than there was the last time I picked up an issue. So, while not as Yuri-fied as Nobara no Mori no Otome-tachi – which has gotten very Yuri indeed, there in Nakayoshi – The Margaret has some lovely platonic romance and rivalry between girls. All good.

Overall – 9

I think that’s it for girls’s manga and Yuri. For now. Here’s hoping that there’s more on the horizon. For one thing, the girl’s magazines have the best furoku!

Posted in Manga, Maria-sama ga Miteru | 7 Comments »


Yuri Network News – September 4, 2010

September 4th, 2010

Yuri Anime

I still haven’t bothered to figure out what it’s about, but Tamayura is on all the Japanese Yuri lists, and Ogata Megumi is playing one of the character’s mothers, which is all I need to get to me to watch. It’s by the same staff that did Aria, which might help convince some of you. :-)

***

Yuri Manga

The next wave of Yuri Manga from the Tsubomi anthology is on the way! Kono Kutsu ha Shirimasenka? by Mizutani Fuuka, has an October street date.

Comic Lily Plus, Volume 2 the “other” Yuri quarterly anthology, also has an October release.

Actually, there’s going to be a veritable Yuri pileup of manga in October. So much in fact, that I’ll be talking October releases all month. Let’s just do one more today…Utena-inspired Shitsurakuen, Volume 4 is also a-coming in October.

…Okay, one more. ^_^ Here’s one for the gender-switch fans here. Trans Gals is, apparently, an actual anthology about, according to YNN correspondent Erin S., CIS women who have been transformed/de-aged into girls, instead of yet another teen gender-switch comedy. If one of you gets it, I’d love to have a guest review!

***

Erica In and Around the Internets

I’ll be part of a Yurilicious blogtalk radio show, starring myself, host Allaine and co-host and Yuri Fanfic author Dreiser for an “Anime-ted” discussion about Yuri Fanfic on Femmslash4Fans. The show will be broadcast on Thursday, September 16 at 10PM (EST, I believe). September will be filled with more Yuri interviews with popular Yuri fanfic authors so bookmark this page! And do drop by for a fun conversation about Yuri fanfic. I know it’ll be fun, because Dreiser and I are old drinking buddies and we always have a good time. :-)

Speaking of the Internet, it was my incredible pleasure to be part of a Manga Out Loud podcast with host, blogger and a person I consider it an honor to know, Ed Sizemore. We discussed…wait for it…moe. You think I’m kidding, but I’m not. ^_^ It was a great conversation and we had a lot of fun. Keep your eye out for this podcast early next week on the above website.

Tomorrow, Sunday, my next post for Hooded Utilitarian will publish. This month I talk about Wonder Woman Day at the Best Comic Store in the country. Wonder Woman is totally on topic for Yuri fans, I think. :-)

Lastly, another chance to pimp for MangaNEXT, because they’ve just added alternative Japanese manga artist Kondoh Akino (AX magazine) to the roster of guests. In the last week, I also had the chance to read this incredible exchange about copyright between ManagaNEXT guest Nina Paley and author Cory Doctorow. It was an amazing discussion that blew my brain out as it tried to expand to be half as smart as either Ms. Paley or Mr. Doctorow. As a result of the exchange, I contacted Ms. Paley, introduced myself and suggested a few bits of reading material for her before she arrives at MangaNEXT, so she understands some of the larger issues that we have in the manga world. She’s asked if she can print my correspondence with her, I gave her my permission, so hopefully, you’ll see that on her website sometime soon, as well.

If you are an aspiring manga artist, doujinshi creator or are just really interested in the history and/or industry of manga and sequential art, ManagNEXT is the place to be this year.

***

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 »


Maria-sama ga Miteru Drama CD: Parasol wo Sashite

September 3rd, 2010

The good news is that, phew, that’s behind us now. No more Rainy Blue ever again…until the manga catches up. D’oh!

Well, for the moment, we can wallow in the comfort of the 14th Drama CD of the Maria-sama ga Miteru series, Parasol wo Sashite, in which Yumi gets back both her favorite umbrella and her beloved onee-sama.

This Drama CD is a 2-disk set, each disk has about 45-60 minutes of material.

The first disk has the half of the book in which Yumi meets Katou Kei and her older relative, the entirely adorable Yumiko. The second has the appearance of Youko and the revelation of what Sachiko has been going through for the past few months.

Two scenes in this story were critical to my understanding of the characters. When Touko snaps at Yumi outside the cafeteria, it occurred to me that, at that point, Touko has no idea that Yumi does not know what’s up with Sachiko. So, to see Yumi having fun with classmates is upsetting. Of course, yes, Touko’s a absolute jerk about it, which adds to the drama of the scene. But in the second half of the book, Touko knows that Yumi doesn’t know, which is probably one of the very first bricks in the wall she builds between Yumi and herself.

The second scene that really blew me away, was the scene with Kei’s older relative, Yumiko. Kei imagines her to be a taciturn old lady and Touko later points out that she was clearly used to frowning alot. But something about Yumi’s unexpected kindness opens up Yumiko in a way that I think she could never have expected. Yumiko tells Yumi something so important that I missed it the first 30 times I read/watched/read/listened to this scene. She says, simply, that if Yumi loves her onee-sama, she should tell her. Verbalizing this changes Yumi’s whole perspective…and Yumiko’s own life.

Of course it was nice to encounter Sei and Youko again, and “meet” Kei.

And the whole bit at the end that had gotten cut out of the anime, about Youko being too competent to forget an umbrella, then not having one, proving that she was totally discombobulated and Sachiko’s mother obsessing over convenience store food were told in full, to my immense pleasure.

The second disk also includes a bonus track, in which the actresses point out that it had been almost a year since they recorded Rainy Blue and how they were all kinda tense about that not being resolved.(Most of them have now read the novels, something I find fascinating.) But the thing that makes the bonus track priceless is right in the very beginning, when they are all talking about how emotional this CD is and Itou Miki says that saying “I love you Yumi,” was really emotional for her. When Itou-san says the words, “I love you, Yumi,” Ueda Kana immediately replies, “I love you too, Onee-sama!” And I, and the entire cast of Maria-sama ga Miteru screamed of “Ow! That hurt!” as our hearts exploded from the cuteness. (^_^) Toyoguchi Megumi says something like, “Aw, c’mon, I don’t want to see that!”

So, although it took a really long time to get…Parasol wo Sashite was totally worth it.

Ratings:

Overall – 9.5

Now that I think about it, this novel had *three* adorable adult characters – Sachiko’s mom Sayako, Kei’s relative Yumiko and “Miffy-chan,” the middle-school teacher who returned Yumi’s umbrella.

Posted in Drama CD, Drama CDs & Audiobooks, Maria-sama ga Miteru | 3 Comments »