Yuri Manga: Miyuki-chan in Wonderland (English)

July 10th, 2009

Wow, it’s only a few years ago, but reading Miyuki-chan in Wonderland feels like stepping back a million years into the past. To a time when Tokyopop was *the* name in manga, when they were cutting edge and hot. And CLAMP was the name on everyone’s lips all the time. From X to Chobits to…well just about a zillion series, whatever CLAMP touched turned into money.

Miyuki-chan is a collection of 6 short, service-filled stories of hapless high school girl Miyuki, as she wanders through dreamscapes loosely based on Lewis Carroll’s iconic works, games and CLAMP’s own work. All of these are filled with primarily female characters, mostly adult, and almost all focused on feeling Miyuki up or stripping her down. A psychological reading of the book could easily attribute all sorts of pent-up lesbian feelings to Miyuki but, as she’s completely fictitious, we have to just assume that CLAMP really likes drawing women in underwear. ^_^

The Yuri in this manga is really Yuri – there are no lesbians here. Just fictitious female beings groping a fictitious female character. There’s no emotion at all involved, unless you count titillation as an emotion.

Personally, the best line was when Miyuki cries out, “Oh no! I’m in some weird movie version of the X manga!” which made me laugh because, like there was a non-weird movie version of the X manga? ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 5
Story – 5
Characters – 5
Yuri – 4
Service – 7

Overall – 5

The upside of the manga is you don’t have to listen to that *horrible* music, but the downside is you don’t get the great seiyuu voices, either.

This manga volume shipped to me with no Hero’s name attached. (Boo Powell’s.com, not letting me know who my Hero is!) If you were the sponsor for today’s review, will you please step up and claim credit? Thanks so much from all of us!

Posted in CLAMP, English Manga, Yuri Manga | 1 Comment »


Yuri News: Aoi Hana on Afterellen.com

July 10th, 2009

The largest online lesbian media source, Afterellen.com will be premiering this summer’s Yuri anime hit, Aoi Hana: Sweet Blue Flowers via Crunchyroll.

Afterellen covers lesbian media and entertainment of all forms, and they stream a number of live-action drama and news series on their site. This is their first anime stream.

Both the anime stream and an article I wrote about the series goes live tonight at 11PM EST. Check it out and don’t forget to rant about how much you love my articles in the comments! :-)

Posted in Aoi Hana/ Sweet Blue Flowers, English Anime, Shimura Takako, Yuri Network News | 10 Comments »


Yuri Manga: Itoshi wo Tome (Volume 1)

July 8th, 2009

Set in the Heian period, Itoshi wo Tome ~ Kimi ga Kokoro ha ~ (愛しをとめ~君がこころは~) is a story about noblewomen Tachibana and Sakura, whose older sister had been a lady of the Emperor’s palace, but had died. Sakura is living with Tachibana’s family as a courtesy.

Tachibana falls in love with Sakura’s tearful face early on but as much as they wish it, their story is not as simple as “Happily ever after.” First, Tachibana is betrothed to the stupidest, most cheerful doofus ever. His words are decorated with ASCII art just to give you an idea of his depth and intelligence. When he discovers Tachibana and Sakura locked together in an embrace, Sakura is able to convince him to be their friend and ally.

But a far, far worse threat is around the corner. Tachibana remains engaged to her doofus, knowing he won’t press the issue – but when Sakura is called up by the Emperor to be one of his women, there is no escape. Tachibana wails that as a woman she is powerless, but then comes to the surprising conclusion that even as a man, she would have had no power over the whims of the Emperor.

To protect her beloved Sakura, Tachibana takes her place in the Emperor’s bed. It is not a happy moment for either woman and eventually Sakura interrupts to stop what she cannot bear to see or hear.

The Emperor claims that he has no intention of separating them, instead asking them to have sex in front of him, to “prove” their love. They do, because it’s that or have sex with him (the saving grace of this scene is that he is young, attractive and not doing anything that would make a Yuri fan cry while he watches.) Unrealistically, he allows them to leave, unharmed. And despite my and Tachibana’s suspicion, he appears to be as good as his word. The book ends with them in each others arms thanking the gods that each other exists.

I can’t say I liked this book, really. It wasn’t vile or anything, but it just didn’t grab me. The art wasn’t up to either the Heian clothing or the “beautiful people” that populated the Imperial Palace. The few glimpses of actual Heian-style art served to really pull us down to reality on what was considered beautiful during that time – something I did quite like. I would have liked a more elegant style, something more Mist-like.

Mostly, I just didn’t like the story. It was very “Plot? What Plot?” Tachibana and Sakura barely talk before they are having sex and the sex isn’t really portrayed well. (If you do that to breasts, guys, it hurts. I recommend not doing that if you don’t want to be slapped.) The scene where the Mikado has them have sex in front of him is, perhaps surprisingly, perhaps not so much, the sexiest scene of the book.

The *best* scene of the book, IMHO, was a moment when Tachibana carves Sakura’s name (桜) into her arm with a knife. Sakura grabs the knife and threatens to carve Tachibana’s name (橘) into her own arm. That’d be a heck of a carving.

This manga is a collection of another of the cell phone manga distributed by Ichijinsha. I’m not sure I’d subscribe to it – there is better out there.

Ratings:
Art – 6
Story – 5
Characters – 7
Yuri – 8
Service – 6

Overall – 6

OTOH, it didn’t suck massively, either. I’ve read better, I’ve read worse.

Posted in Comic Yuri Hime, Yuri Manga | No Comments »


Yuri Manga: Red Garden, Volume 4

July 6th, 2009

Red Garden, Volume 4 is 272 pages of blood, weirdness, violence and undead girls who look very fetching in that frock.

As you can see clearly from the cover, Kate steps forward to openly take her place as the lead character in this volume. It’s been apparent that, although the story is *said* to revolve around Lise, it really revolves around Kate.

Kate and Herve’ come together, and are ripped apart, Kate fends off Evil, Psycho Lesbian TM Paula who, completely unlike the wonderful, kind, sincere Paula of the anime, is a loathsome, unstable creature in the fine tradition of carnivorous lesbians in most media. But don’t worry – she dies. Then she comes back and turns out to be real nice after all. But she dies again anyway.

Kate is set apart from Rose, Rachel and Claire at the end when, in order to save everyone, she is forced to sacrifice herself. Although they mourn their loss, they are able to move on and live the lives that had been taken from them. Kate, however, does not die, but lives in this series’ version of Tir-na-Og, the Red Garden of Roosevelt Island, with her beloved friend Lise. Which is why I am calling this a Yuri Manga. Surely even the undead can live in a Boston Marriage? ^_^

As with all the other volumes, there is violence, there is fashion, there is raw emotion and shoujo-style SHOCK! eyes. There is also an amazingly nice set of panels with all four of our heroines in the uniform of Grace, which is way more effective than I would have expected.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Yuri – 4
Service – 3

Overall – 8

It’s really hard to ignore the importance of clothes in this manga. What they are wearing is at least as important as what they are doing. ;-)

Posted in Yuri Manga | 7 Comments »


Yuri News this Week – July 4, 2009

July 4th, 2009

What a week for Yuri fans!

Yuri Anime

The top story this week is, of course, that the Aoi Hana anime is not only available on, but is “simulcasting” an hour after its Japan TV debut on, Crunchyroll.com. If your country is not blocked, you can watch it for free, but a small subscription fee will get you a better stream, higher definition and more options. The anime has received critical acclaim so far, from both fans and reviewers. Smart folks on the Yuricon Mailing List like Katherine, have identified preorders available for the DVDs on Amazon JP and like Sal, noticed that it looks to be running 11 episodes. Here’s hoping it does well enough to garner a second season.

I was chatting with @Funimation on Twitter and they let me know that the projected release date for El Cazador is autumn 2009 and Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne is sometime in spring 2010.

Speaking of 2010, Right Stuf/Nozomi (@AnimeToday on Twitter) has announced that the 4th season of Maria Watches Over Us is slated for a 2010 release. They also announced the licenses for Aria the Origination and the Arietta OVA to be released together in one set. Also Right Stuf is planning a line of Aria lithographs, which Gia Manry of Anime Vice explained as coming out one at a time until there’s no money left in our pockets. :-)

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Yuri Manga

Erin S mentions on her LJ that Fujieda Miyabi has nothing in this month’s issue of Yuri Hime, but that he’ll be back in October’s issue. To me, this says that we’ll finally get that Ame-iro Kouchakan Kandan tankoubon. It’s pretty common for the mangaka to take a break the month of the collection release. I’m sure we all hope so! (This just in – Ichijinsha Mail Magazine has a release date for Ame-iro of July 25th, so there ya go.)

Bruce P wrote me to tell me about the summer Yuri-themed issue of a magazine called Kikan S (Esu). He says, “There are articles (principally author interviews and artwork examples) on a selection of Yuri manga: Aoi Hana, Sasame Kikoto, Manga no Tsukurikata, and Otome Keki. There is also an article about Anise magazine, in one sidebar of which I was pleased to see them show the cover and give publishing info on Rica’tte Kanji. Another sidebar describes the evolution of the word Yuri. The original illustrations in this issue are also mostly Yuri, though some of them are, in the unfortunate tradition of Kikan S, pretty skeevy. Artistic, but skeevy.”

Lastly, if you’ve been wondering where Gunjou went, since it hasn’t run in Morning 2 magazine in a while, I can assure that it is live and well! I haven’t reviewed it, because honestly, the climax chapter was so raw and beautiful that I haven’t been able to deal with it in words. I know that sounds melodramatic, but it’s totally true. It was 72 pages of some of the best manga I’ve ever read and when I was done, I was wiped. Then the series took a few months off, I assumed it was because of the Morning International Comic Contest. It turns out I was wrong about that, but Gunjou returned to the magazine for issue 23 – which is the important bit. If you do like Gunjou, I hope you’ll write Morning 2 and let them know. It’s important to communicate these things to the editors and publishers.

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Yuri Drama CD

And really quickly, links are now up for the 4th Special Maria-sama ga Miteru CD and the newest Drama CD (and the first in a long time) Tears of the Rosary!

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I was going to get caught up on “Snatches” this week, but with so much real news, I think I’ll leave it at that. It’s a really wallow-worthy week, don’t you think?

As always, if you’d like to share news with the world, please feel free to email me at anilesbocon01 at hotmail. dot com and share!

 

Posted in El Cazador, Fujieda Miyabi, Maria-sama ga Miteru, Yuri Network News | 6 Comments »