I have been so crazy busy recently working on Yuri Monogatari 6 that, after hours of staring at the computer, the thought of reviewing something for you makes me want to cry. Which is why it is once again my absolute, sincere pleasure to welcome Winterbraid as a guest reviewer! Yay!

I`ve finally bled up enough coin to get the new (well, not really, ’cause it was some time ago) and shiny release of Murder Princess, which got, uh, released – by a company aptly calling themselves “Anime Video” – in Poland. And in Germany too, I guess, since it comes with both Polish and German subtitles; and even two different versions of the latter, according to my video player. I know this series has already been taken apart, like, three times on Okazu; but I`m still gonna write about it excessively.
^-^

I must say, while Murder Princess doesn`t seem to have magically gained more Yuri value (or more innovative value, when we`re at it ^-^;) on the second run, it is still – all the same – an enjoyable anime to watch. I think it`s because it is basically a handful of entirely unoriginal themes blended together in an entirely original manner, serviceliciously free of intellectual baggage, and amply seasoned with awesome (like in “Hey, she just thrashed a monster ten times her size!!!” awesome). ^-^ Yes, I just like this series, somehow – perhaps not the title, though. ^-^;

The release consists of two DVDs in a single box (the summary on the back cover has a rather serious mistake, by the way); the first thing I noticed (or should I say, didn`t notice) upon opening the box was lack of postcard. =_= On the other hand, there was a booklet with several pictures of Faris and Alita, and translated liner notes from Tomoyuki Kurokawa of Bee-Train; quite a nice touch, yeah, but still not a postcard… okay, okay. ^-^; Each DVD contains three episodes, and the remaining space is conveniently filled with trailers; nothing Yuri-esque there, so I skipped that part (the company has also released both seasons of Black Lagoon, by the way).

Now for the translation, which is… rather unusual, I`d say. The translators obviously went the creative way; that in itself is more than commendable, as long as it is a result of actual creativity rather than lack of knowledge. I`d like to believe the former is the case here, although this belief`s been put to trial a few times. In other words, there are moments when the text not only doesn`t make sense when compared with original speech, but it also doesn`t make any sense at all. ^-^; Oh well. Still, there is a number of actual “wow!” moments, and these – at least in my opinion – more than make up for the occasional not-so-wow moment, and the more blatant differences from the original are an extra source of fun. ^-^ The characters are, for once, literate (actually, even more literate sometimes than in the original; that`s okay, seeing that while short sentences might sound cool in Japanese, in Polish they just sound dumb ^-^;), use more than 2000 basic words, and – most of the time – use wording you`d expect from the genre. In fact, the result might be a bit too… theatrical at times, but this anime isn`t one to be taken seriously either, so it`s all right, I guess. ^-^; I believe in beautiful translations rather than strictly true translations, so I wholeheartedly support the turn towards creativity (as long as some improvement is on the way) and I can only wish the editors even more imagination in the future, to cover up any gaps in actual knowledge. And more postcards, perhaps. ^-^

And these were my thoughts on “Murder Princess.”

Erica here – thank you Winterbraid for that insightful and entirely laugh-out-loud review. Consider your thoughts and rambles welcome here any time.

Kitsune to Atori is a freaky little collection of three multi-part stories that have absolutely nothing in common except the creator, Takeda Hinata.

The first half of the book, “Kitsune and Atori,” follows the lives, deaths and lives (and deaths, etc, etc,) of sisters Kitsune and Atori. Atori loves her big sister, but hates the foxes that haunt the shrine they live in. It’s kind of sadly apparent that they *are* the foxes, but when Atori kills her sister, there’s nothing we can do about it. Nor can we do anything when we see them alive once again, only this time it’s Atori who has to die. The story is a little weird, a little depressing, a little violent and a little touching, with a measure of “Wait, wasn’t that…? But I thought she…? HUH?”

The second half of the book, “The Doll’s Girl,” follows an introverted and lonely girl, Minori, who has been hospitalized for a long time, following her father’s death. Minori assuages her loneliness by making clothes for her only companion, a doll. When Kanae, a girl slightly older than Minori and exactly opposite in personality, arrives to share her room for a little while, she throws Minori’s life into complete chaos. Kanae is clothes obsessed, extroverted and brand-conscious. But she’s good-hearted and when she sees Hana, Minori’s doll, she decides that she needs a little bling in her life, pulls out a pair of scissors and slices her camisole up for lace for Hana’s hat. Kanae moves to her own room, but she and Minori come to see each other over and over. Minori asks if she can use one of the shiny buttons Kanae wears on her purse, but is told that those, and those alone, she can’t have.

When Kanae’s surgery day comes close Minori makes her a protective charm. Minori cuts out ivy leaves which, in the language of flowers, means “eternal friendship.” Kanae wants to see what’s inside, but Minori won’t let her, embarrassed by her moment of emotionality. Minori thinks Kanae doesn’t appreciate her, so she demands the o-mamori back. As she’s wheeled to surgery, Kanae asks the nurse to give the charm back to Minori, after learning what was in it. Minori receives the charm and opens it to find the buttons that Kanae treasured inside. Minori goes running through the halls to tell Kanae not to die.

The story comes to an end with Minori, dressed quite nattily, visiting a recovering Kanae in the hospital, with an epilogue in which Kanae and Minori are reunited in the outside world, hopefully never to be parted again.

The third story, “Yaeka’s Airmail,” involves a nursing school and some characters that look like infants, a lot of animals, and cool adult characters who look all of mid-teens. It was very dramatic, with fun interiors that didn’t match the story at all.

So, not the Yuriest manga ever published, but for incesty crushes and hospital crushes and impossible age-difference and geographically separate crushes, it was a fun romp through the interesting variety of stuff in the creator’s brain. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – variable, but averaging at 7
Story – ditto
Characters – same here
Yuri – 1
Service – 1

Overall – 7

Today’s review was sponsored by the peerless Komatsu-san, whose blog makes me laugh, as well as educates me about my own industry from the Japanese perspective.

Once more, my sincere thanks to a guest reviewer, this time a guy I only know as Bob. (Sounds like I buy reviews on the street, doesn’t it? “Hey, ya wanna buy a review, I got some in the trunk, right here…” lol) Bob is filling in for an Erica who is halfway out the door to go teach martial arts again for the first time in eight years. Can’t wait. Take it away, Bob!

(I would like to preface this by saying that this would normally be a loser fanboy review, but I’m not a fan of the material covered and so it’s just a loser boy review.)

Sex and violence, as the old saying has it, are reliable sellers. Without that expression, the lasting popularity of Strike Witches would be one of life’s great mysteries, up there with Fermat’s last theorem, Fermi’s paradox and why people can’t believe it’s not butter. I don’t clearly remember why I picked this series up, but it must have seemed like a good idea at the time – maybe I was just desperate for something that seemed likely to be high-yuri in content and wasn’t another season of Ikki Tousen.

The year is 1944 and Strike Witches is all about an international crew of magical mecha-shoujo moe cat-lolis with guns fighting Borg-Angels week after week in a world where Manchukuo, Katyn and Auschwitz-Birkenau never happened. You see, in the world of Strike Witches – hereafter shortened to SW – 1939 saw, not the invasion of Poland and the beginning of World War II, but an invasion of the entire planet by mysterious beings called Neuroi, whose way of life is to hit things with death rays and make more Neuroi out of the charred remains. Having discovered that fighter aircraft et cetera are useless, humanity falls back on Plan B: the magical girl.

Enter our young hero Yoshika Miyafuji, yanked out of her happy pants-free school life by a woman with a disturbing laugh and a patch-covered demonic eye who wants her to join an elite squad of underage witches on the frontline of the war against the Neuroi. Witches, that is, who confront the enemy not with wands and broomsticks but with machine guns and Striker Units – the latter being a miraculous invention of Yoshika’s MIA father, whose stroke of brilliance was to combine the essentials of a piston-engine monoplane with a magical boot. Yoshika, who of course wants to find said father, is badgered into accepting. When the baddies attack en route to England, still holding out against Neuroi-occupied mainland Europe, she establishes herself as the heroine of the series by hijacking a spare set of Strikers and growing furry ears and a tail before taking to the sky. Once in the UK proper, she finds herself inducted into the 501st Joint Fighter Wing, which suffers from a chronic shortage of actual fighters and whose other members hail from thinly-veiled analogues of Japan, Canada, France, Russia, Finland, Italy, Germany and the United States. The rest of this mercifully short series follows a generic monster-of-the-week format with comic interludes as Yoshika uses the power of naïve affection to win over her comrades one by one.

Some, if not all, of the above will sound familiar to those who have consumed a fair volume of entertainment material, because there isn’t a shred of originality in SW from start to end. Yoshika is textbook love-and-peace magical girl material. The other characters are equally stock – which is particularly disappointing because I’d heard over and over that they were based on actual historical figures – though not so much that they can’t be endearing now and then. And of the plot itself? If you’ve seen Star Trek‘s Borg episodes and the first half of Evangelion, you’ll know what the Neuroi are. If you’ve seen the last few episodes of Blue Drop or Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, you’ll see the backstabbing conspiracy coming from kilometers away. If you’ve seen Sakura Taisen: The Movie, you’ll not only know how SW ends but even what the final boss looks like. Like Evangelion, the series implies that the Neuroi are more than relentless, mysterious foes, but runs out of episodes before actually making anything of this development. I have no doubt that a second season is in the works somewhere out there.

To its credit, SW doesn’t waste much time pretending to be anything other than what it is: a light fanservice show that crams in enough tropes to make Kaishaku jealous, albeit in a more coherent fashion. Its particular forte, like Agent Aika and Najica Blitz Tactics, is panties. The viewer who makes it through all twelve episodes will be well and truly inundated with them, because the League of Nations apparently banned women’s pants in order to divert cloth supplies to frontline hospitals. There’s also fanservice of the swimsuit and breast-groping varieties, along with an episode of panty-swapping.

Where’s the Yuri, you ask? Also under the purview of the fanservice bureau, for the most part: the French teamster is blatantly intent on keeping the demon-eyed officer to herself, the Finn and Russian regularly sleep together – in an innocent fashion, of course – and Yoshika herself is heavily implied to have erotic dreams about her well-endowed Canadian partner. It rarely gets further than heavy subtext, but it’s more than some ‘Yuri’ series have offered.

On the technical side of things, the animation quality is decent: while there are occasional bouts of very obvious CGI and some pretty blatant corner-cuts, it didn’t make my eyes bleed. The sound likewise is generally unremarkable and unoffensive.

I started SW with rock-bottom expectations, which is good because it didn’t surpass them by any great measure. If you, unlike me, have a taste for magical girls, moe lolis, gratuitous panties or any of the other items mentioned above, there’s no harm in checking out this series. If you can tolerate said fetishes and are merely looking to watch something inconsequential and get a few laughs, there are probably worse choices – ditto if you just want the Yuri. Don’t watch it for the faux-WWII setting, which is pure gimmick, and fans of girls-with-guns can find far better material elsewhere. If Gonzo et al intend to add to this franchise without it becoming more stale than the bread I ate today, my hearty recommendation is to swap the airscrews for sea screws, bump the timeline forward to 1962 or thereabouts and give us a series called Strike Fishes.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 2
Characters – 7
Yuri – 8 if you have a good imagination, 6 if you don’t
Service – 12

Overall – 7

Thanks Bob! No one told me there was a woman with an eyepatch. Now I guess I’ll *have* to watch it. Bleah.