Venus Versus Virus Manga, Volume 1 (English)

September 14th, 2007

I have been holding off reviewing Venus Versus Virus. For many reasons. Before I get into them, let me thank the good folks at Seven Seas for a review copy…and let me apologize in advance for what are going to be some harsh comments….

Venus Versus Virus has no Yuri. None. Not a single honest emotional connection between any of the characters, much less love or desire between the two female protagonists.

There are people who say it is Yuri – they are wrong. There is splash page art, in which the two leads are draped over one another. And there is a moment, in which two of Sumire’s friends misinterpret something she says to *assume* a lesbian interpretation where none was intended (and how droll and “Three’s Company” is that?) And, during a crisis, Sumire, scared out of her freaking wits, throws herself into Lucia’s arms.

None of these equal Yuri.

If you come across a mention of the Yuri in VVV, you are reading something written by a person who cannot discrimate between women who love/desire one another (we call those “lesbians”) and women who are posed upon one another for money.

Let’s revisit what “Yuri” is – the representation in anime, manga or doujinshi of a woman in love with, or who desires, another woman. It’s *possible* that Lucia and Sumire could, potentially, someday in the future, fall in love with one another. Possible, not probable. Highly unlikely, in fact, since Sumire is straight and spends much of the series longing after a male upperclassman. But the point is – two women who are sempai/kouhai does not make a series Yuri. Two women in the same frame, sharing a experience, does not make it Yuri. By that standard, I and every female friend I have ever had, regardless of our personal and sexual preferences, are somehow a couple.

Aside from this, the manga itself is simply very…okay. At best. Of the many Dengeki Comics to have brought to the US, this is one of the least good I’ve read.

The story, such as it is, deals with demons that infest humans and take them over (the “Virus” of the unfortunate title.) Lucia runs a clothes shop by day, but her true occupation is to exterminate these Viruses, thus making her the Venus of the title. Lucia wears Goth-Loli getup, packs a gun and wrears an eye-patch which *ought* to be enough to pique my interest, but she doesn’t. I think it’s because she has the eyepatch over the wrong eye for her to appeal to me. (No, I don’t know *why* it matters – but, yes, it matters! ^_^;)

Sumire is the typical schoolgirl until she ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time, between Lucia’s gun and a Virus. When she’s shot, she somehow takes on the anti-Virus properties of Lucia’s weapon, and in doing so, becomes a magnet for the Viruses and a weapon against them. And if she had the least little inkling of personality…we might even care.

This series has some potential for some good fights, but eschews it for extended mutation scenes with extra oozing and gloating/drooling.

I want to say that I think Seven Seas did as good a job as they could with this mess – the translation/adaptation is decent enough, but it is not their finest work. The art is dark, a little rough and hard to follow, and the paper they chose makes it all blur together. There are even a few typos, which are inevitable from time to time.

In general, of all the Seven Seas books I’ve read, this is simply the least good in every possible way. As I said in my review of the VVV anime: “This is a classic case of the “Newtype Effect” in which two otherwise straight women are deployed draped over one another to play the Yuri-service card, when there is no Yuri and neither character is remotely lesbian. Not that this will stop fans from insisting.”

Ratings:

Art – 5
Story – 5
Characters – 4
Yuri – 1 (if you don’t care that there really isn’t any, but you can make it work in your head)
Service – 6

Overall – 5

Posted in English Manga | 11 Comments »


Yuri Monogatari News

September 14th, 2007

A couple of quickie items today.

Somewhat belatedly, I have learned that Yuri Monogatari 3 was nominated for this year’s Lambda Book Award from the Lambda Literary Foundation, the country’s leading organization for LGBT literature. While YM3 did not win, merely being nominated is a tremendous honor! Congratuations to everyone who contributed to YM3! If YM5 gets a similar honor, I *promise* to announce it earlier! -_-;;

 

 

 

 

And secondly, the newest member of this award-nominated series, Yuri Monogatari 5 will be making its official premiere at Yuricon’s 2007 “Yurisai” Event! We’ll have no less than 5 contributors to the Yuri Monogatari series at the event – this is your best chance to get copies autographed by the artists who make this such a fantastic (and notable) series!

 

Posted in ALC Publishing, Yuri Monogatari, Yuri Network News | No Comments »


Yuri Anime: Doki Doki School Hours, Volume 5 (English)

September 13th, 2007

It’s not like Doki Doki School Hours had much of a plot to begin with. It was much more an animation of 4-panel comics than anything else. You know…characters with one, maybe two dimensions to their personality, set up situation, rimshot for the punchline.

And what little plot the series had was thrown to the wind in Volume 4, when the writers ceased to write anything remotely having to do with what plot there was.

So you can hardly call it jumping the shark, when Volume 5 starts of with a parody of every shounen anime ever, inexplicably called “Beast Buster Katarina Nagare.” It’s especially inexplicable because it’s not like we’ve ever seen Iinchou interested in this kind of adventure anime/manga/game at all, and because, once again, the character gags remain the same (except for Iinchou inexplicably becoming a rogue warrior schoolgirl thingy.)

But what’s REALLY weird about Volume 5 is how, after apparently getting all the fanfic they could think of out of their system, the writers suddenly, for no apparent reason, return the the original school-year plot. It’s quite boggling. Unfortunately Doki Doki School Hours comes with no liner notes (or any extras…in fact, its *so* sparse I kind of think we’re lucky to get a case with the DVD,) so there’s no way to learn whether their madness had any method at all. Since there is no proof to the contrary, I’ll project…. No. ;-)

It also makes me a little sad to think that there are so many series I enjoyed more than this and would have loved to have a 26-episode run, and instead, this ridiculous piece of fluff got to go on waaaaaayyyyyy past the time the joke was dead, buried and forgotten.

That having been said, there’s nothing to make this particular volume any less amusing than any of the others. Nothing has changed, in fact. Rio and Kudo are still gay for Mika and Suetake, respectively, and everyone else is pretty much the same as they were when they first showed up in the series. Tominaga seems to have taken a hit on screen time (did she offend the producer?) which I feel bad about, because I think she’s my favorite character. Hang on, let me check:

Minako Tominaga

A brutally honest student who belongs to the cooking club. She is often shown moaning about being surrounded by the “idiots (etc…)” in her class, or telling people off. She loves slasher films.

Yup. She’s my favorite. :-D

Stuff happens in Volume 5. Some of it is school-type stuff, like the school festival, and some of it isn’t. The final episode is my second least favorite tedious plot complication (after the physical exam). Mika-sensei is having an Omiai (arranged formal matchmaking meeting) so of *course* she’s positively 1) getting married and 2) leaving school. The students stress, they get over it, and surprise! when the next semester comes, nothing’s any different.

While I hated the SPCD in this episode, I did love Kitagawa’s quite real issues at the thought of losing Mika-sensei – and how the other students pretty much acknowledged that. One more for the animated lesbians are better looking, smarter and more talented list; now they are more gracious and emotionally stable, too. ^_^

Ratings –

Art – 6
Story – 6
Characters – 6
Yuri – 4
Service – 3

Overall – 6

I keep waiting to get utterly sick of this series. So far it hasn’t happened. If I marathoned it you can be sure I’d be very very done with it, but as an occasional piece of brain candy, it’s plenty fine.

Posted in English Anime, Yuri Anime | 1 Comment »


Maria-sama ga Miteru DJCD 3

September 11th, 2007

As I mentioned in my review of the first two Marimite DJCDs, these CDs are compilations of the web radio shows from the Animate TV site. DJCD Volume 3 is, like the previous two volumes, general chitchat between the seiyuu, question and answer sessions relating to the characters, and incredibly silly radio dramas that are done with tongue firmly in cheeks.

Of the various questions asked of the various voice actresses, two seemed notable to me – who would you live with, and who would you borrow money from. The live with question elicited some interesting answers. Noto Mamiko, thinking as Shimako, said she’ want to live with Noriko, since they were so close – or failing that, Yumi, so they could do silly girly things together. Ikezawa Haruna, speaking for Yoshino said Rei, with no hesitation. The “borrow money question” elicited a “anyone other than Sei” from me, so I thought it funny when Noto Mamiko said she’d borrow money from Sei-sama. Ikezawa Haruna said that Yoshino would make a cute face and Rei would give her anything she wanted. ^_^

The dramas were pretty long this time. One of them dealt with Sachiko’s introduction to that promotional thing where you crank the ball roller and get a prize based on the color of the ball. Sachiko keeps getting tissues as a prize and gets a little obsessed with winning a real prize.

The last drama wasn’t very exciting, but for Sachiko x Yumi fans, there’s a sweet ending where Yumi thinks to herself that she really, really loves Onee-sama.

The DJCD has a slightly strange piece of art for the cover, not as cute as I’d hoped, but the inserts are two fantastic cards – one, a “game” card for “Magical Girl Shimako” and the other a character card for Yumi as Lilian Sentai Ranger “Chinensis Red” – both gags from the earlier two DJCDs.

These DJCDs were great filler between seasons, goofy fun, a nice mix between talking with the seiyuu and talking with the characters. Since we’re getting a fourth season of the anime, we probably won’t be getting more of these anytime soon but, as with all the drama CDs I listen to, they are a very satisfying way to kill time in a car and practice one’s listening skills.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Characters – 8
Yuri – 4
Service – 1

Overall – 8

Posted in Drama CD, Maria-sama ga Miteru | 5 Comments »


Yuri Manga: Hayate x Blade, Volume 7

September 10th, 2007

I know that when I call Hayate x Blade Volume 7 a “Yuri” manga, I’m stretching the boundaries a bit on the word. There is, as I have mentioned previously, one lesbian character (Jun, who behaves in that typically shounen series pervtastic way) and there’s a whopping load of relationships which lie just on the border between shinyuu and Yuri between the shinyuu. (That sentence contained a pun, but it failed utterly in English. Bah.)

Volume 7 deals primarily with the endlessly fascinating Mikado Akira – she of the 80-member “A-Team” fan club. (Akira is a popular character with fan artists as well, I have quite a few doujinshi that deal with Akira’s apparently cool, but actually fraught, relationship with Hitsugi. And of course her relationship with her shinyuu/ sister-in-arms, Sae.) In this volume, Akira and Sae challenge Hitsugi to a duel, but the council president denies them the request. Instead, she insists that they will fight two other members on the Council, Sid and Nancy, in an exhibition match.

Much of the volume delves into Sae and Akira’s relationship and how, as a child, having been rejected for being a girl, Akira decided that she would become a boy. Sae met her when they were very young, but in typical boy fashion, Akira doesn’t remember that at all. ^_^ The flashbacks are an interesting look into Akira’s history, but an even more interesting perspective on Sae’s relationship with Akira. Upon remembering little Akira’s vow to become a boy, high school Sae pokes Akira in her breast and laughs, saying, “You lied.”

Sid and Nancy are appropriately dysfunctional, as befits their names. Sid, who is a pathetic, yet amusing freak  insists that she is an anarchist punk (again appropriately,) but she’s really a wuss. Nancy manipulates her very easily – should I mention how appropriate that is, again? Sid also curses in English rendered in Katakana. It’s always so rewarding to spend ten minutes staring at a conglomeration of characters, only to realize that it’s something brilliant like, “Holy Shit” or “Goddamn Bitch!” ^_^ Because it takes me so long to read Sid’s tirades, they are just that much funnier to me when I realize how utterly banal she is. (There’s a scene in the middle of their fight when Sid basically accuses Akira, who wears studded belt, collar at the throat and multiple earrings, of being a Hot Topics punk, while she says how she is a REAL punk – Anarchy! Fuck! – which completely cracked me up.)

Because of the nature of their natures, we barely pay attention to Sae fighting Nancy. Even they are sort of half-hearted about their side of the match, knowing that it’s their butches partners who are the real show here.

Hayate offers Akira good luck in the form of two cat mascots for her and Sae’s swords…does that make an even dozen cats now? I think so. Maybe more. During the battle, the cat mascots turn out to be a huge clue. Because. In order to ensure that their idol Akira is the hero of the day, the A-team has helpfully sabotaged her partner Sae’s weapon. But because they are as dumb as a sack of doorknobs, they got it and wrong and…you guessed, it, it is Akira’s weapon that falls apart, just as Sid launches a powerful attack. It’s a case of the immovable object being attacked by an irresistible force as the book comes to an abrupt, if not unexpected, end.

Ratings:

Art – 8 (I think it’s getting a little better in fact, but I can’t tell you why until I review Volume 8)
Story – 9
Characters – 9
Yuri – 4
Service – 3

Overall – 9

This is good stuff. For a drama it’s funny; for a comedy, it’s deep and thoughtful. The action is over the top and interesting. The personal relationships are still the main focus. Hayashiya Shizuru really has the chops. She’s got something for just about everyone in this series. And she has just about everything I like under the sun in it. Hayate x Blade is total, purest win. And once again, in case you missed the announcement, Seven Seas has licensed the series. The first volume is slated to ship in Q2 2008. I’ll look forward to reviewing it. ;-)

Posted in Hayate x Blade, Yuri Manga | 4 Comments »