Lesbian Manga: Honey & Honey Deluxe

May 1st, 2007

Honey & Honey isn’t really a “Yuri” manga. It’s a manga about a lesbian couple, Sachiko and Masako (who is bi,) and their friends, some of whom are also sexual or gender minorities and some of whom are not – you know, like real people. It is also a biographical comic, written and drawn by Takeuchi Sachiko. Most interestingly, it runs in a mainstream magazine for women, Davinci, as a “Comic Essay.” And really, that’s a perfect description of what Honey & Honey is. (Thinking about it, this would be a good description for Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, as well.)

While the art isn’t terribly realistic, the storylines are. They go like this: Sachiko and Masako decide to go shopping. They look at glasses, and then shoes. Then they eat a crepe, and go home. And all the while, they are discussing things like the fact that they are on a date, what it means to be a couple, how the world perceives them and, most importantly, how much in love they are.

This all sounds sort of, “well, duh” but you know, it isn’t. Not at all. There are plenty of people for whom this would be revolutionary news – akin to aliens alighting – even here in my own beloved, mostly progressive, state.

So, when we watch Sachiko and Masako (and their transgender friends Kai and Kou) explain to straight friend Mai what it means to “be lesbian” or “be transgender” or any number of things that always seem self-evident, but just aren’t to a lot of people, it might feel a little preachy, but it isn’t meant that way at all. In the same way Rivkah described Steady Beat to me as having been written for Austin, Texas, this book was written for the average women of Tokyo – for whom sexual minorities are, really, aliens.

Other chapters include such amusing pastimes as shopping for “adult” toys, and attending any number of GLBT events, and the people that they meet.

There’s nothing dramatic in this series. That’s the point. It’s a slice-of-life look into a life that most people don’t live. It’s refreshingly normal, with a little heaviness on the “teaching” side. There are pages of term definitions and some facts about gender transitioning, and even recent LGBT history in Tokyo. None of those is to my taste – it gets in the way of the story for me, but I am not the target audience.

Overall, Honey & Honey is a sweet and mild look at lesbian life, with a good nature and gentle humor. Guaranteed to offend no one but those people who insist on being offended by the very existence of sexual minorities. If this were translated into English, it would be the thing you could give your relatives to explain the whole “gay thing” to them. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 6 Intentionally silly/cute
Story – 6 Slightly bland but realistic
Characters – 6 No drama, but c’mon, we’re talking LGBTQ folks here! So unrealistic. ^_^
Lesbian – 10 A lesbian “onna-doushi love couple”
Service – 0 Not even the sex toy chapter has service

Overall – 6

I enjoyed the glimpse at beginning and end of the book of the characters drawn as if they were in more standard manga form. Kai and Kou in “shoujo manga” form made me laugh. Of course they are totally beautiful.

BGM: Cookie Day by Shonen Knife. (It’s a beautiful cookie day!)

Posted in LGBTQ, Yuri Manga | 5 Comments »


Interview on Afterellen.com

May 1st, 2007

This morning, I awoke to an insane number of visitors to the Yuricon website and discovered that I am the top story on lesbian pop culture and media site, Afterellen.com.

Next stop – front cover of Curve. Then the Advocate. Then…People. Then the Star, the Inquirer and finally the Weekly World News. There you have it – the rise and fall of a pop icon. modern style. LOL

Anyway, read the interview for a brief history of Yuricon, ALC and other stuff. ;-)

Many thanks to Suzanne Corson for her great interview!

Posted in Interview, Yuri Network News, Yuricon | 3 Comments »


Doki Doki School Hours Anime, Volume 1

April 30th, 2007

First things first – today’s review was brought to you by the generosity of Audrey! Much gratitude to her not only for the DVD, but for any inconvenience it caused her getting it to me. Thank you thank you. :-)

Doki Doki School Hours, Volume 1 (Sensei no Ojikan) introduces us to the members of Class 2-A of Okitsu High School, a generic Japanese High School. As we meet the main players, we are also introduced to their teacher Suzuki Mika, a 27-year old who is baby-faced, about 4’10” and, most importantly, pretty childish. Mika-sensei is joined by the following students with their respective obsessions and quirks:

Iinchou – the class representative seems pretty normal, until you hit her obsession with boy-band member “Koro-chan.”

Tominaga – rich, smart girl with a sharp tongue. She seems pretty normal to me…

Kobayashi – not so smart girl, obsessed with money, brand goods and losing weight (a bit of the Tomo from Azumanga Daioh about her in character design and function.)

Kitagawa – tall, smart, pretty lesbian (how ’bout that…) with a self-proclaimed preference for petite, childish women. She likes girls in general, but Mika-sensei is exactly her type. The translation later says that she “likes little girls” but that’s sort of wrong sounding, since she likes “little” in the sense of small or short, not young.

Nakamura, called “Oyaji” – he’s a nice normal guy, who just happens to look, sound and act just like an old guy.

Kudo – as queer for boys as Kitagawa is for girls, Kudo’s also smart and attractive. Sadly he’s in love with…

Suetake – the good-natured, but boneheaded athlete. He’s clueless about mostly everything, especially Kudo’s feelings.

Seki – attractive, intelligent, completely, utterly self-absorbed, with a tendency to cross-dress.

Watabe – hardcore otaku, draws doujinshi. Constantly.

The plot basically runs through the school calendar year, covering all the things that typically happen in a Japanese school, with gags focused around the personalities of the characters.

Which brings me to the one episode that just makes me grit my teeth – the physical examination episode. Despite the fact that it had some genuinely funny moments, and Kitagawa gets to show that she *actually* likes girls in general and is not just gay for Mika-sensei, I just can’t stand the 15+ minutes of Kobayashi whining about how fat she is and the whole breast size thing. I can’t stop wondering why no one ever a) watches the guys obsess over their body images and 2) why no one ever suggests that guys’ penises be measured. Because surely that’s as relevant to their health as breast size is to the girls’. And, btw, 50kg…not fat. At 5’2″ (which is average height for Japanese teen girls, actually a little short these days), not even pudgy. That’s just barely flesh on the bones, so, please, dear Japanese schoolgirls and everyone who writes/draws them everywhere, shut UP already about the weight thing. Gawd.

The personality quirk gags are just that; Mika-sensei is short, she looks and acts like a child, Iinchou is obsessed with Koro-chan, Watabe obsesses about his doujinshi, Kudo obssesses about Suetake, etc, etc, nothing ever changes and it’s all in good fun. This is broad comedy, so the farce factor works. You couldn’t do something serious with these characters and keep them intact, but this kind of light, “around the year with class 2-A” is just fine.

The DVD subtitles are clearly dubtitles – there are a number of times where words or concepts were changed, usually for no real reason that I can see. Watabe’s doujinshi/manga gags are the ones that take the biggest hit. The word “doujinshi” is replaced by “manga” and “Comiket” is replaced by something generic like “event”. When he absent-mindedly draws a page of doujinshi on the back of an exam sheet, Mika-sensei’s warning to not put on the screentone is changed to “Don’t take the carbon out” which I found to be a hysterical choice of change simply because how many young people today would have the VAGUEST clue what that meant? Sure, I remember carbon paper. Obviously the translators and editors do too. What’s the chance that some 15-25 year old anime enthusiast will? Slim? None? They’re more likely to know “screentone” than “carbon paper.” Which takes me back to my “who are you translating for, anyway?” question.

Dear anime distro companies – THINK harder about your audience. Aside from the stuff that’s on TV, WHO do you think watches a direct-to-DVD release of a little known comedy anime? *Not* folks off the streets in Blockbuster. Please translate for us, not for Ma and Pa Kettle, please?

Let’s get back to Watabe for a second. In a scene where they are discussing girl’s swimsuits, Oyaji and Watabe back the school suits as being fine. Watabe goes on to say that bikinis and high-cuts don’t have that “moe” factor. Moe remains untranslated. The rest of the class stares at him like he has six heads – Suetake even goes so far to say, “is that Japanese?” which I thought was very funny. Living as I do in otaku-world it’s nice to be reminded that “normal” people in Japan do not use that word or, probably, many (most!) of the words we’re familiar with. :-)

Honorifics – Mika-sensei and Miyamoto-sensei get their titles, and SYNYAP’s “Koro-chan” gets his, and pretty much everyone else has none. As most of them refer to each other casually by family name, it’s no harm, no foul.

Packaging – well, you get a cover picture on the DVD, it isn’t plain white. :-)

Ratings –

Art – 5, but has its own charm
Story – 6
Characters – 6
Yuri – 6
Service – 3

Overall – 7

Gee, the lesbian character is smarter, more attractive and cooler than everyone else around her. How (not at all) unusual! ^_^

Posted in English Anime | No Comments »


Yuri Mini-Drama CD: Haru Natsu Aki Fuyu

April 28th, 2007

As I mentioned in my review of the HaruNatsuAkiFuyu manga, the deluxe set comes with a Drama CD. Even the cover art is deluxe – I’ve scanned in the back cover of the Drama CD so you can see Haruka and Akiho in their version of Zaou-esque GothLoli. (And, btw, should you not be as enamored as I am of Drama CDs, here is a link the the manga-only edition of this, with characters in unadorned school uniform.)

Let’s start with the roll call, shall we?

Haruka – Tamura Yukari (Tomari in Kashimashi)

Fuyuka – Noto Mamiko (Someone in everything)

Akiho – Shintani Ryoko (Aoi from Mai HiMe/Otome)

Natsuki – Kawasumi Ayako (Chikane from Kannazuki no Miko)

Reiko-sensei – Kawakami Tomoko (Utena in Utena)

Ayano-sensei – Nasu Megumi

Okay, so this drama CD covers the first two chapters of the manga, “Expressions of Love” and “Female Wolf” in which the four principals meet each other and, well, fall in love. It’s pretty much word for word from the manga stories.

And that’s basically why I wouldn’t recommend it too much. It covers the chapters with the “funny” sexual harassment which, if they are unpleasant in print, are really hard to take with sound. Especially “Female Wolf” which is the weakest/worst of all the chapters. Noto Mamiko uses the same voice she does for Ana in Ichigo Mashimaro here and really, the mental images of Ana being sexually abused were just not making me happy at all. (As much as I adore Noto-san, I think another VA really might have been a better choice here. She was *great* as Tsumugi in the MikoMjayo Drama CDs. Good on her that she’s getting so much work. I hope she’s putting scads of money away for her pension. But she didn’t work as the choice for Fuyuka’s voice. At all. It’s not her fault – she doesn’t suit the role, that particular chapter bites…and I really don’t want to ever hear her screaming that way ever again.

On the other side of that, do you think that Kawasumi Ayako was rolling her eyes and thinking, “Dear gods, *another* lesbian rape role?” (No, it doesn’t get that far, but still…)

Assumably the full-length DCD that will follow this summer will pick up the story from where this one leaves off and I really look forward to the “First Kiss” arc with Kawakami Tomoko as school counselor Reiko. (She has about 5 lines in this CD.)

But I found it odd that they didn’t write a new script for this series like they did for the MikoMajyo DCDs, which were entirely original – and which I listen to constantly. Put ’em on my new iPod and everything so I can take them with me. Sadly, the mini-cd of HaruNatsuAkiFuyu will not be coming with me anywhere.

Ratings:

Story – 3
Characters – 3
Voice Acting – 7
Yuri – a highly dysfunctional 9
Service – 9

Overall – 3

The stories are distressing and nothing like good acting is really going to fix that.

Posted in Comic Yuri Hime, Drama CDs & Audiobooks | 1 Comment »


Yuri Manga: Haru Natsu Aki Fuyu

April 25th, 2007

HaruNatsuAkiFuyu, (Spring/Summer/Fall/Winter) is collection of stories by Zaou Taishi and Eiki Eiki that ran in Yuri Hime and Yuri Shimai magazines. I got the deluxe version with Drama CD, a review of which will be a separate entry, because I said so.

It reads oddly, because the first two stories here were done as one-shots, then a third story took off into three-part mini-arc, which was followed by another two chapters that tied it all together. These are followed by an extra original chapter for this collection, and the Zaou Taishi story “Her” that ran in an early issue of Yuri Shimai (I think.) As an exercise in making omelets from cracked eggs, it’s incredibly successful.

The first two cracked eggs we meet are Akiho and Haruka. Haruka is one of the stars at St. Teresa’s school for girls; tall, beautiful, accomplished, friendly – she also has an unpleasant habit of molesting girls by grabbing their breasts. This is meant to be seen as funny, in case you were wondering. Akiho, who has just transfered in to the school, likes Haruka, but is put off by this behavior – can you imagine? After some soul searching, she comes to realize that it’s not that she dislikes Haruka grabbing her breasts so much as Haruka grabbing *other* girl’s breasts. She confesses this to Haruka who is surprised, but not displeased. She also ends the chapter by taking miles where inches are being offered.

The next story is sort of the same, only worse. Our eggs in this chapter are new transfer student Fuyuka who is very excited to be starting a new life at an all-girl’s school. Her anticipation soon turns to terror as she becomes the target of extreme stalker/molester behavior at the hands of another of the school’s stars, Natsuki. (All four of the principles have names with the seasons, hence the title, btw.) After knocking herself out cold running away from Natsuki, Fuyuka wakes in the doctor’s office and tells the school counselor about how she was sexually abused by a male classmate from her previous school. Now she’s developed a fear of men, and had hoped to put it all behind her at this new school. Natsuki, who has heard all of this apologizes, and admits that she has a similar phobia. The story is meant to be read as resolved as the two of them fall asleep in each other’s arms. I really, really don’t like this chapter. I didn’t like it when it ran in the magazine and it doesn’t work any better for me this time around.

This takes us to the three-part story of the school counselor, Reiko, and her childhood friend, and also another teacher at the school, Ayano. Although they both are *clearly* pining away for each other, it takes a while for them to get it. Long story short, they realize that they are in love with one another and live happily ever after. By far and away, my favorite arc.

Fuyuka’s story continues after Reiko tells her to go for it, in regards to her deepening feelings for Natsuki. But when she invites Natsuki over to her house when there’s no one else home and Natsuki doesn’t so much as try to kiss her, she’s not sure if she’s reading the signals right. Depressed, she runs into Akiho from the first chapter and the two uke retire to the roof for conversation, where they become good friends right away.

Natsuki starts to notice Fuyuka’s absences. She confronts Haruka, asking what *her* lover wants with Fuyuka? Haruka has no idea, of course. The argument escalates and they take it to the roof to battle it out, when they come across Fuyuka and Akiho. Natsuki demands to know what’s going on and everyone, including all the onlookers, are flabbergasted when Akiho says that she’s fallen in love with Fuyuka, and kisses her.

The final chapter begins with Natsuki beside herself with anger, and Haruka looking mightily surprised at her lover’s confession that she’s bored and was looking for someone new. When Natsuki starts to drag Fuyuka away, she belts Natsuki and screams at her that she, Natsuki, needs to put up, or shut up. If Natsuki loves Fuyuka, she needs to *say* so. Teachers Ayano and Reiko shoo all the rubberneckers away and leave the four to work it all out.

As Natsuki and Fuyuka confess their feelings, Akiho and Haruka leave them behind, with a short apology on Akiho’s part and a refreshing comment from Haruka that yeah, she was surprised, but she “got” what Akiho was trying to do and believed in her, implicitly. Good lord – does that ever happen in manga? Meanwhile, back on the roof, Natsuki and Fuyuka have it out. And in the end we learn that while Fuyuka maybe uke in school, she has no intention of being the bottom in bed.

The last chapter of the story is new for this volume. The four girls all go to the beach off season together. I very much like the looks on Haruka’s and Natsuki’s faces as they sit in the train grumping that they have to share this date with the other couple. But they perk up when they learn that they have separate rooms. They are accosted by generic guys trying to pick them up, so our female wolf and jaguar can cuddle their girls and tell them no guys need apply. Despite a promise of fireworks, they all end up in their respective beds and, erm, forget to leave for the rest of the night. Last panel, Akiho and Fuyuka lie unconvincingly about how they just were so darn tuckered out they fell asleep, how funny, us too, while Natsuki and Haruka roll their eyes.

And, again, the last chapter is Zaou Taishi’s one-shot, “Kanojo” (“Her”) that tells the story of yet another couple who have the same feelings for one another , but don’t know it.

So…was the omelet worth the broken eggs? Yeah, I think it was. If we had to see one more chapter with “funny” sexual harassment, I probably wouldn’t say so, but I can just get past the two that are here. Although I’ll be honest, the first chapter with Fuyuka and Natsuki really just bothers me in every conceivable way. (And bothered me worse in the Drama CD….) But I genuinely liked the “First Kiss” arc that dealt with the teachers, and enjoyed the turnaround after Fuyuka begins to pursue Natsuki. The last chapter on the beach was a nice extra and sort of tied it all together with a cute ending passage about them being together in each of the four seasons (coupled with pretty bed scene stills). So yes. It’s a nice enough omelet.

Extra come-withs – the picture of Fuyuka and Natsuki above on the front cover is complimented by a similar picture of Haruka and Akiho on the back in the same outfit, only green. Also – many color pages reproduced, including all of the pinup art of the two teachers, and a postcard of them during their school years. And, of course, a Drama CD. ^_^ …I can’t forget to tell you that the under-the-dust-cover gag art may well be the funniest I have ever seen on a manga, ever.

Ratings:

Art – 7 (I know, I know, insanely popular artist…but I find myself obsessing about the mouths because they bother me…)
Story – starts at 4, ends at 8
Characters – same as above
Yuri – 10
Service – lots of “boobies” 7 (“Boobies????” the wife says. “WTF?” Yup)

Overall – 8

I don’t think this is their strongest work, but I really did appreciate the skill that went into tying up all the loose ends and making the thing work as a whole.

Posted in Comic Yuri Hime, Yuri Manga | 8 Comments »