This is the first review brought to you through the generosity and kindness of the folks who purchased something for me from or through my Amazon Wish List. In this case, the review has been sponsored by pachy_boy and many thanks to him for it. He thought this manga would interest me and it does – but not for the reasons he thought. (Sorry…)

The story is, at least for the first volume, mostly realistic. Ayumu, a girl with low self esteem and poor study skills, relies on her smarter friend for assistance to pass the exams into high school. When, through a bizarre turn of fate, her friend Shii does not pass the exam, she begins to resent Ayumu, then outright hate her.

Personally, I question the fact that her friend could have possibly lost skills through helping Ayumu study. That simply makes no sense. If they were studying at a level high enough for Ayumu to pass, then they were studying at a level high enough for the friend to pass too, but be that as it may. Full of self-loathing, Aymu becomes a “cutter.” That is to say, Ayumu begins to cut herself in order to inflict punishment on herself for her self-perceived unworthiness and to feel alive at all. This part, at least, is written incredibly well – Ayumu’s feelings match those of many teenagers who cut themselves.

Ayumu goes on to the new high school, determined to be antisocial, but a shiny happy, incredibly superficial and immediately loathsome girl, Manami, pops into Ayumu’s life and takes it over. And this is where I had to check out of the story. Manami is, as I say, entirely loathsome. So much so that I cannot for the life of me conjur up the least little sympathy for Ayumu after she decides to be friends with such an obvious skank. I felt for her about the cutting, I really did. It’s nothing I ever did, or would ever do – I much prefer to take my bile out on others rather than direct it towards myself – but still, I understand the thing that drives a person towards cutting well enough. But if she didn’t take one look at Manami and think, “what a tick”, well, she’s going to get into miserable situations.

And she does, of course. I did a quick overview of the next several volumes, and it looks like the story goes from one misery to another, with no hope for redemption or resolution in sight. Yeah – I’d want my teenaged girl to read this…not. I imagine it will resonate well with girls facing similar situations, but if there are that many girls facing that many similar situations, then our country has WAY more to worry about than kids cutting. And maybe it does, I don’t know. I despair to think that that many girls might well be in that many horrific situations. I have to believe that it’s a soap-opera mentality; wanting to see people marginally like you in crisis situations that are like yours blown well out of proportion to increase the dramatic potential. I fervently pray that it is so.

What *did* interest me about Ayumu was that, although she is in no way lesbian, she is an exceptional example of a woman-identitfied woman. Most of the examples I can come up with are lesbian characters, so I found Ayumu’s behavior very interesting.

It’s not uncommon to see women, of any orientation, notice what other women are wearing, or comment on their looks. What is less usual is to see women represented as noticing and caring what other women think of them. This is hardly uncommon behavior in real life, but I only tend to see it portrayed in “chick lit” and/or dismissed as an example of the superficiality of women. But Ayumu is more than that. She watches the girls around her almost exclusively, measuring herself against them, not for the sake of a boy, but for the sake of herself. It’s hard to miss that she comments on the looks of the other girls in the class, but completely ignores the appearance of the boys. And yet, I believe she is straight. Ayumu notices the girls for their beauty or popularity, not because she desires them, but desires to be measured against them. She identifies herself in relationship to them, not in relationship to the guy(s) in her life, as Manami does.

So, I don’t see any yuri at all, but I do see a reasonably woman-identified-woman. A rare thing in manga.

Unfortunately for Ayumu, her desire to be carried away in the company of women is going to be getting her in mounds of horrible trouble. I won’t be reading the next volumes of Life, but I might skip to the end to see what happens, when the series finishes.

And, if I did have a daughter who was reading this series, I’d definitely take the opportunity to discuss some of the many issues in here with her.

Unfortunately, Tokyopop blows a HUGE opportunity to engage the reading audience in a dialogue about cutting. The final page is a pedantic, dry and overwhelmingly dull discussion of cutting by a women who has a bunch of letters next to her name. Way to disengage a teen audience there, guys. A small box with the Cutting Hotline number and short, simple and unpretentious message would have served everyone far better. No young person in emotional distress wants some psychologist going “blah, blah, blah, blah, blah” at them. Hell, I don’t want it now, and I’m no longer a teen, nor in emotional distress.

And btw: Hotline for Teens who Cut: 1-800-366-8288

Talk to someone about it. Seriously.

Ratings:

Art – The Usual Teen Manga – 6
Story – The Usual Melodramatic Teen Manga – 5
Characters – The Usual Melodramatic Self-loathing Teens – 5
Yuri – 0
Service – 3

Overall – 5

It wasn’t awful. it wasn’t good. It wasn’t my cup of tea. The biggest problem with the story? I didn’t like a single person in it.

Like Code Geass, Red Garden is a series that is more properly attributed to the Autumn 2006 anime season, but I’ve been too lazy busy to review it until now.

The plot is still a bit obscure, and I am not sure how much will be or can be explained. But in short, four high school girls learn that they are technically dead, but have been given a second life in order to fight off diseased men who become beast-like. So it kind of has a vampire-y, werewolf-y, undead, creature of the night feel to it. Both the reason the men change (attributed vaguely to a curse) and the reason the girls should kill them is left rather shadowy at the time I write this, which is probably midway through the anime. We learn that the family whose men are affected by the curse are attempting to reverse it. Which side is good, and which is bad – or if there is indeed a bad/good, right/wrong, we have yet to learn. And we may never learn it, frankly, which would be no detriment to the story.

The four girls involved have absolutely nothing in common, except that they attend the same school, which is supposed to be set on Roosevelt Island in New York City. The cityscapes are one of the many things I like about the series. The high school is exceedingly un-New York like, however. ^_^

The first of our four and, indubitably, our heroine, is Kate. Kate seems to be a “regular” kind of girl. Smart, pleasant, boring. As the story opens she is dealing with not only her own horrific situation, but also the apparent suicide of her best friend Lise. Lise, like Kate and the others, is not at all what everyone thinks she is.

Rose is a “poor girl”. Her mother is hospitalized and she works hard to take care of her two much younger siblings and keep their family together. Rose is naive, timid and kind-hearted.

Claire represents a different kind of character altogeher. She appears to be extremely poor, but there’s a story there that belies her whole existence. She is a loner too, but that’s about to change. Let’s call her “outcast” girl.

And completing our primary characters is Rachel, our “cool” girl. She is trendy, fashionable, cool and superficial. At the beginning.

These four find themselves becoming friends through circumstance, and then, just because. But the circumstance remains – they must fight these beast-men, together.

I can’t tell you a lot about the story, because it’s not over yet and there’s no real way to tell where it’s going. (I don’t read fan forums and I’m content to watch it play out. So if you think you’ll be clever and spoil it for me with a comment, don’t. Please.) I can tell you that there is decent enough writing going on – even in the mostly cliched plot complications. ^_^ And I liked the fact that in the early episodes, the main characters would suddenly start singing – not well, mind you – and sort of express their feelings that way. It was a bit like watching a musical, without the sticky music or good singing voices.

Okay, so for Yuri. Kate is a yuri magnet, without a doubt. We learn that she and Lise had an exchange diary and that they were very close. fandom will undoubtedly interpret that as *very* close.

Kate is also a member of “Grace,” the name for the school’s student council. Because of her new circumstances she’s been late recently, hanging with a bad crowd and other un-Grace like things. Another member of Grace, Jessica, is seeking to remove Kate from the Council, but is continually blocked by Paula, the council president. (Remember what I said about “Student Council President”? It’s totally the new code for “lesbian.”) Paula is incredibly supportive of Kate – and rather touchy too. Stroking, hugs, holding hands, all in the name of friendship. As Kate has developed a mild case of boyfriend mid-series, I see that crashing, and soon, around Paula’s feet. I predict that she will become Kate’s number one enemy, and not ever know why she feels so betrayed. I also await a flood of Paula x Kate art and stories. Yesterday on the 2chan Yuri board, I saw a simple comment that fully expressed what I see:

Jessica → Paula → Kate.

Yup.

Although I’d wager that Jessica’s jealousy lacks that crucial ounce of desire that would make it “Yuri.” She’s just jealous of Paula being so easy on Kate and paying so much attention to her. “Normal” friend jealousy.

And lastly, I’ve already seen artwork pairing Rose with either Kate or her best friend whose name is escaping me as a I type.

Kate herself appears pretty straight, as do all the others. Shame about Claire, though, she’d make an admirable lesbian. ^_^

What makes this series work for me is that around the unreal storyline, the four main characters appear to be handling real(ish) issues realistically. Certainly consistently with their personalities, anyway. So despite the high pretension level, and the perhaps incoherent plot, the characters are very strong and very likable. With some fanon Yuri.

Ratings:

Art – 3
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Yuri – Paula – 8 (she is so gay); other than Paula – 2
Service- 1

Overall – 7

I found it amusing that last week at my house, I was watching a vampire/undead-type anime with girls as the main characters and some mild Yuri, while the wife was watching a vampire/undead-type anime with boys as the main characters and some mild BL.  ^_^

Yuri’s been pretty thin the last few months in anime – most of what is there is yuri goggles and/or wishful thinking. ^_^ So it’s nice to see at least one or two characters here and there that aren’t completely made up from whole cloth by Yuri fans.

To be accurate, this series is really an Autumn 2006 anime series. I’m just getting around to it now.

Code Geass is in no way a “Yuri anime.” It’s an action story, set up like a multi-level chess game. And for that, it’s worth watching. As long as Sunrise and Gonzo have some kind of actual ending for it, it’ll be worth having seen. If they screw up the end with a reset or something else half-assed, we shall never mention it again. ^_^

I’ll try to be brief about the setup, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to both coherent and brief. Here goes:

In 2010, the Brittanian Empire invades and defeats Japan, turning it into a subjugated space of the empire, known as “Area 11.” For many reasons, a young Brittanian, Lelouch, wants to bring down the Brittanian empire. His best friend, the son of the defeated Japanese Prime Minister, Suzaku, would like to set his people free, but believes that the system can be changed from the inside. When Lelouch gains a mysterious power to control people’s minds, he creates a false persona, Zero, to lead a rag-tag band of Japanese resistance fighters; turning them into a knightly order and the enemies of Brittania. Suzaku becomes, through chance, the pilot of a superior armor technology. Unbeknowst to one another, the two friends fight on opposite sides of the battle – and each against their own people.

Okay…that’s the bare bones of the plot in a nutshell. Hope it makes sense. The details that flesh those bones out are the bits that make the series intruiging, so I won’t go into them. Just go watch it.

By day, Suzaku and Lelouch attend a Brittanian school, very high-class. Which brings us to the details which are pertinent to this review.

The president of the student council (clearly a new code for “lesbian,” like “riding a motorcycle”) is Millay. In early episodes, she shows pronounced attention to women, in particular Lelouch’s obligatory love interest Shirley. (Shirley is actually an excellent character, don’t let my previous comment diminish her in any way.) As befits all good anime lesbians – or at least the recent ones, anyway – Millay is barking mad, with boundary issues. She’s kind of fun in a loopy, not-at-all-real way. She seemed the front runner for “lesbian character with unrequited crush,” for most of the first few episodes.

In Episode 08, Millay, Shirley and Nina all go to a resort for some R&R. Nina is a squirrely, timid geek girl, who has massive fear issues. She clearly fears both men and 11s, (as the Japanese are called). Japanese men bring her to near-hysteria. So, while the three girls are at the resort, one of the Japanese guerilla organizations take them and all the others at the place, hostage.

Among the many that are caught up in the situation is Euphemia, the Vice Governor General of “Area 11” a daughter of the Britannian King AND obligatory love interest of Suzaku. (And yet, like Shirley, she’s a great character.) “Euphie” is quite likeable, even as a representative of the invading forces.

When Nina’s terror causes her to insult one of the Japanese rebels, it looks like she’ll be hurt pretty badly, killed, maybe…or worse. At which point Euphie stands up and introduces herself by name in order to save Nina’s life.

And all of a sudden, Nina takes the lead for “lesbian character with an unrequited crush.” Because she falls head over heels for Euphie. Understandably – how many times have we seen a girl fall for a guy who’s saved her? 14 million? You know – “My hero!” and all that. So let’s give Nina the benefit of the doubt, okay? Thank you. ^_^

Sadly, in episode 12, the writers make Nina do dirty things to herself while she looks at a picture of Euphie, something that was really uneccessary for the story or the character, but I’m sure someone, somewhere, got off on it. And it does hammer home the point that Nina’s feelings are *not* just admiration.

Now, since neither Millay nor Nina can have the one they want, there’s some folks who want them to end up together, so they can have the one they’re with. My personal jury is still out on the matter. I’ll let you know when they make a decision.

Ratings:

Art – characters designed by CLAMP, with fetching giant robots – 7
Story – So far, riveting – 8
Characters – 8
Yuri – 5
Service – 5

Overall – we’ll give it a 7 at the moment, and see where it goes.