It’s come to my attention that some of you have sent me email that was swallowed by my spam filter. If you emailed me in the last week or two and have not heard back (usually I at least tell you “Yes,” “No,” “Thank you” or “Haha, you funny”) it is not because I am ignoring you. It is because I never saw your mail.

Please email me once again and I’ll do my best to assist you. I’ve reset my spam filter – hoipefully I’ll catch your email this time. My apologies for any inconvenience.

This is me, prostrate before the gods of anime that at *last* there’s something on worth watching!
m(__)m

I didn’t actually have any expectations for Mnemosyne – Mnemosyne no Musume-tachi, (Daughters of Mnemosyne.) I like Noto Mamiko plenty, but her presence in a series is not, for me, a guarantee of future results. But about 20 seconds into the opening sequence for Mnemosyne I knew we had a winner. ^_^

Mnemosyne, named after the Greek deity associated with memory, is a horror-thriller about an undead detective named Asougi Rin. The anime opens with her death, although there’s no way to know if it’s her first or just another one along the way. It’s a pretty harsh death. After that, with no explanation, we see her casually avoiding work as a third-rate private detective. While out looking for a lost cat, Rin finds a lost human. Among other things, he’s suffering an identity crisis, so he and Rin set off to find his self. Which brings her into close encounter with a sadistic torturer and zombies.

There is a lot of blood and violence in Mnemosyne and the torture – while not explicitly shown – is still graphic enough that the squeamish need not apply.

But. Rin. Let’s add all her good qualities up: 1) she is an adult female, bucking the recent trend; 2) wears a suit (and glasses which, yes, I also find attractive); 3) is more than competent at hand to hand combat; 4) Not above a spot of really nasty violence and; 5) Is completely nuts because she can’t be killed.

Bing! Bing! Bing! We have a winnah!

I also strongly approve of the fact that Noto Mamiko uses a much more normal range of her voice than her usual breathless bishoujo version. This sounds more like the way she actually talks than anything else I’ve heard her do. (Marimite fans will might also be pleased that she’s joined by the voice actors for Touko, as her assistant and Kashiwagi, as the folorn lost human. Or they might be traumatized.)

Yuri is presented as service. It will likely remain service throughout. There’s really no reason to expect it to be anything *other* than service. Not that that’s ever stopped Yuri fans before…. Rin is tortured sexually, with some groping and piercing (I know it’s very, very wrong, but I thought Rin with all the piercings was kinda hot – but then, I like my women pierced…) and there was a little service-y play between Rin and her assistant Mimi. I hope Laura will turn out to be an EPL – she’s already evil and psychotic, so she just has one quality to go.

This is not a nice anime. It’s nasty, full of violence, torture, blood, death, and other grim. It’s also full of the most competent adult females in anime for about 4 years. I accept your gift, gods of anime! On behalf of all of us real women who like our women animated, I accept!

Ratings:

Art – 7 A little artsy at times, but otherwise good
Story – 7 Sufficiently grim
Characters – 8
Yuri – 4
Service – 108

Overall – 8

I mentioned that Mnemosyne was out and Sean Gaffney asked if this was the Yuri series to end all Yuri series this season. I said no, there was just some breast groping service. And the lead female wore a suit. And it had an EPL. Then I re-read what I had written and said, “Yes. Yes it is.” ^_^

Martial arts. The perfect palette on which to blend skill, fortitude, perspicacity, teamwork and hideously adorable cuteness. Add a dash of Yuri and you have a really thin excuse for a review of Bamboo Blade!

Kendo takes a great deal of subtlety and skill. You can’t just hit a person with the shinai. Footwork, timing, strike location and force all must be precise. Like all martial arts, Kendo takes most of a lifetime to understand and master. (Where “master” is meant as “not come even close to mastering.” It’s a cliche’ in the martial arts – all of them – that the more you know, the more you know how little you know. And no, I am not talking out my ass in fortune cookies here. I taught MA for about 10 years. Trust me – the more you know, the less you know.) So, of course it stands to reason that a hideously adorable fifteen-year old would be practically a world-class kendoka. Wait, no it doesn’t.

And that’s the hand-wave in Bamboo Blade. Little Tamako is in truth, an anime-obsessed master of this difficult art, so of course her high school Kendo club wants, no, *needs,* to get her. And they do, which signals a major turn-around for the Muroe High Kendo club. They are able to recruit some new members, and in honor of Tama’s sentai leanings, assign a color to each of the members.

As Tama’s training seeps osmotically into the rest of the team, they become more focused and more skilled. Bubbly Kirino, the half-assed club president and flaky Saya find themselves winning matches more, beginner Miya-Miya is able to channel her tremdous hidden rage into Kendo and clumsy Azuma finds a group that will accept her for who she is and offer her support. In other words – it’s a “team” anime, where every character has backstory, but we all “gambatte” and win. There will be cliff-hangers here and there, but no real tension. Tama-chan is simply too cute to worry about. Everything will always be all right.

Our excuse for reviewing this series at all is a girl named Reimi who obsessively stalks and photographs Miya-Miya (Kendo “Black”.) Miya-Miya is already the craziest, most mentally unstable character in the show – Reimi’s stalking does not help. Miya-Miya assumes it to be some kind of rivalry, but in fact, Reimi’s in love with Miya-Miya. It’s not really a nice love. Reimi’s admiration does more damage than good. But it’s okay. It’s an excuse to review Bamboo Blade. :-) There’s a nice helping of “obvious” pairability between Kirino and Saya as well, so although they aren’t a couple, it’s easy enough for those so inclined to pretend they are.

Bamboo Blade is not cutting-edge or anything. (Ecch, no pun intended.) It’s a formulaic, yet-another-one-of-those-sports-series that fill Japanese manga and anime shelves. The lessons are “keep trying,” “be a team” and “guts=win.” Same as pretty much every other sports anime. The only difference is that the “win” part is really secondary to the story. Since Tama-chan is a priori way superior to everyone, that’s not an issue. It’s the journey and her experiences hanging out with other kids her age that’s the important bit. Sure, it’s nice that the team is getting better, but that’s just an added benefit. This takes a lot of pressure off the characters – and the viewers. They don’t have to succeed despite outrageous odds and tremendous hardship, and we don’t have to watch them suffer.

Here’s an example. Tama-chan is off to her first training camp. Her father is concerned because there will be boys there. That’s it. And Tama-chan’s biggest concern? That her father go nowhere near the TV and digital recorder, so she doesn’t miss an episode of her favorite shows. Feels nice and relaxed, doesn’t it? It is. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 7 Moe cute
Story – 7
Characters – 8 Except the teachers who are impossible to respect
Yuri – 1
Service – 5 Individual episodes go as high as 7.

Overall – 7

I like the fact that we occasionally see real Kendo techniques. And I defy anyone to tell me that they don’t want to hug Tama-chan. A fun anime about five female Kendoka – does there really need to be anything else?

Still cleaning out the backlog of anime reviews. Today’s review was written by long-time “friend of Yuri” Eric P.!(And many thanks to Adam for his assist on this.) Yuricon 2003 was the American Premiere of the Alien 9 anime, which was very cool, so thanks again to CPM for that. :-) The reason I never reviewed this series is probably self-evident…I didn’t much care for it. lol Extra thanks to Eric and to Adam, and to you for reading!

Here’s my attempt in covering the basics of the Alien Nine saga, a title from back in 2003, including the anime, the three-volume manga, and the one-shot manga sequel Emulators, created by Hitoshi Tomizawa.

In the not-too-distant future, alien invasions are an everyday occurrence. The story of Alien Nine takes place in a school where three 6th-grade girls are elected as the school’s protectors, and have to defend the campus from these occasional intrusions.

One of the three is a girl named Yuri (kinda obvious name, isn’t it?), elected very much against her will. She is teamed with two other Alien Fighters, Kumi and Kasumi. Their fighting gear includes helmets that are in fact living, symbiotic aliens, which can unfurl wings and extend tentacles shaped like screws. The Alien Fighters’ uniforms and weapons make them look like rollerblading lacrosse-players. They face off against creatures of all shapes and sizes; it is amazing what Hitoshi Tomizawa’s imagination came up with at times.

During the course of the story, Kumi and Kasumi experience encounters which cause them to slowly become half-aliens, and in the end they try to protect the still-human Yuri so as to retain what’s left of their humanity.

The artwork of Alien Nine is decidedly paradoxical. If you were to judge this title based upon its cover (DVD or manga), you would be surprised and stunned if you actually looked inside. While the characters designs are cutesy, their situations and the monstrous aliens they face are anything but; some of the imagery can get downright brutal and grotesque. In my opinion it isn’t overdone, but it may not appeal to anyone who’s particularly squeamish or who doesn’t appreciate a little shock.

And now to the differences between the anime and the manga: While the animation is great, I personally hate the anime. As a standalone story from the manga version, Yuri, the appointed protagonist, remains whiny and pitiful from start to finish without any kind of development. She is far worse than Shinji from Evangelion, if you can believe that. She ends up making the viewers, like myself, depressed for having followed a heroine who never accomplishes anything. Also, the anime picks *the* most *awkward* spot in the manga as its conclusion. The very last shot, right before it blacks out to the closing credits, is a scene where Yuri just looks at the camera and then breaks down in tears. Honestly, I felt scarred and empty after having watched it.

At first I thought it was very unfortunate that I watched the anime before reading the manga version. On second thought, however, it turned out to be rather fortunate – because of it, I was better able to appreciate the superiority of the manga version, which continues the story where the anime left off. Although still pitiful, the Yuri of the manga is just slightly less annoying. At least in the manga’s conclusion (before Emulators) she makes choices which affect the outcome of the story. Whether or not you’d consider her heroic, it’s still a vast improvement in my book.

Now down to the Yuri itself. It is much clearer in the anime version, especially in Episode 3, where Kumi expresses her fondness toward Yuri. Yuri seems uncertain, but then later shows hints of being interested in Kumi as well. Then something weird happens in the fourth and final episode: they’re alone, wearing their helmets to block out some alien emanation that’s causing headaches. Then Kumi takes a look at Yuri, dons a wicked smile, and Yuri starts to panic. The camera cuts to the ceiling, we hear some whining, and Yuri’s clothes fly up. You tell me what happened there…

The Yuri is still there in the manga version, at least on Kumi’s part. Yuri (the character) is not remotely aware of Kumi’s feelings, even though it was said feelings which helped bring about the manga’s conclusion.

When the story continues in Emulators, a whole new alien invasion takes place. Of course. Kasumi, being far less human this time around, tries to set up everything for Kumi to be alone with Yuri, but in the end Kumi’s feelings turn out to be unreciprocated. You might well wonder why Kumi would be attracted to Yuri to begin with. Maybe Kumi’s attracted to the really vulnerable types, in contrast to her own independent nature? Anyway, the ending of Emulators is bittersweet, but everyone turns out more or less okay.

I should also mention that there’s a bonus chapter about a boy who had a crush on Kumi, but he becomes an alien villain targeting Yuri upon discovering the true object of Kumi’s affections.

Aside from the Yuri, Alien Nine is made up of very imaginative science-fiction. One of my favorite elements is from Emulators, where a new half-alien girl, Monami, is introduced, and her long strands of hair seem to have a mind of their own. The storytelling style of Alien Nine is vague; it doesn’t delve into the background to explain everything or everyone. Instead things mostly
just happen, and readers are simply along for the ride. Some people may differ, but I tend to find that sort of style appealing. It entails a lot of shocking revelations – certainly enough to make you want to know what happens next. You’re better off skipping the anime version, but if you feel like checking out something that is very weird and unique, but with a humorous tinge, definitely consider the Alien Nine and Alien Nine: Emulators manga.

Ratings:

Art – 8 (fluctuates between cute and grotesque)
Story – Anime, 4; Manga, 7
Characters – 7
Yuri – Anime, 6; Manga, 5
Service – Anime, 7; Manga, 5 (a couple of bath scenes, involving the alien helmets’ tentacle-like tongues)

Overall – Anime, 3; Manga,  7

Eric, you completely captured my feelings about the anime. ^_^ Thanks again for this review!