Yuricon needs your help!
Hi. I've received some news this week that is unlikely to affect
Yuricon or
ALC Publishing in the long run, but in the short-term we will definitely need all the support we can get.
If you haven't yet purchased any of our ALC Publications, or you're looking to buy anime or manga, etc, please consider using the
Yuricon Shop. Your financial support is important to keep the yuri events, publications and community that make up Yuricon going.
I'll be back with more reviews in the next few days, but do please consider making a purchase from the
Shop or donating to Yuricon, if you can, in the next few months - it will make a huge difference in our immediate future. Donors who send more than $20 will be acknowledged on our website and in the next ALC Publication.
And thanks so much for all the positive support you've shown in the five years since Yuricon was born!
Yuri Anime: ROD The TV, Volume 7
In between redoecorating a bathroom in my house, worrking on
Onna! and getting ready for a talk last night at
Gay Activist Alliance of Morris County, I managed to find just enough time to watch this DVD.
I'm really glad I did, too, because I had either missed or forgotten *so* much of what happens in these final episodes that I had to really pay attention to what was going on - and frequently rewind to catch something I had missed.
In other words - it was excellent.
Most of what I had missed had to do with Wendy, whose motivation makes much more sense to me now. But there had still been a bazillion details I didn't catch - like the pile of books in the very last scene. They only translate one of them, but if you've been paying attention to the show at all, you'll recognize them all. (And if you've read the
Read or Dream manga, you'll have a separate set of symbolism for them. Or the line Yomiko spouts at the end, which is translated as "Paper is in heaven and all's right with the world." Which made me laugh and walk into the dining room to tell my wife. Who looked up from her computer and told me that the original phrase "God's in his heaven and all's right with the world" was first in print in
Don Quixote by Cervantes, not in a Keats ode, as I had thought.
There's two key things here: 1) Yes, we really do have conversations like this in my house and; 2) The Paper/God thing was a pun. Yomiko made a joke. All's right with the world, indeed.
Did I mention that this volume was excellent?
There were still many things I wanted answered at the end, but none of them were "Why on earth did so-and-so do such-and-such?" More of them were like, "Hmmm, what will happen when Nancy comes back?"
There are simply so many things I want to discuss with people about this series, and 99% of all of it is spoilers, so you all have to run out and
get this volume, watch it and come to the
Yuricon Mailing List, so we can gab about it until we're blue! :-)
The *only* things that were not good were the low episode count and the retouched artwork (which in and of itself is fine, it just means that the artwork was crappy the first time around.)
Oh..and the pencil board was actually pretty good! It's Yomiko looking all submissive and sexy. Unlike Nenene, Yomiko is pretty much a "good girl" so it fits and nothing in the picture squicks. Of the entire batch, this one is probably the best.
Ratings:
10, all the way around.
Everybody has a happy ending - even the bad guys - the cleverness factor would make Terry Pratchett jealous and the writers win, hands down, for being golden in my book.
No pun intended. :-D
Yuri Hime Issue 1, on the Yuricon Shop
I'll be reviewing the inagural issue of
Yuri Hime in greater detail when I get a chance, but on first view it looks to be a continuation of
Yuri Shimai in both content and art. If you've read the first five issues of
Yuri Shimai then there will be no huge surprises for you in
Yuri Hime.
The only differences appear to be a few slight name changes in some of the series (mostly for the better, I think!) and I can't be sure, because I haven't checked, but it looks like the artist for what was "Koi Shimai" - which is now "Hatsukoi Shimai" - may be someone new. If not, then the art seems a little less clean this time. In all other ways, the artists have migrated seamlessly to the new book.
There is one repeat from
Yuri Shimai 5. The story "First Kiss" by Taishi Zaou and Eiki Eiki and has been reprinted - but you know, I can totally understand why. It was originally meant as a continuaton but stands on its own as a story. The next issue (scheduled to be out in October) will be Part Two of this story.
"Strawberry Shake" has become "Strawberry Shake Sweet" and is pretty much exactly the same love comedy we all enjoy - and we can expect a collected volume of both this and the Morinaga Milk one-shots, according to the write-ups inside.
As always, the anime section looks like they've been eavesdropping on the
Yuricon Mailing List. lol I've reviewed pretty much everything they cover, except for
Loveless, and heaven knows we talked it to death on the ML! :-)
There is a funny 4-page report on the Yuricon event we held in Tokyo in April, drawn by Morishima Akiko (and also a reprint of her doujinshi "Momo no Aji" aka "Peach Flavor") which really cracks me up. For one thing - my yuri screensaver is shown no less than three times, and I look like a frog. LOL Morishima-san did a spectacular job on the report and Rica Takashima did, in fact, look that adorable in her PreCure cosplay outfit. LOL
Several of the stories have slightly older than high school age characters, which appealed to me strongly.
One last thing and then I'll stop raving - not only are all our old favorites in
Yuri Hime, but there's a few new names that I think we can really look forward to in the future!
As I say, I'll give you a better summary of the stories as soon as I have a chance to absorb them all, but for those of you that enjoy original yuri, I can't recommend the new
Yuri Hime enough. You can order it from Amazon Japan through the
Yuricon Shop!
Yuri Manga: Transistor ni Venus, Volume 1
I have two gentlemen to thank for this review - Touko_no_doriru-san, for opening my eyes to this series in general and Mr. Brent Adkins, who has very genourously donated this particular volume to the cause. (The cause being, of course, my enjoyment of yuri. lol) Thank you, kind sirs!
So, in Volume 1 of
Transistor ni Venus, we are introduced to April Enus, expert in espionage, theft, derring-do and cosplay. Apparently in the year 2269, these are all crucial skills. :-) Intrigue, adventure and sleeping with pretty girls is raison d'etre for the lovely Enus, so of course I approve.
The first volume also introduces us to Mariaana, Enus' sometimes partner in work and frequent partner in bed. I had no *idea* Mariaana was another agent! In the next several volumes she goes soft. She's way cooler as a tough agent who manages to resist Enus' charms for several whole chapters.
Oh, and there's a story where Enus has to be a maid to do something or other...I kind of lost the thread of the story while watching her seduce the other maids. :-)
Ratings:
Art - 6
Story - 7
Characters - 8
Yuri - 9
Overall - 8
Not as wonderful as
Volume 2, or as funny as
Volume 3, Volume 1 of
Transistor ni Venus is a charming exploration of several random fetishes. There's sure to be one you find appealing. :-)
Yuri Manga: Amazoness no Matsuei
Time for another hugely obscure manga review! I found this series at Book-Off, where all bad manga series go to die. lol
The cover of
Amazoness no Matsuei (
Amazoness' Descendants) states, in English, " 'I have the reason to fight for!' This is the success story of Amazoness Akari searching for her own answer in the world of women's professional wrestling." And that's just exactly what this short two-part manga series is about.
Akari is a kid who wants to be the women's wrestling champion. And she's got the stuff, so we watch her work hard and practice and move up the ranks, facing ever tougher opponents, but always triumphing. Eventually she falls in love with a blind guy, and in the then end, not only does she become a champion, the guy gets his sight back! Happy endings all around! LOL
Seriously, its a gentle romance with action - no real high drama that lasts too long, some fun fights and, in the tradition of all fighting stories, Akari becomes friends with all her defeated opponents, including the hugely gay current world champion Kanzaki Yuu. (Pictured on the right-hand cover - the bishounen looking character. Yes, that's meant to be a girl.)
In the beginning Yuu is someone to admire and attain the level of. But early on, after seeing Akari seriously injure her opponent in a rough match, Yuu becomes mightily interested in Akari, and asks to room with the newcomer. Yuu does put the moves on Akari, but is soundly rejected. Yuu subsequently behaves, but starts to genuinely fall in love with Akari, even as Akari is falling in love with her blind boyfriend - and moving up the ranks as a wrestler.
In the second volume two things come to a head with Yuu. First, Yuu had made Akari promise not to get involved with any guy, because it would take away from her training. Yuu learns that Akari has reneged on this promise and is both upset for Akari and jealous about her. Akari and Yuu fight and Akari moves out.
Secondly, a reporter takes a picture of Akari with a male wrestler that, taken out of context, looks like they are intimate. (In fact, its a very innocent picture and I really don't get the fuss, but, okay...) Yuu sleeps with the female reporter in order to suppress the picture. When Yuu rejects the reporter because she's not Akari, the reporter not only releases the picture, but she tells Akari that she and Yuu slept together. She goes on to leak the obvious information that Yuu is in love with Akari, which Akari cannot believe.
And here's where the series begins to suck because, of course, Yuu and Akari have to face one another in the ring for the championship. Obviously. In the end, Akari wins, obviously, and they finally have it out about the whole situation, obviously. Yuu forgives Akari for falling in love with a guy. And Akari, hugging Yuu in front of the audience, tells Yuu that she doesn't believe Yuu is a lesbian and she's not in love with her, right? Because they are like sisters to one another.
Yuu can only hold Akari and grunt non-committally. And I really felt for Yuu there. Not only can't she admit she loves Akari, Akari won't even see that Yuu is a lesbian. A decidely unsatisfactory ending for Yuu all the way around. Yuu just happened to be written in the "bleak period" for lesbians in manga between the early shoujo of the 70's and 80's and the
Sailor Moon renaissance of the 90's. Poor Yuu.
One of the high points of the manga is that Akari's opponents are drawn realistically - sometimes really masculine, sometimes crazy, sometimes in costume, etc. It's obvious that the mangaka spent time researching actual women's wrestling. One of the psycho crazy opponents turns out to be a real nice gal out of the ring and one of the butchiest women Akari fights (and who has a female companion all the time) ends up as a good friend. So there's a nice real-feel to the characters and situations.
Ratings:
Art - 7
Story - 8
Characters - 8
Yuri - 7
Overall - 7
Disclaimer: Despite the fact that I reviewed this manga, and that Japanese women's professional wrestling has appeared in both my fanfic and original fiction and that my cousin is a professional wrestler in Japan, that I actually have a favorite fighter in the GAEA league of Japanese professional female wrestling, I am not in any way obsessed with wrestling, professional, female or not. I have never even seen a bout and have no desire to do so. My research into Tiger Mask and Thunder Liger was purely professional and the fact that Ogata Megumi did a death metal version of Tiger Mask's theme has affected me in no way what so ever. :-D
Events: Onna! announces new guest!
Today is a scoop! I'm announcing this before the official press release can go out, because I can. :-)
Onna!, a three-day festival of women's roles in animation and comics, is proud to welcome Tania Del Rio as a Guest Speaker and Artist!Tania is the new artist for the classic American girls' comic,
Sabrina, The Teenage Witch. She's been hired to bring a shoujo manga look to this American standard.
Tania will be joining Paige Braddock of
Jane's World, the only lesbian comic to be syndicated in major metropolitan newspapers, and
Sin Comix, a fabulous group of women who are drawing just about everything under the sun, as guests at Onna!
I really hope you'll join us at Onna!. We'll have very yuri-strong video and panel programming, plus yaoi, shoujo, josei and even, yes, shounen, because this is all about strong women in roles behind and in front of the screen.
Pre-registration for Onna! is still open, and available online or by mail. Vist the Onna website to
register, and to participate in any of our many
contests and games! We'll see you there!
Yuri Anime: Kore ha Watashi no Goshujin-sama - This Is My Master
I'm not feeling very vitriolic today, but I guess I'll review this anime anyway.
Kore ha watashi no goshujin-sama, aka
This is My Master or
He is My Master, is.... Honestly? It's a miserable piece of filth.
I have been told by several guys that the manga is *much* cuter and funnier. However, when I glanced at the manga, I saw very little that I personally find anything like funny. I will freely admit that I loathe and despise broad physical comedy that relies primarily on sexual harrassment and peeping as vehicles for humor. And little girl faces on absurdly developed bodies is repugnant.
Two sisters find themselves dependent on a rich kid for a job. Rich kid is a clothing fetishist and makes them wear "sexy" outfits. Wackiness and tons and tons and TONS of general pervy peeping ensues.
The title is pretty accurate though, when read with sarcasm, "*This* is my master"? And I genuinely believe that that is what the mangaka was going for.
Yes, there is yuri. It is one-sided and will go nowhere and is essentially no more than a girl doing the same exact kind of pervy drooling and peeping that the boy is doing, except of course she can get closer during in the bath. She becomes a maid in the household to be close to the object of her affection. If this is the kind of thing you want to see, she is blatantly, obviously openly desirous of the main character whose name I'm not even willing to look up. That's how good this story is. Izumi, maybe?
Let me slip out of my exhausted and bored distaste into a brief moment of extreme vitriolic hatred. The alligator sexually harrassing the main character is quite possibly the single most disgusting plot complication I have ever encountered anywhere - surpassing even the entire grotesquery of
Shusaku Reply, which was a sewer of an anime. I feel a special violence towards anyone who might conceivably find the whole thing amusing or, heaven forfend, sexy.
Ratings:
Art - 6
Story - 2
Characters - 3
Yuri - 8
Overall - 3
To be blunt - if you find this anime "cute" or "funny", you are probably a "loser."
Yuri Anime: Gokujou Seitokai
The early summer season of anime has been lame in general, with only a few exceptions, and absolutely *abysmal* as far as yuri goes.
As I see it, there are exactly two anime with anything approaching real yuri, and of those I find one so repulsive I simply cannot bring myself to discuss it with any semblance of objectivity. (I will leave it for a later vitriolic rant.) Which leaves us with
Gokujou Seitokai.
Thankfully,
Gokujou Seitokai is a lot of fun, as well as having at least a little meat for the yuri fan to chew on.
The plot, to quote several wise people, is "about girls at a girls school with girls." I think that sums it up nicely, myself. lol
Miyagami Gakuen is yet another exclusive all-girl elevator school - only there is nothing like 1920's comportment here! Instead we have a special super highest power student council that runs the school, with a covert operations squad complete with ninja, an assault squad complete with serious heavy-duty nuclear weaponry...and of course, pretty girls.
In the beginning we meet space cadet Randou Rino, a young lady with a deficient frontal lobe and a bizarre, trash-talking puppet attached to her hand. Randou has been sent to this school by the mysterious Mr. Poppet, a penpal of some kind. Of course she ends up joining the Gokujou Seitokai, which is run by the head of the school, the lovely and gentle and a little cracked, Jinguuji Kanade. Kanade is the idol of the school, so there's a lot of jealousy when she begins to favor Rino. (We eventually learn that there is some connection between Rinou and Kanade, but by episode 14, we have not learned the exact nature of this connection. All we know is that Kanade is definitely, consciously acting as surrogate mother/big sister for orphaned Rino.)
We also learn that the puppet, Pu-chan, is not at ALL what he seems. The obvious gag about Pu-chan being Rino's alter ego is just...wrong. Let's put it this way - in the big curry battle episode, we learn that in the past, Pu-chan had an affair with an Indian woman. Not your average puppet, trust me.
So...yuri?
In the beginning there is a really funny episode about rumors of Rino and Kanade having some kind of affair. "Paya-paya" was not in any of the the slang onomotopeia books or lists that I could find before this episode, but I bet it's in them now. lol
Look! I just found thison the
Urban Dictionary:
payapaya Japanese slang for some kind of interpersonal contact, possibly sex. Popularized (to north american anime fans) in Gokujou Seitokai episode 3.
"The president was seen in Rino's room, they were doing payapaya!"
See?
For me the least likely, yet most interesting, yuri couple would have to be the two Vice Presidents of the Gokujou Seitokai, Nanaho (Assault) and Kuon (Covert.) Really, there's NO sign of anything between them. I'm making it up, pretty much. But they'd make a great couple and I have Kato/Inspector Clouseau-like scenes of bedroom assault in my head between the two of them that I simply cannot rid myself of. LOL
We are introduced to an exceptionally strong
shinyuu/intense friendship between Rein and Sayuri, which is easy enough to see as something more. It wouldn't be a stretch to call them a couple.
And plenty of folks have interpreted Nanaho's feverish devotion to Kanade as love, which it certainly is. I'm not sure it's desire, but I'll leave that question to the philosophers.
The one genuine full-blown babydyke character is Izumi Kaori. In the beginning we are led to believe that she is the typical obnoxious overachieving
ojou-sama, but pretty quickly we learn that she's nothing of the sort. In fact, she's probably the most well-developed character so far and has turned out to be quite intelligent and admirable. Her overt crush on Kanade apparently stems from Kanade's kindness and generosity in Kaori's past, but when we get scenes of Kaori imagining herself and Kanade "doing things that she doesn't know about because she's a pure maiden" it kind of blows the purity bit right off. ;-) So she's probably the only "real" lesbian in the bunch - but we added them all to the
The List of lesbian characters at
Yuricon anyway. Why not.
Ratings:
Art - 7
Story - 7
Characters - 8
Yuri - 6
Overall - 7
Lots of fun, good as brain candy,
Gokujou Seitokai is a pleasant, but seriously unserious addition to the yuri collection.
Maria-sama ga Miteru Manga, Volume 4
I love getting my
Maria-sama ga Miteru manga fix from
Margaret magazine twice a month, but there's definitely something extra special about getting a whole volume with a complete story in your hands. The down side is, you don't always get the splash page art (especially if the series has alot of color splashes) but you get wonderful goofy filler pictures where all the magazine blahblah went. :-)
This week I got my paws on the manga of
Maria-sama ga Miteru: Rosa Canina. And even though the story only ended a month ago in serialized form, it was amazing how much more I can catch when I read it as one whole continuous story. I guess I'm just not all that good at remembering who's what where from month to month. LOL
I have actually discussed most of the differences between the novel/manga/anime and Drama CD in my
notes from the 4th novel, so I'll try not to repeat myself too much. Let me just draw your attention to a few things: 1) The manga inserts some internal Shimako dialogue that doesn't exists anywhere else and which heavily foreshadows her Cherry Blossoms arc; 2) I am steadfast in my belief that Shizuka is coming on to Sei in a big way after the school elections.
Included in this volume is the New Year's arc, which is marginally more accurate to the novel than the anime, but still changes alot of things. And sadly...we don't get to see Sei flirting with the miko who was handing out the fortunes. I think that would have been worth a panel, at least. Because the New Year story (
Nagakiyono) ran in
Margaret before the Student Council election arc (
Rosa Canina), that's the order they appear in the volume, the reverse of the novel. This is a truncated version, since the
hatsumode (first shrine visit of the year) scene was done as a short by Hibiki Reine for Cobalt Shueisha Magazine, the magazine where Marimite is serialized.
The only down side to the New Year story in the manga is that we *still* don't get much of Sayoko, Sachiko's mother - and she was so *cute*! I think we were ripped. We should demand more Sayoko. (In fact, fans must have done so, because in the one-shot short "Library Book", which was included in the 19th novel,
In Library, we get a bit more of Sayoko as a student at Lillian. And its a REALLY cute story, full of truly obnoxious groan-inducing puns. LOL I did a really crappy, rough translation of the one-shot for the folks on the
Yuricon Mailing List. The translation is in the group Files - if you join you can read it and have a good laugh at my expense. :-))
Let's see, what else is notable...well, the incidental filler art this time is on the theme of "sports". Sei is given a surprisingly sexy beach volleyball figure. In fact, thinking about it - she's always drawn really sexy in these incidental art pieces.... Actually, thinking about it - I'm always surprised when any of them look sexy in these pieces. I guess I'm so used to seeing the girls in those awful school uniforms that it's a system shock to see their figures. LOL And to be honest, the first-years look cute, not sexy. Eriko in racing leathers is quite nice, but Youko's baseball catcher's outfit made my wife say, "What is she? A turtle?" LOL
Probably my favorite picture in the whole book is at the end, where Sachiko is feeding Yumi. It's impossibly adorable. lol
The other thing of note is how the art is changing slightly to reflect the characters as drawn in the anime more. At this point the anime is long over and the manga is on-going, so the artist probably has a little less pressure to conform.
Ratings:
Art - 8
Characters - 9
Story - 8
Yuri - 9
As always, another enjoyable entry in the Marimite body of work. It'll be going up on the
Yuricon Shop in the next few days!
Live Action: Takarazuka - Elizabeth
Yay! Imagine my happy-happiness to not only receive this awesome DVD from Japan about a week after I ordered it, but to find that it plays on my DVD player!
(Special Note: I'm getting alot of interest in this post, mostly because of YouTube. I purchased this DVD from the regular Japanese Takarazuka website through a buying service. It is not a cheap process - you will be paying for the DVD, the buyer's commission, the shipping to buyer and the shipping to you. I don't have a special source or website to offer you, I just threw money at the problem. If you want the buyer's email, please email me privately.)And before I say anything else, I want you to know that the virgin watching of this DVD was done with my wife and parents - and Mom was drooling over Death's clothes too, so it's NOT just geeks, goths and lesbians. LOL
You may remember back in April, just as the Yuri Revolution tour was getting underway, I, Serge, Donna and Bruce bailed to go see a Takarazuka show at their Tokyo Theater. If you do not remember, please feel free to read my
original gushing report.
Clearly the plot, characters, cool clothes and Deathkateers have not significantly changed since I saw this show three months ago, so the original review will stand unaltered.
I was very impressed by the DVD itself though. Not only did it unexpectedly work on my R1 DVD player (I knew it would work on my computer, of course, but this was an added bonus) but it was exceptionally high quality, with a nice little "Program" inside that included cast, crew, synopsis, scenes, songs, and history. All in Japanese of course, but that is hardly an obstacle to fangirly-dom. Even more important was the picture card of Nao looking hunky as Der Tod. Yum. It now lives on my desk at work. :-)
Every scene/song comes with a title on the screen, so you know what song you're listening to. I was amazed that I could read about 80% of the song titles. I guess they keep those pretty simple.
The number one win in my book was that the tango between Nao Ayaki and Jun Sena at the very end of the Las Vegas-show portion of the show, was just as sexy as I remember it being. I know this is really fanservice yuri and not really even that, because we're supposed to see Death as a guy, but you know - Nao is gorgeous and doesn't look remotely like a guy, so to my yuri-goggles-on-low eyes, what you have is two women dancing. And I like it alot. :-)
I still want one of those Hapsburg shield mirror things from the finale, too. :-)
Ratings:
Cinematography - 6 (like all stage shows we have too many close ups and often lose what's actually going on on the stage)
Music - 7 (sticky Broadway theme stuff)
Story - 10 (If this doesn't make you love history, NOTHING can)
Characters - 9 (With the exception of Rudolph who is a toal pussy)
Yuri - 9
Overall - 8, objectively, but for me and those of my androgynous-women-in-uniform-loving ilk, 10, really.
Live Action: Kekkou Kamen Movie
I was so happy to find a copy of the new
Kekkou Kamen live-action movie, even though I was pretty sure that there was going to be no yuri in it.
I reviewed the Kekkou Kamen anime, manga, and three truly horrible live-action movies on
April 8, 2004.
I had high hopes for the new live-action
KK, if only because the new
movie version of
Cutie Honey had been so decent. Oh well. I guess it was too much to ask that this really trashy series ever be "decent." :-)
It wasn't just that the scenes of Kekkou Kamen on a motorcycle were obviously filmed in front of a bluescreen - or that the "lascivious" behavior of the teachers and their henchmen were of the boring "slavering over a bra" kind. It was more like, it just got gross instead of tacky. Let's put it this way - this movie actually *stole* the laxative schtick from
Weather Woman. Does it really get lower than that?
The plot, such as it was, was not really enough for a real movie, so the middle bit gets kind of unfocused. I thought it was just me, but about 2/3 of the way though the movie, Mayumi breaks the fourth wall and actually speaks to Go Nagai, who pops up in a little bubble on the screen and answers. Clearly they'd lost all momentum by then. I didn't feel too bad about only half paying attention.
Now - here was the one good thing - the actress playing Mayumi. She was *perfect.* In this version, Mayumi is a transfer student from New Zealand - not too bright, but not stupid; really bad at kanji - but with excellent English, which surprised the hell out of me. She's not particularly cute, either, but really grows on you. Honestly, she was totally wasted in this movie, which wasn't even particularly creative with its sort-of-sadistic, quasi-sexual tortures. Nothing even remotely as good as Gestapoko from the anime.
I was definitely bummed at the lack of yuri. There's plenty of room for it - and its just about the one fetish the movie manages to miss - which, if you think about it could either be good, or bad. lol
The one last major bummer was the crappiness of the theme. In the anime Kekkou Kamen's theme is sung by Shinohara Emi and is really great. The remake of the Cutie Honey theme for the movie was SO good that I was really hoping for a cool remake for KK's theme. No dice. The new version is scratchy and whiny and generally suckariffic. Boo hooooo.
Ratings:
Cinematography - lol
Music - eh
Characters - Mayumi - wow; Everyone else - shrug
Story - bleh
Yuri - snort
Overall, a resounding noseblow of a movie. If you want to see it, you can borrow my copy. lol
Live Action: Summer Vacation 1999
Based loosely on Hagio Moto's Boys' Love classic,
Toma no Shinzo (
Thomas' Heart),
Summer Vacation has just about something for everyone, except perhaps the hard-core action fan.
The story takes place at an all-boy's private school during summer vacation. Almost everyone has gone for the summer, with the exception of three boys who are friends and are now living together. Not to long ago a fourth friend of theirs committed suicide, leaving behind a letter to his roommate. In this stereotypical "hothouse" setting several things are driving the boys apart. For one thing, there is more than a little sexual tension between them, as there was between their dead friend and at least one of them.
Into this tense mix comes a new boy, who looks unsettingly like their dead friend. He seems to know all about the likes and dislikes of the dead boy - and to share them - but insists that he knows nothing about him or his history.
Tempers flare, as does sexual attraction and violence, in this unusual and pretty creepy movie.
All the roles in this movie are played by girls. So you get kind of a double-whammy gender bendy thing going, as girls dressed like boys, start to find themselves attracted to each other. They really aren't good as boys, but they really don't look like girls either - which *really* works for this movie, let me tell you. The entire story balanced on the edge of life and death, vacation and school, community and isolation, madness and health, and sexual identity and gender. There's at least one kiss I can remember, maybe more. Nothing explicit, which would have killed the whole story.
I highly recommend this movie for the zOMGWTFBBQ factor - because you really have no idea what's going to happen through most of it. The end was a little weak, but I have to give it a little credit for not *at all* going where I expected.
Ratings:
Cinematography - 7
Story - 6 (Slow, but creepy and sexy enough to work)
Characters - 8
Yuri - 0 or 8, depending on ho you look at it.
Overall - 7
We'll be showing this obscure, but very worthy live-action movie at
Onna! in October. Join us and get a chance to see this unique story.
Yuri Anime: Madlax, Volume 2
It has been pointed out to me in the notes below that this review was full of hot air. I stand corrected - the translation in the one case I illustrated was fine. ;-))
I am so irritated about this volume of
Madlax, I'm not really even sure where to begin.
So to begin, I'll touch on the good things. First and foremost, this volume is fun, with a capital "fu". I mean, how many other places can you watch a gentle maid go totally postal on some entitled wannabe frat boy? :-) I particularly enjoy it when Elenore snaps the kid's wrist, because he hurt Margaret;'s wrist. And when Vanessa says, "How vicious," she really doesn't sound all that disapproving. :-)
Other good things - the liner notes include highly amusing fan art drawn by some of the staff, complete with in-jokes that have to be explained. I really enjoyed these.
And that about covers it. The plot is dense, the bad guy is a joke, but those haven't changed from my first viewing of the series. And the rest of the episodes are actually very interesting, as we finally start to draw a connection between Margaret, the book and Madlax.
(Remind me to engage in a light rant about the book next review...lol)
The really stand-out not-good thing on this volume is the seriously awful translation. The first volume was pretty good, but again, its like they switched midstream and stopped actually listening to what was being said, and instead started guessing at something sort-of close to the meaning.
Case in point. The above mentioned boy says in Japanese "I'm not a feminist... The translation. "I'm not very chivalrous..."
Uh...hello? He said "Feminist." In English. Fe-mi-ni-su-to. Why did you totally change the meaning? You actually *made* him become the thing he says he's not. It's like in the original subtitle of the
Utena movie when they didn't translate the English worsd "Duelist" as Duelist. It simply makes no sense.
I can't remember the other things that annoyed the living daylights out of me, but there were several. COME ON, stupid anime distributor companies! We are NOT stupid. We are not children. JUST TRANSLATE WHAT THEY SAY. Not something "close enough" to it. And leave the \expletive deleted\ honorifics alone, already!
It's absolutely infuriating to pay money for something that is not done properly. It may be cheaper for you to dubtitle, but it stinks for those of us who want to watch the Japanese. Thanks for treating us like second-class citizens, when we are your fan base.
No ratings, I'm in a bad mood.
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