Yuri Manga: Lesbian II Mitsu no Heya

I cannot tell you how happy I am today. We have a guest review! Not *just* a guest review, though - a guest review by one of my chief lackeys, Bruce! I won't waste your time with too much of an intro, but I will say this - a review by Bruce is a rare and wonderful thing.

Lesbian II: Mitsu no Heya is hentai Yuri, make no mistake. But that being understood, this volume definitely has some good things going for it.

Senno Knife has been drawing manga for a long time. He has a very distinctive and peculiar artistic style – his characters are look-alike mannequins inhabiting a world of ornate architecture. The biggest influence on his style is clearly the Belgian surrealist painter Paul Delvaux. Delvaux was obsessed with mannequin-like nudes, nude 'sapphic couples' (as the art books put it), architecture, trains, skeletons, and hat pins, in scenes with accentuated perspective. All of these are found in Senno Knife stories (except, possibly, for the hat pins). Lesbian II leaves out the trains and skeletons as well. But Delvaux peers out from every page.

Lesbian I Shoujo Ai (2007) was Senno Knife's first volume of nominally Yuri stories – though sadly it included a lot of unpleasant men performing ugly, abusive acts. Lesbian II Mitsu no Heya is without question a superior collection. The stories are about desire and love and contain no physical abuse, what a concept.

Michelle is a well-to-do art student who has artist's block – she just cannot put anything on canvas while the lovely Kiki is modeling nude for the class. That night Michelle is tormented by desire for the woman, but the next day there is a new model. Michelle, complete with art pad, discovers Kiki in a church, living in straitened circumstances. With Kiki's help, under the unblushing eyes of a statue of Maria-sama, Michelle loses her artist's block. Kiki happily moves into the family mansion as Michelle's maid and model-in-residence.

Sheri is attending maid school (well, they have to come from somewhere). Her fantasies involve sempai Misa, stockings, and little maid caps. To her embarrassment she is assigned to practice her servant skills on none other than her charming sempai. Washing Misa in the tub does nothing to calm Sheri's jackhammer heart. That night she hears Misa and their instructor Mary making love, and can't refrain from standing at the door watching. She is discovered – and cordially invited to join. Top student that she is, she realizes that maid practice will never be the same.

Maiko and Miho are at the pool, but phooey, it's raining. On the theory you get wet anyway, and it's fun to have the pool to themselves, they go ahead and dive in. Staring from below at the rain-speckled surface they discover a sensuous, ethereal world. The water is magical, and they have to take their bathing suits off to appreciate it fully. They come up for air and a lifetime of aqueous love, as continued in Part 2.

Part 2 – Maiko and Miho spend their summer vacation together, alone at a relative's seaside house where they can make love in a variety of watery ways: in the surf, the bath, and outside in the middle of a typhoon. They also utilize a school piano; possibly there wasn't a hose within reach (the story, from 1996, strikingly mirrors such series as Strawberry Panic!, and Cream Lemon Escalation, complete with a mansion on a bluff in a storm, so a school piano is almost expected). The storm goes away - so much for the drama - and the girls look forward to their future together as they make love in the back seat of auntie's car.

Megumi longs desperately for sempai Emi, but Emi can think of nothing but the loss of her poor Pochi. All she has left to treasure is Pochi's leash and collar. Can Megumi break through the sorrow and gain Emi’s affection? Yes! Though it involves occasionally being taken out for walkies, and we’ll leave this one right there.

The woman operating the elevator longs for the girl that rides up to the penthouse level every day to enjoy the pleasure of the rooftop garden. One evening the girl sees the woman observing her moment of enjoyment, and soon they make a habit of enjoying the garden together. The impersonal nature (they never ask each other's name) makes this story seem a bit more hentai than the others.

Livonne is smitten with a lovely girl she sees being driven to school, and wistfully sketches her in a notebook. The lovely girl is given the desk beside her, which you just couldn't see coming. Seeing the sketch, Marian asks Livonne to draw her nude. Quite untroubled by artist's block, Livonne happily agrees. They find themselves drawn together in a passionate and joyful love that contrasts with the grotesque situation in Livonne's family, where her mother takes in a succession of oafish 'boarders.' In the deep woods Marian introduces Livonne to the charms of witchcraft, and they bind themselves together in marriage. When their love is discovered by their parents, who get pretty exercised about it, they say screw this and bicycle off for the magic world together.

Ratings:

Art – 8 distinctive, sometimes awkward, often pleasant, occasionally quite lovely, and kudos for the Delvaux influence.

Story – 6 generally not so much stories as situations with simple and happy resolutions. 'A Dog's Life' was pulling down mighty hard on this number.

Characters – 7 almost all good-hearted and just plain nice, though with a distressing tendency to be poleaxed by love at first sight.

Yuri – 24/7 and happy Yuri at that.

Loser FanBoy – 9 a point was taken away for those who might actually miss all those ugly abusive acts.


Overall – 7 without old Pochi in the mix it could have been higher.

I have to tell you, I real all the reviews I put on Okazu out loud to my wife, to check for obvious issues of coherence and typos (which I know only works in part, but it's better than nothing.) The two of us were hysterical as I read this last night. Thanks Bruce, this was a fantastic review! Also, thanks to Bruce for obtaining a copy of this book for me, as well. You are, as always, my Hero.

Yuri Anime: Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne, Volume 2 (English)

To fully enjoy Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne, it might be useful to prepare yourself with a few simple steps:

1) Spend a few moments speaking with someone under the age of 17. Preferably female and preferably Goth and very weary of the world.

2) Read something insanely trashy.

3) Watch a 10-hour marathon of any sitcom that pairs a slobby guy with an attractive wife.

Or, failing that,

Take your brain out of your head for safekeeping.

Once you've done this simple - but crucial - bit of preparation, you're almost ready to watch this series.

Let me give you one warning before you start to watch Volume 2: Do Not Try To Make Sense Of This Story

Sure, you can make sense of it, but the story is *so* much better if you don't try. Just go with it.

There, now you're ready to watch Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne.

Where in the first volume time moved slowly, it fairly flies in the second volume. We're no longer moving a year or a few at a time. Now we are taking decade-long leaps into a futuristic landscape which may seem silly on the face of it (Aquarium floors and ceilings? Really?) but makes a lot of sense if you pay the slightest attention to human nature. (Yes, because we *can*.)

Maeno Kouki has passed out of Rin and Mimi's timestream, but his descendants are still in their care. Kouki's son Teruki starts off as an ass, but turns out to be a dependable guy in the end. It's his daughter, Mishio, who caps off the series and in doing so, changes everything. Rin and Mimi saved Kouki, and saved and protected Teruki, but Mishio is in fact the one who saves and protects Rin and Mimi, repeatedly. When Rin, who has lost her memory as a result of a rather extreme death, is attacked by Laura, it's Mishio that provides a distraction. Mimi leans on Mishio when she cannot control herself when in the vicinity of Angels.

As the climax approaches (a word that is eminently suitable for this series, don't you think?) Apos finally reveals all the pieces of the puzzle we were missing and we learn that the puzzle is pretty stupid. lol But that's okay, because we know this: Rin is the good guy and will win.

And she does, of course.

In the end, we see Rin, Mimi and Mishio as an alternate family of three women bound by thousands of years of fate and who all care deeply for one another.

Yuri in this volume is mostly on Mimi, which annoyed the Rin fans, but I thought it made more sense, really. We've known since the first episode that Rin had a man in her life, and we knew that she saw lesbian sex only as a form of payment. Mimi's relationships with her informers appear a bit more ambiguous. For a moment or two, she even seemed like she may have liked one of them - although since Kugamiya Rie played the role, her reaction was typically passive-aggressive.

Which brings us to the extra on this volume. The four main female voice actors were gathered together to discuss this series and they were surprisingly frank about how working in such an "adult" horror worked for them. This interview took place at the end of Episode 2, I would have dearly loved to see them interviewed again after the final episode. I have a feeling that their opinions might have been a little different. Or not. :-)

I guess the question has to be - was it good?

The story is silly, it panders to a dozen fetishes, it's violent and gross and sometimes plain old dumb. The art was alright, but was not stellar, even the music was overwrought. But. I think it was entertaining and had characters that exceeded their surroundings. Rin was admirable, Mimi was likeable, Apos was unbearable, Laura was...persistent. Kouki and his descendants didn't suck.

Ratings:

Art - 7
Story - 4
Characters - 9
Yuri - 8
Loser Fans - 23.8

Overall - 8

Yes, it was good.

It is once again my sincere pleasure to thank Okazu Superhero Eric P. for his sponsorship of today's review (and the review of Volume 1, which I belatedly realize did not credit him. That has been corrected.)

If you would like to be added to the Okazu Hero's Roll, just pop over to the Yuri Wish List and purchase something for review! The you too will be my Hero. :-)

Yuri Anime: Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne, Volume 1 (English)

2010 continues to be a year of wonder for Yuri fans, as we now have an inordinate amount of good and bad Yuri and Yuri-ish anime to watch in English.

Inexplicably among them, Funimation picked up Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne which has one of my top 2 most favorite opening themes ever right now. "Retsu no Matataki" from Air Master is the eternal winner, but "Alsatia" just cracks me up every time I listen to it.

Let's get the most important thing out of the way first: Mnemosyne, greek goddess of memory, pronounced: \ni-ˈmä-sə-nē. Thank you, Merriam-Webster.

In Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne we meet Rin, an investigator of things as small as missing cats and as large as international terrorism and her sidekick Mimi. Rin and Mimi can die, but they can't stay dead and are, therefore, immortal.

The first episode covers their meeting with Maeno Kouki, a young man with no memory. Their adventure brings them into contact with a corrupt pharmaceutical company, enemies in advanced stages of psychosis and zombie-like test subjects. And a missing cat.

This leads into an episode about a missing stamp and a missing brother who is actually an angel and an episode about a military cover-up and a lethal disease.

Time passes quickly in this series. We jump years from episode to episode. Rin, Mimi and their dog Genta, don't change, but Maeno ages and technology changes, which are cues for the passing of time that are far more powerful than the opening marquee telling us what year it is.

In every case, the story is deeply strange, full of intensely bloody violence and physical and emotional sadism the likes of which I have never seen before in anime. This is not a series for the light-hearted or light-stomached. It's not graphically represented. It's just...obvious.

I know it probably makes me a terrible person, but I love how Rin is tracked over the years by Laura, who single-mindedly kills her over and over and over. I also like how Rin's deaths become progressively more extreme. You think they can't beat blowing her up with a bomb but...you're wrong. Of course, Laura isn't the real enemy - the real enemy is Apos, voiced perfectly by Ishida Akira.

Apos is a source of much confusion and consternation for viewers....personally, I view almost all the plot complications as handwaves that must be accepted in what is not exactly the most logical or well-constructed plot ever written. Since the story is largely a vehicle for pandering of about 70 kinds, if you're gonna stress about Apos, then you probably shouldn't watch this series.

Personally, I loved hearing Noto Mamiko voice Rin. This is probably as close as fans will ever get to hearing her actual speaking voice in a role. And Kagamiya Rie probably broke a few brains as Mimi. She was awesome.

The DVD comes with an extra commentary for episode 2, in which the American director and voice actors are just about as infantile as you'd expect. The word "boobs" is bandied about frequently and references to lesbianism are almost all in the "girls gone wild" sense. Despite that, I laughed once or twice anyway. :-)

There is BDSM and violence and sexual violence, straight sex and lesbian sex and more violence in this series. It's not for the kiddies and probably not for most normal people. I liked it. :-)

Ratings:

Art - this series is a good reminder that not everything looks better on a large screen - 6
Story - Oh, come *on!* It's a 4, maybe 5, but if you're watching it for the story, you have completely missed the point.
Characters - 9
Yuri - 8
Loser Fans - 23.8

Overall - 8

Yes, I know my ratings make no sense. Neither did this anime.

Many, many thanks to Okazu Superhero Eric P. for making today's review possible!