Fortress of Perpetual Midnight

We were hiding out in some Japanese school.

I remember almost nothing from this one, but it was a combination of Raki☆Sta (particularly the bit starting here) and another school series. (It's been so long, I've forgotten what the latter was.) I've never even read or watched the former, but it's one of the ones blitzcon told me he was going to show me long, long ago (but not early enough that I could actually get the videos), so I've been breaking my usual rule in its case. Consequently, most of my knowledge of it is from Ms.?† Maitake's illustrations and comics (although I haven't actually been reading the posts since I haven't even started the series yet), which is undoubtedly skewing my preconceptions of its content.

†You may remember that I fouled up a while back and that I later decided not to worry about it. I neglected to mention that Ms.? Maitake replied the very next day and pointed out that it was clearly stated on the site that duplicating things without permission was prohibited, which rather scuppered a post I'd made.

Meanwhile, when I contacted her/him to ask whether I could post direct links to individual posts, I decided to ask about her/his gender so I could address her/him less awkwardly, but she/he declined to say. (Japanese writers/illustrators sometimes take PNs that would suggest genders different from their own, but I've never seen anything proving that any have made false claims about this. Then again, nor do I have any proof that any Japanese comic writer/illustrator has ever been captured on camera (with the exception of Akamatsu, whose mug I do not fondly remember seeing, particularly considering that he's actually married to a lady who's more than 13 years his junior now), so that's hard to say with certainty, either. You can take this into account for my generalizations in the next paragraph.) I would tend to assume that she/he's a man like me due to the demographics (?) of what she/he seems to find interesting, but that's a bit of a disservice to Ms. Hayashiya, Ms. oneirotsai, and many others. Of course, in English, there aren't any honorifics‡ except title prefixes, so it doesn't make much difference; in Japanese, I've just been using speech patterns somewhere in-between.

I do find it interesting that I see ladies who draw stuff aimed at male audiences all the time (with Ms. Takahashi being the classic example), but never confirmed examples of men drawing stuff for ladies. (The fact that ladies draw lots of yuri, yet I never hear about men drawing much yaoi, is less surprising.) The closest I've seen is Fujieda, who has been suppressing his style (judging by Iono Sama Fanatics, his only independent work I've read) in various YuriHime Comics mooks (and of course the compilations), but although they always use feminine second-person pronouns, the content of even the main series is more moe than shōjo, so he's still a bit short of Jack Nicholson.

‡In my research for Projects Abdiel and Homuncupunk, I was surprised to find that in modern English, the one language I've encountered that has almost no ways of showing respect, we have retained the plural/formal singular objective from the early modern variety as our sole (before conjugation) second-person pronoun.

This time I had a small batch, so I'm trying to drop them all down here before I get the next one and end up being distracted again. But if I always use the same number of items for good luck, why is this one smaller than usual?

説明しよう！†

I did indeed pick 13 items in my original order. However, due to the fact that the release of one of the items kept being postponed, I had a chance to trim out some mistakes I had made: one that I had bought elsewhere (and posted kansō here‡), one that I had accidentally put in the cart twice and ordered elsewhere, and one where my suspicions were confirmed, resulting in its removal as per my policy. When I heard that Yuri Michelin (?) was pushed back again to February, I finally gave up on having it in this order, so the survivors finally shipped.

Anyway, the actual kansō:

「Comic YuriHime VOL.9」 (Anthology): I don't remember too much of these, no doubt due to the difficulty of keeping track of multiple series with multi-month gaps in-between episodes. Nonetheless, it's all good. (Actually, I haven't gotten around to reading the solid blocks of text yet. I'm somewhat curious about an entire article on the Himitsu no Kaidan series, which I found very disappointing from a yuri standpoint—but, then again, I'm a man.) I found it amusing that, unlike Ms. Kiryū, Futami saw the good side of not being blood-related to one's sibling. There's also a second one-shot from the person who did the one about the yakuza heiress earlier. Apparently she/he likes "bad girl" protagonists—and sex, although the latter is pretty ubiquitous in this mook lately.

「MY OTOME Zwei」 (Higuchi Tatsuto/Abeno Chaco): Fortunately, this one follows the chronology from the Ein animation rather than the comics (although there is an allusion to the latter), yet has just as much nudity as Yoshino/Satō's works. (Incidentally, I can't seem to find that post on one of my sources that describes exactly how much you see of which characters in Episode 3.) The chief things I like about it over the OVAs are the increased focus on the relationships between Ms. Kruger and Ms. Viola (although still not much) and Ms. Chrysant and Ms. Armitage (the latter because the author admits that she's her? favorite character), and the complete lack of appearance from Ms. Marguerite (which is better than seeing the depths to which she'd sunk in the show).

「Gakuen Utopia MANABI STRAIGHT! Massugu Go!! Amamiya Manami 3A NO.45526 SEIOH GAKUEN 1」 (ufotable/Tartan Check): The title refers to the punch visible on the cover, which is one of Ms. Amamiya's trademarks. In any case, the primary heroine is quite cheerful and provides lots of skinship, mostly with the secondary heroine; there's some hint of admiration for a character who shows up later on, as well. A standard sports lady and an assiduous tsun-dere (hmm, seem to remember one just like that from Na*na*ki!) round out the cast. I have some difficulty telling the four heroines apart visually, as they're all the same size and shape, and all have short hair other than the fourth.

「Shiharu Genesis 1」 (Kondō Rururu): There are plenty of stories about reincarnation of demons, but it's unusual to use that as a premise for a honobono girls' school life comedy. . . . Like X and Ten-Kin, this follows the 1999-based chronology, but in this case, that's only the birth of the Devil, so it's set in the near future, before her awakening (thus avoiding the continuity problem the other two had, in that they were not finished by the time 1999 passed and the world didn't end). You may notice that I said "she," which fits in with my description of the series in the first sentence. It's not clearly stated, but I assume that this follows the standard in Japanese secular sources that demons (and possibly angels) do have gender, so this would probably fall under the heading of "transexual yuri"—although in a fantastic manner, like KA・SHI・MA・SHI. [It turns out that this isn't the case; for the purposes of this series, all of the top seven demons were ladies in the first place, as was I.] Anyway, it's mostly about the friendship between the two major heroines, but there are hints that Lilith is looking for a bit more (unsurprisingly, considering that she's often described as the bride of Satan, despite the fact that she is also commonly called the first human woman). Stating the presence of any given reincarnatee is not much of a spoiler, as all are identified by their names (e.g. ルシファー → るしはあ → しはる).

Speaking of names, this work also follows the Japanese convention of "Lucifer" being the demon name of the Enemy, as compared to his Latin angel name. In Ten-Kin and DEVIL & DEVIL, his angel name was Lucifel, a fabrication using the Hebrew "el," which is found in many angel and human names. In the former, "Satan" is a title applied to his seven lieutenants (and not him), while the latter has "Satan" as the hereditary title for the ruler of hell.

Like CHRNO CRUSADE and Project AnthraXX, a running gag is that the chief demon is actually a very nice person. And like Ten-Kin, there is also an angel who is reincarnated in parallel to the fallen—although this time they reversed the missed opportunity by making them both ladies. Personally, I'm glad I wasn't actually reincarnated as a Japanese lady in 1999. I appear to be the most popular angel in Japanese media; in Earthian, DEVIL & DEVIL, and this, it looks like I'm the only one taken from Abrahamic scriptures and apocrypha. [Actually, it turns out that Raphael is actually my aide, and Lucifel, Uriel, and Gabriel appear as well.] At least in this and Ten-Kin, I get to fight, instead of being in what appears to be a purely administrative post. . . .

「Neko Mokoro 1」 (Otokasa Aki): Another one set in a magic school for ladies, although this one is in some sort of space opera setting. The heroine's feelings originate in the fact that the object was the first other person she ever saw who looked human, but she remains loyal even after meeting various other beauties. An amusing running gag is that, although the heroine spends most of the first volume only being able to see her admiree from afar, she has many fantasies about what would happen when they meet, all following the same pattern, including that what they're doing towards the end of the dream is always censored (or perhaps left to the reader's imagination, but I like the sound of the first one better). The heroine's reaction when they finally do meet face to face is also quite nice. Of course, it's hard to say they have good prospects for a relationship if they don't even know one another, but I'm confident (as is the cover to Volume 2). Incidentally, this series is also the first I've seen to portray the difficulties of mermaids living on land.

「PENGUINMUSUME 1」 (Takahashi Tetsu): On the inside pages, this is called "PENGUINGIRL 14," where the "14" means (numerically, not phonetically) the same thing as in 14; the exploitative nature and the overly developed figures of the two chief heroines are other parallels. Sadly, this one loses out in the key point, as the athletic lady and her suitor (suitress?) are Heroines #2 and #5 rather than #1 and #2, and the former doesn't seem to have a huge following of underclass fans. (I told you the "boku" was an important selling point!) Still, there are several good prospects—I think the hime-sama dakko was a nice touch. (Incidentally, that's the one point that punk Zidane wins over Squall. It might have something to do that Ms. Til Alexandros was actually a real princess, though.) Heroine #1 has been related to the term 「ミーハー」, but unlike Ms. Kuremi, she's interested in men, too. Heroine #2 also knows a hunk when she sees one, but then again, so did Meg (too lazy to look up her surname).

Other points of interest include the fact that, for some reason, the ladies' uniform has a slit skirt with a fake petticoat doohickey. Meanwhile (not much of a spoiler), like in Ruro-Ken and Iono the fanatics, the drag queen guest (hopefully)-chara feels the need to show concrete proof. (Is it a coincidence that all of these were written and drawn by men?) Also, the Japanese heiress has a head butler named "Sebastian" (contrary to most old geezer butlers I've seen, who are called "Jī" or "Jīya" by their masters), while the American? one ("Marie Chupacabra W. Whitebear" sounds quite multicultural, but since the "W." is pronounced "Double-U," English has as many points as French and Spanish put together, and we all know how English speakers love giving their kids names from other languages, as anyone who knows my family can attest) has a head maid named "Maguro." Takahashi beat me to the punch with his badass eyepatched maid, but her personality is completely different from mine's, and the world still has room for plenty of gantai moe. There's also the same misunderstanding about the term 「メイド」 as in HAYA-BLA, but this time it's because she's Chinese, not because she's had an unusual upbringing.

「Kyōkan Astro 1」 (BannoNegi): From the title, I thought this was going to be set on an educational starship or something, but apparently the "ASTRO" is just the name of the athletics wear company that the main heroine patronizes. (I haven't the foggiest idea where they got the 「艦」.) Anyway, this is something of an unusual series, as it's set in a high school, yet the main characters are the teachers. (There was a student with good taste and a name who appeared, but only for one strip. Perhaps she was hospitalized after the heroine's hug.) Still, they are mostly in their 20s, as is to be expected from a society where female sex appeal is supposed to peak in the teens or earlier and ladies are ostracized for not marrying and retiring by the age of 25.

Anyway, the chief heroine inadvertently provides a lot of good scenes, mostly with the other who fell for her on the third page, but also with the other two main heroines and several lesser characters. (The story starts out focusing on a small group of individuals, but later adds some others, likely when it was clear that the serial was going to continue. Kubo did a similar thing with BLEACH, I imagine due to the fact that he wasn't told until the last chapter that his previous series was being cut.) I believe that falls under the heading of "tennen." The other characters are disappointing, but on the whole, I think this is my favorite of the new ones.

「HAYATE CROSS BLADE DRAMA CD Vol.2」 (Hayashiya Shizuru): Since this one has audio, I haven't gotten around to listening to it yet, but I do notice that they've skipped ahead to the Gakuensai part. Obviously they don't have the demand to adapt the entire series, so they're just doing the favorites.

Conclusion: Apparently the loss of luck wasn't terribly significant, as these are all worthy of continuing to read (with the exception of the one that was only one volume).

P.S. I was going to discuss a few new vocab words from this batch, but I've already spent my computer sessions for three days typing this, so I'll follow that up later. So much to type, so little time and readership . . .

†I first remember hearing this element used by Seki Tomokazu (played by Seki Tomokazu) in Love Pheromone (half of Love-Ge), but I can only assume it's more prevalent in pop culture than I've noticed. It's also used commonly in PENGUINMUSUME.

‡I know that you can't access this if you're not a member of daily_yuri. However, if you actually care, it's no trouble to join. You don't even have to have it on your friends page. The only risk I see is that someone might see your membership on your userinfo and think you're weird. You can also join whenever you want to read a post, then immediately quit again when you're done.

[Edit (2009.08.19): Clarified some misconceptions I had before reading further in those series]

Comic YuriHime has been successful enough to try some interesting things lately. I haven't yet posted on the last three mooks I've received, so here we go:

Comic YuriHime VOL.8: Following from the first one to have characters not from Hatsu-Koi Shimai and the first one to not have two characters, this cover is not even by Ms. Hibiki! To tell the truth, I'm not a big fan of her style or that of Ms. Zaō, but they don't bother me for the most part. In any case, everything seems to be going as usual. (They even brought back Ms. Sudō (who hasn't been seen since the previous series's VOL.5), along with her hormones (which haven't been seen since VOL.4), if only for one page.) Coincidentally, this is the first time I've heard the term "se(x)frie(nd)," and in two stories in the same issue. . . . Strawberry Shake Sweet continues to up the story, introducing a mysterious villain who looks like she might be related to Ms. Asakawa (whose origins are still unknown)—but, then again, so does one of ZLAY's members. There's also some information on Aoi Shiro, and the new serials look really pretty (including yet another series where the main character's best friend addresses her with "-chan"-zuke ". . . desu wa"). Meanwhile, the cover story is interviews with the cast of the Haru Natsu Aki Fuyu drama CDs, including our beloved Ms. Kawakami: 「GLは初体験・・・」? Perhaps the big one doesn't count because it's not "only."

YuriHime Selection: The first half of this is a compilation of many one-shots that weren't big enough to warrant their own compilations, so you can get them now even though their original mooks are out of print. This is of course less useful to someone who has the entire set, like myself. Fortunately, the other half is other one-shots and bangaihen of stuff serialized in the main mook. We also see the cover debut of Ms. Eiki, who stated way back in her first appearance that she was collaborating with Ms. Zaō because she hadn't yet achieved "the power to draw cute girls." Her partner's influence is rather evident in the illustration style. Speaking of covers, a one-shot mook is apparently cheap enough to produce that they didn't need a CM on the back, instead covering it with the reversed names of the author/illustrators.

Comic YuriHime S VOL.1: According to a guide way back when, "S" (short for "Sisters") was something of a prototype for yuri (which still has strong sisterly overtones in many cases). It bills itself as a 「PURE★コミック誌」, but it still has a fair amount of sex and violence (including a series with combat elements, which is something that hasn't been seen before in this family of mooks), so I'm not sure what is supposed to differentiate this from the other serial and justify making another one in parallel instead of just releasing issues of the main one more often. (I never was clear about target audiences. In one of Ms. Morishima's one-shots, the heroine's "non-ke" friends were mooning over guys in Shōnen Chump.) In fact, it appears that Nanami to Misuzu is serialized in both. (Fortunately, it's rather episodic anyway, so continuity shouldn't be too big of a deal.) I like a lot of the new serials, of course, including two in particular. The first one is drawn with incredible technical proficiency—and who can resist a diminutive purple-haired aristocrat who uses the copula verb "ja" (no "warawa" this time, though)?

The second one is by Ms. Iwami, whom I know from Suzunari! I had a bit of a problem with the character designs in that (not sure why—something about looking a bit flat, perhaps), but her serial here looks flawless. It's set in another of those small fictional states that are never named (see Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Roman Holiday, Iono the fanatics, etc.). Unlike the others this one is apparently in East Asia (judging by the names of their royalty, which are based on the four guardian gods of ancient China and written in Chinese characters), yet very liberal—there appears to be no problem with the fact that the crown prince is a cross-dresser, or that (not much of a spoiler, given where it's serialized) the second princess (apparently she has an elder sister around here somewhere) gets married to another princess. It also appears to be ruled by dark-skinned people with funny-shaped marks on their foreheads*, despite the fact that the commoners are white. The more boyish of the two princesses also has a bit of a 「フェミニスト」／「王子様」 thing going on.

*Does anyone know what the thing in Hinduism is called? In Japanese media, I often see it replaced by birthmarks on the foreheads of (often dark-skinned) people of both sexes.

The aforementioned combat series is somewhat unpolished in its illustration style and has a lot of "service," but looks fairly entertaining. It looks like, as often seems to happen, the main tough young lady is going to be relegated to comic relief status. There are at least two obvious couplings visible even from the introduction—and a dark-skinned, pale-haired sub-chara with a birthmark on her forehead.

Fujieda and Takagi, two of the luminaries of shōnen yuri, only have four- to five-page introductions to their serials so far (the latter continuing his usual trend of maid uniforms and three-syllable names), but I'm sure they'll be entertaining.

Excerpts from two of the mook's unrelated serials include . . .
「松平さー・・・　んっ！？」
「ナギ・・・さ　んん！！」 (can't figure out how to type a small "n")

Addendum to the voice-actor comments earlier: Ms. Mamiya is back as another young lady who talks funny. Also, the heroine has quite a feminine name, but that appears to be a holdover from a previous life, where she had a very different personality.

Fujieda Miyabi likes to give characters from his works guest appearances in his other works. I decided to compile the ones I knew, and found that the diagram was very simple.

( Balanced this time )

Upper Left: AliceQuartet

Upper Right: Kotonohano Mikoto Kotodamano Majyoto

Lower Left: Iono the fanatics

Lower Right: ameiro–kohchakan–kandan

The "↑" on the right was apparently popular enough that the ameiro characters are listed in the main cast of the drama CD.

TWINKLE SABER NOVA isn't included because I haven't heard any yuri plugs about it.