You know that you watch and read too much yuri if you...

• hear "anise" and think of the lesbian magazine, not the plant.

 

• try to recreate the teas blended at the Amber Teahouse. (Even black seaweed and strawberry cream.) Bonus points if you make scones and tea for you and your girlfriend right before accepting her marriage proposal.
•  compare you and your significant other to a teapot and tea cozy.

 

• read every single literary work you haven't read that Shimura Takako references.
• schedule a trip to a city or town around the sights referenced in a series you love. (Like, say, Aoi Hana and Kamakura.)

 

• try every music artist name-dropped by Yamaji Ebine.

 

• get beauty tips from Girl Friends.
• visit Mister Donut because Akko is obsessed with it.
• drink Kahlúa milk because it's Mari and Akko's alcoholic beverage of choice.

 

• order a grasshopper every time you get drinks with someone you like.

 

• seduce someone by inviting them to eat mapo tofu.

• convinced some older guy to let you treat him like a surrogate brother and send him letters about how much high school sucks before you entered your freshman year. Poor bastard.

• sing the Amigo Tacos song every time you have a taco.

 

• are enraged by the lack of lesbians in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
• are similarly disappointed by the Pillow Book. 

• take it as a challenge if someone offers to befriend you.
• name your daughter Vivio.

• decide that even though you're not a ten year old girl, no one will be creeped out if you convince the person you like to cosplay dresses you made while you gleefully film them with a video camera.

 

• watch Battle Athletes to get in the mood to exercise.

 

• are still willing to try whichever new title Kaishaku produces that's tenuously connected to Kannazuki no Miko. (Kaishaku have turned themselves into the herpes of the yuri genre. They won't ever quite go away.)

• are a man who acts fanboyish over real women- not fictional characters, but flesh and blood people in front of you- who you perceive as a couple. If this applies to you, know that no real lesbian will ever like you and you aren't as progressive as you think you are.

 

• refer to butchy women as "princes" or "princely."

 

• get all of the references in Strawberry Panic!

• substitute Lonely Planet (or your travel guide of choice) with Rica'tte Kanji!? and Honey & Honey when you visit Shinjuku Ni-Choume.

 

•  when listening to a completely unrelated band (say... The Chieftains) you begin imagining what an AMV of the music would look like, results naturally involve yuri anime. (Contributed by Steven.)

• say "Gokigenyo" when greeting someone, even if they don't understand you.
• buy an orange lipstick that reminds you of sunset.
• check almost every day if there are new yuri releases.
• have read "Wuthering Heights" right after Aoi Hana and not because of some boring vampire book.
• if a significant part of the music you've got is from yuri anime. (This one + the above four are contributed by Gata de los canales.)

 

• ....See white lillies as more than just a symbol of death. (Contributed by P.S.)

Have any more suggestions? Share them in the comments, and I shall add them. :-)

Anime Review: Rin ~Daughters of Mnemosyne~

Most people who know me would be surprised that I like this show. (Because my taste for the occasional dose of schlocky horror rarely comes up.)*

Rin, with its twisty roller coaster of a storyline about two immortal women, private investigator Asougi Rin and her computer hacker-assistant Mimi, is one part speculative fiction, one part trashy, sexually-tinged horror, and one part surprisingly involving human drama, blended into an appetizing smoothie of "wtf."

This show was released as a series of 6 forty-some minute episodes , which were broadcast on the AT-X channel to commemorate its tenth anniversary.

The early episodes involve Rin and Mimi solving cases connected to the tree of Yggdrasil that releases invisible time spores that turn women who absorb them immortal and men who absorb them into "angels" that eat the immortal women they encounter.

In the first episode, Rin helps Kouki, a man with a connection to a shady lab who feels as though his memories are fabricated, and he ends up joining Rin and Mimi's detective business. While the first two episodes take place in the early 90's, later episodes jump ahead by larger chunks of time, ending in 2055, with the last two episodes dealing with Rin's amnesia after an especially grisly death (baaaad idea to wrestle an android on the side of a flying airplane) and Rin and Mimi's confrontation with Apos, the pimp guardian of Yggdrasil who wants...I'm still not quite sure what his motivation is, aside from being a complete bastard. In a nice twist, Kouki's granddaughter Mishio helps Mimi save Rin from Apos- and the legend of Tajimamori from the Kojiki plays a major role in the denouement, which is a pretty cool touch.

Rin has a plot, but its most famous hallmark is the blood-and-boobs gratuity that permeates it like oil frying a doughnut. (Of course Laura attacks Rin when she's only wearing a towel- and what lab facility doesn't have a dominatrix mad-scientist? Etc, etc.) It can be disturbing at points (definitely not for the squeamish), but the excesses are so hammy and over-the-top that they can't be taken seriously. (In a From Dusk Till Dawn kind of way.) The characters are suitably likeable and/or demented, depending on their roles- Rin's a great protagonist no matter how many times she kicks the bucket. (Usually courtesy of Laura, with her single-minded, Wile E. Coyote-like dedication to killing Rin again and again.) I especially liked how the futuristic setting in episodes 4 through 6 was developed. (The last two episodes will probably be a hoot to people watching them in 2055.)

As for yuri- Rin and Mimi are pretty obviously bisexual and gay, respectively. Underground information in this series is sold by Grasshopper-ordering lesbians who require sex as payment. (How do they pay for their living expenses? lol Is there a larger lesbian sex-bartering network that this series just doesn't reveal? "What do I need to do for this month's electricity?") Subtext this ain't.

Story: Such a mixed bag...
Art: B+
Overall: ...but I like the overall package. B

Funimation's DVD release of this series actually has noteworthy extras- a commentary over episode 2 by the English voice cast and an interview with four of the main female seiyuu. I only watched a few minutes of the former- I like making inane comments with friends while watching silly movies, but I don't want to listen to a group of strangers doing the same thing. The seiyuu interview was entertaining- and not too long at about 15 minutes. (Although I would have loved to see how Ishida Akira felt about playing Apos. :-) )

* I like Mnemosyne, but I can't stand torture-horror movies like Saw, Hostel, The Hills Have Eyes, etc. (It kind of freaks me out that they've been so popular.) Go figure.

Merry $@#$ Christmas, Indeed

Ooh! The new dubbed trailer for Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne (originally titled Mnemosyne: Mnemosyne no Musume-tachi) is up on Funimation's website! Awesome trailer. :D

I've mentioned it on this blog before, but I actually didn't finish the show when I watched it as it was first coming out, even though I liked the protagonists- the graphic content got to me. But with exposure to Queen's Blade, Butt Attack Punisher Girl Gautaman, Higurashi's nail-pulling scene, and an extra score of B-horror movies under my belt since then, I may be more tolerant (or callously amused by the excesses? ...or able to make it an episode further than I did before?) and ready to face Rin's infamous airplane scene. ^^; It also probably helps that I'm not expecting "Rin and Mimi's Great Yuri Rabu-Rabu Story!!" Simply bloody, mature (in more than one sense) action with yuri-service.

So I'll at least rent Funi's release- and I'll give the English dub a fair shot. Imo, Mimi's voice sounds better (read: older) in English. I was never much of a fan of Mimi's original seiyuu Kugimiya Rie, Queen of Tsundere Voice Acting, although I like her as Touko in Marimite and Alphonse in FMA.



And I've settled on this template as my blog's new look, ^^ along with adding a few new links on the side: Shimura Takako, Kaishaku, Ikeda Takashi, and Hibiki Reine's blogs. (Small aside: I love checking out the bonus character art that mangaka post on their blogs. ^^ Although in Kaishaku's case, it ranges from "aww, cute"

to "wtf- more catgirls?" to "she's going to have so many back problems later on in life." And Ikeda has some super-cute Sasameki Koto drawings.)

Plus, I'm massively happy that I received my Limited Edition Ameiro Kouchakan Kandan volume 1 in the mail today (technically yesterday now)! ^^ It's been out of stock on Amazon Japan...pretty much since its official release day. (The people who pre-ordered received copies.) I initially waited for several weeks to see if Amazon would restock the LE, since Ichijinsha's shop still had it in stock, but it never happened. And I wasn't able to find any Amazon Marketplace merchants who were willing to ship it to the U.S. ;_; Even though I didn't like the idea of using a seller, I began thinking that I would have to (but it would be more expensive, ugh)... Luckily, YesAsia got it in stock (and they still appear to have it in stock), so I picked it up from them. ^^ I'll listen to the drama CD tomorrow- err, later today, but not now. Need sleep...

Edit: Ack, I didn't link to the trailer before!! > < It's been added now.