Steven has declared a unit of measurement. Sometime during the blur that was my vacation in Japan, I found something that I think measures up:

In addition to her high-school uniform, she enjoys busting out of a yukata, a miko outfit, frilly western dresses, and lacy lingerie. She’s the oldest of four sisters, and their Parents Are Traveling Abroad. And Our Hero has just moved in with them, having been Sent Down From The Mountains by his father to Become Stronger in the ways of the samurai.

She’s his new teacher.

Less than an hour after moving in, he manages to get into a Compromising Position with all three of her younger sisters at the same time.

Second sister is a bleached-blonde modern girl who’s sensitive about her small bust. Third sister is a sexually aggressive busty meganekko Gal doujin manga artist and junior high-school student. Fourth sister is a fourth-grader, who doesn’t appear to be a harem loli, fortunately, even if she does get dragged into the Wacky Hijinks.

Recently, Steven said:

After you've finished watching Misaki Chronicles, what becomes clear is that the story tellers had a really good story to tell, and knew they did -- but didn't think they could sell that story on the merits, either to their studio or to an audience. So they had to hide it, disguise it, attach things to it. Like huge boobs.

In the interests of clarity, I want to say that when it comes to the new manga series HEAVEN, creator Aoi Nanase has not gratuitously added large breasts and panty-flashing in order to market a serious story about the nature of good and evil.

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The names given to Japanese bands are often peculiar. The folks at Hello!Project have a good track record in this regard, with their 2005 “shuffle” projects having the names セクシーオトナジャン, エレジーズ, and プリプリピンク.

Despite the use of katakana in the names, only one of these is a true loanword, “Elegies”. The other two translate to, respectively, “Sexy Grownups?” and either “Angry Pink” or “Stinky Pink”. They may not be angry, and they probably smell nice, but they’re definitely pink.

But that’s not the puripuri I’m writing about today. I tripped across a completely different use of the word this morning at Kinokuniya. PuriPuri – The Premature Priest:

Five volumes (so far!) of Catholic-school fan service. I don’t see a catgirl, but there’s a meganekko witch on the cover of volume two, and volume three apparently features The Three MusketeersLust-a-teers.

The artist’s official web site includes this nice sample from the volume three cover.

It doesn’t appear that the Mai-HiME manga has been licensed for the US market yet, despite the expected popularity of the anime. Pity, really, because I’m curious how the usual hack translators would deal with the last page of the first volume. A Strange Cute Girl (one of many) has just entered Our Hero’s dorm room, stripped off her panties, and pushed him to the ground. The volume ends with a full-page panel of her straddling him, speaking the line:

私の鍵穴も開けて下さい。

Our Hero seems more shocked than excited by this statement, but it’s understandable, since he’s still discovering just how peculiar his new school (and its girls) are. Unfortunately for him, I’ve seen enough spoilers from the (very different…) anime to know that neither shock nor excitement is the right response to a bold invitation from this girl. “Fleeing in terror with his manhood protected by a sturdy shield” just about covers it.

My other response to this scene was “hey, I just read that, and only had to stop and think about one of the kanji” (鍵, which I haven’t gotten to in my writing practice yet; I know the word, and they provided furigana that made it clear). Okay, the others are extremely common, basic kanji, but the point is that I was reading rather than deciphering.

I rather like the webcomic Misfile. The art and writing aren’t as polished as some others, but both are improving over time. The pacing is pretty good, and sometimes it just rings true:

…but I don’t think Christian manga has much of a chance in the current market.

Admittedly, putting a cute girl on the cover with the subtitle “bad girl in town” will pull in some eyeballs, and it’s a good time to release anything called “Serenity,” but the interior art is crap. Perhaps if you’d hired the person who drew the cover?

If it shows up at local bookstores, and it’s not shrink-wrapped, I suppose I’ll look inside to see if it’s done well, but I have a hunch the writing is heavy-handed and the art is weak, a sure way to sink this new venture.

PS: the redemptive power of high-school bible study groups is a more fantastic premise than either Eiken or Battle Vixens. Good luck with that.

Take an ordinary teenage girl. Bright, clever, slender and pretty, with a pleasant but not exaggerated figure. Now shrink her down proportionally until she’s about four feet tall, then stretch her vertically until she’s back to her original height. Perform the usual big-anime-eye surgery, and reshape the rest of her face until she has a chin that could cut glass. Throw in a haircut that further enhances her resemblance to a puppy-dog, and finish with one of the goofiest-looking dresses ever. You’ve now created Maia Mizuki, heroine of Daphne in the Brilliant Blue.

With that out of the way, she’s the star of an action/comedy series, so set the tone by putting her through The Worst Day Ever. Go wild here; we want her to be about ten minutes away from peddling her cute little ass on the street in exchange for a stale ham sandwich and a dirty patch of floor to sleep on.

In the second episode, we’ll start introducing the rest of the cast, consisting primarily of a conveniently color-coded set of gun-toting women with lush figures and fashion sense that rivals Maia’s. Don’t worry, their chins are razor-sharp as well, so Our Heroine will fit right in. Which one’s Daphne? Well, none of them, actually; we figure that will be covered on disc 6, which comes out next January. You didn’t realize that we’re releasing each of the seven discs two full months apart? Sucker!!!!

Now, for the fan-service, we want to do something a little different. Boobs are great, and we’re always glad to show that our girls have them, but we want to stand out from the crowd, so this show should be all about the ass. No, not the panty-flashing thing, everybody does that. Cheeks. Bare cheeks. Bare cheeks in the water, bare cheeks on land, bare cheeks in combat, cheeks, Cheeks, CHEEKS!

Why? Well, it’s for the fans, really. It catches their eye when they’re changing channels or walking through the video store, and the promise of more cheeks will keep them watching while we set up the plot. It’s not for me, certainly; I’m not one of those, y’know, ass-otaku. Okay, maybe a little. Or a lot. Just don’t ask me why I lock my office door when I’m “reviewing” the storyboards.

…

Moment of sanity: yes, I’ve now seen the first four episodes of this show, and I’m sufficiently amused that I’ll pre-order disc 2. The character designs grow on you, and the cheeky fan-service is something that just blends in after a while, helped by the fact that no one else ever notices it. Seriously. Maia and Shizuka casually walk through a crowded casino while carrying huge pistols and wiggling their bare asses, and it’s like they’re invisible. Until Shizuka starts shooting up the place, that is.

In vaguely related news, the English translation of the Tenjou Tenge manga has been chopped to bits by a publishing company that's terrified of sexual references and exposed nipples. Um, hello, did you actually look at the product before you licensed it? Did anything about this series say "kid-friendly"? Did no one mention to you that the sexy girls are pretty much the primary draw, here?

Based on the ham-fisted editing they’ve done with volume one, I don’t even want to think about what they’ll do to the Chiaki/Aya bathing scene in volume two. If they feel the need to draw in bras and delete sexual references in the dialog, they’re going to really butcher a lesbian seduction that shows one girl sucking on another’s tit. And as for the dialog that goes with that scene, brrrrr.

[update: I picked up the Japanese version of volume one today and examined the pages in question. The folks at ListerX underplay some of the edits, neglecting to mention that they’re changes to a rape scene. I’m not a fan of using rape to show that villains are villains, but from the description, it sounds like the edits attempt to reduce the severity of his crime, which leads to more edits as the characters react to what happens, etc, etc.

Either way it’s not critical to the story, but this kind of tinkering tends to snowball. It’s the same sort of “mother/editor knows best” attitude that led Eric Flint to “modernize” elements of James Schmitz’s Telzey/Trigger stories when he assembled the new editions (because, after all, modern audiences would be blasted right out of their immersion by the concept of a man offering a woman a “friendly cigarette”, and in an aircraft, of all things!). At least Flint was trying to guess what the audience wanted to see; DC is apparently trying to guess what the local Soccer Moms Against Fun committee will complain about.

If the only thing they’d done was downgrade a violent rape to a violent assault, I’d be able to understand their reasoning, but I’d still be annoyed by it. It’s not that I want to see Chiaki shriek and cry while some leering clown slams her into the wall and gets off on her pain; no, not at all. I’d much rather see her smiling and laughing in the arms of her loving boyfriend, but they hacked up those scenes, too. Because her tits were showing.]

[Update: Adding insult to injury, someone pointed out this statement on the DC/CMX web site: “And it’s pure manga — 100% the way the original Japanese creators want you to see it.” What a shame they don’t read their own press releases…]

…only outlaws will have Captain America, I suppose. Cartoonist Scott Kurtz just discovered the hard way that a lot of the Left-leaning people who’ve been accused of hating America really do hate America. Even Captain America.

Last night, after the day started to wind down I logged into my favorite virtual world for some escape time. The City of Heroes game has been my online diversion of choice as of late. I really enjoy the game a lot.
I've tried just about every character type and I'm settling on my favorites. Last night, for fun, I decided to make myself a Captain America type hero...you know, go the whole patriotic route.

The typical reaction when his red, white, and blue hero appeared in public? “Ugh. I hate our country.” “How can you wave a flag of a country that kills other countries for oil we already have.” “Bush is an idiot.”

Kurtz’s response? A series of macros to quickly counter the reflexive anti-Americanism he’s running into. My favorite?

"I defeated Hitler's reanimated body to defend your freedom to say that."