Strawberry Panic - Nagisa and Shizuma

Yuri, shoujo-ai, girl’s love, cute anime girls getting it on with each other – no matter what you want to call it, these names refer to entertainment that contains romantic and/or sexual relationships between women. Yuri first developed as a genre mainly targeted towards women, much in the same way that lesbian literature in other societies began growing as homosexuality became an issue in developed nations. However, it seems that a large volume of yuri being produced is now marketed towards male audiences rather than ones composed of females. Why is this?

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Copyright © 2010 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Kylaran | Permalink | 18 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Maria-sama ga Miteru, Sasameki Koto, Strawberry Panic, Yuri

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Copyright © 2009 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By NHRV Staff | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Casshern, Clannad, Maria-sama ga Miteru, Natsume Yuujinchou

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In anime, moe is so rammed down our throats sometimes that it is easy to grow tired of it. It’s become a successful component in anime, to the point now that (to pull a number out of my ass) ~90% of anime use the moe art-style for character designs, but like all successful things, it has been abused and overused to the point where it’s use has become stale and unimaginative in a lot of instances, and even blatantly manufactured and manipulative in some of the worst cases (cf. the visual novel adaptations with an array of archetypes that you can check off on a list). Moe itself, though, is difficult to define (I don’t particularly subscribe to the Akamatsu definition) and we’ve basically been forced to go to an upper-upper-upper level to define it, calling it something akin to an art-style, which is sufficiently broad to encompass all things moe but tells you nothing about what makes it special or unique as a phenomenon. The challenge of defining moe in a meaningful way comes from the fact that it’s different things to different people, and I think most people have given up trying to come up with a definition that’s specific enough to describe it comprehensively, but general enough to encompass everything to do with the phenomonen. So, defining moe is a challenge (arguably) no one has completely succeeded at, now I’m going to attempt to define a subset of moe, something I refer to as “natural moe”.

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Copyright © 2009 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Sorrow-kun | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Aria The Animation, Hidamari Sketch, Maria-sama ga Miteru, Natsume Yuujinchou, Sketchbook ~full color’S~

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Must... buy... Pizza Hut.

…and a few thoughts on the current season.

Mild spoiler warning for the tagged anime.

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Copyright © 2009 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Sorrow-kun | Permalink | 18 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Birdy the Mighty DECODE, Kemono no Souja Erin, Maria-sama ga Miteru, Natsume Yuujinchou, RIDE BACK

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Northern hemisphere seasons always stuff me up, since I’m writing a post titled “Winter 2009″ despite the fact that it’s over 30°C outside. I’m not watching all that much this season, for two reasons. First, other than the slew of sequels (again), there’s not too much that seems interesting. Second, I’m too busy right now to waste as much time on anime as I usually do. Anyway, here are some first impressions on what I’ve seen so far this season.

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Copyright © 2009 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Sorrow-kun | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Akikan!, Maria+Holic, Maria-sama ga Miteru, Minami-ke, Natsume Yuujinchou, RIDE BACK, White Album

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We touched on it a bit in our Year in Review article, but 2008 did have a lot of sequels and 2009 so far seems to be following that trend. Is it more sequels than usual? Well, I haven’t bothered sorting through the data, but it sure feels that way. The difference between last year and years before isn’t so much that there have been a crapload of second seasons, but that these second seasons have cropped up in places where one wouldn’t initially expect them, and there have also been a rise in prominence of third seasons. We’re currently into a third season of Minami-ke and a fourth season of Marimite. Last year we had a third season of Zero no Tsukaima and the third season of ARIA. Later this year we’ll have a third season of Nodame Cantabile. I’m not going to bother with the question “has there been more sequels of late” because I’m not prepared to do the number crunching to answer that question… at this point in time anyway. My question is, is the proliferation of sequels a good or bad thing for anime as medium for creative storytelling.

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Copyright © 2009 Behind The Nihon Review. All licensed material are owned by their respective parties.
By Sorrow-kun | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to StumbleUpon | Tweet! | reddit
Post tags: Aria The Animation, Clannad, Code Geass Hangyaku no Lelouch, ef -a tale of memories, Full Metal Panic, Maria-sama ga Miteru, Minami-ke, Nodame Cantabile, Zero no Tsukaima

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