What I just finished watching and what I thought about it 2 (USE SPOILER TAGS)

[alexander]

So the topic is yuri? Personally I liked Kashimashi but none of Strawbery, Marimite, My Hime.

Originally Posted by ThePatches

Your posts always impress when you decide to get serious.

I must admit to not reading it because there were no paragraphs and long walls of text frighten me.

There's a lot of high school anime for 2 reasons:

Don't forget the actual reason: most of the audience is in school.

[Kyoraku]

One Outs.

26 episodes.

About 9 games happened. Somehow it managed to keep me completely entranced throughout.

Utterly brilliant, somehow. It's basically like some kind of Baseball/Death Note combination
It shouldn't work, but it just DOES.

[coyotech]

Eureka Seven: Pocket Full of Rainbows - Not bad but definitely not good for me. Anyway its what I expected from a retake/retelling of a series in movie form :S 3/5

[Omurqi]

Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei
That was one wild ride, the pacing was even faster then the first season 0_o
Enjoyed the two seasons alot, probably also because this is actually the first parody-anime in which I recognize alot of the parodies :P
Looking forward for S3 to begin, 3-4 more days ^_^

3.5/5

[Najaraja]

Okay, I finished Azumanga Daioh. Do you people really need me to tell you how it was? I'll tell you anyways. It was awesome. Sure, I mean the animation wasn't anything to stand up and cheer over but it was a great feel-good, funny, relaxing anime. I swear every time Osaka opened her mouth to speak I got excited because I knew it was going to be something completely ridiculous and it was. Sooo, 5/5 because even if the plot is non-existent and the animation isn't great, if it's funny enough I just don't care about all that stuff.

[Cicada]

Originally Posted by ThePatches

As to the Catholic Girls thing? I think it's imported from the west, and treated as exotic. Notice how the schools all have french names and western scenery?

Well yeah, it may be. A lot of pre-war literature took advantage of peoples lack of familiarity with Westerners to get away with really unbelievable behaviors attributed to Western characters. Most early shonen-ai shojo manga of the 70s/80s were set in a sort of vague imaginary West for the same reason, it allowed authors to stretch disbelief, sure these androgynous bishonen could be having these kinds of relationships in some other place. When anime started to get popular in the West people would talk about a lot of it being 'culturally odorless' as one reason it was spreading so fast - people we'rent turned away from it because it transcended 'Asianess/Japaneseness' (big eyes, all sorts of hair/eye colours), though that doesn't stand so much now, it was more when it was just sci-fi, now I think most people turn to anime because of it's foreignness.

So here, because it's a catholic school which could be set in France if not for the names/language, it's more believable that everyone is, well, gay. I'm not sure of that's enough now (not least because Japan is less conservative and more self-aware), but it's a start. I'd like to think it's more playing with more basic ideas about sexuality and repression, and playing with what it will show us using the same tools.
And like I said, the other thing about a school is that it's a very contained world, and allows the story to block out anything that will get in the way of the particular relationship narrative focus, and anything that would complicate the creation of it's own world with it's own structure and rules.
(And you're both right about it being a shared experience, and that the audience are mostly schoolgoers. It's interesting that a comparatively small percentage of programs here, as far as I know, are set in schools. Actually a drama here recently caused a minor media stir when it had two school-age girls kissing. How behind we really are (actually it was far more in the minds of media, girls have been kissing ever since faux bisexuality became cool years ago. Then again, Japanese is still conservative, maybe I shouldn't have been so fast to reject that first point).

And I wouldn't call My-Hime yuri at all.

It just happened to have two gay characters (neither of which in reciprocated relationships, sort of).

Edit: The Maria-sama extras are cute!

[Fireaxe]

Simoun, Strawberry Panic, Kasimasi are yuri shows, My HiME definitely is not.

[Najaraja]

My-Hime has my favorite lesbo couple EVER, but I would not consider it yuri. Cicada, I would hate for you to miss Strawberry Panic because it is actually pretty good. While the Yuri undertones of Maria-sama are subtle in the anime (not in the novels. Yumi is practically orgasming every time Sachiko walks by) they are not subtle at all in Strawberry Panic. At all. But it is still a awkward girl catches the cool girl's eye kind of story lines. It's not great but it isn't bad.

I'll recommend Simoun (in my signature) if you haven't seen it already.
Kashimashi is alright. Tries to be tongue in cheek I feel but it is too goofy to be subtle.

[Cicada]

Originally Posted by Najaraja

My-Hime has my favorite lesbo couple EVER, but I would not consider it yuri. Cicada, I would hate for you to miss Strawberry Panic because it is actually pretty good. While the Yuri undertones of Maria-sama are subtle in the anime (not in the novels. Yumi is practically orgasming every time Sachiko walks by) they are not subtle at all in Strawberry Panic. At all. But it is still a awkward girl catches the cool girl's eye kind of story lines. It's not great but it isn't bad.

I'll recommend Simoun (in my signature) if you haven't seen it already.
Kashimashi is alright. Tries to be tongue in cheek I feel but it is too goofy to be subtle.

If you're talking about Yukino-Haruka I hear you loud and clear (see My-HiME thread).

Are the Maria-sama novels translated? Under what title?
Doesn't look like my local Kinokuniya has them...

[Fireaxe]

Originally Posted by Cicada

If you're talking about Yukino-Haruka I hear you loud and clear (see My-HiME thread).

Are the Maria-sama novels translated? Under what title?
Doesn't look like my local Kinokuniya has them...

I haven't watched My HiME in years, but I'm pretty sure Narjaraja was referring to Natsuki and that blond girl whose name I can't remember. And they're not really a couple (I wish they were though!)