Sailor Love (GLBT March mini-challenge)

For the March mini-challenge of the GLBT Challenge instead of reading and reviewing a manga dealing with that subject I've decided to talk about one of my favorite series of all time, Sailor Moon, and the relationship between Sailor Neptune and Sailor Urnaus.

In both the anime and the manga, as civilians Mirchiru (Michelle US) is a very girly and beautiful musician and Haruka (Amara US) is an androgynous race car driver.  Everyone who meets Haruka thinks she is a boy and it leads to some confusion and hilarity especially when Usagi (Serena) and Minako first meet them.  In the manga and in the Japanese anime, it is established that they are in a relationship with each other.  There are many moments, some funny, some very touching, to establish their relationship.  It is taken as natural and normal.  They obviously love each other and they have the most mature of the relationships shown in Sailor Moon.

When it came time to dub their episodes in the United States in 2000, however, their relationship was changed to "cousins" since it was believed that a lesbian relationship would not be acceptable for a children's cartoon even though there is nothing overt about their relationship other than some hand holding and a little "couple" talk.  This made for some very interesting changes especially in the episode with the love challenge which was changed to the friendship challenge with only male/female couples besides Michelle and Amara.  It also made the animation seem off since they would talk about one thing, but the images invoked a different sort of tone.  There were also many changes of Haruka flirting with Usagi where Amara would say something about flirting with Darien (Mamoru) in order to make her "straight."  It was a ridiculous change.  I doubt that they would include the relationship if they re-dubbed the series, but I would hope they wouldn't make them cousins because it is just creepy.

Miyuki-chan in Wonderland (Based on a Book)

Ahahahaha, okay I knew what I was getting into when I decided to watch this.  I wanted an anime Alice in Wonderland as part of the challenge and I found this.  Ya'll.   ...  ... so Miyuki-chan in Wonderland is based on yuri manga by the same name by CLAMP, a very well known manga artist group.  I've read and watched other things by them, but never anything like this.

(Remember everyone is female in this description.)

So in the first part, Miyuki is late for school when a girl dressed in a bunny suit skates by her saying she is late too.  Then they both fall down a hole where Miyuki is alone.  There she finds a girl on a door and it turns out the girl is the door and Miyuki finds her doorknobs (more like door knockers *chuckle* if you know what I mean and I think you do) and goes through to be confronted by a pair of twins who challenger her to a duel.  Once she escapes, she stumbles into a tea party where the Mad Hatter tries to seduce her.  After she escapes from them, she finds the playing cards painting the roses red and is almost punished by the Queen but runs from her and, well, you know the rest.

The second part finds Miyuki pulled into Mirrorland by her mirror image.  There the girl Jabberwocky flies her to a field with some *ahem* interesting flowers invited her to do *ahem* play (that's what she said!) but she runs away and encounters a beautiful butterfly, but accidentally blows her away with a sigh.  Miyuki herself is then blown away and lands on a chessboard controlled by Humpty Dumpty.  She plays a game against her mirror-self and when the other Miyuki loses and starts to lose her clothes, Miyuki runs to her to stop her and ends up back in her room.

So basically, Miyuki runs around escaping from scantily clad women trying to seduce her and she is so polite about it and the whole thing is freaking hilarious.  I don't know, but I laughed the whole time.  The music is this upbeat bubbly constant stuff, but it just added the general insanity of the whole thing.  Apparently, this is a whole series about Miyuki going to different lands and the same thing keeps happening to her.  It was cute, especially if you like anime, but if you like sweet non-sexual anime then this is a definite no.  Me, though, I just thought it was weird and funny.



*For the "Watch and review one other movie listed under 'Film'" part but I asked Jenny and she said this was okay