Yuri News This Week – July 11, 2008

July 12th, 2008

While there’s no huge news this week, there’s a *lot* of Yuri-related news this week, so here we go!

Yuri Manga

So, Seven Seas says that their Yuri line is fine, but many fans are frustrated and angry about their inability to *find* them. Even I have run into this. I’ve got some insight into the issue, but it is a very complex situation, so I’m going to write more about the publishing/distribution/buying cycle and its accompanying array of dizzying difficulties tomorrow. In the meantime, I’d like to hear from Seven Seas what they suggest for fans trying to find a copy of some of their earlier Strawberry titles?

Yuri Hime Volume 13 goes on sale next Saturday, as does YH Comics collections, Yuri Hime Wildrose 2, Tokimeki Mononoke Gakuen 1 (yay!) and Creo the Crimson Crisis 1, which I will be skipping. Preorders are up on Amazon JP.

Suzunari in English, will also be out shortly. It’s got some Yuri – I’ll be reviewing it here soon.

There’s a new manga coming out in English called Kasumi that has no Yuri whatsoever, but I thought was an interesting analogy for being a lesbian. Kasumi can become invisible when she holds her breath but, when she goes to a new school, she finds her true identity at risk. Made me think how much like being gay that sounded, so while not Yuri or lesbian, it still sounds very queer.

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Yuri Anime

Sean informs me that on the 2nd Lucky Star DVD, “the liner notes not only mentioned the MariMite (reference), but also a quick Glass Mask ref and the fact that Konata has Strawberry Panic on in the background at one point.” He adds that, despite that, Konata is *still* not gay.

From the world of my past, the husband-and wife team of designers that worked on the the Sailor Moon anime will be making an appearance at Otakon this year.

ADV has announced that the Best Student Council, aka Gokujou Seitokai anime is being discontinued. Get your copies quick! There will probably be some copies left on Amazon, so go through the Yuricon Shop and support the cause.

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Events

Speaking of Otakon, Yuricon and ALC *will* be there in the Dealer’s Room, and we’ll be running a Yuri Panel, as always. When and where to be announced. Like all other Yuricon and Yuri-related events, you can find details for where and when Otakon is on the Yuri Events age on the Yuricon site.

And also for your calendar, add in October 31-November 2 for the return of MangaNEXT in New Jersey. Yuricon/ALC will be there, and we’re looking for Yuri artists to join us for a Yuri block in the artists alley – details to follow.

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Other Yuri News

Yuri fan Chris points us to these two videos on YouTube that appear to be a discussion of shojo [sic] ai. I did not watch them, as I am less enamored of YT than mostly everyone in the known universe, but please do feel free to enjoy and comment on them! Part 1 and Part 2. (I have been told that he seems to have made these videos for me to comment on…sorry, I’m really not going to watch them. Feel free to email me with a short coherent email on your views if you want my opinion. I really don’t watch YouTube, I’m not very visually inclined. I prefer text.)

soulassasin has done us the favor of running his (my) Strawberry Panic Fighter jets through a flight simulator. The resulting pictures are fabulous. Check out the Astrea jets and the new “Miator Airways” in flight on his LJ. Awesome work, soulassassin! Can you work on making me some MariMite tanks now? (This is not a capricious choice – doujinshi artists LOVE to draw the Yamayurikai as Rommel’s desert tank forces. I have no idea why, nor do I wish to know. I just want General Torii’s Yellow Rose Division tanks. lol)

This is not Yuri, per se, but worth a note, I think. Merriam-Webster has added “fanboy” to its storehouse of words.

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That about wraps it up for the week. As always please send any news with Yuri interest my way and I’ll do my best to get it up on the report!

 

15 Responses

  1. Anonymouse says:

    About those two Yuri rants–he calls you out at the end of them. Not in a ten paces and shoot way, but in a “These rants aren’t for all you people so much as they’re for Erica Friedman and I want to hear what she has to say to them” way.

    Just so you know.

    (Kannazuki no Miko made him cry.)

  2. Jarlath says:

    There’s always the suggestive posters in Megami and Comp-H to go with… even if the last one suggested the whole scenario was Hiyorin’s fantasies. Then again, she gave us the Minami/Yutaka pairing too.

    As for finding Seven Seas titles? Good luck – I can’t even order them online, much less find them on shelves. Their distribution has GOT to improve if they want to sell things; as others have noted, bookstores won’t even bother ordering something, or setting aside shelf space, if they know they can’t get titles from a company.

    There’s a reason that Del Rey Manga broke into the manga business in a big way, after all – they had the support of Random House behind them, and thus had both marketing power as well as guaranteed shelf space available. Oh, and the rotating plastic stands they supplied to bookstores didn’t hurt. That, and they had good licensing… pity they didn’t get Kashimashi. That title had an anime to go with it (albeit one I didn’t like the OVA for), and had quite a bit of fan buzz… but well..

  3. anonymouse – who he and what rants are you referring to?

  4. The Denominator says:

    Nope, Lucky Star isn’t remotely Yuri but a lot of people go for the Konata/Kagami slash pairing.

  5. Lirin says:

    The two videos that you linked to on YouTube — the rants about, yes, shojo ai. His pronounciation made me a little squeamish at times, but he did have some good things to say. And apparently he reads your blog and wants to know what you think.

  6. anonymouse – Oh, I see. I fear that he’s doomed to disappointment then, because I have no intention of watching his videos. I really don’t care for YouTube. I find it very irritating. :-)

  7. Anonymous says:

    Funny thing about the Seven Seas issue. I live in Singapore, and I managed to get the Light Novel from a anime merchandise shop.

    I think it’s just a matter of liasing with your local bookstore to get the books in.

  8. Feito says:

    Oh get off your high horse Erica Friedchicken. A fan makes a video for you asking for YOUR opinion and you completely ignore it. Way to treat your fans. He took the time to make not one but TWO videos discussing the shoujoai genre the LEAST you could do is watch and give him an answer.

  9. well gosh, feito – with that sort of encouragement, I’m *sure* to run over and watch it.

    It’s nothing personal.

    I really find YouTube very annoying and avoid it as much as possible. He’s welcome to email me anytime and I’ll be glad to read, and possibly, comment on it. I can’t make any promises. If this is his opinion, I’m not about to argue with him – he’s welcome to it.

  10. Anonymous says:

    Ichijinsha has recently released some demographics and what looks like sales numbers of their magazines, including Yuri Hime and Yuri Hime S

    http://www.ichijinsha.co.jp/ad/

  11. Anonymous – Yes, I linked to the Compiress translation of that article on the June 27the Yuri News Report: http://okazu.blogspot.com/2008/06/this-week-in-Yuri-june-27-2008.html :-)

  12. kenwolfe says:

    I watched the 2-part Youtube video that you linked to. It can be summed up pretty quickly. Basically he is complaining that most of what passes for shoujo-ai does not really count since it lacks the two vital elements: having two female characters in love, and having their relationship be the main focus and drive of the story. 95% of what fans cite as examples of shoujo-ai have a relationship that is one-sided, unimportant to the story, implied rather than explicit, and was added as an afterthought or as fan service. This pretty much disqualifies most anime that many fans point to as examples of shoujo-ai: Marimite, Strawberry Panic, Simoun, Kashimashi, Blue Drop, Mai Hime, Noir and so on. A lot of these are great anime, but not great shoujo-ai.

    The focus of the second video is why yaoi and shounen-ai seems to be so much more popular than Yuri and shoujo-ai. Even casual anime fans know what yaoi is, many yaoi titles are readily available anywhere that manga are sold, and Previews has full-page ads for the latest yaoi manga titles. On the other hand, shoujo-ai fans have practically nothing to choose from, which may be why so many fans watch anime through “Yuri goggles” and see Yuri relationships every time two girls smile at each other on screen.

    One reason cited for the relative obscurity of Yuri is it just reflects that lesbians are poorly represented in mainstream media. Lesbian relationships are never depicted romantically and are never shown to last long. On the other hand, the same show is more likely to show two gay men in a romantic, long-term relationship… Six Feet Under, Degrassi and One Tree Hill are examples. There does not seem to be any good reason for this except maybe just plain old-fashioned sexism. Whatever the reason, no writers seem to want to explore the potential of women in romantic, long-term relationships.

  13. Cbreck says:

    Am I the only one who thought those Yuri rant videos were nothing short of crap?

    I really find it hard to take someone who writes mariamite off as “girl’s stuff”(exact words: while it’s well-known, I found it lacking in various places and it looked like it would only appeal to shoujo fans)

    and couldn’t even sit through simoun(exact words: To be very honest, Simoun bored me. I watched the first two episodes and found them BORING)

    Yuri opinions seriously. And he complains there are no good Yuri.
    Of course, KNM is the best thing he’s ever watched.

    LFB anyone?

    Basically, the videos are just useless nitpicking, no new unique perspective on anything at all and it’s more or less a pimp for his rather narrow view on Yuri.

    In my opinion, your dislike of youtube has saved you close to 20min of your life. This seems like a popular attention-seeking way after the furore over a uber-rant a while back on the fansub genre which made quite a splash.

    If he cared that much for your opinion, he really should have sent you a polite and well-written email on the offset.

  14. The fact that everyone is referring to them as “rants” was a dead giveaway that my time is better suited to other things.

    Of course he’s entitled to his opinions, but that doesn’t mean I have to sit through them. No one is forced to read Okazu, either (that I am aware of, anyway, lol).

  15. darkchibi07 says:

    But really is there Yuri series that even casual fans can identify that automatically synominous to the Yuri genre? One of the points he mentioned is that when some casual fans think of yaoi, most of them think up Gravitation (I’ve actually seen this happened when our anime club played an anime-themed Family Feud game and this was the question and #1 answer).

    Can we ask the same question to the same casual fans about the one series they automatically think of that’s Yuri? And this is where one of his frustrations comes from.

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