Lots of Yuri News this week!

Yuri Anime

Animevice reported that He is My Master is going to be showing on Anime Network Online and out on DVD, and Ultraviolet 044 (yes, *that* Ultraviolet – based on the crap movie, and wasting starring the voice talents of Paku Romi) will be getting a US DVD release. If you aren’t following Animevice on Facebook or Twitter or on the site directly, you’re missing some extremely otaku-tastic news, btw. Highly recommended.

Aoi Hana on Crunchyroll has ended for those of us who purchased subscriptions, and will end next week for the remainder of viewers. I cannot express how much I liked it. Yes, there were a few changes from the manga – in every case for the better, I thought. From beginning to end it is one of the best anime I’ve seen in the last few years and an exceptional example of schoolgirl romance Yuri. The 11 episodes covered three volumes of manga and, as of yet, there are only 4 volumes out so it may be some time before we learn if there will be a second season. However, I want to address a question I keep getting about this anime. There’s a alot of confusion about this.

Crunchyroll *is* the official licensor of this series – for streaming only. But that does not make them less a licensor. (Just like Funimation holds the streaming rights only to Air Master right now. You wouldn’t write Viz and ask them to license that, would you? Because even if you wanted them to, Funimation is the license holder and therefore more likely to get it to DVD than some unrelated company.) As the primary licensor of Aoi Hana, it is CR who has the best ability to *obtain* the DVD rights to this anime.

No one has DVD rights at the moment.

What I am suggesting is that people who would like to see a DVD release of AH should let CR know that there is a *market* for it. (I.e., that you will be willing to buy DVDs should they become available.)

It seems to me a much better chance of getting DVDs by asking CR to find a way to make them available, either through licensing, POD or partnering, than to ask some other company that has absolutely no relationship with the anime to suddenly put money up to distribute DVDs for it.

If you do send an email to CR, I suggest you put in a line that you *understand* that CR does not currently have the DVD rights, and would the person who gets this email forward it to the guy in charge, so he can tally up what kind of interest there is.

The dub cast for Rin – Daughters of Mnemosyne has been announced by Funimation.

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Yuri Manga

Erin S points out some objectively Good News – a number of popular Yuri doujinshi artists are involved in a new anthology from Hakusensha called Rakuen (Paradise). Among the list are several of my personal favorites, including Nishi UKO, whom we have featured in the last few Yuri Monogatari volumes. This anthology is due out at the end of October – as soon as I can, I’ll put up a link for ordering it here and on the Yuricon Shop. I am also interested in the entrance of yet another publisher into the genre, with such clearly doujinshi circle choices. I bet they were recruiting at one of the last couple of Comiket. I approve, of course and am very much looking forward to seeing this. It’s much more to my tastes than Hobunsha’s Tsubomi.

And objectively Bad News. For a lot of reasons, which she has detailed on her blog (in Japanese), Nakamura Ching has announced that the serialization of Gunjo has been suspended and there will be no collected volume from Kodansha. Many thanks to all the Japanese readers and friends who told me about this, including Nakamura-sensei herself. We’ll keep our thoughts positive and see what the future holds.

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Yuri Events

Please join me at NYU on Wednesday October 21 from 5:30-7pm at 60 Washington Square South (Room Number to be determined), in New York City, for what is going to be an *incredible* panel on Queer Manga. I will be joined by Ivan Velez, June Kim, Mari Morimoto and Hiroki Otsuka. I’m going to do a 5-minute overview and then turn it over to the panelists. Interestingly, the panelists represent Bara, Bian and Queer manga, while manga created by and for straight members of the opposite sex as porn are pretty much not represented at all. It should be a really interesting conversation!

For our friends in Japan, the all-Yuri doujinshi event, Maiden’s Garden 4 will be held in Kyoto on Novermber 8.

The success of Maiden’s Garden and Girls’ Love Fest, along with a third publisher entering the Yuri field with an anthology, (not to mention the mainstream women’s and anime magazines reporting on the genre that we’ve covered in previous weeks) is more indication that the Yuri wave is finally building towards a self-sustaining model. We’re nowhere near that yet, but give it a few more years. 2003 was when Yuri Shimai and Yuri Monogatari were launched. I’m willing to bet that ten years after that, by 2013, our genre will be an established feature of the manga landscape. Will anime follow? I don’t know – there’s not that much really decent Yaoi anime, but that’s very much because it’s a given in Japan that women will buy manga and novels, but do not buy anime. Could Yuri shift that, because the audience is split between men and women? Possibly. It remains to be seen.

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And that’s a wrap for this week.

Become a Yuri Network Correspondent by sending me any Yuri-related news you find. Emails go to anilesbocon01 at hotmail dot com. (Not to the comments here, please, or they might be forgotten or missed.)

Thanks to all of you – you make this a great Yuri Network!