Event
Yuricon Presents the Yuri Panel at Anime Next! We’re so glad to be returning to our home event for another year. There will be a lot of good news (and some bad) and we’ll be giving away a lot of fun stuff, so we hope to see you there. ^_^
Other News
In an exciting new attempt to leverage “Cool Japan,” a new anime streaming site has launched, Daisuki.net. The site appears to be be globally accessible. It’s unclear if all the anime on the site is globally accessible, as well. If you live somewhere other than North America, and have registered for Daisuki, can you let us know in the comments if all the series are accessible to you? Bruce_McF wants to know. The launch campaign includes a contest for various goods – and there is a promise of a store in which goods can be purchased. Some of the anime on Daisuki is available on Crunchyroll, but this is really big news for European anime fans.
Anime News Network has a glimpse of the second Bandai Sailor Moon figurine – no surprise, it’s Sailor Mercury.
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Yuri Manga
There’s a pile of new manga from Comic Yuri Hime: Tsuki to Sekai to Etoile (月と世界とエトワール), Kimono Nadesico Volume 2 (きものなでしこ), Sentimental Dust (センチメンタルダスト), and steps by Takemiya Jin. Whee!
Rakuen Le Paradis (楽園 Le Paradis) Volume 12 will hit shelves at the end of June, and so will the first volume of Seijukuki Jinmei Vega by Hayashiya Shizuru,(思春期生命体ベガ)! Whee!
Nogami Takeshi’s online comic series Marine Corp Yumi has launched an English version. There’s some Yuri-service and a load of insight to military life in the United States of Amerigo. The translation is courtesy of our own C.O., Ana Moreno.
Comic Natalie reports that Transistor Ni Venus creator Takemoto Izumi has a new sci-fi school series in Comic Beam, Shinraku Mono De…. Bruce, we expect a review. ^_^
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Yuri Anime
Ghost in the Shell: Arise full trailer is now streaming for your entertainment. It looks like Kusanagi gets another woman to talk to/be enemies with.
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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. There’s a reason for this madness. This way I know you are a real human, not Anonymous (which I do not encourage – stand by your words with your name!) and I can send you a YNN correspondent’s badge. Thanks to all of you – you make this a great Yuri Network!
Gosh, thanks Erica! I expect the Daisuki series likely to attract the attention of more readers of Okazu is Madoka Magica.
So far it seems like everything except Lupin III is available in the UK and Latin America. It also seems like the Aniplex titles had their region blocking set incorrectly the first day, so if you tried for Madoka on launch day and then gave up, give it another try.
They have two Gundams from Sunrise, the Prince of Tennis OVA’s from NAS, a Lupin III series (OVA? TV? I dunno) from TMS, and Sword Art Online and Madoka Magica from Aniplex.
They promise that One Piece from Toei is coming, though its widely expected that series will have all sorts of region restrictions, given its wide popularity.
Also, they have a vote for catalog titles you’d like to see. A lot of them are old archival titles that were never licensed, so if there is anything in there that is of interest to Yuri fans, people could note that too so we could give that title some love in the voting.
They also seem to be making a lot of novice mistakes, so could probably benefit from gently worded and clearly phrased descriptions of changes that could improve their site ~ an alphabetical series page, a clear description of what regions different titles are available in, etc.
I voted on the title’s I’d like to see, but early, when it only allowed A-C titles. Still, better than nothing.
If you have suggestions for changes, please do write them and let them know.
Wow, this is brilliant news! I just had a look at the Daisuki website, and so far everything works for me except Lupin Sansei, just like Bruce McF was saying. I was actually really surprised to be able to watch SAO and Madoka, since both series have been licensed in France and are available for streaming and download on Wakanim’s pay-per-view platform.
As for GITS Arise — I still cannot get used to Kusanagi being voiced by Sakamoto (as much as I love her), nor to Togusa being the only one who hasn’t de-aged (and don’t even get me started on the Major’s new look), but, heh, I’m still looking forward to watching it. Just saw the news today that there will be a screening, here in Paris, next month… hopefully I can get tickets to it. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the Major on a giant screen. ;)
“I was actually really surprised to be able to watch SAO and Madoka, since both series have been licensed in France and are available for streaming and download on Wakanim’s pay-per-view platform.”
Recently I heard Sam Pinansky in his AnimeSols ANNcast say non-exclusive streaming rights is normal in Japan. So maybe Aniplex has already started to shifted their international streaming rights to non-exclusive rights. Non-exclusive rights really simplifies the contracting. For Daisuki, it would let the international licensor to simply provide their own stream worldwide outside Japan, without an expensive license terms search.
Exclusive licensing at its conception made a tremendous amount of sense, though its conception came a long time before the development of internet streaming.
Broadcasters did not want to invest in promoting a series only to have a rival broadcaster take advantage, and given the economics of home video distribution, multiple rival home video distributors would end up with far fewer series distributed than exclusive rights to a distribution area.
In both cases, the payment per broadcast or royalty per disc easily justified the extra transaction costs.
But for streaming and SVOD rights, and a niche media product like anime, it’s much less of an open and shut case for simulcasts, and doesn’t make much sense at all for catalog titles. It especially doesn’t make sense to give exclusive streaming rights to home video distributors, who are using streaming primarily as a promotional vehicle ~ since the wider visibility from streaming on multiple legitimate outlets is also a benefit to the home video distributor.
But this is a normal thing with technological development ~ economic institutions that made sense under the old technology are applied “as is” to the new technology, but it turns out that there’s something from the old institutions that don’t fit the new conditions, and there is a period of fighting for the institutions that fit the new technology.