Yuri Network News (百合ネットワークニュース) – August 17, 2013

August 17th, 2013

YNN_Lissa

Yuri Live-Action Movie

This weekend is the premiere of Yuri Live-Action movie, Schoolgirl Complex in Japan. If any of our Japanese friends want to report on it, please let me know!

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Yuri Manga

YNN Correspondent Grisznak  shared this great news with us: “At the first months of 2014 we’re gonna have Oniisama E… published in Poland, thanks to the JPF company. They’re also going to publish other Ikeda works, like… Lady Oscar (in 2015 perhaps). Oniisama E… will be published in one volume and in big format.”

Comic Natalie tells me that the September issue of Feel Young, will contain the final chapter of Ohana Holoholo. I’m a little relieved, because after the fabulous Volume 5, the story kind of jumped the shark. :-(

For Hakusensha’s 40th anniversary they are re-issuing a 1980’s title,Narita Minako’s CIPHER in a collector’s edition. The new two-volume release (Volume 1) collects this tale of a painter and her painting of her twin brother. The art is very 80s, but it’s totally my style. ^_^

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Yuri Anime

ANN reports that, at Otakon last week, Funimation announced that they’ve licensed a pile of series previous put out by Bandai , including the entire Mai Hime franchise, Mai Hime, Mai Otome, Mai Otome ~S.ifr~ and My Otome Zwei. Funi’s modus operandi right now seems to be to stream titles and then release them on DVD, so expect Shizuru, Natsuki and the gang  in 2014. For reviews of all of these, check out the Mai Hime and Mai Otome categories here on Okazu.

Classic Yuri fans unite! AnimeSols is streaming and crowdfunding the DVD set of Dear Brother. My gods, Saint-Juste on DVD, it’s hardly conceivable. /shiver/

Last report I shared that the new Sailor Moon anime would be streaming on Nico Nico Douga. Well way more importantly, Comic Natalie reports so will the new Sailor Moon Musical. If you’ve never seen a SerauMyu, you’re in for a bit of a “holy crap, this is cheesy…but I think I like it” moment. One of my favorite memories on my first trip to Tokyo was the unexpectedly fabulous SeraMyu I attended.

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Yaoi Manga

Say what? Yes, there is news of a BL Manga you should read. (This is hardly the first mention of BL here, check the category sidebar, you’ll see a Yaoi Category, as well as the LGBTQ category) This is not just any old BL manga, though. ANN reports a new Vertical license – something that has been on my to-read list for a few years. Kinou Nani Tabeta? / What Did You Eat Yesterday? by Yoshinaga Fumi, is a story of a gay couple and their daily life…and the food they eat. I’ve written about Yoshinaga’s love for food and about my love of her love of food. I adore her foodiness. And this is not a typical BL, it’s a story of a real couple. A BL version of Collectors, if you will. I’m really looking forward to this manga. ^_^

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Other News

The pair who goes by the name Himekawa Akira (co-creators for The Gold Ring, the first Arabic-language manga and who did the Legend of Zelda manga, have been chosen to work on the My Little Pony manga. This is all kinds of fabulous – they are really nice ladies, and friends of a friend of mine, and they are a terrific team.  And..My Little Pony **manga!**  I’m already squeeing. ^_^

Via Ben A. on Twitter –  watch this super-swell video. Mid-century art stylings, romantic ballad, space pirates and the girl gets the girl. Whee!

Rose of Versailles-themed shoes! Comic Natalie finds the best stuff.

To cap this week, we’ll take a look back at last week, when Comic Book Legal Defense Fund’s Charles Brownstein addressed a standing-room only crowd at Summer Comiket on Manga Freedom. Read the full text of his speech. It’s good stuff.

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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!

17 Responses

  1. just me says:

    “Say what? Yes, there is news of a BL Manga you should read. (This is hardly the first mention of BL here, check the category sidebar, you’ll see a Yaoi Category, as well as the LGBTQ category) This is not just any old BL manga, though. ANN reports a new Vertical license – something that has been on my to-read list for a few years. Kinou Nani Tabeta? / What Did You Eat Yesterday? by Yoshinaga Fumi, is a story of a gay couple and their daily life…and the food they eat. I’ve written about Yoshinaga’s love for food and about my love of her love of food. I adore her foodiness. And this is not a typical BL, it’s a story of a real couple. A BL version of Collectors, if you will. I’m really looking forward to this manga. ^_^”

    AWESOME NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Also, one of the reasons ity’s awesome is that from what I’ve read about it, it’s not BL – it’s ML. These guys aren’t boys, they’re men. :D

    • BL is a genre, not a description of character age. ^_^

      • just me says:

        The B in BL stands for “boy” and for “boys'”. There’s no letter B in “man” or “men.”

        As someone who started speaking English as her native language years and years ago *and* who isn’t ashamed enough of not being Japanese to pretend to be an ESL speaker, I’m not going to pretend that the word “boy” has everything to do with being male and nothing to do with being a child. ;D

        • The term for the genre in Japan is “Boy’s Love” or ‘BL’ and as a genre is includes stories of men, as well as boys.

          Antique Bakery and What Did You Eat Yesterday by Yoshinaga Fumi (One is out in English from DMP, the other is coming out from Vertical) are good examples of what I mean. Both are “BL” books, but neither are about boys. As a genre, stories about male homosexual romance and sex – predominantly by and for women – are called “BL” regardless of the protagonists’ states age.

          There is a difference between the English usage of “boy” and the Japanese usage of the phrase “Boy’s Love,” which is abbreviated as BL in Japan.

          • just me says:

            I’m still not going to call stories about adult men “Boy’s Love” when I’m talking about them in English.

            If some ESL speakers who didn’t understand that the English word “boys” refers to male children, instead of male people in general, wanted to call some Japanese stories about adult men “Boy’s Love” instead of calling them something in their native Japanese when talking about them in Japanese…

            …then I still don’t have to change my usage of English to match theirs. ;)

            It’s like the way some JSL speakers didn’t fully understand all the connotations of some Japanese words in Japan and gave them different connotations as loan words in English. Who expects native speakers of Japanese to change their usage of Japanese to match theirs? Not I! :D

            Meanwhile, remember how some gay men IRL are romantically interested in other men, not romantically interested in boys at all, are interested in reading stories about men in love with each other, don’t limit their leisure reading to comics from Japan, and are sick and tired of the stereotype of gay men as going after boys?

            Using the “Boy’s Love” label when promoting the English editions of What Did You Eat Yesterday? could *repel* these potential customers.

            Someone at Vertical should ask himself or herself who their target markets (plural! they don’t have to give up on fans of Japan to target other markets too, right?) are for these books…

          • By all means refer to the books however you’d like. “Man Love” has no meaning in the context of manga and no one will understand what you mean, but it really does not matter to me if you do not wish to use the term that the Japanese and western publishers, creators and fans use to identify a genre.

  2. BruceMcF says:

    Dear Brother is confirming my “weekly waves of support” theory for the AnimeSols twist to Kickstarter of streaming a new episode every week … when I finally worked around my debit card expiration date issue to pledge at the DVD level it was $30 shy of 30% … as I write this a day and a half later its $340 past the 30% level, closing in on 33% funded (32.6%).

    IMO, over and above our own personal support, what we can contribute over the next two months is pushing the episode links out into our social media channels each week as the next episode comes up.

    Because I do believe that if we can get people watching, then it’ll get over when the crunch time comes, if it hasn’t already hit its target along the way.

    Episode Two: http://animesols.com/videos/139

  3. Rin says:

    “after the fabulous Volume 5, the story kind of jumped the shark.”

    Can you elaborate a bit on this? Do the latest chapters undo the Yuri ending of volume 5?

  4. just me says:

    “but it really does not matter to me if you do not wish to use the term that the Japanese and western publishers, creators and fans use to identify a genre.”

    As if the people who are *already fans* are the only people who matter when selling books?

    As if attracting more potential customers to try and buy the books, ones who *don’t* necessarily already know all the in-crowd jargon of a fan scene, matters not at all?

    OK, got it. ;)

    • No, attracting new readers to BL does not matter at all to me. It is not my area of interest. I am convinced that ESL readers are as capable of understanding “the name of this genre is BL” as English natives are. I have no idea why are are arguing about this on a Yuri blog. Please go argue this point with Vertical or DMP.

      • just me says:

        “Yaoi Manga

        Say what? Yes, there is news of a BL Manga you should read. (This is hardly the first mention of BL here, check the category sidebar, you’ll see a Yaoi Category, as well as the LGBTQ category) This is not just any old BL manga, though. ANN reports a new Vertical license – something that has been on my to-read list for a few years. Kinou Nani Tabeta? / What Did You Eat Yesterday? by Yoshinaga Fumi, is a story of a gay couple and their daily life…and the food they eat. I’ve written about Yoshinaga’s love for food and about my love of her love of food. I adore her foodiness. And this is not a typical BL, it’s a story of a real couple. A BL version of Collectors, if you will. I’m really looking forward to this manga. ^_^”

        • BL is a name of a genre and no matter what you say here, it will not become Man Love, (“Man Love” has a completely different association in English, not a positive one.) BL is not my genre, I did not name it. By all means, start a new trend. Try here: http://www.digitalmanga.com/forums/

          • just me says:

            I was thinking more of, if I like it after I read it, how to recommend What Did You Eat Yesterday? to my friends who are gay men and aren’t otaku *without* implying that they’re into kids…

  5. just me says:

    OMG OMG

    I just found a comment on a post on io9 (not a scanlation site!) about the problems with scanlation that’s a HUGE eye-opener!

    Remember how some publishers assume that if someone spends their time scanlating a series, the series must be something they actually like?

    Pretty reasonable assumption, right? It’s assuming that scanlators are all at least reasonable enough to not waste their time scanlating series they *don’t* like (unreasonable about piracy, but at least reasonable enough about *this*).

    The trouble is, it wasn’t true. O_O

    A former scanator confesses at http://io9.com/480382568#comments

    “…4. Companies began to scrape possible titles directly from fan translator project lists, which was great…

    “…5. Sites (who operated on an “honor among thieves” basis back then) were then forced to delve deeper into the pile of possible translation sources, since the hobby of translating manga had become their go-to social scene. This led to fewer quality titles floating to the top, but fans still scooped them up because something was better than nothing…

    [ O_O As if someone you met and befriended in a scanlation scene would *stop being your friend* when you run out of likable stuff to scanlate, instead of continuing to be your friend and chatting about your other shared interests with you? O_O ]

    “6. Companies, seeing that the online community was still growing, and riding high on impressive sales, snatched up these lesser quality series as well.

    “7. The process repeated…”

    This is terrible. O_O

    • It has been obvious to many of us in the industry that the currency of scanlation was ego. They received dopamine bursts from the praise and microfame and avoid censure if they just keep giving fans more.

      • just me says:

        yeah, I knew about the ego stuff. Some even got possessive about it (“how dare you scanlate the series we started scanlating first!!!!!!!!!” “how dare you scanlate my English scanlation into Spanish!!!!!!!!!!!!!”).

        Finding out that they did that with stuff they DIDN’T EVEN ENJOY READING, in order to NOT GET DUMPED BY THEIR FRIENDS, now THAT was an extra surprise. O_O.

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