Yuri Games
The 2020 Yuri Game Jam is happening right now. Make the games you want to play! EVN Chronicles has a terrific write up of the Visual Novels from last year.
shino on Twitter shared their previous game (while working on their new submission!) tender feelings like water.
Yuri Manga
We’ve got some new items up on the Yuricon Store!
A Tropical Fish Yearns for Snow, Vol. 5, Makoto Hagino’s soft and slow seaside romance continues.
The Rose of Versailles, Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3 and Volume 4 are now listed on the Store! I can’t wait for you to read them all.
And we finally have a pre-order for Asumiko Nakamura’s A White Rose in Bloom, Vol. 1. I’m so looking forward to this!
New from Ichijinsha is Volume 1 of Majyou ga Koi Suru 5 Byou Mae (魔女が恋する5秒前) about a solitary witch and a witch-hunter in a sort of relationship.
Another slow, gentle school romance, Hana ni Arashi, Volume 6, ( はなにあらし)and it looks like an actual thing might happen! ^_^
We’re only a few patrons away from hitting our 2020 goal. We’ll Guest Reviewers a raise,
do more videos, and support more queer creators directly. Become an Okazu Patron today!
Kodansha Comics has announced the license of Whispering You a Love Song, by Takeshima Eku. I very much enjoy this series in Comic Yuri Hime.
Seven Seas has released all of Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl on digital. If you missed your chance to read this super-problematic, but also not all that terrible Yuri series, grab it it on digital now! This series has its own category here on Okazu, as it was a biggish thing back in the day, with manga and an anime. Check out the Kashimashi Category for all my reviews from 2005 – 2008. My opinions and reading of this series will undoubtedly have evolved significantly in the last 15 years (so be warned.)
Comic Natalie reports on a “Manga Music Video” for Shimura Takako’s Donikanaru Hibi, Happy Go Lucky Days.
Yuri Anime
Added to the Yuricon Store is the new Diskotek release of Devilman Lady – The Complete Series.
YNN Correspondent Megan notes that the VLADLOVE team had a press-only event where director Oshii Mamoru spoke. You can find it on YouTube with English subtitles!
Get a look at Ecchan and Aya-san, the lesbian couple from the anime Happy Go Lucky Days on Comic Natalie!
Yuri Navi talks about Yuri fandom’s interest in the up-coming anime of I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level due to the various relationships among the women in the story.
ANN’s Alex Mateo reports on Viz’s removal of all free Hulu videos on their site. Now you’ll have to subscribe to Hulu to watch classic Sailor Moon anime.
Other news
You can stream the music from Zsa Zsa Zaturnnah ze Musikal, based on Carlo Vergara’s brilliant transsexual superheroine on Spotify. ^_^ I still find myself humming “Babae Na Ako,” years after watching the movie. ^_^
MSN finally gets me. This week I opened up a browser and found Latonya Pennington’s article, A Beginner’s Guide to Modern LGBTQ+ Manga. ^_^
Lauren Orsini interviews Waka Hirako, creator of the powerful, award-winning My Broken Mariko. This manga is getting a lot of buzz and looks like it’s well worth your time. Lauren asks if here could be a queer reading of it. ‘My Broken Mariko’ Manga Is An Emotional Journey Of Love And Loss
And speaking of possible queer reading, J-Novel club announced on Twitter, that Volume 4 of My Next Life as a Villainess is being released as a paperback next week.
One last item, Vertical Comics has shared the acceptance speak by Macoto Tezuka on behalf of her father Osamu, as he is inducted into the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame.
Become a YNN Correspondent by reporting any Yuri-related news with your name and an email I can reply to – thanks to all of you – you make this a great Yuri Network! Special thanks to Okazu Patrons for being an important part of the Okazu family. I couldn’t do it without you!
Some tidbits I forgot last week!
Vol 2 of ‘Love me for who I am’ is out in English this week, the cover star is lesbian character Kotone. Her backstory as seen in this volume isn’t a happy one, though considering the overall positive direction of the manga I suspect her story will be going better places soon.
Vol 1 of a dark fantasy manga titled ポラリティ透明期 – with a setting where homosexuality is illegal. A 15 year old girl and her girlfriend are sent to a juvenile correction facility after falling foul of this. Awaiting them are harsh prison guards and other boys and girls in the same predicament… The author has a blog, and a couple of other one-shot manga that seem to be LGBT+ related: https://ayabatafuie.jimdofree.com/
Happy Go Luck Days news: Tribute art drawn by various mangaka including Ono Natsume and OshiBudo author Hirao Auri https://natalie.mu/comic/news/399379 and as a tokuten for moviegoers, “what happened next” short manga drawn by Shimura for all the main couples https://natalie.mu/comic/news/400452
My Broken Mariko’s TV Bros’ cover after winning their manga grand prize: https://natalie.mu/comic/news/401513
Still a few days left to donate to Scotland Loves Anime’s crowdfunder – SLA is the most important anime event for us here in the UK, if not all of Europe, so if you have a bit to spare it’d be a big help! There’s various reward tiers for UK and international backers. https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/scotland-loves-anime-2020
Well, I wouldn’t call “I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level” a harem because it’s definitely not romantic, at least openly. But when you have an OP female MC who is frankly adored by the many female characters, with whom she lives with as a surrogate family, it definitely provides enough material to read.
As for Broken Mariko, I could complain that people are more obsessed with the possible queer reading than with the manga itself, but judging from mangaka’s answer, this is a difficult question for her herself. Anyway, the only thing I don’t understand is the desire to call queercoded any title that focuses on strong emotional relationships between characters.
Relationships do not equal harem. Women have more than one kind of relationship.
I understand, I meant to say that many people mistakenly call this yuri harem because of the premise I mentioned. Compared to yuri-ish titles, I would call it something remotely similar to Nanoha in terms of the idea of a surrogate family.
No one is “mistakenly” calling this anything. The article isn’t calling this Yuri, nor am I. Yuri fandom is interested in this series because of the many kinds of relationships between the characters. Many of us like to read about characters in relationships that are more than just lovers/not-lovers, because women have many kinds of affectionate relationships beyond “lovers.”