Archive for the Doujinshi Category


HabuCore F

April 4th, 2024

On the right, a stern-faced woman with short dark hair and glasses, wearing a suit. On the left a red-haired woman in a scarf and red jacket over yellow tee shirt, smiling. Today’s post is less of a review than a story of how a chance encounter changed my life. ^_^

In the early 2000s, a reader of Okazu, touko_no_doriru_san was kind enough to gift me the very first issue of a series that would take up a lot of space in my brain for the next almost 20 years. Hayate x Blade (はやて×ブレード) was a gonzo battle/school manga series by someone whose art I  already loved as the doujinshi circle JESUS DRUG, Hayashiya Shizuru.

The original story was as follows: Kurogane Hayate, an energetic doofus enters Tenchi Academy (under, it turns out, false pretenses) in order to compete for money to wipe out the debt at the orphanage that took care of her and her twin sister, Nagi. To win, Hayate must find a partner to combat other teams with. Hayate ends up partnering with Mudo Ayana, a girl whose breakup with her last partner has traumatized her and made her swear off fighting. 

This all sounds very heavy – and, honestly, it is! There is a ton of deep, dark stuff here, but also so much more crazy, goofy nonsense and high-powered swordfighting action and quite a lot of violence. Gouting blood is a thing, but so are banana peel gags and the chairwoman of the school fighting to a song made famous by a real-world roller-blading boy band. The action was good, but what made this series shine was the characters. There are too many amazing characters to name – by 2015, there were 40 main characters in this series. Honestly, I was going to list out just a few, but in the end, I really can’t. ^_^

The series went through a lot of changes. A publisher shift in Japan meant that we only got the first 6 volumes in English. The series initially ended in 2013, with Hayate clearing the orphanage’s debt. In 2014, it began anew as Hayate x Blade 2 (Nyan), in which the school chairwoman Amachi Hitsugi creates an even nuttier battle royale, pitching all the students at the school, including an outsider group determined to take the school down completely, against one another. Students were split into “Heaven” and “Earth” teams and given dangerous and weirdly bizarre scenarios in order to fight one another. There was never any doubt who would win.

There were also 9(!) Drama CDs which live in my head rent-free, as masterworks of writing and voice-acting.

In 2018, we said good-bye to Hayate x Blade. As I said at the time, statistically speaking, one volume should have been less good than the others, but none of them were anything other than fantastic. The story ended, I was very happy with where and how it ended, which was on a gag that made me snort my drink out my nose. A perfect ending for this series.

But, selfishly, I want more. ^_^ I love epilogues in manga. I especially adore 10-years-later epilogues, to see what became of these people. I wanted that for this series.

Well last year, I got it. As part of the Habu Core, (Hayate x Buraydo Collection), Hayashiya-sensei put together a doujinshi of commission art of the HxB characters (squee) and a series of 10 years later sketches of all 40 (plus 1) of the main characters, plus some high-school-era comics for those pairs. And once again, it ends on a gag so utterly out of the pale, but completely in character for Amachi Hitsugi, that I choked on my drink. 

Habu Core F is the perfect epilogue to the perfect manga series.

I’ll never forget this series. At least in part because when Hayashiya-sensei was dissolving her backlog of manuscript pages, I purchased some of the panels for myself and plan on having them framed and added to my art gallery in my office this year.  ^_^

Once again, we say good bye to Hayate x Blade. I’m glad that Sid and Nancy seem pretty happy with their choices. ^_^

 





Cherish Every Moment, Indonesian Yuri Anthology Book That Matters So Much More, Guest Review by Lena Tama

December 6th, 2023

Hello! Lena Tama is here again! Unlike my previous article for my Suara Kita (Our Voices) LGBTQ+ community, this article is entirely personal but still matters a lot for Indonesian audiences. On this occasion, I’m reviewing a local yuri anthology book called Cherish Every Moment by a group of yuri mangaka called Yuri Nakama. If you have the chance, say hello to them on their Facebook page!

This yuri anthology book has been quite an enigma since I bought it at the Comic Frontier (Comifuro) convention in May this year. Sometimes I wondered if this book would be worth reviewing or not due to its circumstances, but I did it anyway.

Cherish Every Moment consists of five one-shot titles, but not all of them are in manga format. Of those titles, three of them are manga, one of them is a short story, and the last one is… hard for me to explain, but again I’ll get to it as well. Their stories have one defining theme: To cherish every moment, however we can.

I’m going to review each title and provide a snippet of them as they are in the book. Here goes!!

 

1. Loop of Second Chances by Pianno

Our first title is a one-shot manga about Lucy, a third-grade high school student who gives up her love after being rejected by her crush Anna during their graduation ceremony. Or at least, that’s what Jean dreamed of before she woke up and found out that she looped back in time during her second year, giving her a second chance to get closer to Anna.

Except, it’s already over 50 times by now and every time loop results in the same conclusion: Anna rejects Lucy because she has her eyes on someone else and Lucy’s friend Jean keeps bullying their teacher Mrs. Katerina until their graduation. At this point, Lucy resigns her fate to repeat one year of her high school moment forever like a curse from God.

But not everything is always the same. One time, Lucy picked up an unassuming pen which remained in her possession for dozens of time loops. Anna and Jean allude to their high school moments lasting forever, and Mrs. Katerina is slowly getting closer to Lucy with each passing cycle.

Eventually, Lucy and Jean figure out who’s behind this endless time loop: Mrs. Katerina and Anna. Not only is Mrs. Katerina a witch and the unassuming pen is her magic wand, but Jean is also her superior. Anna asked Mrs. Katerina to perform a magical time loop so that she can be with her crush, Jean, for a while longer, which Mrs. Katerina did thanks in part to her blossoming affection toward Lucy.

Finally having clarity, Lucy accepts the truth and Mrs. Katerina returns the time flow to normal. For the last time, these four girls relieve their high school moment with Anna finally getting closer to Jean and Lucy giving the depressed Mrs. Katerina a chance to get closer to her.

And that’s the end of this story. It took me until the end of the story to realize it was a romcom student x teacher story, but even then that’s quite a stretch given the many bizarre twists. The artstyle is rather simplistic and cute, but it doesn’t detract from its overall story. It kept me guessing for a while, and I like it.

Enjoyment: 6/10
Characters: 7/10
Yuri: 7/10

 

2. Debur Amarilis (Splash of Amaryllis) by Saxifraga

This short story depicts the aftermath of the war between the nations of Floralys and Orkanius which concluded with the defeat of Orkanius and the unification under Floralys. Kairi Physeter, a herbalist and former paramedic for Orkanius army remained in Floralys to help the war-torn areas and victims of war as the only healer available, at least until the arrival of another healer called Elena Crescent, a renowned white mage and leader of Floralys paramedic battalion.

Despite initially standing opposite each other during the war, Kairi and Elena gradually got closer as they reached a level of intimacy unbound by labels over the course of three years. They loved each other and respected the boundary to maintain professionalism at their respective jobs.

One day, an announcement comes in which states that Orkanius’ revitalization has completed and the citizens in Floralys, including Kairi, may return home. After three years thinking only about her job and Elena, the thought of returning to Orkanius suddenly hits Kairi. Her former greenhouse, her Master Herbalist who had long passed away, the subtropical climate of Orkanius which is vastly different to Floralys’ tropical climate, and her own hometown.

As much as Kairi wants to return home, it would mean being separated from the one person that matters so much to her. This is the first time Kairi ever feels distraught by that mere thought and she’s afraid of saying it to Elena, afraid that Elena would feel indifferent if they’re apart after all these three years and their relationship which they have built would crumble.

However, Elena caresses Kairi gently, reminding her that she will always respect Kairi’s decision and that nothing will ever replace Kairi in her heart even if they’re physically apart from each other. At this moment, Kairi realizes how much they love and respect each other, and how far their relationship has come.

Elena follows Kairi as they travel to Orkanius together, back to where Kairi began her journey as a herbalist. Kairi decides to continue her late Master’s study someday, rebuild the untidy greenhouse, and become a better herbalist than she is now. In their embrace, they know that they’re ready to make the decision when the time comes and the bond they have is unbreakable.

I didn’t expect much from this title and ended up intrigued by it. The world building is compact but pretty imaginative to me, and the characters are well-written; they have deep love for each other and they communicate their feelings well.

Overall, I enjoyed this story so much. I hope they can expand the story of Kairi and Elena in the future. One can dream…

Enjoyment: 9/10
Characters: 9/10
Sapphic: 8/10

 

3. The Time Jacker by LoveJuice

I’m going to be honest; I don’t like cute-girls-doing-cute-things stories that don’t add anything else to the table, and this manga does just that. It’s a story about a cute girl doing a time loop to turn back time and save her cute crush.

An unnamed senpai steals her unnamed kouhai’s coffee and dies due to said coffee. Distraught over her beloved senpai’s death, an eccentric cute engineer called Professor. Loly comes to the rescue and gives the kouhai a time machine in the form of a stopwatch to return to the past and save senpai from the deadly coffee.

Indeed, kouhai goes back to five minutes before senpai’s death using the stopwatch, only to meet her past self who got persuaded to throw away the deadly coffee.

Although initially afraid kouhai cannot return to the present time because the time machine/stopwatch only works once before needing to change its battery, it doesn’t matter since she only jumped to the past five minutes ago. Things shortly return to normal and kouhai finds her tsundere senpai alive and jolly. Everything’s as it should be, except for the godzilla in the background wrecking havoc.

There’s a fine line between writing a good comedy and trying too hard to be funny. This title does both simultaneously and I don’t enjoy it that much. Adding to that is the overly cute artstyle that makes the story a bit aggravating whenever it tries too hard to be funny. Many things about it feel too basic and not memorable enough for me.

Bonus points if you see the kouhai as Nishikino Maki and the senpai as Yazawa Nico from Love Live.

Enjoyment: 5/10
Characters: 4/10
Yuri: 3/10

 

4. Our Memories Are Stored in the Clouds by Sakakibara Ryoichi

Now this is the real deal, possibly the biggest selling point of this yuri anthology book and one of the major reasons I want to review it. This is a short story being told in a very unorthodox format: A dialog between two girls in 1999 via email messages.

Before the advent of mainstream internet access and social media, there were only private forums where people could communicate beyond borders like Compuserve where fellow computer enthusiasts across the world shared their thoughts on software developments, tech news, and the likes. Among many forum members who were mostly foreigner guys, Mira was one of the only two Indonesian female members there with the other one being Ghani.

Starting from February 18, 1999, Mira and Ghani became acquaintances on Compuserve and shared their passions with all things computer. Ghani took a liking in software development thanks to her father being a former lecturer for Institut Teknologi Bandung (Bandung Technology Institute) and that she had graduated from college a year earlier, whereas Mira was still attending college at Budi Luhur University during her final semesters and she wished to develop a commercial storage system in the future.

Eventually, Ghani received a scholarship at MIT for advanced web designing while Mira graduated college and was starting a job as a web technician for a bank which she didn’t like due to the disrespect from her male colleagues. Many times, they shared their dreams and frustrations, as well as how much they wanted to meet each other but failed twice.

However, with Ghani’s eventual departure to the US in the Fall season in 2000 for her scholarship, the opportunity finally arrived for them to meet up in real life for the first time. Ghani stayed in Jakarta for one week before her flight and both she and Mira spent their time together, including taking a commemorative picture at Monas (National Monument) on June 30, 2000, capturing Mira’s calm and timid expression which contrasted Ghani’s upbeat and cheerful personality, as well as the genuine camaraderie between the two computer enthusiasts.

Ghani and Mira grew ever closer together in spite of Ghani living her new life in the US. They never stopped sending emails to each other and always poured their feelings into each message, including their desire to experience valentine day together with Ghani wishing to savor Mira’s homemade chocolate someday.

After working for Bina Nusantara University for some time, Mira received an invitation for a Master’s Degree at either Stanford or UC Berkeley next year. Meanwhile, Ghani was also about to participate in her first-ever conference at UCLA which would become a regular activity for her to travel to Los Angeles. With every opportunity coming together, they couldn’t be more overjoyed at the thought of finally meeting up again, this time in the US.

On September 1, 2001, Ghani was excited that her conference at UCLA would come sooner in mid-September thanks to her promotion as a panelist for the conference. With Mira’s blessings, Ghani anxiously awaited her flight from Logan Airport, Boston to LA International Airport on September 11, 2001.

And then, I briefly stopped reading the story. My fingers trembled in fear, realizing that some details mimicked a very particular event which I wish wouldn’t occur in this story. I kept wishing I wouldn’t have to open the next page to find out what really happened after that. But then, I swiped to the next page and the story skipped to September 11, 2021. 20 years had passed since Ghani’s last email and Mira broke the silence by sending an email, along with a picture of her in her 40s right next to the 9/11 Memorial with Ghani’s name engraved on it.

In the last 20 years since they talked, Mira became one of the leading scientists on cloud computing and cybersecurity and she wished to pay her respect for the victims of 9/11. Mira had grown so much, but she remained a single, unmarried cat-lady whose heart only had a place for Ghani, and she hoped her cloud computing systems could send this one email to Ghani up in the sky, among the clouds.

I bursted into tears when I read it for the first time. And after consecutive readings, I still find myself crying so much. Never did I expect a short story with such an unorthodox storytelling method would make me care so much for two people who deserve the best in their life. This stupid, simple, sapphic story…

Enjoyment: 10/10
Characters: 10/10
Sapphic: 7/10

 

5. The Present by Magnolia Team

Whew, that was some powerful angst, so let’s end this yuri anthology on a more cheerful note. The Present is a quick, simple one-shot manga about a blonde girl who seems to have a bad day. She almost forgot about her black-haired girlfriend’s birthday, so she rushed to the nearest florist and bakery to buy a nice set of presents, only to then get caught in the rain and return home rather late.

The black-haired girl awaits her at home and is worried sick, knowing that the blonde girl goes home rather late and gets drenched so badly. Despite the blonde girl’s bad luck at surprising her girlfriend, the black-haired girl insists that what matters the most is her beloved girlfriend being there for her.

In a rather quiet scenery, they both take a bath together, enjoy homemade dinner, and close the day with a simple birthday celebration on each other’s embrace. And that’s it.

The Present is a short and sweet sapphic story. The blond girl and black-haired girl love each other so much in a depiction that is wholly respectful and pretty relatable.

I cried a bit when reading this story the first time but for a different reason than the previous story. I love this simple love story and I wish us Indonesians could experience it freely as well.

Enjoyment: 7/10
Characters: 7/10
Yuri: 8/10

—

And that’s all there is to Cherish Every Moment. Yuri Nakama doesn’t sell this book outside of the local Japanese pop culture conventions, not even in their digital form. People can only buy the physical release during the events which causes accessibility issues for local readers in Indonesia, especially for overseas people. And once the events are over, there’s no way of buying the previous works again.

This is one huge reason I wasn’t sure if Cherish Every Moment would be a book worth reviewing on the internet. I didn’t know if people would want to hear the review of a book that they couldn’t access easily among locals, let alone overseas audiences.

However, the Yuricon community encouraged me to write this review anyway, knowing that this simple yuri anthology book represents so much more for the LGBTQ+ community in Indonesia. In a country where gender and sexual minorities are neither condemned nor protected by the law, we are prone to discrimination by the people each passing day with little to no chance to speak up for ourselves.

Among the handful of local queer books like the ones available on Yuri Nakama and my organization Suara Kita, most of them are produced in-house with little easy access on the bookstores and online marketplace. I’m more representing Suara Kita on this one, but I feel like we have similar risks to face as Yuri Nakama in that our literature is prone to being burned down, torn apart, or review-bombed by the majority of people, as it happened a couple of times in the past.

The fact that there’s a small but dedicated community who produces yuri manga in a respectful manner and a bit regularly, albeit with accessibility issues, is very fascinating to me and they deserve more exposure. I hope this article can help raise awareness of Yuri Nakama’s contributions to queer people in this country. Whether they’re for queer people, yuri fans, anime and manga fans, or the common audiences, their books are worth buying and reading for their contents, to provide critics that can help them grow, and for what they represent.

And last but not least, I hope they can begin selling their books in digital form for easier accessibility among us locals and hopefully the overseas readers as well. I know I can recommend some good books from them just like this yuri anthology book, Cherish Every Moment.

*About author
Lena Tama is an Indonesian trans woman, as well as a translator and freelance writer since 2016. Lena began indulging in the world of journalism in 2020 by joining The Jakarta Post. Aside from writing articles, Lena is also involved in advocating LGBTIQ+ rights and other groups of minorities in Indonesia





My Date Is A Total Ike Woman

June 11th, 2023

A short dark-haired woman in red and black carries a woman with short light-colored hair in a denim jacket and white pants, who gently strokes the dark-haired woman’s chin. The title “My Date Is A Total Ike Woman and a small image of a merry-go-round in lavender. Logo that says Tomboy in the upper right corner in blue. In the upper left, also in blue read “Butch x Butch” and “Presented by Natuo Mutsumi.”Mustumi Natsuo is a name with which we at Okazu are familiar. Mutsumi-sensei was the face of the Boyish² Butch x Butch Yuri Anthology project last year. This year, Mutsumi-sensei ran a Kickstarter for a new work, also a butch x butch comic. And, like the last project, this one blew past early goals. In fact, we’ll be getting a voiced reading of the comic at some point, since stretch goals were likewise met.

So today, I thought we’d take a look at My Date Is A Total Ike Woman, the English language edition of Date Aite Ga Ikemen Onna Datta Kudan (デート相手がイケメン♀だった件). Both Japanese and English language editions are available on the Tomboys Booth.pm page, where you can purchase them both as a physical book and as digital. When I backed the Kickstarter, I pledged for both the JP and EN editions as physical books. As soon as the PDFs became available, I scooped them up, so I could talk about them here!

The title of this comic is a pun on the Japanese word ikemen (イケメン) which means an attractive guy. We’ve seen that in some works here, like, Ikemen Onna to Hakoiri Musume and Ikemen Sugidesu Shiki-senpai! For anyone familiar with the term, this title would be expressive.

My Date Is A Total Ike Woman is a 37-page comic about Ushio and Asahi, two otaku butches on a blind date at an amusement park. In this short story, there are so many qualities that makes this comic worth owning and reading. When they meet for the first time, they are both blown away how cool each other is…and immediately become intimidated in rather cute and relatable ways. They spend their date negotiating boundaries both mental and physical. Both are otaku, with different interests, but both have had some negative experiences and don’t want to give up to much and get hurt. As the date goes on, they learn to open up and be honest with each other. This comic ends in a perfectly satisfying way that makes me hope for a sequel some day.

The translation is very good. In an early page Asahi sees Ushio for the first time and thinks, “Crap, their hotness level is clearly over 9000!” which of course made me laugh out loud, being a good otaku myself. The art is simple, with fantastic body language and facial expressions. When they should look cool, they look very cool indeed. For sample pages, check out Mutsumi-sensei’s Twitter page. 

If you’d like to read an engaging comic featuring two butch women on a date, definitely get yourself over to Tomboys and grab yourself a copy!

Ratings:

Art – 9 100% in wheelhouse
Story – 9 Covers a lot of ground in few pages
Characters – 9 So cute
Service – Well, ahem, cute butch women, so…10 for me
LGBTQ – 10

Overall – 9

The book ends with an interview of Mutsumi-sensei, about trying to create more queer comics in Japan. Obviously, I will always support that.
I hope we’ll get more of these two and their various otaku pursuits. ^_^

 

 
 

 

 





Yuri Research Club Doujinshi at Comiket 101

March 26th, 2023

Today’s review is sponsored by Rica Takashima who sent me all these treasures from Comiket 101 at Tokyo Bight Sight this past winter. She and I have had our fair number of surreal experiences there, but among those I had not imagined, was the growth of Yuri research clubs at various universities. Of course in retrospect, it makes perfect sense that, as Yuri grows in popularity, some folks would create circles around doing basically the exactly same thing I’m doing here – reviews and research, interviews and news.  Because when I first visited Comiket 20 years ago, Yuri was not a genre, it’s really delightful that there are so many folks doing just that now. (Also, marveling at the fact that when Rica and I were selling our Yuri manga at Comiket, these young people were in diapers. What a different world they have ground up in in regards to Yuri!) Thankfully Rica also enjoys other people’s enjoyment, and so I have some really fun Yuri Research doujinshi today to share with you and some joyful faces from Comiket.

Our goodies today come from: 

University of Tokyo Yurizukikai (@utokyo_yuri on Twitter)

 

The UTokyo Yuri Lover’s Society had two publications:

Liliest was a slick perfect bound collection of essays about Yuri location travel, webtoon recommendations and brief history of Yuri from the 1990s to the present, a terrific essay answering the question “Is Anne of Green Gables Yuri?” and, when one flipped to the other side, original fiction and manga.

I have to tell you, as I read through each of these doujinshi, my heart grew 20 times in size. ^_^

It was just so delightful to be a part of this conversation, even if just vicariously through the doujinshi.

 

Also wonderful was UTY’s second publication, a copy book entitled, Hyaku-Nengo Ni Nokoshitai Yuri Manga Hyaku Sen. Let me me see if I can explain what is going on in this title. If you look at the red characters, they spell ‘Yuri,’ but the first character also is ‘100,’ so this title means something like, 100 Selected Yuri Manga For the Ages, but is a couple of clever uses of the way kanji is read and laid out.  It’s very clever in a college club way. ^_^

Inside this copybook  is a foldout page with 100 Yuri manga that they think are key pieces of Yuri manga history. Largely I agree with them! A few are open for debate, as one might expect. ^_^ This is accompanied by group members’ discussion of decades in Yuri and why they picked certain series. Absolutely had me grinning like a loon through this whole book. Squee!

You can buy this issue of Liliest and the 100 Selections doujinshi on UTokyo Yurizukikai’s Booth.pm store – and you should totally do that. ^_^

 

Next up we have:

Kyoto University Yuribunken (@KU_yuribunken on Twitter)

 

 

Immediately when I picked up their publication, Lilyology, Volume 1, I squeaked out “I know that artist!” Indeed I was correct, The fine folks at Kyoto U. Yuri Culture Research Group  have an interview with and cover by Fujieda Miyabi, creator of Iono-sama Fanatics and Ame-iro Kouchakan Kandan, (and a perennial favorite of mine).  This is preceded by a series of essays in which members discuss how they found Yuri.

“Mizuno Ami” has an interview with a Kyoto U grad student who presented about Yuri doujinshi at Comiket from the 90s-00s at an academic conference. This is exactly the kind of thing I want in my collection. Members then select their favorite one panel from a Yuri manga or anime. And these are followed by essays on Adachi to Shimamura, Shiroi Suna no Aquatope – with an extensive list of all the species of fish seen in the series!

Turning to the other side of the doujinshi is a piece of fiction by Saruwatari Shirayuki about a girl who wants to go out with a Prince in a Yuri world…or so she thinks.

Seriously, tell me you aren’t utterly entranced by all this? I was delighted.

 

Our last University group today is:

Tokyo University of Science Yurizukikai, aka RikaYuri (@tuslilylover on Twitter)

Notice this fantastic sign “Jidai ha Yuri da.” It’s the Age of Yuri. Guys, if you make this into a t-shirt, I will buy it. ^_^

Their publication is lovely little A5 perfect bound volume, RikaYuri, Volume 3. Volumes 1, 2 and 3 are available in print and V2  and V3 as digital editions on RikaYuri’s Booth.pm.

This volume includes essays, including the “RikaYuri Symposium,” held in spring 2022 about the past, present and future of Yuri, art and original fiction – and, in the back a guest post by a member of the Nagoya University (Meidai) Yuri Lover’s Club (@nitech_lily on Twitter)! I approve of this cross university communication. ^_^ All the art in this nice little doujinshi is reproduced in 4 color.

I will never ever not be amazed and envious at the relative ease with which Japanese doujinshi circles can get high quality color printing. It’s true that digital printing has made leaps and bounds here in the west, but the process in Japan is so streamlined and flexible. I always wonder what my life might have been life if printing in the US in the 2000s wasn’t so darn difficult! But how wonderful for this generation of Yuri fans that they can get their work online and in print – and how wonderful for us. ^_^

Last up, we have a bonus manga by someone I follow online.

I was on Mastodon, following and chatting briefly with Yamako-sensei, a Yuri doujinshi artist who’s Nakayoshi Oneesan-tachi is an adorable slice of life about two adult women, Mako and Natsu.
I mentioned having sold once as a vendor at Comiket, and Yamako-sensei noted that they had been my neighbor. Small world, eh? (I remember nothing about that whole day, hardly, because it was an absolute blur of exhaustion and euphoria.) So when my package of doujinshi included Yamako-sensei’s work, I was absolutely beside myself with glee. Happily you can purchase some of Yamako-sensei’s doujinshi on Bookwalker or, as digital or in print (and stickers and coasters) through their online shop (with shipping through a buying service like Tenso.)

This doujinshi is charming in a totally relatable way with 4-koma comics that span all the various emotions and situations one might find in an adult relationship. Lots of hugs and kisses for these two. They are so cute. ^_^

That brings me to the end of my vicarious walk through the state of Yuri at Comiket in 2022 and let me tell you, it was wonderful. ^_^ I really hope to make it back to Japan this year and take in Comitia or GLFes once again and maybe meet up with some of these folks!

For more Yuri clubs, take a look at the folks on my Yuri resource list on Twitter. I’m adding new groups, creators and organizations all the time.

Thanks so much to the Yuri groups at U Tokyo, Kyoto U and Rikadai, and to Yamako-sensei for all their lovely messages and especial thanks to Rica for getting these for me. What a fantastic way to start this year off! ^_^

 





Yuri Drama CD: @Around Kabukichou Shinjuku 0:00AM ~ Ena Saitou (＠新宿区歌舞伎町近辺午前0時)~ 齋藤恵那

April 26th, 2019

Today we’re looking at a lovely little Drama CD I picked up at Comitia last February. I’ve mentioned a number of times that the Yuri section was pretty large as compared with years past, and this last one, was especially sprawling. As we moved out of た into ち blocks, we came across a number of folks selling really unique items. Among those were circle doyondo (どよんど) who were selling an original Drama CD called @Around Kabukichou Shinjuku 0:00AM ~ Ena Saitou (＠新宿区歌舞伎町近辺午前0時)~ 齋藤恵那 by Taiyaki, Kokoro and Kudo Asa. Kudo-san voiced the main and only character, Ena…and she did a really decent job of it. It could not have been easy with no one to work off of.

The story begins with Ena, a high school girl, finding us, “oneesan” an older woman (maybe early twenties?) on the ground in the Kabukichou in Shinjuku at midnight. She asks if we are all right, but we are crying and Ena, who is a kind girl, says that we’ll make her cry. She picks us up, takes us to a hotel, because she can hardly bring us home and we tell her that we’ve had a bad break up with our girlfriend. Ena handles that with gentleness.

Each scenario is given a time and a place as a title: Shinjuku Kabukichou at a Hotel 2 AM; In front of the College Gates 6PM. As the scenarios develop we learn that Ena and we have kept in touch by text. Ena asks us for advice which she does not take because she doesn’t want to leave us. Eventually Ena tracks us down to tell us she likes us, can we go out? We say yes.

But as time passes, we’re being distant and Ena finds us, once again drunk in Kabukichou (I am not loving us right now….but I think we were just bumming because we were trying to “protect” her,) Ena tells us that she loves us and asks if we can make it more serious. Thankfully we say yes! We take Ena home and settle down together. For the last track “At Home The Future,” We make out a little and Ena asks us very cutely if she can call us by our given name.* This was an incredibly good and bad scene simultaneously, as poor Kudo-san had to make the kissing sound real by herself. She did better than I wanted to hear. ^_^; Honestly, I find listening to people kissing a little repulsive anyway. I skip those bit in movies a lot of the time.

For the cast talk, Kudo-san was joined by one of the writers, Taiyaki-san. They chatted about the creation of the story, and the manga of it, and how they’d like to turn it into an anime, of course! You can read the opening scene on Yuri Navi as part of their online Web Yuri Anthology Yuri “Toile” (WEB百合アンソロジー「トワール」 ).

You can also listen to the opening tack with Japanese subtitles on Youtube. Thanks redfish for the heads up that it’s also downloadable (at least within Japan) from booth.pm.

This was a delightful, well-acted story that was charming and engaging in a short time. I’m hoping I’ll get a chance to hear more of circle doyondo’s work!

Ratings:

Story – 8
Character – 9
Voice acting – 9
Service – 4 that one make out scene sounds like exactly what its supposed to be
Yuri – 9

Overall – 9

*As I mentioned yesterday in my reviews of Kyuusei End Contents Positive: Encount (九彩エンドコンテンツ), this was a repeated theme I’ve seen a few times recently. Is this…a new trope? /insert meme here/

So. Drunk onee-san are rapidly being set up to become the Yuri:2020 version of the cool upperclassman. It’s not going to make Yuri a queerer genre, but I’m finding it hard to complain. Get back to me in 8 years. ^_^

I’ve linked to the Toranoana e-shop to get this. If you are outside Japan, you probably will need a buying service.
This is unrelated, but I found it remarkable, so I will remark on it – Toranoana has an otaku wedding planning service. I think I like that.