Common-Sense Monster, Volume 2

July 29th, 2026

Surrounded by the gaping maw of a monster, two girls in dark blue Japanese school uniforms make the heart sign together. One girl, with long dark hair smiles gently, the other girl, with messy light brown hair, stares in abject horror.In Volume 1, we met Itou, an awkward high school student and the eldritch horror of a monster that is walking around in the skin of popular, attractive fellow student Takahashi.

In Common-Sense Monster, Volume 2, Itou is confronted by her incredibly creepy, shape-changing monster of a teacher Niehara-sensei, and accused of being a monster herself. Itou refuses to help Nie-sensei, but neither she nor Takahashi has the ability to kill him. No matter how many times Takahashi bites his head off, Nie-sen just pops up again, with his toothy grin and grabby hands.

Itou is then confronted by her next greatest fear – two classmates who want to be friends.  Itou’s personality is so cutely, weirdly awkward that these two classmates find her charming…and the next thing she knows, as the class trip looms, is that she’s part of a friend group for the first very time. Even if the fifth of their group is a…very…unknown quantity.

Itou’s still looking to Takahashi for guidance, and getting really solid, simple advice that she just cannot put into play. But more importantly, Niehara-sensei is getting more and more brazen with his taunting and attacks, until the end of the book which, while we were told it was coming, is still monstrous.

The underlying horror of this story is that monsters live among us. And we know it. Predators, abusers, “normal” people who destroy the people around them. Which is more horrific, really? A teacher who is a known sex offender that no one seems to be able to get rid of, or a monster that eats people? I argue that the former is far worse and causes more damage, but when both real and fantastic monsters are one and the same….it makes for difficult reading. 

This is not an easy book. Itou’s an anxious mess, but one sympathizes. Every quiet moment, every kindness, every moment of humanity is likely to be literally swallowed up. It’s hard to relax when the ordeals keep coming, piling on to one another, leaving no room for anything else.

Is this a Yuri story? Kind of. Itou admirse Takahashi, but also cares about her – even though she understands that it is foolish, she’s always clinging to any small kindness. In the bigger picture, Itou is simply without affection in her life, but her care and affection for Takahashi definitely feel a step beyond that.

What this absolutely is, is an uncomfortable mix of fears both real and phantasmagoric, without space between them for a horror manga that will keep you on edge. 

Ratings: 

Art – 7
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Service – Pervy teacher makes everything icky
Yuri  – 1

Overall – 8 

Common-Sense Monster, Volume 2 is out now from Yen Press.

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Yuri Network News – (百合ネットワークニュース) – July 25th, 2026

July 25th, 2026

In black block letters, YNN Yuri Network News. On the left, in black silhouette, a woman with a broad brim hat and dress stands, a woman in a tight outfit sits against the Y. Art by Mari Kurisato for Okazu

Yuri/GL/Queer Manga & Comics

New Yuri License from Yen Press this week! Watching the Angel Sleep, Drowning in Bed Together. A woman assigned to a room finds it occupied by another woman. They move in together…and find they are attracted to one another.

I am a bit behind on this, but there is a GWitch “parallel spin-off” (cough/fanfic) Called Mobile Suit Gundam The Witch From Mercury Frontier (機動戦士ガンダム 水星の魔女 青春フロンティア) that features Suletta and Miorine at a Japanese Technical College. Volume 1 and Volume 2 are out now in Japan. I am going to have to get this series, obviously. ^_^

I’m reading this for ANN and frankly, think it’s pretty good. Let Loose on Lezhin is a bit of a suspense story about a woman in enemy territory who encounters an old…friend. Human/beastkin characters and lots of painful emotional stuff in this post-war setting. 

Via Sr. YNN Correspondent Frank Hecker, schwinn has a new doujinshi up on her Patreon. A preview is available for Our Hope, Twenty Years After We Lost The Right To Marry.

This kind of went under the radar, but Fantagraphics is re-releasing Wandering Son in a new paperback edition! Hopefully this time they will be able to complete it. This story about two trans teens was foundational (and problematic) for many readers  in the ’00s! YNN Correspondent Ivan just let us know that Fantagraphics just sent out email indicating 25% off everything on their site. The code is SDCC, so if you want V1-2 of the new edition, the time is now. ^_^

On a white background, the Okazu mascots feed each other, while say "I love Yuri" in English and Japanese. Orange letters say "Become and Okazu Patreon today! https://www.patreon.com/Okazu

 

Yuri Anime

Via Sr. YNN Correspondent Matt Marcus, The Executioner and Her Way of Life Season 1 anime is now available in a complete Blu-Ray set  from Sentai Filmworks.

 

Yuri Events

The Art Locker in NYC is holding a Yuri Comic Panel, where we’ll be having the incredible Adeline Kon, Kimberly Wang, and Kelly Ficarra on August 30th, from 2-4:30PM, at 38 West 32nst St, in New York City. The event is currently sold out, but keep your eyes out for openings.

I will be at Anime NYC with Manga Mavericks, and I’ll be signing copies of my books for you at their booth! I’ll also be helping out with some fun stuff that is top secret as of yet. Keep your eyes peeled. In the meantime, go pre-order the Sword of Paros Deluxe edition. It is gonna be so pretty and petty and fabulous. I promise you, it will be worth every penny. Also pick up Horon of the Closed Country, which has more than on genderqueer character. It is just such a fantastic story, if I do say so myself, because this is 100% my editing darling right now.

 

Yuri/ Baihe/LGBTQ Live Action

Amber Glenn, the figure skater who is out as an openly queer woman, decided she liked Heated Rivalry and lesbian ice skating comic Just Between Us so much, she made a queer women’s ice skating music video, featuring herself and Lena Lemon as skaters to a remade “All The Things She Said”, a song that hits hard for Millennial lesbians and is now a new hit for Gen Z. (As Nirvana is becoming Everything old is new again.)

via live &love on X, Cage of Shadows, a”dual women lead, gl-coded, master-disciple, women-centred, wuxia revenge, chinese survival thriller series” is available on You Tube for free right now with English subtitles. 

 

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Light Novel

Via Sr. YNN Corrspondent Ashley 1000 Lotuses is a “lesbian tale of passion and vengeance inspired by China in the 10th century.” Available by the chapter on itchi.io

 

Other News

Mathematician Yu Deng has won the Fields Medal for his work on Randomnness and order. Deng  specifically cited Yuri as an inspiration in this article at Quanta magazine. Sr. YNN Corrspondent Matt Marcus found this further discussion on differentials being Yuri, via haystack on X. 

I often feel these days that Yuri as a genre has hit it’s adulthood, and is out there in the world doing very cool stuff that I am no longer involved in, but can be proud of, as a parent. ^_^

On FiftyShadesofGayOfficial account on Instagram, a swip-through article on the disappearance of dag king culture in Korea in Drag, Defiance and Disappearance: Inside Korea’s Vanished Female Drag Culture.

You may remember my interview with Dr. Stanley Love, the NASA astronaut who repped Sailor Moon at the Artermis II mission control. Well Stan is not done repping! He’s written an article for Reactor, Why Sailor Moon Belongs in Mission Control:  The lead CAPCOM for the Artemis II mission explains how magical girls embody NASA’s core values. This is a great article that came out of part of our conversation, and some comments that Stan made on ANN. Absolutely worth reading!

Via YNN Correspondent akatsukinoluna, here is a 2019 interview with Last and First Idol writer Gengen Kusano and Otherside Picnic writer Iori Miyazawa, called Yuri Made Me Human.

Lastly, not Yuri, but so pretty, Udon Entertainment just announced a license for Hiromi Matsuo’s Department Store Waltz, Rondo Manga. Crystalynn Hodgkins has the news over at ANN. I adore Matsuo-sensei’s work. I have a postcard of their take on a Takabatake Kasho painting I also adore sitting right here where I can see it as I work. ^_^

 

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Become a part of the Yuri Network, by being a YNN Correspondent: Contact Us with any Yuri-related news you want to share with us.

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Otherside Picnic, Volume 10

July 24th, 2026

In front of a door or gate of some kind, a woman with collar length dark hair is wrapped in a towel of sheet. A woman with long blonde hair has a towel on her head, as she looks up at the other woman. In front of them is is girl with very long, dark hair wearing a dark brown dress, holding a hose, as she stands in a puddle.Otherside Picnic, Volume 10 is, like Volume 9,  a volume primarily about communication. Like Volume 9 it feels more like a part of a whole than a whole in and of itself. 

Tsuji, DS Research’s resident “magician” (coughwitchcough), who continues to be written for me, personally, begins this novel with a theory. Not just any old theory but a brilliant if vaguely formed theory that the apparently random artifacts used by Satsuki Uruma against them are a kind of experiment. Or could be, although her motivation remains obscure. It is becoming clearer to me Satsuki was an amoral, manipulative reearcher who looked too closely into the palantir and was caught by it.  Tsuji identifies the mechanism for a new artifact and, with a simple grounding technique, brings everyone out of interstitial space. We have a counter, at last.

With this new knowledge, Sorawao and Toriko head into the Otherside once again. Even with their newfound identity and named relationship, Sorawo struggles with the idea of a relationship. And communicating about it. Worse, she now finds herself meeting and speaking with people outside their small circle, which compounds the problem for her. 

At this point, I would not at all be surprised if Sorawo was a child of the Otherside, but her continuing confusion about it, leads me to think it’s nothing as simple as that. Still it feels as if she and Toriko are a kind of “key” to the Otherside, opening up new pieces, taking it apart, bringing it back for analysis and re-entering once again. Archeologists of the Otherside, but with one foot (hand/eye) always there. It is, in that sense, a distorted mirror of normal university life. For most people they meet new folks, explore new interests, form relationships, move into another world as adults. Sorawo and Toriko are doing this…only the world they are moving inexorable towards is the Otherside. Kozakura’s new program which is generating ll permutations of ghost stories is fascinating and, based on our lived experience with AI, terrifying.

This was another short volume, and we’re clearly setting up for something big. Runa is free from her DS prison, Sorawo and Toriko are mapping the Otherside with near impunity (aside from the native(?) threats of the UBL). If you are a huge fan of the series, grab it right now, but for casual fans I actually suggest waiting until Volumes 9-whatever) are collected into an omnibus. This volume feels like something serialized that we now have to wait to find out what it all means. ^_^ 

I do love this series. It’s both so original and utterly, fascinatingly derivative of random urban legend and paranormal weirdness on the Internet, like a fanfic of elements from all over the place. I find this incredibly fun and shockingly personal as Sorawo litigates what it means to function in human society over and over at different levels as her life changes in complexity.  Together Toriko, Sorawao,  their charge Runa, and arguably Kozakura’s charge, Kasumi, all children of the Otherside are about to enter a new phase. The Fourth Kinds have taken their power back. 

I can’t wait to read what will happen.

Ratings: 

Art – 8 Shirakaba’s art is best when it leans into the shadows. 
Story – 7, we’re clearly setting up for something
Characters – 9
Service – I don’t think so? Am I just missing it? 
Yuri – 9

Overall – 9

These short tastes are delectable, but I’m dying for a bigger chunk.

 

Posted in Light Novel, Otherside Picnic | No Comments »


Japanese Girls at the Harbor (港の日本娘)

July 21st, 2026

Minato no Nihon Musume, Japanese Girls at the Harbor is a 1933 silent black and white movie. Directed by  Shimizu Hiroshi, it is based on a novel by the same name, written by Kitabayashi Toma that same year. 

Sunako (Michiko Oikawa) and Dora (Yukiko Inoue) are bosom friends in the port city of Yokohama. They swear to never part and always be close to one another as they walk home from school. Both Sunako and Dora are mixed -race girls who attend a Catholic school. Yokohama at this time was a true melting pot of people and cultures. You can still see a very little bit of that in modern Yokohama, with it’s huge Chinatown and “westerner’s houses” as well as European construction that is disappearing a bit, but still exists.

Dora and Sunako, almost the moment they make their vow are torn apart by “Henry,” a young man who has adopted western ways. He’s flashy, playing with both girls separately, but its Dora who receives his attention more and they ride off together, setting Sunako into a spiral. Sunako has no other friends and resents Henry, while still desiring him. She learns that Henry has a third girl – and older girl named Yoko. Yoko pities Sunako, because she’s still a child. In response Sunako shoots Yoko in the school’s chapel. Yeah, not much symbolism there.

Sunako runs away, becoming a prostitute. Years later, when Henry comes into the bar where she works he’s excited and happy to see her, and asks her to visit. Even as she does, Sunako thinks of the former madam’s word about how she’ll be unwelcome forever. The movie then becomes a psychological drama as Dora and Henry, now married with a child, and Sunako can never truly reunite. Despite her own success as the madam of a bar, and as she works to build a real business with her money to claim the kind of respect she can never get as a madam, Sunako is both happy for and resentful of Henry and Dora, and the friendship that meant so much to her.

It is both easy and difficult to parse this as an early “queer” movie. Dora and Sunako’s love for one another is immediately, fatally, cast as an immature love, nothing more than girls’ friendships that it is so fragile it snaps over a man. (You may imagine me rolling my eyes.) But as the movie goes on, Sunako continues to be disgusted by Henry’s behavior, long after he’s a respectable married man, to focus on Dora. As with so many movies of the early twentieth century, Sunako sees herself as unclean, both for shooting Yoko and for becoming a prostitute. Even as Dora invites Sunako back into their lives, she is shook with the feeling that she can not, may not sully those lives. Dora misses the Sunako she knew and loved, but that girl is long gone. Sunako still longs for Dora, but that’s just not possible.

The biggest problem with the story is that Henry is, immediately and consistently, trash. He’s a two-bit criminal, which becomes apparent when Yoko enters the scene. She’s older than Dora and Sunako, knows what Henry does for money and expects to marry him. He’s useless in every scene he shows up in. 

What really stands out, even now, is the acting. Inoue’s Dora feels typical of portrayal of a teenager of the time, but Oikawa carries the movie as Sunako. She’s a fabulous actor, but sadly, her career was over early as she died at 26 from cancer after nearly 2 dozen movies and other works. Inoue went on to have a storied career, making her final acting appearance in 2004!

I would not claim this movie as a genius work of early queer cinema, but it is a very interesting look into the early 1930s in urban Japan, with it’s multi-cultural prosperity, something that was sacrificed a decade later for no good fucking reason. And it is actually an interesting movie, despite all the attempts to make it about two girls fighting over a guy. 
Ratings:
Cinematography – Pretty good, given some obvious limitations. Let’s say 8
Acting – 9
Story – 7
Yuri  – 5

Overall – 8

The whole movie is available with English subtitles on Youtube. It’s worth a watch.

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Yuri Network News – (百合ネットワークニュース) – July 18th, 2026

July 18th, 2026

A blue silhouette of a girl with a white flower in her hair, embracing the earth. Blue block letters read YNN Yuri Network News. Art by Lissa P. For Okazu.

 

Hello and welcome to a special edition of Yuri Network News brought to you from the other side of the pond by Okazu staff member Eleanor.

Yuri Anime

Over on ANN, Kevin Cormack looks back at the Spring 2026 series Even A Replica Can Fall In Love.

Yuri Manga

Two girls standing in front of the open boot of a car. The one on the right is hugging the one on the left very forcefully

Described as “A special coming-of-age outdoor girls’ story, all connected by cars!!” Tabireco’s Baby Road Trippers (Baby Shachuu Hackers/ベイビー車中ハッカーズ) has been added to Shueisha’s online service Manga Plus, reports Rafael Antonio Pineda, also on ANN. The first 20 chapters are available immediately, the series is up to 4 volumes in Japan and ongoing.

Via Okazu Japan correspodent Sasori, artist Yon has posted on Twitter that their previously published one shot “今夜、エーテルで待ちあわせ” about two women who become closer after meeting in an online game is becoming a series. As of yet, there is no English translation but the first chapter is available for free in Japanese.

Yuri Live action

A Filipino sapphic film “Open Endings” is now available on Amazon Prime but you need a VPN. Thanks to staff member Marcus for the find.

Yuri Light Novel

Two girls in uniforms stand back to back. The one one the left has long hair and is making a fireball in her hands

Via staff member Marcus again, a new Yuri Light Novel called “Soul Magic” by an author writing under the pen name “Soul” is going to be released in August. Illustrations will be handled by Tikklil, who produced the Yuri webtoon Night Owls & Summer Skies, as well as Drifting Into Summer, a sports Yuri which is being released as a Viz Original. Soul Magic generated much discussion on the Okazu discord as it seems like it’s going to clock in at well over 600 pages, but it’s apparently meant to be more like 2 standard volumes in 1.

Yuri Games

Via tazimonfire on the Okazu Discord, AstralShift’s Hell Maiden is now available in early access on Steam. The developers describe it thusly “Traverse the depths of Hell and beat its toughest demons on your way to Heaven in this horde survival deck-building game inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy.”

UmaMusume news

7th Event World Tour: The Stage is coming to Los Angeles’ Peacock Theater on October 22nd-23rd. Tickets go on sale at 10am PDT on July 23rd, as per Alex Mateo on ANN. Outwith Japan, the tour will also be visiting Seoul and London. (Eleanor here: I really hope I can go to the London one…) 

As always, YNN couldn’t exist without your support. If you have any news you want to share, please get in contact with us either via email, social media or the Okazu Discord.

Posted in Eleanor W, Yuri Network News | No Comments »