Top Story this week – I am once again gainfully employed. Yay. (And I’ve got a part-time gig whch I’m keeping secret for the moment, but I’ll tell you all about it alter. Promise.)
Yuri Manga
R.O.D.‘s Hideyuki Kurata is doing a new series that will run in Dengeki Daioh magazine. There’s no word yet on whether it will contain Yuri, but we are talking Kurata and Dengeki, so there’s likely to be *something* we can make up in our heads. :-)
Suzunari! an uber-moe series said to have Yuri by the Japanese Yuri blog Yuri na Hibi, is now available in English. Whether that is a *good* thing or a bad is entirely personal. lol
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Marimite News
A couple of people have forwarded this cover of Cobalt Shueisha starring Yuuki. This is indeed a special story about “Buddha Watches You,” starring the fine young lads of Hanadera Academy. A few folks have jumped to the conclusion that this marks a whole new series, which is kind of a leap. I’m sorry to disappoint – it’s only a special issue. (I consider it another delaying tactic, myself.)
The folks from Anime on DVD ferreted out this super-secret not final art for the packaging of Season 1. Looks like Marimite, doesn’t it? :-)
Those of you on the Yuricon Mailing List will know that with the assistance of Sukoshi, I was able to complete the translation of In Library. After which, I’ve decided to retire from translation for a while. But thankfully Sukoshi and Rei have stepped into the gap, while I move back to a “coordinating” position. So look forward to Novel 19 being posted here eventually, and Novel 20, Souer Audition to the YCML and then to Okazu. Yay Sukoshi and Rei!
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Snatches of Yuri
Watching Kaiba last night and episode six, while being much like stabbing yourself in the eye with a fork, including an interesting gender-bent love affair of a sort between Warp, currently inhabiting a girl’s body and Gel, who lives in a man’s body. The vibe (from my perspective) was that Gel was as much attracted to Warp’s body as personality. YMMV.
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Other Yuri News
Speaking of Yuri blogs, I’m please to introduce you to Heavenly Blue, the first Yuri blog I know of written by a Japanese woman. How cool, huh?
If you, or a friend read Yuri or Yaoi – especially if you are GLBT – and you have a moment or two, please help Robin Brenner with her research, by filling out this survey. She’s trying to get a bead on what the GLBT community actually thinks about Yaoi and Yuri.
Also, let me once again mention the Manga/Anime exhbit at the GLBT lending library in St. Paul Minnesota, Quatrefoil. Thanks to “Friend of Yuri” Ellen K for helping set up the exhibit. If you or a friend can, do please drop by – spread the word and visit Quatrefoil!
Lastly, we have a bunch of updates at Yuricon, including a redesigned Shop. We’ve split the Japanese and English manga into separate pages and added a new Light Novels in Japanese page. (The only Yuri LN series translated into English so far is Strawberry Panic, which you can find on the English manga page.) So far there’s only a few LNs up on the LN page, but I’ll be adding more as time goes on. Plus, new events, the 2008 Yuriko Poster Contest Winner and more!
Which brings us to the end of this week’s new report. Can’t wait to see what next week will bring!
Glad you got a new job.
I don’t know if you meant it as a cute nickname, but hopefully you know it’s not Hideo Kurata but Hideyuki Kurata (one of my all-time favorite authors, actually)
congrats on the new job!
also, thanks for all the work done in the past Marimite translations – look forward to reading more as Rei & Sukoshi take the rest on!
i can’t wait until the Marimite Vol. 1 DVD set is released! my pre-order has been put in…
Are not Yuri Kokoro blog and Yuri-Yuri blog written by women? Though it isn’t stated anywhere I’ve always thought that people who do them MUST be women.
And there are some other Yuri blogs/pages like BLND:
http://blnd.sakura.ne.jp/
and there’re lots of women Yuri review pages at online book stores:
http://myshop.7andy.jp/myshop/lilyonly
http://myshop.7andy.jp/myshop/tamanoheya
http://myshop.7andy.jp/md_fair/novelists/tamanoheya
They’re great cos you can also find reviews of japanese lesbian novels there.
There are still more women Yuri pages I know, and btw, among the japanese Yuri pages dedicated to series I fangirl(NOIR, SIMOUN, CLAYMORE, Mai-HIME(SizuNatu)) the vast majority of pages are done by women))
anon – No, they are, at least in my opinion *obviously* written by men. The very fact that they have no discrimintation between the zOMG Yuri! of something as trashy as Shiroyuki Gakuen Onee-sama Itadakimasu and Aoi Hana appears to me to be stylistically indicative.
In any case, most Yuri blogs are written by men.
thanks grace – greatly appreciated. :-)
Emm… Erica)
What do you mean by “no discrimination”?
Usually trashy moe-fs-Yuri series get veery low or just no quality score at Yuri-Kokoro compare with perfect score for Aoi-Hana, and at Yuri-Yuri reviews of such things are very rare /also at Yuri-Yuri I see sometimes news concerning Japanese LGBT community, and in them ‘bian’ term is used 0_o/.
It’s just a japanese cultural thing – blog is, after all, a public place, you can’t plainly write that something was trashy/crappy/shitty, you can just hint at that.
Of course, I don’t doubt that blogs like Yuri-Amagasa and SMALLCALL are done by men, I even don’t read them now – though I admit they are very good and I just adore Yuri-Amagasa-Admin-san for _reading_ marimite _novels_, I just can’t stand any visual images of moeloli and giant breasts, and they have lots of covers of this stuff.
Oh, Ive written quite a lot, huh.
In fact, It’s not that I’m ranting or posing as woman supremacist/man-hater or trying to pick a fight with you – I completely adore you)) – but you constantly write things that can lead to conclusions that the number of female Yuri fans in Japan is low or that Yuri is targeted primarily for men – cos there’re a lot of female Yuri fans – and people/companies who do Yuri know this – female Yuri fans are just closeted. Many of them usually socialize in tight-knit communities and don’t want their pages to be popular, they do not want attention /Attention brings stalkers and trolls -__-/.
But I hope this will change someday…
By “disctrimination” I mean the ability to tell when a series is good and when it is crap.
Yuri na Hibi gave Shiroyuki Gakuen Onee-sama Itadakimasu 5 stars – the same score as Aoi Hana. For YnHb, hentai sex is the same as romantic drama. There’s no distinction between the two – that’s why I have a LFB score. So if a series is 9 in Yuri, but is crappy hentai, you know.
I wasn’t implying that the number of Japanese female Yuri fans is low. I said that “Heavenly Blue” was “the first Yuri blog I know of written by a Japanese woman.”
That is exactly what I meant.
I appreciate the links you’ve sent me, so I know of other places to find comments by Japanese women on Yuri.
Oh, sorry? I wasn’t talking about Yuri-na Hibi – Yuri-na Hibi = Yuri Amagasa – , I don’t even read this blog, though I know It’s popular, I’ve written earlier why.
I was talking about
ttp://d.hatena.ne.jp/Yuri_Yuri/
and
ttp://Yuri.cocolog-nifty.com/
If you are interested, I also read
ttp://d.hatena.ne.jp/SAVOIA/
ttp://blog.livedoor.jp/hitokuzu/ (very interesting blog by an MtF lesbian)
ttp://veilchen.blog17.fc2.com/
and you)
There are many other blogs, you can find some of them in the Links sections of beforementioned blogs. Sometimes Yuri things get reviewed on bian sites like ttp://www.bravissima.com/
And of course there are thousands of pages and blogs dedicated to different series))))
anon –
I am using Yuri na Hibi as an example. I also read Yuri Kokoro, as well.
I appreciate that you are giving many links and I’ll do my best to take a look at all of them.
Your point that many Japanese women who do like Yuri don’t want their sites to become popular is exactly why I don’t know about them.
If they let men be the only one’s discussing Yuri in public, then it seems like only men are fans. That is exactly why I try to publicize Okazu as much as possible. Because most Yuri blogs in English are written by men. It’s important that women’s – especially lesbian’s – opinions on Yuri be heard too.
Un) And I appreciate your effornt greatly)
And btw It kinda gnaws on me that I’m kinda closeted too…