Archive for 2017


Sailor Moon S Anime , Part 2, Disk 2 (English)

September 25th, 2017

For the first time ever, I’m going to say hands down, the Blu-Ray is better. Watching Sailor Moon S, Part 2, Disk 2 on BD was…fun. The colors are super-saturated, and the animation is as good as the animation ever was (which is to say, not really all that good.) It was good enough, however, that we commented that the Blu-Ray made a difference and we never do that. Sound quality was, again, really decent and overall, the technicals were solid enough that we never once had to think about them for being intrusive or annoying.

In Part 2, the story is getting both sillier and more serious at the same time. We lose Eudial and pick up the delusional Mimete, with her creepy cormorant Daimons. In Mimete’s world, pure hearts are only had by celebrities, so she’d get along famously in 2017.

The Outer Senshi have settled down into full-time brooding, as Sailor Moon herself is getting used to a powerup. I particularly like how they don’t sit down to have any sensible conversations about the situation. Chibi-Usa is the only one who can cross lines, and that’s only because no one takes her seriously. 

Hotaru gets a creepy power-up, then the pathos is laid on with a trowel. I don’t get Kaolinite treating Hotaru so shitty. You’d think…but, no. 

In one of the most eye-opening episodes we both saw something so Ikuhara we started to laugh. It’s funny to see a beloved director’s visual tic so obviously on display.

We’re about to get into the darkest moments of the series and I find I can’t wait to watch it. 25 years later and I’m still a huge fangirl…which is why I’m as excited as I am to say I’ll get to see the new Sailor Moon store in Harajuku! Yay! I’ll be in Tokyo for Comitia and will save my yen for all the Sailor Senshi goods. ^_^ 

Ratings:

Art – 8 
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Yuri –  2 A bit muted this disk
Service – 3 

Overall – 8

I’m also keeping my fingers crossed for an interview that will interest you all at AnimeNYC. Say a little prayer.

Thanks very much to Viz for the review copy! I just love it to pieces.

 

 





New! Okazu Patron-Only Content on Patreon

September 24th, 2017

Today I hit a major milestone in what I’m calling the “Big Book o’Yuri” – the definitive book on history, influences, key series, definitions, and random things I want to write about, etc, etc. This monster project, which is going to cover approximately 100 years of the genre we love is halfway done! Yay! (mind you, halfway not counting formatting, citing, editing, images, etc….)

In honor of this momentous occasion, I am working on my first-ever “Patron Only” content! Get this glimpse of the definitive on Yuri book by subscribing to Okazu! All patrons who are subscribed at any level will get a peek behind the screens at some of the newest content on October 8th.

Your patronage makes it possible for me to do the work of writing what will be the most comprehensive book about Yuri ever. Every dollar helps and will get you a look at brand-new, non-Okazu content.

Subscriptions over $5/month get a badge and mention on the Okazu Hero Roll, chances at special patron-only Lucky Boxes and my sincere thanks!

I hope you’ll support this work on Patreon!





Yuri Network News – (百合ネットワークニュース) – September 23, 2017

September 23rd, 2017

Yuri Manga

Seven Seas has licensed a kind-of-Yuri manga-ish title, Hungry For You: Endo Yasuko Stalks the Night by Flowerchild. It’s a Young King title, so I feel not particular hopeful that it’ll be good, but I’ve been wrong before. ^_^

Kusanagi-sensei ha Tamesareteiru. (草薙先生は試されている。) is a Yuri 4-koma gag comic that follows a teacher, whose school love’s daughter falls in love with her when she’s in Kusanagi’s class. You can read at least some of it online (in Japanese) for free.

Comic Natalie has the news of a Onee-loli Yuri anthology with familiar names like Namori, Itou Hachi and Takemiya Jin called Parfait. (パルフェ おねロリ百合アンソロジー)

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Yuri Anime

Crunchyroll has added the first of Bee Train’s “girls with guns on the run” anime trilogy, Noir and circus-themed Kaleido Star to their catalog.

Card Captor Sakura – Clear Card Arc will be premiering on Japanese TV in January, Crunchyroll News reports. Check out the promotional video.

CR News also has a report on some speculation about a Gai-Rei-Zero animation in celebration of the anime’s 10th anniversary.

 

Events

Tomorrow in Tokyo, Japan will be 2OL, an event for Yuri starring adult characters. Keep an eye on the Twitter hashtag #2OL for related posts.

I’m doing another lecture up at Harvard on October 26. Not sure if this will be open to the public or not. Check back for details.

I expect to be attending Anime NYC as press. This is this event’s first year and I’m very hopeful it will be successful. It’s a general “anime’ event, so I don’t expect anything of Yuri interest. November 17-19, 2017, Javits Convention Center.

And Comitia is coming up on November 23 at Big Site in Tokyo. I am very much hoping to be there.

 

Live-Action News

YNN Correspondent Brendan B wants you to know that “Apparently Fun Home is getting a Japanese production, with former Takarazuka star Jun Sena playing adult Allison. That’s some casting!” That will be amazing, yes. ^_^

Ciara Pitts wrote up a list of New And Upcoming Lesbian Movies Out In 2017 And Beyond which, sadly, left out the one movie I’m looking forward to the most – Signature Move, which will be coming to Amazon Video in 2018.

Takarazuka is gearing up to do Moto Hagio’s Clan of Poe and the first look at the lead is absolutely grin-making.

Check out the digest video of the the final Sailor Moon Musical ~Le Mouvement Final~.

Saki – Achiga Hen will be getting a live action drama and movie. About girls playing mah jong. Riveting stuff, eh? ^_^

The live-action Futari Monologue is not Yuri, but definitely looks interesting. It’s streaming on Youtube according to ANN.

 

Other News

The Center for LGBTQ studies of NYU have open Fellowships you can apply for. If you are creating work with LGBTQ themes or doing research on those works, take a look!

Yesterday on Twitter, Tagame Gengoroh-sensei, creator of My Brother’s Husband, tweeted that he’s done a second jacket cover for the BD/DVD edition of Oscar-winner movie Moonlight, for the Japanese release. Check out his tweet for the image!

 

Know some cool Yuri News you want people to know about? 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!





LGBTQ Manga: Otouto no Otto, Volume 4 (弟の夫)

September 22nd, 2017

Tagame Gengoroh-sensei’s Otouto no Otto, Volume 4 (弟の夫) completes the series in Japanese. This final volume is exactly as it should be, tying up the loose ends of Yaichi’s inner story in a very satisfying and wholly unpreachy way.

You may remember from Volume 3, Yaichi receives a call from Kana’s teacher. As we feared, he is calling under the guise of “concern” that there is a gay man in her household. Yaichi’s transformation from a man who does not say what he thinks about saying, to a man who says exactly what he thinks about saying in 4 pages is magnificent. As he leaves the teacher’s office, having made it plain that the teacher’s “concerns” are neither legitimate nor appropriate, the sun breaks past the clouds and shines upon him. I said it didn’t preach – I didn’t say it doesn’t visual allegory all over the place. ^_^

As the last remnants of Yaichi’s bias slips from him, he asks Mike to share some of his life with Ryouji. For the first time, Yaichi faces the brother he knew – and wanted to know – nothing about. When he sees Mike’s parents in Mike and Ryouji’s wedding pictures he feels stupid for not being there. To make up for it, Yaichi takes Mike with himself and Kana to clean his parent’s grave so, he says, he can introduce Mike to them before he leaves. It was a really nice touch. 

Kana’s issues with her friends are cleared up, and there is a nice little digression about Romeo and Juliet that makes up one of the nicest moments of the book. There’s also time taken to deal with the local gay kid’s story, and let us know he’s in an okay place emotionally.

Watching Yaichi accept Mike fully was exactly as heartwarming as one might expect. ^_^ And one hopes that this manga was able to shepherd other Japanese men through the process with Yaichi and, maybe, help a few young people to find a way to talk to their families. For that alone, this would be a an important book, but it’s also just a really good read. Tagame-sensei deserves every award this series gets.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 9
Characters – 10
LGBTQ – 10
Service – 2

Overall – 10

We don’t yet have a date for the final omnibus volume of My Brother’s Husband by Pantheon – as soon as I do, I’ll post it!

 





Yuri Manga: Galette, Issue 3 (ガレット )

September 18th, 2017

…and we have a winner!

Galette, Issue 3 is the third volume of the quarterly Galette Yuri Anthology created by a bunch of folks whose love for Yuri equals or exceeds my own. It is the first Yuri anthology you can get on US Kindle (albeit still in Japanese language) as well as on JP Kindle and in print from Amazon and in print from another system, Booth, that will ship overseas. (People in Japan also have options of buying it at Comic Zin, Animate, Shosen Book Tower, Gamers, Melon Books and more.)  And you can support it on Patreon-like crowdfunding platform Enty and get – depending on what level you support the work at – early copies of the magazine digitally and various extras. In every way, other than in content, Galette is ground-breaking. So let’s talk about the content.

Galette still has a lot of school-girl stories, from Amano Shuninta’s emotional look at a one-sided love in “Fuma-kun” to Hiyori Otsu’s interesting take on the girl wearing earphones in “Nutmeg”. When you remember how much of Japanese kids’ life is tied up in school activities (teams and clubs, which in the USA can also be community-based are largely school-based in Japan) it makes sense that this is where one might also find friendship, love and lust.

But lesbians don’t die when they graduate and many of us end up in college or careers, still trying to find ourselves. Gotou’s “Takaramono” (which I dubbed “Dude, what do I have to do to get you to notice I want to kiss you” ) was a decent example of that. Ringo Hamano’s “Cotton Candy” took a bit of a twist to show us just how important having adult role models can be to a young woman. And Yatosaki Haru’s “Futari no Arcadia” took a tired trope and turned it into a tale of human frailty.

Fantasy gets played with a lot in Galette. Hakamada Mera takes the innate love of uniforms and Rose of Versailles so many of us have (^_^;) and turned it into a nice little story about two very likable young ladies in “Fuwafuwa Futashika Yumemitai.” Takemiya Jin gets to play around in the darker desires of some humans in the creepy-sexy “Marionette.” I like that Takemiya-sensei is looking at more manipulative characters. She’s established her lesbian cred with her audience, and gets to talk about how not all love is healthy. It’s one thing to be pathologized by straight artists, and another to have one of us note that some people are just not good people.

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Morinaga Milk tells a story that will resonate with a lot of adult lesbians who fall for the straight women in their lives…who then awkwardly begin to question their sexuality in “Watashi no Kawaii Neko-chan” (a story that I feared based on the title, but has turned out to be more about human mortification than cats.)

And Kita Izumi and Momono Moto’s “Liberty” has continued to be excellent, with a silly twist, but one that keeps the story firmly rooted in adult life. I look forward to this story with every issue, as it hits the right notes of setting, character design, and tension for me.

I love the guest art – Etsuko’s color spread is very nice – and I like the photography by Takahashi Minori. The cover design is just lovely.  Issue 3 came with a copy of Petit Galette, an omake volume with a few short comics and a prose story.

Issue 3 has a pretty all-star lineup, with a few notable omissions. Luckily for us, one of those obvious names – Morishima Akiko – will be joining the lineup next issue. Now all I need is for Nishi UKO and Hojou KOZ (UKOZ) and Hayashiya Shizuru to join them and I’ll have all my faves in one place. ^_^ Still, Galette is turning out to be the Yuri magazine I’d hoped it could be. I now hope to see a bit more lesbian identity and it’ll be perfect. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story- 9
Characters – 8
Service – 6 Nudity 
Yuri – 10

Overall – 9

Way back in 2005 or 2007 or so, I joked that odd-numbered years are always really good for Yuri. That’s switched around here and there, but here we are in 2017 and I think this is the best year we have ever had for Yuri in the almost-20 years I’ve been doing this. May our tribe increase.

Issue 4 will be out at the end of November and available at Comitia (which I am planning on being at, if all goes well.)