I’ve been thinking a lot recently about Yuri anthologies. They serve a unique purpose for a niche genre, as a gathering place for up-and-coming artists to have their original (or parody, in the case of series-focused anthologies) work highlighted. Yuri anthologies often end up being full of creators who are not yet famous enough to warrant their own series, but who have built a following at comic shows. Read a few contemporaneous anthologies in any niche and you’ll start to see the same names over time.
Today we’re looking at Yuri + Kanojo (百合＋カノジョ), a fun Yuri anthology that lives on the intersection of Yuri manga, and Yuri Visual Novels.
The format of the book makes it clear that Yuri VNs are the inspiration for the story. It begins with “Now Loading….” and then moves on to a chapter labeled “Episode of high school students.” Each vignette is short, and we, the player character are not seen in full any of the vignettes, we are merely spoken to (although we do see peces of ourselves, like our hands or feet.) Credits for the stories are presented like game controls and after each short vignette ends, (they run about 6 pages each,) the final page shows us character design and bio for the “other” character, our love interest.
This book is already kind of fun and unique, but it adds one more nice feature – only the first chapter happens in high school. “We” then move into college and the workplace and life. We go on dates, take jobs, go out with friends, have lovers, and continue, one chapter and one individual at a time, to live life vicariously through the PC point of view.
Because the vignettes are short, there’s very little story-telling. “Two women on a date” is not a plot so much as a fleeting thought. But, as a series of scenes written around the prompts, this was a very enjoyable exercise and a very unique volume.
Ratings:
As an anthology, it’s all variable, but for the adult art and thinking about life, I give it a solid 8
This book sold out incredibly quickly on Amazon JP, so I was absolutely thrilled to find a copy on display at the Shosen Yuribu in Akihabara. Yay Yuribu!
This sounds really cool! I wish I could read Japanese but languages are my major weakpoint
That raises an interesting question. I’ve often thought about print-on-demand as a way to lower the upfront cost to publishers releasing manga in English. But I imagine the translation costs are also significant. I wonder if a savvy publisher could tap into the scanlation community for free translating (since like it or not they are doing it anyway) and then offer the books as legitimate print on demand copies so that the original writers/artists would be compensated? It would also help with books going out of print or having small runs (and the resale market doesn’t help the original creators at all there). I just have to believe there must be a way to get more things legitimately into English and get creators paid. Of course, crowdsourced translation does hurt the job prospects of professional translators and has questionable quality at times. Maybe the solution is just for more people in the US to actually read manga to create more of a demand in the first place!
No. This is not a model that works. Scanlators are not interested in hitting deadlines, dealing with editorial instruction, being held to professional standards and, should they acept money they will be seen as having sold out. Scanlations are, at this point, nothing more than parasitical. There is no longer a justifiable case for them and no publisher will give people who scanlate the benefit of the doubt. Repeatedly, manga artists and publishing professionals are asking people who scanlate to stop telling them – it is not seen as a legitimate step in professional development by them and they will not hire people who admit to benefiting from illicitly distributing their work.
In fact, at TCAF this year, Asano-sensei, the JP guest asked people to stop telling him that they scanlated or read scanlations of his work. His translator made a special plea for people to stop that. He did not want to hear that, with legally licensed translations available, people still reached for illicit scanlations or worse, worked on them.
Totally didn’t mean to suggest that scanlation was okay. I buy in order to support the creators and I hope everyone else does too as I know that scanlation only hurts everyone. Knowing that the volume of copies sold in the US is so low for any particular title, it was more an exploration of how we might drive down localization costs in order to make more titles available legally to the smaller US audience. But definitely didn’t mean to suggest legitimizing the infringement or destructive impact of scanlation. Sorry for the confusion.
I understand what you meant, but think about it a bit. The moment publishers use scanlation as “farm leagues” for translators and publishers, they are giving it legitimacy. DMP tried that, but they lowballed everything, which meant that people whose illicit work had diminished the value of professional work them were not properly recompensed for that work and, with a complete lack of irony, complained bitterly about it.
Thank you for being willing to keep this discussion going on your site, I recognize that you certainly didn’t have to. I also really appreciate being able to get more insight on things within the industry that I don’t know anything about and haven’t found a good way to learn about yet.
In reflection, I think reading on your site about how many more wonderful reading/viewing options there are in a language I don’t speak is making me long to have those options here. It’s hard to read about a story I can’t immerse myself in. But I sincerely believe in buying the legitimate copies to support these brilliant creators.
I have to be more appreciative that at least we have some things being translated (there are certainly many worthy works of literature in the world of all types that never get translated and thus readers outside those native languages never get a chance to read wonderful literature). I also need to remind myself that feeling badly about what I can’t read won’t make anything better. That whole desire leads to suffering and dissatisfaction thing…