There’s a lot of Yuri news this week, which is good – and amazing, given our present circumstances. Japan is suspending shipping by air to the USA, among other countries, as flights have been stopped. Shipping by sea is still happening, and Amazon JP appears to be, for the moment, still shipping…presumably because they have their own planes. But do be aware that if you buy anything from Japan right now, there may be significantly delays. I will continue to write reviews here as long as I have material to review. And, given the number of manga in the report this week, that doesn’t seem like it’ll be a problem. ^_^
Seven Seas dominates the news this week with a pile of new licenses.
Yuri Novels
Seven Seas released the second Sayaka novel this week digitally, you can get Bloom Into You Regarding Saeki Sayaka, Volume 2 on Kindle or Bookwalker Global (you’ll be seeing more of Bookwalker, just because the system makes it easy to get both English and Japanese materials in one digital library.)
Pixiv announced the winners of the 2nd Yuri Literary Novel Contest! You can read the entries in Japanese on Pixiv, including winner Taiyou no Yoakeato. (太陽の焼け跡) by Kotobuki Shika. As you can imagine, the idea of a Yuri novel contest makes me happy. I will aspire to become a judge. ^_^
Seven Seas announced an interesting new license with I’m in Love With the Villainess, a GL Bunko light novel. by Inori, with art by Hanagata. You may remember I reviewed Girls Kindgom 1&2 from GL Bunko and found the story to be silly and the translation adequate, but not good. GL Bunko teaming up with Seven Seas for translation and distribution means you might get to read these goofball Vampire x Samurai novels I’m reading now. ^_^ In any case, this is a good choice for GL Bunko.
Yuri Manga
Seven Seas already licensed the Light Novel, and now they have acquired the manga for ROLL OVER AND DIE: I Will Fight for an Ordinary Life with My Love and Cursed Sword! You may recognize the artist, Munakata Sunao as having done the art for the Riddle Story of a Devil manga.
Kodama Naoko’s Uminekosou days has been licensed as Days of Love at Seagull Villa. This story has, so far been entirely on-brand for Kodama-sensei with solid characters and fetistry that makes me feel wholly creeped out. ^_^; Link above leads to my review of Volume 1, and Volume 2 is sitting here waiting for me to get to around to it.
Not Yuri, but I am ecstatic about it being licensed, Seven Seas has picked up Kageki Shoujo! The Curtain Rises!, a story about a young woman who enters a school for an all-woman musical theater troupe. I really enjoyed the first volume of this.
Also not “Yuri” per se, but a manga from one of our own, My Alcoholic Escape From Reality, is Kabi Nagata’s most recent autobiographical volume licensed by Seven Seas. I reviewed the Japanese edition, Genjitsu Touhishitetara Boroboro ni Natta Hanashi, this past winter. I also would like to take a moment to shout out the title translation on her work, which now presents a consistent body with “My Lesbian Experience…,” “My Solo Exchange Diary, ” and now “My Alcoholic Escape…”. This is really quite exceptionally well done. For an overview of everything Nagata-sensei has done so far, and why I think it is important I wrote an essay about her work, Kabi Nagata: Opening Doors at an Intersection.
From Rafael Antonio Pineda on ANN, we have the news that Love to Lie Angle manga is wrapping up in Comic Yuri Hime magazine.
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Yuri Visual Novel
YuriNavi has news of Yoru, Tomosu (夜、灯す) a “horror Yuri” VN headed for Playstation 4 and Nintendo Switch this summer.The link has screencaps and character designs.
Sailor Moon News
In the countdown to the new Sailor Moon movie, Sailor Moon Eternal, the Sailor Moon Official site reports that for the next several months, the first three seasons of the original anime will be available on Youtube in Japan. All 5 seasons are available in English on Viz Media’s website. Sailor Moon Crystal, for which Eternal is the 4th season, is available on Crunchyroll.
And, at last, we have a trailer and a date for Sailor Moon Eternal the first movie that will comprise the “SuperS” season. On the positive side, the animation is genuinely good. Check out this comparison of a similar frame from the original anime, Crystal and Eternal from CC Takato on Twitter. Look at Ami’s face and you can really see the difference.
Other News
In “feminist scholars you should be following, Grace Ting,” who writes about queer theory and feminism in Japanese and Asian pop culture, is writing a series of intros to Japanese feminist writers on Twitter. I’m super excited about this, frankly.
Nerd Lolz: I made a joke this week about Evangelion 3.0 being a Tales of Hoffman for anime and Loryn Stone came back with this brilliant summation on Twitter. The comment by Empty Movement is also spot on.
ANN’s Crystalyn Hodgkins let us know that Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 has already been greenlit for a second season.
And, to wrap up this week, Anthony Gramuglia offers up Girl’s Love: Where to Start With Yuri Manga on CBR.
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I understand that Class S is quite problematic in terms of queer representation from the point of view of our time, but why do so many authors believe that it was not a product of its time, but a problematic or even homophobic portrayal of lesbian relations?
When Bloom into you criticized in the Sayaka’s subplot thesis “lesbian relationships are just a phase”, many even sincerely read it as an attack on Class S as a whole.
I have absolutely no idea what “thesis” you are referring to. Once again, I assume you read some person’s comment online somewhere and are assuming a whole body of thought behind it that doesn’t probably exist.
Class S is a historical reality; it was a proto-femininist arts and letters movement. “Lesbian identity” as such didn’t exist. Homophobia was very new at the time and it was deeply codified into scientific thought, so many “progressive” thinkers were, what seems to us to be homophobic…including people we know understand to be gay.
Saeki Sayaka is a fictitious creation of the 21st century. She has awareness of her own attraction to women.
What connection between the two you read about, or are asking about, is obscure to me.
I’m talking about her relationship with sempai, which, as I recall, at some point said that she was “too old for such a relationship.” Since it was portrayed as a tender relationship at a girl’s school, many, including a reviewer on ANN, decided that Sayaka’s experience should be or at least can be a Take That! to Class S and its tropes.
For some reason, every time when yuri work criticizes such stereotypes about lesbian relationships, people on the Internet constantly say that this is a “criticism of Class S”.
I am not aware of any Nao-sensei intentions behind this, so I personally read it simply as a criticism of “just a phase”.
One person is not many people. One review is not every time. A review is reviewer’s opinion.
Ask the reviewer why they said that, not me. I don’t know, I won’t speculate.
Well, it was originally a scream to the sky, I don’t think that you know or even care about someone’s silly stereotypes in the internet.
That’s fair.
I spend a lot of time trying to explain things. I’ll try to avoid “‘splaining” things. ^_^
Seven Seas licensed ‘Even Though We’re Adults’ too —> https://sevenseasentertainment.com/2020/04/24/all-grown-up-seven-seas-licenses-lgbt-manga-series-even-though-were-adults-by-takako-shimura/ Seven Seas and Shimura sounds like very much a match made in heaven, also pleased to see them able to license from a Kodansha magazine like Kiss.
This is the first big manga licensing announcement since I started properly getting into Japanese language manga, and 3 of the licenses announced were already on my BookMeter list – Otona ni Nattemo, Umineko-sou, and Kageki Shoujo. For the latter, sometimes this sort of license announcement can hint at an upcoming anime which I certainly hope to be the case sooner or later.
You’re right, I forgot to include that. Thanks for the reminder! I’m reading Otona now and I’m interested to see where it goes.
Bloom into You volume 7 now available in English!
Sure is, thanks! We’ve got it up on the Yuricon Store.