Yuri Manga
Everything old is new again! Ninin ga Shinobuden returns in a sequel. Crystalyn Hodgkins has the scoop over at ANN. You can take a look at a sample in Japanese on Comic Newtype.
Also over at ANN, Jennifer Sherman reports that Battle Athletes Daiundōkai ReSTART! getting an anime and a manga on Comic Ruelle & Comic Jardin’s website. The story will include returning and new characters.
Speaking of Comic Ruelle, YNN Correspondent Patricia B wants you to know that Sono.N’s doujinshi series SHWD has been picked up for serialization. This series about beefy women in a special forces section is currently licensed for translation by Lilyka which is very conveniently having a special 20% off sale this weekend! Basically, if you buy all 5 issue, you’ll be getting one for free.
We have a lot of new license announcements this week, thank you very much to Senior YNN Corrspondent Sean G and Yurimother for their efforts to keep us all up to date:
Yen Press has announced two Yuri licenses – Kujira’s Sekai Owari to Majou no Koi (世界の終わりと魔女の恋), as A Witch’s Love at the End of the World and Strawberry Fields Once Again by Kazura Kinosaki. You can read my reviews of Strawberry Fields wo Mou Ichido ( ストロベリー・フィールズをもう一度 ) here on Okazu.
Seven Seas has also announced two Yuri licenses. Asumiko Nakamura’s A White Rose in Bloom. You can read my review of this in Japanese as Mejirobana no Saku (メジロバナの咲く). Interestingly, Rakuen Le Paradis magazine just posted on Twitter that this series is continuing in Volume 33. Yay! I want to know what will happen to Ruby and Steph.
I’m very pleased that Seven Seas has announced the license for Shio Usui’s Donuts Under a Crescent Moon, which I have reviewed here as Kaketa Tsuki to Donuts, Volume 1 (欠けた月とドーナッツ) and which I really like. ^_^
Become an Okazu Patron by July 7th and get a preview
of our upcoming Yuri Studio video!
Via Comic Natalie, Arata Iri’s “painful high school love comedy” Amedemo, Haredemo (雨でも晴れでも) Volume 1, sounds awfully like a nod to classic Yuri, Futtemo, Harettemo (降っても晴れっても).
Volume 3 of Hayama-sensei to Terano-sensei ha Tsukiatteiru, (山先生と寺野先生は付き合っている) is out and up on the Yuricon Store!
Yuri Light Novel
Via Yurimother, J-Novel Club has announced a new series by Ameco Kaeruda, author of Sexiled, A Lily Blooms in Another World. I started reading this, but have only gotten a little way in. ^_^
LGBTQ News
I finally sat down and listened to Dr. Grace Ting’s lecture for Waseda University, Building a Queer Feminist Life: Research and Community Across Borders. I recommend it, especially if you are currently seeking to find the truth of your self and work right now. This would have been very powerful to a younger me and was, to me now, a very inspiring look at creating a queer identity.
Brad Krautwurst on Twitter created this informative thread of trans/non-binary sci-fi/fantasy authors. There’s some great stuff on this list.
Via the Official Godzilla Twitter account from TOHO, here is a lovely short video by beeragon, called”Coming Out for Pride month. ^_^ It’s fabulous, give it a watch. (Everything about this sentence is absolutely amazing and wonderful, when you think about it!)
Other News
Via Geocities Shrine Maiden on Twitter, Riyoko Ikeda admitted that she based Oscar’s unearthly beauty in The Rose of Versailles on David Bowie. ^_^
You too can smell like the Sailor Senshi! Take a look at the scents for the Outers and Starlights, and Sailor Moon and the Inners.
A bunch of online events of happening this weekend, Anime Expo Lite and Funimation Con among them. Helen has put together a comprehensive spreadsheet with all this weekend’s event schedules. This is a brilliant resource, thanks Helen!
Become a YNN Correspondent by reporting any Yuri-related news with your name and an email I can reply to – thanks to all of you – you make this a great Yuri Network! Special thanks to Okazu Patrons for being an important part of the Okazu family. I couldn’t do it without you!
“Also over at ANN, Jennifer Sherman reports that Battle Athletes Daiundōkai ReSTART! getting an anime and a manga on Comic Ruelle & Comic Jardin’s website. The story will include returning and new characters.”
I don’t know if Takato-sensei will be the author of the plot or just a hired mangaka for adaptation, but to be honest, mentioning his name came as a surprise to me. Most of his works are somehow all-female martial arts and absurd, often to the level of grotesque and provocation near-hentai, so it is difficult for me to imagine him as the author of such a work. Especially when his two current series are SoL about a housewife having sex for money and a ridiculous hybrid of Baki with yuri hentai.
Denpa’s just announced a vampire Yuri license: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2020-07-04/denpa-licenses-akili-vampeerz-manga/.161432
I believe Seven Seas’ other new license Machikado Mazoku goes well beyond the usual Kirara fare and, according to reliable Yuri fan Someanithing’s review, includes a love confession from one of the main girls to the other in a more recent vols, so seems worth keeping an eye for Yuri fans who like the Kirara style.
Thanks Megan!
Similar “love confessions” were even in Love Live or Eupho, this is the standard “ambiguous” fanservice for both Kirara and many CGDCT titles in general. Another thing is that MM has long been incredibly popular in Japanese and Western yuri fandom, so I won’t be surprised if their license is positioned exactly as a yuri product.
Fwiw, if it was coming from someone else about a Kirara/CGDCT series I’d take it with a larger grain of salt but I trust Someanithing on this. Fwiw, Seven Seas don’t seem to be marketing the manga as Yuri so far, what they’ve said so far just mentions the comedy side of the series.
I’m not saying that this author is mistaken in any way or you shouldn’t trust them, just if in the end the characters didn’t become a couple or the plot didn’t take it as a romantic development, then this is a pretty typical situation for the CGDCT market. Even straight titles like “Isshuukan Friends” parodies it. For this reason, many modern yuri have been forced to add the clarification “did you mean that you love me as a friend?” even in obvious romantic moments to avoid audience’s mistrust.
Doesn’t mark? Strange, I always thought that the yuri audience was always the majority of the readers of this manga. However, this is already a personal matter for everyone, I think.
You don’t actually know if any manga has been forced to add “Do you love me as a friend?” Since you are a fan, not in the industry at all, your information in regards to editorial decisions is second-hand at best.
I’m closing this thread to you now. You have opinions, not expertise, and we have heard those at this point.