Yuri Manga
Seven Seas has announced the license for the Bloom Into You manga anthologies (both of which have been reviewed here on Okazu: Volume 1 and Volume 2). They were a fun way to spend more time with the characters.
Manga Planet has announced some Jousei Yuri licenses from Shodensha, including several of my favorites! Teiji ni Agaretara by Ayu Inui, Hitogoto Desu Kara! by Yuni and Tsuki to Suppin by Yu Akegata have all been reviewed here on Okazu and I am absolutely delighted that you will be able to read them in English.
Heading our way his month from Yen Press is Strawberry Fields Once Again, which is a three-volume school romance, that has a hell of a twist ending. I reviewed all three JP volumes here, but don’t read the reviews unless you want to be spoiled! Volume 1 | Volume 2 | Volume 3
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Yuri Anime
Sentai Filmworks will be releasing Happy-Go-Lucky Days, the anime based on Shimura Takako’s manga. I reviewed this anime very recently and found it to be worth a watch.
While I still am in no way convinced that a slapstick anime about vampires can at all be serious, Mamoru Oshii insists that he wanted VLADLOVE to do “Girl Meets Girl” in a serious way in this interview covered by Komatsu-san on Crunchyroll. I kind of liked the “Mai” version of the opening. I’m always partial to harder rock used in anime and characters animated to be performing the theme. So here I am mentioning it again, despite my insistence that I wouldn’t any more. ^_^
Crunchyroll has added Yamibo: The Darkness, The Hat and the Travelers of the Books to their catalog. Jennifer Sherman has the report on ANN. I’ve reviewed it about a zillion times here and it’s not gotten any less annoying ^_^; The thing is…it had potential, then just squandered it. This is one of the earliest anime based on a Visual Novel I can think of off the top of my head.
Crystalynn Hodgkins has the news for the upcoming Otherside Picnic anime on Anime News Network.
Yuri Light Novel
J-Novel Club is putting out scifi Yuri LN Otherside Picnic in print ahead of the upcoming anime release!
The third volume of Bloom Into You Regarding Saeki Sayaka is headed our way in a few weeks!
Sailor Moon
The trailer for Sailor Moon Eternal is on Youtube and it looks amazing! I vote Chiaki Kon for handling all things Sailor Moon forever.
Clearly I am not the only one, as Twitter fandom is celebrating with an “All Sailor Moon” hashtag (#全セーラームーン). I’m wearing my Sailor Moon Super S t-shirt today and Sailor Venus socks (which are probably legitimately antique now!) in solidarity. ^_^
Other News
Anime Feminist has this terrific look by Karleen: Art as Discovery, Art as Hope: Kamatani Yuhki, x-gender and asexual mangaka
This is very timely, as I’m pushing to get out a new video on Yuri Studio this month on queer creators who create queer manga. ^_^
ANN’s Kim Morrissey has a write-up of the demographics among English translators and letterers in manga, from tweets by Phil S. Christie. There’s a small majority of women in the field (but it would be interesting and important to know how income falls along those lines, as well.
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No, you’re not mistaken, Yamibo premiered at the heyday of VN adaptations, and if I’m not mistaken, it was even before the release of cult hits like Clannad or Higurashi.
“This is very timely, as I’m pushing to get out a new video on Yuri Studio this month on queer creators who create queer manga. ^_^”
And I would be very interested to see that. While I was very skeptical about some of the works, I always found them more sincere than those written by people outside the LGBTQ community. Especially if I compare works on gender identity.
It has to be said the impression from Oshii’s comments seem different from what we’ve seen from Vlad Love in the PV etc., but on the other hand, anime has a history of absurd comedies that get you so attached to the cast then emotionally gutpunch you harder than you thought possible (Gintama fans will know what I’m talking about)… So I think I can tell what Oshii is going for, but the proof will be in the pudding if the writing can pull that combination off, I suppose. In other news, the official twitter clarifies that the OP did not use motion capture (though it was inspired by a filming of Lovebites’ concert captured by the animation director), and shared a comment from Oshii describing the anime as “not bound by common sense”… yep, that checks out!
The Yuri licenses from Manga Planet are fantastic news! I haven’t checked in with their service for a while, but it looks like they’re building up quite the interesting range of manga quite different from other publishers. When the new Yuri titles land on the service I might subscribe and catch up on their offerings.
Twi-yon has another new serialisation – called “The outcome of my classmate fave author finding out about my Yuri fantasies”, a big Yuri fan moves to a new school and when she bumps into a classmate she drops the Yuri novel she was reading – but it turns out the classmate is the novel’s author. Details from YuriNavi: https://yurinavi.com/2020/11/30/oshisakkani-start/
There’s going to be an manga adaptation of LN series “The story of a girl who insisted there’s no way she’d date women, who fell completely into the world of Yuri”, which currently has 2 volumes out. https://ln-news.com/articles/110094
AdaShima is getting a event on February 21st titled “Choose my chocolate”, like in vol 3 of the LN – priority access to ticket application comes with vols 1 and 2 of the anime’s BD. https://www.tbs.co.jp/anime/adashima/special/special03.html
Release date and details for the anime of Farewell My Dear Cramer… which isn’t Yuri whatsoever, but I know a lot of people are interested in watching a proper girls’ sports anime since they’re pretty thin on the ground. The series is about a girls’ football club, while the prequel manga (being adapted to a film) is about the same main character at their previous school without that sort of club. https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2020-12-03/farewell-my-dear-cramer-soccer-anime-film-reveals-more-staff-april-1-debut/.167008
The (I think) first published manga with a asexual protagonist! Josei/comedy manga わたしは壁になりたい’s first volume is out this week, and is about a marriage of convenience between an aro ace fujoshi, and a closeted gay man who can’t confess to his childhood friend. Serialisation is ongoing on Pixiv: https://comic.pixiv.net/works/5627
Otaquest looks into the latest manga from Shuzo Oshimi, focusing on a non-binary character: https://www.otaquest.com/okaeri-alice-manga-shuzo-oshimi/
PS The link for the Anime Feminist article seems to be redirecting to another article?
Thank you, I fixed the AF link.
“Farewell My Dear Cramer” not only isn’t yuri, there is almost no romance at all, because if I remember correctly, the author said several times even before the announcement of the anime that they are obsessed with women’s football and have long wanted to create a good manga that would be directly devoted to this sport. I don’t quite understand why the shonen and some shoujo authors are constantly afraid that romance will distract their readers from the main topic, but until this point it even almost forgot about the straight romantic subplot that was in the prequel.
No one is “afraid” of a romance subplot, but some creators understand that not every story needs a romance. If I were writing a sport dram, I’d feel that an obligatory romance plot would be a distraction, too.
Well, I would say that it depends on the author and each work separately, but I agree that obligatory romance often looks boring and unnecessary. Especially when such subplots are based on characters whose personality and appearance in the plot is solely driven by their love interest status.
“The (I think) first published manga with a asexual protagonist!”
There was one with an asexual man as protagonist by Yotsuhara Furiko (who has done yuri for YH, Hirari and Galette) titled セックスしたい、したくない.
There’s a good series quite recently started by Isaki Uta (of Mine-kun is Asexual and an Eclair contributor) focused on asexuality called きみのせかいに恋はない. It runs in Kodansha’s digital josei magazine Hatsu Kiss, but is also sold as individual ebook chapters.
Its also josei?
Yotsuhara’s? It was released under a seinen label, ZZZQN. It’s from the same editorial department she usually does josei/shoujo for though.