Yuri Manga
The cleanup of the the Yuricon Store continues! The English Manga section is about half finished, a few items are linkless as we’re trying to determine if they are in stock, but most are up to date, with current info. Of course we are still adding new items! Here’s this week’s crop:
Nigiyau’s Yuri school comedy School Zone Girls, Volume 1, which is headed our way in May is now on the Store.
Also coming to your shelves in May is The Rose of Versailles, Volume 5, the climax of this extraordinary story! And what a climax it is.
Kaijuu-iro no Shima, Volume 1 (かいじゅう色の島) is out now, and folks overseas ought to be getting those copies in shortly.
I’m in Love With the Villainess, Volume 1, is headed our way in English this July. You may remember that a few weeks ago, this title was among hundred nominate for an annual “Which Manga I Want to See as an Anime!” contest run by AnimeJapan. Both inori-sensei and Ichijinsha reported yesterday that “WataOshi” made #5 on the rankings! Will that mean we’ll get an anime? I don’t know, but as the top-ranking series for Ichijinsha, I am hopeful. Take a look at the Top 10 rankings on the AnimeJapan site.
Sasayakuyouni Koi wo Utau, Volume 4 (ささやくように恋を唄う) – as Yori and Himari begin to date, Himari’s going to have to put words to how she really feels. I just adore this story, which is out in English as Whisper Me a Love Song. Volumes 1 and 2 are up on the store, Volume 3 is slated for a June release. (As soon as we get the office English language cover from Kodansha, we’ll add it.)
We’ve added Futaribeya: Room For Two, Volume 2, by Tsukiko, out from Tokyopop.
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Via Comic Natalie, to celebrate WebAction’s first anniversary, they are putting a bunch of manga online for free, included U-TEMO’s Yuri-Ota ni Yuri ha Gohattodesu!, (百合オタに百合はご法度です!) in Japanese. If you prefer the collected volume, we have Volume 1 up on the Yuricon Store.
Also via Comic Natalie, there’s a new Revue Starlight anthology, called Shoujo Engeki☆ Revue Starlight Comic Anthology Nine Stories (少女☆歌劇 レヴュースタァライト コミックアンソロジー ナイン・ストーリーズ) that includes a story by, among others, Cocoon, Entwined creator Hara Yuriko.
Event News
Yuriten is still ongoing – thanks to the folks who hung out with us last week and did a walk through on Discord, That was fun.
Prism Comics is sponsoring a virtual WonderCon@Home 2021 panel today, LGBTQ+ COMICS AND SOCIAL ACTIVISM, online Saturday, March 27, 11:00 am Pacific Time (2PM EST), with Moderator Justin Hall and panelists Jennifer Camper, Tara Madison Avery, Trinidad Escobar, Lawrence Lindell, and Anand Vedawala.
Anime News
Otherside Picnic has wrapped up on Funimation. If you’ve watched it, let us know what you think in the comments!
The second half of VLAD LOVE is up on Crunchyroll, Megan’s working on a review for us now. ^_^
Rafael Antonio Pineda has the details about a new mini-anime from the Assault Lily team.
Check out this short promotional video of Athena and Alice singing Athena’s barcarolle. Komatsu-san has the details for ARIA The BENEDIZIONE on Crunchyroll News.
CR’s Daryl Harding has the news that the Penguindrum TV anime Twitter account has started a countdown. What for? We don’t know yet!
Crunchyroll seems to be putting some energy into PreCure these days, with the new series Tropical Rouge! PreCure, a higher-definition release and new regional licensing for the first series, Futari ha PreCure! Komatsu-san notes that the first two minutes of the Healin’ Good PreCure movie are online as a teaser.
The writer of Serial Experiments LAIN and Digimon Tamers, has announced that their project Desupera, delayed for years, has now been 80% funded. Honestly, this excites me, as both LAIN and Tamers have some of the best writing in anime that I can think of off the top of my head.
Other News
Kara Dennison at Crunchyroll News has the report of a collaboration between Rose of Versailles and the Japanese Racing Association, and I’m not sure what it means, but we’re probably all hoping for a cosplay horse race! ^_^
YNN Correspondent Evie reports in that Square Enix has announced that their character Alex Chen from the upcoming Life is Strange 3, “Life is Strange: True Colors” will be bisexual along with lesbian Steph. Yvie suggests we all sing a little Cyndi Lauper to celebrate. ^_^
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As a huge fan of the Otherside Picnic novels I did enjoy the anime. I thought it was a bit light in tone in comnparison with the novels and I felt that Sorawo and Toriko were portrayed more like high school students with guns on a jape. But it was fun, and a good introduction into the world of the Otherside. The voice-acting was engaging and the music and sound effects were a starring role in conveying the Otherside. The continity was different from the novels and there was the odd translation glitche.
Quite a bit of manga news this week! Zanka has their first short story collection, 吸血鬼ちゃんとメイドさん featuring vampire Yuri, master-servant Yuri, and more: https://natalie.mu/comic/news/421982
A new serialisation in Kadokawa’s moe-focused Gekkan Comic Kyuun, あなたが私を照らすから。At an all-girls school every year the school’s “best couple” is decided and they became student council president and vice-president. https://natalie.mu/comic/news/421976
Another new serialisation, in Josei magazine Eleganceイブ, set in the Taisho era. The protagonist enters a women’s school and falls in love at first sight with her beautiful senpai. Later she learns of the school’s custom of sister-like “S” relationships between the students. https://natalie.mu/comic/news/421888
And another: In Gekkan Big Gangan, 嘘とキスは放課後に. High school girl Rin feels contempt for women like her mother who ran off with an unknown man. But after she criticises her family friend, Momoka, for fooling around with men, Momoka suggests Rin becomes her lover instead. https://natalie.mu/comic/news/421537
A done-in-one print volume for 北の女に試されたい, a story which starts with Hokuryou Aya, who wants nothing more than to talk to Hokkaido girls, trying her luck in the entertainment district of Susukino in Sapparo. She picks up Suzuka who proposes they go on a road trip together. https://natalie.mu/comic/news/422058
Pine Jam, also the studio working on Kageki Shoujo’s anime, announced an original anime called “Do it yourself” about high school girls and DIY. There’s always the possibility of Yuri(/ish) with this sort of premise, but either way the character designs and typically solid team at the studio are winning me over already. https://diy-anime.com/
For the Penguindrum countdown – on the wild ride that was Sarazanmai I learned never to predict Ikuhara, but my best guess would be maybe a stage adaptation? I would have said a BD box or something but that already happened, and both Utena and Sarazanmai have had very successful stage versions in the last couple of years.
I’m only a middling Revue Starlight fan but I’m tempted to buy the anthology just for Cocoon Entwined’s author!
A bunch of the stuff on Comic Natalie I am holding on for future weeks, since this week got pretty long. I like to look at stuff in Japanese before I list it, so I have a sense of whether I think it’s really something I want to talk about. ^_^
I was thinking the same thing about the RS anthology. I like it well enough, (but was vexed with the way the ED was sold in singles in Japan, which is a total aside. I wanted a CD of all of the versions and when I was there, they just didn’t have that, boo, then I fell out of interest with it) but kind of want to see what Hara does here.
As a fan of the *Otherside Picnic* novels, I was a bit disappointed in the anime. It suffered from some continuity problems (largely the result of the changed chronology) and was fairly mediocre in terms of animation. I doubt that it has done well enough to merit a sequel, which is sad, because later material in the novels is, I think, more interesting than some of the lighter fare (Ninja Cats, the haunted auto-repair place) in this first season (but that material is needed to set up events and character development that will happen in that hypothetical sequel).
On the other hand, if I hadn’t read the novels before, I might have found the anime “okay”.
Your mention of *Despera* reminds me that I have wondered how the *Lain* team could have handled this material (in part because I think *Lain*’s Wired visuals had elements that the Otherside entities could have benefited from, plus this kind of horror is close to Chiaki Konaka’s wheelhouse).
My standard media consumption formula is to watch first, then read, because the other way around leads to disappointment, generally speaking, so I agree.
I’ve been thinking about Lain a lot recently in fact! I think the Wired is a pretty excellent approximation of social media. And unusual series that held up well. And again, agreed. ^_^
As someone whose only exposure to “Otherside Picnic” so far has been the anime, I quite enjoyed it; I would have called it one of the unexpected hits of last season, and definitely one of the few shows that I was actively looking forward to each week. Certainly, it was rough in a number of places; but at the same time, it felt original, quite different from a lot of current series. While it had horror elements, it wasn’t about the horror; I felt it was about these characters exploring a strange world, and how their relationships were shaped by that. There remain a lot of unexplored threads that make me want to find out more about their world. Not a perfect series, but well worth watching, in my opinion.