There is so much news this week and I have an opinion at the end, so strap in!
Yuri Manga
Nagata Kabi’s new book My Alcoholic Escape From Reality is out, she did an interview with Deb Aoki for TCAF which will stay on Youtube until May 21, so don’t miss it! and Seven Seas has announced the license of her next book, Nagata Kabi’s My Wandering Warrior Existence!
Rafael Antonia Pineda has the news that Hara Yukiko’s Mayu, Matou (released by Yen Press as Cocoon, Entwined) is going on a 4-month hiatus in Comic Beam due to the creator’s illness.
Seven Seas has released Syrup: An Anthology, Volume 3, which covers couple’s first nights together.
Galette WORKS has some good news and some bad news. The good news, is that Galette No. 18 (ガレット) is coming out next month and Galette MEETS 15 is on sale as well. The bad news is that the website Galette Online, is shutting down, so all the short stories and voice comics will be going away at the end of this month. The magazine is thus far still in publication. You can still support the creation of Galette on Fantia or Pixiv Fanbox.
Ajiichi’s Dekisokonai Hime-tachi, Volume 5 (できそこないの姫君たち), continues this emotional rollercoaster for a group of of girls in high school.
Shakaijin Yuri foodish manga Minna Watashi no Hara no Naka, Volume 1 (みんな私のはらのなか) is available in print or you can check it out on Takeshobo’s Storia Dash online in Japanese.
Eden no Shoujo, Volume 1 (エデンの処女) is a science fiction story about a world with no men.
Watashi no Yuri ha Oshigoto Desu! Volume 8 (私の百合はお仕事です!) comes to a climactic moment, and Mitsuki is not ready…
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Yuri Events Online
If you have ever wanted to attend an academic conference on anime and manga and were unable to…this year is your year! Mechademia is going online and has a non-academic/student rate for attendees. Videos are going live today for panelists, while public registration opens up tomorrow. Please enjoy presentations by myself, James Welker and Verena Maser on Transporting Yuri Across Borders and join us for a panel on June 5th!
This weekend is also the Queer Comics Expo Online, which includes the PRISM Comics Award.
You can also join me and a other panelists at CasaCon, free on Discord, from June 25-27th.
TCAF 2021 has a wonderful panel, LGBT + Micro and Macro Perspectives, that is available for you to watch now on Youtube!
And don’t forget to watch the newest Yuri Studio episode, Yuri: How It Began – How It’s Going, in which I take a look at a couple of the key Yuri tropes and how they change over time. Subscribe to Yuri Studio for a nice mini-course on Yuri!
LGBTQ News
Alison Bechdel is working on an animated Dykes to Watch Out For series! This is absolutely the right time and place for this.
With Pride month just around the corner, Companies are gearing up to rainbow wash everything from NFL jerseys to Twitter’s logo. Comics companies, dragged reluctantly into the 21st century and reckoning with decades of suppressing non-white, non-male, non-straight voices are doing…things…to fix this. I am 100% supportive of these companies and their pride branding, but it is also always business first, statement second. My opinion of efforts to present these non-white, non-male, non-straight, non-abled voices – the very efforts most hated by the mediocre men of *.*gate – is that I think they have power despite themselves. When a company fronts a non-white, non-male, non-straight, non-abled person and actually gives that person tools to succeed, that person becomes a role model…even if the original intent was merely to pretend to be woke enough to convince investors to stick around. I won’t pretend that Conde Nast putting a black woman in charge of Bon Appetit wasn’t a calculated move, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t the right mov or that she isn’t the right person for the job. Dawn Davis has already had a visibly positive impact on the magazine.
The point is that there is a position that companies can take that isn’t tokenizing – it can invest in lifting up diverse voices, centering them, letting them be heard and seen and appreciated. I make fun of gay cereal and cookies, but both Oreos and General Mills are real-world allies to LGBTQ folks, too, supporting inclusive legislation and policies.
Which brings me to Marvel and DC. I could probably talk about why I think that both companies are choking on their own bullshit here, but that isn’t the point. The point is…they are doing something and they are doing it publicly and I think they may actually be doing it okay this time, ish at least. Better than usual.
Marvel is celebrating Pride Month with a series of variant covers by out artist Phil Jimenez for characters being featured in the Marvel Voices: Pride #1, which also features queer writers and artists.
DC is also releasing DC Pride #1, with contributions by queer actors from the DCU and artists (including Phil Jimenez), as well as variant covers of relevant titles. Check out a preview of these on the DC blog. Sneak peak of some pages here, and variant covers here.
I’ve linked to Amazon and Comixology here, but you know…what a great time to call up your local comic store and give them some business! I’ll be doing that as soon as I finish this report. ^_^ Check out Comicshoplocator.com to find a store near you!
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I really hope Hara Yuriko gets well soon! I have been enjoying “Cocoon Entwined” a lot, and I hope she continues to work in manga, as her style, both in terms of art and writing, is very mesmerizing.
Seems like at least once a month at least I hear about another mangaka going on hiatus due to illness. At this point is there any explanation that doesn’t include the insane pressure and demands of that job? It feels like the companies know they have us over a barrel – for the artists to make anything at all we have to buy their work, but that just ends up propping up a broken and unsustainable anime/manga ecosystem.
Is there anything fans can do? What will eventually lead to positive change for artists and animators? Do more of them have to die working insane hours for poverty wages?
Makes me feel dirty knowing I enthusiastically support something so exploitative that I would certainly rail against in other industries.
Finally an anime announcement for Komi Can’t Communicate – definitely one of the more queer series to come out of the big Shounen magazines recently, with one of the main cast being openly nonbinary (though this isn’t always handled well) and most of the girls are in love with Komi, including a “psycho lesbian” character. https://www.crunchyroll.com/en-gb/anime-news/2021/05/11-1/komi-cant-communicate-writes-in-tv-anime-adaptation-for-october-2021
Yuri Navi reports on the vol 1 release of 愛されてもいいんだよ, the manga about a woman who gets drawn into the lesbian sex industry I mentioned here some time back: http://yurinavi.com/2021/05/13/aisaretemoiindayo-pr/
New one-shot in Comic Zenon, an adult woman invites her highschool crush to tea after a chance reunion. https://comic-zenon.com/episode/3269754496296414453
Sailor Moon Eternal’s Japanese BD release unveiled tokutens for its different versions: https://www.otaquest.com/sailor-moon-eternal-blu-ray-dvd-will-arrive-with-bonus-cds-in-june/
It’s true about a non-binary character (if you are about Osana Najimi), but personally I don’t remember that Komi was a big target of romantic female affection, not just onee-sama-like admiration (while the manga does have very large doses of male homoeroticism, including explicit subtext or jokes). However, I can’t deny that if Rumi and Komi weren’t in love with the MC and the manga was all about their friendship, it could easily have become a best-seller in the yuri-ish BFF manga.