Yuri Manga
Senior YNN Correspondent Sean G. wants you to know that Seven Seas has a couple of license announcements for us this week. Topping the list is The Girl I Want is So Handsome, by Yuama. I have reviewed this in Japanese – you can read my thoughts on Ikemen-sugi Shiki-sempai! Volume 1 and Volume 2 here (Tl;dr – it was cute.) Volume 1 is getting a end of year release.
Seven Seas has also announced the license of Jun Ogino’s semelparous, and Double Your Pleasure – A Twin Yuri Anthology, neither of which I am ever likely to mention again.
Via ANN’s Rafael Antonia Pineda, Transparent Light Blue creator Iwami Kyouko is starting up a new series, “Today, She is Not Here.” Get the details on ANN!
On their twitter account, MICRO Magazine announced the serialization of the ROLL OVER AND DIE manga!
We have a couple of volumes that have been added to to Yuricon Store:
Mikanuji, creator of Now Loading….! and Fuzoroi no Renri has a short story collection out from Kadokawa, Mukanuji Short Story Collection Happy End Iranai (みかん氏短編集 ハッピーエンドはいらない).
Kujira’s A Witch’s Love at the End of the World, Volume 3 is headed our way in just over a week, to finish up this story.
Volume 2 of Superwomen in Love: Honey Trap and Rapid Rabbit will be coming at you at the end of the summer.
Yoru to Umi, Volume 3, by Goumoto wraps up that magical tale.
Amano Shuninta has a new collection, Aisarete mo Iindayo (愛されてもいいんだよ) about an unhappy woman who finds happiness during her experience with a sex worker.
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YNN Correspondent Megan wants you to know about Ienai Himitsu no Aishikata (いえない秘密の愛し方). A teacher meets her favorite dounjinshi artist, who turns out to be a student in their school. You can read some sample chapters in Japanese on Takeshobo’s Story Dash.
Also via Megan, is Cosmic Lily (コズミック・リリィ), a one-shot scifi story set in space, by Yoshitaka Nao. You can read this in Japanese on Comic Days website.
Kawashima Suzu offers this sweet little Yuri tidbit in Japanese on Comic Zenon, Kanojo to Shuumatsu Afternoon Tea (彼女と週末アフタヌーンティー). Thanks again to Megan for spotting this on Yuri Navi – I had read and bookmarked it, but hadn’t added it yet. Sometimes I hold items for a later report. ^_^
Yuri Interview
The lovely folks at Yuri Times are pleased to present a 2-part interview with Yuri manga artist Inui Ayu, creator of If We Leave on the Dot, which is being serialized in English on Mangaplanet. Part 1 and Part 2 are up for you to read and enjoy! Thanks to the staff of Yuri Times for bring out this interview in English and Japanese!
Yuri Anime
Rafael Antonia Pineda has the news on ANN about new cast and staff for upcoming anime Aquatope of White Sand.
And Rafael is our go-to guy today, because he’s also noted that the first 4 minutes of the new Revue Starlight movie is being streamed right now for you to watch!
Yuri Visual Novel
YNN Correspondent Patricia B.r writes in with the news about Korean Yuri VN that looks fun! “Lady in Mystery is a mystery/romance visual novel set in 1700s Korea, where the protagonist can romance four potential love interests, who are all women. It was originally released in South Korea in 2014, and I believe this is the first time the game has been translated into English.”
MangaGamer announces Distant Memoraĵo – a Return to the World of The Expression: Amrilato. Distant Memoraĵo contains two new chapters in the tale of Rin and Ruka and their desire to communicate. Check out the trailer on Youtube.
Other News
Not Yuri, but this is big – all 44 volumes of fine wine battle manga Drops of God are available on Comixology. I read this all the way through in Japanese and it was absolutely ridiculous and amazing and informative. Imagine Kaiba and Yu-Gi-Oh rambling on about wine instead of a card game and you’d be very close. Also I learned a LOT, but the focus of the manga is always about enjoying wine first and understanding it second.
Gentlewoman and scholar Rachel Thorn tweeted a 3-part NHK series on how Japanese girls magazine cover art changed and maybe you’re not as into this as I am, but I am very into this! Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3. Thank you Rachel! Its especially relevant as I am watching the evolution of Rica Takashima’s art for the cover of By Your Side: The First 100 Years of Yuri Anime and Manga, which is coming out next summer and I am very excited for you all to see it. ^_^
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Thank you again for including my news piece!
I’m really intrigued by the NHK series Rachel Thorn has brought up, and look forward to watching it. I love looking into the history of women’s media.
Also, I wanted to point something out about “The Girl I Want is So Handsome”: the English version will be released as an omnibus, so the entire series will be in one volume.
The mangaka of Barikyari to Shinsotsu, who now works under the pen name Miyagi Michi (宮城みち), will be doing a series called Haha no Motokano to Kurashita (母の元カノと暮らした。) in Morning Two. The premise is a middle school boy going to live with 3 former girlfriends of his late mother, hoping to find out who she really loved. According to Miyagi it will be not so much a yuri manga as a series depicting the diversity of a modern family wrapped in a fluffy home comedy: https://wodsum.fanbox.cc/posts/2264927
Wow, that sounds pretty interesting! Thanks for letting me know!
Definitely picking up the Ikemen manga! Amid an otherwise slightly meh licensing round from Seven Seas, I was happy to search the archive here and find your positive reviews ^_^ I’m quite appreciative of boyish looks in manga girls so I’m glad to see this sort of Yuri make it into English.
I was pleasantly surprised this week to find new Chinese donghua series ‘Link Click’ feature a subtextually Yuri (or Baihe as it is known in Chinese) relationship. In ep 2 the ““Time Photo Studio” dive into the past of two women from their uni days to their reunion and happy ending in later life. The show is streaming on Funimation: https://www.funimation.com/shows/link-click/
Something a little different – vol 1 of Yuri horror series 名状しがたい彼女と、あの頃臆病だった私の話, a girl who lost where she belongs in a certain incident is saved from danger by the mysterious, beautiful Rei, who can manipulate demons and carries out ceremonies of human sacrifice. https://natalie.mu/comic/news/429065
A fan disc sequel to Yuri VN 推しのラブより恋のラブ, titled Love or Die (ラブ・オア・ダイ～) releases in July: http://yurinavi.com/2021/05/21/oshilovelod-hp/
Over on twitter, ehoba unearthed an Ikuhara interview from around the time of Utena about his pet racoon’s advice for the show: https://twitter.com/htGOIW/status/1392801417459494913
Vol 1 of LGBT+ manga “I think our son is gay” is now out in English – I have the book in my hands and its just as delightful as I remember from the Japanese previews! https://squareenixmangaandbooks.square-enix-games.com/en-us/series/i-think-our-son-is-gay
Another LGBT+ manga debut this time in Japanese – ‘Last Gender’ ラストジェンダー ～何者でもない私たち is an omnibus series following queer people (including lesbian, Bi, Pan, aro, trans and genderfluid characters) gathering at a bar. The series is running in Kodansha’s salaryman-orientated Evening magazine so expect a more mature approach. I hope to pick this up and be able to report more on it…soon, when I whittle down the mountain of stuff on my plate already ^_^’ https://kc.kodansha.co.jp/title?code=1000039411
I read Last Gender in Evening (via the Comic Days Premium subscription service) and while it’s interesting, I think it has given itself a slightly awkward writing challenge due to being set in a happening bar, i.e., a type of sex club.
It’s clear from the prototype one-shot (私季、折々と) that the concept of it being about a happening bar came ahead of making it an LGBT series: in the one-shot a woman comes to the bar after finding her husband’s membership card. She opens up about her husband being abusive to a man she meets there and having sex with him helps her find the resolve to get divorced. I can see the idea is to have the initial impression of the seediness of the bar turned around into a positive tale about sexual liberty there. That the man was incidentally pansexual helped with that positivity.
The serialization version goes big on the idea of serving as a vehicle for looking at LGBT+ issues, which is cool, but I think it could have been a nicer portrayal of some of the characters if it were set in a normal LGBT friendly bar. With Amiru, an aromantic woman, it works fine as a context for talking about an aroallo character, but other times it’s more that it has wound up set in a sex club for the salaciousness.
Thank you for this mini-review. It sounds very much like a one-shot that is pivoted towards a different story.
“Seven Seas has also announced the license of Jun Ogino’s semelparous, and Double Your Pleasure – A Twin Yuri Anthology, neither of which I am ever likely to mention again.”
Okay, the second one I understand completely based on what you have said before, but I’d like to know what your objections to the first one are.
I wrote about it once on Okazu: https://okazu.yuricon.com/2020/01/19/yuri-manga-and-problematic-art/
After seeing some rather unusual ideas for yuri anthologies, it seems to me that yuri is so popular these days that you can take any trope and make a compilation around it. However, everyone has their own tastes, I guess.