Back in the day, there was a brand-new online community for fans of lesbian characters and stories in Japanese comics and animation. That group was named AniLesboCon mostly as a joke¹. By 2001, I was transitioning that name to a new name, one that I hoped would re-connect this new genre to its ties to Japanese lesbian history. In August 2001, I relaunched our website as Yuricon², a virtual convention and community for fans of what we were now calling “Yuri.”³. Here we are, 20 years later, and still going strong! If anything, we’re stronger than ever, with more Yuri manga and anime coming out in Japan and being translated for a global audience. (Okazu followed a year later, also in August, and I’ve got some ideas for next summer, too.)

Clearly, a 20th anniversary calls for a celebration.

As you may know, I was part of what I believe was the very first Yuri-focused panel at Mechademia this year, at which I was joined by Prof. James Welker and scholar and translator Verena Maser. It was a tremendous honor and a lot of fun. But, because to attend you had to register with Mechademia, we ran into a lot of limits – we had limited access and we couldn’t record the panel. And so, to celebrate the Yuricon community’s 20th anniversary, I invite you to save the date for an exciting event:

Saturday, August 14th, 2021, 21:00 JST (8 AM US EST, 1PM BST) I will be joined once again by James and Verena for a live panel on Yuri!

We will be recreating our panel from Mechademia, Transporting Yuri Across Borders. This panel focuses on challenges and opportunities in the evolution and transformation of Yuri as it is transported across chronological, geographic and linguistic borders. This time we will be able to discuss things more leisurely, take more questions and, hopefully, record the session to be able to post on Yuri Studio later, for folks to watch the whole thing.

Registration will be free, but there will be limited space available. Okazu Patrons will get early access to registration and be able to send in questions beforehand. I want to apologize to folks on the West Coast, this timing is the best we can do to not drag into super late hours for Japan and still be accessible for me on the East Coast. Hopefully some of you early birds will still be able to attend.

I hope to see many of our friends and Patrons there! Links to registration will be posted to Okazu Patrons in July, followed by general registration in August. So, save the date and we’ll see you on August 14th at our Yuricon anniversary event!

***

¹Named after the fictitious Animated Lesbian Convention (AniLesboCon) from Dreiser’s fanfic, Scenes From An Elevator.

²This was followed in November by YahooGroups nuking the ALC community in a Yuri/BL/Queer/Porn purge and me re-starting it as Yuricon, a group that survived into late 2010s.

³https://www.yuricon.com/what-is-yuricon/#whatisyuri