Yuri Research

You’ll forgive me for making this my headline this week. My own book, By Your Side: The First 100 Years of Yuri Anime and Manga will be on sale June 1! 

This book collects 20 years of articles, essays, lectures, presentations and introductions into one work, tracing the history of Yuri from the early 20th century to the present. It features a Foreword by James Welker and cover art by Rica Takashima, and is the combined effort of many of my dear friends in the Yuricon and Okazu community. It takes a village to make a book, let me tell you…. ^_^

This is the first book of it’s kind in English, I hope it will not be the last! I hope all of you will freely draw on this for your own work and I look forward to read your research on Yuri. ^_^ (If you have any Yuri research, don’t forget to contact me, so I can put a link up on the Yuricon Essays page!)

Yuri Manga

Viz will be publishing Mieri Hiranashi’s Girl Who Can’t Get a Girlfriend as part of their Viz Originals imprint. This is very good news for all of us who have been following and supporting Mieri as she creates her work. And, also, it shows that Viz is on board with openly queer manga. I cannot overstate how amazing this decade is already, so far. Kodansha, Seven Seas, Yen and Viz are all investing in openly queer work. That’s a huge change in this industry over less than a decade, really, but they are also promoting it as queer work. This is the world I imagined back in the 1990s and…here we are. ^_^

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Bookwalker is running a 40% coin back on all eligible Yuri and BL titles through April 7! Now’s a great time to play catch up!

Even Though We’re Adults, Volume 4 is on the way this week, with another volume packed full of complicated adult emotions. I recommend this series highly. It’s by far and away the best of Shimura-sensei’s work to date.

Ajiichi’s Failed Princesses, Volume 5, will be hitting shelves shortly! The school trip is over but Kurokawa and Fujishiro’s relationship is never going back to where it started.

GUNBURED x SISTERS, Volume 1 was released last month by Seven Seas. Vampires, vampire hunters, guns, questionable anatomy, prominent lingerie, Yuri….this manga has it all.

Our Teachers Are Dating, Volume 4 hit shelves mid-April, with a touching ending to this sweet series. Print listings are on the Yuricon Store, don’t know why Bookwalker is so slow to get this up.

This summer will bring us Yuri Espoir, Volume 1. A young woman spends her last year before she is married off, drawing and enjoying Yuri wherever she finds it!

Yen Press debuted the cover of Adachi and Shimamura, Volume 3 on Twitter.

If you like Alt Hanakage’s work, she is serializing this 18+ story on Bookwalker, Sexual Liberation: To Each Their Own Form of Love, Chapter 1. I think the title image is pretty clear on the sex triangle that will be the main focus of the story. Ch. 1 is 78 cents. ^_^

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U-temo’s school Yuri, Yuri-Ota ni Yuri ha Gohattodesu!, Volume 2 (百合オタに百合はご法度です!) is up on the Yuricon Store. A Yuri Otaku is at an all-girl’s school, but life is not as expected when a gal Yuriblocks her at every turn. But now she’s thinking about Yoshioka in that Yuri way….

Hirao Auri’s short stories have been collected into one volume, with some new content in Joshi ni ha Rekishi ga Arimashite Hirao Auri Tanhenshuu (女子には歴史がありまして 平尾アウリ短編集).

Watashi no Yuri ha Oshigoto desu!, Volume 10 (私の百合はお仕事です! 10) is slated for a May release. Things are getting intense at Cafe Liebe!

Yuri Light Novel and Prose Anthology News

Via Sr. YNN Correspondent Sean G., I’m in Love With the Villainess, Volume 5 is slated for a September release. I cannot express how amazing a novel this was. You will be blown away. I promise.

Over in Japan, the print edition of Watashi Oshi ha Akuyaku Reijou. – Revolution –, Volume 2 (私の推しは悪役令嬢。-Revolution-) will be released in June. I’m making my way through Volume 1 and it’s been interesting to “re-read” this for the first time in Japanese. Thanks to Ichijinsha, I’ll have a nice edition on the shelves along with the English volumes.

Curtain Call no Mukougawa – Geijutsu Yuri Anthology (カーテンコールの向こう側-芸術百合アンソロジー) is a JP Kindle-only prose Yuri anthology of stories about stage actresses. I really want to read this, but can’t for regional licensing reasons, so if you get it, do consider writing a review!

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Anime News

Viz Media is releasing Sailor Moon Season 1 as a single box set, so if you skipped the multi-part version, here’s a chance to get the whole season at once. Let me address the major question – no, the quality of the art will not be better. It is a 30 year old series that was hand-painted on the cheap for little kids on much more low-res television sets. It will never, ever, look better, because there is no better for it to look. There is no high-res master, like there are with 70mm films. I literally have several cels here in the house – this was never finely crafted. Season 1 was especially cheap because they didn’t know if anyone would like it. If you want a better render, travel back in time and convince Toei to do a better job.

Other News

If you’re a regular here, you know I have long joked about how lesbians do not disappear after high school. Legitimately, it has taken Yuri and lesbian literature a couple of decades to age out of school and college into the workplace…and now we’re going to see more mid-life stories. On LGBTQ Reads, author Tiffany E. Taylor talks about writing butch/femme romance for 40+ characters (and readers) in: Writing Midlife Butch/Femme Romance.

Juana Summers, Megan Lim and Mallory Yu take a look at Why Sailor Moon is beloved by so many, 30 years later for NPR!

The Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has teamed up with Google Arts and Culture for an online “exhibit,” The Origins of Shōjo Manga. The white text is a bit excruciating, but the art is great.

In Japanese, but you can get the point with a machine translation,  Miyake Kaho-san answers a question many have asked, Why Is Tuxedo Kamen drawn weaker than Sailor Moon? なぜタキシード仮面はセーラームーンより「弱く」描かれたのか.

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