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Yuri Network News (百合ネットワーク・ニュース) – February 16, 2013

February 16th, 2013

Yuri Manga

Seven Seas has licensed Centaur no Ayami, a school life series about centaurs. Volume 2, if you remember, goes off the charts with service-y Yuri.

Comic Natalie reports that there will be a Yuru Yuri spin-off, “The Ohmuro Family” which, along with several other Comic Yuri Hime 4-koma titles will run on their upcoming webcomic site Comic Yuri Hime on Nico Nico Douga.

Comic Yuri Hime, May 2013 Issue (コミック百合姫 2013年 05月号) is now up for pre-order on Amazon JP. It will street in March.

Tsubomi has put  new chapters of 4 comics up, and has a nice new top illustration on their webcomic page. Himitsu no Recipe by Morinaga Milk, Eden no Higashitotsuka by Hakamada Mera, Otomo Megane’s Futari and Sugawa Tokushi’s  Zenryaku, Yuri no Sono Yori have been updated.

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Other News

ANN has a new feature which I would recommend to any of you out there who want to understand IP law (in a US context). Part 1 of the The Law of Anime: Copyright and the Anime and Part 2: Copyrights and Fandom are both well worth your time . (Also, if you feel very superior and intelligent about how reform is long overdue, read the comments, too where Sean Thorsden, Esq. says, “yes” to that and then explains why it isn’t happening to your satisfaction.)

And my wife notes that it has been about 5 years since I started to post weekly news updates about Yuri. (My first “This Week in Yuri” was in February 2008). She says, “I think it’s impressive that you’ve had something to report nearly weekly for 5 years.” I have to agree with her on that. So now we have another pin in Yuri’s history, in 2008 it became possible to start writing weekly new reports on Yuri! How amazing is that. ^_^

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That’s a wrap for this week!

Become a Yuri Network Correspondent by sending me any Yuri-related news you find. Emails go to anilesbocon01 at hotmail dot com. Not to the comments here, please, or they might be forgotten or missed. There’s a reason for this madness. This way I know you are a real human, not Anonymous (which I do not encourage – stand by your words with your name!) and I can send you a YNN correspondent’s badge.

Thanks to all of you – you make this a great Yuri Network!





Yuri Manga: Collectors, Volume 1 (コレクターズ）

February 14th, 2013

In honor of Valentine’s Day I can think of no better candidate for review than Nishi UKO’s Collectors, from the pages of Rakuen Le Paradis magazine.

Nito Shinobu collects books. Kanzaki Takako is interested in fashion and collects clothes. The two of them love each other very much but, as they both consider their future together, their competing use of space could make living together awkward. ^_^;

With their friend Naomi and “the other one,” the unnamed friend who makes up the fourth in their group, Shinobu and Takako’s life together is detailed in amusingly realistic 4-koma strips or chapter-long stories.

From how they met, to Shinobu hiding from her students at a book store, to going away with friends, to bickering and moments of intimacy, their lives look remarkably like a real life that a real couple might have, rather than the melodramatic extremes of so much manga. For me, Collectors is a refreshing, realistic, fun look at a relationship between women who love each other. Weird huh? I mean really weird. Because there is hardly any manga like this.

Here’s my favorite scene – Shinobu, standing with Naomi and the other one (Okay, let’s just pick a name for her. Put your suggestions in the comments section and I’ll pick one, and send it to Nishi UKO-sensei as a suggestion. ^_^) waiting for Takako to arrive, when  Shinobu says Takako is heading towards them. Naomi asks where, as a woman walks up to them. Takako’s changed her hair color, but Shinobu knows it’s her from meters away. ^_^

They snipe at one another about each other’s collection habits, they have tender moments with hands entwined in each other’s hair, they live and they love. Just like me and my wife, just like you and your girlfriend, just like lesbians whose relationship does not end with a kiss or graduation. This is what after the happily-ever-after really looks like.

Whether you collect glasses, boyfriends, books or clothes, Happy Valentine’s Day from myself and everyone at Yuricon & ALC Publishing!

Ratings:

Art – 10
Story – 10 Life. What could be funnier, more poignant or more interesting?
Characters – 10
Yuri – 10
Service – 1

Overall – 10

As I read this book before bed, I look fondly over the multiple piles of books-to-read next to my bed and smile. I’m on Team Shinobu. ^_^

Go ahead and put your suggestions for Takako’s friend’s name in the comments. ^_^





Destro 246 Manga, Volume 1 (デストロ246)

February 12th, 2013

Destro 246 (デストロ246) is the newest manga by Takahashi Keitarou, the creator of Jormungand. Where I might summarize Jormungand as an action manga about a group of unrealistically cheerful arms dealers Destro 246 is more or less about a bunch of young female assassin/bodyguards and their underwear.

Let me slack off and re-quote Tomo K. who let us know about this series in the first place:

“The story starts out with a Japanese businessman buying two 17-year-old female professional killers from a South American mafia to avenge his murdered wife and children. In Tokyo, the two bump into Imari, the professional killer from Ordinary, Takahashi’s debut series.

The Yuri part involves Ichigo, a senior-high girl who’s inherited her father’s yakuza business. She has two female bodyguards, Manten and Renka (who’re her classmates as well). The three talk of having threesomes “as the usual thing”, and there are panels where Ichigo fondles one of the bodyguard’s huge boobs, and the bodyguards kiss Ichigo in public as well.

When Ichigo destroys a rival, she keeps the girlfriend of the gang leader alive, and orders her to be their sex slave until she grows up and inherits her father business (then she’ll be forced to hand money over to Ichigo’s organization).”

There’s a lot of fighting and the above female assassin/bodyguards beat the crap out of some guys but in Volume 1 at least, there’s only vague hints of a plot.

So, what is this manga about? I honestly have no idea. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – ?
Characters – 4 Kind of cookie-cutter at this point
Service – 7

Overall – 5

There’s no sense of “competence” here as there was in Jormungand, just magical hand-waves of skill. And awkward angles for upskirt shots because we just can never ever ever have enough of looking at underwear on indifferently drawn female bodies.





Lesbian Animation: Strange Frame – Love and Sax

February 11th, 2013

starngeframeI was going to review a manga today. I have it sitting right here. But like the magpie I am, when I see something shiny, I just have to go haring off after it. And so, today’s shiny thing is a movie-length sci-fi animation starring a mixed-race female lead and her DNA-modded female lover, Strange Frame – Love and Sax, by Shelley Doty and G.B. Hajim. (Apparently this animation was shown at DragonCon last year to some acclaim.)

Let me get the single major criticism I have for this movie out of the way – there is not one unique or fresh idea in the whole thing. In fact, about a third of the way through the movie, I hit a moment  when the Huggy Bear pimp cool voice that all the characters were using started to wear on me. That having been said, the story was very comfortable as a result. It was easy to slip into it and easy to get caught up in it. The pull quote on the website says, “A punk version of Blade Runner” but I think that is slightly off the mark. Not far off the mark, though. It’s more like a jazz version of a slightly gritty Fifth Element.

The animation is quite good. It had Eastern European animation vibes, with that smooth oil-painting feel one encounters in European animation of the last decade, with a sensibility that would be right at home in the pages of Heavy Metal magazine. (You know what I mean, right? All the dancing is hedonistic hip-churning, there’s “futuristic” nudity and the drugs are all post-Op Art black light psychedelic posters.)

The voice cast is a delightful mix of  cults, Star Trek (Michael Dorn, George Takei), Farscape (Claudia Black), My Little Pony – Friendship is Magic and a million other cartoons (Tara Strong), Barney Miller (Ron Glass) and Tim Curry who of course has been in everything ever. (And there’s a few other easter-egg voice actors as well.) The cast handles the script deftly. So while every scene is something you’ve seen before, and much of the dialogue is something you’ve heard before (and in a few cases, the writers damn well know it, and are very, very openly stealing from dialogue that has come before) it never feels eye-rollingly done.

The lead, Parker, has a comfy sort of ex-something feel, and her lover Naia is any pop idol ever. As I said, the plot is well-worn and no new ground is uncovered here, but if you’re like me, you eagerly await the day when this story is made as a live action and Parker and Naia are just the leads, not  zOMG a lesbian couple!

You can rent the movie on Vimeo or order the DVD.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Characters – 8
Story – 8
Lesbian – 9

Overall – 8

I hope you’ll give the movie your support – the more of this kind of animation we get, the more we get, y’know? ^_^




The Legend of Korra Cartoon (English)

February 10th, 2013

Let me tell you something true and important.

Aang was wrong.

It’s not the moment you’re most down when you unlock your potential. It’s the moment after that. When you look at where you are and think, “Well fuck this, I’m going to live anyway.” *That’s* the moment you connect with your “spiritual” self.

This weekend, during snowstorm Nemo, I took the opportunity to sit and watch all of The Legend of Korra on Amazon Instant Video.

It was excellent.

Super quicky synopsis for those of you who have never seen it: In a world where some people, known as “benders.” have power over one of the four elements, the “Avatar” can manipulate all four. Avatar-in-training, Korra, has mastered all but Air, but when she comes to Republic City to learn the fourth element she find herself caught up in a veritable war.

I never did watch Avatar – The Last Airbender, beyond catching a random episode here or there. It looked good, plenty of people I know liked it, but we just never connected. So when I heard about Korra, I was glad, but not compelled to watch it. It was on my radar, I just needed to make some time for it.

Now I have and I’m pretty pleased at the result. Every character was written incredibly well. I mean that. As a person 100% driven by connection to character, there wasn’t one of the “good guys” that I thought, “oh come on…!” Especially Korra who is that invisible-unknowable to writers in almost every media – a competent adolescent girl. Korra knows from a young age she is the Avatar and has both self-confidence and self-doubt born from that knowledge. She’s not too fragile nor is she too arrogant. She’s welcome over for lunch anytime. ^_^

The story really takes off when she deifies her teacher Tenzen’s order to stay away from sport bending. Korra meets Bolin and his brother Mako…and it’s her illicit professional bending that sets much of the story in motion.

Mako picks up a girlfriend along the way, Asami, who turns out to be a key in the larger plot. Of all the characters, she was the one I was most afraid would be written poorly, but nope. The plot screws her a bit, but the writers never do.

Bei-Fong, the police chief, is a rare middle-aged female character with both bending and secular power. She also gets moment of “waaaah” during the series usually given over to male characters.

Even Tenzen’s family are not afterthoughts. There’s a moment early on when Tenzen and Korra are arguing. Miffed, Tenzen forbids his eldest daughter from being like that, which she wisely refuses to guarantee.

The plot is jam-packed and, as a result moves a teeny bit too fast at the end, but that’s honestly one of only three quibbles I have.

Quibble the first: City Council Members who are clueless sheep. Politicians might follow the money, but darn few of them are clueless sheep. They might be delusional, insane or incompetent, but not too many people are going to make a City Council without *some* presence.  At least make Tarrlok an amazing speaker or something to convince me they were convinced that the worst ideas ever were good. (“Why yes, let’s pass a law that does the very thing the enemy is accusing us of doing! That’s a great idea!”)

Quibble the second: Nothing personal to Mako, and he didn’t have to stay with Asami, but I can think of several ways in which he and Korra did not have to end up together and the story would have ended better. Also, how vexing that Asami, who is a very decent character, is basically brought in just to end up being Korra’s rival. Snooze. I want Asami to be avenged by being a major character next time.

Quibble the third: Aang’s BS about Korra connecting with her spiritual self. Yes, I realize time was running out, but really, 5 more seconds (hey, cut out the Mako scene and you’d have had plenty of time) for the right kind of epiphany and it would have been awesome.

Other than those small things, I genuinely enjoyed the heck out of this series. Korra was definitely my definition of a “strong female lead”. (You can read a discussion of my definition in my review of Bandette.) If I had a girl child, she’d get this series and kung-fu lessons for her birthday. (With a teacher that understands why Aang was wrong!) Highly recommended.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Characters – 9
Story – 8

Overall – 9

Bolin was my fave character, he just said what needed to be said.