Yuri/LGBTQ Publications

Our top story today is awesome indeed.  Sarah Frederick’s long-awaited, much anticipated, brand new English translation of the Yellow Rose story from Yoshiya Nobuko’s Hana Monogatari series is available on Kindle.  Buy it! Read it. Touch Yuri history. (If you’ve been a reader for a long time, you may also remember Dr. Frederick from our Yuricon events, or the fandom lectures series up at MIT, where she spoke about Revolutionary Girl Utena. (You can read the notes of all the lectures on the Yuricon Essays page.)

Yuri.pl’s Facebook page has information on the upcoming release of Morinaga Milk’s GIRL FRIENDS in Polish!

Sparkler Monthly is ramping up their 2015 subscription efforts, with an eye to getting through the end of the year. If you’ve ever thought, “I want to support the manga industry, but there’s not enough I like,” then you’ll be pleased to know that our voices are being heard at Sparkler. “Before You Go” their Yuri one-shot, (now two-shot) is one of their top sellers, and they get the message loud and clear. You want more Yuri? More importantly, you want a venue in which up and coming Yuri artists in the west have a place to publish Yuri? Throw a happy meal a month at these folks and we’ll get more Yuri. It’s  that simple.

DC’s Kelly Sue DeConnick is spearheading a new all-girl comic anthology. Right now Dirty Diamonds has an Open Call for Submissions.  Do IT. Send your work in. Immediately.

Robert Kirby writes a nice little piece over at The Comics Journal: What Was So Queer About Comics in 2014, with a nod to the PoC who were queer creators of note as well.

Senior YNN Correspondent Erin S. points us towards  another same-sex webcomic of note, OWLS, by Martin Ernsten.

For the completists out there, a Yuri Kuma Arashi mook, Yuri Kuma Arashi Starting Guide (ユリ熊嵐 公式スターティングガイド) with lots of pretty Morishima Akiko-sensei’s art is (via Comic Natalie).

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Yuri Anime

YNN Senior Correspondent Eric P. has written in with a pile of anime news!

Aniplex USA announced a limited edition bilingual blu-ray/DVD hybrid set for the Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie -Rebellion movie. Regional restrictions apply.

He also notes that Yuri Kuma Arashi is now available on Hulu.com.

And lastly, Eric reports on an ANN article announcing Kill La Kill will run on Cartoon Network’s Toonami slot in February.

In Japan, Mawaru Penguindrum (輪るピングドラム) is getting a Blu-Ray box set.

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Other News

The Yuricon website has just been given a quick facelift and we’re still working on a full refurbish of the Yuricon Shop. I wrote about that this week and we hit another major milestone on our Patreon campaign for the month! Thank you all! There’s two weeks in the month left to subscribe and get early access to Yuri scholarship.

Flame-Con, New York City’s first LGBTQ-focused comic convention has a date and a location! I’ll expect to see you all in NYC in June to help me bring the Yuri to Flame-Con. ^_^

YNN Correspondent Michi wants you all to know that LGBTQ idol group (Nagoya Sexual Minority) NSM=, has a, iTunes app these days. Appearances, songs, events calender, blog posts, Twitter feeds all in one handy place for iProduct users.

Twitter user Pe Kare caught a glimpse of a Sono Hanabira itasha (decorated car) on NHK’s coverage of winter Comiket. ^_^

io9 has a lovely collection of Korra x Asami fan art to fulfill your Korrasami needs.

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Know some cool Yuri News you want people to know about? 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!

Let’s see what the Yuri Network is doing this week!

Yuri Manga

Seven Seas has announced the license for Akuma no Riddle: Riddle Story of a Devil, with an Autumn 2015 release date.

Okazu readers in Japan might want to look at the new online manga magazine service that Amazon JP is launching for Kindle. Based on current region issues, I don’t expect we’ll be able to access it outside Japan. ^_^;

Comic Natalie reports Oiwa Kenji is launching a new Yuri fantasy in GUM magazine called “Aka to Ao no Ehrenberg”. (Thanks Orphireus, for the clarification.) Just a heads up, despite the pretty color picture on the news article – GUM is where Ikkitousen runs. Just so you know what to expect. ^_^

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Yuri Anime

Yurikuma Arashi launched this week. I haven’t had a chance to see it yet, but please share your spoiler-free opinions in the comments!

ANN has the scoop on the second Psycho-Pass movie trailer.

While Hollywood is busy white-washing Ghost in the Shell by giving Scarlet Johansson the lead, Studio IG is releasing a new animated GitS movie in summer 2015. Check out the trailer and sigh with relief.

ANN also has the second Ikkitousen: Extravaganza Epoch trailer for us.

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Other News

Out in the real world, Vietnam has abolished their same-sex marriage ban, becoming the first Asian country to allow same-sex marriages!

Marcy Cook has an article on the The Mary Sue with 10 Rules for Making a Transgender Superhero. (Of which we need more, so get to it!)

In a transparent, but welcome, effort to compete with Marvel’s wonderful Ms. Marvel, Kamala Khan, DC is launching a new Power Girl, sans boob window or Aryan looks. Tanya Spears looks awesome as a young WoC superheroine, let’s keep our fingers crossed that they give her the writing team she – and her readers – deserve.

The LGBTQ Rights Index page Equaldex has launched a new page tracking LGBTQ Kickstarters. If you’re looking for a good cause, or want to support a LGBTQ artist but don’t know where to start – check it out!

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Know some cool Yuri News you want people to know about? 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!

Here we are at the first news report of what already looks to be a really busy year. ^_^

Yuri Manga

And to start I have some really wonderful news. Last month, I received a tweet from the creator of GUNJO, Nakamura Ching-sensei, tell me that she was launching new manga online and the topic was Lesbian Life!  You can imagine how excited I was.

In fact, she has launched 3 new titles online! All three have sample chapters, up, and are being sold through Note.mu.

Okaasan Futariitemo iikana? ~ Lesbian no Mama Seikatsu (お母さん二人いてもいいかな！？~レズビアンのママ生活~) 800￥

Rezu to Nanajin no Kanojotachi (レズと七人の彼女たち) 600￥

Mienai Me to Onaji Dessho  (会えない日と同じでしょ) 500￥

Check out the samples. Yay we’re getting more comic from Nakamura-sensei! (Note: I don’t seem to be able to get Note.mu to take my overseas credit card, but I’ll keep trying.)

In Yuri Hime Comics news, Ohsawa Yayoi’s latest collection Spice Girls (スパイスガールズ)  has a mid-January release date, as does, Nakahara Tsubaki’s  Himitsu, Hitotsu (ひみつ、ひとつ),  and the first volume of Amano Shuninta’s new series Ayame 14 (あやめ14 ). The January issue of Comic Yuri Hime is already on shelves, and the March issue is available for pre-order.

And, the final volume of Takemiya Jin’s high school series from Rakuen Le Paradis magazine, Omoi no Kakera, Volume 3, had a Christmas street date.

I hadn’t been paying attention, but Morita-san ha Mukichi (森田さんは無口) is still going strong. We’re up to Volume 9 of this cute one-joke gag comic.

The final volume of Golondrina (ゴロンドリーナ), Est Em’s epic bullfighting manga is available. I’m dying to read it!

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Yuri Anime

Otaku USA reports that Funimation has licensed Yuri Kuma Arashi for digital simulcast in the USA and Crunchyroll has picked it up for non-North American regions. I’m sorry to say this news doesn’t actually make me happy. Funimation’s site is terrible. It’s organized badly, rarely works and is frustrating to use. If they want to position themselves as a digital anime channel, they have got to get off their asses and develop the damn thing properly. ANN takes a look at the creepy online countdown to the anime. Eric P has reminded me that Funimation series can be watched at Hulu.com, so we can avoid the agita. ^_^

We have a trailer for  Sailor Moon Crystal‘s second arc,  (which I will continue to think of as ‘R’) with a brief look at Sailor Pluto!

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Other News

I really, really want everyone to read Noah Berlatsky’s article in The LA Review of Books The Virtues of Know-Nothing Criticism. Noah hits the ball out of the park on this one, discussing how “knowing a lot about a series” or “having read/watched all the canon material” /= expertise and expertise and perspective can come from a lot of different sources and still be very relevant to a niche fandom.

In a fandom, it’s quite often that new fans or younger fans or female fans in a space that male fans presume is theirs are challenged to “prove” their expertise in series ephemera, or time dedicated. Not only is this childish gatekeeping, it ignores the wider existence of expertise, experience and plain old knowledge about something that also exists outside the pages of >this comic<. Really, please read this article.

In case you missed it, we started off 2015 here at Okazu with a frank discussion about our place is our comics ecosystem and how we can help keep this industry sustainable: Supporting Your Comics Ecosystem in 2015

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Know some cool Yuri News you want people to know about? 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!

Welcome to the final Yuri Network News of 2014! Before we move on with the news, I want to stop and thank all of you who have sent in Yuri-related news over the past year, my trusted YNN Correspondents – and a special shoutout to our Senior YNN Correspondents, Erin S. and Grizsnak, who have really been pulling out the stops this year. Thanks to all of you – you make this a great Yuri Network!

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 Yuri Anime

ANN has the third Yuri Kuma Arashi trailer up for our perusal. A plot seems to have been settled on. A plot idea, anyway. (Crunchyroll adds in some Christmas-themed logos and art from Morishima-sensei and Twitter.)

Back to ANN for this amusing note – DLE is streaming Frogman’s Rose of Versailles parody shorts which are highly amusing.

And again ANN reports Non Non Byori is getting a second anime season.

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LGBTQ Comics

Via Jennifer Camper, grab a hold of this LGBTQ comics collection by Side by Side, the first ever of it’s kind in Russia.

Via YNN Senior Correspondent Erin S. we have a webcomic with fairies and witches called Gay Birds by Mariana S. Costa.

Not necessarily LGBTQ, but ass-kicky and interesting, webcomic Princess Retribution has a kickstarter to collect and print all five volumes as a GN.

Japanese TV Talent Ichinose Ayaka, whose public coming out was accompanied by the creation of a manga called Real Bian, has just announced her impending marriage ceremony and a desire for it to *not* be merely a ceremony, but to be accompanied by actual rights. The fight, my friends, is on. It’s going to be a slow one, but this is the opening round.

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Sailor Moon

I am not the only person obsessed with crossing King Arthur and Sailor Moon! Yay! Next time you want a fix of archetypes being all archetypical, check out my Courtly Tales of Crystal Tokyo series and cap it off with Studiodisa’s Holy Avenger Sailor Moon art!

And because I’m in the mood, here’s a link to some Sailor Uranus/Neptune Korra/Asami crossover art by Sleepy Senshi. It’s kind of obvious who the artist thinks is the most confident in each couple. ^_^

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Other Stuff

You need this Youtube cut of Japanese female metal bands. I don’t consider them all metal, but some sound pretty darn good.

And I know you need to watch io9’s supercut of Super Sentai heroines transforming. Obviously.

Balogun has put together a nifty list of 10 Black Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists I’d Love to Work With (or work with again)! The art and links are fantastic, go click, read, think, buy, fan at.

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Coming up, it’s time for our Top Ten Lists of 2014! I wonder what I’ll write? ^_^

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Know some cool Yuri News you want people to know about? Become a Yuri Network Correspondentby 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!