Archive for the Yuri Network News Category


Yuri Network News – May 1, 2010

May 1st, 2010

Yuri Manga

Comic Lily is undergoing a name change to Comic Lily Plus. So, if you’ve been following this anthology, the next volume is not Comic Lily, Volume 4, but Comic Lily Plus, Volume 1.

Something Kaishaku this way comes! YNN Correspondent Katherine reports on their new work Zettai Shoujo Amnesium. It’s Chikane and Himeko all over again, and I mean that literally – the leads are Chikane and Himeko.

Saving our sanity in fifteen different ways, Hayate x Blade, Volume 12 is hitting the shelves in a few weeks. Thank heavens.

And for those of you sticking it out, Manga no Tsukurikata, Volume 3 is probably going to be about the same level of ambiguous as it has been so far, until it’s not.

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Even More Maria-sama ga Miteru Movie News

The Mantan Website has a photo gallery of the actresses for the Maria-sama ga Miteru movie. Let the pointless criticism and conjecture begin!

By the way, if you missed the Maria-sama manga when it came out the first time, the first omnibus volume of the manga is coming out. Looks like there’ll be three volumes total.

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Snatches of Yuri

I have to admit, this one made me laugh – Aika Zero is out and has Yuri, presumably. Yes – it’s that Aika. The whole panty shot-a-second Aika. This time it takes place in a girls’ school with rosaries and the whole schtick. It’s from Gum Comics, so you know it’s gonna be classy.

Bato-Supi is about two girls in the “Battle Spirits” card game club at school and the funny sexual harassment that happens there.

Okay, I’m in on Shitsuji Shoujo to Ojou-sama. (That’s “The Girl Butler and Her Mistress” to you.) I don’t really care that it will probably be about nothing. :-)

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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 Network News – April 24, 2010

April 24th, 2010

While I enjoy the delights of Pittsburgh’s Comic Con, you can enjoy the delights of *not* being at Pittsburgh’s Comic-Con!

Yuri Manga

YNN Correspondent Erin S. wants us all to know that Comic Yuri Hime will be going bimonthly. (Insert obligatory “bi” jokes” here.) This is excellent news on all levels.

And YNN correspondent Sean G gleefully points out that Adam Arnold of Seven Seas wrote about plans for Hayate x Blade and why Strawberry Shake Sweet never got over here on the Shoujoai-Archive Forums.

I’d like to take this opportunity to once again address the issue of fan paranoia. Companies are NOT out to get you, screw you or otherwise do you in. Please, I beg you all, stop assuming the worst of every company. There is no company in the western manga industry that is doing anything other than doing their *very* best – with exceedingly limited resources – to bring you manga to read. Support them, stand by them, give them encouragement. Assuming the worst of them all the time is horribly disheartening to the people who are trying hard to do the best they can. Seven Seas has been honest, friendly, approachable and their quality has been top notch from beginning to end. They are also a business, so of course sometimes they will make decisions you don’t like, but I can guarantee that are doing their best to publish what they think you want to buy. Making them your enemy is weird and delusional. (Note to the extra frothy commenters that will follow this statement – seriously, it’s you. If you are getting THAT worked up about being denied something that is a comic book…it’s you.)

I completely forget to mention that a new series started in Ultra Jump that has some Yuri-service. It’s called “Sayonara Summer” and I think the service will be a regular feature, as the female protagonist professes to like girls. And she has some serious issues with baseball, as well. It looks interesting – if it becomes something worth watching, I’ll make sure to point it out.

Erin S. also want to make sure you know that Yotsuhara Furiko’s Sleeping Beauty is available for your reading pleasure.

The third volume of Watashi no Taisetsuna Tomodachi by Hakamada Mera is also out. One of the odd things about Mera’s work is that I always forget that she’s got all these series out there and then am surprised all over again when they pop pack into the news report. :-)

And I’m sure that someone is interested in knowing that the third volume of Creo the Crimson Crisis is available.

And I’m not sure if I told you that the Shoujo Yuri anthology will be getting a second volume or not. Well, it is. And this one will include stories by Kitao Taki and Mitou Kana, also known as Sakuraike, so at least two stories will definitely be good. :-) If there was anything that might tempt me to buy another volume – that was it.

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Yuri Anime

Media Blasters is streaming dubbed episodes of Magic Knight Rayearth on Hulu. They already have Ikkitousen available on the video streaming service. Go Media Blasters! Work those properties, you sexy thangs.

I started to watch Seikon no Kwaser, but when I started tasting bile, I stopped. Guest Review fodder if ever there was.

Yuri has also reared it’s gothic head in the newest Precure property, Heartcatch PreCure. There’s definitely *something* between Dark Cure and Cure Moonlight. I like to pretend it’s a relationship. :-)

A new anime for this year, called Tamayura, has some serious potential, as well. It’s been on all the Yuri lists, has the staff that worked on Aria and Satou Junichi for a director. In a waterfront town, a girl who loves taking pictures, ends up taking a picture of a fairy-like girl and her life is changed. It sounds sweet, and the buzz is that the Yuri will be a major-ish part of the story.

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Snatches of Yuri

In Literary – Mikaze High School Literary Club, the Belles Letters club of a school includes and encourages all genres – including BL and GL. The art kind of put me off, but I think I’m going to give this one a try.

YuyuShiki, Volume 2, is a 4-koma with skinship and possible actual Yuri interest. Volume 2 seems to up the level somewhat.

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Other LGBT News

In what I think surely must win the “Whuh…?” Award this week, Archie Comics has introduced a gay character, Kevin. Just to add to the “Whuh…?” factor, he comes out first to Jughead. In my childhood, Jughead would have responded to a comment like, ‘I’m gay” with something high-larious like, “Well you sure seem happy to me!” but that’s an ancient Jughead. This one cleverly plans to use disinformation to shame Veronica. How 90210 of him.

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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!





Garo Exhibit at the Center for Book Arts

April 23rd, 2010

Garo was an experimental, independent manga magazine that ran from 1964-2002. The Center for Book Arts Exhibit covers the first decade of publication.

I attended the exhibit with manga artist Rica Takashima, who provided some interesting perspective on this influential magazine during it’s first decade of existence.

To understand where we are, it’s important to see where we’ve been. The Garo exhibit allows one to see and experience the turbulence of the 1960s and early 70s through the eyes of young Japanese artists. Intensely personally narratives, side-by-side with historical drama and tales of the eerie, provide a fascinating insight into a formative period of independent Japanese manga art.

Rica and I spoke about the magazine and about our lives as we walked around the space.

ELF: What are your impressions of Garo?

RT: I first encountered Garo when I was about 10 years old, in a book store. Manga artist Tsuge Yoshiharu was very popoular at the time, so I wanted to try it. It was very strange and weird – which was attractive to me. I tried to read it, but I couldn’t understand it. I decided to try again in a few years. When I was in middle school, I bought a few issues, but again, I really couldn’t understand it. I tried again in high school, but at that time June magazine was beginning to be published, and I ended up reading that instead. At that time, there was a New Wave in music and also in manga. Punk and New Wave music magazines were strongly linked with manga. Like Nagai Go’s work in Heavy Metal magazine, it shifted the focus of manga into new territory.”

Standing in front of a case that showed covers of the “Legend of Kamui,” we realized that, as groundbreaking as Garo was, we had no idea that it featured “Legend of Kamui” and some of Mizuki Shigeru’s “Kitaro” stories as well as the more well-known gekiga artists like Tatsumi Yoshihiro.

“Because I was so young when I tried to read Garo,” Rica said, as we observed many pages that showed violence against women, “I didn’t understand it, but it scared me.” Even though these manga stories were meant to be seen as non-pori – non-political – as adults we couldn’t fail to see the gender politics built into them.

We looked at stories that chronicled the Vietnam War protests in universities across Japan. “Something always blew the protests up into riots. At the time, I wondered why people couldn’t just calm down a little, but there were riots all the time in the news,” Rica said, pointing out an image that an American might think showed riot police, but in Japan represented the student forces, armed with a sword and wearing a helmet with a face shield. “To me the protests seemed so weird, since the college students were angry about different things, like Vietnam and the American presence in Okinanwa, but they would become the same thing.” We agreed that it’s human nature to conflate issues and anger at change becomes anger at many other things.

There were few women who contributed to Garo and only one regular contributor who was a woman. Both Rica and I noted that sex was a prominent theme – not surprising for a magazine created by young men. But the boy’s club atmosphere began to wear on us, as we realized that stories of female experience were mostly absent. Even in scenes where pro- and anti-Vietnam arguments were presented, the absence of women in the conversation was pretty noticeable. Curator Ryan Holmgren mentions “how, despite its commitment to political activism between 1964 and 1966, its continuing sympathies with the left until about 1970, and its experimentation with form and theme, Garo was highly regressive when it came to gender and sexuality issues, more and more so in the early 70s. “

As Rica and I walked the room for the second time, we talked about how Garo was chronicling what I think of as my “shadow childhood.” These events were all happening, I said as I pointed to a copy of Abandon the Old in Tokyo, while you and I were alive. Watergate, Vietnam….but we were very young, and so while it was always there, we weren’t old enough to understand. These are the stories of the shadows behind our youth. She agreed.

Surrounded by the past, we both are of a mind that that this is the best of all possible times to live – we still have access to the roots of manga, we can enjoy the present and we can look forward to a future of new stories that have yet to be told.

The Garo exhibit was small – but the conversation we had there was huge. If you are at all interested in manga, in independent art, in the way that past and present connect through books, printing and/or art, this exhibit comes highly recommended.





Yuri Network News – April 17, 2010

April 17th, 2010

Yuri Anime

Media Blasters has announced that Queen’s Blade will get a dub track. Because you’re watching it for the great dialogue. lol (Oh, and a quick note to those of you who know and care about Media Blasters, Chet and John are still there and say hi.)

Other Yuri News

YNN Correspondent ashi pointed out that the Crunchyroll Newsletter addressed the question “Why is there more Yuri these days?” Yuricon Mailing List Member Jacob summed it up well when he said, “Maybe it is because such relationships are more accepted. Maybe because it sells. But probably both.”

However…based on the conversation about “Fufu” on 2chan, I would say that same-sex relationships are nowhere near being accepted in Yuri fandom. The channel was split between people who insisted that Yuri and lesbian are the same (which they clearly are not) and those who said plainly that they don’t want lesbians in their Yuri. Which leaves – there’s more Yuri because it sells.

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Yuri Manga

Tsubomi 6 is out next month and the next issue of Comic Yuri Hime is out now. This is the issue in which Morinaga Milk makes her reappearance with a color illustration. It also has the return of Ame-iro Kouchakan Kandan for those of us who have missed it.

Also coming from Ichijinsha is Yuri Hime Selection 2. The first volume of this was a collection of random stories and one-shots from Yuri Shimai that didn’t have enough chapters to be collected into a volume by one artist. I’d assume that this second volume is the same for Yuri Hime stories.

And while we’re on an anthology kick – new Yuri Anthology Hirari is also out this month.

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Snatches of Yuri

Award winning author Asakura Takuya has written a 2-novel series about two women who meet again after 15 years and find that their feelings for one another have, if anything, grown more intense. Old Friends Volume 1 and Volume 2 might appeal to the more adult readers among us.

A live action movie called GL – Little Witches Labyrinth looks just about as pandering as a non-porn can look. I would not expect quality.

Nekokami Yaoyoruzu is a cat-eared lolicon god comedy from Champion Red Comics, about a cute god who lives in a shrine in a little town’s antiques shop.

Another novel series that seems of interest is Kimi ha Boku wo about a town with a thriving shopping center and two girls that live there. Volume 2 is especially Yuri-riffic, but if I tell you why, it’ll spoil volume 1. ;-) If you can read the book, you can read the synopsis on Amazon JP.

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Other News

I was not able to attend MocCCA’s festival this year, but the last time I did, I wrote about a very talented woman named Margot Dabaie. Well this year, her book The Hookah Girl and Other True Stories: Growing Up Christian Palestinian in America made the “best comics from the 2010 MoCCA Art Festival” list on the New York Daily News! Congrats Margot!

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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 Network News – April 10, 2010

April 10th, 2010

More Maria-sama ga Miteru Movie News

Courtesy of YNN correspondent senbei, here is more information on the Live-Action Maria-sama ga Miteru Movie:

From Eiga.com News –

Work has begun on a live action film version of Konno Oyuki’s popular teen novel series Maria-sama ga Miteru. Starring Miki Honoka (未来穂香 [born March 7th 1997, a resident of Chiba]), a model attached to the fashion magazine Love Berry; and Haru (波瑠 [born June 17th 1991, a resident of Tokyo]), a model attached to the fashion magazine Seventeen.

Based on the original light novel work (boasting sales of 5.4 million copies), the series was made into a much-discussed anime by TV Tokyo. Terauchi Koutarou (director of the recent films Karasuko Raida and Ikemen Bank: The Movie [as well as the 2006 film, Boys Love]) , takes the megaphone again as director of this film. Ostensibly, the content of the movie is based on the thirty-seven published volumes as well one volume [series?] of manga.

The stage is set at Lillian Girl’s School—a preeminent Catholic women’s school in Japan. Here there exists a system of bonding between upper classmen and underclassmen known as the soeur system. The story centers on the Yamayurikai: the student council organization of youth on campus. As the film opens, Fukuzawa Yumi (played by Miki), an ordinary female high school student, is called to stop by her upper classmen, Ogasawara Sachiko (played by Haru). Here in depicts a complete change in her daily life at the academy.

Miki, the chosen lead, innocently comments, “I am very very happy. Thinking back, I had said, ‘I want to work as an actress my whole life.’ I think it’s fate that I got this performance.” With considerable enthusiasm she went on, “Maria-sama ga Miteru is my fated film [debut]. With no less than all the energy I can muster, I will strive to tackle this role. I want this to be a good performance,” she added.

Regarding Miki’s costar, Haru, she told us that, “While on the one hand I’m happy, I’m also surprised to find myself asking, ‘Am I good enough?’ Even just in the role of “Oneesama,” one gets the sense of being a lean, well-bred woman. So as not to disappoint fans of the original work, I want to bring that visual Sachiko and my internalized Sachiko as close together as possible.”

Maria-sama ga Miteru will be distributed by Jolly Roger and open in theaters [in Japan] this autumn.

Thank you so much for this translation, senbei – we’re all very appreciative of your efforts on our behalf! :-)

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Yuri Anime

On the Yuricon Mailing List, YNN correspondent Nick P pointed out that Blue Drop is going to get an English-language dub courtesy of an “upgrade” program from Sentai Filmworks.

Crunchyroll has announced that they’ve licensed Shin Koihime Musou 2nd. Here’s hoping for more cringe-making Yuri-service. :-)

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Yuri Manga

Okazu Superhero and YNN Correspondent Eric P. calls our attention to news that Seven Seas has announced omnibus collections for Hayate x Blade and Strawberry Panic!, and has rescued some other Dengeki Daioh titles that had lapsed licenses.

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Other Yuri News

YNN Correspondent Erin S. gladly shares a link to the Toranoana website with a description and pictures of the Fujieda Miyabi art exhibit that I was able to attend while in Tokyo. Although the exhibit is over, the pictures give you at least an idea of what it looked like.

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Other News

Neither of these are related to Yuri in any way, but I thought them of interest – in Japan, a mangaka named Shuho Satou who has had issues with several of the larger publishing companies, started publishing his work online directly with a fair amount of success. Now he has launched MangaWebOnline.com, a site for other manga creators who want to take their work directly to their audience.

And in North America, several former Tokyopop OEL creators have teamed up to do exactly the same thing with Bento Comics.

In both cases, while right now these can be seen as the online equivalent of an artists’ cooperative, if successful will find themselves in the position of becoming a publishing entity. I think it’s worth keeping your eyes on both these efforts to see where the future of manga may very well lie. There’s a real possibility that webcomics and manga are about to give birth to some really interesting kids.

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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!