Archive for the Yuri Network News Category


Yuri News This Week – October 11, 2008

October 11th, 2008

Not my best week ever, that’s for sure. Yesterday, on my first day not working, I decided to catch up on yard work that had gone undone for 4 months. (Getting a lawn service in around here is like pulling teeth. My backyard is teeny and unruly and not worth their time, apparently.) Just as I finished the first thing I had to do, I landed wrong on my leg and fell with a dislocated knee. Yep. So now, instead of spending this week cleaning up the yard and house and generally setting my life in order, I’m sitting here on the sofa with my leg in a brace. Sigh. But on to better things!

Yuri Anime

Eric P writes in to let you all know that Media Blasters is releasing a Kashimashi ~ Girl Meets Girl box set. I’m glad that they are. It makes sense for short-run anime. The folks at MB tell me that other box sets are not out of the question. No promises or hints, just that it’s not out of the question for other Yuri series.

The Pre-order for the 2nd season of Maria Watches Over Us (originally titled Maria-sama ga Miteru ~ Haru) is now up on the Yuricon Shop! The second season is coming out next month. (Wonder if they’ll give us a fun freebie this time, too?)

ashi reminds us that Lyrical Nanoha Season 1 boxes are slated to come out in November. Keep your eyes open for that – and for news of the new Nanoha movie, the character designs for which have already caused controversy among people with very little else to do. lol

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Other Yuri News

Interviews are flying thick and fast these days. Catch a completely different sort of interview with me at Comics Structuralist, where I was asked questions that focused more on the sociological ramifications of Yuri than on the usual “so, how did you get into Yuri?” type things I usually get.

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Yuri Events

Once more plugging MangaNEXT where Rica Takashima will be doing an Aozora Art Project that you – yes *you* – can participate in.

Feeling Much Better Through Manga Art

There are times when we are too busy or too shy to say “thank you” or “I’m sorry” to the people who deserve to hear how we really feel. Once the moment is lost, it is usually gone forever. In “Feeling Much　Better Through Manga Art,” members of the public get a chance to turn those lost moments and unexpressed sentiments into works of art. Participants write their apologies or appreciations on life-sized dialogue balloons, and then posed for portraits by Aozora Art staff. These pictures are incorporated by Rica Takashima into unique, one-page manga book stories, thus transforming the participant into the protagonist in his or her own visual storyline, and their message into a therapeutic fusion of personal expression and contemporary art. People of all ages can use this opportunity to express a whole range of thoughts and feelings, from the poignant to the profound. So please visit Rica in the Artist Alley and make your own manga story!

Join Rica, Yuri artist Jess B, myself and the usual cast of Yuricon characters in the Artist Alley at MangaNEXT from 10/31 – 11/2 in Somerset, NJ. It’s going to be a blast. :-)





Yuri News This Week – October 4, 2008

October 4th, 2008

Not much new Yuri anime coming out, but there’s plenty of places to get our fix. :-)

Yuri Anime

Viz and Joost have announced that they have done some deal or other, the details of which aren’t really interesting to anyone but them, but the bottom line is, we get free, legal, streaming video of Ikkitousen. Should we want it. :-)

Right Stuff announces another excitingly dynamic and really irritating new website, with the launch of the Aria webportal. Lots of moving postcards that morph into information, should you have the right browser.

Winterbraid tells us that El Cazador Volume 2 has been released in Poland. Winterbraid says of the series, “Volume 2 brings us episodes 6-10 and: more service on cover, more poor translation, more postcards. Well, maybe saying “poor” is too much; it certainly isn’t literary Polish, but the “I can bear it” to “uh…huh…” ratio is rather plausible in the few glimpses I took of it. Still, I can`t wait to witness the feast of linguistic creativity that will be the “okama” in the last episode. ^-^ And because we all want to put our fingers in the fire, I switched to gerdub for a few seconds… of course, you can’t judge the entire dub from, like, three seconds, but Nadie sounding twice her age was more than enough for me. ^-^;;” (Yes – we DO all want to put our fingers on the fire. I made it through about four words of the Mai Hime dub myself. lol)

The second episode of Shoujo Sect came out in Japan. The only thing I have to say about it is – harmonicas. (If you haven’t yet watched it, I know you just got the totally wrong idea when I said that. It’s not what you’re thinking at *all*. lol)

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Yuri Games

Amy K wants everyone to know that there’s a Yuri-related tabletop roleplaying game that’s been recently released entitled Maid: The Roleplaying Game. (Mostly she wanted a new category added to this report. lol) She points out that this game “is basically an emulation/parody of the maid/harem/etc. genre, and is intended to be “funny sexy”, if that’s possible. Oh, and the samples of play in the book are virtually all yuri-flavored, so it’s pretty clear the intention is that the maid PCs are intended to fall in love/seduce each other.” (Sounds great, doesn’t it? -_-; LOL)

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Yuri Webcomics

Webcomic fans should head over to Wickerman Studios and take a look at Gun Street Girl, an interesting fusion of lesbians, violence and magic. Three great tastes that go great together. lol I’ve liked what I read so far. Also, if you’re an aspiring writer, the good folks at Wickerman are looking for bloggers to write reviews at their other site, mangalife.com. They aren’t paying, but it might be good for comp copies of books, so if you’re the collector type it could be a good deal!

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Snatches of Yuri

And for the snatches file, this one is more for the gender-bendy crowd. Yen Press has released Angel Diary the story of an angel who was originally slated to be male, but made female to marry to the god of hell. She runs away to earth and hides as a boy. Wackiness ensues. It’s more of a fakey BL story, rather than the (to me) obvious Yuri path, but it seems pretty cute if you like female crossdressing and Gravitation-style pairings of boys. :-)

A manga called Kanojo-iro no Kanojo has blipped onto the Yuri radar. Looks like it certainly could contain Yuri, but I’m not getting my hopes too high.

On the other hand, AneImouto clearly has Yuri for the lesbian twincest and hentai crowds. It doesn’t sound very good, but I’ll let you know…should I just happen to accidentally add it to my next Amazon JP order. lol

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Yuri Events

MangaNEXT has officially announced that Yuri manga artist Rica Takashima will be a guest of the convention – and I just happened to have had lunch with her today. She’s got a really exciting art piece planned for the event, somethnig that you can all take home with you and enjoy. :-) I hope you’ll all join us for the only manga-focused convention in the US! MangaNEXT is happening on Oct 31-Nov 2 in Somerset, NJ. Visit their website for registration and hotel info.

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Other Yuri News

The Advocate article on Yuri hit the print edition this week and I’m told that the Blade article is now slated for November, so look for that when it comes out. The print version of the Advocate article has a lovely full-page cover image from Hatsukoi Shimai, some images from Shoujoai ni Bouken and a few pages from June Kim’s 12 Days reproduced in full. Visually, it was very good.

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Once again this week had seven days, seven nights and a ton of Yuri!





Yuri News This Week – September 27, 2008

September 27th, 2008

Yuri Events

I hope you can join me today for Morris County Author’s Day at the Morris County Library, and/or the Yuri Panel tonight at the New York Anime Festival!

Don’t miss the upcoming MangaNEXT Event, on Oct 31- Nov 2. Rica Takashima, creator of Rica ‘tte Kanji!? will be a guest at the event and will be at the Yuricon Table in the Artist’s Alley. Please don’t hesitate to drop by and ask her unanswerable difficult questions about lesbian life in Japan. She loves those. :-D

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Snatches of Yuri

Just *had* to tell you about a new manga called Escalation: Girls Inside the Walls which takes place in a girl’s reform school. Unlike the original Escalation series, it is not sweet, cute, or Yuri. There’s some marginal sexual harassment by the crazy butch character, so if that works for you, get it. :-) (Before you ask – yes, I got it. lol)

Soutenzen-iro Otome-gumi is a story of love among school girls, one of whom is “boyish.” With such an original plot, I know you’ll all want to run right out and read it!

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Maria-sama ga Miteru

Sarcastic weasel reminds us that a new Maria-sama ga Miteru web radio is up. This is the post-Lillian Festival issue, so hopefully, they’ll mention the anime. :-)

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Yuri in the News

I forgot to tell you this earlier. I was contacted by the LA Blade and The Advocate for interviews about Yuri. In a brilliant display of synchronicity, they contacted me the very same day, asked me all the same impossible to answer questions and then asked me for a pictures, contacts and lists for the next three weeks. It was actually pretty funny. The Advocate article is up online now and printed in the October 12 issue, no clue for the Blade.) The Advocate article is a pretty decent (if not 100% accurate in all things) article about the complexities that make it impossible to map the term “Yuri” to “lesbian” in any socio-politically meaningful way. More importantly, the illustration they chose for the article is a lovely picture of Yuricon mascot Yuriko kissing one of her pre-Midori paramours drawn by our own Kelli Nicely for Shoujoai ni Bouken: The Adventures of Yuriko, Volume 1.

We’re getting closer to my goal of total media domination. First Curve, then the Advocate, then …who knows? People magazine? Inquirer? Sky’s the limit. LOL

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That’s the Yuri News for September 27, 2008 – see you next week!





Yuri News This Week – September 20, 2008

September 20th, 2008

A happy birthday to two of the most important men in my life, Ed. Ed and Dad. You all owe my father, btw. It’s from him that I get many of the interests that make me the reviewer that I am. He fostered my love of comics, action flicks, sports and soft-core crap. lol Thanks Dad, and happy birthday!

Yuri Anime

By now many of you will have heard the big news…The 4th anime season of Maria-sama ga Miteru has been announced. Last Monday was the Autumn Lillian Festival where it was announced that the new season will begin in *January*. I have already been asked if I’m anticipating it – of course the answer is yes, but probably not as much as the rest of you. I now have to contend with the issue I feared all along – I’ve read the novels. I know what’s going to happen and have my own ideas about things. But, provided we get Shouko, and you get to see some of Touko’s true self, I’ll be happy.

Fans of Lucky Star will be want to view the online streamed “promotional video” (in the real world we call that a “commercial”) for the upcoming OVA. This OVA is rumored to be Konata x Kagami friendly – I note that the promotional art accompanying the above article has whichever one of them it is holding leeks, a popular Japanese Yuri meme. Before you write and express that you were right and I was wrong, let me remind you that I have never watched the series and have no opinion about it whatsoever. I do not see an overt K x K pairing in the OVA as validation of your interests, but as a catering to it in order to separate you from your money. Just wanted to be clear on that. Should it be true that they are paired in the OVA, my opinion will be that I am pleased that the collective whim of fandom has once again triumphed to put another Yuri couple on the map. :-)

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Yuri Events

Next Saturday, September 27, I will be at *two* events. In the early afternoon, I will be attending the Morris County Author’s Day at the Morris County Library, one of the best county libraries evar. I invite you all to come, get your books signed by the authors, ask us for advice, get advice which will not be of help to you, and check out the really excellent graphic novels section in the library (which is rather heavy in Yuri, due to yours truly. Whenever I review an English-language manga that I do not need to keep by my side, I donate it to the library. Everything but the crap. I encourage you to do the same. Libraries need and want your help.)

Immediately after the library event, I will wing my way over to Manhattan and the New York Anime Festival. I and Sean Gaffney will be running the Yuri Panel at 8PM on Saturday. It says in the program book that it is an 18+ event, but that is wrong. I’ve asked for and gotten permission to make it more open. The bottom line is, I don’t want to talk about sex – and especially not with you people. Anime and manga, yes, absolutely. We’ll talk about that till we’re hoarse. :-) Sex? No.

Also Maiden’s Garden, the Yuri doujinshi event, is coming up in Kyoto. As always, you can find all the latest Yuri Events on…the Yuri Events page on Yuricon!

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Yuri Manga

Friend of Yuri Eric P wrote in to let us know that he’s seen a preview of Hayate x Blade in his newest issue of Anime Insider magazine. He says it looks pretty funny. It is funny – and I can promise you that the second volume is even funnier. ^_^ (Off-topic, Eric also wrote an Evangelion review that has recently been posted on Anime News Network, so congrats, Eric!)

Yuri Hime S is once again out, this time accompanied by two collections, Hanjuku Onna by Akiko Morishima, and Gokujou Drops, by Mitsukuni Hachime. (Late breaking news. Erin tells us that these collections have been delayed and are now slated for *next month*. Thanks for the heads up!)

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Snatches of Yuri

Ririi no Kago (Basket of Lily,) looks to be a collection of stories about Girls’ Love. It is not a “lesbian” collection, a reviewer tells us, but it’s a good collection. This is a book, not a manga, fyi.

And one more book for the pile of novels that I will never get to, Yoshiya Nobuko’s Kuro Shoubi (thanks for the correction, Komatsu-san,) (Black Rose) tells the story of a young woman who goes to teach at an all-girl’s school and a student who falls in love with her. For what it’s worth, I am once again tackling Yaneura no Nishoujo, but Akiko is such a mopey girl. In the last scene she actually sat there for like 20 pages whining to herself. Ugh.

Hakamada Mera’s manga series Akatsuki-iro Senpuku Majyo (The Hidden Witch of the Dawn, I guess I’d translated it as) is much like the more well-known Last Uniform series, only this series takes place at a school of magic. Stories of friendship, love and Yuri, so pretty much the same old-same old in a different series.

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That’s it for this week. More already on the horizon, so come back next week for more Yuri News!





Yuri News This Week – September 13, 2008

September 13th, 2008

It’s a very, very light week, which is good, because I’m completely pie-eyed this AM. :-)

Yuri Anime

Right Stuff announces that you can preview the first episode of Aria on the DVD sampler included in the October 2008 issue of OTAKU USA magazine.

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Yuri Manga

In this month’s issue of Chopsticks magazine, friend of Yuri and manga translator Mari Morimoto wrote an article about the translated manga scene for the Japanese-American audience. Included in her list of “Best (Translated) Manga You Ought to Read” is ALC’s own Rica ‘tte Kanji!?. Thanks for the props, Mari! It was a pretty great article all around, so read the article on the Chopsticks website for a slightly different perspective on everything.

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I’ve got some Snatches of Yuri for you all, but I’m beat. Next week.

Send in any Yuri news you have to share and I’ll make sure it gets up here for the world to see.