Archive for the Artists Category


I Wanna Be Your Girl, Volume 4

October 11th, 2026

Two girls standing in front of a classroom blackboard. They are both smiling broadly.

by Eleanor Walker, Okazu Staff Writer

This review contains spoilers.

Being in love with your best friend is hard, but being a good friend is even harder. The final volume of the hit manga series about the complications of friendship, first loves and what it truly means to be an ally.

Childhood best friends Hime and Akira are finally ready to make up. After a big fight about a boy, and about what ‘being a girl’ means to them both, Hime and Akira have done the work to accept themselves and each other.

At the end of volume 3 of I Wanna Be Your Girl, reviewed here on Okazu, along with volume 1  and volume 2, Hime vows to face Akira head on and sure enough, in I Wanna Be Your Girl, Volume 4, the final volume, we finally get a confession. Both girls are able to open up and be honest with each other, which is wonderful. Hime reveals that she’s been in love with Akira for a long time, and Akira reveals she wasn’t actually that interested in Hasegawa-senpai, she just thought that having a crush on a boy was a normal teenage girl thing to do (Disclaimer, I am not trans but I am definitely not straight and I too pretended to have a crush on an older boy when I was in my first year of high school because I was trying desperately to fit in…)

I went into this volume hoping that we’d get a confession, then Hime and Akira would get together and everyone would live happily ever after. Life isn’t always that simple though, and I respect the decision to not just go for the fairytale happy ending. The whole series continues to be an excellent look at being a teenager and I recommend it wholeheartedly on that basis. The series then ends with Hime and Akira graduating from high school and then the final two chapters act as a sort of epilogue where we get to see everyone as adults. Even Hamuro-senpai who I wasn’t keen on in the previous volume becomes a lot more interesting once he’s given a bit of time to develop.

Overall, I’m satisfied with the ending even if the starry eyed teenager in me just wanted Hime and Akira to get together. What I do think is important though, is the acknowledgement of all kinds of relationships. Akira describes her and Hime’s relationship as “Not lovers and not just friends.” and I think more people could do with realising that some relationships just don’t fit into a neat little box. I hope that if you do read this series, you take that away from it, whatever your age.

Story – 7
Art – 6.
Characters – 7
Service – n/a
LGBTQ — 10

Overall – 7 but as always, probably an 8 if you’re a confused/closeted queer teenager looking for something to relate to.





Amayo no Tsuki, Volume 12 (雨夜の月)

October 8th, 2026

During a rainy night a tall girl with long, black hair wearing a baseball jacket in in red with white sleeves, meets a shorter girl with orange-brown collar-length hair, wear red sweat pants and jacket with white stripes on the arm and leg, under an umbrella.I just happened to notice the Amazon JP ratings when I was setting Amayo no Tsuki, Volume 12 (雨夜の月) up on the Yuricon Store and with several hundred ratings, it has 97% 5-star ratings.

It is really that good. 

This story has been about growth from the very beginning. Kanon was cocooned in a world of her own making, to protect herself from the outside world that did not care to understand her.  She let herself use her inability to hear to avoid things she did not want to deal with, and things she knew would hurt. Saki did not break those walls down, we learned from earlier volumes. Saki helped her want to break the walls on her own. Once she started to interact with people, and the people around her reached back for her, she stopped hiding in that world. Which meant, she faced feelings she had never had to feel before. 

Saki was hiding something from herself, as well.  She’s becoming more aware of her interest in other girls, but while an older gay women is able to see her right away, she’s still only taking tentative steps to acceptance. 

In many ways, adolescence is a kind of glass closet. Adults can see the people they may become, but it’s almost impossible to see it one’s self. In the case of Amayo no Tsuki, the closet is a one way mirror and both Saki and Kanon have not been able to see outside.

In Volume 12 all these things are about to change.

Saki will admit to herself who she is, and Kanon, will see herself from the outside for the first time and both will  come to the same conclusion.

And it it so, so good.

As an extra bonus, the trailer for the Amayo no Tsuki anime is live on Youtube! (I have a unsubstantiated theory that the trailer was being held until Volume 12 came out…for reasons. ^_^)

Ratings: 

Art -9
Characters – 10
Story – 10
Service -0
Yuri/queer – 10/10

Overall – 10

Volumes 1-8 of The Moon on A Rainy Night are available in English from Kodansha. Volume 9 will be hitting shelves in January 2027.





Wandering Son: Volumes One & Two

August 23rd, 2026

Reading an older manga can be very edifying. Re-reading an older manga even moreso.

I have written at length in many places here on Okazu and elsewhere about my conflicting feelings about Shimura Takako’s work. But as I re–re-read Wandering Son, which I initially started in Japanese and of which I reviewed a number of volumes in English, before the series was discontinued. I was, and am convinced that bringing it out in hardcover was a terrific idea, but no grounded in good business sense.

Now Fantagraphics is taking a second stab at bringing out this series. With much more staid covers, these are two-volume omnibuses, something that helps the story flow a lot better. This will become important in later volumes, as the plot slows and change also slows.

But here in Wandering Son, Volume One and Two, we meet Shu, a trans kid who AMAB is very strongly contemplating the idea that they are a girl. We also meet Yoshino, AFAB, who wants to be a man. I say it that way, very carefully, because issues of gender and gender presentation in this book is complicated… and maybe not what you as a reader might be looking for.

In part, this is due to Shimura who, for many years has been writing queer stories. I don’t object to her doing so, but she has said that she is not herself queer. And to be clear I don’t mind that, either! If it’s working and people find joy in it, that’s great. I love her art, and I have enjoyed watching her story-telling grow and change. So what is my pain point? I am conflicted at Shimura mining queer trauma for content. It makes me feel… icky. In this older series, her story-telling is not so skilled and there will be pacing issues, but also some choices that will sit uncomfortably.

All this to say that, while I absolutely think Wandering Son is worth reading it, like Sweet Blue Flowers may not have aged well. The last twenty years we have seen tremendous change in the way we approach gender and sexuality. There is so much more nuance now, leading me to think that, if Yoshino and Shu had met genderfluid or nonbinary people as well as trans people, their choices might have been less along a binary and more somewhere in the middle. I know if someone had to me at 11 or 12 that non-binary was an option, I know I would have leapt for that.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 8
Characters – 9
Yuri – 0

Overall – 8

Thanks so much to Fantagraphics for the review copy, and I really look forward to reading this series again!





Yuri Figure Drawing Salon and Flamecon in NYC Today!

August 15th, 2026

On an 8-bit like background of many colors, two girls illustrated in white, one with a red dress and bow in her hair, one with blue dress, witch's hat and broom.No YNN report for the next week or so, because we have entered “all the events all at once” season. ^_^

I will start my day today in Brooklyn, NY, at Yume, helping Rica Takashima out at her Yuri Touhou Figure Drawing Salon.

I’ll be bringing a small selection of doujinshi of several sizes for folks to look at from copybooks to zine style, to full color productions, so folks can see what artists in Japan are doing. 

Print options in Japan are astounding, and I will only be able to bring a few books, but if you ever get a chance to visit a Comic Market or doujinshi show in Japan, I highly recommend it!

 

 

Today and tomorrow is Flamecon, this year at the Marriott Marquis Times Square! The event is from 12:00 to 6:00 PM both days. I have a press pass and I am really hoping to get there for a while this evening. Check out these great panels!

Graphic Pride: Celebrating BL, Yuri, & LGBTQ+ Manga with Kodansha on Sunday at 1PM.

I’m hoping to make Queer Rage & Queer Joy: A Comics Reading Slideshow at 4PM today.

Also comics focused:

All Grown Up: Queer Comics for Adults

LGBTQ+ Representation in Comics for Youth

 

And anime!

Behind The Magic of Witch Hat Atelier with Coco (Anjali Kunapaneni) & Kodansha

Plus a ton of other game (gayme?) TV show, cartoons, crossplay and other media-related panels. It is a weekend of LGBTQ+ fun! Hope to see you there!





Pink Candy Kiss, Volume 5

August 10th, 2026

Two women stand close to each other in an intimate way, both facing the camera. The one on the left has long hair, the one on the right has short hair.

by Eleanor Walker, Okazu Staff Writer.

This review WILL contain spoilers.

It’s taken 5 volumes of Pink Candy Kiss, but we finally got the confession. It’s mutual, it’s as messy as everything which has come before and it’s all the better for it. The author says in the afterword “If it feels rough and ugly to you, then as the author, I’m pleased.” This is what I like so much about this series, it does feel rough and ugly sometimes, but it feels real because of that.

I worried in my review of volume 4 also here on Okazu that there was only so long the story could go without a confession, so I’m glad it’s finally happened. It happens at the end of the book and the rest of the volume leading up to it is mostly Ema and Takara talking to other people about their situation and feelings for each other. There are some other important moments though, like when Ema finally tells her mother she doesn’t want her in her life any more, which really shows how much she’s grown.

Hario comes to Takara’s office and they end up going for lunch together, when he voices his unease about Ema to her. We learn a little more about how he and Ema ended up getting together, and how he feels now. Whilst he is grateful for her new found confidence since Takara came back into her life, he also feels uneasy but can’t think why. He’s probably too naive to think his wife is in love with another (wo)man, but it’s going to have to come out eventually.

Pink Candy Kiss continues to be one of my favourite ongoing series. I will, of course, be picking up the next volume to find out what the fallout  is, but at this point, I have to wonder if anyone is going to get a happy ending.

Ratings: 

Art – 7. It’s still a shame there aren’t colour pages with the chapter art on.
Story – 7. Not a lot happened but at the same time an awful lot happened
Characters – 10 
Service – None. It still doesn’t need it. 
Yuri – 10

Overall – 8