Archive for the Doujinshi Category


Yuri Drama CD: @Around Kabukichou Shinjuku 0:00AM ~ Ena Saitou (＠新宿区歌舞伎町近辺午前0時)~ 齋藤恵那

April 26th, 2019

Today we’re looking at a lovely little Drama CD I picked up at Comitia last February. I’ve mentioned a number of times that the Yuri section was pretty large as compared with years past, and this last one, was especially sprawling. As we moved out of た into ち blocks, we came across a number of folks selling really unique items. Among those were circle doyondo (どよんど) who were selling an original Drama CD called @Around Kabukichou Shinjuku 0:00AM ~ Ena Saitou (＠新宿区歌舞伎町近辺午前0時)~ 齋藤恵那 by Taiyaki, Kokoro and Kudo Asa. Kudo-san voiced the main and only character, Ena…and she did a really decent job of it. It could not have been easy with no one to work off of.

The story begins with Ena, a high school girl, finding us, “oneesan” an older woman (maybe early twenties?) on the ground in the Kabukichou in Shinjuku at midnight. She asks if we are all right, but we are crying and Ena, who is a kind girl, says that we’ll make her cry. She picks us up, takes us to a hotel, because she can hardly bring us home and we tell her that we’ve had a bad break up with our girlfriend. Ena handles that with gentleness.

Each scenario is given a time and a place as a title: Shinjuku Kabukichou at a Hotel 2 AM; In front of the College Gates 6PM. As the scenarios develop we learn that Ena and we have kept in touch by text. Ena asks us for advice which she does not take because she doesn’t want to leave us. Eventually Ena tracks us down to tell us she likes us, can we go out? We say yes.

But as time passes, we’re being distant and Ena finds us, once again drunk in Kabukichou (I am not loving us right now….but I think we were just bumming because we were trying to “protect” her,) Ena tells us that she loves us and asks if we can make it more serious. Thankfully we say yes! We take Ena home and settle down together. For the last track “At Home The Future,” We make out a little and Ena asks us very cutely if she can call us by our given name.* This was an incredibly good and bad scene simultaneously, as poor Kudo-san had to make the kissing sound real by herself. She did better than I wanted to hear. ^_^; Honestly, I find listening to people kissing a little repulsive anyway. I skip those bit in movies a lot of the time.

For the cast talk, Kudo-san was joined by one of the writers, Taiyaki-san. They chatted about the creation of the story, and the manga of it, and how they’d like to turn it into an anime, of course! You can read the opening scene on Yuri Navi as part of their online Web Yuri Anthology Yuri “Toile” (WEB百合アンソロジー「トワール」 ).

You can also listen to the opening tack with Japanese subtitles on Youtube. Thanks redfish for the heads up that it’s also downloadable (at least within Japan) from booth.pm.

This was a delightful, well-acted story that was charming and engaging in a short time. I’m hoping I’ll get a chance to hear more of circle doyondo’s work!

Ratings:

Story – 8
Character – 9
Voice acting – 9
Service – 4 that one make out scene sounds like exactly what its supposed to be
Yuri – 9

Overall – 9

*As I mentioned yesterday in my reviews of Kyuusei End Contents Positive: Encount (九彩エンドコンテンツ), this was a repeated theme I’ve seen a few times recently. Is this…a new trope? /insert meme here/

So. Drunk onee-san are rapidly being set up to become the Yuri:2020 version of the cool upperclassman. It’s not going to make Yuri a queerer genre, but I’m finding it hard to complain. Get back to me in 8 years. ^_^

I’ve linked to the Toranoana e-shop to get this. If you are outside Japan, you probably will need a buying service.
This is unrelated, but I found it remarkable, so I will remark on it – Toranoana has an otaku wedding planning service. I think I like that.





Yuri Manga: Galette Meets, Issue 3 (ガレットmeets3)

March 15th, 2019

The third Galette Meets, the doujinshi put out by the folks at Galette Works, is a pretty healthy body of Yuri work.

With 8 stories for 120 pages, some by artists we know and love and others by new folks whose names we don’t yet know, it’s a great way to dip your toes into a wider range of stories featuring the emotional range of women. There’s sweet here and ugly and mean, and kind and romantic all dealt with by varying artists in different ways.

Ogawa Masumi’s story about a toxic relationship was the standout story for me, as it takes a dark path through bullying, and using sex as a weapon, and the extremes of love and lust in a chaotic few pages.

Galette Meets 3 is available in Print and on Kindle from Amazon JP and on US Kindle (in Japanese). It’s not (yet, maybe?) available on Global Bookwalker. 

Ratings: 

Overall – 8

Galette Meets 3.5 will be available in print at the end of this month – which is an interesting little thing, because in the end of Galette Meets 3, it says that the next one will be, naturally 4, and yet, here is 3.5. with 90 pages of content. I’ll be interested to see what “a little sexy and more sweet” stories we’ll get this time. 





Yuri Manga: Galette Meets, Issue 1 (ガレットMeets)

January 14th, 2019

Crowd-funded, creator-owned Yuri manga magazine Galette is another success story of the last few years. It comes out quarterly, with work by some of the leading names in Yuri manga. Heading into it’s third year of existence – which is always a test of resilience – Galette has already spawned a doujinshi of its very own.

Galette Meets (ガレット Meets) is a periodic, well, periodical, from the team that puts out Galette. It collects doujinshi one-shots from Yuri creators with the imprimatur of “Just a tad sexy and a little more sweet.” 

Volume 1 is a little more sexy than stories that run in Galette and in this volume, a little more bitter, rather than sweet. With 6 shorts, three by names we know already, Galette Meets is a nice way to get more Yuri doujinshi into your life. 

Ratings:

Overall  – 7

Available on Amazon JP in Print, on JP Kindle, Bookwalker, and US Kindle (in Japanese) Galette Meets is worth adding to your Yuri collection!





Yuri Doujinshi: Our Story Begins With… (English)

June 17th, 2018

One of the many comics I picked up in Toronto at TCAF was a sweet little volume called Our Story Begins With… by Chilean writer and artist team Shihho and Naito.

In a genre awash in first love stories, what I find most interesting right now is unique presentation and perspective. Everyone has a first love that turns into a first relationship. We all understand the feelings, the circumstances, the big and little things that make up those days.  Our Story Begins With… looks at the things that represent those moments.

An MP3 player, a text message, a scarf, a suitcase. These items of every day life that represent a moment, a change, a crisis, a decision. It’s not a ground-breaking work, but it’s a truly lovely way to look at how a relationship develops. I spent some time looking around my house and remembering the where and when of that thing, and enjoying the memories. 

The art is clearly manga-influenced, and so is the story, but the way it is told makes it worth taking a look at. 

Ratings:

Overall – 7

Our Story Begins With… reminded me that, even a well-worn path can be worth retracing and may turn up some surprising new things. 

 

 





Tokyo Journal: Comitia, CAT 2, Character Alley and Yuribu

November 25th, 2017

Hello Okazu Readers! I am writing you from beautiful Tokyo! (This is said with no irony. I like cities and have always liked Tokyo.)

Every morning I am greeted by this view. We’ve had lovely weather.

Made a short visit to Animate, in which we found the Yuribu (Yuri club) proudly displayed by the door.

Only bought one book, because it was the last copy on the shelf there, but will be back to do actual book shopping later. Instead we bought these.

Remember a few weeks ago, when I reported there was the Animate Girls Festival and Asagao to Kase-san anime had a booth? This is what is left from the goods at that booth. I bought everything that remained (except two that escaped my notice.) 

The wife bought a Sailor Moon collaboration purse at GU, with a little jewelry to hang off it.

We had a lovely dinner with James Welker, who always makes us feel at home.

We’ve hit up half of Book-Off, and a bookstore here, but it was Thursday that we really got the buying ball rolling. At Comitia, I bought multiple copies of Galette, and a number of other original Yuri doujinshi. Not as many as in previous years, because after the 35th one titled “Hajimete” or “Hatsukoi” I just felt a bit eye-rolly. Folks, please learn to write a story beyond “there is a girl, she likes another girl. The other girl likes her. The end.” Thank heavens for some of the folks doing Yuri about adults.  I’ll do a much more detailed review of everything when I get home. 

We then wandered through the Kaigai Festa, the International Comics Festival, where I spoke with folks at the TCAF table. And I spoke with Sonia from France, as I bought her English-language Yuri comic (about schoolgirls in love for the first time, of course).

Next day we hit up Mandarake where I managed to find some stuff to buy (duh) and had a nice lunch with Deb Aoki. The three of us stopped for a rest at the Murakami-owned coffee shop, where I had a Murakami latte.

It was a very relaxing way to ease into buying too much stuff, because the next day, we hit high gear. 

Comic Arts Tokyo 2 is the second year of a small independent comic show, held at the Tokyo campus of Temple University. I found a number of awesome people and things. Among them were An Nguyen, creator of So Pretty, Very Rotten, a very talented artist named Erica Ward (so, obviously I will remember her name! ^_^) And I bought this awesome painting from Makiko Kodama.  Yes, I went to a comic show and bought a painting. ^_^  This is all the things. Rokurokubi is my favorite youkai, in uniform, kissing another Rokurokubi, cutely in a cafe. Squee. 

 

We then had lunch with the indefatigable shoujo scholar Fujimoto Yukari-sensei,  who was delightful as always. She  had a gorgeous Utena-collaboration themed handbag, based on Anthy’s dress from the movie. We were so jealous.

It was a magnificent night so after we left Fujimoto-sensei, we decided to head over to the Toyokawa Inari Shrine. We made some offerings, lit some incense and candles and said farewell to Bruce. It’s been a rough trip without him and we apologize to everyone we’ve met with for moping, but we’d been coming to Japan with him for 12 years and we feel his absence keenly here.

Once that had been done, we headed over to Tokyo Station Character Street. Where I unloaded a mass of money in a beauty shop that was selling Sailor Moon, Utena and other series goods. This store had bath and beauty items for adult women, who just happened to want their bath bombs to look like, you know, the Outer’s henshin wand toppers. (^_^);

And an Utena bath set, journal, stickers and calendar which will need to be put together before you can see how awesome it is.

 

And then we dragged ourselves back after a lot of walking and shopping. Next up, Harajuku for Kiddyland and the Eternal Sailor Moon shop and probably Yamashiroya.