Archive for the English Anime Category


LGBTQ Anime: Sailor Moon Stars Limited Edition, Part 1, Disk 3 (English)

February 26th, 2020

If Sailor Moon Stars did nothing else in the way of being extremely gay, it could easily ride on it’s reputation as an extremely gay anime for the rest of the series. But…it doesn’t. Because in Sailor Moon Stars Limited Edition, Part 1, Disk 3, Haruka and Michiru show up, are extremely gay, and then Aluminum Siren and Lead Crow show up and are also extremely gay.

In regards to this disk I have some good news and some bad news.

Let us begin with the beginning. Sailor Moon learns from Setsuna, Haruka and Michiru that the enemy is definitely from outside the Solar System and that both Chibi-Chibi and the Starlights might, possibly, be bad. We definitely cannot trust them, for sure. This despite the fact that we definitely seem to be able to trust the Starlights to not throw us at the enemy as a distraction. And we finally learn of Sailor Galaxia.

The first and most persistent of the several not-good things in this part of the story is that exactly zero new ideas appear in this series. The Starlights take over for the Outers in Stars with “we are not allies, despite all evidence to the contrary” and “they cannot be trusted”– exceptionally ironic coming from the Outers who, you may remember 2 whole years earlier were in the exact same position. Chibi-chibi is given the exact same cover story as Chibi-Usa. If we were rational beings, about now, we’d doubt the writer’s abilities. But no, we too have been besotted and smile and nod like this isn’t the laziest writing in the known universe.

Worse – and worst, IMHO – is the aggressive ball of toxic masculinity passed off as perfectly normal. Seiya and Haruka are ridiculous at each other. Seriously if they were real people saying this shit, we’d be like, “dudes, you have some issues.” And Michiru has developed a deeply not-real-world okay tic of shooting Haruka down in public. Passive-aggressive much Michiru? I will handwave Michiru’s behavior toward Seiya, pretending that she also sensed something and wanted to be sure, or something…but “or something” was what I said a lot during this bit. Worst, when Usagi went to help a hurt child she made him feel insecure about his pain and told him that boys don’t cry. That…actually really annoyed me. What a hypocritical thing for her, of all people, to say.

On the positive side, Haruka and Michiru, having come completely out of any small closet they were in are gaying around town. You know they are. They say really suggestive stuff right in front of us, so only the most aggressively clueless among us can still pretend they are not gay, by covering their eyes and ears when they are on the screen. This is so classic “we are out of the closet, dammit” behavior, I actually find it a bit cute. ^_^

And then the surprisingly adult pair of Aluminum Siren and Lead Crow show up and again, you’d have to be ignoring every single thing about them to not see how much of a partnership they are. Next disk, they will prove me correct.

The art on this disk is not particularly good, but there is no inconsiderable effort to show Ami, Rei, Makoto and Minako as visibly more grown up than they were in previous seasons. I appreciate those touches.

Ratings:

Art – 4
Story – 7 Much less bad than I anticipated
Characters –  7
Queer – 9
Service – 5 The Inners have racks, too. When we seem them shirtless, the Three Lights don’t have a six-pack. They deserve six-packs.

Overall – 7

Overall, this disk isn’t nearly as bad as I remember, and I find myself not-disliking the Starlights as much as expected to. I’ll even grant that Seiya might even be good with Usagi, if it weren’t for Mamoru. It’s hard to not be angry at Mamoru for making Usagi sad, but as he’s dead, I’ll give him a pass.





LGBTQ Anime: Sailor Moon Stars Limited Edition, Part 1, Disk 2 (English)

January 29th, 2020

Welcome! Have a seat, grab yourself a drink, get comfy, because today – at long last – we will be talking about the Three Lights/ Starlight Senshi. ^_^

In Sailor Moon Stars Part 1, Disk 2, Usagi must say goodbye to Mamoru, who heads to America to study. Unbeknownst to Usagi he is immediately disappeared and will not return to the story, except as a maudlin little plot device.

We turn away from that tragic loss which will never be fully processed, to a new set of complications. A popular idol group, the Three Lights, has transferred into the high school attended by the Senshi. Once again, I note that had there been an actual adult among the children, very little of the conflicts that pass for plot would have worked. Someone – ideally Ami – might have noted that the popular idols and the Sailor Starlights popped up at the same time and hey…hrm. But…no. So the Inner Senshi find their time occupied with fighting a new enemy, the Animamates, to restore people’s Star Seeds, and confronting yet another new set of Senshi(?) Also ideally, the Outers ought to have noticed. I love them unconditionally, but for people’s who sole mission it is to protect the Solar System from invasion from outside, they suck. ^_^

None of that is important, though, because we, the audience have done this before. WE know that the Starlights are not the enemy, everyone will die and we will save the world. And we’re being distracted by the fact that the boy idol group Three Lights, when they transform, are girls. The animation takes great pains to highlight the secondary sexual characteristics as Senshi (e.g., breasts) and in at least one episode we are treated to a detailed cut of Seiya’s masculine 6-pack. In any case, we are to understand that the Three Lights are male.  Much has been written about Takeuchi’s surprise about learning the direction the anime took the Lights. In the manga they are, like Haruka, women who wear men’s clothing and their Senshi form is their true form.  In the anime, the Starlights are women who transform into male form as their disguise on this planet. This has spawned generations of fandom among sexual and gender minorities, every one of whom has a valid personal relationship to the narrative.

I’ve been honest about this – my wife and I have never liked the Starlights. Her because Seiya harasses Usagi, me because Seiya will not take not for an answer, Taiki is nasty to Ami and Yaten is a jerk generally, but especially to Minako. It does not matter to me that Ami changes Taiki’s mind, and Minako Yaten’s, there was no need for them to be asses. We were not children when we saw this the first time and did not need what the Starlights offered. It has been 20 years and my opinion of them is different. I still don’t like them, but I can give them more space to be children and make terrible decisions.

Still, in order to do so, let me let you in to *my* headcanon regarding the Starlights. First, the premise is that The Three Lights are merely a disguise and are not specifically important to their story at all. As it was in the manga. They are, as the Inner Senshi are, young. They are in a sense child soldiers, as the Inner Senshi are, but they lack a Moon Princess, whose sole ability is to love everything so much that it becomes whole. If Kakyuu could kiss a thing and make it better, they wouldn’t need Usagi.

In my 21st century rewrite, I think that the Starlight’s native planet doesn’t have genders the way humans do, hence the apparent switching, which is probably totally normal for them. To me, Seiya would trend more masculine, Taiki more feminine and Yaten would tell us to fuck off generally and specifically about all of this, gender, idols, school, all of it. So I unofficially declare Seiya trans masc, Taiki trans fem, and Yaten is the agender Senshi we all need. That’s how they read to me. In no way does this invalidate your take. ^_^

Now we’re sorted to watch the next 4 disks worth of Sailor Moon Stars.

Ratings:

Art – 4 A little better than the opening arc, but those head – body proportions ouch.
Story – The Inners come off strong so, 6
Characters –  I find the Starlights to be a 5 at this point
Queer – 9
Service – 5 Yes, the Starlights have racks.

Overall – 7

I’m here clutching my aspirin until Siren and Crow.

 





Yuri Anime: If My Favorite Pop Idol Made It to the Budokan, I Would Die (English)

January 26th, 2020

Dear Everyone Watching If My Favorite Pop Idol Made It to the Budokan, I Would Die (streaming on Funimation.com),

You have not had to sit through a Hirao Auri series before, so you have hope that what you are seeing in If My Favorite Pop Idol Made It to the Budokan, I Would Die, will resolve in some fashion.

Let me assure you that there is no hope. 

***

Eripyo is the only fan of a minor member of an “underground” pop idol group. While the management is clearly pushing the “top three,”  ChamJam member Maina is always in the background. But Eripyo is determined to contribute to Maina’s success…and would totally tell her, if everything in the world didn’t conspire to keep them apart.

I’m not trying to be a downer. I have been following this creator for about a decade, beginning with Manga no Tsukurikata, a “Yuri manga” with little to no Yuri. I have been following this manga series, Oshi ga Budokan Ittekuretara Shinu, since it debuted in 2016. I recommend you read my reviews, because they detail exactly why this series is not a comedy, it is a tragedy, dressed in a clown nose and funny wig. This story is a brutal look at the pop idol industry from the point of view of the fans who are willingly manipulated by it. It’s harsh. It’s hopeless. And yet, because Eripyo and Maina could love one another, if they could ever manage to speak to one another, it strings you along, like Eripyo herself, with unfounded, idealistic hope.

Yuri is complicated in this series. Eripyo is clearly besotted, and she and Maina might, in some other reality, be able to fall for one another. In some ways, the more interesting relationship is hinted at between Maki and Yumeri (although I thought it was Yumeri and Yuka in the manga. Maki is one of the few characters I can actually recognize in the manga, where everyone’s hair looks similar.) In any case, Yumeri is the queer girl in the mix. Since Maina’s story is not within the group itself, it isn’t really something they discuss. There’s the group’s collective internal life, which has it’s own drama, and Maina’s little issue, which is droll and unrelated.)

The animation here is not terrible. I was super pleased that ChamJam got an actual song to sing for the first episode and the animated dancing looked pretty much like the kind of minimal choreography one might actually expect from a group like this. The voice acting is very decent, Ai Faoruz is doing a genuinely fantastic job as Eripyo.  In fact, all the voices are spot on. It’s just that I have no hope that there can be a happy ending. Certainly not for the anime, as the manga is ongoing. If you’re really enjoying it, hang on, because one of the next few episodes is breathtakingly horrible and once past that, it settles down into an low-level existential dread-filled hope/disappointment cycle. This is a direct quote from my review of Volume 5: “Their eyes meet, they have a conversation, no plants fall and Eri doesn’t end up injured. They are practically married.”

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – I don’t know what to say
Character – 8
Yuri – 10 and 0 as only Hirao-sensei can manage it.
Service – Because animators can’t just not.

Overall – I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. Just leave me alone and let me sulk.

Watching this series is even worse for my blood pressure than reading it. I’ve had to stop joking about strangling the author in a comedic fashion, because it’s no longer funny.

 





100 Years of Yuri 2020 Project, by Erica Friedman

January 5th, 2020

Welcome to the final post of the 100 Years of Yuri 2020 Project! With this post, the first centennial anniversary of the Yuri genre is complete. We can walk forward into a new century, assured in the knowledge that we have absolutely no idea at all what will happen. ^_^

One of the most often-asked questions I get is “where do I start?” when it comes to reading and watching Yuri. My criteria for this list was simple: Answer that question using primarily English-language releases (as the readership for Okazu is primarily, although not exclusively, English readers.) This list is an attempt to trace the evolution of the Yuri genre over 100 years. These choices will help you understand where the tropes of our genre came from and how they developed. The series mentioned here had massive influence on our perception of Yuri. There are still a few critical pieces that are not yet available in English – I hope that one day I’ll be able to say they are. In the meantime, I’ve added them in in Japanese, for those of you who are dedicated to learning more about the origins of the genre.

I’m presenting these choices in chronological order, from earliest to most recent. Here are my recommendations to understand 100 years of of the Yuri genre.

Titles have been edited so series available in English use official English-language titles, and Japanese-only titles are in Romaji (with Kanji in parentheses).

 

Yaneura no Nishojo (屋根裏の二処女) by Yoshiya Nobuko
Yoshiya Nobuko’s story about two girls living in the attic room of a foreign-run mission school is the origin for so many of the tropes we have come to expect from Yuri – from the tower room itself, to an intimate piano duet.

Akiko, who take three pages to open a door when we meet her, does not hesitate to take Akitsu’s hand and go to the outside world, together, a choice echoed by two women who lived in a tower almost a century later in Revolutionary Girl Utena.

We would not speak of or think of Yuri in the way we do now, if it weren’t for this foundational work, Yaneura no Nishojo.

 

 

Yellow Rose by Yoshiya Nobuko
In the first part of the 20th century, as the “S” aesthetic was sweeping Japan and creating a culture for girls, Yoshiya Nobuko’s serialized short stories of the lives of young women were wildly popular. Hana Monogatari represented girls’ lives as they moved out of school into adult life. The protagonists of these stories often embraced new technologies so instead of marrying, they lived independent lives as working women.

Yellow Rose is the only one of these stories available in English. Translated by Dr. Sarah Frederick, published digitally by Expanded Editions, this short, but intense, story captures the feel of classic Japanese literature and the sense of the dawning of a completely modern age. Trains and typewriters loom as large as Sappho and her poetry in this fascinating, darkly emotional tale about unexpected feelings of attraction and loss. This is an excellent place to start with in your English-language journey through Yuri.

 

 

Princess Knight by Osamu Tezuka
The Yuri trope of the Girl Prince has roots going back to the Heian period, but as far as manga is concerned, this is where it began. Tezuka, known as the “god of manga.” captured the glamour of the all-woman musical revue named for the town he lived in, Takarazuka, added a bit of Disney flair, spiced it up with a little gender-bending to create Ribon no Kishi, Princess Knight (Volume 1 |  Volume 2) available from Vertical Publishing. This book is technically out of print. Consult your local library to get it by Interlibrary Loan.

Sapphire is born to be the Prince of her country except that, as a girl, she can’t rule. But because she has the heart of a man and a woman, and to stave off the evil Duke, Sapphire grows up acting as the Prince. Her boy heart give her athletic and ruling abilities, but her girl heart makes her yearn for love and beautiful gowns.  This story relies on mid-century gender stereotypes, but it is the origin of a theme we will see over and over again in Yuri; the blending of male and female in a noble Girl Prince.

 

 

Shiroi Heya no Futari (白い部屋のふたり) by Yamagishi Ryoko
There’s always controversy around the “first” anything, but if there is a single manga that has claim to being the first truly “Yuri” manga, Yamagishi Ryoko’s Shiroi Heya no Futari is the leading candidate. It codified Yuri tropes visually, in the same way Yoshiya’s novel Yaneura no Nishojo did thematically.

Emotionally high-strung traditional Japanese beauty Simone and cheerful and European doll-like Resine meet in a foreign mission school. Both of them outsiders to the school, they share an attic room where they fall in love. But there can be no happy ending for them, so Simone runs off to die a tragic death (one that immediately recalls American lesbian pulp novels of the time) to “free” Resine to marry.

Almost 50 years later, we still see the ripples of Simone and Resine in other popular Yuri series about a romance between an emotionally unbalanced dark-haired beauty and a cheerful girl, most recently saburouta’s Citrus. Shiroi Heya no Futari is long out of print and not available in English, but I hope one day to be able say that this classic Yuri manga is heading our way, if only to share the “original” Yuri manga with you.

 

 

The Rose of Versailles by Riyoko Ikeda
Sometimes it is easy to look back and see why a thing sparked the zeitgeist. Timeless tales told with high drama, history as seen through a modern lens; the human drama of human drama is always popular.

The French Revolution is so enormous that it may be best told as one person’s story. Whether we follow Jean Valjean or Oscar François de Jarjayes, seeing the events from one perspective gives us a place to start as the grand and ghastly true tale unfolds. With such epic historical content, Riyoko Ikeda still manages to make The Rose of Versailles relatable.  Oscar stands atop the pinnacle of the Girl Prince trope and we, the readers, understand perfectly why the men and women who knew her, loved her. Tezuka may have created the Girl Prince, but Ikeda perfected her.

Now that there is a definitive English edition of The Rose of Versailles manga from UDON Entertainment, we can one day hope for a definitive edition of another of Ikeda’s masterworks, Dear Brother (Oniisama e).

 

 

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon by Naoko Takeuchi
In any modern series we’d be happy to see a lesbian couple form an alternative family with three mothers and a daughter. In any current series, we’d be delighted to see a team of women willing to die to save one another. More than 25 years ago we got all that, and more. Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon as a series includes multiple instances of sexual and gender minority characters. In a series ostensibly for children. Not all of them are dead at the end of the series. For a 25-year old series, that seems a miracle.

Miracle or not, it is one more reason to continue to love a magical girl series that has inspired-and still inspires – a quarter of century of creativity, of social expression and a ridiculous number of Yuri artists and writers. With both anime from Viz Media and manga from Kodansha Comics available in English, it’s time to fall in love with the Senshi – and watch Haruka and Michiru, the queens of Yuri, fall in love with each other – all over again.

 

 

Revolutionary Girl Utena by BePapas
On the cusp of a new millennium, a group of extraordinarily talented anime and manga creators teamed up. They took Yuri tropes, magical girl tropes, festooned them with dueling and overtly meaningless symbols that were left to grow in a fertile petrie dish of adolescent awakening until they developed meaning. They covered it with the musical equivalent of a magical cookbook full of spells and paid homage to dozens of Yuri predecessors in the anime, movie and manga series that followed. Revolutionary Girl Utena was indeed revolutionary to the fans who watched wide-eyed as Utena unsheathed Dios’ sword from Anthy’s chest and were lead into the birth of a whole new genre.

Revolutionary Girl Utena gave us Utena and Anthy, but it also gave us Juri, the lesbian whose heart is locked up in her love for a manipulative (and, depending upon who you ask, unworthy) Shiori. It gave us a whole new set of Yuri archetypes, explored all the old archetypes with fresh eyes and ushered in a massive wave of fans, ready for a new genre. In many ways, Yuri could not have been born without the magical unrealism of Utena. Both anime, movie from RightStuf and manga and movie manga from Viz Media have received definitive releases in English, so it’s worth taking a look at all four of the stories to see all of the alternative versions of this important series.

 

 

Maria Watches Over Us by Oyuki Konno
At the same time Utena was redefining and reimagining magical girl Yuri, another series was doing the same with the early 20th century “S” aesthetic. Maria-sama ga Miteru was developed by Konno Oyuki as a 39-novel series (plus 9 other related novels) over 15 years. It was adapted into 4 seasons of anime, an 8-voume manga series, and at least 26 different Drama CDs.

Fukuzawa Yumi is honest and goodhearted, but not, apparently, special. We watch this “average” girl become involved with – but not overwhelmed by – the elites of the school, the Student Council and most especially, with the object of her own admiration, Ogasawara Sachiko. The focus of the series is on the big sister/little sister relationship trope that was so deeply embedded in Yuri and so well-known to Japanese fans, but mostly unknown to western audiences, as none of the early sources had been (and many remain) untranslated. When Maria Watches Over Us, available in English from Sentai, debuted as an anime, an entire generation of global Yuri fans learned about the specific and sisterly bonds between girls that had been encouraged since Akiko and Akitsu shared that tower room in the early part of the 20th century.

 

 

ALC Publishing
In  2003, ALC Publishing published the very first “Yuri manga” in English, Rica ‘tte Kanji!?, which went for 3 printings. Further chapters were serialized in in ALC’s Yuri Monogatari anthology until it was collected and reprinted digitally in 2012 as Tokyo Love – Rica ‘tte Kanji! Digital Collection. Rica was followed by Tadeno Eriko’s doujinshi collection WORKS, which is still in print and the Yuri Monogatari series, of which Volume 4 and Volume 6 are still in print.

The Yuri Monogatari anthology series (named in homage to Yoshiya Nobuko’s Hana Monogatari,) brought together Yuri artists from around the world in the very first English-language Yuri anthology. The goal was to present English-language readers with a wide variety of story and art and encourage them to look beyond girl-meets-girl.

ALC Publishing laid the English language foundation for the western Yuri market, with a strong emphasis on stories of adult lesbian life, rather than the still more common first-love school scenarios.

 

 

Cutey Honey & Devilman Lady by Go Nagai
If Osamu Tezuka is the “God of Manga” then Go Nagai is manga’s brilliant, but creepy uncle. Every genre that Tezuka established, Nagai did too, weirder and, arguably, better. Nagai is known in the west primarily for his Devilman and Mazinger franchises. In Cute Honey, Nagai created a magical female warrior who did not need men to help her (and often had to save them from harm) and a lesbian love story that has evolved and survived over decades. The Cutey Honey Classic Collection manga from Seven Seas and Cutey Honey Universe anime from Sentai Filmworks are exceptional versions of this timeless, yet pervy, story.

But where Nagai really excels is in the horror genre. He was born to create and explore the dark underbelly of demonic existence. The 2018 Netflix release of Devilman Crybaby was deeply queer and absolutely worth watching as a horror series. As far as Yuri goes, the series we should all know is Devilman Lady, released in the 2000s by ADV (now, by Section 23) as Devil Lady. Hopefully we’ll see a 20th anniversary release of one of the objectively best Yuri anime ever made just as lesbian horror is undergoing a long-awaited renaissance.

 

 

Comic Yuri Hime (コミック百合姫)
The story of Comic Yuri Hime is the story of Yuri at the turn of the 21st century. This magazine burst forth in 2003 as Yuri Shimai and the last 2 decades have seen repeated renewals and rebirths as the market shifts and changes.

Beginning life as a quarterly magazine, Comic Yuri Hime is now monthly and has been home to the growth of many of the top name sellers in Yuri manga, from Morinaga Milk to Kodama Naoko. Along with the careers of their creators, these pages have seen so many of the newest iterations of old Yuri standards and, with folks like Ohi Pikachi and Takemiya Jin, its even broken some new ground.

While there is no English-language version, you can subscribe to it digitally in Japanese on Bookwalker Global.

 

 

Galette (ガレット)
I think of Comic Yuri Hime as a pathway that has been paved and widened over time and is now a highway for Yuri artists to take from their own work to published status. Using that metaphor, Galette magazine is an upgrade to the old road that parallels the new expressway. It’s still a smaller road, but there are a lot of things to look at, and accommodations are often more interesting/quirky than they are on the highway. 

This crowd-funded, creator owned quarterly Yuri manga magazine is giving complete freedom to Yuri creators. We have no idea what we’ll see along the way, but it will surely be interesting!

Galette is also available for Japanese-language subscription through Bookwalker Global.

 

 

Kase-san Series by Hiromi Takashima
Hiromi Takashima’s Kase-san series is a story of survival and tenacity. It was born in a brief period of prosperity during a Yuri boom in 2011. When the magazine it ran in went belly up, it would have been reasonable to assume we’d never see more of it after the third volume was published. But the creator didn’t agree and took her work online and continued the story. Without a magazine for an anchor, its amazing that this series was given a fourth volume, then a fifth. And then an actual miracle occurred. Because while the Kase-san series was continuing, peripatetic although it was, the Yuri market had blossomed since 2014. In 2017, the world was ready for Kase-san and Yamada to leave school and not live happily ever after, but continue on dealing with things like jealousy and separation and two lives moving in different directions as adults.

The manga series is available from Seven Seas and the beautifully animated OVA is available from Sentai Filmworks. The Kase-san series both embodies common Yuri tropes and exceeds them, which makes it an important stepping stone to understanding Yuri.

 

 

My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness by Kabi Nagata
One day, there will be articles and research about the impact this book, its sequels and its creator had on manga. Japanese manga has already seen an uptick in manga about mental and physical health. I don’t think I can overstate how important this book will be as we move forward in the 2020s.

Autobiographical comics are not uncommon in the west or Japan. When we look back at some of the greatest western comic artists, their stories about their own lives have resonated deeply with millions of readers. For a Japanese manga to join the ranks of Harvey Pekar, Alison Bechdel and Raina Telgemeier among our comics awards, is notable. In the sense that this is not “Yuri” at all, but is by and about life of a queer person, it threw doors wide open.

Kabi Nagata has already been recognized for her work with a Harvey Award. The creator being open about being gay, without any sense that story this is – or ever can be – a romance story, has already had a massive impact and I expect we will see ripples for years to come.

My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness and My Solo Exchange Diary Volume 1 and Volume 2 are available in English from Seven Seas.

 

 

Yuri Life by Kurukuruhime
The last few years has seen the creation of a brand new subgenre of Yuri. Known in Japanese as Shakaijin Yuri (社会人百合), these stories follow adult women in society. Often written as office romances, they allow for exploration of life as an adult woman in the working world, a place that is often a hostile environment for women.

Kurukuruhime’s Yuri Life avoids the problems and instead focuses on pairs of adult women making their lives together.

Adult life Yuri is not new – ALC Publishing’s WORKS addresses many of the same issues we see addressed in stories like Still Sick from Viz Media but Yuri Life and Whenever Our Eyes Meet, both from Yen Press are the first two adult life Yuri to make it into English and are notable for being the opening adult women needed to be part of the Yuri landscape.

 

 

Sexiled: My Sexist Party Leader Kicked Me Out, So I Teamed Up With a Mythical Sorceress! by Ameco Kaeruda
The end of our first Yuri century just about exploded with whole new sections of the Yuri genre. Visual novels, office life Yuri, and Light Novels all carpet bombed Yuri fandom. I waffled heavily trying to pick just one truly representative Light Novel. Bloom Into You: Regarding Saeki Sayaka from Seven Seas was certainly representative of the older schoolgirl romance tropes and it was still a very good light novel, but the example I chose for this list was the one that broke new ground.

We might have expected it from a office romance, (and, admittedly, we see examples of the frustration with systemic misogyny in almost every example of that subgenre) but for pure, unadulterated exhaustion with misogyny, with a sense of being so far over it, that it’s unbelievable it still exists at all and with the kind of empowerment women can give one another when they work together in a Yuri story, I had to go with Ameco Kaeruda’s RPG Fantasy Sexiled: My Sexist Party Leader Kicked Me Out, So I Teamed Up With a Mythical Sorceress! Volume1 and Volume 2 are available digitally and Volume 1 will be released in print in 2020 from J-Novel Club.

 

 

Our Dreams at Dusk Shimanami Tasogare
Following on the heels of openly queer creators whose work is breaking sales records and breaking new ground at the same time, Kamatani Yuhki-sensei took the next step forward with a manga about sexual and gender minorities and the community they create for themselves. Like Rica ‘tte Kanji?!, Our Dreams at Dusk Shimanami Tasogare from Seven Seas uses the life of one young person, still questioning themselves to learn about the ups and downs of other people’s lives – all with eye to creating empathy and acceptance.

At the end of a century of Yuri, we are finally seeing what I always hoped we’d see – lesbian stories, stories of lives led, and loves found and lost. Yuri is still undergoing a massive change as more stories of adult life move into the Yuri genre. Eventually, as Yuri creators age, I have no doubt we’ll see senior years romance and life. ^_^

And here you have – it a primer for 100 Years of Yuri. With these titles, you will encounter all of the traditional Yuri tropes, where they came from and be able to see where they creators are taking them.

 

2020 is going to bring us absolute riches of both classic and new Yuri. With all these riches, I want to point out – again – that I’m still not seeing a few things that I want to see. So as we move into 2CYE (Common Yuri Era), here is my wish list for Yuri:

  • Sports Yuri manga series
  • “Ladies” Motorcycle gang Yuri series
  • High-powered Court Yuri Lawyer drama
  • Mystery-solving Lesbian Detective series
  • Space Marine Yuri Science Fiction
  • Senior Yuri Romance

…and, borrowed whole from petrarchian on Twitter:

  • A mezzo and a soprano who fall in love during a run of Der Rosenkavalier Opera Yuri ^_^

There’s my wish list – have at it, Yuri creators!

Thank you all for reading our lists, contributing your thoughts and here’s to a brilliant decade for Yuri!





Okazu Top Yuri Anime of 2019

December 27th, 2019

Hello and welcome to the 2019 Edition of the end-of-year lists here on Okazu! <pausing for applause> As usual, I will be splitting the lists of things I consider notable, interesting, worth mentioning into three. We begin, as we always begin with anime of the year that I consider worth noting. Also as usual, I will be bending the laws of relativity around words like “anime” “year” and “worth.” ^_^ I’ll do my best to note where and/or how you can watch this series on the list. Because it is possible this year, every single series on the list is available legitimately streaming and/or with an English-language release on DVD or Blu-ray.

These are all inherently my opinion and may therefore necessarily not reflect yours. ^_^ I invite you to write your top lists in the comments! I’d love to see what you consider best of the year.

 

Honorable Mention: Devilman Crybaby

This was explicitly a 2018 series, but I did not watch it until 2019, so could not include it last year, which was a huge failure on my part. Oh well. ^_^

Devilman Crybaby is also not “Yuri” per se, but it is queer as fuck and arguably the best anime I watched all year.

So here we are, starting off with this collaboration for Go Nagai and Masaaki Yuasa in one of the finest anime I have ever seen. Devilman Crybaby is a masterwork and deserves recognition for its mastery.

Streaming on Netflix.

 

 

 

Revue Starlight

It’s not as Yuri as I’d hoped, but there’s plenty of Yuri drama in between what is largely incoherent plot points. But who needs coherence when you have songs! and fights! and a giraffe!

For Futaba and anyone not Kaoruko, for Banana and Junna and above all, for Maya and Claudine, this series definitely deserves a place here.

Streaming on HIDIVE, coming out in 2020 on “home video” as they say, from Sentai Filmworks.

 

 

Steven Universe

I know and you know that this is not anime. It is, however so *deeply* inspired by anime that I hope I don’t even need to mention that it’s a child of Revolutionary Girl Utena, it’s just that obvious.

It tells us deeply difficult stories in a way that actually address all of the problematic bits, and it give us multiple queer characters seen from multiple angles. Both allies and enemies are sympathetic and unsympathetic in turn.  And it gave us so much music that gets stuck in my head. The series climax was brilliant, the movie finale was a Takarazuka tribute and “Future” gave us time to consider where we go from here. As long as there’s a Steven Universe. It’ll quite likely end up here on my Top list eventually. ^_^

Broadcast on Cartoon Network, streaming on Amazon Prime, available on DVD.

 

 

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

Yep, also not an anime. But super duper gay, so yeah, it’s on here. It’s a little darker, a lot more complex than kid’s cartoons were in my youth, but the gay characters’ relationships are noted as such. There’ll be no segment of fandom trying to rewrite what they are told here – Netossa and Spinarella are a couple and so are Bow’s parents and that is that. I genuinely love how I am not the target audience for this series and how very obviously little kids are, without the tiresome blatant marketing + faux morality that was foisted upon cartoons I grew up with.

She-Ra and the Princess of Power is a damn fine animated series and you should at least give it a try.

Streaming on Netflix, available on DVD.

 

 

Sailor Moon Super S

Upon watching the Sailor Moon SuperS Special, one might find oneself inclined to become very gay indeed. (Also one might wonder about the ferociousness of Michiru without Haruka to keep her tempered.) For such a short special, it packs a really gay punch. And this is the first time its ever had an official English-language release!

SuperS starts off with a surprising amount of queerness, but it all gets set aside for the second of Chibi-Usa’s questionable love choices. Nonetheless, the SuperS Special makes this whole season worth existing and is the sole reason that it is on this list.

Streaming on Viz.com, available on Blu-ray from Viz Media.

 

 
 

Sailor Moon Stars

Where SuperS starts off queer, but ends back in boring old straightsville, Sailor Moon Stars starts queer and just keeps on going for a long, long while. It has the largest collection of non-cis and not-straight characters of all the seasons and Haruka and Michiru get some pretty intimate lines between them. When you remember that this is a 25 year old series for children, and you reevaluate some of their scenes, you might feel at least a little bad for those folks positive in their conviction that they were not women and not in love. Because they are so obviously, definitely two women in love any argument to the contrary seems utterly ridiculous.

For at long last, giving us the best possible version of Stars, Viz gets two thumbs up and a place in this year’s top three.

Streaming on Viz.com, available on DVD and Blu-ray Viz Media.

 

 

Kase-san and Morning Glories

It was sweet, it was charming, it was beautifully, lovingly animated. And now that it is available in English as a sub and a dub, it’s one of the best buys of the year! Yamada, who loves plants and struggles quietly with her sense of self-worth, and Kase-san, a beloved star athlete of the school, fall in love and it’s all…delightful. They have things to work through, and things they need to say out loud and things that they need to do for themselves, but they are there for each other, moving forward in life and love, together.

Their story is ongoing, but this anime can be watched as is without any explanation as a slice of two lives that are coming together as one.

Available on Blu-ray from Sentai Filmworks.

 

The Kase-san OVA has been my #1 of the year before, and I honestly expected it to be again this year, but then some things happened. First, something old and wonderful came back to us after years of being obscure.

 

Go Nagai’s The Devil Lady

A bit of a late entry, because I had no idea it had come back into circulation, but Go Nagai’s The Devil Lady, the early 2000’s ADV (now Section 23) release of Devilman Lady is….fantastically gay and deeply Yuri. It’s violent, and trashy, as all Nagai works are, and it’s full of mutating people and death and misery and sexual desire and even love.

In a year when queer horror is having the renaissance it deserves, and in Go Nagai’s 55th anniversary of his debut year, I can’t think of anything that makes me happier than to see one of my absolute favorites come back into the limelight. Fingers crossed for a license of the remastered Devilman Lady which ought to be out next year for a 20th anniversary. (And I’ve already asked Seven Seas to consider the manga which was deeply fucked up. ^_^)

Streaming on Amazon Prime.

 

When it comes to “something happened,” my number one pick of the year doubled down.

 

Bloom Into You

The first thing that happened was that – very unusually – the anime really added layers of depth to the manga and ended up being better than the source material.

With insightful voice acting in both English and Japanese, the anime took a few early volumes of the manga and made them seem far more compelling than the comic had. That’s rare in and of itself.

But what really catapulted this series into the top spot was that the home release actually fixed the problems with the broadcast/streaming animation, and added in a pile of physical extras on top of that. For once, it was really worth getting a Premium box set.

Considering that the story is chock-a-block full of typical Yuri tropes, the fact that the Bloom Into You Premium box set from Sentai Filmworks/Section 23 is so incredibly good, it is my number one Yuri anime pick of the year.

Streaming on HIDIVE, available on Blu-ray.

We didn’t have a lot of Yuri anime this year, but what we had was pretty amazing! Next up, the unbelievably difficult Yuri Manga list. (Holy cow there was a lot of good Yuri manga this year.)