Archive for the Events Category


Maiden’s Garden 7 Event Report

November 23rd, 2012


One of the motivating factors for me to get to Japan is to attend various doujinshi events. This time, we were able to get to two separate (and vastly different!) events. The first was the 7th Maiden’s Garden Yuri-only doujinshi event in Kyoto.

Although the event was in Kyoto, we stayed in Osaka.  We had a nice view of Osaka Castle from our hotel window, and took the opportunity the night we arrived to walk around town and get reacquainted with (and introduce my wife to) Osaka. Bruce and I were amazingly, able to remember a great deal from our visit in November 2010 (to see the Maria-sama ga Miteru Live-Action Movie.) Later, that night, walking back to the subway from the Shinsaibashi, the wife spotted Oscar on a salon sign:

 

The day before the event, we had the unparalleled pleasure of accompanying our friend Komatsu-san and the lovely and talented Ransui-san around Kyoto, on a singular tour. You see, in Smile Precure, the five main characters do a whirlwind tour of the city and see all the sites. Ransui-san decided she was going to recreate that episode. So accompanied by Cure Happy, Cure Sunny, Cure Peace, Cure March and Cure Beauty, we started at the bus station and saw the Kyoto Tower, visited Yama Arashi Park where we ate green tea ice cream,  and went to the Kinkakuji – the famous Golden Pavilion. We then left Komatsu-san and Ransui-san to go out to Kiyomizu temple by themselves, while we headed back to our hotel. We had a fabulous time tagging along . Thank you Komatsu-san and Ransui-san for letting us join your tour!

The Kinkakuji is a magnificent postcard – totally worth seeing, with every angle carefully cultivated for maximum artistic impression.

Bruce, the wife and I spent a short time wandering Osaka and eating as much as we could there. We did manage okonomiyaki for dinner one night. ^_^

The next day it was raining pretty steadily, but we headed back to Kyoto for Maiden’s Garden. The event was grouped with several other events in the same space, including a PreCure event, one for Madoka, Nanoha, Strike Witches, and even a Mai HiME/Zhime event. Here’s a pdf copy of the MG7 catalog pages – the table rows were split into Black Lily, White Lily and Mountain Lily, which I found kind of cute. You can see the tabs for the other events in the catalog along the side. To get into the event, you buy the catalog (which contains the circle listings for all the events taking place.

So while MG7 was small, all the events grouped together meant we had a fair amount to look at. First we went over to Fantastic Yuri Rhythm, Ransui-san’s circle and picked up her new books. She’s amazingly talented.

It was pretty gratifying to see so many circles I knew well there. even some I hadn’t seen in years, like CHC.

Here’s some of what I picked up at the event, starting with this spiffy Mouretsu Pirates coffee travel mug:

I followed this up with a trio of my fave circles – Sakuraike, UKOZ and Raku-Gun.

I bought this thing totally and only for the cover:

I was pleased as punch to find something new (and not obviously porn) by Pen-Pen Gusa Club, along with this Lyn/Jenny thing I couldn’t pass up from the not-series specific, but all anime parody/totally 18+ section of the event.

And I bought this one because of the title:

I told the guy at the table that I am a researcher, but I don’t think he believed me. He had “ewww, creepy foreigner” face on. ^_^;; I also bought a fabulous “Promises are forbidden” (約束禁止) Kyuubey strap, but it self-destructed before we got back to the hotel, so I’ll have to make myself a new one.

Overall, while on its own Maiden’s Garden is small, grouped with the other events, it makes a good afternoon’s entertainment. And it’s a great way to meet Yuri artists. ^_^ I wholeheartedly recommend MG, if you find yourself in the Kyoto area when they next hold an event.





‘Aoi Hana Meets the Enoshima Electric Railway’ Special Event Report by Bruce P

August 5th, 2012
Advertising Poster, Fujisawa

OMGOMGOMG! We have a very special Special Report today! Yuricon Staffer and Okazu Superhero Bruce P. took a little summer trip to Japan and wanted to tell us all about it. Here’s his report of the Aoi Hana x Enoshima Electric Railway Special Event!

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I recently had the opportunity to attend ‘Aoi Hana Meets the Enoshima Electric Railway’, an event held in Enoshima in connection with the publication of Volume 7 of Shimura Takako’s beautiful manga series. Actually, I made the opportunity. As a fan of Yuri, and Japan, and railways, and with Aoi Hana being my favorite series, nothing could keep me from attending this event (although a ride to the airport that never showed up came close).

The Enoden (i.e. Enoshima Electric Railway) runs from Kamakura along Sagami Bay to Enoshima and on to Fujisawa. This area is the setting for Aoi Hana, and the Enoden is the little train Fumi and A-chan take to school. In real life this is a seashore vacation area with a lot of young out-of-town summer visitors, and the Enoden is happy to promote itself to them with different events. An event for anime and manga fans is a perfect fit. Put on in association with Manga Erotics F, publisher of the series, ‘Aoi Hana Meets Enoden’ was as close to perfect as you can get without coffee mugs.

So on a hot Saturday morning I took the train called ‘Romance Car’ from Shinjuku to Fujisawa. Filled as it was with excited shore-bound families, and with scenery consisting mostly of trackside apartment blocks, there was little romance involved. It did stop briefly at the town of Shin-Yurigaoka (‘New Hill of Lilies’), which I took as a good sign. Five stops on the Enoden brought me to Enoshima, and after a short walk I found Enoden House, the principal site of the event. It was an hour after opening on the first day, and there was quite a crowd. Enoden House consists of a single large room; it was devoted half to toy train items for sale, and half to the event. There was a goods counter, the line for which extended out the door when I arrived (admittedly it wasn’t very far to the door). Items for sale included Aoi Hana lunch bags, tote bags, a variety of clear files, very nice post cards, pins, and copies of the manga and anime (but no coffee mugs). Background music from the anime was helping to put people in a festive mood. Festivities at the cash register were intense.

Enoden House

On the walls there was an art exhibit, consisting of original B&W ink drawings used in production of the manga, and framed copies of the manga’s color illustrations. To each of these color illustrations Shimura-sensei had added character sketches and an autograph. They were being raffled to folks who made purchases. You were allowed to turn the red drum, the number of turns depending on how much you had purchased; you cranked away, hoping for the lucky token to fall out. If it did, you could select any of the autographed illustrations on the wall for your own. I ended up with 27 turns. And zero framed illustrations. Good exercise though.

It was very hot, and Enoshima, being the shore, had sea breezes and stuff shops and food and drink and ice cream places and was really very pleasant. So I spent the day in the area, visiting the island with the tower you can see in some scenes, and late that afternoon stopped back at Enoden House to see how things were going. It was relatively uncrowded at that point, allowing for better viewing of the artwork, and of the adventures of ‘chibi A-chan’ and one of Enoden’s mascot figures, which looked like a fluffy throat lozenge. They had been photographed ‘posing’ at different spots along the railway. Some people were still buying, and by that time the DVDs had sold out.

Vol. 2, p. 150, trackside entrance to sweets shop.

Tokyo was so hot and Enoshima was such a delight that I went back again the next day. I walked around finding some locations used in the series.

Vol. 2, P. 149

Stopped one last time at Enoden House; it was not as crowded as on Saturday, most of the illustrations had been claimed, and the manga had sold out. Two more turns of the drum. More exercise. Zero framed illustrations.

The Enoden House exhibit was fun, but there was something that impressed me much more. As part of the event special posters with illustrations and quotations from the manga were put up in all the stations on the Enoden line. These were in addition to the quite nice general advertising poster for the event.

There are 15 stations, and there were 15 different one-of-a-kind special posters. Each one was incredibly elegant and beautiful. Apparently fans had been involved in the selection of the scenes and quotations.

To see them, and even more to see them hanging there in the wider world – and not, say, just in the back of a manga shop – was actually breathtaking. As a fan I was deeply impressed and grateful for the effort that had been taken to produce these posters, and with the elegance of the result. They were hard to photograph because they had a shiny, reflective surface, but I wasn’t the only one buying tickets to ride to all the stations just to take photos of them. The Enoden line didn’t mind a bit.

Was it worth the trip? You bet it was.

Erica here: Bruce, thank you for the report and the pictures! As a fan, I completely understand what you mean about seeing these up in the wide world. I’m so excited that this series has – and will for a few more days – brought tourists to Kamakura and Enoshima. And those posters. Wow. Thank you again and I can’t wait to see your swag!





Live Online Yuri Panel Date and Time!

April 15th, 2012

The first-ever Live Online Yuri Panel now has a date and time. Check out the details at Yuricon for when, where and how to submit questions!

I’m really looking forward to this, and I hope you are too!





Yuri Night/ Pizza Party at Smith College on Friday, April 13th

April 11th, 2012

Here is the list of anime that will be shown:

Kannazuki no Miko episode 1
Maria-sama ga Miteru episode 1
Revolutionary Girl Utena episode 1
Simoun episode 1
Strawberry Panic! episode 1

YNN Correspondent Katherine H has been working really hard to get a Yuri Night Pizza Party together at Smith College, so if you live in the area, please drop by! Here’s a map of the campus.

Through a quirk of fate, I will be attending, so if you’re in the Northampton area, I hope you’ll stop by and say hi!

Also – major point here, Katherine says she set this up specifically to show that if you want a Yuri event in your area, you can, y’know, just do one. Don’t whine that no one else is doing it – do it yourself! Yay Katherine!
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Yay for YaYCon!

April 5th, 2012

My eye is marginally better and I wanted to get this down before it all started to mush into my collective con consciousness.  (For a Dutch perspective, please look here: http://forum.ngamer.nl/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=10269)

Yaoi and Yuri Con (YaYCon) was held on April 1, 2012 in Enschede, The Netherlands at a music venue called Atak.

In addition to being a Yaoi and Yuri-focused event, YaYCon explicit bills itself as a LGBTQ-friendly space. With this, and with the Dutch reputation for tolerance and acceptance, we found that the people and the event at YayCon were welcoming and friendly. Not a single “Eww, Yuri” was heard. ^_^ American BL fans, you could learn from this.

Because Amsterdam is well known for art and architecture, rather than anime and manga, we spent several days simply walking around and enjoying the sites, the canals and the buildings, rather than rushing hither and yon filling our pockets with goods. I am sorry we didn’t get a photo of the 5 euro bag of mini “Delft” shaped like wooden shoes. That was the funniest and smartest bag o’souvenirs I’ve ever seen. ^_^ Imagine this in a plastic bag with a 5€ sticker on it:

We did take this picture, because we knew the Rijksmuseum was undergoing construction and the wife was dead set against going in if Rembrandt’s The Night Watch wasn’t on exhibit.

Amsterdam is a wonderful town for walking around randomly, since the architecture did not take a beating in WWII, we were able to spot houses as old as the 16th century that still were in use.

We stayed at a Hotel called Chic and Basic. Thankfully it wasn’t Chic, instead it was quirky and charming. The giveaway was when you walk up and on the window it says in large letters “Yes, you are standing in front of the window of the hotel.” Next to that on the door it says, “Yes, this is the door to the hotel.” I loved it right at that moment. The rooms had very thankfully not been updated to the Chic and Basic decor, so they were rather strange, instead. Our room had a clown, a smurf and holiday flags as trompe l’oeil on the walls, with a ribbon painted hanging down from the wall onto the headboard of the bed. Bruce had a “painting” of a naked man over his bed. I feel sad that these will be painted over for white with white trim one day and white non-furniture. Poor weird little rooms.. Other items that had comments – the room key expressed a wish to be a movie star’s credit card, rather than a hotel room key and the soap in the hotel was confident that it was the cutest soap that we’d ever steal. (It wasn’t, but I didn’t want to tell it that….)

After several days of Amsterdam and at least one breathtaking meal, we headed out to Enschede, for YaYCon.

We had some difficulty finding our hotel, but when we found it, it was nice, if full of steep stairs. We took a walk around central Enschede, found Atak, the venue and settled in for the night.

The next AM, we headed right for Atak, and were met by Liedi, who acted as our guide for the first part, until I was set up for my lecture. Both Marissa and Nicolle were lovely and I once again thank them very much for inviting me to visit their event!

It was relatively early, and I expected more BL than Yuri fans, but when I got started, the room filled up. It was gratifying and some of the questions – including the one from the tech crew – were great.

Wifey, Bruce and I wandered around the event, and went out for a lunch of epic proportions with Lililicious leader Wendy. (Epic as in, it was the worst meal we’ve had in years. ^_^) Poor Wendy. We laughed through the meal, then went back to look around the Artist Alley.

We finished the day off with Wendy and I running a very informal Yuri Panel, where we focused on Yuri that currently is or is soon to be available in multiple languages (from this post) and, as I have begun to elsewhere, I rewarded good questions with prizes. ^_^ Fans got books, we got good questions, and we all had a lot of fun. I was presented with a piece of original art by the artist, as a gift from the con organizers. It was a lovely gesture.

Once more, my sincere thanks to Nicolle for the invitation, Marissa for her help with accommodation, Liedi for her enthusiasm, all the attendees at YayCon for being fun and cute (and so young!) and especially Wendy for her help and for hanging out with us. As always, my undying thanks to Bruce for his train-schedule skills and companionship and to my wife, for traveling with me to wherever, for whatever.

I hope those of you in Europe will try to get to YayCon in the future – it was small, pleasant and really full of wonderful fans. I hope to get to another European con in the future, so if your local con is interested in having me as a guest, have them contact me! ^_^