Archive for the LGBTQ Category


Pride Month Manga Thread on Twitter

June 5th, 2018

To celebrate Pride Month I decided to share a LGBTQ manga recommendation every day on Twitter. (Disclaimer: Not every suggestion will be manga. ^_^)

We’re up to day 5 and I wanted to give you all the thread link, so you can follow along – and feel free to suggest your faves in the comments – you know I’m always on the lookout for good LGBTQ manga and comics!





LGBTQ Manga: Claudine (English)

May 8th, 2018

Claudine, by Riyoko Ikeda, is a tragic, yet sympathetic, story about a transgender man. Originally serialized in Margaret magazine, this story is touching and agonizing in equal measure. The story is presented to us as a case study from the perspective of a kind and empathetic psychiatrist who becomes Claudine’s confidant and knows there really isn’t anything wrong with his patient that full acceptance by society couldn’t cure.

The psychiatrist is himself an interesting character and reminded me greatly of the equally kind psychiatrist in Pieta. While this doctor was only able to watch and record Claudine’s life, the doctor in Pieta were able to intervene, allowing Sahako and Rio a chance at happiness. I wonder, sometimes, if Claudine had been written 20 years later, would this doctor have done the same? I feel sure he would have.

Riyoko Ikeda is well-known for the otherworldly beauty of her gender non-conforming characters and anyone who knows Dear Brother or Rose of Versailles, will be used to the character type presented here. Claudine is beautiful and women are attracted to him, but he is not able to maintain a relationship through no fault of his own. And, while there is a Well of Loneliness feel about the conclusion, the end of Claudine’s life is presented not as an inevitability, but a crime committed upon Claudine by society.

For 1978, this was an extraordinary portrayal. It reads a bit old fashioned now, as society moves towards greater awareness and understanding of transgender people, but it’s not stale in the least. 

Of course Seven Seas has done a lovely job of reproductio,n as one expects. I was thrilled to see the talented Jocelyne Allen translating this particular volume. I knew she’d handle it all with skill.  This is a top-notch English edition of a 40-year old classic that I have wanted you all to read for years. ^_^ I recommend it highly. Pre-orders are live; the book is slated for release in late June.

Ratings: 

Art – 8
Story – 6
Characters – 6
LGBTQ – 8
Service – 2

Overall – 7

As I wrote in my 2007 review of the original, “I like to think that, when young Satou Sei was combing literature for reflections of her own feelings and she came across Well, she might have also come across Claudine and, like myself, rejected the tragedy, even as she acknowledged its place in her personal history…. Us Comp. Lit. majors must stick together after all. ^_^”

Seven Seas is branching out into more queer narrative; in upcoming days you’ll also see The Bride Was a Boy, which is a comic essay by transgender creator Chii, as well as My Solo Exchange Diary: The Sequel to My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness. This seems like a perfect start to this week, which will end with TCAF. And, ss we all know, everyone is queer at TCAF! ^_^

Many, many thanks to Seven Seas for the review copy! The original volume of this is one of my prize possessions, it’ll be nice to have it in English!





LGBTQ: Dousei Seikatsu ~Watashi o Sukittekoto Desho (εŒζ£²η”Ÿζ΄» γ‚γŸγ—γ‚’ε₯½γγ£γ¦γ“とでしょ

March 23rd, 2018

Miyuki and Yuuko are a couple. They live together. They love each other.  Yuu-chan likes cute things, Miyu-san likes bugs. Dousei Seikatsu ~ Watashi o Sukittekoto Desho (εŒζ£²η”Ÿζ΄» ~ γ‚γŸγ—γ‚’ε₯½γγ£γ¦γ“とでしょ  is a full-color manga about their life together, based on Pixiv comics by the creator, Satsumaage.

As you might be able to imagine (or have experienced if you have ever been in a long-term relationship) this book is filled with those ridiculous moments between couples: squeeing over how cute the other is when they are asleep, or finding their weird obsessions and habits adorable. Sharing food and playtime and shopping for one another, cold feet, snuggling, having disagreements and apologizing, and all the silly ways we relate to someone we love. This book is about the small day-to-day moments that make up a life.

There is no plot here. We are literally watching the shared life of a couple, with little to no interaction with their lives outside. As a result it is silly and cute and sexy and stupid and annoying and boring, just like life. It’s also so refreshing. The daily life of two women in love living together presented as perfectly normal and without crisis. It made me happy every time I read a few pages. ^_^

The final chapter details the circumstances under which Miyuki and Yuuko meet, can’t stop thinking about one another, run into one another again and begin dating. Like the rest of the book it’s all so normal and without melodrama I became a little weepy reading it.  It’s just all so…nice.

Ratings:

Art – 8 Pleasant, rather than good, and sometimes goofy 
Story – 8 Life
Characters – 9 I’d have them over for lunch
Service  – 3 A little, because they are a couple and do touch and like to look at each other in states of undress and the like
LGBTQ – 9 No discussion of them as lesbian, but it’s really aside the point here. They are a couple.

Overall – 9

It’s true that I wouldn’t want to read nothing but this kind of pleasant slice-of-life all the time, but an appealing story about two adult women being happy together is still rare enough in manga that you’ll excuse me for kvelling a bit. ^_^





Winter Reading: A Whisper of Bones, a Jane Lawless Mystery

March 4th, 2018

Ellen Hart recently was named a Grandmaster of the Mystery Writer’s Association, a very great honor awarded to her by her peers. She’s written 33 novels, 25 of which are the Jane Lawless mysteries. Jane was one of the first out lesbian detective series that shepherded me through my 30s.  Hers was not a a story of  struggling with being closeted, as was Katherine A Forrest’s Kate Delafield, but she was, like Kate, an accomplished adult woman, with a life and friends (and she just happened to be good at solving mysteries.)

I have a soft spot for lesbian mysteries. It was the first genre of lesbian fiction that I could stand to read. Although a remarkable number of the detectives had shitty relationships and drank too much, in the time honored way of detectives everywhere, these were the first lesbians I had ever seen in popular fiction who existed in my world as lesbians. So I was willing to overlook a bunch of tired tropes. Including shitty relationships and alcoholism. ^_^

The last few Jane Lawless books have been a little uneven. I liked The Grave Soul, which I reviewed here in 2015. The beginning was very strong, but it thinned out a bit as the plot wore on. I didn’t review Fever in the Dark because it was a fine beach read, but nothing to hold on to.  But here I am again, this time reviewing her newest Jane Lawless book, A Whisper of Bones, because it did some very good things and some really not-good things.

To begin with, Minneapolis is now firmly lodged in my mind as a hotbed of creepy family mysteries and murder.  Maybe it’s time to take Jane on the road or it might begin to  affect tourism. ^_^

One of the not-good things is that it is now almost wholly implausible that Jane can run a restaurant and be absent so often and for so long. In this novel she literally walks out during a wine tasting at her restaurant at which the vitner is the guest of honor. I find it hard to believe that this could continue more than a short while before it began to take a toll on the well-being of the restaurant.

Another weak point was Jane’s implied incipient alcoholism in the last two books has just disappeared. And, of course she has a shitty relationship. As horrible as it sounds, I was looking forward to the impending death of her shitty girlfriend, but no luck so far.

The final weak point is one of the characters that fans love best, Jane’s friend Cordelia. In 1990, Cordelia, a kind of femle Oscar Wilde, was a delight. In 2018, she’s a tad wearing. Luckily for this book, she’s also given a lighter, more human touch, which made her less a piece of ornate scenery and more of an actual character.

The good things all revolve around the mystery itself. Hart’s got a great talent at creating creepy, moody set pieces that work out completely differently than  a reader could possibly imagine. And it’s that talent makes this book enjoyable. The right people end up happily, the right people don’t and there’s a bonus “you could not possibly have known” thing that feels a bit like the cherry on top. 

Ratings:

Overall – 8

As a fun bit of winter reading without making me (or allowing me) to work too hard at it, A Whisper of Bones is  a good choice to enjoy some light reading about a lesbian private detective surrounded by death, disease and lies.

Thanks very much to the publishing company, St. Martin’ Press, for the review copy!





LGBTQ: Hitori Koukan Nikki (一人亀換ζ—₯記)

February 22nd, 2018

“Dear Nagata Kabi-san, this is Nagata Kabi.”

We left Nagata-sensei at the end of Sabishi-sugi Rezu Fuzoku ni Ikimashita Report (γ•γ³γ—γ™γŽγ¦γƒ¬γ‚Ίι’¨δΏ—γ«θ‘ŒγγΎγ—γŸγƒ¬γƒ) (which was sold as My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness in English) looking at a building a life in the middle of crushing depression and a debilitating eating disorder. As the pages of Hitori Koukan Nikki (一人亀換ζ—₯記) open, she is still attempting to build that life with crushing depression and sudden, shocking fame. (How much fame? The cover of this book says that her first book has 4.8 million copies in print.) But no pressure.

Nagata-sensei’s journey is a merry-go-round. Left out of the normal development of human emotions and affection, she’s desperate to be loved, to be embraced, but incapable of functioning at the level she would need to build the relationships that provide those things. Torn between needing some kind of stability, and desiring adulthood and freedom, we see her moving in and out of her parent’s house over and over trying to find some kind of balance.

Determined to make it on her own, Nagata-sensei struggles with ever worsening depression – her darkness is very omnipresent in these pages, signified by increasing use of black in the art, as she all-but-literally drowns in her own misery. 

Nagata-sensei, though, really is determined and keeps working at her next book, this time for Shogakukan’s Big Comics Special. Although her story is fully autobiographical, it has enough general appeal to have a major publisher pick her up and run her work in their magazine. More success equals more pressure.

But, just when things seem too overwhelming, she meets someone. Someone who becomes important to her. For the first time in her life, Nagata-sensei is experiencing the kind of emotion she craves. And, miraculously, it’s returned. I won’t spoil the end of the book, because it made the rest of the book worth reading, frankly, and you too will be able to read it this June when it comes out as My Solo Exchange Diary from Seven Seas.

Let me editorialize here for a moment: I am convinced that the reason the first book sold so well was that it had “lesbian experience” in the title AND a relatable story for so many.  I bet this won’t sell nearly as well without the word “lesbian” in it. Why? Because Amazon does not have a Yuri or lesbian manga/comics category. So people put in the keyword lesbian to find stuff they might want. Then they read the description. No one  is going to find Hana & Hina Afterschool when looking for a “lesbian romance” because that phrase is never used in the description. How many people might have loved a cute, sweet lesbian romance? Who knows because the description calls it a “toy-shop romance.” This is why Amazon needs a Yuri category, but also why publishers have *got* to understand how description works and who it’s for. Because I feel so strongly about this, I’ve sent this all to Seven Seas. Update: Seven Seas tells me that they agree, and are putting this volume out as My Solo Exchange Diary: The Sequel to My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness.

Seven Seas does a reasonable job with description, compared with say, Yen, who use the surreally vague Japanese descriptions, but this one is just going to need some help to become as popular as the first volume. And it should be, Because it’s a harder read, but a better book.

It is a harder read. I squirmed during the chapters when her parents read her first book. Crushing depression is crushing, and I was feeling weighted down by Nagata-sensei’s struggle. And when she broke down after kissing someone she liked for the very first time in her life, I’m not ashamed to say I cried, too. Which is why I really liked the ending and very much look forward to Hitori Koukan Nikki, Part 2.

Ratings:

Art – 7 She definitely has a style
Story – 6 
Service – N/A, even when there is nudity
LGBTQ – 9

Overall – 8

I’m fascinated by the (maybe disproportionately?I don’t know) important role in the comics industry held by autobiographical comic essays both in the West and in Japan.