Archive for the LGBTQ Category


Watashi no Oshi ha Akuyaku Reijou., Volume 5 (私の推しは悪役令嬢。)

March 6th, 2023

Before we start today’s review, I want to let you know that until May my reviews are going to be less regular. I have a relentless schedule for March and April, but at the end of it, I hope I have a lot of fun stuff to share with you all.

Today, to get this new schedule off with a bang, we’re looking at Watashi no Oshi ha Akuyaku Reijou., Volume 5 (私の推しは悪役令嬢。) In the aftermath of the Commoner Movement and the resulting loss, Claire is depressed and Rae is desperately trying to cheer her up. But when Claire does cheer up, it is because Rae’s only real rival is arriving – Manaria, the crown princess of the neighboring country Susse. Manaria is good-looking, popular, accomplished and worst of all, she’s the only quadcaster in the world. She’s top-level at all four elements, to boot. Even worse than worst, Claire has a childhood crush on her “oneesama.” Manaria is an understandably popular character, but in the real world, she’d be insufferable. ^_^

Now it’s Rae’s turn to feel loss…and have her worldview challenged. Manaria pushes Rae to be honest about her feelings for Claire, then destroys her in a duel. But when Rae gets back up and challenges Manaria to an epic battle of vows of love, it will change everyone in the story. This is one of the most popular arcs of the original series, according to inori.-sensei. For good reason. There’s a lot of nail-bitingly good stuff here.

Art-wise, this book is phenomenal. From the tension on the spectators’ faces during Rae and Manaria’s duel to the incredible climax of the Scales of Love contest, there are whole volumes in Claire’s eyebrows. ^_^

This arc is a breather before the story takes a darker turn – a breather that is still quite intense. It’s also the first time Rae is able to meet someone in this world who admits to being queer…a remarkable thing that heralds many other remarkable occurrences in the series, as well as laying some foundations down for future arcs.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 9
Characters – 9
Yuri – 7
Service – Manaria is a kind of service. ^_^

Overall – 9

This volume does not yet have a English-language release date, but when it does, don’t hesitate – it is wonderful. ^_^





The Girl That Can’t Get A Girlfriend

February 21st, 2023

A blonde short-haired woman holds up a hand to black and white weebish girl with short dark hair holding a hear-tshaped flower. Letters read "The Girl That Can't Get A Girlfriend, Story and Art By Mieri Hiranashi."Disclaimer: I am a huge, weeby fan of Mieri Hieranashi and contributed to her patreon for many months, Do not expect anything like an “objective” review. I am about to gush.

The Girl That Can’t Get A Girlfriend is an autobiographical manga by a young butch lesbian who would like, very much, please, thank you, to find a butch girlfriend. This is, as many of us know – and some might guess – a complicated ask. It’s not that the lesbian butch/femme dynamic is a given, but human sexuality is a really complicated system and there are many moving parts to who we like and why.

….

Well…, maybe why isn’t that complicated.

Mieri, like so many of us, discovered Haruka and Michiru. ^_^

 


We’ve all been there. ^_^ (This is me, looking at the Sailor Moon fanfic I wrote in the late 90s through the 2000s.  I ain’t ashamed, it’s all still on my fanfic site.) But fanart is one thing and real life is another, as Mieri discovers, trying to find a partner and, ultimately herself.

When she finds a girlfriend in Japan, she falls in love and her whole world changes. We’re watching over her, like a virtual Maria-sama and can see that what feels to her to be the right choices may not be the best choices for her. We struggle with her struggle and hurt when her heart is broken. Can I be a literary nerd for a second? This is the manga equivalent of The Sorrows of Young Werther* and I wish to heavens I had had this when I was in college I would have compared and contrasted the shit out of it…I’d like to say “just to piss my teacher off,” but that teacher probably would have been cool with it.  Everything in this book is relatable even if a reader hasn’t experienced that specific thing. We know those feelings.

As a counterpoint to the emotional drama, The Girl That Can’t Get A Girlfriend is laugh-out-loud funny. Mieri’s use of meme is always spot on. Her own reminder to remember a potential date is also human had me laughing for a whole day.

You can feel the timeliness of the memifications and jokes. They will hold up as a snapshot of dating life in the early 21st century. My wife and I still joke about “today’s chin” from when I read that scene on Patreon.The humor is humorous, even when it’s a little sad or more than a little self-deprecating. There is a quite a bit of negative self-image in this story…again, relatable for most readers. Mieri presents the women she dates as dashing, while drawing herself a caricature with one exception. Did you catch the one panel where she doesn’t draw herself goofily? Tell me in the comments.

Mieri wrote both the Japanese and English script for this book and you can feel how personal it is to her in both the images and words. Which is why the final chapter is so important. We are carrying her burden along with her as she tells her tale. It is important for us as readers, that we are left with a hopeful look, not just for ourselves, but for her as well. Much like Kabi Nagata’s 282 liter refrigerator, we can see this book as a physical expression of her finding herself and triumphing.

Extras for this volume also include a gallery of sketches she did for the cover art. 28 sketches!?! Yikes, Viz.

Which brings me to one last thing I want to touch on. I had the pleasure of talking with one of the editors of this book at AnimeNYC. I want you all to know how enthusiastic Viz has been about publishing this book. I can see many of the changes made from the original Patreon pages and I could see how loud Viz was about letting people know about it.  This is a beautiful, heart-breaking and hilarious book about queer life and love.

Ratings:

Overall – Yes, Erica, what rating would you give this heart-rending, emotional autobiography?

9, goddammit, it’s a 9.

Absolute must-read for anyone who has ever existed as a human on this planet.

*Yes, I did just compare this book to a novel by Goethe. I will not apologize.

 





Otona ni Nattemo, Volume 7 (おとなになっても)

December 8th, 2022

In Shimura Takako’s Otona ni Nattemo, Volume 7 (おとなになっても) a lot happens.

We left Akari and Ayano having been carefully not seeing one another for some time, as Ayano’s divorce proceeds. When they meet again, they mutually decide to begin over, but the rumor that Ayano is having an affair begins to spread.  In school, Ichika’s life has become more complicated as she’s refusing to return to class. I’m honestly way more invested in the well-being of the children than I want to be. ^_^;
Eri and Wataru are reeling as their relationships fail. Neither the adults nor the children are particularly alright.

But Akari and Ayano are doing a pilgrimage to Akari’s hometown, visiting her childhood haunts. They are taking time to talk through their lives – something they have never had a chance to do. It’s good for them. There is a particularly charming moment, when they fantasize about having gone to school together…who would they have been and how would they have related to one another? The art is especially cute as they (as adults) imagine each other as children.

When they return, they find that the rumors are picking up steam. But they have made a decision. They tell Akari’s family that she is moving out…and moving in with Ayano.

Shimura-sensei’s art is not refined in these chapters, but there’s a sense of motion, and emotion, that is subtle and intense.  When she’s good, she’s really good. This story is one of the adultest mange I have ever read. I cannot imagine being a teenager and giving a hoot about anyone in this manga for any reason. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 8
Characters – 8 I don’t think I dislike anyone…. there’s no bad guys here
Service – 0
LGBTQ+ – 6, maybe? Lives are changing while we watch

Overall – 8

Little girls and and friendship and school, adults and marriage and divorce and choices with consequences. This series would make a pretty solid live-action drama.
 





Watashi no Oshi ha Akuyaku Reijou -Revolution-, Volume 2 (私の推しは悪役令嬢。-Revolution-)

November 10th, 2022

As we all wait breathlessly for the formal announcement of an anime for I’m in Love With the Villainess, today I am looking at the Japanese print edition of Watashi no Oshi ha Akuyaku Reijou -Revolution-, Volume 2 (私の推しは悪役令嬢。-Revolution-). As a reminder, this series came out in print in English before it made it to print in Japan. So the edition you have read is the English translation of the webnovel which was put out digitally by GL Bunko. The series was licensed for print by Ichijinsha. Volume 1 of the JP print edition was reviewed here on Okazu last spring.

This will make the third time I have read this volume, having read it in the GL Bunko novel and English language editions. Because this is a new, deluxe version, with extra stories that have been written since the webnovel was initially licensed, there was quite a bit of new material tucked in between things with which we are already familiar.

There are several key elements to this content, even aside from the new content.  Lily becomes a major player on the board and we eventually learn several secrets regarding the Royal Family and their advisors. Rae explains her former life and tragic first love to her friends. Claire’s class consciousness is awakened when they visit Rae’s hometown. Manaria arrives and forces Rae and Claire’s relationship to change during the Scales of Love arc, which coincidentally completed in the December issue of Comic Yuri Hime as grandly as I had hoped. ^_^

So while the Yuri goes up significantly, with the addition of Manaria and her boyish charm, as well as the Love Scales, the LGBTQ rating stays high with open discussion of complicated queer lives, once again.

Ratings:

Art – 7 Still portraits of the people rather than the scenes.
Story – 9
Characters – 10
Yuri – 10
LGBTQ –10
Service – Rae’s obsession about Claire shifts more to her moods than her body, but there’s still some body commentary, Let’s still say 2

Overall – 9

The board is set now for what is to come. In Volume 3, what is to come will be…revolution.





Queer Transfigurations: Boys Love Media in Asia

October 16th, 2022

I treated myself to a copy of Queer Transfigurations: Boys Love Media in Asia, edited by James Welker recently and I honestly found it to be really inspiring.  Obviously, Boys Love media as such is not terribly interesting to me, but the way fandom creates, interacts with and consumes it, is.  While I read the various essays in this book, I found myself having some of my questions answered and new ones forming. As a result, I will (eventually) be making a survey to do some primary research on Yuri fandom  and I hope you’ll help me out when it’s done by filling it out. ^_^

In the meantime, I found the various essays in this book really interesting in part for the history of how BL media made inroads in various Asian countries outside Japan (mostly through scanlations,) and how various local fandoms have absorbed and adapted BL concepts to fit their own ideals and circumstances. Additionally, a few of the essays discuss the response to BL from queer fandom (and in a few, the impact queer fandom has had on BL.)

Which is where my brain kind of stuck. There’s a lot of throwing the word “queering” around in regards to BL and this got me thinking. IMHO, there are a number of gaps between 1) media being queered by a straight audience and media being queered by a queer audience or; 2) between queer media and straight media being queered; or 3) by queer media being consumed by straight folks as opposed to queer folks. Fundamentally, it is hard for me to credit the “queering” of straight media by straight people as being “queer” in any meaningful sense. Nonetheless, this appeared to be a commonly held assumption about BL based on this selection of articles. (Of which some of the writers are, I know, to be queer themselves.) 

My thoughts as I read these essays often turn to the idea of replacing “BL” with “lesbian porn.” If a writer is making a statement about BL’s inherent queerness that might sound absurd if I replaced it with “lesbian porn,” I question if it could be true. Is straight people creating queerness out of mainstream media “queer?” Is a straight folks imagining lesbian sex between two female movie stars “queer?” Why might one be “queer” and the other not? I have no answers, but I do have a lot of questions. Some of which I will ask James when I interview him for Casa Con this December!

Also interesting for me was the several mentions of misogyny in BL and BL fandom and it’s impact on and relation to local feminisms. I have seen how BL empowered women…and also how some empowered by fandom, turn on other marginalized folks in their communities. Is that changing? Is it worse or better than it used to be? I can answer that a little for Yuri, but not for BL.

Lastly, there were some tidbits of research subjects talking about how BL helped them either empathize with gay issues, or find their own queer identities and that interested me a lot, so that’s probably where I’m going to be focusing my research. How has Yuri made an impact on fans’ identities and sympathies? Let’s find out!

Overall, I found this book to be a fun and interesting read. Few of the articles were bogged down in over-dense language. I was especially interested in the section on China as mostly everyone can see that danmei is already the next big cultural export from China…even as it’s not apparently acceptable by their own media laws.

Ratings:

Overall – 9

If you’d like to understand how fandom studies look from the inside, or are interested in BL and/or queer media studies, I highly recommend Queer Transfigurations: Boys Love Media in Asia. It got me thinking – I look forward to seeing what comes out of this thought and I hope you do, too. ^_^