Archive for the Miscellaneous Category


Treat Yourself With a Lucky Box! ALL CLAIMED

November 6th, 2022

This time we have 3 Lucky boxes! They are full of comics and manga and poetry and magazines and and other random things to marvel at.  All of these boxes include other flat fun things like stickers, bookmarks, comics, or postcards which are equally random and frequently bizarre (and often not at all Yuri.) As always,

You’ll get random things in random things. All boxes include manga, Japanese candy, random toys, paper items, some include magazines, the large boxes include artbooks.

I assure you that this is all 100%, unadulterated stuff. Lucky Boxes are created by me shoving a bunch of things in boxes. ^_^

This time we have 2 Premium Large boxes and 1 Premium Medium Box.

These are all considered Premium as they contain Japanese media along with the other stuff.

USPS is making the boxes smaller and smaller, and the rates higher, so I compensated by putting more JP items in each one this time.

Here are today’s choices:

Large Box 1 – $50 – Claimed

Large Box 2 – $50

Medium Box 1 – $30 Claimed

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To be eligible to buy a Lucky Box, follow these instructions carefully. Please. Thank you. Failure to follow all of these instructions will disqualify you. It’s not personal, they are all claimed pretty quickly and I don’t have time to track you down for a piece of information.

1 – You must live in the Continental USA (contiguous 48) only, no APO/FPOs. This is disappointing for me too, so I apologize. Nothing in here is worth the amount of money it would cost to get it overseas.

2 – You must be over 18, I am not policing books or recipients.

3 – Email me at anilesbocon01 at hotmail dot com with the subject “Lucky Box”. Use an email you check regularly. Because I will reply asap. The first person who responds to my email gets the box.

4. *****Please include your name, age, mailing address. ***** Tell me which box you want. Even if you’ve given me your address previously, please include it, I am very lazy.

5- I will contact you at that point and give you details about payment by Paypal. Please be prepared to check your email and get payment out so this post doesn’t linger. Thanks in advance. These will be shipped out asap, as well; the whole point of this is to get these out of my house. ^_^

This whole process will be handled with utmost capriciousness, as usual. ^_^

Ready? Get your Lucky Boxes!





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. ^_^





New York Comic Con Event Report

October 7th, 2022

My apologies for the radio silence over the past few days. I had a guest review lined up for you all, then got busy and distracted. Mea culpa. In the meantime, I did manage to attend the Librarian and Educator day of New York Comic Con, which is happening this weekend at Javits Convention Center in New York City.

NYCC has not historically been my favorite event, (AnimeNYC is a vastly superior event and I hope that all the anime and manga companies are going to be there. I’ll do a write-up before the event itself to give you an idea who is coming) as it gladly takes money from anime and manga-adjacent companies, but gives them little respect. This year it seems like the word got out and while Toei was there, with massive giveaways, and Bandai Namco with same, the only manga presence was the usual NYC based publishing companies. More on all of this in a sec.

I was part of the Manga in Libraries panel line-up on “Defending Manga,” with Jillian Rudes, founder of Manga in Libraries, Renee Scott, Rie Ishibashi, and Joe Sanchez. We had a lively panel, followed by manga industry folks talking about manga for libraries, and that was followed by a “Best and Worst” manga panel in which I got to be timer. ^_^ They were all fantastic panels. And – this is why I am telling you all of this – not only was there a lot of talk of queer representation in manga, but also disability, mental health and more. Every panel had some discussion of the importance of manga in giving voice to folks who have been marginalized. Obviously not every librarian, but many, are on the right side of this. Talk to your public and school libraries about getting good queer books on those shelves. Manga in Libraries has a ton of resources for all ages. AND let me assure you that the industry is also on our side. Here are some upcoming picks from representatives of Kodansha, Yen and Viz – Uta Isaki’s manga about being asexual and Mieri Hiranishi’s book about being a butch girl trying to find a gilfriend were positively gushed over. ^_^ (Photo by me.)

There was a panel today on manga, as well, This Manga Is Awesome, check out the tweets on that!

So, I didn’t walk the whole floor, because I wasn’t interested in the giveaways so much, or the Golden and Silver Age comics, as I’m out of collecting, or the booths selling crap, because I have so MUCH crap here. But I did walk along the publishing aisles…because books are not crap. ^_^ I stopped by the Yen Press booth and picked up a copy of She Loves to Cook, She Loves to Eat (review here on Okazu) and only later learned that there was a giveaway of a measuring spoon with a 1T and 1t measurement, for that. The guy I bought it from never even mentioned it. ^_^; Joe gave me his spoon, so I do have one. BUT, if you go to table 2837, tell Yen you want your spoon!

One last thing, Bandai Namco was there with a HUGE presence and multiple booths, so I wandered over to that and Crunchyroll in vain hope of a Birdie Wing thing sneaking through the cracks. No luck. I did check to see if Aerial from Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury was available yet, because I am an otaku, but not yet. Maybe by AnimeNYC, and then I’ll have to face how *much* of an otaku am I, really. ^_^

My day at NYCC was nice and very super queer-friendly. ^_^ Next up, I am doing a talk at Hunter College and going to be at Women in Comics Con in the Bronx this month – next month, I’m a guest at AnimeNYC, where I’ll be signing my book, By Your Side: The First 100 Years of Yuri Anime and Manga all weekend long – buy a copy there, and get ANYC exclusive giveaways while they last! ^_^





Yuri Studio Early Access for Okazu Patrons – Top 10 Changes In Yuri From 20 Years of Okazu

August 29th, 2022

Happy 20th Anniversary Okazu! As requested Okazu Patrons, I’ve created a 20th anniversary video for Okazu, talking about the changes in Yuri that I have seen over the last 20 years.

For early access to all video and research, become an Okazu Patron today! ^_^ Your support goes directly into supporting Yuri creators.

 





Okazu’s 20th anniversary Celebration Begins with a Big Thank You to Okazu Patrons!

August 1st, 2022

Okazu’s 20th anniversary Celebration Begins with a Big Thank You to Okazu Patrons! Okazu Patrons are getting early access to new Yuri Studio Content, a special gift and early entry into the 20th Anniversary celebration!

To get all this and support Yuri creators, writers and more, become an Okazu Patron today!