Archive for the Miscellaneous Category


2021 New Year’s Lucky Boxes! All Claimed

January 10th, 2021

As you may remember, this autumn I engaged upon a massive renovation of my office. That meant clearing *everything* out, every box of books, every bookshelf, every file and folder. Even the filing cabinet was weeded and man did I find some stuff in there. ^_^ This first crop of Lucky boxes for the year are full of manga (Japanese mostly, but also some English,)  western comics and doujinshi, toys, stickers, candy  – I can assure you that the mochi cube candies were really pretty good! – and other random things to marvel at. The Premium boxes include other flat fun things.

This time we have 3 Large Premium boxes, 2 Medium Yuri boxes for you.

As always I assure you that this is all 100%, unadulterated stuff. Lucky Boxes are created by me shoving a bunch of things in boxes until I can barely tape them shut. I don’t  remember what went in, so no..I can’t tell you what is in each box. I do try to put random things like postcards and papers and toys in there to make the unpacking process an adventure. ^_^

When you email me, please refer to the box you want by the title and #1. First come, first served and these always go fast! These are listed out so I can cross them off as they go.

Large Premium Box 1 – $50 Claimed

Large Premium Box 2 – $50 Claimed

Large Premium Box 3 – $50 Claimed

Medium Box 1 – $25 Claimed

Medium Box  2  – $25 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.

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.

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

Ready? Get your Lucky Boxes!

 

 





Lucky Boxes and I’m In Love With The Villainess, Volume 2 aka no Okazu today

January 7th, 2021

Cleaning up some last items from the great office clean up renewal  and you know what that means…. Lucky Boxes to start 2021! Keep your eyes peeled for the post here on Okazu. ^_^

In the mean time, I’m taking today off to read I’m In Love With The Villainess, Volume 2, which dropped this morning and *nothing* is as important as me reading it right now. It’s amazing. Go read it and we can talk about it when we’re all done. ^_^





Kageki Shojo! The Curtain Rises by Kumiko Saiki

December 20th, 2020

In 2013, I reviewed a manga call Kageki Shoujo!. I enjoyed it immensely. It had all the elements of a strong Shoujo manga story, but was running in Ultra Jump magazine, Shounen Jump‘s older brother. After that review, the mangaka moved publishers and it was relaunched as Kageki Shoujo SEASON ZERO, a reboot of the series with Hakusensha that ran in Hana to Yume magazine…an audience that seems, on the face of it, more sensible for this series. Volume 1 of this reworking is a larger volume than the original V1 I reviewed. It was with great delight then, that I heard that Seven Seas has licensed this manga as Kageki Shojo The Curtain Rises!.

Narata Ai is a former idol with a major group, who has been forcibly “graduated” as a result of her calling a fan a creep. Desperate to be in a world without men, Ai decides that a career with the all-female musical review troupe seems the perfect escape so she applies to the school.

Watanabe Sarasa is a highly enthusiastic fan of Lady Oscar and, by extension, the troupe that brought that show to light, the Kouka Revue. She’s a bumpkin, tall and not particularly graceful, but she has energy and enthusiasm in abundance and Ai dislikes her instantly. Ai and Sarasa are, of course, roommates upon entrance to the school and of course, have to deal with bullying from older students, but they have other issues, too. The root of Ai’s fear of men is much darker and Sarasa’s dreams are much more aspirational, than we initially understood.

The art in this series is really wonderful. There is a deep love for the glittering shinyness of Japanese musical revue theater on every page and the drama of the story echoes the struggle to achieve and transcend, the gut-wrenching emotionality and triumph of a Takarazuka play.  It’s exactly the delightful concoction of joy and pathos that makes a great musical revue play, balled up in a fun, otaku-friendly manga story. I’m so very excited that you can read it!

The story is not Yuri, but there is a deep root in it to stories that are. There are a good half dozen references to anime, manga and other media that we all recognize in this volume. This story about two girls striving towards stardom together may not be Yuri, but it will always be welcome on my shelves.

The folks at Seven Seas did a great job of bringing the references-to-other-things-filled narrative to English, so kudos to Katrina Leonoudakis for translating that messy pile of cultural references. Laura Heo’s letter and retouch was excellent, especially as a lot of the effects here are artfx. I do also want to say that logo designs at Seven Seas have upped their game significantly and this one, by Courtney Williams is a lot of fun. Great work as always to the folks at Seven Seas.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Character – 9
Story – 8
Yuri – 0
Service – 3 some nudity and ugly stuff implied

Overall – 8

If you like Takarazuka, or Shoujo drama, sports manga, or frankly, pretty much anything at all, do give Kageki Shojo! The Curtain Rises a try. It’s a great production of a manga. ^_^ I know I’m looking forward to Volume 2!

Thanks very much to Seven Seas for the review copy!





More Thankful Than Ever for Yuri in 2020

November 26th, 2020

It’s “Thanksgiving Day” here in the United States, a day rife with lies, colonization of the first people on this land, traffic, family trauma and now, a dose of COVID-19. It’s never been a favorite holiday of mine, but I wanted to take a moment and reflect on how immensely thankful I am right now.

First of all, I am most thankful to all of our Okazu patrons, and to thank them properly we’ll be hosting an online Holiday party once again!

This year, as travel and events were complicated by the pandemic, I’m extra-thankful for the manga companies who are bringing out more Yuri! I can no longer effectively keep up, which is a problem, but it’s an amazing problem to have. ^_^ As a result, I’m also super thankful for other folks in the manga news and analysis spaces, Yuri Mother, TomoChoco Podcast, Yuricast, and all the folks at ANNCrunchyroll News, Yuri Navi, our international friends, like the Yuri/GL Phillipines and all our global Yuri News Network Correspondents. I would not be able to function without you. The global Yuri Network grows every day and it’s an awe-inspiring thing. ^_^

I’m thankful to you, my Okazu readers and writers. I’m very thankful to everyone who has contributed to making Okazu a Yuri resource for almost 20 years. I’m especially thankful to Louise and Pattie, who have made it possible to do videos for Yuri Studio. I know I owe you a video. Which brings me to why you haven’t gotten one yet. ^_^

I’ve been working on cleaning up the office in my house. It fell out of use when we ceased to use desktop computers and became a giant closet. After having it painted and the floors refinished, we’re at the point of redecorating. I wanted to share a few pictures with you. This is still work in progress, as only the doujinshi are in there (and only in temporary situation), and all the books are yet to be dealt with and all the art is waiting to go up on the walls.

Before:

After:

Here is my small original art gallery to go up once the corner shelf is in place.

Today, as I sit, surrounded by a sea of Yuri manga that I will be sorting and re-arranging in order to find homes for all of it – and planning Lucky Boxes for all of the stuff that has been weeded from the boxes and cartons and closets – I am so very thankful for Yuri creators and and for the stories and characters that have given me a lifetime of joy.

I’m most thankful for my wife, Pattie, for everything. I could not do any of it without you.

Thank you all. I promise I’ll get working on that next video shortly! Happy Thanksgiving.





Yuri is My Job, Volume 6

November 9th, 2020

Depending on who you feel is the actual protagonist of the story – or whomever you are personally rooting for – Yuri is My Job, Volume 6 by Miman can be hard on the heart.

Let us say, for instance, that you feel Hime is the protagonist, as we’ve been following her since the first page of the series. In that case, Volume 6 is largely her struggling trying to not hurt her former best friend again, while also not hurting her newer best friend and preserving the even newer relationship she’s built with that former best friend.

If you’re rooting for Mitsuki, you’re about to watch her spill her heart and soul out in front of Hime without any guarantee of it being recoverable.

If you, like me, actually sympathize most with Sumika and Kanako, you’re going to be watching as things break and you cannot even help to catch the pieces this time.

It seems like something is going to have to give and Hime decides that that thing…is her. Or, is she just running away again? We don’t know yet. (Frankly, we *still* don’t know in the ongoing serialized chapters in Comic Yuri Hime, either. ^_^;)

Despite Miman’s protestations to the opposite in the author’s note, it seems like the story is very much under control. We, the readers can’t yet predict the outcome….but we can conjecture on the possible courses to lead to the outcomes we want, which is a wholly different thing.I know what I want – it isn’t Hime and Mitsuki as a couple. I expect that is what we’ll get, and that’s jut fine. But it’s not that I want.

Miman’s art is stronger than ever before, backgrounds are really being filled out and characters have more definition. So, when we get the next volume, pay close attention to the background people. They are getting people-ier. ^_^

When the Yuri in this volume lands, it lands hard. ^_^

Kodansha is doing  clean job of the reproduction. And we’re getting people to credit now for that work. Translation by Diana Taylor captures the emotion beautifully, Jennifer Skarupa’s lettering helps keep the story moving along. Logo design and cover design by Phil Balsman and My Truong respectively are terrific and editing by Haruko Hashimoto pulls it all together.

 

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Service – 4 Mitsuki’s cleavage is its own character
Yuri – 7

Overall – 8

Yuri is My Job, Volume 6 is a pivotal – and emotional – volume of a a series that is more than the sum of it’s Yuri trope parts.