Archive for the Okazu News Category


Okazu and Yuricon make Active Anime’s Top 25

February 18th, 2008

It’s a one-two punch! Okazu (#6) and Yuricon (#7) have made the Top Ten of Active Anime’s Top 25 Anime Sites poll!

We join such notables as Comipress, Mangablog and Anime News Network in the Top 25.

My thanks go out to all of my Yuricon staff, all the many helpers we’ve had over the years, all our guest reviewers here at Okazu and you, all the readers and fans. Thank you for your support, truly. :-)





Stroking My Ego, Among Other Things

January 8th, 2008

Quick semi-news post. If, like, me you enjoy the occasional bout of literary criticsm on comics and manga, I suggest you visit Newsarama’s blog for a list of their commentator’s top critical posts on manga and comics. I hope you’ll read all the way down the list, to where Mangablog‘s Brigid Alverson gives Okazu a shout-out. ;-) That was awfully nice of her. I can return the favor. She’s a great writer – go read her blog.

Also, Active Anime has resurrected the old AnimeFringe Top 25 anime/manga site poll. Way back when it was just a baby site, Yuricon was in the Top 25. I’d love to make it again – of course, it would be even *better* if I made it twice with Okazu on the list, too. Feel free to stuff the ballot box vote for your Top Anime Site. Don’t forget to make two of your three choices Yuricon and Okazu. LOL





Okazu News: We’re the Top!

December 12th, 2007

I’ve been getting a lot of email these days on how impossibly cool Okazu is. I can’t say this displeases me. LOL

This week we got two pieces of particularly ego-gratifying email.

Okazu is being included in an upcoming book, Top 500 Blogs by online dating blogger Vicky Zhou. The book is slated for release in Q4 2008; Okazu will be included in the “Animation & Media” section.

And this morning I learned that Okazu is coming in in the Top 3 blogs at Inside Manga. According to the website, Okazu is one of the hottest blogs on manga. Okay, I accept graciously. :-)

So thanks to Vicki, Inside Manga, Cole Porter and to all of you for making Okazu the top! I look forward to writing more reviews and hearing more from all of you. :-)





News from the Yurisphere

November 7th, 2007

A couple of news items of interest that I wanted to throw your way today!

Eriko Tadeno, author/artist of the collection Works, and contributor to Yuri Monogatari 5, has been interviewed by Polish magazine “Comix Grrrlz.” Thanks to Sylwia for the link! This review is in Polish, so don’t be surprised.

Dedicated reader and Yuri fan Eric P points out that Love My Life, the live action movie based upon the Yuri manga of the same name by Yamaji Ebine, (here’s my review of the movie) has been starting to pop up at Gay/Lesbian/Bi/Trans Film Festivals in North America. It’s already been screened in Tampa and at Outfest. ANN Previously reported that Wolfe Video licensed it, so keep an eye out for a North American release.

Download the new Yuricon toolbar! In the never-ending quest to provide both good information and a lively community, I have developed a Yuricon toolbar which is now available for download at: http://yuricon.communitytoolbars.com/. There are toolbar versions for M$IE and Firefox, which works on Linux and Macs, I’ve been told. The toolbar includes a search box, messaging, an Okazu headline ticker and a Yuricon Chat. (I’ve been looking to do a chat for some time and this seemed like an interesting experiment.) The rules of the chat are the same as those on the Yuricon Mailing List.

The search box utilizes the custom Yuri search engine I built – which is also located on the Yuricon Site Map, so the results will be very anime/manga-centric. You can also search for reusults within the Yuricon site, as well.

Feel free to download and play around with it – tell friends who are interested in Yuri and want to chat, send messages or just search for Yuri online. :-)

And thanks to eagle-eyed Erin S. for pointing out that a Spanish scanlation group has received permission from Rica Takashima to scanlate Rica ‘tte Kanji!? in Spanish. I know that Yuri has a huge Spanish-speaking following, so cool for them! :-) And thanks to Erin for the news! Here’s the link to the thread on the CoYuHi forums.





Okazu on Wikipedia

September 23rd, 2007

Okay – I need your help. Okazu has been increasingly cited in Wikipedia entries and I want to collect a bibliography of them all. Some of them are incredibly silly, and some are vaguely interesting – most are just references to my reviews.

Here are some of the cites that I know of off the top of my head from the English Wiki:

Yuri_term
Kashimashi Girl meets Girl
Maria-sama ga Miteru
Shiroi Heya No Futari
Okazu
Strawberry Panic!
Madlax
Strawberry Marshmallow
Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou
.hack/Sign
Sukeban Deka
Yuri Hime
The Last Uniform
Claudine
Bee Train
Simoun (anime)
The Sword of Paros
Strawberry_Panic! (short stories)
Anata no Scandal
Oniisama e…
Shoujoai_ai
Falling_of_Blossoms
Pieta (manga)
Kuchibiru Tameiki Sakurairo

(I suppose I ought to alphabetize all that but I’m not going to…)

There used to be an entry on me, but I edited it to add a bit about Okazu and it disappeared slightly afterwards. (Anyone feels like putting it back up, you have my blessing. It failed for “lack of notability.” Write me and we’ll write a better entry. lol)

There’s also links from the Russian Yuri and Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou entries.

Yuricon has a stub entry (I’ve got way too much on my plate to do a more detailed one, so again, if anyone wants to expand it, go right ahead!) and is cited in the Yuri entries in English, Russian, Italian
November 15 2007 Note: And my big excitment for the day – I’ve made it into the Japanese wikipedia as a reference for the Simoun entry. Woo!

Here’s what I need from you all – as you scan Wikipedia, can you comment here with links for the various entries where Okazu is cited? I can’t remember half of them – and I’d like to have a record of them all. Thanks to all of you – it’ll be a big help. :-)