Archive for the Okazu News Category


Okazu News: 5th anniversary ahoy!

August 7th, 2007

I just happened to notice last night that we are only a few posts away from the 800th post here on Okazu and, coincidentally, one week from today is Okazu’s 5th anniversary. (No, I won’t be forcing the two things to land on the same day.)

Wow.

800 rambling, incoherent opinions about nothing much, over 5 years! What a total waste of time. LOL On the other hand, I have met many, many of you, my dear readers, and that has been a pleasure and not a waste of time at *all*.

Since we have a week left and I love prezzies, how about some 5th anniversary art? I think it would be nice if the art illustrated the theme “Hungry for Yuri? Have some Okazu” in some way. It could be the blog seen on a computer screen, a word in an ad, a typical Okazu meal being shared by two women, or the faboo Yuri Okazu designed by my wife (which can be seen above and has a place of honor in the in the downloadable banner on the sidebar or the scrolling headline banner the bottom of the page) as part of the picture. However you want. Fan or original art (fan art of Yuriko and Midori or any series, whatever you want.)

You can email any 5th anniversary art to me at anilesbocon01 at hotmail.com . Include contact information, please, because there’s a high likelihood that I’ll send out a thank-you prize or two. :-)

Good lord. 5 years of this. lol





Guest Review Guidelines

July 12th, 2007

2021 Update: Guest Reviews on Okazu are paid at what is currently an industry standard. As a result we are more strict about Guest Review applications and submissions. Please read and follow the process below carefully: 

If you would like to write a Guest Review for Okazu, please begin here before you contact us!

1) If you have never been a Guest Reviewer before, please email me *first*. Introduce yourself. “Hello, my name is _____ and I am writing to discuss a possible Guest Review for /name of series and media/.” Anime, manga or games only please. Games and Visual Novels are especially welcome. 

Please send a request for *one* series to review. (Folks have been known to send suggestions for multiple series. Please do not. Thank you.)

Please also do a quick search using the search function on the righthand sidebar to see if the media you’re contacting me about has already been reviewed. We have a lot of content on Okazu, we may have covered it already. ^_^

 

If you have previously Guest Reviewed and are suggesting a review, you can begin here:

2) Suggest a series that you have legitimately purchased or watched on a legal stream. No subs or scans or games that were downloaded illicitly. Remember, at Okazu, we support the industry and the creators. 

3) What should follow is a short discussion of *why* that series suitable as a review topic for Okazu – i.e., where’s the Yuri or Queer content and why it is of interest to Okazu readers. This is the meat of your pitch so please, I beg you, keep your email relevant. We are most interested in Japanese and other East Asian popular culture content, but are open to western popular culture, or relevant non-fiction reviews.

Spell check it, make sure the grammar is correct. It is upon this section that I will be making my decision. (This is unnecessary if I have specifically solicited a review for a series from you.)

 

If you have have been solicited to write a review you can start here:

4) DO NOT EMAIL ATTACHMENTS. I hate, loathe and abhor attachments. When you email the review, you MUST send it as inline text, so I can cut and paste it. If you make me open an attachment I will be very grouchy. 500 words is average for a review, but we’re not counting, so you don’t have to be anal. If you can write a succinct review in a couple hundred words, feel free, or go longer if you have a lot to say.

5) Please use the format I use for Okazu and include ratings as I do. The format is, roughly: 

– Personal Intro and links to your relevant sites.
– Series Intro and Synopsis.
– Notable Items of Interest. If there are any. For instance, this is where you might discuss the art or a theme, etc.
– Discussion of the Yuri/Queer content
– Ratings.

If it is an obscure, out-of-print or hard-to-find series, please include a cover picture or a link to a cover picture. If it is currently available I’ll use the official cover art.

Ratings on Okazu are from 1-10 on categories:
Art –
Story –
Characters –
Service (level of salaciousness) –
Yuri  –
Overall –

You can also add in ratings for notable qualities like music for an anime. Ratings may be as capricious as you like. The Overall score does not have to be an average of the other scores. The Overall score is a general effect/overall impression score.

 

6) Please proofread your review before you send it. Have a friend proofread it or read it out loud. 

Lastly – being a Guest Reviewer on Okazu is an honor. I do not bestow it lightly. I may reject your review. It is most likely not personal. Either I did not feel that the series was worthy, or your review needed improvement or I want to review that anime/manga myself or something else. Please don’t take it personally. 

7) If your review is accepted payment will be made through Paypal. Include your Paypal email with your review. ^_^ We won’t demand formality. If you send out invoices for your own records, that’s fine.

We welcome Guest Reviewers on Okazu and look forward to working with you! Thank you to all our Okazu Patrons for making it possible to pay Guest Writers the industry standard!





Okazu News: More site construction

December 6th, 2006

So, uh, once again, the old “under construction” sign is up around here at Okazu.

Blogger has a few new bells and whistles and I’m trying to get those working and keep all the old stuff in place. So, my apologies for any inconvenience as your RSS Feeds get 600 posts in the next several weeks, in clots of about 30 or so. (If I didn’t have to republish, I wouldn’t. But I do.) When it’s all over, we ought to have a nice automatically generated list of Labels for you to find things more easily, and I can lose the fakey categories I’ve been using.

I’ll still be posting all week, just to make this even more awkward and annoying. Got a couple more schoolgirl manga for y’all. :-)

Anyway, my apologies. I’ll try to make it as quick as possible. Thanks for your continued support of Okazu!





Okazu News: New Banner and "Opinion, Part 3"

November 8th, 2006


This week has been a bit busy, what with preparations beginning for Yuricon 2007 Yurisai, our festival of Yuri. Look for some signs of life on the Yuricon website soon, as we start developing programming, video, guests and contests for this exciting one-day event! Registration is slated to begin in January.

In the meantime, as we’ve made it to yet another November here at Okazu, I thought I’d offer up the opportunity once more to ask me anything, anything at all, as long as it’s not absurdly personal (“What’s your bank account number?”) I promise to, as I have in the past, answer everything with my usual brutal, yet somehow adorable, honesty. Questions about Yuri are always welcome, questions about ALC and Yuricon are VERY welcome, questions about Maria-sama ga Miteru are always fun, but don’t be afraid to make me think. I’ll warn you though – I’m not good at logic questions, I tend to think in bursts of intuitive thought, so if you’re proposing a difficult logic question, I’ll pass. I never liked those. ^_^

Ask your questions here in the comments section, or feel free to email them to me with the subject “Your Opinion” and I’ll do my best to answer them all. I won’t promise to be nice, but I’ll do my best to be funny. ^_^ The last two ventures into this were a hoot, so I’m looking forward to your questions! (And I have a personal bet with myself about them…let’s see how I do.) No limit to the number of questions you can ask, but no promises about the number I answer.

***

While you’re thinking up a good questions, please feel free to use one of the wonderful new link to Okazu banners, complete with “Yuri Okazu” logo as created by my beloved wife! We have two sizes – the small banner is about 2.8″ long and the super-sized version is about 4.8″ long. Please spread the word and spread the love and link to Okazu! (I was going to include a tagline “Okazu – when you’re hungry for yuri” but decided to skip it on the banner. Feel free to use it or not. ^_^ And see if you can ID everything we put in our little “Yuri Bento” box there.





Yuricon News, Okazu News

January 28th, 2006

If you are regular reader, you may notice a few small changes going on around here. This entry is pretty much a “We apologize for the inconvenience while renovating” type post. ;-)

Here’s what’s up on Okazu:

Because I’ve been doing Okazu for over three years now, the monthly archive is, as you can see, huge and not easy to navigate. (Gee, what was Erica talking about in Sept. 2003?). Blogger does not have a real categories function, so I’m using a workaround I found, which is basically to use Blogger search for certain preset keywords. If you look on the right-hand sidebar, you’ll see a new section called “Categories”. I am retroactively retitling all the several hundred posts on Okazu to have one or more of these keywords in the title. It’ll make it a bit easier…I *hope*…to find relevant posts. And it will force me to use more consistent titles.

The Categories are broken down into basic, obvious areas – Yuri Anime, Yuri Manga, Marimite-related, General Yuri news, Yuricon news, etc. Not every post will be keyed in to one of those categories, but most will – eventually. My apologies for any issues you encounter with links and general difficulties until it’s all done. I’m starting with my very oldest posts, and my very newest one and working towards the middle.

I guess the question I have is – should I leave the monthly archive up, too? Does anyone other than me use it? Let me know in the comments section.

Onto Yuricon:

Firstly, the final day to submit a picture to the 2006 Yuriko Fanart Contest is January 31. (I know the rules say the 30th. I’m giving readers and Yuricon Mailing List members an extra day.)

Secondly – we are starting to think about 2007 and a possible event. IF we decide to do an event in 2007, it would be a US version of what we did in Tokyo. That would be a one day event, cosplay welcome (but no cosplay event held) with a focus on video programming, panels and workshops. So keep an eye on autumn 2007 in Newark, NJ!