Archive for the Series Category


Yuri Manga: Kase-san and Yamada (English)

February 13th, 2020

Yamada is experiencing college life and it’s keeping her super busy. Kase-san is, as well. It’s a struggle for them to find time to be together and when they are, a lot of of their old habits keep them apart. And, neither of them have ever really decided what their relationship means to them as an individual. In Kase-san and Yamada, the sixth book of the Kase-san series, all of this will land on their heads, all at once.

Yamada makes a new friend, Hana, who is shockingly similar to herself in personality, which sets up a crisis with Kase-san, whom we have seen previously is prone to jealousy. Yamada also undergoes a crisis of jealousy, which is unusual enough for her that’s she’s not really sure what she’s feeling.

But what really stands out for me is that both Yamada and Kase-san are new enough to dating – and not around other queer couples – that they are both very closeted and don’t actually realize it.

On Twitter, I was chatting with some folks about this. When my wife and I moved out together, we were in a similar position for years – alone among peers and coworkers and schoolmates for whom being gay was not at all everyday, Coming out was not just a big thing for one’s own life, an admission of self, but a huge fucking load of baggage that could open people up to harassment, losing jobs, losing family or worse. That was a long time ago and seems to young people I know now a bit remote and abstract, but as the discussion went on we heard from folks in China and Japan who affirmed that being out was still quite fraught and who to be out to and how far to be out are everyday concerns.

I recently finished reading a YA lesbian romance that was very out in and of itself. Tell Me How You Really Feel, by Aminah Mae Safi has two women on the cover in a romantically intimate moment, with a pullquote that reads “The queer hate-to-love story you need in your life” on the cover. In the story, both protagonists are themselves out to friends, schoolmates and family, a priori and I think we’re still hoping that Kase-san and Yamada will one day be able to be comfortable being the people they are. We want to see them as happy, out young lesbians. But, they aren’t. And they won’t be because its not normalized in their society (and, more specifically, the society Takashima-sensei inhabits.) Instead, their discomfort is played for comedy. And how we feel about that says more about ourselves than the characters since they are merely ciphers for our own needs.

But when we take ourselves out of the equation. Yamada and Kase-san make some important progress in this issue. They increase the intimacy between them as adults and individuals, something that they could not have done in their hometown where other people’s expectations would create even more inflexible boundaries around them.

So, it may be true that they are not “out” as we understand that, but they make important steps towards being people who could support each other if they choose to come out in their future.

As we have come to expect from Seven Seas, the book’s technicals are lovely, with a really nice raised lettering cover and thick page count, so it feels like a substantial contribution to this series.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Characters – 8
Story – 7
Service – Does Kase-san in a suit count? Yes. 7
Yuri – 9 The real world is making itself more known.

Overall – 9

I’m still hoping for a scene in which they go to a Pride parade and a famous lesbian couple of a violinist and race car driver are the marshals. Just sayin’.





Yuri Light Novel: Otherside Picnic, Volume 2 (English)

February 2nd, 2020

In Volume 1, we are taken to the “other side” along with Internet legend-hunter Sorawo and Toriko, a woman looking for her missing friend. In Volume 2 of Otherside Picnic, by Miyazawa Iori, Sorawo and Toriko gain more understanding, but get no closer to the truth. 

The volume begins as the two decide to return to the Otherside to rescue the trapped and desperate group of US marines who wandered in from Okinawa. To do so, they start to put together a map of the entry and exit points. They barter their rescue for guns and weapons, and have started to expand their use of their changed bodies. Sorawo uses her blue eye to see things on the Otherside more accurately and Toriko uses her transparent hand to open portals between their worlds.

While their rescue attempt is successful, Sorawo is forced to make some real-world decisions. College is becoming increasing difficult, with excursions (and recovery) that take a toll on her body and mind. And, she finds she’s getting a reputation for being weird. So when another girl roughly her age asks her for help with a weird thing, she’s not in the mood to oblige. But she ends up helping “Karateka” (her nickname for Akari, who has actual hand-to-hand fighting skills,) anyway and are the three are immediately catapulted into a whole new set of Internet legends together.

Yuri continues to be complicated. Sorawo is attracted to Toriko, and jealous of Satsuki, the missing friend. Akari’s interest in Sorawo makes her more aware of Toriko. Sorawo is being pulled in several directions at once. She wants to help Toriko….but she doesn’t want her to find her friend (who was probably more) Satsuki, who is beginning to look like she may be the center of the horrors they are facing. Sorawo wants to spend time with Toriko, and resents the intrusion of her new kouhai…but also kind of likes her. When Kozakura introduces them to the organization that is researching the Otherside, they learn that they’ve been in more danger than they even realized….and come to a crisis that requires Sorawo to open up to Toriko to save them both. Only, she still hasn’t admitted everything. At some point Toriko and Sorawo are going to have to come clean about Satsuki. I look forward to that. 

The more we’re faced with creepy-to-horrific circumstances of the Otherside, the less realistic the legends seem. Although Miyazawa is at some pains to document the boards on which he learned about them, the less convincing “I wish this board was still in existence” sounds. ^_^ Ninja cats are funny-creepy, but, to be frank, the complexity of “kid on the beach beaten up by thugs, who kill the kid, but then they all turn on you” kind of loses me. I’m not inclined to be taken in by Internet horrors – I was so tired of seeing warning articles about the Momo challenge, I tracked it all down to the hoax it was, before the wikipedia article was written. Nonetheless, the slow-burn of constant horror, slowly building into climactic real/fake horror was a terrific bit of writing and worth re-reading.

Ratings:

Story – 9
Character – 9
Service – 3
Yuri – 5

Overall – 9

Of everything weird and inexplicable we’ve been asked to believe, the one thing that sticks with me is the “New York style” toilet in the hotel room. I am 100% convinced that that was probably real (although not common or trendy in New York, but maybe it really was in a resort the author visited.) I once stayed in a B&B in Birmingham, England, that had a completely clear-glass walled shower in the middle of the bedroom. It happens.





LGBTQ Anime: Sailor Moon Stars Limited Edition, Part 1, Disk 2 (English)

January 29th, 2020

Welcome! Have a seat, grab yourself a drink, get comfy, because today – at long last – we will be talking about the Three Lights/ Starlight Senshi. ^_^

In Sailor Moon Stars Part 1, Disk 2, Usagi must say goodbye to Mamoru, who heads to America to study. Unbeknownst to Usagi he is immediately disappeared and will not return to the story, except as a maudlin little plot device.

We turn away from that tragic loss which will never be fully processed, to a new set of complications. A popular idol group, the Three Lights, has transferred into the high school attended by the Senshi. Once again, I note that had there been an actual adult among the children, very little of the conflicts that pass for plot would have worked. Someone – ideally Ami – might have noted that the popular idols and the Sailor Starlights popped up at the same time and hey…hrm. But…no. So the Inner Senshi find their time occupied with fighting a new enemy, the Animamates, to restore people’s Star Seeds, and confronting yet another new set of Senshi(?) Also ideally, the Outers ought to have noticed. I love them unconditionally, but for people’s who sole mission it is to protect the Solar System from invasion from outside, they suck. ^_^

None of that is important, though, because we, the audience have done this before. WE know that the Starlights are not the enemy, everyone will die and we will save the world. And we’re being distracted by the fact that the boy idol group Three Lights, when they transform, are girls. The animation takes great pains to highlight the secondary sexual characteristics as Senshi (e.g., breasts) and in at least one episode we are treated to a detailed cut of Seiya’s masculine 6-pack. In any case, we are to understand that the Three Lights are male.  Much has been written about Takeuchi’s surprise about learning the direction the anime took the Lights. In the manga they are, like Haruka, women who wear men’s clothing and their Senshi form is their true form.  In the anime, the Starlights are women who transform into male form as their disguise on this planet. This has spawned generations of fandom among sexual and gender minorities, every one of whom has a valid personal relationship to the narrative.

I’ve been honest about this – my wife and I have never liked the Starlights. Her because Seiya harasses Usagi, me because Seiya will not take not for an answer, Taiki is nasty to Ami and Yaten is a jerk generally, but especially to Minako. It does not matter to me that Ami changes Taiki’s mind, and Minako Yaten’s, there was no need for them to be asses. We were not children when we saw this the first time and did not need what the Starlights offered. It has been 20 years and my opinion of them is different. I still don’t like them, but I can give them more space to be children and make terrible decisions.

Still, in order to do so, let me let you in to *my* headcanon regarding the Starlights. First, the premise is that The Three Lights are merely a disguise and are not specifically important to their story at all. As it was in the manga. They are, as the Inner Senshi are, young. They are in a sense child soldiers, as the Inner Senshi are, but they lack a Moon Princess, whose sole ability is to love everything so much that it becomes whole. If Kakyuu could kiss a thing and make it better, they wouldn’t need Usagi.

In my 21st century rewrite, I think that the Starlight’s native planet doesn’t have genders the way humans do, hence the apparent switching, which is probably totally normal for them. To me, Seiya would trend more masculine, Taiki more feminine and Yaten would tell us to fuck off generally and specifically about all of this, gender, idols, school, all of it. So I unofficially declare Seiya trans masc, Taiki trans fem, and Yaten is the agender Senshi we all need. That’s how they read to me. In no way does this invalidate your take. ^_^

Now we’re sorted to watch the next 4 disks worth of Sailor Moon Stars.

Ratings:

Art – 4 A little better than the opening arc, but those head – body proportions ouch.
Story – The Inners come off strong so, 6
Characters –  I find the Starlights to be a 5 at this point
Queer – 9
Service – 5 Yes, the Starlights have racks.

Overall – 7

I’m here clutching my aspirin until Siren and Crow.

 





Okazu Top Yuri of 2019

December 31st, 2019

As we wrap up this year, the 100th anniversary of the Yuri genre, I like to imagine what Yoshiya Nobuko might think, if she were to spring to life and see Yuri anime, manga, novels, games…stories of women in love with women, in both fantasy and “real world” settings and bookstores around the world with Yuri titles and manga stores with dedicated Yuribu.  I’d like to think that once she got past the confusion of it all, she’d be pretty pleased about it. ^_^

For the 15th year in a row, I’m wrapping all the best Yuri people, companies, trends and titles up in one big old package and presenting it to you as the Okazu Top Yuri of 2019. ^_^ Please note there are no numbers, as this is not a countdown. Everything here is equally notable.

We’ll start with some well-deserved kudos to the pieces of the industry that set the places at which we sit and lay the feasts we enjoy.

 

Yuri Publishers & Yuribu
In this 100th anniversary of the genre, something almost miraculous occurred. Manga, anime and light novel publishers in the US and many of the major Japanese publishers are now investing in Yuri as Yuri.

My sincere thanks to everyone at Yen Press, VIZ Media, Seven Seas Entertainment, TOKYOPOP, J-Novel Club, UDON Entertainment, Kodansha Comics, Denpa, Lilyka Manga and in Japan, Ichijinsha, Futabasha, Shueisha, East Press, Seidosha, Hayakawa Shobo, Kadokawa Shoten, Akita Shoten and, at long last, Shogakukan.

Additionally, Japanese manga and bookstores have finally recognized that Yuri is a genre that does bring in business and have developed Yuri Clubs to help funnel money their way. ^_^ So thanks to Animate, Shosen, Gamers and Futabasha (again.) Toranoana has no Yuribu, but their Yuri Corner in the flagship store in Akihabara is worth noting, as well.

All these companies have recognized the potential of the growing LGBTQ and Yuri markets and responded to it with money and promotion (and in the case of US companies, care and attention,) which gives us hope for even more and even better Yuri in the year to come!

 

Yuri Webcomics
Webcomics have been an important arm of indie comics since the early 2000s and the last few years has really seen the growth in online platforms for comic artists.

Pixiv has quite literally changed the game for indie artists in Japan like Nagata Kabi, and Webtoons and Lezhin have been among newer platforms that opened up a whole new audience to the joy of Yuri manga and comics.

Artists like Ratiana Satis (Pulse) and Kuru of Color_LES (Mage and Demon Queen) have changed the landscape for how – and where and by whom – people are able to find Yuri.

I think this kind of work is very exciting and very entertaining and always look forward to more new independent artists breaking out!

 

Yuri Visual Novels/Games
I’m not going to lie, the visual novel landscape has a lot of problems, Steam’s inconsistent and obscure rule changes looming large among them.  But the industry is full of energy and creativity that is worth talking about.

In 2019, Studio Élan created a whole new game engine for putting out innovative, unique, and original work. What I have seen has impressed me so very deeply. Indie creators gather annually for the Yuri Game Jam which gives space for smaller creative teams and individual devs to work on their idea and for you to try them out. Itch.io has quietly become a significant independent resource for game and VN developers and players.

Even if I will never be the audience for them, there are some really excellent VNs and games being made and I think they absolutely deserve a place on this list this year.

 

Yuri Creators
There are so many creators of Yuri these days that it almost seems insulting to highlight a few names, but this year there has been some outstanding work by a few individuals, that I really believe it’s worth highlighting and celebrating them.

These are creators whose work has created change in the Yuri landscape: Yoshiya Nobuko (Yaneura no Nishojo) for setting in motion the creation of an entire genre by living her life and writing the stories she wrote;  Riyoko Ikeda (Rose of Versailles), for having conversation about gender presentation and sexuality 40 years before anyone else had words for them;  Takeuchi Naoko (Sailor Moon) who twenty-five years ago created characters so timeless, that we’re only now realizing just how important they are; Kabi Nagata (My Solo Exchange Diary), for her heart-breaking honesty – I know many of us want her to be healthy and happy; Takashima Hiromi (Kase-san and Yamada) for breaking Yuri romance out of high school where it had been locked for so long; Go Nagai (Devil Lady), for being a pioneer of queer women in his Devilman sagas;  Takemiya Jin (Itoshi Koishi) for walking us along the path with a young woman who wants to be out and open with her friends; Ameco Kaeruda (Sexiled), for writing a feminist power fantasy that is empowering, delightful and funny; Morishima Akiko (Conditions of Paradise) who at long last in 2020 will get the English-language recognition as a Yuri manga artist that she deserves.

Breakthroughs often pass unnoticed until long afterwards. I will note that 2020 will mark the end of one the most important decades in history for our genre, as well as the end of the first century for the genre. Some of these names created a solid foundation for us to build upon and some are among the leading lights as we head into a new decade. They most assuredly deserve our thanks and a place on this list.

 

Okazu Readers and Patrons
You, my Okazu readers, are critically important to our mission here. It is a testament to your engagement that so many of you have become writers for Okazu and a testament to your personalities that so many of you have become my friends. ^_^ My very sincere thanks to every one of you who reads and comments on and shares our content.

My very special thanks to Okazu Patrons for making it possible for me to celebrate this year with reviews and lectures and panels and events. Your financial and social support helps us pay for guest writers and reviewers. Every year you make this list, and once again this year I can say with all honesty, I could not have done it without you.

 

Light Novels & Novels
This year saw a veritable explosion of Light Novels and Novels in both digital and print. While as a genre LNs can be inconsistent, Yuri fans have been horribly spoiled by the high quality Light Novels we’ve seen.

J-Novel Club opened up their Yuri line with a salvo of truly excellent Yuri titles, including Last and First Idol,and Side-by-Side Dreamers. Seven Seas picked up what are extraordinarily good series-extension Bloom Into You, Regarding Saeki Sayaka. But the Light Novel that really blew my hair back was the totally-on-point brilliantly topical and deeply satisfying Sexiled series by Kaeruda Ameco. Those books scratched itches I didn’t know I had. If you haven’t read these, you should. Just go read them.

Will Yuri fans continue to be spoiled with top quality fantasy and science fiction Light Novels while everyone else has to deal with “the protagonist has no pants, hurh hurh” as a main plot point? I sure hope so.  ^_^

 

Now as we enter the final few of of our end-of-year roundup, I want to take a moment to note a few series that just deserve a moment of reverence and thanks for all they’ve done and all they will continue to do.

 

Our Dreams at Dusk Shimanami Tasogare
As I have repeatedly noted, this series is not Yuri. Instead, there is very real-world queer identity here; real problems faced by real people in the real world, which makes this series, if not unique, then at least extraordinary.

This story about self and community and creating a space in a world that isn’t welcoming…and then taking up that space and owning it, is a lot to ask of a work of fiction. Heck, it’s a lot to ask of life! Not only does Our Dreams at Dusk: Shimanami Tasogare succeed at that, it does it beautifully.

This is the kind of LGBTQ work I hope we’ll see more and more of from increasingly open queer manga artists.

 

 

Sailor Moon Stars
Every year I joke that if there is a Sailor Moon out that year, it will find a way on to this list.  ^_^ Well this year a Sailor Moon that has never had an official English-language release is out and it so very, deeply, queer that it seems almost fantastic. Sailor Moon Stars is the final piece of the original series, and we’re looking forward to the Sailor Moon Crystal 4th season movies in the years to come.

Let me offer a toast to Sailor Moon Stars and to the permanent – and official –  partnership of Tenoh Haruka and Kaioh Michiru – and welcome to the the next iteration of Sailor Moon fandom. Here’s to cafes and night drive parfaits and anniversary albums. May we all be together once again for the 50th anniversary.

 

 

Rose of Versailles
The wait has not been in vain. It *just* squeaked onto this year’s list by having a limited release in December. Don’t be surprised to see it back again in 2020. It’s almost 50 years old but we have an official English language release of The Rose of Versailles at last and it is a truly magnificent thing. UDON has really gone above and beyond for this release.

Oscar’s struggle with gender and class expectations, with the pressures of a society in which she may not be the person she wants to be, takes us through love and loss and the overturning of an ancien regime in a story that is terrifyingly timely.

This story of the French Revolution seen through the eyes of Oscar François de Jarjayes is so very, very extra.

A classic manga just in time for our 100th anniversary. What a year we’ve had. Our Yuri shelves are already full to bursting, with even more amazing stuff to come in 2020!

 

 

Kase-san and Bloom Into You
Both the Kase-san series and Yagate Kimi ni Naru/Bloom Into You were relatively typical high school Yuri series. Both series managed to take the typical tropes of their origins and turn them into something interesting, unusual and ultimately,  original. Both had animation that went above and beyond the manga and both had a global impact.

Once upon a time, all we wanted was a genuinely happy ending for a Yuri love story, an ending that showed our characters moving into the future together. This year, we got two. Moreover, neither series is riding its fame into the sunset, yet. Takashima-sensei’s Kase-san is ongoing and we’re getting some post-series work from Nakatani-sensei in anthologies and artbooks and I desperately hope to see signs of a third Sayaka novel soon.

These series have made it onto both of the other lists and it seems only reasonable to just say this plainly – both these series were tops for 2019.

 

I’ve mentioned this repeatedly during these lists (and have to tell you, we’re not done yet…) but this year was an amazing one, for me, for the Yuri genre, for all of us. Which brings me to the very best Yuri thing this year.

 

100 Years of Yuri

Yuri Events were through the roof this year. It began with the an amazing time at TCAF and took me along, one fun Yuri-filled event to another. We did Yuri-focused Yurithon. We held the 100th Anniversary of Yuri Tour with a few like-minded friends, during which we spent time with the Sailor Senshi, and ate lunch with Fumi, flipped 500 yen coins at a shrine with Kuraku Asuka, bought Yuri goods and Yuri doujinshi and Yuri manga and glutted ourselves on food and threw money at Yuri artists at Girls Love Fest.

This celebration of Yuri’s 100th anniversary has been exhausting and amazing. I’ve met so many folks, got to meet new Yuri manga artists and see old friends and done so many presentations and had so very much fun.

The number one top Yuri thing of the year was…the year.

It’s been 100 Years since Yaneura no Nishojo (屋根裏の二) codified how we think and talk about Yuri. Thanks to Yoshiya Nobuko and thanks to all the people and companies on these lists. Thanks to all of you, my readers and commenters and my patrons.

Here’s looking forward to 2CYE (Common Yuri Era) in which the the fun is not over, as we extend the celebration into 2020 for the final 100th anniversary project here on Okazu. ^_^ Tune in tomorrow! And here’s to the next 100 Years!

 





Yuri Anime: Sailor Moon Stars Limited Edition, Part 1, Disk 1 (English)

December 24th, 2019

While at AnimeNYC, I took the opportunity to indulge myself a bit and buy myself a few presents. The Bloom Into You Premium Box Set (for which I believe one more review is due, since I watched the dub) was the first of my early holiday gifts to self and the Sailor Moon Stars Limited Edition was the second. Viz had a lovely booth set up and I was able to get the Limited Edition Blu-Ray Combo Pack for Part 1 and Part 2 and a neat little box for them, as well as the infamously misprinted booklet (I’ve already asked for my copy of the fixed version ^_^) and a pile of fetching art cards. Additionally, the set comes with a decorative box for both halves of the season and was handed over in one of Viz’s colorful Sailor Moon tote bags, this one purple with the silhouette of Eternal Sailor Moon on one side and her locket on the other. All very satisfying.

And so, for the first time in a number of years, I sat down to watch the first six episodes of Sailor Moon Stars Part 1, Disk 1, the fifth and final season, in its first-ever official western release.

As soon as the first notes of either the OP or ED start up, I get teary. In part because they are both deeply depressing songs. ^_^ Go ahead, look at the lyrics, see what I mean.

This first disk covers the best part of the Stars season, in my opinion, as Neherenia is freed from her prison and vows revenge against the White Moon Princess. This is not theg ood part…the good part is that we spend a lot of this arc with the Senshi. First we see Hotaru  growing up (at an accelerated rate) with Michiru, Haruka and Setsuna and later, Saturn gets a non-dying role protecting Chibi-Usa. I also very much enjoy the scenes where the Outers inspire the Inners to be even better at what they do. If I had been writing the series, it is quite likely I would have spent half the arc with this kind of thing.

Sailor Moon is able to save Mamoru and the other Senshi and, by extension, the Earth, once again. With two disks to go, we will finally be getting the Three Lights/Starlights and I know that most folks are poised to finally see them. I’m fairly alone in not liking them, for reasons we will discuss when we get there.

Right now, I just want to wallow a bit at how frickin’ gay Haruka and Michiru are in these six episodes. The gloves were off, clearly, as Michiru teases the heck out of her butchy partner. I rejoiced at how touchy they are, as well. Watching this disk, it boggles the mind that anyone ever insisted that they were not lovers, or if they were, Haruka had to be a man. But then, I suppose if the *.*gaters weren’t obsessed with Star Wars or whatever, we’d be having that argument all over again today. Instead, we get to smile and nod at Michiru when she tells Haruka that she could stare like this all day as she looks at her lover. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 4 In my memory, I thought this was some of the best art in the series. I was wrong.
Story – Despite being a reprise, it was not boring. Short, sharp and some of the best character writing so far
Characters – 9 I love the interaction between the Outers and Inners.
Yuri – 9
Service – 5 someone really had a thing for upskirting Jupiter

Overall – 8

My interest in this series effectively ends here, with just a few moments sprinkled through the story, but we still will have a lot to talk about including, eventually, my thoughts about the Starlights and what exists of the plot and how to rewrite it to make sense.