Archive for the Revolutionary Girl Utena Category


This Week in Yuri – May 24, 2008

May 24th, 2008

Yuri Anime

I spoke to Right Stuff this week, about Maria-sama ga Miteru and the second subtitle track. They basically said that they know that the audience for Marimite is pre-existing, with high expectations, and not off-the-street 12-year olds in Best Buy. They told me that they actually got emails that said that if they left out the honorifics, that the writer would not be buying it, which didn’t surprise me in the least. It was refreshing to speak to a company that gets fandom, really. The media rep assured me that they really want to do the best possible job for the fans, and I believe her. After our conversation, I’m completely convinced that they *get* it.

The other thing I asked, which I was fairly certain I would not get an answer for was – how are sales going? I knew they wouldn’t tell me numbers, but was it 100 units or 1000? This is what I got in reply – “We were very, very, *very* pleased with sales.” Like myself, many folks ran out and bought all three season sets. :-) But that third “very” was encouraging.

If you haven’t ordered yet, here is the link for Season 1 pre-order on Amazon. :-) (Available, like so much great Yuri anime, through the Yuricon Shop!)

I was also told that they’ve got some cool things planned for the series and to keep my ears to the ground. Previously, I had suggested to Pizza Hut that they run a campaign here (I’m sure you can imagine the confusion and bewilderment with which that suggestion was met…) but seriously, how much fun – and how bizarre! – would that be here in the US? lol I wrote a fanfic about the Pizza Hut campaign, a while back, after a comment I made on the last “Now This is Only My Opinion.” I put it up on “Worldshaking” Fanfic for you to enjoy. (Oh, oh – but here’s the funny thing! I saw a picture of Yumi, Yoshino and Shimako eating pizza in an official ad, and you know, I was *very* close in my fic. lol)

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Yuri Manga

Yuri fan flojistik informs us that Maka-Maka is now available in French through Amazon.Fr! I know a lot of people would like to see it in English – I also know that there’s a company working on it, so just be patient, ‘kay? :-) In the mean time, French readers can enjoy ther own edition of this adult Yuri manga. If someone gets it, please write in and let us know how it is!

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Okazu News

Thanks to my loyal readers for wondering about that Yuri Wishlist being unpopulated for so long. The balance finally shifted in my piles on the table here and I’ve repopulated it, if you care to sponsor reviews once again. I’m going to do my utmost to review every day this coming week, and get that “to-review” pile halved.

Also, since Amazon is *still* not carrying Mai Otome 4, if someone wants to volunteer to get me that from another source, I’m going to accept graciously. Just email me first, because I don’t want to get 4 copies.

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Other Yuri Interest

It’s not a very active group, but I’ve created an IRC channel to talk in detail about all things Marimite – #[email protected]. This is a spoiler chan for the novels, anime and manga, and we do talk about fine points of what’s going on with MASSIVE spoilers. So if you don’t want to know what happens, don’t join. lol If you want to talk about inexplicable Shimako things, and fine points of Yoshino references, this is the place for you!

And for something completely different, through Mangablog, whch got the link through When Fangirls Attack, here is an essay by Kristin McCauliff about gender roles in Revolutionary Girl Utena. It’s feminist, but not lesbian, but still totally relevant to our interests. :-)

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That’s it for this week. As always, if you have Yuri news you want to share, or any new or obscure series in which you feel there’s a little Yuri you’d like people to know about, feel free to email me with the Subject line “Yuri News” (so my idiotic spam filter doen’t lose it) and I’ll tell the world!! :-)





Events: BFI Lesbian and Gay Film Festival

February 15th, 2004

The Utena Movie at the BFI Lesbian & Gay Film Festival in London, UK, on March 30 & 31, 2004

In one of those utter coincidences that rules my life, I happened to be planning a trip for entirely personal reasons to the UK in March. So, I will be once again presenting the Utena movie to a bewildered audience in London, England, on Tuesday, March 30 as part of the British Film Institute’s 18th Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.

I have no details yet, about time or place, but you can be sure I will let you know as soon as I have any. Tentatively, there is a Q&A session planned for after the movie, for those of you interested in discussion the state of gay, lesbian, yaoi and yuri anime and manga. (One of your questions can be to ask me why I think those are not the same thing. LOL)

My presentation is short, but I really hope I’ll get to meet alot of you British yuri enthusiasts on March 30!





Yuri Anime/Manga: Sailor Moon

January 29th, 2004


Things I’m Not Going To Write About
Part 3

Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon (Sailor Moon)

What is there to say about the series that launched a thousand yuri fans, that hasn’t already been said? Well, lots really. But I won’t say it all here – I’ll just focus on the yuri. :-)

In Season 3, Sailor Moon S, the adorable Inner Senshi (and let’s face, they’re yuri subtext-y enough for any fan!) are joined by Sailors Uranus and Neptune, arguably one of the greatest lesbian couples in anime, manga and related media, ever. Directed by Ikuhara Kunihiko, (director of and creative genius behind Utena,) Sailor Moon gave the world the first anime lesbian couple to ever be portrayed *as such* on Japanese television. In doing so, Ikuhara set the bar pretty high with Haruka and Michiru, instructing the voice actresses to act as if they were married.* In fact, the next time the bar was raised was by this very same man almost ten years later, with Anthy, Utena and Juri in Utena.

It’s more than five years later and we’re *still* using these five characters as poster children for yuri anime and manga, which says a lot, IMHO.

Bottom line, Haruka and Michiru are one of the most romantic, funny, and fun yuri couples, ever. Every year sees new fanfic and doujinshi and even official Sailormoon World art about these two, and now, with the advent of the Live Action Sailor Moon, a whole new generation of kids might one day get to scream “Kakko-ii!” in the general direction of yuri fandom’s reigning queens. :-)

This anime is horrifically magical girl-y, so if repeated transformation footage, girly attack names and goofy monsters bore you, then yeah, it’ll be hard to get into the story. However, if that kind of thing doesn’t put you off, and you want to see where it so much of western yuri fandom began, you might want to get a hold of this season, which is available on DVD. The Sailor Moon manga is available on the Yuricon Shop. A new edition is available in Japan, in honor of the new Live Action series, with spiffy new cover art.

(The SM manga was one of the first titles Tokyo Pop ever translated, and boy was it a learning curve for them! Originally, they changed the names of all the Senshi, only to be met with huge fan resistance. It was too late for the Inner Senshi, but ultimately, the Outers’ Japanese names were retained. I actually have the old Mixx magazine issues with the Outers’ westernized names, before Tokyo Pop got inundated with fan mail begging them not to change Haruka’s name!)

Ratings: Yuri – 8, Art – 8, Story – 7, Music – 9, Characters – 10, Overall – 9

*It’s fairly well-known that it was was Ogata Megumi’s portrayal of Haruka that catapulted me into anime fandom in the beginning, and to be honest, she’s still my favorite. While it will be very cool to see a Live-Action Sailor Uranus, it won’t be MO, boo hoo. :-(

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This week’s brainstorm

After much thought on the subject, I have now developed a working definition for “porn” versus “erotica” that I’d like to share with you all. There’s quite a few people who think that there is no difference, but I believe there is:

Porn is any representation of sexual conduct with the implicit acknowledgement of a third party who is watching – and for whose pleasure the sexual act is being conducted.

Erotica is an honest representation of sexual conduct between people for their own pleasure.

I came to this conclusion while reading several yuri doujinshi I own. If you agree with it, please feel free to use it. If you disagree, feel free to come up with one of your own. :-)





Events: Utena at New York GLBT Film Fest

June 12th, 2003

It’s Showtime!

Tonight, I’ll be presenting a showing of Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie once again – this time with the New Festival of NYC. It’s being shown at 5:45 PM at the Tishman Auditorium at 66 W. 12th St, between 5th and 6th Aves. There are a few tickets left – I hope I’ll see you there!

I was gonna talk about all the stuff we had for artists to do, really, but I’m SO swamped (I was on the road from 11AM to 6PM yesterday) that I find I simply don’t have time. I’m on my way to run a few more errands before we leave for the hotel. I’ll see you there tomorrow!

Yuricon – one day and counting!





Events: Yuricon at MIT

February 28th, 2003

We interrupt our regular Tokyo journal to mention that last weekend I had the incredible honor of speaking at MIT about gender and sexuality in Japanese animation. Many thanks to Cassie Huang and Emily Lowe of the Women’s Studies dept and to the MIT Anime Club who were very, very cool!

The program was titled Schoolgirls and Superheroines: Gender and Sexuality in Japanese Anime.

Keridwen Luis was the first speaker – she did a great paper on shoujo anime from an anthropological perspective. Her discussion focused on “agency” – the active element, as opposed to passivity, that affected female characters in shoujo anime.

The next speaker was Dr. Sarah Frederick, who discussed Utena in relation to the work of Yoshiya Nobuko, an early 20th century Japanese popular writer. Her presentation was fascinating to me as I have a real interest in Yoshiya’s place in the origins of shoujo conventions.

I’m no academic, so I basically did what I always do – I cracked ’em up. I wasn’t profound, but they laughed a lot, which was all I cared about. I presented them with a basic history of anime and manga, some definitions; I made up some “archetypes” of the portrayal of women, contrasting the conventions of shoujo and shounen anime and manga. I finished up with a discussion of fandom and it’s role in portrayal and creation of gender and sexual roles in the field. And we all had lots o’fun.

I will be putting the text of all three lectures at the Yuricon Essays page under the title of MIT lectures (duh) so you can all read what we talked about. It was some good stuff!

Last but not least, here’s a mention of an upcoming appearance – in April in New York City, the New Festival, NYC’s Gay and Lesbian Film Fest will be showing the Utena movie and Fake. I may or may not be presenting them, and there may or may not be a Queer Anime panel – if there is, I’ll be on it. In any case, I’ll be there doing promotion for Yuricon, so drop by and say hi!

I’ll upload the next bit of the Tokyo Journal real soon – promise!!