Archive for the Staff Writer Category


Botan Kamiina Fully Blossoms When Drunk Anime, Episodes 1-5

May 17th, 2026

The title art for Botan Kamiina Fully Blossoms When Drunk. On the left is the title logo, while on the right is a collage of the main characters. One girl has long straight purple hair, wearing a white button front shirt and a slight smile. Below her, a strawberry blong girl with long wavy hair leans chin on hand, looking longingly to the side. Next to her is a girl with pink hair tied up in a pony tail with a black ribbon, tuning a red Yamaha Pacifica guitar. One girl has a wheat-colored bob and is holding a bottle of alcohol, leaning over a railing in the boarding house. One girl in a black knitted sweater dress and sporting medium-short black hair sees herself in a mirrored fireplace mantle, on which there is an assortment of airplane-sized bottles of alcohol. In the foreground of all of these is a girl with long pink hair tied up in dual ponytails with blue ribbons. She is wearing a light blue overcoat over a midnight blue cocktail dress. She's holding a giftwrapped bottle of booze and is sporting a slight smileIn Botan Kamiina Fully Blossoms When Drunk (currently streaming on Crunchyroll), incoming (hic) college freshman, catches her RA Tonami Ibuki enjoying a whiskey highball at a spring festival. Ibuki, who is something of an alcohol otaku, only drinks alone because…she hiccups a lot when she drinks and has a complex about it. Botan is charmed by her (hic) regardless, and the two end up as drinking buddies, and perhaps something more…?

It turns out Botan, who took a convenient gap year so that she’s of legal drinking age (burp) as a freshman, turns into a big flirt after a drink or two–no surprise, given the title of the show. Thankfully, she’s not the handsy type, but there’s an odd purity to the dynamics here. I’m not asking for sloppy drunken makeouts in a pile of empty Yebisu cans…OK I kinda am, I remember what it was like in college. (hic) Really, Botan just got the big ol’ doki-dokis for Ibuki, and her RA is just a bit too overwhelmed by her forthrightness. But also, the show does twist itself into knots around Ibuki’s hiccup hangups. It is (hic) mildly annoying to me as a viewer when you know the show is going to find a way for every other character to leave a scene just so Ibuki can be alone with Botan and feel comfortable drinking. (hic)

Three other girls round out our small cast: the quick-tempered Yaeka Kitamori, her travel-partner-cum-possible-musician-girlfriend (?) Akane Yusa, and Kanade Gujou, the cigarette-smoking (hic) grad student with a failgirl crush on Ibuki. As of this writing, there is a sixth cast member who has yet to arrive, I assume to pick Gujou up out the smoking wreckage that she made for herself trying to get Ibuki to (hic) notice her. They are all perfectly fine, though they are all fairly one note so far.

Here’s the thing with this (burp) anime: not a lot happens. The girls in various permutations find themselves traveling, drinking, or often both. Some light flirtation occurs, maybe some mild yearning or angst. End scene. A character-driven story this is not; I know more about series creator HEY’s taste in music from one scene in episode 4 than I do about any of these (hic) girls. But there sure is a lot of product placement, mostly of alcohol (note that the anime had its own sake collab), but also Yamaha music equipment.

The Botan Kamiina anime is a spiritual successor to the Bocchi the Rock adaptation. My evidence:

-pink-haired protag ✅
-yuri/yuri-ish elements ✅
-animation showcase ✅
-Yamaha guitar product placement ✅

— Matt Marcus (@hyperartmarcussan.bsky.social) May 2, 2026 at 9:52 AM

If you are expecting fireworks, you will find it in the animation flexing that inexplicably shows up in (nearly) every episode. Much ado (hic) has been made online about the intentional changes in art style and direction between each episode, with different staff leading the production week to week. Mostly I find this successful, but occasionally it can be VERY distracting (looking at you, Episode 3). If nothing else, it covers for the otherwise (burp) languid development of anything you’d call plot. I will say though that the OP, with a song performed by yonige and made to look like handheld Super 8 footage, is gorgeous, as are the watercolor-styled ED sequences that do a strong job fleshing out each character’s backstory. There is a lot of craft being put into this anime, but the substance of the story itself is (hic) fairly thin.

It really is hard to pin down this (hic) show. It’s not hobby enough to teach you about brewing or mixology; it’s not travelogue enough to be a guide book (although people have already made their own); it’s not quite Yuri enough to do more than whet the palate for something more. For me, personally (burp), I don’t want to just see Botan sip delicate sakes or infuse upper-shelf single malts. I want to see her wax poetic about the top notes of Mad Dog 20/20. I want to see her do Edward 40-hands with Steel Reserve. I want to see her drink like a college student, damnit! (hic) Also where do they get the money for all of this.

If it sounds like I’m damning with faint praise, fear not. I’m enjoying watching this series every Friday night, with a drink (or two) in hand, as you might have been able to tell. (hic) Bottom’s up, y’all.

Art – 7 Knocking off a point for ep 3
Story – 5
Characters – 7
Service – 3 Bartending is service, right?
Yuri – 5

Overall – 7

Botan Kamiina is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Fridays.

One thing to note: there was a recent blow-up on social media around HEY’s bookmarked art on Pixiv, particularly at least one that included Botan in a (seemingly) non-yuri scenario. Whether or not that crosses a boundary of good taste or morality is something that everyone should decide on for yourself. Having looked into it myself, I am personally less bothered by the fanart and more troubled by some other choices, but nevertheless I will continue to follow the series.

Matt Marcus is a cohost of various projects on the Pitch Drop Podcast Network. You can find him mostly reskeeting Yuri posts and sports takes on Bluesky @hyperartmarcussan.bsky.social





Young Ladies Don’t Play Fighting Games, Volumes 7 and 8

May 15th, 2026

The cover for Volume 7 of Young Ladies Don't Play Fighting Games. It shows Aya, a teenager with long brown hair and a fringe, looking at the viewer with a small smile. by Luce, Okazu Staff Writter

I’m Luce , and I must apologise for the delay on the review for these volumes, 9 is nearly upon us! Onward!

The young ladies are back to prove that they do indeed play fighting games, and violent ones at that! Not only that, but they want to make their pugilistic simulations into a club activity?

In Volume 7, the tournament wraps up and the girls head back. After a few days rest from gaming to allow/force Mio to recover from her random nosebleed, they start their midnight training again. Aya is acting weirdly, but that’s the least of their concerns when they get caught by a disgusted member of the disciplinary committee! Can they fight their way out of this one – with words?

Volume 8, and the fighting is no longer contained to a screen. It’s Mio, fighting for her right to disobey her mother’s wishes and continue to play video games, versus her mother, fighting to get the idea into her daughters thick skull that video games are no good! The gloves are off, child services are probably gonna get called, who will win this showdown?

The cover for Volume 8 of Young Ladies Don't Play Fighting Games. It shows Mio, a teenage girl with pink hair and fringe, in a fighting pose. Honestly, this series is so much all of the time, and it’s great. We know Aya had a vicious jealousy that maybe she wasn’t Mio’s biggest rival after seeing her fight Arisa on stage in Volume 6. The way she tries to deal with that is kinda hilarious… and the way it ends is magnificent. Mio basically getting kidnapped by her mum for playing video games, and duking it out for the right? Crazy.

We discover that Arisa, the bratty kid that Mio fought, is the sister of the president of the student council. While she doesn’t play games herself, she likes seeing her sister happy like she was when fighting Mio, so she’s on board with them being allowed to play. Pulling a few strings, she manages to reduce their sentence to suspension for a few days, but… ‘Mama Mio’ as she’s referred to by the other characters is not having her daughter become a video game playing wastrel. Even if she has to fight her about it, literally.

The panelling, art and dialogue is always fun in this series. The assembly with the student body is no less dynamic than the actual fight scenes, and often the characters don’t react how you might expect. It is, if you’ll excuse the phrase, ‘batshit’. Aya, Tya-senpai and Inui all commentate on the Mio Vs Mama Mio match like they would a fighting game, but even commenting on things that are different from their normal fighting game, like the fact that it’s in 3D rather than 2D. It’s just glorious. Full of zany and deranged characters, I’m always looking forward to what they get up to next.

Volume 8 sets up a conflict for the next episode – the problem with an advisor for a club, and needing more members! Volume 9 is coming out shortly, and it won’t be long until the anime is airing too.

Art: 9
Story: 7
Characters: a wild 9
Yuri: 6 – more breathtaking declarations of rivalry and competition, but it sure could go there
Service: 2 – they had a panel that could have been a pantry shot and wasn’t, so that’s pretty good
Overall: 8

It’s stupid in many ways, but it’s also glorious.





Images From Prism Garden

May 13th, 2026

On a pale green background, bordered on right and left with decorative white lilies, the word "Prism Garden" in English and Japanese, and "Hiakri no niwa ni saku, hitohira no omoi" in Japaneseby Sasori, Okazu JP Correspondent

Last week, the anime and manga chain Melonbooks sponsored a Yuri event called Prism Garden. Our Japan events Correspondent Sasori visited and took a number of photos for us!

Sasori noted that this ran for the whole of Golden Week in Omiya.”..it was an entire gallery and interactive standee walk along complete with a sticky note board for event goers. They also sectioned off buyers in accordance to time slots so it was never too busy.”

This was, like most of the Yuri exhibitions in Japan, part exhibition, part pop-up store. Enjoy these photos as we walk through the event space with Sasori!

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Roll Over and Die: I Will Fight For an Ordinary Love With My Cursed Sword, Episodes 4-12

May 4th, 2026

Main visual for Roll Over and Die anime: 2 girls are in the foreground, the one on the left has apricot coloured hair, the one on the right has silver hair and is wearing a maid's uniform. Other characters appear in the background

By Eleanor W, Okazu Staff Writer.

This review contains spoilers.

When we left Flum and Milkit at the end of episodes 1-3, reviewed here on Okazu , a man called Leitch has asked them to retrieve some illicit herbs to turn into medicine for his sick wife. Remembering that the Church has outlawed such magic, they are joined by Sara, a nun who is willing to defy Church law. While searching for the herbs in a cave outside of the city, our main antagonist Dein, (the man who tried to trick Flum and kill her when she first came to the Adventurer’s Guild looking for work) collapses the entrance, leaving Flum and Sara trapped inside.

If you didn’t enjoy the first 3 episodes, then there’s nothing here for you. As I suspected in my previous review, there is more to the Church than meets the eye, but I was pleased to see it built up in such a way that we gradually learn more as the show goes on, rather than just a massive infodump all at once. An abandoned underground laboratory proves to belong to them, and Flum’s name appears in the papers left behind. Flum reunites with Eterna, a witch from the Hero’s party who quit after an argument with Jean, and is furious when she learns that Jean secretly sold Flum into slavery. Dein and his men continue to pursue Flum, and a new character, a blind girl named Ink, joins the group, as well as some other former members of the hero’s party.

Dein is not the greatest antagonist ever created. He is revealed to be a pawn of the Church and gets a disproportionate amount of screentime for how ultimately inconsequential he is as a character, before he is finally killed by Flum in episode 11. I feel the show would have been much more interesting if Flum and the group had gradually built up to fighting Origin as the final boss, but it may be that the anime just wasn’t able to do this in the 12 episodes available so I don’t want to judge too harshly on that basis.

Artwise, the same dark moody colour palette as in the first 3 episodes prevails. Some character designs are more interesting than others, and most of the budget seems to have gone on the gore, particularly (CW) the torture scene at the beginning of episode 12.

There’s lots of potential directions the story could have gone in, but ultimately I did enjoy this version of it, including Flum and Milkit’s relationship. I liked that the show isn’t shy about making their feelings for each other clear. This is about two girls who desperately need each other and desperately want to protect each other and that’s what they do.  Whilst it does lean on the ick and gore a little too much in places, the setting is still interesting enough that I’d watch a season 2 if it gets made (there were potential threads left dangling to set one up) and I’m curious to read more of the novels too.

Overall, if you’re looking for something in the “kicked out of the hero’s party and wants revenge” genre that’s a little different from the norm with some genuinely nice relationships between the characters, I’d recommend giving this one a go as long as you can deal with the gore.

Ratings: 

Art – 6
Story – 7
Characters – 6
Service – 8 if you enjoy gore, 5 if you don’t care for it.
Yuri – 8

Overall – 7

Eleanor has been a fan of anime and manga for over 20 years, and has several thousand volumes to prove it. Since discovering the original Seven Seas translation of the first 2 Strawberry Panic! light novels back in the early 2000s, they fell down the Yuri rabbit hole and never looked back. They can be found around the Internet under the handle st_owly, and live in Scotland with their wife and 2 cats.

 

 





Can I Call You Unnie?, Book Signing Event Report

April 22nd, 2026

A green cream melon soda next to a copy of Unnie'tte Yondemo Ii Desuka? by Hanakage Alt at Anchor port rainbow Tokyoby Sasori, Okazu JP Correspondent

Nothing excites me more than a yuri event, and in April we have not one, but two book signings for Can I Call you Unnie? (オンニって呼んでもいいですか？) by Hanakage Alt . (Reviewed here on Okazu last week by Erica.)

The signing I participated in was on 4/12, at iconic yuri manga cafe/bar: ANCHOR Rainbow Port Tokyo, also featured in the actual manga. The second signing will be at bookstore (マルジナリア書店) on 4/26, tickets seem to be still on sale as of writing this article if you happen to be in Japan!

Can I Call You Unnie? manga is about a K-pop fan meeting her fav graduated idol through a dating app, with fluffy moments in abundance. The manga was released per chapter on app/web through CandleA on Comic Walker, but now celebrates its first full Japanese volume release. It’s available from multiple retailers in print and digital formats on the Yuricon Store.

I was a huge fan of Hanakage Alt sensei’s work, and reading it per chapter was a great experience. Full of adorable dates, concert flashbacks, and cliffhangers after each chapter. As a fellow concert fan, a lot of the content resonated with me. I loved how it included both Korean and Japanese languages at key moments, to keep the content realistic for their characters and source material. I could tell Hanakage Alt sensei loved K-pop as much as they loved yuri.

So on 4/12, I lined up at 10am at ANCHOR in Shinjuku Ni-chome, for my first book signing. It’s pretty common to ask for doujin and yuri manga signatures at events, such as Comitia or Comiket, if advertised by the artist’s social media, but seeing it as a whole event was a first time experience for me.

A photo of a staircase, with a placard on the wall for ANCOR rainbow port Tokyo, the Yuri cafe in Shinjuku Nichoume

The flow of the event was as follows:

  • Sign up before hand to participate.
  • Go to the event by 10am to draw a lottery ticket for the signing.
  • Line up in order by number.
  • Purchase a drink at the venue and a book to have signed by the mangaka.

A copy of the manga "Unnie'tte Yondemo Ii Desuka?" with a illustration and signature by creator Hanakage Alt-sensei from the event.

An image of the book signing lottery ticket, with at by Hanakage-sensei, and a message handwritten in English that reads "Thank you Sensei, I Love Your Work!"

After drawing our lotto tickets, we lined up, went inside the cafe, and sat at the bar. Hanakage Alt-sensei and their staff introduced themselves and had a very beautiful floral stand and book signing area near the counter. Complete with acrylic stands of their characters and their mangaka mascot plush. I appreciated how inclusive Hanakage Alt-sensei was of their fans, welcoming all yuri/gender/and nationalities to participate. Their English pronunciation was equally fantastic, despite the event being in Japanese. I think they were very excited about engaging with foreign fans as well as local ones. Participants were also allowed to buy them a drink and give them small gifts, which was such an interesting and fun way to interact with them.

Two cards of illustrations by Hanakage-sensei of the main characters of "Unnie 'tte Yondemo Ii Desuka?"

 

The staff was very sweet and allowed me to write in the Anchor cafe’s memo guest notebook. I was happy to see so many English and other languages besides Japanese in the guest book, as well as cute yuri doodles from various fandoms, and even some art from well-known Yuri mangaka. I’d highly recommend visiting ANCHOR if you are ever visiting Japan, even outside of this event if you are a yuri fan, they even have rainbow cake! ANCHOR also has a pixivFanbox for local yuri events and special perks for book signings.

Acrylic standees of the main characters of Hanakage-sensei's book and a small plush "mascot" round, white character with small arms and legs, and a sakura blossom on it's "head."

 

If you enjoy Can I call you Unnie? as much as I do, be sure to buy the manga on the Yuricon Store or at various Japanese book stores, they even come with cute sign cards depending on the store. Sales support really helps with future volumes and hopefully localization. The official tags for the series on X are #オンニて #CICYU so please use those as well. If you’d like to tag Hanakage Alt-sensei in English, they have a bluesky for English comments.

Thanks again for the lovely opportunity and I’m looking forward to future yuri book signings!

 

Erica here: Please welcome our newest member of the writing staff here on Okazu! Sasori-san will be our Japan correspondent going forward. Hopefully this will bring us up close and personal with more Yuri events. Welcome Sasori-san!