Archive for the Yuri Doujinshi Category


Revisiting Old Friends and Celebrating Yuri Anniversaries in Doujinshi!

September 9th, 2020

Some of you may have followed the saga of my recent package from Japan, that sat in a warehouse in Kawasaki for 7 weeks because it was supposed to take 8 weeks, so they made it take 8 weeks and then took 4 days to actually ship. ^_^; Today I want to share the partial contents of that package, because it will give us a chance to catch up with old stories and celebrate some anniversaries. All of the doujinshi I’ll be speaking of were purchased online at Melonbooks, and shipped from there to Tenso, which shipped it to me.

I used to joke/complain that the decent artifacts from Yuri Shimai / Yuri Hime had the most complicated histories. (Although nothing beats Hatsukoi Shimai.) Well each of today’s doujinshi practically comes with it’s own guidebook. ^_^

 

In 2003, before Hayate x Blade, manga artist Hayashiya Shizuru started serializing a story, Strawberry Shake, in the new quarterly Yuri manga magazine, Yuri Shimai, a manga that really honed her “baka” style of physical comedy. The series was ported to the new Yuri Hime magazine in 2005, was renamed Strawberry Shake Sweet and eventually was printed as a two-volume collection, both of which were reviewed here on Okazu. Volume 1 in 2006, and Volume 2 in 2009.  A single omnibus volume re-renamed Strawberry Shake  was printed in 2015 by Shueisha, with a new extra chapter.

The story followed two goofy, clueless “talents” (that is, they model, or do TV shows, or commercials, or whatever) Tachibana Julia and Asakawa Ran, as they meet, fall in love and almost never manage to get it together. When we meet her initially, Julia has just made a splash on a TV drama, and Ran is a new talent who is scooped up for fashion modeling. They are surrounded by a group of wacky characters who are nearly all also lesbian. It’s a tale told with Hayashiya’s bloody, violent comedy and I know it isn’t for everyone, but she’s  been one of my favorite artists since. ^_^ In fact, she may be the first artist I followed specifically, now that I think about it.

She’s continued the series in doujinshi over the years in a – so-far – 4-issue series titled Berry Strawberry Shake. Volume 1 | Volume 2| Volume 3 | Volume 4. The running gag in these are the same running gags in the original. Ran is still a doofus and Julia is still a baka. They are in love, but not in sync. Their manager Saeki is still uptight. The super-lesbian hairdresser Kaoru is still teasing her old schoolmate Saeki and getting into fights with her girlfriend and the very very queer band, which is less visual kei than visual gay, Zlay, is still super gay. All these many years and surrounded by all that gay, and our protagonists still haven’t managed a night together!

Well, this year in, Berry Shake 4, only 17 years after meeting for the first time, Julia and Ran manage a night together. Mostly.  There are…technical difficulties. ^_^;   I’m so glad to be able to check in on Julia and Ran and see that, as goofy as they are, they are happy and successful and…I note that they both are wearing matching rings.

 

 

On a quiet, greenery lined street in a little town, at the end of the road is a tea shop, where you can get delicious tea and patisserie and bask in the company of cute Yuri couples, all enjoying conversation and the pleasant atmosphere. Welcome to the Ame-iro Kouchakan Kandan; Seriho and her partner Sarasa are your gracious…and always adorable…hosts.

Fujieda Miyabi‘s series, Ame-iro Kouchakan Kandan began its life in Yuri Hime magazine in 2006. No, wait, it actually started in 2005 in a one-shot done for the [es] ~ Eternal Sisters, Volume 2 anthology. The series began serialization in Yuri Hime beginning in 2006. It ran for some years and was eventually collected into 2 volumes: Volume 1 in 2009, and Volume 2 in 2012.

Fujieda-sensei took his series to Drama CDs. The series had 4 DCDs and a 5th which was a crossover with his other contemporaneous series,  Kotonoha no Miko to Kotodama no Majyo, Madrigal Halloween, which is still the absolute finest Drama CD I own and arguably, ever made. The cast from this series and locale also makes constant cameos in his other series, including Alice Quartet and even Iono-sama Fanatics. He loves his crossovers as much as he loves Drama CDs.

Sarasa is a high school girl who frequents the local tea shop because she is in love with Seriho, the woman who runs the place. Seriho is sweet and a bit of a bubble-head, but she and Sarasa make a good team. Over time, Sarasa takes on the event planning and marketing and the cafe’s regular clientele eventually boasts a famous Yuri novel series author, a witch, a miko, fashion designers and a god. ^_^ (I bet it tortured Fujieda that his series Twinkle Saber Nova was set in the future….) The series ends with Sarasa and Seriho buying matching rings before Sarasa heads off to school to be become a pâtisier.

When the series wrapped up in Yuri Hime magazine, Fujieda-sensei created his own Yuri anthology doujinshi, Lilyca, in which Sarasa and Seriho, continue to live happily and adorably. I have two of the Lilyca volumes in print and the final two in digital form. It was my great luck to happen upon a collected volume of these stories The Ame-iro Kouchakan Tanhenshuu (飴色紅茶館歓談短編集) on Melonbooks and nab a copy before it sold out. This volume was created for Girls Love Fest in 2018, according to his Pixiv account.

I fell for Fujieda’s gentle stories full of happy Yuri couples, and his clothing design. To be honest, this cover is probably the least good clothing I’ve ever seen him create. Where other artists drew stuff like this – highlighting breasts and crotches for no good fashion reason, Fujieda rarely did that.  He was probably the second Yuri artist I followed specifically.

Time has passed, but all of our favorite couples are doing well. Sarasa is clearly a talented pâtisier now, the shop is known for delicious pastries as well as tea. Also doing well are DCD characters Shuri and Sayu and novel author Manaka and her manager. Sadly we don’t get to see what became of Letty the witch and her miko partner, Tsumugi. But it’s still good to see Sarasa and Seiho happily “married.”

 

 

Speaking of “marriage.” In 2010 – 10 years ago, Yuri Hime magazine was split into two separate publications, Yuri Hime, ostensibly for women, and Yuri Hime S, targeted towards men. Each came out quarterly for a total of 8 issues a year. Almost inexplicably, the February issue of Yuri Hime S premiered a series called  Fu~Fu (ふ~ふ) by Minamoto Hisanari who was, I believe, one of Fujieda-sensei’s assistants, and a member of his Atelier Miyabi/Moonphase circle (which spawned a couple of Yuri artists, in fact.) I say “almost inexplicably,” because Fu~Fu was about Kina and Suu-chan, an adult couple who were moving in together and celebrating wedded bliss without the wedding.  It was great having a series where moe-style art didn’t equate to either infantilized or grossly oversexualized..or worse, both at the same time.

Fu~Fu was a romantic comedy, very much in the Moonphase house style, sweet with explanations of lesbian lives and why marriage equality ought to be a thing. Kina is sweet, bubbly and Suu-chan is serious and a hard worker. They meet other Yuri couples and, when Suu-chan gets them matching rings, their friends and neighbors demand a wedding ceremony. This was collected into a two-volume set. Volume 1 at the end of 2011 and Volume 2 in spring 2013.

Well, this year is Suu-chan and Kina’s 10th anniversary, you see…and Minamoto-sensei had planned a special doujinshi for it…and the pandemic hit and Comitia was cancelled. But he participated with the online Comitia and released ふ~ふ 10th anniversary, act. 1 as a print doujinshi and in digital format which you *can* buy if you are outside Japan.  Act 2 is supposed to be released with the next online Comitia this autumn.

This 10th anniversary doujinshi starts with our two happily nested lesbians watching a movie together. Then a chapter about how all the characters use their cell phones and finally how Kina and Suu-chan met in school. It’s all very “awww”-inspiring.

So here we are, more than a decade since these three Yuri pioneers laid down bricks so many have followed. I still greedily consume everything Hayashiya-sensei creates (including her newest doujinshi series that features Yanki girls, food and Yuri, Yankoi Shokudou, and is therefore the most perfect thing ever created.) I hope publishers will pick them all up again, if they hope for that, or hope they tell the publishers to fuck right off, if the digital economy makes that easier for them.

Happy 17th anniversary to Julia and Ran, Happy 14th to Sarasa and Seriho and a very happy 10th anniversary to Suu-chan and Kina! Our fictitious “friends” are all well, as married as they can be in contemporary Japan, and I’m happier than I expected to be to see them again. ^_^





Yuri Doujinshi Roundup – Lilyka and Irodori Sakura

July 31st, 2020

Doujinshi (同人誌) are small-press and self-published manga created by individuals or groups The English-language equivalent are mini-comics and indie comics. (Although I love how all the machine translators call them “literary coterie magazines.”) Like mini comics, doujinshi are a way for amateur artists to put together their own work to sell. Unlike English-language indie comics (until very recently, and I’ll get into this in a second) Japanese comic markets and after-show selling means that the printing industry for short runs and small prints was very highly developed and more affordable for artists in Japan. Even relatively small print doujinshi runs can look very classy, with texturing, fine insert paper and other ways to make a book stand out.  Digital printing was adopted more quickly by these doujinshi printing companies, and it’s possible to have books delivered to the artist’s table at a show for larger printings. There are catalogs available for cheap(ish, paper is never cheap anymore) printing to standard formats and sizes.

In the US we just did not have this until very recently. When I started ALC in 2002 I worked with graphic novels in part because not one printer I spoke with would do 24-36 page pamphlet-style comics. Because offset printing was the only kind of printing available to me and it was so expensive, I figured we had to do collected volumes to make it make sense. If you look at older mini-comics in America, most of what you’re seeing is photocopies (“copy books” in doujinshi terms) and cheaper hand-made covers. Damned few printers did short runs of under 1000 copies, either. I watched as every convention I ever worked with struggled to find printers to do a few hundred or a few thousand of their program books for prices that didn’t eat up the budget. Printing services weren’t better. There were a hundred print stores in every town, but they were all geared towards making fliers, or signs. Comic artists here in the west just did not have the infrastructure or ecosystem that doujinshi creators had. Even at anime and manga artist alleys, you don’t see nearly as much original work even now, because what sells is parody art. Online art changed all of that, but that’s a conversation for another day. ^_^

Yuri doujinshi has finally made it’s way over to US shores and happily we have two companies at the moment working to bring you Yuri doujinshi for different tastes. It seems like a good time to look at both imprints, their websites, and a few of their titles, to give you an idea of what to expect.

This is not a competition – we’re not pitting these sites against each other  Both Lilyka and Irodori are bringing out a variety of doujinshi, and the more, the better for all of us. Depending on your tastes, and interests, you might find you use one of these sites more than the other, but today’s post is an overview, not a battle. We can and should welcome both companies and any others who enter this field. There are a lot of great Yuri doujinshi artists, including many professional artists who do their own doujinshi as well.

These sites were tested on Firefox, Chrome, Edge, IE, Opera. I don’t have Safari, so if someone wants to jump in and let us know how that works, that’d be swell!

 

Lilyka

Lilyka is the name for the Yuri doujinshi imprint of Digital Manga Publishing. DMP is best known for Boys’ Love titles, but they’ve made several forays into Yuri, licensing titles digitally, with limited titles in print.

Lilyka launched in spring 2019, with a selection of titles from that February’s Comitia. Completely coincidentally, I had attended that event, so I recognized a number of the books they offered out of the gate, and had picked up a few in person myself.

 

Site

Lilyka’s website is clean and simple. The scrolling header gives you the newest news, and you can forward and rewind, if you miss something.  This is followed by a gallery of new releases. Titles on the shop are organized with featured titles across the top, then alphabetically. Their search worked on all the browsers I used.

Search allows you to search an author, title, term, with broad categories, e.g. “romance,” and formats, to limit further. At the moment, their have a small enough catalog that a little scrolling will give you a good idea, but as they offer more titles, this will be useful. There are options for reviewing a title and “Ask a Question” which is an interesting idea.

Lilyka is also running interviews with creators, which I’m finding to be surprisingly interesting.

 

Comic

Lilyka comics are easy to read, reproduction is clean. Translation is fine. SWHD has made-up terminology, which is always complicated.

However, no one is credited. The translation, clean-up, lettering and editing apparently has manifested magically. If you’re a reader of doujinshi you know that even untranslated doujinshi will have credits: The other folks in the circle, the assistants, friends, the printer. I believe it is essential that publishers credit people who do the work. It’s hard enough to be taken seriously, to negotiate or to put things on a CV when you’re doing unsung work, but if you never appear on a credit page, it’s just that much harder. There are other, more historical reasons as well, that DMP needs to be an overtly good actor in this endeavor. 

 

Shop

The titles I read for this review are SWHD and Tadokoro-san. I picked these titles for very specific reasons. SonoN’s SWHD is an action title that I bought the first three issues of at Comitia. It’s about beefy women fighting monsters and in between, it’s really quite sweet. It has recently been picked up by Comic Ruelle & Comic Jardin.  Tadokoro-san had just been collected into a print volume from a new-to-me imprint, Valkyrie Comics, and I wanted to take a look to see what it was like. I also had been given Lily Fairy Tale Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty by mintaro, who now has a story “Pochi Climb” running in Comic Yuri Hime, as a review copy and again, it had been a doujinshi I bought at Comitia, so was pleased to see it here.

Buying from Lilyka is easy, flexible and I honestly have to give it thumbs up. Once your credit card is processed, you have the option of 7 formats to download in, including cbz, mobi, pdf and epub. Most importantly, you are allowed to download multiple formats.  To walk through this, I purchased Twa’s Shiori and Yuki, which was very cute, especially if you like stories that include children acting like children.

Pricing is about on par for buying a doujinshi at Comitia. $4.95 for SWHD when I think I paid about 600 yen, so that’s right in the wheelhouse.

The selection on their shop is pretty good, actually. There’s some school life stories, some fantasy, some adult life and action. I like that the books are mostly SFW, with a little more implied. This is the kind of original work I tend to collect, rather than overt porn, for reasons I will get into when we move to Irodori Sakura. Adult lives written by adult women for an adult audience is still so refreshing that I am not yet tired of it. ^_^

Overall – 8

Lilyka’s over a year old and still going, so I’m hoping they’ll expand their credits, and their acquisitions, but at this point I do recommend them.

 

Irodori Sakura

Irodori Comics is a Japanese erotic doujinshi company who has relatively recently expanded to non-hentai doujinshi. Last year they developed a new imprint Irodori Sakura, with an eye to expanding their catalog with “BL, Yuri, and LGBT” titles. This compliments their general interest imprint Irodori Aqua.

Their shop. called Irodori Lite, for the moment contains SFW titles only. Their main page, which previously listed their NSFW doujinshi, appears to be undergoing renewal. If this is a little confusing to you, you are not alone. They launched Irodori Sakura with four titles, but, as you can see from the screencap to the left, the two available are SFW.

In fact, when we spoke the first few times, I made it clear that I would not be interested in the NSFW titles. The covers looked…unpleasant. I know that there are people who enjoy the spectacle of unhappy women in ill-fitting clothes, their breasts and pudendum uncomfortably swollen. I am not among them.

 

Site

While Irodori undergoes whatever reorg is happening right now, Irodori Lite is sparse, yet with a scrolling header it feels crowded and busy, in part because you cannot forward or rewind and have to simply wait to see that news item again. There are links to the different imprints, discussions of doujinshi and genres listed. With the minimal content currently available, it’s easier to search by genre.

The search feature did not pull up anything under Yuri, but they have two comics listed as Girls’ Love. Each comic is also given tags, so you can search by that author, category, genre, etc. The feature worked on all the browsers I tried it on.

 

Comic

So, of the two I had requested for review, the first is Isaki Uta’s Mine-kun is Asexual. I’m very pleased to see a comic that explicitly features a person who is asexual, and was further pleased that the story was not simplistic. Mine-kun is a pretty complex individual and so is the girl who becomes, for a short time, his partner, but ultimately neither of them are able to really communicate about what they need and want. The overall feeling was melancholy, but not unpleasantly so, just…softly sad. Not a bad story at all.

The second review copy was for Why Does Love Do This To Me?, by Ayanoayano, a story of two adult women who like each other and are both kind of not just asking each other the obvious thing, overthinking situations and generally missing the hints each other gives. If you like miscommunication comedy, it’s cute. If not, it’s annoying. ^_^

But as I write this, it becomes obvious that both these titles are about poor communication, and I hope that does not become  trend. Irodori has this month announced a new title for their catalog, The Albino and The Witch by Tendou Itsuki so we can look forward to that. ^_^

Irodori credits the folks who work on the comics, even if they are using non-standard crediting. Translation, lettering, “compiling and formatting”, QA (I guess that’s the production manager) all get named. I am pleased about that. Lettering is clean, easy to read, formatting is also clean.

 

Shop

Irodori Lite checkout was a breeze. You fill in your home address and it offers a list of possible rest of the info drop down, which I liked. I had choices of two possible sizes, but only one format, pdf. That’s fine with me, but if you use a epub reader maybe not so much for you.

To test the system, I purchased Hiroyuki’s Of Girls, Love and Money, which was a vaguely Yuri-ish school story. Everything went smoothly, the transaction, the download, the reading.

 There’s a tab about why is doujinshi so expensive on the about page, but  $3.99 is 413 yen, so probably slightly less than I’d pay at a comic market, to be honest. So in my opinion, pricing is fine.

Overall – 7

The site is working and I believe Irodori is sincere. Certainly based on conversations I’ve had with their reps, they really want to do this right.  I’ll recommend them with reservations, as their content is thus far, thin.

 

We’re still in early days for Yuri doujinshi in English, but I expect we’ll be seeing more if these early titles are popular enough. For a few dollars, you might want to give some new artists a try and let Lilyka and Irodori Sakura know how they are doing!





Yuri Anthology: LiLium Yuri Anthology, Vol. 1 / リリウム 百合アンソロジー

February 7th, 2020

Comic Zin is the bomb. I’ve probably mentioned it before, but it’s a teeny little cave crammed full of treasures. Across the street and down a block or so from Toranoana in Akihabara, there’s a big sign that reads “ZIN” You go up narrow steep stairs (my wife calls the “harrowing,”) to one room, so chock-full of randomness that you instant think, “I am doing doujinshi storage all wrong: and “Ooohhh…train tables in manga form!” Well, you you may think that, if you can get past the first three sets of shelves on which are a surprisingly decent collection of Yuri doujinshi that you totally need.  Or, you can use a buying service and visit their website. But that’s not nearly as much fun.

Which is where I finally found a doujinshi put out by LiLium Plan, a Twitter account I’d been following for ages. LiLium Yuri Anthology, Vol. 1 (リリウム 百合アンソロジー) is described on it’s Amazon page as “8 stories of cute, beautiful, precious love to happy sexual relationships, between young couples and adult women in society. Packed full of moe situations.”

Most of the names here are new to me, with one exception. Takashima Hiromi, creator of the Kase-san series, has a short story in this collection about two girls who meet on the train. Quite possibly the story I liked the most – and brace yourselves, because I have never said this before – was about a maid and her mistress, a girl who uses a wheelchair, by Edoya Petit, “La Fleur Artificielle.” It turned really dark and creepy at the end and I’m not sure why, but I think I liked it anyway? It’s hard to tell if I liked it, or just couldn’t look away. ^_^ 

The art is decent throughout and while the collection does nothing new, it’s also doesn’t suck while handling anything old. And now I have new names to watch for. Volume 2 will be released at Comitia (tomorrow in Japan,) so if doujinshi anthologies are your boom and you’re at Big Site, go to U06ab and grab a copy!

Ratings:

Overall – 8

This is it, I think…the last thing I picked up as part of the 100 Years of Yuri Tour that I am going to review. Unless it isn’t. ^_^ Onward into a new century!





Yuri Doujinshi: Yuricon Tabemono to Joshiben (ユリコン　食べ物と女子編)

February 4th, 2020

What do you get when a bunch of the best adult-life Yuri artists get together and explore random themes, then collect them together into anthology doujinshi? You get the Yuricon series! (No relation to my Yuricon.) We’ve explored a few of the earlier volumes here on Okazu, Yuricon Travel (ユリコン Travel) and Yuricon Jimoto Hougenhen (ユリコン 地元方言編) (which is available in Japanese on US Kindle, as is Yuricon Otaku Joshiben (オタク女子編), which I cannot remember why I did not review.)

I was beyond myself to be able to get Yuricon Tabemono to Joshiben (ユリコン　食べ物と女子編). My very sincere thanks to Xan who picked it up at Comiket for me. You are my hero!

Why was I looking forward to this issue so much? Because it focused on the three things in the world I enjoy most: Food, Women and Yuri. There’s little else that I want – although I’m still hoping for a sports Yuri series that takes place at the Special Olympics in Tokyo. (Two competitors from rivalry and love at the Special Olympics. Please. Thank you.)

The first story, by Seta Seta is less about food than it is about dieting. A woman finds that her jealousy hides other feelings when her friend loses weight.

Riru contributes a story about a woman who runs a lunch truck, who takes great pains to woo a food critic. The smiles on their faces at the end are a lovely payoff. Also, an expected side effect of reading this at night before bed, while hungry –  I want to try a noriben. 

Baked goods bring two women together in Takemiya Jin’s story…stollen and chocolate bread and a bonus chinese cabbage (also called napa cabbage) millefeuille nabe recipe and comic.

Kitao Taki takes a deep dive into a years-long relationship between two women and souffle cheesecake. Yeah, now I want a Japanese cheesecake. Yes. I am easily influenced. ^_^

Ratings:

Overall – 9

 

Four strong adult-life Yuri contributors focused on love and food and love of food. You can’t go wrong, really. ^_^

If this issue becomes available digitally on Amazon.com, I’ll let you know. In the mean time Melonbooks has it and you can use Tenso or White Rabbit or some other buying service to get it if you need. Or ask a friend who is going to an event where it’s being sold! That seems to work for me. ^_^ I’ve used Tenso, buying some t-shirts from Hayashiya Shizuru-sensei’s shop (I am currently coveting this bag. It makes me weep with joy) and it was a bit repetitive to fill out, but it worked like a charm and the costs were – for me, anyway – perfectly acceptable.

 





Yuri Manga: Galette meets, Issue 6 (ガレット meets)

November 6th, 2019

One of my purchases at Girls Love Fest in September (along with piles of doujinshi) was Galette meets, Issue 6 (ガレット meets). Galette meets functions as the doujinshi arm of the quarterly Galette magazine. It’s subtitle reads “All one-shot, slightly SEXY and more SWEET, galette meets.” I receive meets as a backer of Galette, but when I can get a copy in hardcover, I do, because my growing section of Galette publications makes me happy. ^_^I encourage you to become a backer and get a PDF download of magazine and meets as a perq!

This issue contains 6 stories for a hefty 84 pages. There are a number of cute and fun stories, but the one that I enjoyed the most was “Watashi no Roommate” by Morino, An ero-manga artist is not comfortable with her roommate at all. She’s relieved when her roommate leaves. As she works on her comic, she finds herself stimulated and moves to the bed to take care of the issue. Her roommate walks in on her, comments drily, “I forgot my phone” and leaves again. ^_^ The roommate’s complete lack of concern was pretty funny.

nui’s “Hibi no Katachi” also scratched my Yuri android itch. I really like Yuri android stories for some reason. ^_^

Overall – 8

Issue 7 of Galette meets was released at the end of September in print. You can also get Issue 1 through 3.5 on Bookwalker Global in digital format. Issue 4 and Issue 5 are available as Kindle only on Amazon JP. You can find other links to purchase them (Melonbooks, Comiz Zin) on the Galette meets website.