Editorial: Online Events, Representation and Accessibility

This will be a summer of virtual events in the anime world and I want you to think about this before we do any thing else:  Because panels and guests are moving online, there will be a tendency for event programming to have less diversity than usual, as organizers talk to people they already know about, for content. Take a moment and write organizers to remind them to seek out panelists and presenters from marginalized groups. Representation and accessibility ought not to be afterthoughts.

If you’ve been following me anywhere, you saw the most amazing thing over the last couple of days. I’ve been trying to ensure that the Online Yuri Panel will have automatically generated closed captions available. YouTube does not offer these for Livestreams unless an account has 1000 subscribers. I had no idea how many subscribers we had on Yuri Studio, for many reasons. Back in 2009, I was just uploading some of the Yuri AMVs we had from our events, and then a few of my lectures and presentations. As it turned out we had 420 subscribers.

So I asked the Internets for 600 more subscribers so YouTube might listen to me and grant me auto captioning. In two days, and people clicked that button. I’m very mindful of the reason *why* they clicked that button – not for me, but so people can get closed captioning. I don’t trust YouTube to turn on that feature for me, so I found a good option, Webcaptioner. It only works in Chrome but it works and it’s free (donations welcome on the site, click and you’ll see.) I tested it to see if it works while watching a Youtube stream and even with an accented voice speaking at normal speed it did well enough.

My point here is, please write these online events and gently remind them to seek out queer and PoC and disabled folks for their panels online and to make sure that closed captioning is available.

I’ve written to Funimation and Anime Expo to ask that they consider these issues for their upcoming events. I hope you’ll write the events you plan on attending. As fans we can and ought to make fandom more welcoming and open every chance we can. ^_^

Having said that, I invite you all to join me tomorrow, Sunday May 31, 2020 at 5PM Eastern US time (with my apologies to folks in Japan for who it will be 6AM)  for the 2020 Online Yuri Panel Livestream on Youtube. I hope to see you all there.

Yuri Manga

Kaishaku’s Kannazuki no Miko spin-off manga Himegami no Miko (姫神の巫女), is beginning serialization,.Yuri Navi has sample pages from the first chapter in the July issue of Dengeki Mao. You can get it digitally on Global Bookwalker.

ANN’s Rafael Antonio Pineda has the news that spin-off manga Murciélago Byproduct Araña will be coming to an end with the 5th volume. I’ve reviewed Volume 1 and Volume 2 here.

Other News

In one of the few delightful moments of a dark week, Stjepan Seijic offered up this piece of fanart of Color_LES’s webtoon Mage and Demon Queen. ^_^

Global Bookwalker is doing a huge “Stay Home, Stay Safe and Read” campaign with up to 50% coin backon loads of J-Novel Club and Seven Seas Titles.

You may remember my adoration for the novel Gideon the Ninth. A free e-book preview of the upcoming sequel Harrow the Ninth is available on Kindle. /jubilant shouts of joy/ I’m re-reading Gideon right now, because holy heck it’s a brilliant book.

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Online Yuri Panel

Just a bit over a week until our 2020 Online Yuri Panel. Patrons of Okazu will get special backstage access on Wednesday, May 27th as I do set up!

Yuri Light Novels

Via Senior YNN Correspondent Sean G., Roll Over and Die, Volume 1, Adachi and Shimamura. Volume 3 and I’m in Love with the Villainess, Volume 1 all from Seven Seas, have early digital pre-orders. I’m looking forward to reading some of these. ^_^

Kasucchi on Twitter recommends 101 Meter Hanareta Koi, (101メートル離れた恋), describing it as a “yuri science fiction work that explores gender (including trans themes), sexual exploitation, and human/robot relationships in a very neat mystery structure.”

Yuri Manga

Galette Magazine has found it’s new normal, and Galette, No. 14 (ガレット) is now available as a digital release on Global Bookwalker or on Amazon US Kindle in Japanese!

Volume 3 of Mayu, Matou is slated for a June 2020 release in Japan and creator Hara Tsukiko revealed the cover image on their twitter feed. Not gonna lie, I really hope the school Prince is saved from her hopeless obsession by this plucky younger student and her hair. ^_^

Via YuriMother,Yuri VN Kundan Folklore is getting a manga serialization in Comic Yuri Hime. Also via YuriMother, Seven Seas has licensed the manga adaptation of I’m in Love With the Villainess Light Novel.

Via Comic Natalie, we have news of Kuwabara Tamotsu’s Anata to Watashi Shuuhatsu, (あなたと私の周波数)  collection from Yuri Hime Comics, which includes a story about two women attempting to bury a corpse late at night, so there’s that. ^_^ (It wasn’t a terrible story, honestly.)

Also via Comic Natalie, the June issue of Sunday GX Comics (サンデーGX」6月号) has an addition – a  live-action Vampeerz Special Yuri Photo Book  in which live models are “recreating the world” of Akili’s Vampeerz. So, basically, its a cosplay photo shoot. Vampeerz,  Volume 3 (ヴァンピアーズ) is also available as of last week.

Yuri Visual Novel

Studio Élan has announced Highway Blossoms Next Exit: a DLC for Highway Blossoms. The link will lead you to Steam, where you can wishlist it.

Via Senior YNN Correspondent Yeo, we learn of GirlJail which creator Alexander Ocis describes as a “bullet-hell minigame” with an average play time of 3 minutes. ^_^

Yuri Anime

YNN Correspondent Megan wants you to know that Mamoru Oshii’s VLADLove anime has announced a second set of key visuals. They added a character type and a voice actress I cannot resist and I hate them for it. ^_^ (I looked at the character design and instantly thought, “/bleep/ers hired Paku Romi, didn’t they?” And yes, yes they did.)

LGBTQ News

Via Melon on Twitter, “On May 30, the first lecture of「レインボー大学ＳＡＩＴＡＭＡ」will take place via Zoom. This first session will feature discussions of the manga “Love My Life”, in order to explore the situation of lesbians. Attendance seems to be open to everyone.” Check the thread on how to get tickets. The lecture will be in Japanese.

On June 3rd, grand damme of lesbian fiction, Katherine V. Forrest, will be running a zoom lecture on her classic lesbian novel Curious Wine and the history of modern lesbian fiction.

Other News

Check out #Sailormoonredraw on Twitter for some fun, delightful and amazing re-workings of Sailor Moon art. It’s an endless bag of sweets. ^_^

Speaking of something sweet, stjepan sejic posted a piece of Mage and Demon Queen fanart today and the Internets lost their collective mind, as you might imagine.  I just sat there grinning like a loon for Kuru/ Color_LES. ^_^

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Events

Normally around this time of year, this segment of the news report would be filled with Yuri panels and appearances. To be honest, I am not planning on attending a live event for the rest of 2020 at the absolutely minimum. (Honestly, I’m still iffy about 2021, because I know history and expect a second wave of COVID-19, as with the Spanish Flu. Not to be a downer, but I’d expect this to be ongoing well into 2022.) But this year events are going online and showing some success already. Air Comiket (which I was following closely on Twitter) was really quite wonderful. The Comiket twitter feed made the usual announcements, directing people to places and cautioning folks against running. They paged people and shared videos of previous years so we could applaud when the event opened and “walk up” the stairs to Big Sight. Artists set up tables in their homes and promoted their work online. Kim Morrissy over at ANN says that I was among the 440,000 people who enjoyed the AirComi experience together from their computer screens. I thought it absolutely delightful.

San Diego Comic Con has announced an online Comic-Con@Home event. ANN’s Crystalyn Hodgkins has the details.

The Cartoon Art Museum is holding the Queer Comics Expo this weekend on Discord!

I will be holding an Online Yuri Panel on May 31 on Youtube. (link will be forthcoming.) I’ll also be holding an Okazu Patron Backstage Event on May 27, where they can post questions I’ll answer at the panel and get to watch (and laugh) as I set up my “studio.” Support Yuri reviews, news and interviews – and get “backstage” access –  become an Okazu Patron today and help us support the Yuri ecosystem!

Yuri Manga

We have a bunch of new titles up on the Yuricon Store:

tMnR’s If I Could Reach You, Volume 4 is already available. This story is perfect if you like relationship angst and unresolved sexual tension.

Sailor Moon Eternal Edition, Volume 8, in which the combined Senshi defeat Neherenia and free Helios.

Galette, No. 14 (ガレット) has been released in print through direct sale only in limited quantities, but is available for the JP Kjndle in Japan, and on Global Bookwalker next week for folks outside of Japan.

Speaking of Galette, they’ve released a bunch of free sample chapters, including Hakamada Mera’s Sekai ga Owaru Sono Mae ni (世界が終わるそのまえに), Hamano Ringo’s Sora-iro Melancholic (空色メランコリック) and Yatosaki Haru’s Ami-chan no Nikki (あみちゃんの日記).

Comic Walker offers a free sample chapter of Kyuuketsuki to Yobaretai (吸血鬼と呼ばれたい) by Pyaa, about vampire girls who attend Vlad Gakuen, and I mention this primarily because my wife immediately said, “What? Not Saint Vlad Gakuen? Missed opportunity.” and I want you to have that stuck in your head as it is in mine. ^_^

Yuri Light Novels

Hitomi Iruma’s Adachi to Shimamura, Volume 2 is slated for a September release in print, but will be getting an end-of-May release on Kindle!

Yuri Doujinshi

Also on Kindle is Ruri Hazuki’s REFACTORS 1: Nana  & Kanon, a workplace romance doujinshi we encountered at Girl Love Festival during the 100 Years of Yuri Tour.

If you like Hazuki’s work, Lilyka has just also added her -3.25 Hazy World Saturday – Lunch Menu – 2, a continuation of her office romance series named after days of the week.

Minamoto Hisanari, creator of the delightful Fu~Fu (ふ～ふ) manga, has released a Fu~Fu 10th anniversary doujinshi for Air Comiket that is available on Melonbooks. This is Act 1, and an Act 2 is supposed to follow later. There are sample pages on the Melonbooks site. 

Hayate x Blade creator Hayashiya Shizuru, has a new doujinshi series out that combines two of my favorite things: Yanki girls and food. Yan  Koi Shokudo (ヤン恋食堂) Set A (which offers some sample pages) and Set B look amazing. Hayashiya-sensei said on Twitter there will be a Set C and she apologizes, but she hasn’t gotten to the Yuri part yet…. ^_^

I’ll take this opportunity to tell you that, despite the fact that Japan Post has had to suspend shipments to the USA and other  countries, because of the slow-down of commercial flighst, proxy service Tenso has added DHL shipping as an option.  I’ve used Tenso before (and am using them now for these and a bunch of other doujinshi) and can recommend them as a buying service. Signing up is free, you just prove you identity. You are assigned a Japanese address, to which you can ship your items. Tenso will hold the items for a time, if you need to combine orders. And when you ship from Tenso to you, there are multiple shipping options. I was willing to let these go by sea, but since DHL is available, why wait? ^_^ (Tenso also has a proxy buying service, if you don’t read Japanese and don’t want to figure out their almost-always exhausting hoops to buy stuff. I don’t know why, but my goodness buying from a Japanese site has so many steps!

Lesbian Anthology

One more Kindle item of note! Silk & Steel: An adventure anthology of queer sf&f with high femmes & dashing women pre-order on Kindle is now available. And I gotta say that the lineup they’ve got is genuinely fantastic. Aliette de Bodard, Ellen Kushner, Yoon Ha Lee, Django Wexler and more. I have already pre-ordered this and cannot wait to read it. ^_^

Queer Cartoons

Via Dinah Frost on Twitter, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy are now officially a couple in the Harley Quinn cartoon.

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Season 5 has dropped on Netflix and it’s everything we could have hoped.

Other News

I was deeply honored and delighted to be asked to contribute to the British Film Institute‘s Sight and Sound magazine‘s Anime Special: 50 Essential Films summer issue. I can’t wait for you all to read it. It looks amazing!

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Yuri Events

Join us all today on the Okazu Discord for our lowest-key Yuri event ever. There is no agenda, so come by, relax, have some tea and snacks with like-minded folks on the Okazu Discord Yuri Tea Party! ^_^

Please mark your calendar for May 31, and join us on Youtube for an Online Yuri Panel! I will be sending out a link when we are sorted.  The Panel will be free to anyone. If you support Okazu on Patreon for as little as $5/month, you’ll get backstage access! We could really use a few new patrons, too. We’re hovering at just around $500 , I’d like us to be able to move past that sustainably and start investing in Yuri creators again. ^_^

I’ll be joining a couple of podcasts in days ahead, so keep you ears peeled for those, too!

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Yuri Anime

Adachi to Shimamura anime will have a October premier date and has a second trailer on Youtube. It looks just as exciting as I remember it being with extra slo-mo on the already-slow scenes of them doing nothing. Honestly, I remember the whole book being slo-mo.

Mamoru Oshii’s VladLove anime has been delayed due to COVID-19, according to Jennifer Sherman at ANN.

Yuri Doujinshi

Irodori Sakura has announced their first set of translated doujinshi which, they say, will include 3 safe for work and 1 NSFW titles. Momoko Wants To Do What? by Ichinorai is the one they are working on now.

Yuri Manga

Yuri Mother has collected together suggestions from a ton of folks who discuss Yuri manga with The Ultimate Quarantine Yuri Reading List! Take a look for some ideas. ^_^

Yen Press‘ Éclair Blanche is now available, featuring works by Kiss and White Lily creator Canno and Bloom Into You‘s Nakatani Nio. Check out my review from last month – this is a pretty solid anthology and a good read.

Also from Yen Press, Volume 14 of MURCIÉLAGO.

Out this week is Bloom Into You, Volume 7; as Yuu and Touko struggle to figure out what they mean to each other, Sayaka confronts her final inner boss.

Yuri Voice Drama

Galette announces a new Voice Drama story, Ippen Arumi’s Shinda Onna no Hanashi (死んだ女の話). The first part is up on Galette online!

Other News

Via YNN Correspondent Vialla, renaissance woman Sandy Toksvig has taken to doing videos from her home and in one of her recent videos, she discusses Japanese suffrage and Kimura Komako, a Japanese woman who came the the United States in 1915 to be part of the Women’s Suffrage March in NYC. Here is a photo of Kimura-san from the archives of the Japan Society in NYC. So, if a shouty primate tells you that feminism in Japan is modern or a Western import, share this name and information with them. ^_^

The British Film Institute is celebrating 100 years of Japanese cinema with months of Japanese films streaming on their BFI player. They’ll be releasing some of these for free, so take a look at the schedule and catch up on Japanese cinema classics.

Senior YNN Correspondent Sean G reports on Megan’s thread on Twitter of their translation of an “interesting interview with Japanese openly gay LGBT+ rights campaigners Nanasaki Ryousuke, Mizonoguchi [sic] Akiko, Matsuoka Munetsugu, about the evolution of BL and whether queer media should be realistic.” 

ATo wrap up, the Japan Foundation has shared this memory from a year ago, when we kicked off the 100 Years of Yuri celebration with an interview of Kase-san creator Hiromi Takashima as part of TCAF!

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Loads of Yuri news this week!

Yuri Manga

Starting with the new license I accidentally skipped last week, woops, thanks for the reminder, Megan. ^_^

Seven Seas licensed Even Though We’re Adults, by Takako Shimura. This is a story about a married woman and the woman she meets and sleeps with. Tthe Japanese edition, Otona ni Nattemo, Volume 1 (おとなになっても) is on the Yuricon Store, but Volume 2 is no longer available in print. It is available in digital format on Global Bookwalker. I just finished the first volume, so expect a review shortly!

Bloom Into You, Volume 7 now out from Seven Seas and there’s only one volume left in the series. Volume 8 will probably be out late this year.

Seven Seas has also just released Nameless Asterism, Volume 5. This pleasant school life story touches on BL and Yuri, as well.

Via her Twitter account, Ohsawa Yayoi has released the first few chapters of 2DDK, GPen, Mezamashitokei (2DK、Gペン、目覚まし時計。) on Piccoma for free in Japanese.

We have a bunch of titles up on the Yuricon Store including FLOWERCHILD’s Warikitta Kankei Desukara., Volume 2 (割り切った関係ですから。)

And super-happy news for me is that Takemiya Jin’s Fujyourina Atashi-tachi, Volume 2 (不条理なあたし達) is out this week in Japan. It’s a sequel I never even expected! I described this in my review of Volume 1 as “a story about two crappy people who end up with a happy ending that they actually deserve.” ^_^

Hakamada Mera’ Aikata System ~ Gakuen ga Eranda Unmei no Onna no ko~ , Volume 2  (相方システム~学園が選んだ運命の女の子~) is up on the Store. I just started Volume 1 last night. I’ll get back to you on it.

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A couple of titles popped up recently that I hadn’t heard about (or hadn’t been Yuri) until the last volume. If anyone out there has read either of these, let me know if they were of interest? Via Comic Natalie,Wakusei Closet, Volume 4 (惑星クローゼット) is a science fiction horror, which appears to have a Yuri ending.

Also via Comic Natalie, the 11th and final volume of Jousei series Nigeru wa Hajida ga Yakunitatsu (逃げるは恥だが役に立つ) has a Yuri ending. This is sold out in print, but you can still get it digitally on Global Bookwalker.

One more via Comic Natalie, Itazura Privacy (悪戯プライバシー) is about a Yuri relationship between two bullies. Huh, that’s different-ish. You can grab that on Global Bookwalker or in print on Amazon JP.

Lastly, one of the new Comic Yuri Hime manga, Lonely Girl ni Sakaraenai, Volume 1 (ロンリーガールに逆らえない) is just out in Japan, but is out of stock in print, so I’ve added the digital edition on Global Bookwalker to the Yuricon Store. I think this is a pleasant enough story. ^_^

Yuri Light Novels

Penguindrum, the Light Novel, will see Volume 1 released at the end of this month, and Volume 2 headed our way, in the autumn via Seven Seas.

Adachi and Shimamura Light Novel , Volume 2 is also slated for a early autumn release. Volume 1 is available now.

Via Yurimother, we have news that the webnovel sequel to Kannazuki no Miko by creative team Kaishaku, Himegami no Miko will be serialized in Dengeki Maou magazine. It wasn’t as much of dumpster fire as Zettai Shoujo Amnesium, but it wasn’t a literary classic, either. ^_^;

Yuri Doujinshi

Lilyka has made their doujinshi available on Kindle, so to get you started, I’ve added irua’s The Wanderers and Ruri Hazuki’s Saturday 2-book collection to the Yuricon Store.

Also on the store is Twa’s Between She and Her. Lilyka has an interview with creator Twa on the Lilyka site.

LBGTQ Live-Action

Via YNN Correspondent Roxie, Alice Wu’s new queer teen drama The Half of It, has been released on Netflix. You may remember Alice Wu’s work on Saving Face, What interests me most is that the news was released on Netflix Malaysia’s Twitter feed.

Also via Roxie and Netflix, A Secret Love is a biographical story of two women who fell in love when it was not a thing one does, and their relationship over time.

Queer Comics

Emma Vieceli and Claudia Leonardi are creating a Life is Strange, Volume 1: DUST, a sequel to the popular game franchise.

Other News

Air Comiket, the first-ever online Comike,t launched their new logos this week. I think they are perfectly charming. ^_^

Sotheby’s in Hong Kong has a Manga auction coming up this week with original cels up for bidding. They are expecting a fair amount for some of these.

Become a YNN Correspondent by reporting any Yuri-related news with your name and an email I can reply to – thanks to all of you – you make this a great Yuri Network! Special thanks to Okazu Patrons for being an essential part of the team!