Yuri Network News – (百合ネットワークニュース) – August 19, 2023

August 19th, 2023

In black block letters, YNN Yuri Network News. On the left, in black silhouette, a woman with a broad brim hat and dress stands, a woman in a tight outfit sits against the Y.

This month is Okazu’s and Yuricon’s birthdays so I am running an amazing birthday special! US folks can get By Your Side: The First 100 Years of Yuri Anime and Manga plus a signed bookplate for a flat fee of $20, including shipping! Overseas folks, please contact me and we’ll figure something out. 

If you were waiting for the right moment to buy a copy of BYS, this is that moment!^_^ The offer ends Sept. 6th, so don’t wait!

Yuri Anime

Whisper Me a Love Song anime, which will be released in the new year, now has a key visual reports Rafael Antonio Pineda over at ANN.

Alex Mateo has some info on the music for the upcoming Hoshikuzu Telepath anime over at ANN as well.

Via Sr. YNN Corespondent Sean G., Yuri-adjacent anime, Management of a Novice Alchemist, is getting a Blu-ray collection from Sentai Filmworks.

 

Yuricon 2023

It was our very real pleasure to host a panel that we could not have done in 2003, but for 2023, we absolutely definitely could and did. Please enjoy Trans Perspectives On Yuri, featuring Alexis Sara, Cypress Catwell, Tif Gallant and hosted by our own Ashley Payne.

You can watch all the Yuricon 2023 videos on Youtube! We have some great content coming up as well. It’s going to be a fun Yuri autumn.

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Yuri Manga

Alter Ego 2: Noel & June by Ana C. Sánchez is slated for a February release in English from Tokyopop.

Also from Tokyopop, If My Favorite Pop Idol Made It to the Budokan, I Would Die, Volume 2 hits bookshelves this week!

 

Live-Action Thai GL

Via YNN Correspondent Frank H, Becky and Freen, stars of GAP The Series, are starring in a new series from Idol Factory called Pinpak, about a Princess and her childhood friend. The Twitter post linked here also contains links to Meb, where the books the series are based upon can be purchased in Thai.

 

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Yuri Doujinshi

The big news from Comiket was the existence of a G-Witch doujinshi b ythe staffers who worked on the anime Mobile Suit Gundam – The Witch From Mercury – which included many expressions of congratulations for the marriage of Suletta and Miorine. So that was *their* interpretation, Bandai Namco. ^_^

Irodori Sakura has pre-orders for two ongoing Yuri doujinshi series, Working Women Yuri Manga Compilation 2: After Dating by Yuriemon and My Crush Is My Roomate 3 by Hajima.

 

Other News

Anime Feminist has a must-read interview for us by Vrai Kaiser, Author And Scriptwriter Watari Wataru On Cynical Heroines, Getting A Lesbian Kiss Onscreen, And Keeping His Day Job.

Monique Thomas & Nicholas Dupree have a great conversation in Is There a Double-Standard for Same-Sex Relationships in Anime? over at ANN.

YNN Correspondent Patricia C. Baxter writes a compelling piece for Anime Feminist, On Nintendo’s Reluctance To Make Princess Zelda Playable.

 

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Your support goes straight to paying for Guest Reviews, folks helping with videos, site maintenance, managing the Yuricon Store and directly supporting other Yuri creators. Just $5/month makes a huge impact! Become part of the Okazu family!

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Posted in Yuri Network News | No Comments »


Monologue Woven For You Volume 3, Guest Review by Matt Marcus

August 16th, 2023

The role of Reviewer will be played tonight by Matt Marcus. He is a cohost of various projects on the Pitch Drop Podcast Network, as well as the author of the blog Oh My God, They Were Bandmates analyzing the manga series How Do We Relationship.

The stage is set: Haruka has resolved to hide her acting past indefinitely while Nao has resolved to break the impasse once she passes her next big audition. Are all the secrets going to spill out? Are we going to finally learn what happened with Haruka in high school? Is Yuki going to ask out her still-in-high-school coworker?

The answers are yes, yes, and thankfully no (for now). Hope you all enjoyed the show! See you next time.

…OK that’s a bit too underwhelming even as a joke, but to be honest the story itself doesn’t fare much better.

Woe be me to think that this story centering around The Theatre wouldn’t be extra dramatic. A Monologue Woven For You, Volume 3 starts out the gate with Haruka having a minor health scare that motivates Nao to rush to her side, even though her audition is the next day. So what’s Haruka’s conclusion? Is it that her lover cares very much for her wellbeing? No, it’s that she is going to drag down Nao, snuffing out her shot at thespian greatness. She wrestles with what to do until she discovers the program for her last performance in Nao’s bag, showing that her past was known the whole time. She decides that after seeing Nao off to her audition she will ghost her. You can’t become a great artist without a little trauma, right?

You can probably figure out the rest from there. Nao is panicked. She tracks down Jun, who isn’t very helpful until she decides to try, at which point she isn’t very effective. Haruka meets Rei, the high school theater geek, who unsuccessfully tries to guilt Haruka into un-quitting acting. Somehow, Nao takes a wild leap in logic to deduce that Haruka is sulking in the auditorium in which she last performed. Nao confronts her, prompting Haruka to finally tell her why she quit.

After beginning acting at a young age, Haruka joined a local theater troupe while she was in high school. There she became close friends with a girl a year older who was an accomplished child actor. Haruka looked up to her as her role model. All of that comes crashing down when Haruka beats her out for a leading role. Her friend has a meltdown, blaming Haruka for stealing her golden opportunity, and quits acting altogether. Haruka comes away from this with a deep sense of guilt for “killing” the acting career of someone she thought was truly talented. And that’s it, that’s the trauma on which this entire plot hinges.

Haruka is still wallowing in this guilt until Nao pushes back, saying that Haruka saved her from quitting acting, and that it is her dream for the two of them to act together on stage. They reconcile, and a year later the two succeed in co-leading a play for their college drama club. Nao goes on to be a professional actor, while Haruka continues to act as a hobby. They move in together, and everyone’s happy. Cue the orchestra.

I will be honest: I thought the melodrama was both over the top and contrived and the payoff a bit rushed. I don’t think after two volumes of teasing that I would ever be satisfied with Haruka’s inciting incident in high school, and what we get is more or less as pedestrian as you could get. I had mentioned in my review of Volume 2 that I wasn’t sure if the story wanted me to trust in Haruka’s decision never to act again. Seems a bit foolish now to think that she could have chosen to stay in the audience, but given the way the story framed her stance I think my confusion was warranted. A slightly less storybook ending could have demonstrated Haruka’s outlook maturing as she looks back on the opportunities she threw away. For most people, there are times in your life where you have to give up on participating in something you love but you discover a new way to appreciate it, like an injured athlete becoming a coach. You can wring a lot of impact from such stories of loss, however it would fall flat here because Haruka’s decision to leave the troupe was not foisted upon her; it was entirely self-inflicted. Seriously, someone should have just told her that the fault lies with the girl who quit over a bruised ego. Like, maybe her parents. Or Jun. Or Nao! (I have the “it’s not your fault” scene from Good Will Hunting running on loop in my head now.) Given where Yasaka-sensei wanted to take the story, it would have been better to seed more hints that Haruka was drawn to act again, but felt ashamed about it.

To pivot away from the story, there is one interesting part of the art that didn’t strike me as obvious until this review, which is the use of blur to show depth of field. There are of course cinematic perspective tricks used in other manga, but the way it is implemented here feels somewhat unique. It had been there the whole time–hell, it’s on the Volume 1 cover with the cherry blossoms–but for whatever reason I only noticed it in this volume. Aside from that, there is only one bit of art that I felt was really well composed and drawn, which is the cover page to chapter 15, with Nao standing under a streetlamp at night.

All in all, this series ended up very “mid” as the kids say. The story could have relied less on contrived and stretched out tension, the art is fine but not amazing, and I don’t think it draws out all of the potential out of the college setting. That said, it’s not a bad time. If you want some fluff with a heaping of melodrama, you could do worse.

Art – 7 The art stayed consistent throughout
Story – 6 The melodrama was overwrought
Characters – 5 They’re acting to the rafters but they can’t elevate the script
Service – 0 Nada
Yuri – 8 / LGBTQ – 1 They teased a second ‘ship but didn’t commit

Overall – 7 Would give it a perfunctory standing ovation

Posted in English Manga, Guest Review, Matt Marcus, Yuri Manga | No Comments »


Kininatteru Hito Ga Otoko Janakatta, Volume 1 (気になってる人が男じゃなかった)

August 14th, 2023

Black art and letters on vivid green background, a girl with curly hair sits next to an androgynous, masked, hoodied girl, while sitting on a guitar amp.Aya is a high school student who loves music of the 90s-00s. She’s content to sit and listen to the Foo Fighters in her ear buds, but when she see an old CD shop, she pops in and is awestruck by the cool guy behind the counter. She keeps dropping by to see the cool “onii-san” who share his musical tastes with her, but she’s still pretty tongue-tied when trying to talk about anything with him.

That onii-san has a secret, though. “He” is not an older cool guy, she is the girl who sits next to Aya every day at school, Mitsuki. Mitsuki works at her uncle’s CD shop, and he stresses about her constantly; everything from her loner life to her old guy taste in music.  Mitsuki is not terribly interested in being cool, or being friends with cool girls like Aya, but she is worried that Aya might figure out what is going on.

Aya eventually figures out what is going on.

So does a classmate who is, thankfully, more amused than anything else. He’s kind, sort of trying to get them together.

The thing is, when Mitsuki isn’t thinking about it…she really is pretty cool. ^_^

Kininatteru Hito Ga Otoko Janakatta (気になってる人が男じゃなかった), subtitled in English “The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn’t A Guy At All,”  by Arai Sumiko began life as a comic distributed online to instant approval by an international groups of fans who clamored for more. Luckily we got more and here we are with the first print volume of this manga.

With its uniquely visible color scheme of black, white and a vivid green, new pages of this comic were always super noticeable whenever they came across my feed. The art in this manga reflects the online sensibility too, I think. With unique perspectives on panel structure, body language and expression, this comic feels somehow grounded in street art and manga art at the same time. The change in artistic confidence from beginning of the volume to the end is visible, but the art solid all the way through.

The plot idea isn’t the first of it’s kind, but I am hopeful that it will be better-handled than others, given that we address the assumption here in volume one. Also dealt with is the jealousy of old friends when a new friend/interest appears, a story that will bleed into the next volume. Everything about this book gives me the sense that Arai-sensei has complete control of the narrative. I wasn’t entirely sure how the “he’s a she” was going to be played, but so far, it’s pretty solid, especially for a manga that was online first.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 7
Characters – 8 I think I kind of like the uncle, even if he is a bit extra ^_^
Service – 1 The setups for Mitsuki and Aya are like 5/10ths kabedon
Yuri – 4 Getting there, no question

Both Aya and Mitsuki have recognized attraction for each other, where will it go? How many other 90s bands will be name checked? Tune in to Volume 2!

For free sample chapters in Japanese, you can check this manga out on Comic Walker!

Posted in The Guy She Was Interested In / KiniOto, Yuri Manga | 7 Comments »


Yuri Network News – (百合ネットワークニュース) – August 12, 2023

August 12th, 2023

A blue silhouette of a girl with a white flower in her hair, embracing the earth. Blue block letters read YNN Yuri Network News. Art by Lissa P. For Okazu.

Yuri Anime

We have news at last about the broadcast date for I’m In Love With The Villainess anime. From the Official WataOshi Twitter feed, it will be airing on Japanese TV on October 2, with a special ticketed premiere in late September. I will be speaking with inori.-sensei in early September for Yuricon 2023 and I hope we’ll get some insight into the anime. ^_^

Do check out the English-subtitled I’m In Love With The Villainess trailer, on Crunchyroll’s YT channel.

 

Yuri Manga

We have a couple of great upcoming titles on the Yuricon Store!

Let’s start off with the much-anticipated Volume 3 of She Loves To Cook, She Loves To Eat, which will be headed our way in October!

As a reminder – one of the do not miss books of the years, The Moon on a Rainy Night, Volume 1 is hitting shelves in September. Trust me, you want to read this manga by Kuzushiro. Along with She Loves To Cook, I have been buying this as a digital to get the new volumes right away, until I can get a print copy. I’ve been reviewing it on Okazu. I’m re-reading the print right now and holy crap is this a good book.

Amongst Us: Soulmates by Shilin is out from Seven Seas. This is the current-time AU of her webcomic Carciphona. Her art is stellar and the characters cute as they bicker. ^_^

The final volume of Ari North’s gorgeous webcomic Always Human, Love and Gravity: A Graphic Novel is out and in the world. I loved this series so much as a webcomic and am delighted to have it as a 2-book series!

Sasayakuyou no Koi wo Utau, Volume 8 (ささやくように恋を唄う) was full of drama in the best way.

 

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This might not be to everyone’s taste, but Hakyoku Yuri Anthology – Setsuna (破局百合アンソロジー　セツナ) has the focus of catastrophic Yuri relationships. Whee!~ You can get it in Japanese on US Kindle as well.

While I was looking up the above collection I found a pile of Yuri anthologies I’d never hear of on US Kindle:

Flower: A Yuri Anthology [sic] by Ferra Tenzin, stood out because it appears to be in English. No idea of the content, specifically, but it looks like a self-published book of short stories.

Kyoshi Seito no Sosaku Yuri is a teacher/student relationship anthology in Japanese, with a mixture of short stories and manga. Also available on JP Kindle.

Satsubatsu Yuri Anthology: Edge of Lilies is a collection of stories that appear to be centered in violence. Also available on Amazon JP.

But the piece de resistance of these creepy, miserable collections is…

Edible Lily: Cannibalism Yuri anthology. And you know what? I am NOT reading this one. I love Yuri, but nope. Also available on Amazon JP.

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 Other News

From creator Natsuo Mutsumi-sensei’s twitter, the final stretch goal on My Date Is A Total Ike Woman is being worked on. “Voice drama and music production for “My Date is a Total Ike women” is underway. As for the music, a demo tape has arrived from the US! I’m so excited! We have asked an idol named PAiDA to sing for us.”

I am especially pleased with this choice as PAiDA was the target of a recent online hate campaign for having the nerve to envision herself as the pop idol she is. Check out her new song Future☆★Town on Youtube!

Of interest, Richard Eisenbels on ANN has this interesting news item, Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! Author Talks About His Disability, Gender Identity, and PC Culture.

And let’s wrap up with this fabulous celebration of Yoshiya Nobuko’s work at the Yayoi-Yumeji Museum in Tokyo. To celebrate a new edition of Yoshiya’s Wasurenagusa (わすれなぐさ), the museum has rounded up the gayest works they could find. Including this stunning piece by Takabatake Kashou, “Uruwashi no Kouittsui (Pair). For all the images, check out the Yayoi-Yumeji Museum’s post on Facebook.

If you’d like to support Yuri journalism and research, Patreon and Ko-Fi are where we currently accept subscriptions and tips. Your support goes straight to paying for Guest Reviews, folks helping with videos, site maintenance, managing the Yuricon Store and directly supporting other Yuri creators. Just $5/month makes a huge impact! Become part of the Okazu family!

Become a part of the Yuri Network, by being a YNN Correspondent: Contact Us with any Yuri-related news you want to share with us!

Posted in Yuri Network News | No Comments »


Thai Yuri Dramas Show Me Love and Be Mine, Guest Review by Frank H

August 9th, 2023

After creating hundreds of live-action BL series, TV producers in Thailand have turned their attention to live-action yuri, spurred by the breakout success of GAP: The Series, which racked up millions of views on YouTube due to the chemistry between its two leads, Sarocha Chankimha (“Freen”) and Rebecca Patricia Armstrong (“Becky”).

Two new series, one already released and the other still in production, illustrate different approaches to satisfying this newfound demand.

Show Me Love: The Series was one of the first out of the gate, but was hobbled by being originally released on a for-pay streaming service. After complaints from fans, its production company, GrandTV, is now re-editing and re-releasing it for YouTube, beginning with “Part 1 of episode 1” at the time of writing the first six episodes (out of nine) are available for viewing. (At time of pot, the first 7 episodes are available!)

Show Me Love was created by a company that puts on beauty pageants, stars two former beauty pageant contestants (with a host of other contestants in supporting roles) and has a plot about competing in a beauty pageant. It even includes scenes that feature fans shipping the contestants and criticizing ships that appear fake.

This last is an inadvertent self-own, as Show Me Love’s fatal flaw is the weakness of the relationship between the two leads: Engfa Waraha as Meena, a country girl come to the big city, gives a much more expressive and appealing performance than Charlotte Austin as Cherine, a former contestant returning to try for a first victory. As a result, their interactions often come across as flat and even forced, especially in the earlier episodes. The show’s relative paucity of views compared to GAP reflects that weakness.

Yet to be filmed is Be Mine: The Series from IS Entertainment, a new production company, although an Official Prologue was released to YouTube a few months ago. (It has over 1.5 million views thus far.) Be Mine is based on four linked novels, Be My Baby, More & More, Be My Sugar, and Be My Boo by Khun Phuying (คุณผู้หญิง) and is planned to be adapted into a 16-episode series, four episodes per couple.

IS Entertainment is attempting to replicate the winning playbook followed by IdolFactory, the producers of GAP: release a pilot to get feedback and adjust accordingly, keep fans interested and involved by releasing a flood of show-related content (including behind-the-scenes YouTube videos, Instagram photos, and TikTok snippets showing interactions between the young women portraying the couples), and monetize through product sponsorships and fan meets.

IS Entertainment is going even further than IdolFactory in explicitly seeking to promote LGBTQ-related issues via the show and its fandom. As part of their celebration of Pride Month they even brought in a professor to hold a “gender seminar” to present “Queer 101“ facts and concepts to the cast and selected fans.

The company has also cast Montana Chuthatus (“Gene”), a trans woman, in a supporting role in the show; she’ll appear in flashbacks as the former partner of Peak (played by IS Entertainment CEO Namhom Atchareeya), the proprietor of a café that the four couples frequent. Thai TV shows have a reputation for having trans actors give exaggerated performances, often for comic relief. (GAP is guilty of this, as is Show Me Love to a certain extent.) Given IS Entertainment’s track record thus far, I’m confident that this won’t be the case with Be Mine.

But in the end the success of Be Mine, like that of GAP and Show Me Love, will be determined primarily by the on-screen romantic chemistry of its leads. Such chemistry can be discovered, as it was when Freen and Becky appeared in small roles in an earlier IdolFactory production; it remains to be seen whether it can be workshopped.

Ratings for Show Me Love:

Production quality – 7
Story – 2  Do you enjoy watching reality shows about beauty pageants? Me neither
Characters – 4  Heidi Amanda Jensen plays a delightfully bitchy contestant
Service – 3  Revealing but SFW pageant gowns
Yuri – 4  Through episode 6, longing gazes, two almost kisses, and a wedding dress dream sequence

Overall – 3  If I hadn’t been reviewing this I would have stopped after the second episode

It’s premature to rate Be Mine: the Series, especially since one of the roles has been recast since the pilot.

 

Posted in Frank Hecker, Live Action, Thai Drama | 1 Comment »