Yuri Network News – (百合ネットワークニュース) – February 6, 2025

February 8th, 2025

In blue silhouette, two women face each other. One wears a fedora and male-styled attire, one is in a dress and heels. Their body language is obscure - they may be dancing, or laughing or fighting. Art by Mari Kurisato for OkazuYuri Manga

The Kickstarter for Miyuki Yorita’s EN-language translation of Her Kiss, My Libido Twinkles, Volume 2 has 16 hours to go, as of writing, and has met all of the stretch goals except the final one. Another 364,150￥ (about $2400) will do it.

We have a bunch of new items up on the Yuricon Store!

Shio Usui’s I Married My Female Friend, Volume 4 wraps up the series from Seven Seas.

Viz Media is releasing Ami Uozumi’s Pink Candy Kiss, Volume 1  in April. “After 20 years apart, Takara reconnects with Ema, the girl she nearly kissed in middle school—who’s now a beautiful, married woman.”

Kase-san and Yamada, Volume 4, which is the ninth volume of the Kase-san series(!) is headed our way in April, also from Seven Seas.

 

Kininatteru Hito Ga Otoko Janakatta, Volume 3  (気になってる人が男じゃなかった) will be hitting shelves this month in Japan. Many hijinks and dress-up moments await in Arai Sumiko’s runaway hit series.

Fuzoroi no Renri, Volume 9 (不揃いの連理) focuses on Shizuku’s relationship with Saori.

The final volume of Osoto Gohan wo Go-issho ni, Volume 3 (おそとごはんをご一緒に) has food and camping and goodbyes.

Via Comic Natalie, Yuri no ha Hajimari Dorei kara, Volume 1 (百合のはじまりは奴隷から), tells the story of a girl who is asked to confess for a schoolmate and is sucked into a slave/master relationship with the object of the other person’s desire.

Twinstar Cyclone Runaway, Volume 2 of the manga was  released in December.

With Galette, No. 33 on the horizon, Galette No. 32 (ガレット) is on the store! We’re still waiting for a Bookwalker JP link, but you can get it digitally on Booth, and physically from the Melonbooks and Booth if stock is still available.

 

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Yen Press announced the license for Lycoris Recoil Official Comic Anthology: React. Alex Mateo at ANN has the details.

Joana Cayanan on ANN has the news that Suzu Akeko will end Love Shitai Tatsunomiya-san wa Jouriku Shimashita manga in the 2nd Volume. This manga is about a mermaid who falls in love with a woman and moves in as her neighbor.

 

 

Anime News

Via Comic Natalie, the Citrus anime will be streaming for free on Youtube on Valentine’s Day. This will probably be without subtitles, as it is meant as a JP campaign.

In “This Week In Anime” on ANN, Lucas  and Coop cover Anime That Feels Like A Bad Trip, featuring Momentary Lily and Revolutionary Girl Utena.

Speaking of the damned, do NOT watch episode 6 of Momentary Lily, but DO read James Beckett’s horror story/review of it. Seriously, do not watch it.

Girls Band Cry 2-Part Compilation Film Project Opens on October 3, 2nd Film Screens on November 14, ANN’s Alex Mateo has the details 
 

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Yuri Audiobook

Roll Over and Die: I Will Fight for an Ordinary Life with My Love and Cursed Sword!, Volume 1 Audiobook from Seven Seas Siren is on the Yuricon Store. Volume 2 will be out soon.

 

Yuri VN

Autumn Wright at PC Gamer magazine takes a look at Studio Élan‘s National Park Girls in A yuri VN about national parks that turn into anime girls is, somehow, the most relatable game I’ve played in my 20s.

 

Other News

Bookwalker is merging with Dwango, says Crystalynn Hodgkins at ANN. Kadokawa says the service will remain the same, but we’ll see.

 

If you’d like to support Yuri journalism and research, Patreon and Ko-Fi are where we currently accept subscriptions and tips.  Our goal now, into 2025, is to raise our guest writers’ wages to above industry standard, which are too low!

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.

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Watashi no Oshi ha Akuyaku Reijou., Volume 9 (私の推しは悪役令嬢。)

February 6th, 2025

A girl with blonde curls in a red fantasy school uniform jacket and blue skirt and a dark-haired girl in a white blouse and dark slacks, swing on metal swings, surrounded by lavender irises. Watashi no Oshi ha Akuyaku Reijou., Volume 9 ( 私の推しは悪役令)。picks up in the middle of Cardinal Lily’s delusion that she has a chance to be someone in romantic relationship with Rae.

I know I am in a minority of one when I say that this Lily is my least favorite character in the story. And because she is the overwhelmingly most popular character in polls, this volume adds extra Lily and Rae shenanigans into the narrative. So we accompany Lily and Rae on what Lily thinks is a date and Rae thinks is just part of their investigation into corruption among the nobility. Rae teaches everyone about plea bargains and she, Lily and Claire work their way up the hierarchy. After confronting Prime Minister Salas, who is apparently unnecessarily rude to his daughter Lily, Claire is left to imagine the worst about her own father.

BUT, this is not really what this volume is about. This volume is about Rae dragging Lily to underground MMA bouts and a magical circus, where Lily saves a giant griffon, thus making a friend for life. It’s about goofy reactions and action scenes and running away from mayhem. In all of this, the volume excels. Aonoshimo’s art is absolutely fantastic enough to carry even the absurd plot line of “in the course of an investigation of corrupt nobles, while Rae is also tracking down the Resistance leaders, she and Cardinal Lily end up at a magical circus.”

Silly mayhem in the middle of an otherwise quite grim arc? Sure, why not. It breaks up interrogating boring corrupt nobles and Salas’ sneering.

The volume ends on an oddly personal conflict. Prince Rod has a proposal for Rae…that is to say, he asks her to marry him. Her reaction sets Rae and Claire at odds for the first time since before the Scales of Love. What will happen to them? Volume 10 is currently ongoing, with no release date, but I expect to see it soon.

I know I am asking a lot, but I would love for this manga series to extend past the Revolution arc into the Demons and Nur arc. Aonoshimo-sensei drawing Dorothea would be breathtaking. The idea gives me a(nother) reason to live. ^_^ So everyone run out and keep buying this series so we can meet Aleah and Mae and see the cooking contest and the Demon Queen and Dorothea. Please. Thank you. Volumes 1-7 of I’m In Love With The Villainess manga are available in English from Seven Seas.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 8
Characters  – I really struggle with Lily
Service – A bit here and there?
Yuri – 11 Lily needs an off switch

Overall – 8

If you love inori.-sensei’s work, don’t forget her newest self-published book Homunculus’ Tears: Alchemy For The Broken-Hearted is available for digital pre-order with an April release, and Yen’s print and digital EN edition of  The Girl Who Wants to Be a Hero and the Girl Who Ought to Be a Hero, Vol. 1 is also available for pre-order with a June release date!

 

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Becoming a Princess Knight and Working at a Yuri Brothel, Volume 2

February 5th, 2025

A buxom blonde girl smiles vapidly at us as she dances in lavender lingerie.by Paul S. Enns, Guest Reviewer

Becoming a Princess Knight and Working at a Yuri Brothel, Volume 2, by Hinaki, is a silly story, told with lots of sex, and not as good as the first volume, which I reviewed here last month It’s still a mashup of isekai , yuri, and gender bender. Naruse Soushi has been placed in the body of Princess Reina (queen) and is trying to survive as a prostitute named Lillion (lily) in a yuri brothel.

I will again provide translations from Latin into English in parentheses after the first use of the character’s name (like Princess Reina and Lillion above).

Helping Lillion out are her friends Precarie (precariously—she’s the one who did the soul swap), Alsea (sea—assigned to humiliate Lillion, she strongly supports Lillion now), and Lapis Rufus (red stone, or ruby—Lillion’s first regular client). Lillion now faces the challenge of Iris (rainbow), the High-Class Prostitute to which Lillion has been assigned to serve.

Iris’s other attendant is Alga (algae), who comes into conflict with Lillion over Iris’s demands.

The politics of Lillion’s situation and her (the pronoun I use to refer to Soushi-in-Reina’s body) efforts to navigate them are interesting, but I find the path she follows in this book to be absurd. The solution to everything that happens is sex. It’s a let down compared to the first volume.

Being punished by Iris? Sex. Fulfilling Iris’s demands? Sex. Helping Alga? Sex. Lillion trying to master her fire skill? Sex. Confronting the Lady of the Moon (who still should have been named Domina Lunae)? Sex.

Lillion still provides most of the humor. The sketches she makes for Iris’s dress are straight out of standard yuri tropes, but brand new to this world. I also laughed at Lillion’s attempts to activate her fire skill. I have a feeling the pose she makes is a reference to something, but I don’t know what it is.

 

The finale of this volume has Lillion facing the Lady of the Moon again, complicated by Alga’s interest in the Lady of the Moon. Alga seeks the redemption of her sister, Oleia (olive tree).

There isn’t as much world building in this one. Mostly the politics of being a prostitute. Madam Acanthus (genus acanthus is a family of plants with spiked or thorny leaves) is much nicer to Lillion in this book, probably because Lillion is now a full Soror (sister) in the brothel. Nothing provides any answers for why Precarie took Reina’s soul or what Precarie did with it. When will this be addressed?

I do want to give praise to the art. This volume, it’s the best part of the book. All the characters can be recognized and the backgrounds are well done. I’ve seen many a manga where the background was plain to nonexistent on most pages. The background really helps the setting here.

Translation is, once again, well done. Use of Latin for the proper nouns is still fun.

Ratings:

Art — 8 The best part of this volume.
Story — 3 I can accept sex in stories, but not if it’s 90% of the plot.
Characters — 5 They’ve improved, but I still want to know what’s up with Precarie and Princess Reina’s soul.
Service — 9 for how explicit it is, 10 for how much there is.
Yuri — 9 We’re reminded every chapter that it’s a guy inside Lillion.

Overall — 5

A disappointment over the previous volume. I’ll still check out Volume 3  and Volume 4 after it releases March 4, 2025.

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Three Yuri Short Story Collections

February 2nd, 2025

These three Yuri Short Story collections have been taking up space in my house for a year or more. I moved slowly through each of them and thought about how to – and which of the three – to review. Ultimately, I decided to do one combined review for reasons you will come to understand.

At a roadside bus stop, in front of the seas an adult woman dressed for the office looks to the side, a girls in school winter coat looks in the other direction.The first of our three is Yuri Short Story Collection wiz ( 百合小説コレクション wiz). This book had been on my to-read pile for more than a year. Unfortunately for me, I did not enjoy a single story in this collection and left a number of them unfinished.

Asaura’s “Warui Yatsu” was not bad, as expected from the writer of Lycoris Recoil.  By the time I  got to Yuki Shasendou’s “Senkyo ni zettai ikitakunaika no sofa de tabete nete eiga mitai” I felt very much like the protagonist and just didn’t care all that much, really.

On the one hand I was pleased to see an original Yuri collection, but in the end, nothing really grabbed me, and I struggle to remember most of the stories.

Overall – 6

 

 

A schoolgirl and an angel sit on the edge of a building reading.Next up was Zerogo: Yuri Literary Magazine, Volume 2 (零合 百合総合文芸誌 第2号). I absolutely adored Volume 1 and was really looking forward to this volume.

I was so deeply disappointed by this issue.

The first story had a great setup, then turned sharply into a incoherent plot that literally wallowed in filth. Many of the stories just left me cold, I often stopped reading because I could see where something was going that I did not want to have to read.  One story that I did read and left me thinking was about researchers and archivists on a planet on which everything lost it’s name. Again, great setup, then it just…didn’t do anything with it. Best title of the collection was” Kokkyuzoi no Pinball Lizard,” Pinball Lizard on the Border. Again, I had to stop reading that one because I was not willing to be traumatized.

I have here on Okazu mentioned many times my feelings about short story collections and how often they reach for the traumatizing or gross to create a quick impact. I am a hard pass on that. I hate when authors do that so much that I stopped reading science fiction for literal decades because the 1970s best science fiction anthologies were so full of that shit.

This volume also came with a little booklet with the cover illustration and story.

Overall – 4

 

Two girls lay over a "love unmbrella" drawing in red. One with pink hair in a black hairband and frill idol-style plaid dress whispers into the ear of a girl with curly dark hair in green blouse over white tee shirt and dark pants, holding two paper cupsLast is our clear winner of the bunch – Yuri Bungei Shousetsu Contest Selection 5 (百合文芸小説 コンテスト セレクション). I have previously reviewed Selection 1 and Selection 3 but skipped both 2 and 4 for the same reasons as above. Well, in the main this fifth volume was outstanding. I have linked the title above and image to the Pixiv results where you can read every story for free. If you want the collected volume, Booth is your simplest choice, with a buying and/or shipping service.

To begin with, the Grand Prize winner was a story so fantastic that I can not stop thinking about it. It ran in the Comic Yuri Hime February 2024 issue and was just… astoundingly good. “Tsuitou Juu-shunen Tokubetsu Kiji “-Tou Sakusha Sakakiba Mizue no Jinsei” by Maruchou. 『追悼十周年特別記事　『盗作者・榊葉瑞枝の人生』』The title translates to “Special 10th anniversary memorial article: ​​The life of plagiarist Sakakiba Mizue.” It begins with a biography of this immensely famous “plagiarist” and has one of the absolutely most fantastic endings I have ever read. I hope you will click the link and take the time to read it.

There were a number of very good stories in this collection, including a poignant one from the perspective of a man whose wife has died and how his world gets narrower and narrower, until a woman shows up claiming to be a dear friend of his wife’s. They start going all the places he promised his wife he’d take her…until all that is left is very far out of the area. When the woman steals his wife’s ashes, he gives her his blessing and only asks for reports from the places they go – a bargain she keeps up.

My second favorite story was about a woman who returns to the town she grew up in on the occasion of the destruction of her high school. She and her closest friend make up over the rift that separated them back then and they and the remaining few students and teachers paint a colorful mural expressing their feelings and experiences all along the school walls. When the mural is finished, the school is taken down. The title of this story is #89c3eb, after the pale blue color of the mural.

This collection did have two stories I stopped reading, but overall was vastly better than the other collections and previous Contest Selection volumes. The volume came with a clear sticker and postcard bonus story.

Overall – 9

In all cases your opinion might vary, and with so many stories in these collections, there’s something for everyone. But if you are even vaguely interested in Yuri literary short stories, I beg you to please read “Tsuitou Juu-shunen Tokubetsu Kiji “-Tou Sakusha Sakakiba Mizue no Jinsei”. It is deserving of a Grand Prize and gave me hope for short stories once again.

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Yuri Network News – (百合ネットワークニュース) – February 1, 2025

February 1st, 2025

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. Art by Mari Kurisato for Okazu

I started a new job last week, this one in-office, so my life is now commute-work-commute for the first time in 15 years. Keeping up on reviews has taken all my free time, so I’m keeping today short and sweet to make some time for catch up. ^_^

Yuri Manga

The Galette Special English Edition02 kickstarter has come to a successful close, surpassing the 5th and final stretch goal! Our own Frank Hecker did a little number crunching: Over ¥8M pledged (up from ¥7M for the first kickstarter), 400% over-subscribed, 759 backers (up from 637), average pledge of over ¥10,600 (down slightly from ¥11,100).  Here is my insight: The slight decrease in ¥ per backer can be explained by the increased number of backers. Since the high amount rewards level were limited, people coming in after  will join at the more unlimited lower reward levels. In any case, yay GaletteWORKS for an even more successful run this time. I am so looking forward to seeing this edition. ^_^

ANN’s Alex Mateo has news that Kakinouchi Narumi and Hirano Toshiki will launch a new Vampire Princess Miyu-Yui manga. This is about the only vampire anything I really enjoy. Kakinouchi’s art is fantastic and the stories are batshit. The anime is a fave of mine, with the best creepy doll and lesbian story ever.

J-Novel Club has announced a license for a print edition of Gushing Over Magical Girls light novel by Ononaka Akihiro. ANN’s Crystalynn Hodkins has the details.

 

Yuri Short Stories & Light Novels

Via Canno, the short story collection WSS Yuri Anthology- Watashi ga Saki ni Suki Dattanoni  (WSS百合アンソロジー 私が先に好きだったのに) is available on Melonbooks for those folks who can get it. ^_^ It features 7 Yuri short stories.

 

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Anime News

Joanna Cayanan has the new cast members, character highlight trailer and news about last week’s premiere of The Rose of Versailles anime movie on ANN.

Crunchyroll is streaming the Precure baton pass with EN subtitles, ANN’s Egan Loo reports. Following up the change from Wonderful (which I watched all the way through, and it was pretty wonderful, with a human boy Precure by the end) we look to You and Idol Precure, which will also stream on Crunchyroll according to ANN’s Alex Mateo.

Speaking of Precure, (which we are now doing with a regularity that alarms me slightly,) Sr. YNN Correspondent Cryssoberyl says that Mahoutsukai PreCure!! ~ Mirai Days~ is getting pop up shops in Loft stores in Ikebukuro Tokyo, Yokohama, Umeda and Nagoya.

Rafael Antonio Pineda reports on ANN on Gundam GQuuuuuuX -Beginning- film stayed at #1 for a 2nd weekend.

Look Back has won the Tokyo Anime Award Festivals’ top award for animated film of the year. Crystalynn Hodgkins has the details.

One more from Crystalynnn Hodgkins,  Zombie Land Saga: Yumeginga anime film will debut in 2025. 

 

Yuri Audiobook

Qualia The Purple audiobook, narrated by Katy Vaughn is up on the Yuricon Store!

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Yuri Videos

Via Sr, YNN Correspondent Ashley, Unmounted Stones on Youtube is “An excerpt from a larger story about thieves, crime, and debt. Dangerous valuables have dangerous owners.” by arainydancer.

Via YNN Correspondent mandtheblubird, Thai GL novel My Honey She Is The Best has a fun little promotional animation up on Youtube!

 

Other News

Ado, Yoasobi, Atarashii Gakkō! are going to be in concert in Los Angeles in March. Any one of those would be amazing, but together, that is a holy cow kind of concert. Hope they do a recording/stream/something. ANN’s Adriana Hazra has the news.

Sailor Moon Super Live tickets are starting pre-orders! They are visiting 20 cities in 2025. This was so much fun when I saw it the first time. I hope if you go to a local show, you’ll write something up for us. I’ll be at the Newark, NJ performance at NJPAC, so if you’re there, say hello! It’s really fun. ^_^

 

If you’d like to support Yuri journalism and research, Patreon and Ko-Fi are where we currently accept subscriptions and tips.  Our goal now, into 2025, is to raise our guest writers’ wages to above industry standard, which are too low!

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 | 3 Comments »