Koudou Ryou no Seizana Hibi, Volume 1 (黄道寮の星座な日々)

June 9th, 2024

A blonde with short hair in a white school uniform and beige cardigan, embraces a brunette with pigtails, who reaches out towards us. Both smile as they look at us, surrounded by small cute girls representing the Zodiac signs at the Zodiac Dorm.One again, this review comes with a story. I was standing in Animate in Shibuya and saw a book I had been meaning to read for a while, so I nabbed it because it was one of the featured titles. Well, I got home and found that I had purchased Volume 2 of this series, so it was going to require me to get and read Volume 1 first.  As it turns out, I was incorrect – I absolutely could have started with Volume 2 and just jumped right in, but I didn’t know that yet. ^_^

So Bookwalker to the rescue, which is where I purchased Koudou Ryou no Seizana Hibi, Volume 1 (黄道寮の星座な日々) by Canno, creator of Kiss and White Lily For My Dearest Girl.

A young woman comes to the “Zodiac Dorm” where every resident is referred to solely by the Zodiac sign they represent. Our protagonist arrives to explain the she intends to be the next Virgo. She seems passionate, and competent and all she needs to do is get the approval of all the other 11 (no Ophiuchus here) residents, which necessitated Virgo meeting all the other signs, being dragged into their drama and solving several conflicts before breakfast.  The rooms in the dorm accommodate two people, so there are some love affairs and personality conflicts. As far as I can remember Scorpio and Taurus are dating and, I think, Aries and Sagittarius.

And then, there’s Gemini. Gemini is…well Gemini. I’m not hugely into astrology, but if you know a Gemini, you know this Gemini.  She’s a human boundary violation. ^_^ And at the end of the tour, she rejects Virgo. Why? It’s a Mystery!

Only, it isn’t really and about then I realized I could have just read Volume 2 and have known exactly what was happening. No worries though, there’s nothing wrong with a little predictability. I’m watching Blue Eye Samurai on Netflix, I feel like it’s the equivalent of watching a Shaw Brothers movie (including the masterwork 36th Chamber of Shaolin, which is a must-watch for fans of the genre) – every line is pretty much predictable, every “reveal,” every scene. It’s okay to relax into that kind of thing and just let it wash over you.

What is Gemini’s deal? Who is the “Alice” that Virgo was told to protect by her older sister? Yeah…it’s the same story.

Ratings:

Art – 7 Not Canno’s best
Story – 7 Same as above, but that’s okay
Characters – Exactly as you’d expect
Service – 0 Unless you have an astrology kink
Yuri – 9

Overall – 7

So Volume 2 is awaiting me, but I’ll be shocked if I am shocked. ^_^ In the meantime, as the worst Virgo ever, I absolutely approve this Virgo as the new resident of the Zodiac dorm.

Posted in Artists, Canno, Yuri Manga | 3 Comments »


Yuri Network News – (百合ネットワークニュース) – June 8, 2024

June 8th, 2024

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 Okazu

Yuri Manga

On the Yuricon Store this week:

The Moon On A Rainy Night, Volume 5 hits shelves this week! Do not miss this wonderful story by Kuzushiro from Kodansha.

I Can’t Say No to the Lonely Girl, Volume 2 also hits shelves this week.  While the premise was a bit sus, I will continue to promise that it does get better and ends in a terrific place. Just bear with this volume. ^_^;

How Do I Turn My Best Friend Into My Girlfriend?, Volume 2 by Syu Yasaka will hit shelves in September, which seems impossibly far away, but will be here all too soon.

Twinstar Cyclone Runaway, Volume 1 (ツインスター・サイクロン・ランナウェイ) is the “comicalized” version of an award-winning story from the Literary Yuri Short Story Contest run on Pixiv annually. It tells a science fiction story of a young woman who is looking for a marital partner so she can go out and fish (something only married partners do on this world,) and the restaurant server (which is sort of meant to explain the incongruent maid costume) who joins her. It was a fine short story, I guess we’ll see what it becomes as a manga.

Via Comic Natalie, V Drive (Vドライブ！) is about a girl who joins a talent agency that is a front for saving the earth from alien invasion and is paired with someone who can’t stand her, but with whom she is in” Business Yuri” relationship on stage. Throwing everything at the wall to see if anything sticks, I guess. ^_^ Check out a sample chapter in Japanese on Comic K.

Genkai OL to Joshidai-sei ga Rei Rei Suru Hanashi (限界OLと女子大生が〇〇する話) is about an office worker and a student  who become friends, then more. Check out a sample chapter in Japanese on Comic Walker.

 

 

Yuri Drama CD

We’ve added the Kininatteru Hito Ga Otoko Janakatta Drama CD, Special Edition (ドラマCD 気になってる人が男じゃなかった) to the Yuricon Store. How exciting that Drama CDs are making a comeback. This is particularly a fun one as the entire premise is about retro music. ^_^

 

 
Okazu News

If we get $50/month more in patronage/support on Okazu this month, we can give every single reviewer – staff and guest – a raise. Help us get Yuri reviewers the wages they deserve! You can support us on Patreon or Kofi.  This is a huge help to us and allows us to do more coverage of the Yuri you love! This Pride month, help us support queer creators and their work! 

 

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Yuri Live-Action

Big news from Sal Jiang, creator of Black & White! Her office romantic comedy Ayaka-chan ha Hiroko-sempai ni Koshiteru is being made into a live action drama for Japanese TV. (Yet again confirming my long-held belief that Josei work is almost always more suited to live-action than anime.)  This will begin next month on several JP networks and I’ll be looking for some way to watch this without bending the rules of time and space. ^_^ I have reviewed Volume 1 and Volume 2 here on Okazu, but have not yet had a chance to read Volume 3. I’ll bump it up, now.

 

Sailor Moon News

Netflix has announced that Sailor Moon Cosmos will be headed our way in August. ANN’s Egan Loo has details. Fans are, predictably, relived that we’ll get the final two movies of the Crystal series.

Now. Wouldn’t it be cool if the next time they redo the anime, Toei doesn’t rush or shortchange it, puts directors on it that understand the franchise and the US localizer doesn’t hire toxic asshats to handle talent? Just saying, I would like to think this series will one day actually get a chance to shine.

 

Yuri Visual Novels

Via YNN Correspondent Patricia B, Studio Élan has announced two new VNs!

A Tithe In Blood, is a “A dark yuri visual novel, about a quiet university student who discovers blood magic in the depths of her grief. Stepping into a world she little understands, Honoka finds unexpected love, and inadvertantly [sic] sets in motion a deadly series of events.” Wishlist on Steam or download on Itch.io. Trailer is up on Youtube!

“After getting lost in a blizzard you find yourself in Rainbow Valley—a strange mountain with even stranger villagers.” Wishlist Rainbow Valley on Steam. Creator Izzy calls Rainbow Valley a “cute dating sim, set in a secluded mountain village.”

 

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Other News

In honor of Pride Month, the outstanding documentary about Queer Comics, No Straight Lines is streaming for free on US PBS (Public Broadcasting Stations). If you have not seen it, I hope you will make time for it, it is fantastic. I reviewed it back in 2021 and it is even more important as we lost more of our first-gen folks this year, including the incomparable Trina Robbins.

In fantastic news, Anime NYC, The Japan Society and star anime journalist and opinion-maker Deb Aoki announce the creation of the North American Manga Awards! I know Deb’s been working on this for years and it’s amazing that it finally is off the ground. With manga accounting for almost half of comics sales in the US and only just this year being eligible for Eisner Awards outside the English Edition of International Comic (Asia) category, it’s been time for a long time that we have our own award. Congrats to all the judges and to everyone involved. I’m looking forward to the results. Get the details on ANN from Alex Mateo about this long-anticipated award.

This week’s fun fact, Watashi no Oshi ha Akuyaku Reijou in this month’s Comic Yuri Hime is the second Yuri manga reference to Japanese Edo-period costume drama television series Mito Koumon. The first was Fujieda Miyabi’s Iono-sama Fanatics. (Another series that just did not get the chance it deserved through bad timing and organizational incompetence.)

 

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 2024, is to raise our guest writers’ wages to above industry standard, which are too low!

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Posted in Yuri Network News | No Comments »


Assorted Entanglements, Volume 4

June 7th, 2024

A woman in sweatsuit and a girl in a school uniform sit close in a classroom as the sunset turns golden in the windows.by Matt Marcus, Staff Writer

In the previous volume of Assorted Entanglements, a new couple joined our problematic posse with the 3rd year high school student Sugimoto and her perpetually maidenless gym teacher, Kujou. Everybody else is still on their normal bullshit.

Assorted Entanglements Volume 4, brings something that was sorely needed to the series: character development. No, really! The series up to this point was content with short four-page chapters that loosely hung together but were mostly setups for gags. About a third of the way through this volume, Mikanuji-sensei starts writing longer chapters that expound more on the girls’ histories and their evolving connections to each other. It’s something that I would not have explicitly asked for, but it greatly benefits the whole package.

Minami has a flashback to the time she spent with Shizuku after getting out of the child services facility, which prompts a crisis of confidence. Nevertheless, she continues to think only of Iori and how she might leave her someday. After another open-handed peptalk from her older lover [sigh], Iori admits that she is a terrible person (true!), but she says that they would not have met if either one of them were normal. It’s almost touching!

Elsewhere in the city, a meaningless spat between Shizuku and Saori* leads to the two girls not talking for some time. Shizuku, never one to be fully honest with herself, finds herself feeling lonely enough that she goes out of her way to patch things up by laying out her point of view for Saori: that she is a fundamentally broken person who cannot relate to “normal” people, and thus despises them. Saori accepts this, finding common cause as maladjusted girls with twisted, unfulfillable loves. It’s kind of endearing!

Kujou’s girlfriend quest hits a snag as she gets a harsh dressing down from the cantankerous manager of the lesbian bar. Sugimoto is still trying to push her along, her last act in the volume being to offer her teacher an aquarium date as a “girlfriend test” (we all knew this was coming). We do find out in a bonus chapter that Sugimoto found the gig at the maid cafe after finding herself too gripped with panic to deal with the social stressors at school, and that seeing Kujou outside the bar everyday gave her the motivation to go back to class. It’s nearly sweet!

While all the other couples are angsting it up, Heke-san and Shinohara are still slowly circling towards each other like a binary star system. They are still the most wholesome couple here. It’s refreshing!

You may be detecting a theme here. With some space to stretch out, Mikanuji-sensei is able to add more contour to the characters and, despite all of my kvetching and faint praise, there is a core here that I do indeed like about this series. It’s still a hard recommend, but if you’ve stuck it out through three volumes already this one is worth picking up; it’s the best the series has been so far.

Art – 7 No major changes here, but Shizuku does give one the best “silent seething rage” faces I’ve seen put to page
Story – 8 It’s not going to win an Eisner but at least it’s trying
Characters – 7 Everyone’s schtick is firmly established here, yet there is some growth
Service – 2 Points are mostly for Minami’s tattoos
Yuri – 9 / LGBTQ – 9 Kujou gets a lesbian dating app

Overall – 8 Normality is overrated

Volume 5 of this ensemble story of Sapphic misfits is coming our way in June.

*I hadn’t noticed until recently that while the localization by Eleanor Ruth Summers has been excellent, Iori’s sister’s name has ping-ponged between Shiori and Saori throughout the series, even within the same volume. It’s an odd editing miss. Either may be technically correct, but after some discussion in the discord we have decided to go with Saori.

Matt Marcus is a serial enthusiast whose range of appreciations include guitars, watches, and a particular genre of Japanese popular media named after a flower. Outside of writing for Okazu, he cohosts various projects on the Pitch Drop Podcast Network, where he frequently bloviates about video games, anime, and manga. He also hosts a blog Oh My God, They Were Bandmates analyzing How Do We Relationship in greater depth.

Posted in English Manga, Matt Marcus, Mikanuji, Staff Writer, Yuri Manga | 1 Comment »


Comic Yuri Hime June 2024 (コミック百合姫2024年6月号)

June 6th, 2024

From within an ornate gold frame on a dark green background, two girls in dark red school uniforms with whit collars look up and out from a window into a rainy garden.Teenager angst is such a staple of fantasy literature that we don’t really question is any more. We all know that been an adolescent is fraught, (complicated, unnerving and frustrating) as well as full of unknown excitement and opportunity. So of course it’s a fertile area for queer and queer-adjacent works to suggest alternatives to this reality. Comic Yuri Hime, June 2024 (コミック百合姫2024年6月号) begins with one such new story.  “Genjitsu Sekai Demo Shiawasenishite Kudasai Ne?” follows Machino, a girl who is deeply, obsessively a fan of manga. When the president of the manga club introduces her to an Isekai game in which she can play the love routes as a girl or a guy, she falls hard.  She plays the game over and over, playing all the routes as a girl. When the princess appears in her room one night and confesses to her, things are (clearly) gonna get wacky.

This is followed by “Gakeppuchi Reijou ha Kuro Kishi-sama o Horesasetai!” in which a hapless princess is trying to find the way to her heartless Black Knight fiancee’s heart through…food. A time-honored strategy.

Shiho *finally* has her come-to-god moment! It’s really about time, She’s just been so intolerable. Now she’s merely annoying in a totally normal way, in Takeshima Eku’s “Sasayakuyouni Koi wo Uta.” In case you’re watching the anime and wondering if she ever gets less appalling Yes, eventually.

Still REALLY liking “Salvia no Bouquet” with its focus on finding joy and sharing emotional bonds through magic. There is a lot of fntasy in the magazine right now, as I have pointed out, so it’s good that some of it is…nice.

I have a lot of big feelings about “Watashi no Yuri ha Oshigoto Desu!” by Miman. Kanako has come to some important conclusions for herself but in doing so, has still forgotten that Sumika is on her own journey. I am  – as I have been all along – hoping that the to of them can be sisters to one another in a supportive way.

In “Odoriba ni Skirt gag Naru,” Shion is finally given space to think about her relationship with Kiki. My hope for them is that they lean into a friendship based on healthy competition.

Kodama Naoko’s “Utsotsuki Hanayome to Dousei Kekkon-ron” is moving into it’s “crisis because we can’t have a conversation” phase. I’m sure all will be well, since as dark and bitter as her set-ups are, they tend toward fluffy endings.

Ciel  rips her father a new one in “Kiraware Majoureijou to Dansou Ouji no Kon’yaku” as a distraction (and confession) while the rest of the cast tries to figure out some clues to the dozen or so secrets laying around the story.

In “Ooto Gohan Wo Gossho Ni” food is bought and then prepared and eaten outside. Please the gods this story never develops a plot. It’s fine just the way it is!

“Watashi no Oshi ha Akuyaku Reijo.” gives a Rae, Lily and Claire working for the Crown, but maybe against their fathers? and the infamous Mito Koumon reference, which I am pleased to note makes this the second Yuri manga to reference this series. ^_^

I have no idea where “Gan no Hime” is going, but I guess I’m okay with wherever it is. As basically the only scifi in the magazine right now, it is carrying a lot of weight for me.

And also of interest to me was this moth’s film review which took a look at Sakura no Sono – a 2008 remake of an earlier 1990 movie of the same name that I reviewed based on a manga by Yoshida Akimi, creator of BL classics Banana Fish and Lover’s Kiss.  Katherine Hanson reviewed the manga for Okazu,  I really enjoyed this movie when I watched and reviewed it in 2013, so click the link above to read my thoughts. ^_^

As always there’s a lot I read, but didn’t mention, or just didn’t read, but flipping through, I am reminded that I’m reading about half the stories here and enjoying most of those – and of those, I am enjoying very much, so that’s an excellent percentage.

Ratings:

Overall – 9

I’m back on my normal schedule now, reviewing one volume of Comic Yuri Hime just as the next comes in to the bookstore. It was nice being ahead for a month or two! ^_^ The July issue is on Japanese bookstore shelves now and, once again, waiting for me at Kinokuniya.

Posted in Comic Yuri Hime, Magazines, Yuri Manga | 2 Comments »


23.5: The Series

June 5th, 2024

by Frank Hecker, Staff Writer

The Thai company GMMTV is a BL powerhouse, with eight live-action BL series aired in 2023 and a staggering fifteen BL productions scheduled for 2024. Thus it was major news when GMMTV took note of the success of GAP: The Series and created their first yuri series, 23.5 (airing on either Youtube or Netflix depending on the region).

In creating 23.5 GMMTV generally played it safe, with a high school setting, a plot element (mistaken identity) that was centuries old when Shakespeare used it, the classic pairing of a short brown-haired extrovert with a tall black-haired introvert, and two actors (Milk Pansa Vosbein and Love Pattranite Limpatiyakorn) who had displayed good chemistry as a side couple in GMMTV BL series. However, GMMTV did show some confidence in the appeal of a yuri work: A popular pair of BL actors was rumored to be included as a side or even second primary couple, but GMMTV apparently decided that “MilkLove” would be able to carry the show without such help. GMMTV also chose an out lesbian (Fon Kanittha Kwunyoo) to direct. These both proved to be wise choices.

The astronomically-themed 23.5 (after the tilt in the Earth’s axis) is set at S-TAR Academy (“S-TAR” = “star,” get it?), which the shy and gawky Ongsa joins as a transfer student. She finds herself attracted to Sun, one of the most popular girls in the school, and reaches out to her over social media using the pseudonym “Earth.” Their online relationship quickly blossoms, but not without complications: Sun wonders when Earth (whom she assumes is a boy) will ever meet her in person, while Ongsa tortures herself over whether and how to end the charade and tell Sun her feelings face to face. Those familiar with mistaken identity romances know how this will end, but the journey on the way is quite enjoyable, thanks in large part to the central couple. As portrayed by Love, Sun is one of the most adorable and charming love interests ever to grace this solar system, while Milk’s Ongsa is completely endearing as she veers from giddy infatuation to agonized embarrassment.

23.5 is worth watching just for them alone, but as usual there are some side couples as well. The most prominent other yuri pairing features View Benyapa Jeenprasom as Ongsa’s introverted and UFO-obsessed cousin Aylin (“Aylin” = “alien,” get it?) with Luna (portrayed by June Wanwimol Jaenasavamethee) as a “manut” (human) intrigued enough to want to get to know her better. View’s portrayal of Aylin, who’s clearly intended to be read as neurodivergent, may be a questionable aspect of the show for some. I’ll leave it to others to assess how realistic her character is, but for much of the series the only direction given to View seems to have been “look straight ahead and talk like a robot.” However, later in the series Aylin opens up a bit in response to Luna’s offer of friendship and View can portray a wider range of emotions.

There are other positive aspects to 23.5: there’s a quasi-BL side plot involving a character who wouldn’t normally be featured in a conventional BL series, and another side plot involving the students’ teachers that’s notable among Thai series for featuring trans women in roles not limited to comic relief. As befits an experienced production company, other aspects of the series are generally competent, including the English subtitles. However, the writing can occasionally get overly saccharine or stray into “special episode” territory (as in the Aylin subplot, which at times treats her as a problem to be solved rather than a person to be respected).

Despite my quibbles, I can recommend 23.5 as a solid and satisfying first entry by GMMTV into the yuri genre, with Milk and Love (along with Faye and Yoko of Blank: The Series) poised to rival Freen and Becky as the next hot yuri pairing. I hope GMMTV will see fit to give them starring roles in another yuri series, and in particular will let Milk and Love be the adults they are; as anyone who’s seen her modeling photos can attest, Milk in particular would be stunning as a glamorous and sophisticated older character.

Rating:

Story – 6
Characters – 8
Production – 7
Service – 3 (Ongsa in a traditional Thai outfit)
Yuri – 8
Overall – 8

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