Comic Yuri Hime June 2022 (コミック百合姫2022年6月号)

June 9th, 2022

The June issue of Comic Yuri Hime magazine is an issue of transition. Old series are wrapping up, or moving to new arcs and new series are beginning.

Firstly, we have another fantastic, textured cover with ambiguous scene, this time a rainy city night, in a city where the lights never go out.

Then we move to a fabulous new series, “Natsu to Lemon to Overlay,” by Ru, which is, right out of the gate, intriguing and strange and I love it. An aspiring seiyuu is hired to read a last message at a woman’s funeral. What the woman’s story is, she isn’t told, but she takes this strange job.

“Watashi no Oshi ha Akuyaku Reijou.” wraps up the fisrt volume of the Light Novel and as we turn away from one arc, we’re about to head into the main part of the story.

“Kimi to Shiranai Natsu to Naru” settles down a bit from the scattered wackiness of running away from society to take a job at a local seaside place. The pace has slowed, but it remains charming.

Color pages for “Odoriba ni Skirt ga Naru” my new favorite ballroom dance manga, by Utatane Yuu. This chapter moves the healing of past traumas forward. Kiki and Michiru had found their place and for a moment, everything is good.

The second half of this volume contained a number of one-shots one of which was outstanding – “Tsuihou wo Tsukamu” by nanimowakaran. This mermaid story was the first and only one of it’s kind that I have ever really liked. A woman is visited by a half-woman, half-sea creature from her past who has loved her for hundreds of years. This manga was beautiful and haunting and will stick with me for a while.

As always there are many other stories, some of which I read and enjoyed and others I did not, or did not read, which means it’s a decent selection all the way around. ^_^

Ratings:

Overall – 8

Looking forward / not looking forward to the already-out  July issue, which will contain the final chapter of Usui Shio’s “Kaketa Tsuki to Donuts.” Yay, boo. ^_^;

Posted in Comic Yuri Hime, Magazines | 2 Comments »


Author Talk Tonight on Zoom!

June 8th, 2022
Don’t miss my virtual author talk for Under the Umbrella bookstore Wednesday, tonight from 8-9PM Eastern time!
 
RSVP with Under the Umbrella or  register directly on Zoom!

Bring questions and I’ll see you tonight!

Posted in Events | No Comments »


By Your Side Digital Bookplate Giveaway for June!

June 7th, 2022

June always presents a host of conundrums, among them how best to mark Pride month – this year I’m going with the historical precedent of rioting against cops as our spiritual ancestors did –  and, for the first time, how best to celebrate my own achievement of writing a book on the history of the Yuri genre, as well. ^_^

For the remainder of this month, I am giving a signed digital bookplate away to anyone who has purchased a digital copy of By Your Side: The First 100 Years of Yuri Aime and Manga in a digital format! (Click the link for all the online sites I have links for and for Bookshop.org if you want to support a local bookstore. Any legitimate digital format is allowable, Kindle, Nook, Kobo, or directly from the publisher.

All you need to do is send me a copy of your receipt for the e-pub, Kindle, etc, to [email protected] and I’ll send you back a signed digital bookplate with original art by Rica Takashima, especially for By Your Side!

 

Posted in History of Yuri, Yuricon | 2 Comments »


Flung Out of Space: Inspired by the Indecent Adventures of Patricia Highsmith

June 6th, 2022

Rarely have I read a more captivating biography and rarely have I read so beautiful a comic. Flung Out of Space: Inspired by the Indecent Adventures of Patricia Highsmith by Grace Ellis and Hannah Templer is  a magnificent work about a deeply flawed and complex person….a person who would likely have loathed this book about herself.

Patricia Highsmith is a name well-known in older lesbian circles as the real name of Claire Morgan, the author of the first lesbian novel with a happy ending published in the United States. That novel, The Price of Salt, was one of my foundational novels as a young lesbian, as it has been for many others. It was made into the fabulously well-done movie Carol, which I have reviewed here. But to the rest of the world she is far, far more famous as the author of suspense novels, the first of which, Strangers on a Train, was made into a rather famous movie by Alfred Hitchcock.

That said, Patricia Highsmith is not the hero we need. Even if we take away the obvious stress of being a lesbian in a time where that was understood to be a form of mental illness, Highsmith was an unpleasant person; anti-Semitic, racist, and often extremely nasty to the few people around her she could call friends. Ellis addresses this in the foreword, but the script isn’t nearly vulgar enough to have any impact. One can see that they were juggling the idea of making her a bigoted harridan and a semi-sympathetic protagonist, but failed. There’s really no way to sugar-coat hatred and give it any impact, sadly. 

What did have impact was Templer’s art. Templer portrayed Highsmith’s life in three different templates, using one style for the day-to-day experiences, a second for the comic book scenarios Highsmith was cooking up for her job with Timely Comics, while struggling with her sexuality and her writing career. Her suspense novels are given a third style, and they and comics alternately fill Highsmith’s head as she balances all of these things with an increasingly difficult life as a lesbian.

Ellis and Templer’s portrayal of Highsmith is, simply, outstanding. We are left with a very heartfelt portrait of a miserable person who did little to many anyone else happier than she. Highsmith would have hated this book, which is why I love it to much. It’s more sympathetic to her than she ever was to anyone, including herself.

Ratings: 

Art – 10
Story – 10
Writing – 9 Balancing the shittiness of a shitty person with making a books people want to read is hard. 
LGBTQ+  – 9 Highsmith might have been happier if she was alive now…or she might not

Overall – 10

If you’re looking for an excellent Pride month read in comic form, I’m going to strongly recommend you reach for this comic. It’s only weakness is that it is just slightly too kind for the real Patricia Highsmith, which works just fine.

Posted in LGBTQ, Western Comic/Comix | No Comments »


Yuri Network News – (百合ネットワークニュース) – June 4, 2022

June 4th, 2022

Yuri Studies

I want to start by thanking everyone who has bought By Your Side: The First 100 Years of Yuri Anime and Manga so far. I wake up every day to see it back up at #1 on Amazon in it’s category and am filled with pride for all our work! ANN’s Rebecca Silverman has given By Your Side a lovely review. ^_^

If you’ve enjoyed By Your Side, please feel free to review it at Amazon or Goodreads – your reviews can make a difference.

I will be doing an author talk with Under the Umbrella, a fabulous queer community bookstore in Salt Lake City, Utah on June 8, 8-9PM Eastern US time by Zoom. Your can register on their website, or directly on Zoom!

This week I was very honored to be able to write for John Scalzi’s blog Whatever, as part of his The Big Idea series. I took the opportunity to write about my love of and hopes for fandom. Here’s my article on The Big Idea.

If you have written anything about Yuri, please let me know! I’d love to add your work to the Yuricon Essays page!

 

Yuri Manga

My Next Life as a Villainess Side Story: Girls Patch is now out from Seven Seas. They have also released a 4th Volume of Syrup: A Yuri Anthology.

I’ll finally take some time this week and start updating the Yuricon Store, promise. ^_^; I’ve been kinda busy.

Whether this is actually Yuri remains to be seen, but Assault Lily: Bouquet (the anime based on a line of dolls, reviewed here by Day) is getting a spin-off manga, Assault Lily Last Bullet: Secret Garden Sweet Memoria. Check out Crystalynn Hodgkins’ article on ANN for more details.

Take a moment to watch this video of an absolutely beautiful, queer, flipbook comic by shinranshinge on Twitter.

 

Yuri Webtoons

Mage & Demon Queen will return to Webtoons on June 22 – COLOR Les made the announcement and we’re all bouncing out of our seats for the climax of this epic webtoon.

 

Okazu needs your support –
Become an Okazu Patron today!

Yuri Games

YNN Corresponent Patricia B writes in to say that the “Queer Games Bundle for this year has launched. Just like last year, it is a collection of over 500 games made by LGBTQ+ game developers for the price of one AAA game.”  This is always a great way to find lots of fun Yuri to play and read.

Tabletop RPG Thirsty Sword Lesbians won the Nebula Award this year for best game writing! How exciting for the creative team. Congrats to them.

Check out YuriSoft Games, an indie studio making games about lesbian romance.

A beautiful immersive game/story came across my feed last night, via YNN Correspondent Prairie Rose – The Blooming Bounty Apothecary is available for 50% all month with the code “I love lesbians.”

 

Anime Collaboration News

Sailor Moon Vans? Yes, finally this collaboration has reached the US. Sailor Moon Fandom News has all of the relevant links. Thanks to ANN Correspondent Amy M for this!

You can get (and presumably wear on the links) the golf gear featured in the end credits of Birdie Wing! Kim Morrisey has the details on ANN.

I refuse to make any jokes about the collaboration between The Executioner and Her Way of Life anime and a ramen shop that is creating themed bowls, but luckily I don’t have to. Check out Kim Morrisey’s  article on ANN for the punny ramen names.

 

Other News

Inori-sensei posted a pretty great conversation between herself, hanagata-sensei and Aonoshimo-sensei on her Pixiv account. If you support her there, you can read it in full.

Speaking of Pixiv. Last week a Japanese trans employee of Pixiv went public with horrific treatment by a male boss. As a result, a number of queer users of Pixiv have canceled their accounts and are looking for replacements for their Booth.pm stores. I’ve pulled the paid plans off Pixiv Fanbox for Okazu, as well, but am leaving Fanbox account as a free news feed. If you’d like to support Okazu, we still have our Patreon and Ko-fi (which really seems to walk the walk, at least so far.)

Support Okazu on Ko-fi! We’re building a community!

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

 

Berkely Hermann has a lovely article on The Geekiary about Examining Socially Awkward Anime Characters that was worth a read.

Grumpycroc’s Strength Unsaid: How Moribito’s Main Characters Normalize Gender Equality for Anime Feminist, is also very worth reading. This series is so under-appreciated. I love this anime a great deal for this and many other reasons.

My review of Summer Time Rendering, Volume 2 is live on Anime News Network. This is a great manga, even with a lot of fanservice. I’m definitely going to keep reading (and, I hope. reviewing it for ANN. It’s nice to have a writing credit there that isn’t Yuri, just to prove that, seriously I *do* read other stuff. ^_^)

 

Thanks to our Okazu Patrons who make the YNN weekly report possible! Support us on Patreon or Ko-Fi to help us give Guest Reviewers a raise and to help us support Yuri creators!

Become a YNN Correspondent: Contact Us with any Yuri-related news you want to share and be part of the Yuri Network. ^_^

Posted in Yuri Network News | 1 Comment »