Uchi no Shishou ha Shippo ga nai, Volume 2 (うちの師匠はしっぽがない)

January 6th, 2022

Weirdly, it was almost a year ago that I reviewed volume 1 of this series, in which we met Mameda, a tanuki who wanders into the big city and becomes enamored by the magic of rakugo, Japan’s traditional form of storytelling. This week I finally made time for Uchi no Shishou ha Shippo ga nai, Volume 2 (うちの師匠はしっぽがない)

Rakugo is, effectively, a one-person play, in which the story teller captivates an audience by playing all the roles in their funny, or sometimes sentimental, story. If you did not know any of this before you came into this series, I assure you that you will most definitely know about it. when you leave.

Each chapter is accompanied by interstitial notes on some of the specific cultural touchpoints of that particular chapter. In this chapter Mameda will up her rakugo skills and defeat a mischievous god child at the Tenjin Matsuri,  be possessed by one of the three most famous ghosts in Japan, Okiku and she’ll help out her master’s shamisen player, Koito-san, when an accident threatens to stop the show.

All of these things are true, but the descriptions don’t do justice to the idea of a playful tanuki navigating through human and rakugo culture at the same time. Luckily, I don’t have to work too hard, because you can read My Master has no Tail, in English from Kodansha, available from these helpful affiliate links on Amazon, and Global Bookwalker, because this is not on the Yuricon Store.

And why is this not on the Yuricon Store, although I discovered it through Yuri lists? Because while I don’t argue that there is a bond growing between Bunko and her baka-tanuki disciple, Mameda, I’m not entirely sure I see it as Yuri. It is absolutely cute, and there are some obvious set-ups that are designed to make people think of more, but…well, I just don’t buy it. ^_^ Nonetheless this is a darling manga and very funny in places that I absolutely enjoy the heck out of and will probably read more.

TNSK’s art favors silly, rather than realistic, but the Osaka of the story is lively and fun and you’ll learn a lot about rakugo, which is always nice.

Ratings:

Art – 8 Good, but not to my taste
Story – 8 Goofy and charming
Characters – 8 Koito surged to the head of the pack. She ain’t no dope
Service – 4 Yeah, bathing and some implications and setups.
Yuri – Eh. Affection, definitely, so YMMV

Overall – 8

The Okiku chapter was particularly fascinating, because the very night before I read it, I had just finished a chapter of Zack Davisson’s book Yurei on that exact story. Zack’s book is a great read, by the way, especially f you like ghost stories. He’s a friend of mine, so I’m glad to say that I enjoyed it immensely. ^_^ But what a coincidence!

Posted in Miscellaneous | 6 Comments »


Kyou mo Hitotsu Yane no Shita, Volume 1 (今日もひとつ屋根の下)

January 5th, 2022

Starting in 2020, Yuri manga artist Inui Ayu began an autobiographical comic essay column in the pages of Monthly Comic Yuri Hime. For almost two years, she had about a couple of pages every month to talk about her life with her girlfriend. It is absolutely adorable, and apparently garnered enough support that it was expanded into a full page series in 2021. Now it has been collected into a volume and I, for one, am really happy to be able to read it in one place!

Inui-sensei portrays herself as a bit silly, but primarily to show us how her partner, here known as Kon-san, is so solicitous and intuitive about her needs. We are assured they both love a lot of the same things, they are both into Yuri, and idols. In one particular chapter, something that made me laugh was, as they both watch some media with a lot of female characters, they are both like, “Oh yeah, this so Yuri.” Wifey and I have been known to say that very thing, so…yeah. ^_^

We learn how they met, and started dating and eventually move in, about their daily lives, and mostly, it’s all a giant love letter from Inui-sensei to Kon-san. Chapters are split up by short Q&A pages where Inui-sensei and Kon-san answer questions about their lives together; how they deal with social issues, whether they plan on getting married, and what kinds of foods they like – a whole gamut of questions, very personal and less so. Inui-sensei’s art style is cute, with broad, blushing faces, but her characters are not infantilized. These are adult women, with fashion choices and hairstyles. I love the looseness of the art.

It’s real life, but only a small slice, of course. Nonetheless, as I am very appreciative when Yuri artists are out, this kind of comic essay makes me extremely happy. This is a pretty openly queer story, too, which gives me hope for the future. It took Comic Yuri Hime a long time to be home to queer manga, and the more we, get the better it is for Yuri, I think. I’m so proud of the younger generation of manga artists who are much more open about themselves and their lives. Yay for them and yay for us! ^_^ This is, again, the future I want to see for Yuri manga.

Ratings:

Art – Inui-sensei’s signature style. Lots of blushy cheeks.
Story – Small slices of real life
Characters – Real people, but presented in a way to make them seem extra adorable. ^_^
Service – No, this is about the love-love of daily life
Yuri/LGBTQ+ – 10/10

Overall – 9

A cutely conceived and executed look at a real-world relationship turned into a manga about life and love. Sign me up for more of this!

Posted in Comic Essay, LGBTQ, Yuri Manga | 3 Comments »


Fuzoroi no Renri, Volume 5 (不揃いの連理)

January 4th, 2022

Mikanuji’s Fuzoroi no Renri, Volume 5 (不揃いの連理) continues as a  smorgasbord of miscellaneous relationships between various couples.

In this volume, we take time to expand on a few previously established couples. A mangaka and her editor who bond in their game world, take their relationship into the real world, and it turns out it works rather well.

Two women meet in university and everything just works beautifully.

Minami has Iori now, but Shizuka remembers when they had no one else to rely on but each other. She’s not ready to move on, but Minami seems so happy now, Shizuka finds it hard to not be jealous…and she’s maybe not winning that war. The epilogue spends time with Minami and Iori and their happy life together and, finally, we see Saori reminding Shizuka that there is someone there waiting, if she cares to look.

The art here is primarily cute, emotional and sweet. The couples are living in that world where expressing one’s feelings is fraught, but the real world considerations that make that true, are absent.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 8
Characters – 9
Service – 3
Yuri – 10

Overall – 8

As a light snack of happy Yuri couples in Mikanuji’s cute art style, this volume is sweet treat.

No author’s note this time, but the book came with a comic on cardstock as Shizuka has a smoke while chatting with Minami.

Posted in Mikanuji, Yuri Manga | No Comments »


Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna, Volume 1 (作りたい女と食べたい女)

January 2nd, 2022

I am so excited to be able to review this particular book as my first review of 2022! Since I first read this on Comic Walker, I’ve been super excited to get it as a collected volume.

Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna, Volume 1 (作りたい女と食べたい女) is what I’d like to think is the future of Yuri. Nomoto-san is a office worker who is stressed. As she sits down to eat lunch a male coworker “compliments” her lunch by commenting that she’ll make a great wife. Nomoto understandably resents the implication that her life is nothing more than practice to be useful to a man.  Angry, she goes home and cooks a massive meal, far more than she can eat.

Just the day before she had seen her next door neighbor, Kasuga-san, a large women, who had come home with multiple buckets of KFC for herself. In a moment of courage, Nomoto offers some of her too-large-for-one meal to Kasuga. And so, a friendship is born.

In this first volume, Nomoto will make meal after meal, while she enjoys Kasuga’s enjoyment of the food. When Nomoto gets her period and is down with bad cramps, Kasuga realizes something is up immediately because she can’t smell any food cooking – and so she texts to see if she can do something for Nomoto. I was all in, but that simple act of kindness pinged all my *THIS IS GOOD* alarms.  And indeed, Kasuga understands Nomoto’s issue, buys her pads, pain killers and they make comfort food together. It was perfect.

Kasuga offers money to Nomoto, because she rightly understands that Nomoto is spending a lot more on meals than normal. Nomoto tries to refuse, but Kasuga’s reasoning and sincerity would be too much for anyone. ^_^ At this point, Nomoto is starting to realize how much she enjoys her time with Kasuga and we can see that Kasuga agrees, when she invites Nomoto on a drive out to a farmer’s market. They shop for fresh veggies, eat ice cream and generally have a lovely time. They continue to have fun together, including making a 5 liter giant flan in a rice cooker. ^_^

The volume ends with Nomoto asking Kasuga to spend Christmas and New Year making and eating food. In an omake, Nomoto buys a brand new platter just because it would be pretty to serve something for Kasuga in. And indeed, when she serves her fried rice, it is a perfect platter. As Kasuga finishes every last grain of rice, Nomoto thinks that she is so very glad she had some courage that day.

Okay, in case you can’t tell, I LOVE this manga. Everything about it is just right. It has a woman who is not the same slim, small, fashionable working woman we keep seeing. I’ve just flipped through and I don’t think we see Kasuga working, but her work jacket has a logo is similar to that a large distributor of alcoholic beverages and she drives, so I’m going to take a leap and assume she does delivery for an alcoholic beverage distributor.

Here we get to watch adult women loving food and eating to their heart’s content without any tiresome thoughts on /insert something stupid about what women should or should not do./ This will always appeal to me. The way to my heart is through food and food manga. ^_^

I know from reading further on Comic Walker, that Nomoto’s thoughts about Kasuga will change and she will realize that she likes her, which you too can read if you pick up Volume 2. (That’s next on my to-read list.) In a Twitter conversation some months ago, it was also noted that this manga comes with a content warning for workplace sexual harassment, but unless I am missing it, I don’t see it on the book or site anymore. It’s pretty plain by Nomoto’s reaction, that she’s very uncomfortable with the man who approached her at work. Nomoto’s feeling are implicit in that one scene. I like that the story focuses on the two of them, without an external “reason” Nomoto doesn’t like men. The scene where she realizes she likes Kasuga is charming. It doesn’t need a reason, other than her affection. Update: CW has reminded me that the content warning was for Chapter 16, so I had forgotten something. My mistake.

Kasuga is a character marked with very subtle expressions. For this alone, I’d call this art amazing. Her face changes very little, but even slight shifts carry a lot of weight. Especially compared to excitable Nomoto, Kasuga almost seems to have no affect, but that’s not at all true. Nomoto and we can tell exactly what Kasuga feels with subtle, but telling shifts in her expression.

The focus on eating and mouths here is not gross, completely unlike a similar obsession in Blue is the Warmest Color movie, which I found creepy and intrusive.

In a lot of ways, I think this story is emblematic of a shift in queer story-telling overall. So much of queer work in the last century was rooted in trauma (isolation, rejection, ostracization, etc.). Now we’re seeing more positivity in our fiction and I’m all for it.  I would like to see much more Yuri sitting in a place that isn’t a closed-off fantasy world but also gives no or little room to intolerance.  Yes, of course, harassment and violence exist in the real world and yes, definitely there needs to be some manga that addresses that. And…there are some now and there will be more. I’m glad to see this one that is about something else entirely – two women bonding over food.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 9
Characters – 9 We don’t know much about them, but what we know is sufficient to know them
Service – Does massive platters of food count? No? Then…no.
Yuri – 2 in this volume, more to come.

Overall – 9 but only so there is somewhere to go up.

And so I start this new year with a “best of breed” and declare Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna as a harbinger of great work to come in the new year!

If you get the book, there is a QR code to download the cover art as a digital poster…and so I have. ^_^

Posted in TsukuTabe / She Loves to Cook, She Loves To Eat, Yuri Manga | 12 Comments »


2021 Milestones and 2022 Goals

December 31st, 2021

As this year comes to an end, I am amazed and pleased at everything we accomplished this year, which was challenging in every possible way.  To finish off the year on a positive note, I wanted to share some of these things that you and I did together. Once more I thank all my Okazu Patrons for their support. Without them we would have done much less. ^_^ I’ll finish off with a new item and my 2022 Goals. ^_^

Here are our 2021 milestones for Okazu, Yuricon and me, personally. ^_^

***

Just under 300 posts for the year. That’s about 5 posts a week, here on Okazu. Which was a lot, but this year, I had a lot of help, because we…

Increased our Guest Reviews by 500% in Q3 & Q4.
Our Guest Writers are now making industry-standard rate for a review, something we’ve extended to them ahead of making our next Patreon goal, because its the right thing to do. Thanks so much to all our new and returning reviewers. I would *love* to expand coverage in 2022. If we get enough Patrons, we’ll look into adding semi-regular columns or reviewers.

We increased our direct support to another new creator. One of our microgoals on Patreon is that for every $50, we support another creator directly through their Patreon on Fanbox. When we sustainably get to $700/month, I’ll add another creator in – I have two I want to support.  Right now we’re currently supporting 5 creators or creative teams. Thanks so much to you all for helping Yuri creators keep creating!

We have 10 new videos on Yuri Studio this year, well ahead of our goal of 6. Next year the goal will be 12. I already have a really cool video planned for the new year…one I’ve been saying I was going to do for a long time. So look forward to that! Thanks to my wife for her design skills and to Ashley for doing my finishing edits which is such a HUGE help.

For personal “appearances” I presented at Mechademia, CasaCon (twice this year!), HYPER JAPAN, Manga in Libraries: The LGBTQ+ Community, Anime Lockdown, and in a return to in-person events, AnimeNYC and talked about Shoujo Manga with the Japan Foundation which was really an extraordinary experience for me. 

We reprised our Mechademia presentations for the Yuricon 20th Anniversary Discussion Event with James Welker and Verena Maser. This is up on Youtube and you can watch it anytime.

I was on podcast and video segments on Shoujo & Tell, Publishers Weekly, Manga Mavericks, Galactic Journey, and Third Impact, and possibly some I am forgetting. If I was on your podcast and forgot to list you here, please remind me!

I also ran a Translation Workshop with Michigan State University that was so successful, we’re running an expanded version with **8** speakers in Feb 2022! Links to sign up will be going live soon, and I’ll be sure to share them here and on other platforms. This is going to be amazing.  If you are interested in doing or understanding translation, you will want to register.

I wrote my first ever review for Anime News Network. I’d been on Zac’s ANNCast, but this was fun. I got to cover Ride or Die, the Netflix movie based on Nakamura Ching’s manga GUNJO which you may remember is my favorite manga.

I finished a novelette, as Editor Ed calls it, that began as a Utena fanic 20 years ago. I can remember exactly where I was when I started it. A/CINet Case File: An Inside Job is up on Kindle for a whopping $1.99 for one more day, then it goes back to $2.99. ^_^

Finally, By Your Side: The First 100 Years of Yuri Anime and Manga is in penultimate edits! Next up formatting. After we’ve proofread the proof, we’ll set up pre-orders. We’re also going to do limited-time  orders on some special goods, so keep your eyes peeled for those!

***

All in all, a lot of amazing stuff this year.  We’ll wrap up with one new announcement:

I’ve opened up a Pixiv Fanbox for Okazu, in case Patreon goes cryptocurrency like Kickstarter. It will have all the same content at the same levels. If you prefer Pixiv, you’ll be able to start supporting us there in the new year.

This is in addition to Patreon for the moment, unless they lose their minds.

***

Now onto our 2022 Goals!

Speaking of Pixiv Fanbox, they are doing a contest, so I took a few moments and entered. ($10 gift certificate is totally worth it for like an hour’s work, right? Right?!?

I shared our 2022 goals on this attractive Ema I designed. I’ll give Inari-sama a donation to see if I can get this through to the powers that be. ^_^


The first two goals are, clearly community oriented. We are at 1400 subscribers on Yuri Studio, for which I am very grateful. I won’t be getting awards from YT anytime soon, but the fact that that many folk clicked subscribe is amazing. I’d like to – and think we can get to – 2000 subscribers for Yuri Studio in 2022.

We’ve hovered back and forth over 100 patrons/subscribers for about a year. This year, I’d love to see us get past that sustainably. It’s not about the money, although that helps so much to hire folks to do things for us(!), obviously and it increases the number of creators we can support indirectly and directly. It’s also about building a community dedicated to the sharing and support of Yuri and the folks who create and write and talk about that work. Now we have a Patreon and a Pixiv Fanbox, and I hope we’ll get past that goal!

The next goal is not entirely personal, but I won’t lie and tell you it’s wholly impersonal. Working on The Rose of Versailles was one of the greatest achievements of my life to date and so, yes, I think I deserve an Eisner award, (^_^) but also and more importantly, the whole team did amazing work and the end result is magnificent. Ikeda-sensei’s work got the treatment it deserved. So, yes, I unabashedly believe RoV deserves an Eisner Award.

Debuting a book during a pandemic is not optimum. And my health, which had been holding steady at “not great, but it’ll do,” has tanked, hard. I’m a hikkikomori now and perfectly okay with that. So while I’d love a real-world book tour for By Your Side next year (and a post-pandemic world to travel), I am resigned to virtual events for the near future. Nonetheless, while I am clapping my hands and praying, I might as well ask. And okay, I’ll admit this one is 100% ego. ^_^

The last thing is eminently doable. I really enjoy doing conventions and meeting fans, but I will not lie, I love doing professional speaking gigs – when I’m being brought in to talk about Yuri, it’s the best feeling. The good news is that I have several professional events lined up, and I’ll hope to get more after the book is released in the summer. So 6 professional speaking events for 2022 is the goal. /nod/

Thank you all once again for an amazing year.  Here is to our wonderful community and all the great work we support and create and enjoy!

I’ll see you in 2022!

Posted in Okazu News, Yuricon | 2 Comments »