Ikemen Onna to Hakoiri Musume, Volume 1 (イケメン女と箱入り娘)

July 29th, 2020

Ikemen Onna to Hakoiri Musume, Volume 1 (イケメン女と箱入り娘) is written by Mochi_Au_Lait, and drawn by majoccoid for REX Comics, one of Ichijinsha’s other imprints. Honestly, I think both art and story are not bad. I kind of like this story and also it kind of bugs me, so I talked it over with my wife and I know why it kind of bugs me and why I kind of like it, but I still don’t know whether I like it more or don’t like it more. ^_^ Get settled and we’ll see if we can’t work it out, together.

Satomi is a college student who has fallen for Kanda-kun, a classmate. She asks Kanda-kun to go out and is thrilled when she says yes. Kanda Misaki is an extremely handsome and cool woman. Satomi is fine with that, she’s actually just happy to have a partner.

Satomi is very sweet and she really likes Kanda-kun. Kanda-kun is likewise quite nice, showing a lot of consideration for Satomi. Satomi is, yes, naive, but so is Kanda-kun and they are missing each other’s cues, which is about half the humor. Ultimately, they really do like one another, that’s obvious.

There’s just…something wrong with the joke. Update: I could have sworn that Kangda-kun actually mentions that she’s a girl, but I am apparently mistaken, which makes the joke even less funny.

Kanda-kun is perfectly fine going out with another woman, and doesn’t mind being treated like a boyfriend, but always thinks, “but I am a girl” when Satomi does that. Which gets tired.

In the final chapter, the what-might-be-a-gender-mindfuck-in-some-other-story sort of comes to a head when, at an arcade, Kanda-kun wins Satomi an ugly zombie doll and they are hit on by some guys, who turn out to be friends with Kanda-kun. She grabs Satomi’s arm and tells them that Satomi is her girlfriend. Satomi squeals happily and she and Kanda-kun have a private side conversation about Kanda-kun being the zombie doll’s “papa,” and Kanda-kun gently reminds the zombie to keep it’s eyeball attached and they laugh and head off, while the guys all act confused. “Does she know Kanda-kun’s a woman?”

So, it was a sweet story and I certainly want them to be happy….but it was often very annoying as well. Not because the character or situation is problematic. Kanda-kun is not hiding that she’s a woman, but she’s also wearing a corset (like an industrial one, not a Victorian one) to ostensibly “protect” her chest, because she’s so ticklish, and she wants Satomi to be able to hold her arm, which is the thinnest excuse I have ever heard for wanting to be bound in my entire life. And she’s not just telling Satomi.

I really want to like this manga.  The art being by majoccoid helps so much, I won’t lie. Kanda-kun looks cool when she’s supposed to. Satomis is cute. Mochi_Au_Lait just does not have the style for this. The characters are likable, the situation is not problematic, but it is, nonetheless, a problem.

Ratings:

Art – 9 majoccoid’s work is definitely right in my wheelhouse
Story – 7 *So* close to being good
Characters – 9
Service – 2 Light, nothing horribly creepy, more situational
Yuri – 9

Overall – 8

I especially enjoyed the fashion checks for the filler pages. There were no judgements about who was wearing what, just contrasting styles on display.

It was just so >close< to being really good. CW says that “as well as being serialized in Comic Rex, chapters go up on majoccoid’s pixiv and twitter. Chapter 11 is the most recent.”  Thank you very much!

Posted in Yuri Manga | 9 Comments »


Model-chan to Jimi Mane-san, Volume 2 (モデルちゃんと地味マネさん)

July 27th, 2020

In Volume 1, we met Okabe-san, a new manager for top model Yuria-san. Yuri appears cool and remotes but that may well be because she’s so beautiful no one will talk with her. Okabe-san genuinely likes Yuria and is absolutely also intimidated by her beauty, but slowly, Yuria asks, cajoles and need Okabe to be a friend to her.

In Volume 2 of Model-chan and Kimi Mane-san (モデルちゃんと地味マネさん) Okabe-san’s feeling are running ahead of her and Yuria-san isn’t helping by being in serious need of a kind and caring friend. Yuria-san takes her job very seriously, even to the point of not caring for herself. As Okabe-san gets to know her, she find she wants to take care of her charge.

Yuri-san asks Okabe to address her less formally. Okabe-san hesitates, not because she doesn’t like Yuria-chan, but but because she does. At a celebratory party for Yuria’s photograph book, Okabe is waned about becoming too close with her client. It all comes to a head on a winter night at a annual star-gazing event, where the lights go off so city dwellers can make out the night sky. Yuria is recognized and her poor manager is assumed by the Internets to be a boyfriend. Luckily, Yuria-chan is blithely unconcerned with the Internet and neither is their agency.

The omake is a short sweet story in which Okabe gives Yuria a present for her birthday. And that is where the story comes to an end, with Yuri and Okabe smiling and laughing with one another.

This whole story is making something from very little. For all of Okabe’s zOMG! reactions, little happened.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 7
Characters – 7
Yuri – 5 Yuria’s trying
Service – 3 a bit of skin

Overall- a solid 7

In between that nothing, a story that might have been problematic – a manager and her client becoming an item – ends up sweet and harmless instead. Sure they might be a couple one day, but not today.

 

Posted in Yuri Manga | 1 Comment »


Wynnona Earp on Netflix

July 26th, 2020

Wynonna Earp is ridiculous, it’s gross and violent (the very first scene involves someone’s tongue being cut out), it frequently makes no sense, it piles one plot complication on top of another, without resolving it, or the three previous plot complications before it. Worse, when 99% of the characters are undead, undying or unreal, no bad guy ever just…goes away.  It’s a modern paranormal western with absurd shootouts and some of the most godawful fight choreography I’ve ever seen.

But I kinda like it anyway. ^_^

It helps that several of the characters are openly queer and others are probably queer given the right circumstances. Queerable, if you will.

It also helps that this series, developed by Syfy, now also on Netflix, is so stupendously absurd that I can comfortably watch it with almost no real concern, since by the end of Season 3, at least, pretty much all of the main characters have died at least once and are still with us. It’ll get harder and harder to believe anyone is actually dead and out of the show until Twitter tells me so. ^_^

Descendant of Wyatt Earp, Wynnona, has her whole life struggled under a family curse that, (among other things,) ended up with her killing her father and, later, being sent away to an asylum. The curse is real, and so are all the hellish demons plaguing her family and Wynnona’s only real problem, it turns out, is that she’s perfectly sane and is the Heir of Wyatt’s curse. Wynnona and her sister, Waverly, are joined in their fight by the immortal Doc Holliday, and eventually by a host of adorable misfits and weirdos.

Waverly, a bubbly young woman who taught herself ancient languages in order to be worthy of being the Heir, falls in love with new cop in town, redheaded Nicole Haught. In Season 3, the team gets gay researchers/scientist/whatever they need him to be/generic lab guy Jeremy and then he gets a boyfriend who is also a total whatever they need him to be for that arc, forest ranger, lost boy, twink, Robin.

Ultimately what’s keeping me watching is the vulgarity and the fact that the all the characters, female characters especially, are written with depth, with variety and with skill. Even the bad characters have depth and not just tragic “evil person sad story” depth…although every character does indeed have a tragic backstory.

I was not blown away by this show at first, but I find that it has seriously grown on me and not just because it hasn’t given in to Bury Your Gays. That is to say, it has killed most of the gay characters at least once, but all of the characters have been killed at least once, so that’s not an issue.

Ratings:

Cinematography – 6  CGI effects, batman angles, too close on kisses, horrible fights
Story – Goes from ridiculous to laughable
Character – 8 Inconsistent, but fun
LGBTQ – 9
Service – 3 Some, but fairly sprinkled about

Overall – 8

I’m always on the lookout for a series to half-assedly pay attention to as I work and Wynnona Earp is perfectly suited to mostly ignore. ^_^ But when I do look up, the people are pretty, the gays get to have sex, too, and everyone is permanently not-dead. So, that’s good. The actress playing Waverly, Dominique Provost-Chalkley, has recently come out, which is sweet.

It’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer the western, in 2020.

Posted in Live Action, Yuri Monogatari | No Comments »


Yuri Network News – (百合ネットワークニュース) – July 25, 2020

July 25th, 2020

Industry News

This week, we need to start with news that is broader than the Yuri Network, specifically, as a number of important industry issues have come to light.

Both Yen Press and J-Novel Club have announced that several of their light novel titles have been delisted from Amazon Kindle.

In 2009, you might remember the cascade where hundreds, then thousands of LGBTQ titles were delisted over a holiday weekend. There were a lot of weird things about that situation, and a hacker eventually claimed credit, but I did and still think it was a organizational failure created by a contractor with no one above them who cared to actually understand. This situation does seem a lot more targeted. But I’m going to tell you that tweeting and hashtags and online outrage is not how this gets fixed. How this gets fixed is that you as a consumer – especially if you are a Prime member – call them at 1 (888) 280-4331 and write them and let Amazon know that this decision is not appropriate and you object. I called this morning. Of course the rep I spoke with has no idea what I am talking about but she took my concerns down very politely. Don’t be outraged…do something to help.

YuriMother broke some interesting news this week as writers for LGBTQ story app Lovestruck attempted to unionize and were initially rumored to have been fired in retaliation. Follow ups indicate that the Voltage Organized Workers Association (which does not identify as a union) have not been fired and still hope to negotiate with Voltage management.

Udon Entertainment is celebrating a 20th anniversary and for their Comic-Con @ Home panel, they posted a bunch of folks talking about their experience with Udon. At 31:47, founder Erik Ko talks about The Rose of Versailles in a segment that includes translators Mari Morimoto, Jocelyne Allen and myself as editor. (And Mari is right, we did meet Erik at karaoke in Akihabara, but I remember what I sang. It was Alsatia by Galneryus. It was also the very last time I will ever do Karaoke for the rest of my life. I can’t sing at all any more, not even badly. ^_^;)

In case you missed it, I rounded up the current landscape of where to stream Yuri anime for free and legally in the USA.

 

Okazu News

We have some *amazing* things to report here at Okazu and I have been dying to share them with you!

Firstly, thanks to our Okazu Patrons, we’ve made it to the first of our Microgoals on Patreon!  This is a huge breakthrough for us, the first new high point we’ve hit since the loss of our biggest supporter, when my friend Bruce died. The Okazu family is always proud to support queer creators and with your help we’ve added two new folks to our list:

Okazu is now a supporter of YuriMother, whose work in Yuri news and reviews has been fantastic, as you can see above. I’m thrilled that Okazu is now a patron.

And we are now supporting creator Mieri Hiranashi, who draws a charming autobiographical Yuri manga about being a butch lesbian. ^_^

For every $50 mark we hit from here on, we’ll support another queer creator. But that’s not all – when we hit our next Microgoal mark, $600/month we’ll also institute a raise for Guest Writers here on on Okazu.

We’re also working on making our videos more accessible. With everyone’s help I was able to get enough subscribers to Yuri Studio to enable automatic closed captioning. Well, now we’ve hired the amazing Meru Clewis (who has also been  a guest writer here) to handle the subtitles for our Online Yuri Panel. So if you missed it this spring, you’ll now get 90 minutes of accessible accurate captioning for it.

One more “and” – AND just this week, I’ve hired someone to do Japanese-language subtitles for the Why Are There So Many Schoolgirls in Yuri? video. All our videos going forward will have accurate bilingual captioning.

All of this is possible because of our Okazu patrons. So thank you! If you’d like to be part of the team,
please support us on Patreon! 

Yuri Anime

The Premium Box Set for Revue Starlight from Sentai Filmworks is up for pre-order and it looks really nice. ^_^

RightStuf has a huge deal on the Bloom Into You Premium Box Set.

Netflix announced the arrival of The Legend of Korra on August 14th in the USA. I recently rewatched this and thought it held up really well. Faster pacing than I had remembered, and Asami and Korra’s relationship develops pretty organically, even if it is in the background.

The British Film Institute (BFI)’s magazine Sight & Sound put out a special feature on 50 Key Anime Films. It was my pleasure to write #33 on the list. (There were two others I had wanted, but they were already taken. Feel free to guess which ones!)

Matthew Rose talks about Serial Experiments Lain on ANN. He’s not discussing it explicitly as a Yuri anime, but we all considered it one back in the day. On rewatch, I found the series to be prescient.)

Mikikazu Komatsu on Crunchyroll has the news about a new, original 15th anniversary Aria movie, ARIA The Crepsucolo, which will feature the ladies of Orange Planet. This movie is currently slated for a spring 2021 release.

 

Yuri Manga

Jennifer Sherman on ANN has the news that Yuru Yuri creator namori has teased a new series on Twitter which is to be revealed on July 31!

Lilyka has released a new interview, this time with creator Ruri Hazuki, whose manga and doujinshi work I really, honestly like.

 

Cool Queer Stuff

Naomi Schalit writes Queer young adult fiction isn’t all gloomy realism. Here are 5 uplifting books to get you started on The Conversation.

I’m going to remind you all again that Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir is coming out on August 4th and you do not want to miss it!

Comic-Con @ Home had a panel dedicated to the life and work of Howard Cruse: The Godfather of Queer Comics

Pallabi Munsi has a short, pithy look at the life and work of Yoshiya Nobuko on Ozy, The Daring Feminist Writer Who Inspired Manga.

Become a YNN Correspondent by reporting any Yuri-related news with your name and an email I can reply to – thanks to all of you – you make this a great Yuri Network! Special thanks to Okazu Patrons for being an important part of the Okazu family. I couldn’t do it without you!

Posted in Yuri Network News | 10 Comments »


Isekai ni Saku ha Yuri no Hana ~Konnyaku Hakisareta node Honmei no Akuyaku Reijou to Onna Futari (異世界に咲くは百合の花～婚約破棄されたので本命の悪役令嬢と女ふたりで楽しく暮らします！～)

July 24th, 2020

Kareuda Ameco’s Isekai ni Saku ha Yuri no Hana ~Konnyaku Hakisareta node Honmei no Akuyaku Oeijou to Onna Futari de Tanoshiku Kurashimasu!~ (異世界に咲くは百合の花～婚約破棄されたので本命の悪役令嬢と女ふたりで楽しく暮らします！～) is the first Yuri webnovel I am reviewing as a web novel.

This is a multiple breakthrough on Okazu….this is the first overwhelmingly absurdly overlong Light Novel title for this blog. ^_^ It literally takes up two lines on the editor. It also marks the first time I’ve read the web novel not in final published for before buying the book.  GL Bunko has released it in digital for Japanese Kindle and J-Novel Club has licensed it for release in English as A Lily Blooms In Another World, (with a preview up now on the J-Novel Club website) but I have had this sucker bookmarked for *months* on Syosetuka ni Narou!, the webnovel website quite a lot of recently licensed work has come from.

Miyako Florence is affianced to the powerful Klaus Reinhardt, but she has no interest in him. Having been born into this world from our own, she is familiar with the players of this new world and Miyako knows exactly what she wants…who she wants…and she wants the villainess Fuuka Hamilton, of the Hamilton family. Taking Fuuka’s hand, Miyako runs away with Fuuka, until a pandemic brings them in direct conflict with both their families.

This was a story written, as I like to joke, to be weeb-nip, as if Kaeruda-sensei wrote it with a big ole’ grin on her face. It’s charmingly silly. And, buried under all its goofiness is something breathtaking and magnificent.

In Sexiled, Kaeruda-sensei created a world where women were systemically undervalued. Isekai ni Saku ha Yuri no Hana exists in that same world, but among the noble classes where daughters are used as marriageable chattel and nothing else. Fuuka is repeatedly called a villainess, but her only true crime appears to have been being born to a villainous family. Fuuka is herself an intelligent, accomplished, talented high-born beauty, whose family treats her horribly.

Fuuka and Miyako met and have their lives changed by another lesbian couple, but other than the fact that they are commoners, I will tell you absolutely nothing about them, so you get to enjoy the reveal.

The webnovel has no illustrations, but the published edition does. I am not at all fond of the cover art, so I expect to not at all enjoy the art when I read it, but I don’t mind. It will be a fast and endearing read in every other way.  This series is also set up nicely to be illustrated or animated in a way that Sexiled was not, complete with magical sea beast who takes the form of a cat. ^_^

In the way that Sexiled creates a female revenge scenario in which the man is merely made to be seen as foolish as he actually is, and the women’s skills and power appreciated for what they actually are…in Isekai ni Saku ha Yuri no Hana the woman is finally seen and appreciated for what she can and does do. In a lot of ways, I found this story, as gobsmackingly silly as it is, to be more touching and personal.

Ratings:

Art – N/A for the webnovel
Story – A delicious confection of a story
Characters – Competent adult women being appreciated and loved for their selves, yes please!
Service – Competent adult women being appreciated and loved for their selves, yes, please!
Yuri – 9

Overall – 9

This was a delightful story.

I really wish, however, that GL Bunko illustrated beautiful accomplished adult noble women not like 8 year olds. It is very tiresome, especially given the entire context of the story hinging on the intrinsic value of women.

Posted in Light Novel, Novel | 3 Comments »