Yuri Network News – (百合ネットワークニュース) – August 17, 2024

August 17th, 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

Okazu turned 22 years old this past week! Given the fact that 38% of websites from 2013 no longer exist, to have 22 years of Yuri reviews and news is miraculous. ^_^

If you’d like to see us continue, please consider supporting us on Patreon or Ko-Fi! Love can do many things, but it doesn’t pay the bills. ^_^

 

Yuri Events

AnimeNYC is upon us! Friday, August 23 – Sunday, August 25 at Javits Center in New York City, I will be at Table E01 in the Artist Alley with Rica Takashima, where we will be signing By Your Side: The First 100 Years of Yuri Anime and Manga. We also will have a fun little display of Yuri Anime History, that you can photo yourself with! Drop by, pick up a signed copy of our book and say hi!

I’ll be moderating a panel on Friday, August 23 – The Rise of Queer Manga, featuring editor TJ “Tiff” Ferentini, Letterer Nicole Roderick and Translator Jacqueline Fung! Join us at 3PM in Panel Room 3, A121. It’s gonna be a fantastic conversation.

Author Zack Davisson and I will be moderated by the awesome author and librarian Jillian Rudes on Sunday, at 12:30 for Manga By The Decade: Manga’s History Two Books At A Time in Panel Room 2, 1A12. I had a LOT of fun choosing my choices for this. All three of us will be talking about our books, including Zack’s and my upcoming work with Frederik Schodt, Rachel Thorn and Jonathan Clements, Manga: A Visual History.

As a result, there will be no YNN next week, but I hope to see you all at AnimeNYC!

For those of you who cannot make it, I’ll be doing a presentation of The Rise of Queer Manga for CitrusCon online on Sunday, August 25 at 9AM. Join us on Discord. It’s free to attend, but you do have to register.

There are two other interesting queer content panels, too at ANYC I want to should out: It’s a Serve! Queer Themes in Haikyuu!! and Transgender Representation in Anime. Drop in and see what they have to offer.

The inaugural North American Manga Awards will be held on Thursday, August 22. A couple of queer books have been nominated, including both She Loves To Cook and She Loves To Eat and The Summer Hikaru Died for Best Continuing Manga Series and My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness, Special Edition for Best Publication Design. These awards are very long in the making and I’m going to be covering them for Anime Herald, so here’s hoping for an amazing first event!

Comiket is past, and a lot of Yuri circles rolled out for that! If you have FOMO about that, and can deal with wading through a lot of stuff that is porny, check out Melonbooks Comic Market 104 section. Comitia begins tonight my time, on the 18th in Japan. Two amazing comic shows back to back!

 

Help us pay our Staff and Guest writers competitive wages –
Become an Okazu Patron today!

Yuri Light Novel

There’s No Freaking Way I’ll be Your Lover! Unless…, Volume 3 is up on the Yuricon Store!

The audiobook for I’m in Love with the Villainess: She’s so Cheeky for a Commoner, Volume 2 is out and absolutely worth listening to!

From Yen Press, My First Love’s Kiss, Vol. 1 by Adachi and Shimamura creator Hitoma Iruma, illustrated by Fly, tells the story of two girls whose lives are forced together and who, despite promising not to interfere with one another, end up becoming involved in one another’s life.

 

Yuri Manga

Comic Yuri Hime and Pixiv are holding the first Original Literary Yuri Manga Contest! Beginning in July through the end of September, they are accepting submissions for the contest. The Literary Fiction Contest has netted us some great stuff, I’m looking forward to the submissions for this.

 

Support Yuri journalism on Ko-fi!

 

Yuri Games

Via YNN Correspondent Patricia Baxter, The Songbird Guild Demo is on Steam. This Yuri RPG/VN is about the secrets of a corrupt fantasy world and fighting creepy (yet somehow adorable?) monsters in turn-based battles, all to pay the bills in this world where being a magical girl is a regular 9-5 job and where magical girls fall in love.

Kitsune Tails is available on Steam and Itch.io! “Run, jump, and dash across a land inspired by Japanese mythology and untangle the love triangle between three young women on a journey of self discovery. Explore the complicated relationships between kitsune and humans through classic platforming action.” I know Eniko from way back – support their work!

 

Other News

Not sure if I have mentioned the Comic Yuri Hime online shop before, but hey, now you know that you can get goods from many of your favorite series from Comic Yuri Hime!

Star Fruit Books is launching a new manga magazine called Comic Bright! Star Fruit picks up really interesting non-mainstream manga, so this might be a rare chance to follow a number of unusual indie series at once!

ANN’s Lynzee Loveridge has a great interview on the creation of the Look Back anime movie, in How A Small Team Created a Huge Hit: Look Back Anime Film Director Kiyotaka Oshiyama.

I am completely down with the naming of a new crustacean species that is both male and female after Takashima Rumiko’s character Ranma. ^_^ Ken Iikura-Gross has the details at ANN.

Very sad news for Utena fans this week – we’ve lost our second Utena, with the passing of Rachel Lillis, who, like her Japanese counterpart, Kawakami Tomoko, died far too young. Jean-Karlo Lemus has a nice eulogy on ANN.

Via Megan Catherine Rose, some fabulous reading as she and Patrick Galbraith interview animator Colin Armistead and voice actress Phoebe Chan in the Journal of Femininities. Megan says on her FB post, “In this interview we explore why anime cuteness, in particular the bishōjo figure, is significant for transfemmes. We discuss concepts of hyperfemininity in anime, its excess and boundless potential and what this can mean for those negotiating trans-feminine identities.” Read Animated Femininities, Queer Discontent for free on Brill.com.

 

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!

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 | No Comments »


The Executioner and Her Way of Life, Vol. 8: Fall Down

August 16th, 2024

A woman in "nun" costume with short silver hair and a woman in shorts, and a split singlet of blue, edged in yellow, with long pale hair tied into pigtails with a black bow, respectively sit and crouch on the roof of a building.We left our intrepid adventurers at the doors to the ominously named City of Ruins after a Volume 7 that began new interior journeys for our new principals. How does Volume 8 hold up?

The Executioner and Her Way of Life, Vol. 8: Fall Down is a pretty good story!

When I say “pretty good,” I am of course speaking the relative scale of this series. It is not Gideon the Ninth, but after 7 novels where the beginnings are slow and plodding, the climaxes are – in many cases – predictable and sometimes anti-climactic, and the descriptions focused on elements better left imagined, this book was a good read.

The volume starts in the middle of an action scene, and continues more or less full-throttle through a final action scene that was actually quite good. As these scenes unfold, we also learn that the playing field in the background is shifting quite a bit, which set up a Volume 9 that I sincerely hope will be the climax this series needs.

In the meantime, having shelved one of the two main characters, this volume actually shows us a Menou who acts as though she is the protagonist of an epic story. As she learns pieces of her worlds’ lore, she now understands who and what she is. It necessitates hard choices, but those too, have made her grow as an individual. Speaking of growing as individuals, the former nun Sahara gets more than a moment to shine here. Having decided to serve the left pinky finger of Pandemonium, Maya, Sahara is developing a conscience. It annoys the shit out of her, but she too, is becoming a hero. In turn that has given Maya a whole new outlook and this Human Error is reclaiming her humanity.

Even the illustrations remembered to illustrate the characters as they are described in the scene. nilitsu’s art is getting better, although not up to showing Menou as the kind of “stunningly gorgeous” she keeps being described as. I went on  short rant on Bluesky about that. I recommend not hiring moe artists to illustrate your characters, when the description reads “drop-dead gorgeous.” It really kicks me out of a story.

Ratings:

Art – 7 Menou is still not stunning and her shorts are the wrong color in every illustration, which is very confusing to me – why? Why not give her black shorts as described?
Story – 8, seriously
Characters – Gawd, I think they might even be a 9
Service – Action and less guro than usual which I consider a service!
Yuri – Even less, as Akari fades from the story, for now.

Overall – 8

I hate to be that guy, but honestly, this series gets good at Volume 8. If you can learn from context and exposition, I suggest you simply skip the first six of these, read Volume 7 and then jump into Volume 8, for a pretty good action novel. Thanks very much to Yen Press for the review copy!

Posted in Light Novel | 1 Comment »


The Secret of Us

August 14th, 2024
Promotional poster for the Thai live-action TV series The Secret of Us, showing Orm as Earn (left) and Lingling as Fahlada (right).Another day, another Thai yuri “love team.” Today it’s Lingling Sirilak Kwong and Orm Kornnaphat Sethratanapong, better known to fans as “Lingorm.” They star in The Secret of Us, an 8-episode series that aired on Channel 3, Thailand’s oldest commercial broadcast channel, and is streaming with English subtitles on YouTube, the 3Plus Premium service, or Netflix, depending on the country.

Based on the novel of the same name by Mee Nam, The Secret of Us features the lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers story of Fahlada (Lingling) and Earn (Orm), who meet and fall in love as university students. After a particularly cruel parental intervention, Earn is forced to break off the relationship. Stung by Earn’s rejection, and not knowing the cause of it, Fahlada is unpleasantly surprised years later to find that Earn, now a successful actor, has been engaged to film a commercial for the private hospital owned by Fahlada’s family, in which Fahlada now works as a doctor and of which she’s the presumptive future director.

While Fahlada wants absolutely nothing to do with Earn, and is slated to be engaged to a handsome fellow doctor, Earn regrets the break-up and tries to persuade Fahlada to open her heart to her once again. And here lies the major problem with this series: although Earn wants to reconcile with Fahlada, who was severely traumatized by Earn leaving her, Earn never bothers to explain to Fahlada exactly why she left her in the first place, and we as viewers aren’t provided any clue as to why Earn doesn’t provide that explanation. It’s a particularly egregious example of a story that wouldn’t exist if the people involved bothered to talk to each other.

The Secret of Us has other plot problems: The end of the series features a clichéd plot twist (one that’s already been employed by at least two other recent Thai yuri series) that serves to force a family reconciliation that comes off as more than a bit unearned. (It’s apparently a standard theme in Thai dramas that happy endings require that initially-recalcitrant elders be appeased.) There’s also a cringeworthy BL subplot that is not in the source novel and was clumsily shoehorned in, presumably as a sop to BL fans.

Fortunately, things look better when we turn from plot to characters: Orm (who resembles a young Scarlett Johannson from certain angles) is quite winning and winsome as the brown-haired extroverted member of the standard yuri pair, while Lingling cuts an elegant figure as the scorned and sensitive black-haired beauty. They play well against each other, both when angry and upset and when being cutely affectionate with each other—although those looking for the raw eroticism of GAP and Blank will be disappointed. Three other characters stand out from the crowd: Russamee (Um Apasiri Nitibhon) is an ice-cold villain and formidable final boss who won a “most hated” award on Reddit. Engfa (Ying Anada Prakobkit), one of Earn’s fellow actors, is consistently interesting as she alternately pines for Earn and helps her reconcile with Fahlada. And Earn’s manager Suzie (Eclair Chatsak Mahata) is so unabashedly herself, in her colorful outfits and ever-changing hairstyles, that she transcends the comic relief role that the script has assigned to her.

Unfortunately, the relatively weak scriptwriting in The Secret of Us often puts otherwise compelling characters into situations that don’t make sense given the context, as with some of Earn’s more forward attempts to win Fahlada back. Lingling and Orm deserve a better vehicle for their considerable talents.

Story – 5
Characters – 8
Production – 8
Service – 4 (not just one but two shirtless guys for the BL fans)
Yuri – 10
LGBTQ — 3
Overall – 7 (I was this close to giving it a 6, but Lingling and—especially—Orm persuaded me not to)

The Secret of Us is a fun watch as long as it focuses on the main characters, but you’ll need to turn off the part of your brain that’s sensitive to plot holes and clichés.

Posted in Frank Hecker, Live Action, Staff Writer, Thai Drama | 2 Comments »


Amayo no Tsuki, Volume 7 (雨夜の月)

August 12th, 2024

Amayo no Tsuki, Volume 7 (雨夜の月) is absolute perfection. It was so good, that the moment I finished it, I started from the beginning and read it again. And cried both times. I’m actually thinking about re-reading at again, as soon as I am done writing this.It was just that good.

In Volume 6, Kanon and Saki processed a lot of feelings – about themselves, about each other and about the people around them. In Volume 7, Kanon’s decision to be part of her school’s life is about to face a test.

But first! Rinne gets the spotlight, as she deals with the consequences of her decisions. After Kanon lost her hearing, Rinne stopped doing the things she enjoyed, so as to not cause her sister distress. Now she’s made a new friend, Chiyama, a girl who is ashamed of her excessive sweating. They quickly become friends and Rinne starts to think about someone else for the first time in a long time. Once again, we see a character opening doors for another person for them to choose whether or not they want to step through. In talking about what she wants to do, Rinne admits that she had given up her dream of going to see a live musical performance. Chiyama promises to go with her to see one, and Rinne finds door opening for her, too.

The school festival is upon them – Kanon is worried that it will be too much for her, but one of her classmates designs a menu meant to be pointed at, so she can take orders. Tomita offers Kanon a button that reads “I cannot hear well, please look at me when you speak” but in a moment of pride, Kanon does not wear it, and fails to explain the menu well to a customer, making it too much for her handle. Saki saves her, but defeated, she leaves to a quiet spot where she can reset. Where she is joined by her former best friend, Ayano. I won’t spoil that scene at all, it’s too fabulous.

The big chorus concert sets Kanon up against her worst fears, but as she and Saki and their class lean into the joy of the moment, everyone is crying happily. Finally, as the volume winds down, Kanon and Saki are off to finally have some fun at the festival. As Saki holds out a hang and says “Let’s go,”  Kanon thinks that now it’s her turn to learn more about Saki.

Ratings:

Overall – 10 No notes.

Absolute perfection.

Posted in Kuzushiro, Yuri Manga | 1 Comment »


Comic Yuri Hime September 2024 (コミック百合姫2024年9月号)

August 11th, 2024

In an elaborate gold frame on a bright purple cover, two girls wearing dark red school uniforms stand on a balcony over a formal garden. They both look up and away from the garden, shading their eyes.Quite a lot goes on in Comic Yuri Hime, September 2024 (コミック百合姫2024年9月号).

Beginning with a double chapter of “Kimi ga Hoeru tame no Uta o” a new series by Kashykaze (the transliteration of whose name is different than the one I have been using and is on I Can’t Say No To The Lonely Girl, Volume 2 of which I reviewed this week.) This series is about a girl with husky voice who wants to sing, but is fearful of even do much as speaking as people always comments on her low tone. An idol classmate may give her the opportunity she needs to thrive.

Usui Shio departs the warm-fuzzy feel-good stories that they are currently known for to look at two women who meet because each has an unusual fetish which may dovetail well. I’m going to keep reading “Bokura no Ai ha Kimochi Warui,” to see where it goes and hope that it goes somewhere interesting!

“Muryoku Seijo to Munou Oujo ~ Maryoku Zero de Shoukansareta Seijo no Isekai Kyuukoku-ki ~” by Tamasaki Tama takes an interesting turn as the newly minted Saint who cannot use her power starts learning how to channel it into potions. The local college of magic are willing to be convinced by her, as they regain their overworked powers.

I’m not sure what to do with “Genjitsu Sekai Demo Shiawasenishite Kudasai ne?” This reverse Isekai has the princess in a game entering our world after she falls for a woman who has played countless times – and choosing to become her housewife. It is a great plot idea for a short story, but I wonder if it can sustain itself. Shibari Kasuko will have to find a groove.

“Salvia no Bouquet,” by Sonohoka, digs into Liza’s past and Ellen learns that they have a lot in common. I like this story overall and hope it ends up being brilliant.

This arc of “Watashi no Oshi ha Akuyaku Reijo.” manages to be ridiculous and smart at the same time, as Rei and Lily find themselves at a “magical circus” where Lily gets to be really cool for a moment.

Fumino isn’t aware of it yet, but both her mother and her best friend are poised to sabotage her team’s design work for the contest in “Kanaria ha “Kiraboshi no Yume wo Miru.” I hope the drama will be minor, honestly.

“Kiraware Majyo Reijō to Dansou Ouji no Kon’yaku” is finally ready for it’s close-up as the pressure is off Ciel and Eve to justify themselves, and on them to investigate dark magic.

“Romance Code” by nMi is a creepy scifi android story. It felt like the 70s all over again. But happily-ever-after, so yay? And yay for more sci-fi? Now, can we get something aspirational? Like Naomi Kritzker’s  The Year Without Sunshine?  Thanks in advance. <- Go read this story, btw, it’s free on Uncanny Magazine.

As always there were other stories I read and others I did not. This year has had a nice balance of me reading about half any given issue, which I consider a win.

Ratings:

Overall – 7

Aspirational literature, aka hopepunk – is where it is at, folks. Let’s have some Yuri about making our world – whichever world it is – a better place.
 
 

 

Posted in Comic Yuri Hime, Magazines, Yuri Manga | No Comments »