Our Teachers are Dating!, Volume 2

February 19th, 2021

In Volume 1, we met Hayama Asuka and Terano Saki, two teachers at an all-girls high school who find themselves falling in love with each other, pretty much in the public eye. Luckily for them, their students, peers and administration all think they are absolutely adorable.

In Our Teachers are Dating!, Volume 2, Saki and Asuka continue to be ridiculously adorably in love. Bandou-sensei, the Yuri otaku, thinks HayaTera is the best ‘ship ever, even as she’s annoyed to death by them. ^_^ And they are, honestly so absurdly adorable that it’s very hard to take their drama seriously. Between a minor misunderstanding and visible hickies after an enthusiastic birthday evening, they just keep getting cuter and cuter. This is not a bug, it’s a feature.

It’s really critical to me to have manga like this where we see an ideal situation – where a world without homophobia and sexism is modeled for us, so we can imagine that one can exist. Queer literature is full of failure to make utopias works, and failure of current society to give space to the joys of life. Come at me, but I think it is equally as important to have stories that center joy, even if it means ignoring reality. Saki and Asuka are in love – their first love. And we are able to enjoy their feelings, think of our own, and enjoy a world full of sparkling sunshine and blue sky days and moonlight nights, full of those feelings. It is perfectly okay to want that.

For those of you who might counter, “But what about society, Erica? Aren’t you always banging on about queer characters having someone to talk to?” My reply to you is yes. Bandou, while not gay herself, is a good friend and gives good advice, but also…wait. This series may be a bit idealized, and because of that, you can be sure there will be someone to talk to. ^_^

In any case, this series is darling and handled in the most charming manner by translator Jennifer Ward, adaptor Rebecca Scoble, editor Jenn Grunigen. Erika Terriquez does a nice balanced lettering and retouch job and kudos to Nicky Lim for another creative cover design that doesn’t just mimic the Japanese, but still feels right. T

Ratings:

Art – 9
Characters – 10
Story – 9
Service – 5 There is nudity and sex, but it is sweet rather than salacious
Yuri – 10

Overall – 10

Finally, you all know what I mean when I say “Okay-saurus!”

Thanks very much to Seven Seas for the review copy. It’s always appreciated. Great job as always.

Full of Yuri joy, Our Teachers Are Dating is a celebration of love. You’ll be able to enjoy Volume 3 next month when it hits shelves at the end of March 2021.

Posted in English Manga, Yuri Manga | 1 Comment »


Journey Through the First 100 Years of Yuri Manga with Erica Friedman By Your Side

February 18th, 2021

It’s official! I and Journey Press are pleased to announce By Your Side: The First 100 Years of Yuri Manga & Anime.

The term “Yuri” began life as a coded reference to lesbianism within manga and anime genres, but in the last two decades has been shaped by creators, publishers and fans into a genre of its own. Though Yuri as a genre is a modern development, it has a century of artistic and literary history behind it. In “By Your Side: The First 100 Year of Yuri,” we take a stroll through that history, from Yoshiya Nobuko’s pioneering works for young women in 1920s Japan, to current 21st century trends in webcomics, light novels, visual novels, events, manga and more.

Factual, funny and highly entertaining, By Your Side is a series of interlocking essays, articles and lectures from Friedman’s work on Yuri anime and manga. Meant to be approached as informal discussion in the manner of convivial conversation over multiple dinners, or panels at an anime convention, through these essays, readers will become familiar with the key creators, tropes, concepts, symbols and titles of the first 100 years of the Yuri genre. Walk by our side as we journey through the past, present and future of Yuri!

By Your Side is scheduled for a June 2022 release, in time for both Pride Month and the 20th anniversary of Okazu, the oldest and  most comprehensive site on Yuri in any language.

 

About Erica Friedman

Erica holds a Masters Degree in Library Science and a B.A. in Comparative Literature, and is a full-time researcher for a Fortune 100 company. She has lectured at dozens of conventions and presented at film festivals, notably the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Film Festival and the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. She has participated in an academic lecture series at MIT, University of Illinois, University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Harvard University, Kanagawa University, and others.

She has edited manga for JManga, Seven Seas and Udon Entertainent, most recently Riyoko Ikeda’s epic historical classic, The Rose of Versailles.

Erica has written about Yuri for Japanese literary journal Eureka,  Animerica magazine, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund,  Dark Horse, and contributed to Forbes, Slate, Huffington Post, Hooded Utilitarian, and The Mary Sue online. The founder of Yuricon, she has written news and event reports, interviews Yuri creators and reviews Yuri anime, manga and related media on her blog Okazu since 2002.

 

About Journey Press

Journey Press was born in 2019 with the goal of bringing unusual and diverse science fiction to the forefront of the publishing landscape. They are dedicated to supporting the women and queer people who have been erased from the history books and reprinting novels that fell by the wayside, in addition to publishing new novels by creators of all types.

For interviews, signings or appearances please contact Erica Friedman

https://www.yuricon.com/contact-yuricon/

For all other publicity, please contact Christine Sandquist at [email protected]

Contact Us

 

 

Posted in ALC Publishing, History of Yuri, LGBTQ, Miscellaneous, Okazu News, Yuricon | 11 Comments »


Uchi no Shishou ha Shippo ga nai, Volume 1 (うちの師匠はしっぽがない)

February 17th, 2021

Mameda is a tanuki who has fallen hard for the magic of rakugo, the traditional Japanese form of comedic storytelling.

Mameda heads to the big city in the form of a human girl. Finding herself on the run from humans after de-transforming from her human form to her tanuki form, Mameda is rescued by a woman who turns out to be a rakugoka, Daikokutei Bunko.

If you’ve ever wanted a story about a tanuki who wants to be a human, so she becomes the disciple of a competent and talented woman in order to learn rakugo, then welcome to Uchi no Shishou ha Shippo ga nai, Volume 1 (うちの師匠はしっぽがない)!

Like so many Kodansha manga, this series is in part “teaching” manga, with a charming story attached, so readers don’t feel they are doing homework. We learn about the importance of rhythm in rakugo, the way different schools handle the presentations, and the details of how rakugo is performed and enjoyed.

Mameda is a big goof, as one might expect of a tanuki, but she has a good heart. Bunko is a mystery, but no surprise her intelligence and competence is a draw for me. It is clear that, despite Bunko’s initial rejection of Mameda, she’s rather fond of the tanuki by the end of the volume.

The art is likewise goofy, with Mameda the goofiest of all, for obvious reasons, but it does have moments that transport you to another world, as befitting the topic.

Ratings:

Art – 7 Belly buttons and city life 
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Service – 4 light nudity, breasty hugs and tanuki butt
Yuri – hrmmmm…… 2ish

Overall – 7

This blog has covered any number of forms of affection between women over the years. It took a tanuki’s magic to make it happen, but with this series, we can add a master of the arts and her disciple to this list. ^_^

Posted in Miscellaneous | 4 Comments »


Mi-chan to Airi, Part 1 (みーちゃんとアイリ (上))

February 15th, 2021

In Mi-chan to Airi, Part 1 (みーちゃんとアイリ (上)),  Midori is heading home one day and passes a pile of garbage bags, on which she sees the sleeping form of a girl. So she takes the girl home, as one does. Gives her a bath and some food and a place to sleep and asks her to lock the door on the way out. Only, when Midori comes home later, there’s the girl!

The girl, Airi, says she’s a witch and while that may or may not be true, as the days go on, she definitely brings a little magic into Midori’s otherwise dull life. Even coworkers start to notice that Midori is bringing lunch from home, instead of just grabbing junk food, and Midori is dressing nicer…and smiling. Is Midori in love? In the meantime, Airi is practicing cooking and is cleaning the apartment. She take long walks, sometimes – we see her find a little girl’s missing ribbon and it sure looks like she’s using real magic this time.

This first volume of a 2-part series by Ichikawa Natsuo is messy and fun, just as a “a witch meets an office worker and brings magic into their lives” ought to be. Midori is average, Airi is irrepressible. As they grow accustomed to one another, it sure seems like they are starting to like each other, only for a threat to pop up in the last few pages of the volume that could tear them apart. Oh no!

The art is likewise “messy” with sparkles and flowers and stars and markups and decorations of a dozen kinds, all of which bring color and texture to Airi’s airyness. Midori is never allowed to be too unpleasant or grumpy, or the set-up might grind to a halt.

All in all, this is a cute and fun little story that drew me in unexpectedly. I came into this completely unsure whether I would like it, but everything grew on me as I read.

Ratings:

Art -7
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Service – 1 Kisses as service I guess?
Yuri – 6 Plenty of room to go up

Overall – 8

Part 2 is already available and I’m kind of looking forward to reading it now.

Posted in Yuri Manga | No Comments »


Otherside Picnic Anime

February 14th, 2021

Miyazawa Iori has rather quickly entered the landscape of Yuri creators in recent years. With a lead story in the Yuri issue of SF Magazine in 2019, followed by the J-Novel licensing Side by Side Dreamers, and then the outstanding science fiction novel series, Otherside Picnic, Miyazawa has set a whole new sets of benchmarks for Yuri in a very short time.

The Otherside Picnic novel series has been fascinating. With an overt mix of Japanese netlore, science fiction, action and horror tropes and a big scoop of Yuri on top, I’ve enjoyed all of the novels so far. My reviews and others’ are all on Okazu in the Otherside Picnic category. Sorawo and Toriko are unusual as characters, compared with my usual fare. The post-apocalyptic unpredictability of the Otherside/UBL and its interactions with this world, give the series a Jorge Luis Borges-ish sensibility that I genuinely appreciate.

Otherside Picnic follows the adventures of college student Sorawo, as she find herself in an alternate reality that is embedded within locations in and around Japan. In this “Otherside,” Sorawo meets attractive Toriko, and finds herself traveling back and forth to the Otherside to gather artifacts for money, and help Toriko find a person who has gone missing on the Otherside…a person who clearly is more than just a friend.

It was with some trepidation that I saw the first key visuals of the Otherside Picnic anime. What was a darkish story about two young adults had already been given much-too moe illustrations in the books, and now it was the moe that was getting the focus, not the dark, not the deep, not the Russian science fiction, not the action, not the creative thinking around the creatures of the UBL. I won’t lie. I was deeply disappointed. Now that I have managed to watch the anime, which is streaming on Funimation.com, I’m still a little disappointed.

The first reactions I read of the anime seemed to focus on the translation, which chose “wiggle-waggle” for kune-kune. That didn’t bother me, as くねくね means wavy, or wriggling. I think the distaste there was the typical otakuish preference for the exotic other. I can see both sides and frankly glad they didn’t go with something like “The Wriggler”.  That is not the problem. ^_^; The problem is that they completely punted on animating the kune-kune, which are, based on the original description, very similar to the monsters of Side-by-Side Dreamers – a sort of familiarly shaped thing, but made of streamer-y parts. Something between those flappy advertising tube men, and the A-jin. The Otherside Picnic manga from Square Enix is way closer to my idea of what they ought to look like than the anime, which just…didn’t bother. The detailed burned-out buildings in the background look great. I wish they had given the same care to anything in the foreground.

Instead of a pleasantly befuddlingly creeping psychological horror, the anime is a comedy-action series, in which running and screaming takes up all the space the “what the ever-loving fuck reference is that?!?” of the novels. The pacing makes it impossible to appreciate the well-crafted horrible unrealness, before the screaming starts. For anyone who has come to the anime from the novels, it’s bound to be a little disappointing.  Even more importantly, if you are enjoying the anime, and decide to try out the novels, be prepared to be be actually creeped the fuck out. The anime makes everything so silly and cute, but the books do no such thing.

It’s not that this anime is unlikable. Actually, it’s very enjoyable, and the voice acting has been superb. As Sean Gaffney noted in conversation, Hanamori Yumiri as Sorawo is particular good, as her lack of affect when explaining her not-at-all-usual family life, actually increases the emotional impact. And if you’re not sure whether you might like this story, I’d definitely say give the animation a try….

…with “try” being the operative word. I know I have been banging on this for years, but Funimation is terrible at streaming. Streams cut out, commercials get stuck on loops, subtitles don’t work at all, or work wrong. I want so much for them to do this well, but they don’t. The first time I tried to watch the first episode, it took me 4 *days* to be able to get the whole thing watched and I ended up watching it with no subtitles at all, because the option never appeared. (Not a crisis, as I knew the story and can sort of understand, but that is not the point.) Funimation still gets a ‘D’ on streaming. I fear that a merger between Funimation and Crunchyroll will mean CR loses all of it’s decent streaming to Funimation’s vastly inferior system instead of the other way around.

Ratings:

Animation – 6 Unsatisfying. This COULD have been amazing and it’s just not
Story – 7 – Not as compelling as everything is crunched for time
Characters – 7 Sorawo comes off as more compelling, Toriko less, Kozakura feels even more like an afterthought
Service – 4 The key visual art was creeperish, and the moeification of the characters is itself a distracting bit of pointless service
Yuri – 5 Implicit and explicit in places and part of the overarching plot.

Overall – 7

So far at least, the anime feels like a children’s version of the novels. Goofy funhouse screaming rather than creeping psychological horror. Not bad in any way, just not good in the way the novels are good.

Posted in English Anime, Otherside Picnic, Yuri Anime | 9 Comments »