Yuri Network News – (百合ネットワークニュース) – December 26, 2020

December 26th, 2020

Yuri Manga

While Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon, Volume 1 is on the way in English, Kaketa Tsuki to Donuts, Volume 2 hit shelves last month in Japan!

Heading our way in spring is Chasing After Aoi Koshiba, Volume1, by Hazuki Takeoka with art by Fly. (I have a fondness for this series I cannot explain. ^_^ I guess I really like Fly’s art.)

Alex Mateo over at ANN reports the news that Makoto Hagino’s A Tropical Fish Yearns for Snow will end with Volume 9. Reviews here are up to Volume 5 in Japanese and  in English. ^_^

Via Comic Natalie, Akarui Kioku Soushitsu (明るい記憶喪失) is completing it’s run in Japanese manga magazine Comic Cune and the final volume will be released there at the end of January. It has not been licensed for the American market as of yet.

I am super excited for Volume 1 of Watashi no Oshi ha Akujyaku Reijou., the manga for the popular light novel, I’m in Love with the Villainess ( 私の推しは悪役令嬢。) I think the art in the manga suits the story much better than that in the LN.

 

Yuri Light Novels

Via Senior YNN Correspondent Sean G., want you to know that Volume 2 of I’m in Love with the Villainess LN will be getting an early digital release on January 7th, with a print release on February 23rd, from Seven Seas.

Girl’s Kingdom, Volume 1 is out now in English for J-Novel Club and it is highly amusing. I’ll have some thoughts on it soon enough. ^_^

I’m also extremely pleased that, after the Sayaka novels, Nakatani Nio and Iruma Hitoma have teamed up again to bring us another Yuri light novel. End Blue (エンドブルー), about a woman who meets another woman, then a year later, their paths cross again….

 

Special thanks to Okazu Patrons for helping us reach our 2020 goals –
Giving guest writers a raise, helping us support queer creators and making Yuri Studio a reality!

Yuri Webtoons

Very exciting – Mieri Hiranashi’s semi-autobiographical comic The Girl That Can’t Get A Girlfriend  is up on Webtoons! These are heart-warming and funny self-owns by the creator- who is one of the many queer creators we support on Patreon here at Okazu! ^_^

 

YouTube News

Carpfish on Twitter has linked to the Youtube version of their Rekijo panel from Fujocon: Romancing the Past, about women who are fujoshi for Japanese history. ^_^ This video has subtitles/cc.

Speaking of that, we’ve got the English subtitles/closed captions up and edited on our final Yuri Studio video of the season, Are There Queer Creators Creating Yuri? I hope you’ll give that a watch. Feel free to share it around and please don’t forget to like it, and subscribe to my channel…YouTube Watches Over Us. ^_^

I don’t know if I shared  this with you yet, so if I did, I apologize. Calorie Mate, a nutritional supplement/diet bar, (depending on the audience they are targeting), made an advert that included some of the staff of the movie Your Name, about a Karolina Styczyńska, the first foreign female to become professional Shogi player in Japan. It’s…lovely. Give The History of Karolina a watch!

 

Sailor Moon News

Komatsu-san at Crunchyroll News, shares a link to a “behind-the-scenes” look at Momoiro Clover Z recording the Sailor Moon Eternal theme.

Komatsu-san also has some fun visuals on Sailor Moon Eternal shows at Konica Minolta planetariums in Tokyo. ^_^

If you are a Sailor Moon fan, don’t miss the fourth trailer for the Eternal movie which features the Inners thinking about what they want to achieve. If the movie looks like this, I may forgive Toei for decades of cheaping out.

Via my own Okazu First Lady, there is a new Sailor Moon Cafe, Eternal Memories in 6 cities in Japan, but as a complete aside I want you to take a look at the top image of all the Senshi and note that both Haruka and Michiru have definitely gotten a grow-up along with everyone’s glow-ups. ^_^

 

Other News

Via YNN Correspondent Megan, Wonder Egg Priority anime will feature a character who is a boyish girl, who the other girls find attractive. Rafael Antonio Pineda has details on ANN including the Utena-esque premise.

Yagate Kimi ni Naru Saeki Sayaka ni Tsuite novels got a live read through and the cast has provided some audio commentary! Check out their conversation (in Japanese, obviously) on Youtube.

The Advocate covers Queer Japan, the crowdfunded movie by Graham Kolbiens and a host of others, documenting the lives of queer folks in Japan.  Hopefully after it runs through the film festival circuit we’ll get to see it for real!

 

 

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. ^_^

Thank you to all our Okazu readers and commenters, our YNN Correspondents, Patrons and friends.

Happy New Year from the entire Okazu family to all of you!

 

Posted in Yuri Network News | No Comments »


Bloom Into You Regarding Saeki Sayaka, Volume 3

December 24th, 2020

Capping this weird, and horrible and amazing year off is the volume that I have been waiting for since April, when I raved about the Japanese edition. At last I can share with you, the joyousness of Bloom Into You Regarding Saeki Sayaka, Volume 3!

Saeki Sayaka, a girl who tends overthink most things, is confronted by a situation that requires faith in the future.

I almost don’t want to tell you anything about it, because I want you to enjoy the whole thing on your own, without my prompts. I’m also tempted to just quote huge chunks of my initial review at you, since the things I loved about the book in Japanese hold up beautifully in English, thanks to the deft translation by Jan Cash and Vincent Castaneda and Jenny McKeon’s adaptation. They captured Sayaka’s cool, reflective, outside voice and the increasing turmoil inside her head beautifully.

The humor fit perfectly, even the one thing I *felt* but wasn’t entirely sure was real, was communicated well. Everything here is as polished as it needed to be, with the result that I picked this long-waited volume up after dinner and did not put it down until I had finished it.

The Regarding Saeki Sayaka series was an unexpected bonus for this reader of Bloom Into You. Sayaka was the reason I kept tuning in. This novel reminded us again of the importance of Miyako as an older role model for Sayaka. How much angst and loneliness might she have to struggle with without someone to just talk to? Instead, this series had carefully, cleanly laid the path out for us to see Sayaka become a person who understands she likes women and feels neither shame nor confusion about it. Having cleared the way of negativity, we are allowed to watch Sayaka become interested in someone for their own sake, for the first time in her life. And, so, we can fully enjoy that moment, alone in her room, when Sayaka says, “I have a girlfriend.” out loud, to her own amazement. ^_^

I tip my hat to Hitoma Iruma whose work here – which included a brief conversation about gaydar, as well – is some of the best they’ve done.  I am so very much looking forward to Iruma and Nakatani’s next collaboration. With this book, Bloom Into You is over, but we have End Blue (エンドブルー) to look forward to.  They really seemed to bring out the best in each other, and here we are, able to reap the benefits. Even if you weren’t a huge Bloom Into You fan, I recommend this LN series.

My sincerest thanks to the folks at Seven Seas for their work on this series. Clay Garderner’s interior design was lovely, Nicky Lam’s cover, as well. And thank you Seven Seas for crediting *everyone* who worked on the book. It’s a pleasure to see the team get their due.

Ratings:

Art – 10
Story – 9
Character – 10
Service – 3
Yuri – 9

Overall – 9

Spending time watching Sayaka bloom into herself is absolutely worth your time.

Posted in Bloom Into You / Yagate Kimi ni Naru, Light Novel, Nakatani Nio | 11 Comments »


Vlad Love (ぶらどらぶ) Guest Review by Megan

December 23rd, 2020

Today is my favorite kind of day – we have a brand new Guest Reviewer here on Okazu! Many of you will have noticed that Megan has been a strong advocate for the newest “girl-meets-girl” vampire series on the block. Her persistence was impressive and I finally watched the first episode – and I didn’t dislike it. But it seemed like there was someone else who deserved to do this review more than me. ^_^ So, please give Megan a warn Okazu welcome!

Okazu readers – welcome to my guest review series for Vlad Love (ぶらどらぶ)! My name is Megan, and I share my thoughts on Yuri and Japanese LGBT+ media on my twitter (@AnimeSocMegan). Let’s get on with the review because there’s a lot to talk about!

You can watch the first episode on Vlad Love’s official Youtube with English subtitles worldwide.

Oshii Mamoru is back with a slapstick Yuri vampire anime. That’s not a sentence anyone, including Oshii, quite expected a few years ago. But here we are, with Vlad Love’s premiere ending on an unmistakable mission statement: “And that’s how I became an unstoppable phlebotomist for Mai, my slightly peculiar girlfriend’s, sake”. 

Vlad Love’s premise is fairly simple. Mai, a vampire girl from Transylvania, runs away from home and washes up in Japan. In her search for blood she runs into Mitsugu, a girl crazy about donating blood but held back by her rare blood type. Mitsugu brings Mai back home, and the two form an arrangement of sorts – Mai gets Mitsugu’s blood, Mitsugu gets a live-in girlfriend. Mitsugu later sets up a school blood donation club with the help of school nurse Chihiro, which is how we’ll probably meet the supporting cast. 

Most reviews of anime wouldn’t include an overview of the show’s funding and production, but for Vlad Love it is worth mentioning. Instead of the “Production Committee” model used for a vast majority of anime, Vlad Love as a project has only a single investor: Ichigo Animation, a subsidiary of real estate and energy firm Ichigo Inc. This arrangement has given Oshii a great deal of creative freedom. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine Vlad Love in its’ current form making it past a more standard anime production process. For better or for worse, Vlad Love is no more and no less than what Oshii and his handpicked team want it to be, and this alone lends it a uniqueness amid recent anime. 

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet. This premiere, for all the zany slapstick trailers promise for the rest of the season, is relatively straightforward. (Vampire) girl meets (blood-donating maniac) girl, girl moves in with girl, girl sets up a blood donation club. It’s nothing remarkable, but the storytelling is efficient.  No scene takes longer than it needs to, no line of dialogue is out of place (other than the Oshii lore we’ll get to shortly, but that’s just part of the package deal). Without feeling weighed down by exposition, this first episode equips us with most of the information we need – about Mai’s backstory, both girls’ family situations, Mitsugu’s rare blood type, and more – before the introduction of the rest of the cast probably starts in the next episode. 

The episode and staff interviews establish Mitsugu and Mai’s relationship as the anime’s focal point. Mitsugu’s attraction to Mai is portrayed at this point as based on her beautiful appearance. As Mai’s voice actor commented, Mai flirts with Mitsugu to get access to her blood, but Mai’s feelings probably don’t go deeper than that yet. The task for the next episodes is to develop their bond beyond blood-sucker and blood-donor. 

Vlad Love probably won’t win awards anytime soon for pushing forward lesbian representation in anime, but there’s still some things worth praising here. Mitsugu seems more confident than many Yuri protagonists in her attraction, especially physical attraction, to women. An awkward nude scene is such an old trope Evangelion parodied it, but Mitsugu is completely into it. Another refreshing moment is Chihiro’s line about Mitsugu’s “first girlfriend”. This line isn’t a punchline, or really met with any reaction at all. 

On that note, one question going forward is the influences on the Yuri. The premise of a strange, magical or alien girl moving in with a run-of-the-mill protagonist is almost as old as anime in its’ modern form, and the series that arguably did more than any other to popularise this trope is Urusei Yatsura (1981)… the first 106 episodes of which were directed by none other than Oshii Mamoru himself. From the premiere, this sort of perennially popular shounen romance represented by Urusei seems to be a more obvious source of inspiration than tropes the Yuri genre has developed in the decades since. Oshii has said he doesn’t watch modern anime, so I’ll be keeping an eye on whether the show overtly draws from other Yuri works, or continues to tread its own path going forward. 

A slapstick show could be said to live and die on its animation, and even if the show’s slapstick side hasn’t completely taken off yet, Vlad Love is delivering pretty well on this front. The art looks a bit rough around the edges by modern standards, though this may be an intentional retro choice, but this is made up by the great work on expressions – I was never left wondering what any character was thinking – and the pleasing sense of physicality. The show hasn’t exactly shown off its sakuga chops just yet, but with reports of a solid lineup of animators to come, it looks like we’ve got more to look forward to. 

Before we wrap up, let’s go over the Oshii references in the premiere. The opening scene gestures heavily towards the likes of Jin-Roh. This scene and the OP feature a blond-haired doll tied to a girl back in Transylvania, possibly Mai’s sister or childhood friend, and the visuals imply a tragedy in Mai’s past greater than she’s currently letting on. One of the more inexplicable lines, about Fallout 4, is also an Oshii reference – he’s a big fan of the game. Another strange tangent, about Social Democratic Lower House speaker “Otaka-san”, was the nickname of Japan’s highest ever ranking female politician, Doi Takako. 

Vlad Love‘s first episode didn’t show its full hand yet. The show’s apparently signature slapstick is only getting off the ground, we haven’t met most of the cast, and our two female leads’ romance has just started. Still, the early signs are pointing in a positive direction. For fans of Yuri as well as oldschool slapstick or Oshii’s other anime, I invite you to join the ride with what is shaping up to be 2021’s most unique Yuri anime. 

Ratings:

Story – 8, unremarkable yet but well told

Art – 7, expressive and fun if a little rough 

Yuri – 5, early days but the intent is there 

Service – 7 by TV anime standards, Chihiro when she strips off doesn’t leave a huge amount to the imagination. 

Overall – 8 

Thank you for reading the review! I would also like to thank all my twitter mutuals and followers who’ve given me their support, and of course Erica, for giving me a spot to share my enthusiasm here on Okazu. This guest review series will continue after the show’s airing begins at a currently unconfirmed date. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to reading your comments! 

Erica here: Thank you, Megan. Your enthusiasm motivated me to watch episode 1. The highly detailed backgrounds, the fanservice and the comedy felt so much like Oshii’s Urusei Yatsura, with that pervasive “what fever dream am I watching?” sense that I associate with UY Beautiful Dreamer. (Which admittedly, I saw at 2AM while working 7 days a week at 3 different jobs, one of them a Renaiassance Faire., so life was actually pretty surreal. ^_^) We look forward to watching this along with you!

Posted in English Anime, Guest Review | 7 Comments »


Before You Go, by Denise Schroeder from Chromatic Press

December 21st, 2020

In 2012, Sparkler Monthly had a bold vision – it was going to be the jousei manga and comic magazine we needed. For years, it was. In print and online, Sparkler Monthly incubated new creators whose work would be focused towards female readers. They paid creators and put out a wide variety of interesting work. Among the stories in their pages was Denise Schroeder’s Before You Go, a girl-meets-girl Yuri story. You can still read this comic for free online, just click the link.

As part of a wrap-up Kickstarter campaign, Chromatic Press put out a collected edition of Before You Go. I wanted to to take a moment to look at this collected volume, to memorialize Sparkler Monthly and thank everyone on the team at Chromatic Press for being ahead of their time.

Sadie and Robin meet one rainy day, waiting for the train. They see each other from time to time, get to know one another and end up going out. They move in together, have communication problems and resolve them. They live happily ever after,

In the final chapter, in which Robin introduces Sadie to her parents, we can see the kernel of less happy, more fraught story that was set aside for the much more light-hearted and happy one we end with…I thank editor Lillian Diaz-Przybyl for suggesting the baggage be shed, before we were burdened with it. The little black hole of Robin’s near hysteria at Sadie meeting her parents becomes an ignorable personality trait, rather than a dismal plot complication. So may years have passed since Yuri came to our shores and a story about self-loathing and parental disapproval might be real…but it’s a drag and what place does it really even have other than self-flagellation in our entertainment? Yes, of course, some people may want to see their experiences and their trauma represented, but I could also argue that there is a place for that and a light-hearted Yuri romance might not be that place. Surely not every queer romance needs to wallow in the old toxicity or stereotypes? (I say this, knowing full well that I’ll be writing a review shortly about this very topic. ^_^)

Schroeder’s art visibly improves as the story goes on, which is really quite charming. Sadie and Robin at the end truly are not the same people they were at the beginning of the story. ^_^ The creator has some nice insight to her artistic choices in the back of this volume.

When I spoke with Denise Schroeder many years ago, she said at the time that she wrote this because she hadn’t seen anyone else do it. Of course, here at Okazu, we had already at that point, reviewed many stories like it, but there were fewer in English. Now of course, I can barely keep up with all the Yuri coming out of Japan, much less English…and we’ve got sub-genres(!). Even so, there’s something admirable in Schroeder’s efforts in bringing together a female couple in an English-language magazine that had a large audience of BL fans, and her shifting the story away from a predictable dramatic pathway to a much appreciated one of acceptance and love.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Service – 0
Yuri – 9

Overall – 8

Thank you to all the folks at Chromatic Press for making this volume reality. Your work was always something I looked forward to. ^+^

Posted in English Manga, Western Comic/Comix | No Comments »


Kageki Shojo! The Curtain Rises by Kumiko Saiki

December 20th, 2020

In 2013, I reviewed a manga call Kageki Shoujo!. I enjoyed it immensely. It had all the elements of a strong Shoujo manga story, but was running in Ultra Jump magazine, Shounen Jump‘s older brother. After that review, the mangaka moved publishers and it was relaunched as Kageki Shoujo SEASON ZERO, a reboot of the series with Hakusensha that ran in Hana to Yume magazine…an audience that seems, on the face of it, more sensible for this series. Volume 1 of this reworking is a larger volume than the original V1 I reviewed. It was with great delight then, that I heard that Seven Seas has licensed this manga as Kageki Shojo The Curtain Rises!.

Narata Ai is a former idol with a major group, who has been forcibly “graduated” as a result of her calling a fan a creep. Desperate to be in a world without men, Ai decides that a career with the all-female musical review troupe seems the perfect escape so she applies to the school.

Watanabe Sarasa is a highly enthusiastic fan of Lady Oscar and, by extension, the troupe that brought that show to light, the Kouka Revue. She’s a bumpkin, tall and not particularly graceful, but she has energy and enthusiasm in abundance and Ai dislikes her instantly. Ai and Sarasa are, of course, roommates upon entrance to the school and of course, have to deal with bullying from older students, but they have other issues, too. The root of Ai’s fear of men is much darker and Sarasa’s dreams are much more aspirational, than we initially understood.

The art in this series is really wonderful. There is a deep love for the glittering shinyness of Japanese musical revue theater on every page and the drama of the story echoes the struggle to achieve and transcend, the gut-wrenching emotionality and triumph of a Takarazuka play.  It’s exactly the delightful concoction of joy and pathos that makes a great musical revue play, balled up in a fun, otaku-friendly manga story. I’m so very excited that you can read it!

The story is not Yuri, but there is a deep root in it to stories that are. There are a good half dozen references to anime, manga and other media that we all recognize in this volume. This story about two girls striving towards stardom together may not be Yuri, but it will always be welcome on my shelves.

The folks at Seven Seas did a great job of bringing the references-to-other-things-filled narrative to English, so kudos to Katrina Leonoudakis for translating that messy pile of cultural references. Laura Heo’s letter and retouch was excellent, especially as a lot of the effects here are artfx. I do also want to say that logo designs at Seven Seas have upped their game significantly and this one, by Courtney Williams is a lot of fun. Great work as always to the folks at Seven Seas.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Character – 9
Story – 8
Yuri – 0
Service – 3 some nudity and ugly stuff implied

Overall – 8

If you like Takarazuka, or Shoujo drama, sports manga, or frankly, pretty much anything at all, do give Kageki Shojo! The Curtain Rises a try. It’s a great production of a manga. ^_^ I know I’m looking forward to Volume 2!

Thanks very much to Seven Seas for the review copy!

Posted in Miscellaneous | 5 Comments »