Yuri Network News – (百合ネットワークニュース) – October 5, 2019

October 5th, 2019

Yuri Manga

Via Senior YNN Correspondent Sean G, we have some news out of New York Comic Con. Viz Media has announced the license of Tamifly’sTsukiatte Agetemo Iikana? (links to reviews of Volumes 1 & 2) as How Do We Relationship? for Summer 2020. The title translation is not in any way literal, but it really suits the tone of the story. ^_^

Via ANN, Blue Drop creator Yoshitomi Akihito is launching a new Yuri manga this month. Kyou Kara Mirai will be on HEROS Flat website on October 18th.

ANN has the full layout of the post-manga series projects for Bloom Into You. I just read the final chapter/epilogue in Dengeki Daioh, and have some thoughts about that. Will write them down in a future review. ^_^

Now that the damn has broken with Yuri Kuma Arashi being licensed by Tokyopop as Yuri Bear Storm, it looks like we are getting more work by Morishima Akiko-sensei. We can look forward to Conditions of Paradise, the English-language release of Rakuen no Joken in February 2020 from Seven Seas! This is excellent news.

 

Yuri Anime

ANN has the promotional video by Yuri anime Fragtime leads Misuzu and Haruka, prompting people to order their tickets for this theatrical release through online ordering app Kinepass.

 

LGBTQ Comics News

Also out of NYCC, Heidi Macdonald on the Comics Beat reports that LGBTQ comic Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me (link to review) won in the Best Children’s or Young Adult Book Category. Check out all of the Harvey Awards winners,  because if you want to see the changes for the better that are going on in comics right now….here it is in list form.

Amanda Steele on The Comics Beat is taking a look at some key LGBTQ artists in NYCC’s Artist Alley for your reading pleasure!

 

 

 

Yuri Visual Novel News

 Studio Élan is holding a Kickstarter to do a fully-voiced version of the Heart of the Woods, their stunning first Yuri VN release.

 

Yuri Events

This Sunday, October 6, at New York Comic-Con, I will be on the Comixology Panel Manga Ikimashou! – LET’S GO MANGA! in which I and a number of illustrious panelists do the one thing I always swear I will not do – recommend manga to you! ^_^ You can catch us 2:30 – 3:30 PM in Room 1A02.

I’ll be doing two lectures at Michigan State University, October 15-16. Both these lectures are free and open to the public.

October 15, 5PM, B122 Wells Hall, MSU Campus
I will be talking about about Rose of Versailles and Sailor Moon to a class on translation. They each pose a significant set of challenges to translators and adapters. This is free and open to the public (check with the school for registration.)

Wednesday, October 16, 5PM, Rom 301 International Center, MSU Campus
We’ll be talking about 100 Years of Yuri!

Oct. 25, I’ll be at Diversity Con, Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC, NY.

And rounding out my 2019, I’ll be presenting 100 Years of Yuri and verbally sparring with translator Zack Davisson at AnimeNYC, November 15-17, at Javits in New York City.

 

Other News

Add this to your morning reading – Brigid Alverson interviews George Takei on his new comic memoir, They Called Us Enemy, about his life in an internment camp during World War Two. Read it, if only as a reminder that the last time we put people in concentration camps was within a lifespan and here we are, as a nation, doing it again.

Speaking of NYCC, I took a look at this year’s AnimeFest and laid out some of the anime and manga-related events and panels you can expect this weekend at The Comics Beat.

To round out this week on a positive note, we can report a couple of steps forward in Japan. Akita held its first-ever Rainbow Pride festival this past month. Love the parade poster. ^_^ And even more importantly the Kanagawa city of Zushi has added same-sex partnerships.

 

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 all of our Okazu Patrons, who make this report possible!

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Yuri Manga: Isekai Tensei Yuri Anthology (異世界転生百合アンソロジー)

October 4th, 2019

Never before have I seen a collection with so many vehicular deaths.

Ichijinsha’s Isekai Tensei Yuri Anthology (異世界転生百合アンソロジー) was somewhat disappointing from my perspective. I was hoping for fun (i.e., innovative and original) Yuri stories about being reborn into an alt-universe. Instead I found this anthology clogged with repetitive tropes that take the place of good writing.

When I was reading fantasy novels in the 70s and 80s during the first big boom, Isekai was a pretty common plot. Lots of “people who ended up in the world of their D&D games as their characters,” or something very similar. It was so common that it almost instantly became a parody of itself and, one or two of the riffs ended up being more memorable than the lazy writing it parodied. Ultimately, they all came down to two plots: We Have to Get Back or Life is Better Here, We Want to Stay.

We’re at that point, clearly with Isekai, where we need some folks with the chops to parody the whole thing better than the originals, because this whole anthology was uninspired and uninspiring.

Which brings me to my original comment. I have been reliably informed about “Truck-kun” the standard form of death that catapults a character to some alternate world. I have so many objections to this interpretation of “reincarnation,” I could write an essay. I’ll spare you other than to say: That is not how reincarnation if we are speaking of the re-incarnation of the soul – works, if it indeed works. “Reincarnated as a Slime” and “Evo Girls” are closer to the idea, even if they are both are hyper-sped up. But setting that aside, the fact that almost no creators in this book came up with *any* new idea to get us to that world is just…disappointing.

Once the character find themselves in “another world,” I was yet again reminded of the D&D isekai novels of my youth as every single alt-universe is some variation of a fantasy feudal society. I mentioned this on various platforms online and several people noted that Isekai, as a subgenre, is meant as a kind of rejection of societal norms and adult oppression – a paean to not growing up. To which I replied, “I reject growing up and being oppressed by authority! Let’s escape to a feudal monarchy!” Even as a child I could see that fairytales were only a good place to be if you were the third Prince with two idiot older brothers. They were shitty for everyone else. ^_^;

The very coolest thing about this collection is the cover. There is no story inside that quite hits that same level. There is one story with a cool knight from another world in ours, who is defending a much younger girl, for some reason, but that failed to engage my attention. Many of the stories include animal-eared or demony girls. My general objection is absolutely zero of the stories were about two adults, and combining lolicon and anthropomorphic fetishes do nothing to endear me more to either.  Although some of the stories were just fine on their own, I have no idea what made them Isekai other than a panel that showed someone dead from being hit by a truck.  These could have just been in the non-human x human anthologies I’ve previously reviewed.

Apparently it is too much to ask of a wholly fantasy setting to have something original, about women in that fantasy setting doing something cool.

I was so looking forward to reading this anthology. I cannot truly express how disappointed I am in it.

Ratings:

Overall – 5

It’s an *alternate universe*, you can make up anything as you go – why be so boring?

Posted in Yuri Anthology, Yuri Manga | 1 Comment »


Yuri Manga: Comic Yuri Hime October 2019 ( コミック百合姫2019年10月号)

October 2nd, 2019

The October issue of Comic Yuri Hime is what I’m starting think of as “steady on.” There are series I like a lot, that sort of sandwich series I don’t much care about, that sandwich stories I don’t like at all, which means I’m reading the beginning and the end of the magazine and just sort of skipping the middle. It’s not 100% every issue, but relatively consistent.

The magazine opens up with a short text story for Yume Utsustu Re:Master, the game that is being promoted in the early pages of recent issues.  This Yuri Visual novel by Konami is about sisters, so is dead to me. Do let me know if you’ve read it and would like to do a review!

“Pochacrime,” Mintarou’s new manga series about indoor climbing, known as bouldering, was not bad. It’ll have to develop a little more before I really decide if I like it or not. My reticence is most because of the art and the viewpoint of the art. If the characters develop to become more than a vehicle for “cute girl eats” and “staring at cute girls’ asses” I’m totally willing to get on board.

A serious crisis comes to a head in Miman’s “Watashi no Yuri ha Oshigoto Desu!” as Hime finally confronts Mitsuki about what the actual heck is happening here. What she finds is probably not what she expected, but once again, her reaction is better than I expected from her. It’s a sign of good writing that I find myself totally comfortable with changing my opinion of both lead characters.

I’m pretty sure this is not going to break any new ground, but I still like Takshima Eku’s “Sasayaku ni Koi wo Uta.”

I’m pretty sure it is going to break new ground, so I’m always eager to read a new chapter of Takemiya Jin’s “Itoshi Koishi.” Yayoi’s confronting some of her own concerns once again and Hina’s right there to let he know when she’s overstepped.

Ohsawa Yayoi’s “Hello Melancholic” is already pushing Minato very hard. She’s barely had time to realize that she’s got friends before she’s realized that she’s falling in love with one of them. A late night caper of illicit musical practice isn’t helping her feel any more grounded….but it’s kind of obvious that this sort of total disruption of her status quo is what she needs.

Ichijinsha is reprinting Kindaichi Renjurou’s Mermaid Line, (which I reviewed back in 2008) with a new complete edition. This month’s issue reprints the classic-Yuri style story “Yukari to Mayumi,” in which two OLs pretend to be dating, but one of them finds that it makes her question her own feelings.

“Ikemen-sugi Shiki-sempai” takes a shocking turn towards drama as Hana learns something about Shiki-sempai that’s she not supposed to know. (It’s not really shocking, but it’ll be good for a couple of chapters of drama.)

Werewolf / vampire /drug / dark fairy tale “SCARLET” is still chugging along, as Misery (Mizallie, but let’s face it, her name and her fate are “misery”) throws herself into the middle of the story once again.

And “Umineko Bessou,” by Kodama Naoko, is getting a little darker as Ashima’s horrible family life crowds out Mayumi’s personal drama. When Ashima points out the obvious, it break Mayumi’s carefully constructed emotional cocoon.  Yes, Mayumi, it is obvious you like Rin. I’m kind of with Ashima on this, it is a bit of a “duh” moment.

Ratings:

Overall – 9

The stories I don’t like, I don’t like more than ever, but the ones I do, I like more, so it all works out.

The November 2019 issue is available and waiting for me at the store – I’m looking forward to it very much!

 

Posted in Comic Yuri Hime, Magazines, Yuri Manga | 2 Comments »


Interview with J-Novel Club’s Sam Pinansky

October 1st, 2019

This summer saw an announcement by J-Novel Club that they’d be releasing a number of Yuri Japanese novels. Yuri and science fiction have had a run of popularity after SF Magazine’s Yuri edition and Hayakawa’s release of a Yuri science fiction anthology, Asterism, so this seems like a good time to be into Yuri and Sci-Fi. Yesterday, I reviewed Last and First Idol, and found it to be an impressive piece of work. I took some time to speak with J-Novel Club’s founder Sam Pinansky about this new direction.

 

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Tell us a little about yourself. How did you get involved with anime and manga originally?
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SP: Back when I was in college, I got really into anime after seeing some VHS bootlegs of Evangelion, and then I started renting tapes of classics like Slayers/Ranma, etc.

In graduate school I took Japanese for fun while studying for my PhD, and started fansubbing anime to help learn.  I took a postdoc in Japan, and after that was over put myself in the right place to be one of the first simulcast anime translators, quickly turning that into my career.  After gathering a group of localizers I took a job at Tezuka Productions, and then later on Yomiuri TV Enterprise, basically running a localization service for anime, TV shows, movies, and manga from Japan.
 

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You first popped up on our radar as part of the AnimeSols project, translating older classic anime, including Riyoko Ikeda’s Dear Brother. What are some of the lessons you learned with AnimeSols? What anime series would you like to be able to release if you could?
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SP: Well, I’d been around translating your anime simulcasts for many years before that!  But while I was at Tezuka I came up with an idea to try crowdfunding for classic anime titles that couldn’t get licensed using traditional routes.  However we ran into the rise of Kickstarter, and our site/system not being on the most popular crowdfunding platform limited our ability to succeed.  It was also a learning experience for all the Japanese companies involved about how much communication and community interaction is necessary to have a successful crowdfunding campaign.  It seems obvious now, but these were very much the early days back then. I personally think that the classic Tatsunoko series like Yatterman and the like really deserve a proper restoration and western release.

 

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Tell us about J-Novel Club. How did the idea come about? How has it been received generally?
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SP: The idea for J-Novel Club came from me attempting to answer a question that began bothering me in 2015: Why were there so many anime being made which were based off of light novels, but so few of the actual original light novels being released in English?  I set out to create a business model that I felt would enable me the greatest chance to turn a profit on light novels and fix this problem, and in early 2016 got to work creating the company and licensing the first content, using my fairly deep connections in the anime/manga/publishing industry in Japan.

J-Novel Club is a publishing company, but we actually have 3 business models going on at the same time.  We publish physical books for some of our series, we publish ebooks for everything, and we also have a paid subscription service where subscribers can read the latest volumes of all of our series week-to-week as they are being translated.  This hybrid model is designed to allow all people to consume light novels in the ways they are most comfortable with, as people come to the format from print manga, from weekly streaming anime, and from illegal fan translation groups.  Thanks to everyone’s support over the past nearly 3 years, we’ve sold over 1,000,000 ebooks already and have already published our 300th volume!
 

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J-Novel Club is launching a new line of Yuri Light Novels. Tell us about that – how you decided to do these. What are the qualities of the first batch that you think make them stand out?
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SP: Broadening our readership base and our genres is an important part of how we grow as a company. One thing I began looking closely at is the amount of effort Japanese publishers are putting in to certain genres and series, and I began to see a mini boom in specifically the Yuri science fiction segment. As we already had a good relationship with those Japanese publishers, their latest works in this genre seemed like a natural choice.There are other books we have offers out for, but licensing takes time depending on the publishing house. Books from Iori Miyazawa like Side-by-side Dreamers and Otherside Picnic are simply great science fiction/horror stories on their own, with the Yuri elements forming more of a flavoring than the main course. I think these types of works which are trying to move the idea of what “Yuri” fiction is are very important to release.  At the same time, books like Seriously Seeking Sister act similarly, but on a different angle: instead of scifi, this time it’s your typical overpowered fantasy character which is peppered with Yuri elements. Both should serve as ways to draw our current readership as well as the Yuri fandom at large.
 

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Which is your favorite of the Yuri Novels you’re releasing and why?
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SP: Personally I really like Last and First Idol, but I’m biased since I edited it.  The author self-describes it as an “existential widescreen yuri baroque proletariat hard sci-fi idol story”.

It’s a collection of 3 scifi novellas, 2 of which won the most prestigious scifi prize in Japan, the Seiyuu Award, in 2017/2018 respectively. These are extremely “hard” scifi stories, with 11 dimensional string theory and aether based gravitational theory and all manner of trigger warnings for gore and body horror, which frankly blew me away when I first read them. As a first work by the author Gengen Kusano, they are completely bonkers. The yuri in them is so stripped down to the bare elements of “yuri” as we know it (the love of one girl for another, in all of its forms), it can be drowned out at times from the noise of planets exploding, but it’s there, and without it the book would be far diminished.

 

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What were your favorite books when you were a kid?
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SP: Asimov’s Robot series and Foundation series, Piers Anthony’s Xanth series, everything Tolkien ever wrote, and eventually in high school Infinite Jest and Gödel, Escher, Bach. I read everything.
 

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Any message for Yuri fans?
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SP: If you’ve only been reading yuri manga, you should definitely try one of our novels! Yuri-n for a treat! *gets shot*

 
That joke aside, (^_^);, thanks very much for taking time to speak with us today, Sam. We’re looking forward to more from J-Novel Club!

Posted in Interview | 1 Comment »


Yuri Novel: Last and First Idol (English)

September 30th, 2019

Last and First Idol, by Gengen Kusano, is the first of the J-Novel Club Yuri novels that I have read. Having read it, I feel that I stand in the presence of genius, very uncomfortably so. ^_^

This collection of three stories, “Last and First Idol,” “Evo Girls” and “Dark Seiyuu” are reminiscent of Murakami’s “Superflat” movement; combining pop culture and the shallowness of consumer culture with an eye to creating something new and extraordinary. In Murakami’s work, he’s using pop culture art as the base for his epic art. Kusano is using pop culture in the form of idols, seiyuu and mobile games as a base for hard science fiction, sprinkled liberally – and holistically – with philosophical discussions of consciousness, soul, time and life, with extremely detailed forays into science, with a strong emphasis on evolution.

The post-script essay by Satoshi Maejima gives us a few clues to the nature of this particular flattened construction; noting that the titular story began life as a Love Live! fanfic. Kusano himself likens his description of his opening story as a “widescreen yuri baroque proletariat hard sci-fi idol story,” as being suggestive of the kind of trope inversions we saw in Puella Magi Madoka Magica.

For myself it reminded me heavily of Piers Anthony’s early pre-Xanth science fiction Herald the Healer series and his early fantasy Tarot series, which, while both were obsessed with sex, dealt rather prominently with communication and evolution and society as well. (Disclaimer: The Tarot series is one of my foundational series and a great number of things remind me of it.)

“But in a deterministic universe only the present exists. There is no past or future. Determinism only allows for a time-like progression based on the laws of causality. All that existed is a privileged point in time we call the present. These points in time are related to each other, in that one occurs before or after another, but that’s all. In a universe where free will had shattered determinism the real present exists. The point at which free will activates is the present. By activating free will, we can create a future that had not yet existed. As opposed to the deterministic universe, in which all points in time exist simultaneously.”

Yuri Novel or philosophic rant by an unhinged pop culture addict? Or thought-provoking science fiction? Choose all that apply.

There’s no question that this book is bonkers, but bonkers in a brilliant and brilliantly disturbing way that nonetheless did not leave me feeling traumatized. This despite a great deal of violence, guts, cannibalism, and three completely different end-of-the-world scenarios, all uniquely horrific.

If you are still reading at this point, not put off by anything I have said, you are now ready to read story descriptions.^_^

“Last and First Idol,”explores the nature of pop idols in extremis, in which one young woman’s desire to be an idol, and another young woman’s desire to see her achieve that, drives her them reshape reality to achieve their ends. The end of the world and the destruction of humanity is nothing more than another idol activity.

“Evo Girls,” explores the exact opposite, using the media of mobile games, which have the ability to strip all life from the planet and how one addict puts is all back together, from scratch. You may have read other “reincarnated as an amoeba” stories, but you have never read one like this. Objectively, this one has the happiest Yuri ending.

In “Dark Seiyuu,” the universe turns out to be fundamentally not at all what physicists tell us it is. Genetically engineered seiyuu who fuel interplanetary travel, have the capacity to destroy or preserve life. Murderous Akane, driven mad by her dreams of becoming the greatest seiyuu, is the only one capable of saving herself and her kouhai, Sachi.

I have never before been so relieved that a book did not have illustrations.

The book is described as being “Yuri” and is being sold as being “Yuri” so, it behooves us to ask “Is it Yuri?”

Yes. Every story includes an intense emotional/romantic connection between two characters who identify as female. This last distinction will become clearer as you read the stories. I will not spoil, but I caution you to make no assumptions about my phraseology. It is neither gender nor sexuality, but humanity, about which I am prevaricating.

In more than one of the stories, “love” or “like” is probably not the right terminology, either. Obsession, mutual need, symbiosis, all come a little closer. I’ll tell you this, though – none of the stories have a particularly bad end. The beginnings and middles, though…you’re on your own. ^_^

 

Ratings:

Overall – 9

Genuinely brilliant, thoughtful and uncomfortable-making in a dozen ways, Last and First Idol is an excellent book, but not a light read. Thanks very much to J-Novel Club for the review copy!

Tomorrow, we’ll be talking to Sam Pinansky of J-Novel Club about this new line of Yuri science fiction novels and see what else in store for us!

 

Posted in Novel, Queer Fiction | 11 Comments »