Doujinshi (同人誌) are small-press and self-published manga created by individuals or groups The English-language equivalent are mini-comics and indie comics. (Although I love how all the machine translators call them “literary coterie magazines.”) Like mini comics, doujinshi are a way for amateur artists to put together their own work to sell. Unlike English-language indie comics (until very recently, and I’ll get into this in a second) Japanese comic markets and after-show selling means that the printing industry for short runs and small prints was very highly developed and more affordable for artists in Japan. Even relatively small print doujinshi runs can look very classy, with texturing, fine insert paper and other ways to make a book stand out.  Digital printing was adopted more quickly by these doujinshi printing companies, and it’s possible to have books delivered to the artist’s table at a show for larger printings. There are catalogs available for cheap(ish, paper is never cheap anymore) printing to standard formats and sizes.

In the US we just did not have this until very recently. When I started ALC in 2002 I worked with graphic novels in part because not one printer I spoke with would do 24-36 page pamphlet-style comics. Because offset printing was the only kind of printing available to me and it was so expensive, I figured we had to do collected volumes to make it make sense. If you look at older mini-comics in America, most of what you’re seeing is photocopies (“copy books” in doujinshi terms) and cheaper hand-made covers. Damned few printers did short runs of under 1000 copies, either. I watched as every convention I ever worked with struggled to find printers to do a few hundred or a few thousand of their program books for prices that didn’t eat up the budget. Printing services weren’t better. There were a hundred print stores in every town, but they were all geared towards making fliers, or signs. Comic artists here in the west just did not have the infrastructure or ecosystem that doujinshi creators had. Even at anime and manga artist alleys, you don’t see nearly as much original work even now, because what sells is parody art. Online art changed all of that, but that’s a conversation for another day. ^_^

Yuri doujinshi has finally made it’s way over to US shores and happily we have two companies at the moment working to bring you Yuri doujinshi for different tastes. It seems like a good time to look at both imprints, their websites, and a few of their titles, to give you an idea of what to expect.

This is not a competition – we’re not pitting these sites against each other  Both Lilyka and Irodori are bringing out a variety of doujinshi, and the more, the better for all of us. Depending on your tastes, and interests, you might find you use one of these sites more than the other, but today’s post is an overview, not a battle. We can and should welcome both companies and any others who enter this field. There are a lot of great Yuri doujinshi artists, including many professional artists who do their own doujinshi as well.

These sites were tested on Firefox, Chrome, Edge, IE, Opera. I don’t have Safari, so if someone wants to jump in and let us know how that works, that’d be swell!

Lilyka

Lilyka is the name for the Yuri doujinshi imprint of Digital Manga Publishing. DMP is best known for Boys’ Love titles, but they’ve made several forays into Yuri, licensing titles digitally, with limited titles in print.

Lilyka launched in spring 2019, with a selection of titles from that February’s Comitia. Completely coincidentally, I had attended that event, so I recognized a number of the books they offered out of the gate, and had picked up a few in person myself.

Site

Lilyka’s website is clean and simple. The scrolling header gives you the newest news, and you can forward and rewind, if you miss something.  This is followed by a gallery of new releases. Titles on the shop are organized with featured titles across the top, then alphabetically. Their search worked on all the browsers I used.

Search allows you to search an author, title, term, with broad categories, e.g. “romance,” and formats, to limit further. At the moment, their have a small enough catalog that a little scrolling will give you a good idea, but as they offer more titles, this will be useful. There are options for reviewing a title and “Ask a Question” which is an interesting idea.

Lilyka is also running interviews with creators, which I’m finding to be surprisingly interesting.

Comic

Lilyka comics are easy to read, reproduction is clean. Translation is fine. SWHD has made-up terminology, which is always complicated.

However, no one is credited. The translation, clean-up, lettering and editing apparently has manifested magically. If you’re a reader of doujinshi you know that even untranslated doujinshi will have credits: The other folks in the circle, the assistants, friends, the printer. I believe it is essential that publishers credit people who do the work. It’s hard enough to be taken seriously, to negotiate or to put things on a CV when you’re doing unsung work, but if you never appear on a credit page, it’s just that much harder. There are other, more historical reasons as well, that DMP needs to be an overtly good actor in this endeavor. 

Shop

The titles I read for this review are SWHD and Tadokoro-san. I picked these titles for very specific reasons. SonoN’s SWHD is an action title that I bought the first three issues of at Comitia. It’s about beefy women fighting monsters and in between, it’s really quite sweet. It has recently been picked up by Comic Ruelle & Comic Jardin.  Tadokoro-san had just been collected into a print volume from a new-to-me imprint, Valkyrie Comics, and I wanted to take a look to see what it was like. I also had been given Lily Fairy Tale Rapunzel and Sleeping Beauty by mintaro, who now has a story “Pochi Climb” running in Comic Yuri Hime, as a review copy and again, it had been a doujinshi I bought at Comitia, so was pleased to see it here.

Buying from Lilyka is easy, flexible and I honestly have to give it thumbs up. Once your credit card is processed, you have the option of 7 formats to download in, including cbz, mobi, pdf and epub. Most importantly, you are allowed to download multiple formats.  To walk through this, I purchased Twa’s Shiori and Yuki, which was very cute, especially if you like stories that include children acting like children.

Pricing is about on par for buying a doujinshi at Comitia. $4.95 for SWHD when I think I paid about 600 yen, so that’s right in the wheelhouse.

The selection on their shop is pretty good, actually. There’s some school life stories, some fantasy, some adult life and action. I like that the books are mostly SFW, with a little more implied. This is the kind of original work I tend to collect, rather than overt porn, for reasons I will get into when we move to Irodori Sakura. Adult lives written by adult women for an adult audience is still so refreshing that I am not yet tired of it. ^_^

Overall – 8

Lilyka’s over a year old and still going, so I’m hoping they’ll expand their credits, and their acquisitions, but at this point I do recommend them.

Irodori Sakura

Irodori Comics is a Japanese erotic doujinshi company who has relatively recently expanded to non-hentai doujinshi. Last year they developed a new imprint Irodori Sakura, with an eye to expanding their catalog with “BL, Yuri, and LGBT” titles. This compliments their general interest imprint Irodori Aqua.

Their shop. called Irodori Lite, for the moment contains SFW titles only. Their main page, which previously listed their NSFW doujinshi, appears to be undergoing renewal. If this is a little confusing to you, you are not alone. They launched Irodori Sakura with four titles, but, as you can see from the screencap to the left, the two available are SFW.

In fact, when we spoke the first few times, I made it clear that I would not be interested in the NSFW titles. The covers looked…unpleasant. I know that there are people who enjoy the spectacle of unhappy women in ill-fitting clothes, their breasts and pudendum uncomfortably swollen. I am not among them.

Site

While Irodori undergoes whatever reorg is happening right now, Irodori Lite is sparse, yet with a scrolling header it feels crowded and busy, in part because you cannot forward or rewind and have to simply wait to see that news item again. There are links to the different imprints, discussions of doujinshi and genres listed. With the minimal content currently available, it’s easier to search by genre.

The search feature did not pull up anything under Yuri, but they have two comics listed as Girls’ Love. Each comic is also given tags, so you can search by that author, category, genre, etc. The feature worked on all the browsers I tried it on.

Comic

So, of the two I had requested for review, the first is Isaki Uta’s Mine-kun is Asexual. I’m very pleased to see a comic that explicitly features a person who is asexual, and was further pleased that the story was not simplistic. Mine-kun is a pretty complex individual and so is the girl who becomes, for a short time, his partner, but ultimately neither of them are able to really communicate about what they need and want. The overall feeling was melancholy, but not unpleasantly so, just…softly sad. Not a bad story at all.

The second review copy was for Why Does Love Do This To Me?, by Ayanoayano, a story of two adult women who like each other and are both kind of not just asking each other the obvious thing, overthinking situations and generally missing the hints each other gives. If you like miscommunication comedy, it’s cute. If not, it’s annoying. ^_^

But as I write this, it becomes obvious that both these titles are about poor communication, and I hope that does not become  trend. Irodori has this month announced a new title for their catalog, The Albino and The Witch by Tendou Itsuki so we can look forward to that. ^_^

Irodori credits the folks who work on the comics, even if they are using non-standard crediting. Translation, lettering, “compiling and formatting”, QA (I guess that’s the production manager) all get named. I am pleased about that. Lettering is clean, easy to read, formatting is also clean.

Shop

Irodori Lite checkout was a breeze. You fill in your home address and it offers a list of possible rest of the info drop down, which I liked. I had choices of two possible sizes, but only one format, pdf. That’s fine with me, but if you use a epub reader maybe not so much for you.

To test the system, I purchased Hiroyuki’s Of Girls, Love and Money, which was a vaguely Yuri-ish school story. Everything went smoothly, the transaction, the download, the reading.

 There’s a tab about why is doujinshi so expensive on the about page, but  $3.99 is 413 yen, so probably slightly less than I’d pay at a comic market, to be honest. So in my opinion, pricing is fine.

Overall – 7

The site is working and I believe Irodori is sincere. Certainly based on conversations I’ve had with their reps, they really want to do this right.  I’ll recommend them with reservations, as their content is thus far, thin.

We’re still in early days for Yuri doujinshi in English, but I expect we’ll be seeing more if these early titles are popular enough. For a few dollars, you might want to give some new artists a try and let Lilyka and Irodori Sakura know how they are doing!