Ah toka Uh shika Ienai Manga, Volume 1 (あーとかうーしか言えない )

May 28th, 2019

The subject of today’s review isn’t really Yuri, although I’ve seen it on a number of Yuri lists. Despite that I want to talk about it, in part because I mentioned it recently during an interview. Ah toka Uh shika Ienai, Volume 1 (あーとかうーしか言えない ) is the story of Toda, a woman who is a very decent ero-manga artist, but who finds it challenging when it comes to expressing herself verbally. Tanaka, her editor, shows remarkable skill in interpreting Toda’s monosyllabic responses “Ah”s and “Uh”. Together, they make a great team.

After a few pages establishing their partnership, we learn how Toda debuted at “XtoC” magazine. That established, the manga becomes more about the cuthroat world of manga rankings. And within that, we get to see Toda and Tanaka working beautifully together.

About halfway through this book I wondered out loud whether I was enjoying it. I wasn’t sure if Toda’s communications issues was being presented as a gag, which I would have found intolerable, or not. But, after Toda and Tanaka spend the day doing research at an amusement part and Toda really starts to open up to her editor and together, they push Toda towards the top of the rankings, I found that I was enjoying it, after all. Specifically, the page with Toda smiling in front of the ferris wheel, telling Tanaka she was having fun. That pretty much set me into a positive spin about this story.

To encourage and support Toda, Tanaka has her move in with her. And in the end, Tanaka says that she likes reading the manga written by a person she likes. The end of Volume 1 comes and we are totally team Tanaka /Toda and rooting for them to beat the author/editors combos to the top of the rankings.

The two things I found to be standout notes on this series were, first, that any Yuri, if there indeed will be any, is not as important as the teamwork that Tanaka and Toda develop. It was pleasantly surprising to have a story which is openly festooned with sexual imagery to not be about sex or sexual objectification of the principle characters. Additionally, this is the second manga I have encountered in recent days, that deal with different forms of difficulties with verbal communication. Yesterday’s Lily Lily Rose presented us a child whose verbal skills were hampered by trauma. In today’s story, Toda’s overwhelmed by the words themselves. In both cases, understanding and supportive partners help the protagonists communicate. As a person who loves words, but who is likely to become overwhelmed when I am communicating verbally (and who is losing access to words more often, presumably as a result of MS,) I’m really feeling Toda’s struggle.

Ratings:

Art – Kind of amazing, really, because its required to present multiple styles and phases of creation 9
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Service – 7 There is quite a bit, as they work for a porn magazine
Yuri – 1 but it doesn’t matter

Overall – 8

I’m 100% behind the idea of a positive working relationship for two women as the backbone of this manga. Whether or not it ever becomes a romance is irrelevant to me.

Posted in Miscellaneous | 8 Comments »


Lily Lily Rose Manga, Volume 2

May 27th, 2019

In Volume 1, we met Nobara whose quiet live is upended when the daughter of her late sister arrives on her doorstep. Lily is a quiet girl, but slowly, she becomes more comfortable with her aunt and her aunt’s boarder, Maya.

As Volume 2 of Lily Lily Rose opens, Lily is doing well – she’s talking more, she’s playing with local kids. Nobara, however, is not doing well at all. Haunted by her late sister’s death, we accompany Nobara as she mourns the relationships she and Yurika had…and the betrayal she felt at her sister moving on to a life without her.

Nobara starts to take her anger at Yurika out on Lily. Lily withdraws into her noverbal state and Maya stands between her and Nobara. Maya rebukes Nobara and points out that Lily is not a stand-in for her sister and should neither be treated like one, nor blamed for Yurika’s failures.

In the meantime, we learn that Lily was there when her mother killed herself. She and her father could only watch from the shore as Yurika drowned herself in the ocean.

Nobara apologizes to Lily and the girl graciously accepts, but established clearer boundaries between them. They need to need one another, but neither of them will be allowed to become dependent, now.

As we established in Volume 1, Noabara and Maya are not lovers, but there is a comfortable closeness about them that does feel like they are partners. When Nobara and Lily are estranged, it’s Maya who step in to parent Lily. Crossdresser Saotome comes by for tea and refers to  Maya as Nobara’s wife. Nobara is honestly confused by this, so Saotome says, “partner, then” and goes on to note what is obvious to all of us…that whatever they see their relationship as, it has morphed into a kind of family, whether Nobara likes it or not.

As the series end, we see that the three of them have indeed become a family and we’re assured that Lily and Nobara will both be able to move on and grow.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 8
Characters – 8
LGBTQ – 4
Service – 1

Overall – 8

This was an uncommonly gentle and sweet story by a creator who often fills her Yuri stories with incest and violence. It felt like  throwback to her days of gentle school ghosts in Himitsu no Kaidan (Volume 1 and Volume 2). The end of the story was sweet and satisfying and I’m glad I was able to read it.

 

Posted in Miscellaneous | 4 Comments »


Summer Reading: The Stars Are Legion

May 26th, 2019

This review must begin with several thank yous. Thank you, my Okazu family for giving me both the motivation and the positive reception that has encouraged me to to read classics I missed in my youth and many of the new, truly fantastic books that are filling my hours these days. Your reception and enthusiasm – and recommendations – have significantly increased my quality of life. I’d also like to thank, in a small way, the angry sad men of the various *.*gate groups and the *.*Puppies, whose railing against inclusion and progress in media of all kinds has exponentially increased the visibility of those inclusive and diverse media. Good job, guys, keep writing those boycott lists, and I’ll keep finding great stuff to read. ^_^ Finally, thanks to the Twitterverse for making it possible for me to follow those amazing authors and their conversations with other amazing authors and thereby discover new amazing authors!

It was on Twitter that I first encountered this book, when author Kameron Hurley announced that this book was on a time-sale on Amazon. I nabbed the book, knowing I’d be traveling a bit in upcoming days…and I do prefer to read genre fiction when I travel. Knowing nothing whatsoever about this book, I opened it up on my flight to Toronto.

It was excellent.

The Stars Are Legion, by Kameron Hurley, begins with a character who has lost her memory. Awakening on a dying world/ship, Zan remembers nothing of herself, but is instantly thrown into a massive conspiracy with a woman she remembers she loved, to destroy and remake…everything.

Zan is clearly a natural warrior, and Jayd, her former(?) lover is a general, but neither of those skills are what is needed, in this dying world. What is needed is ruthless belief that everything can be saved, even if it takes dying repeatedly to make it happen. Betrayal and death are everyday occurrences here, where madwomen both rule and are ruled.

After she is thrown into a recycling pit, Zan gathers allies who help her re-attain the surface, even when they don’t believe that the surface exists. As she travels, she regains bit of her memory, and find that she’s left herself clues – she learns that she and Jayd have done this before. Jayd tells her that at the beginning, but just what *this* is, she’s got to learn by doing it, again.

Because the story is itself so recursive, I don’t want to give away much, but I will tell you that this is a book that rewards careful reading. I will tell you that this is a science fiction version of a quest adventure – but it is a quest through the bowels of a great beast to an end whose goal is clearly stated right at the beginning, but only becomes comprehensible when Zan and we have enough information to understand it.

All of the characters are female; love and sex are therefore all between women. Sexuality and gender are rendered meaningless, since there are no other options on these worlds. It’s a little like early lesbian scifi that way, in which an alternate world is set up so there is functionally no politics around sex between women, except for the internal politics of the story itself.

The world-building in this book is fantastic and phantasmagoric. This was not a book I could comfortably read with meals, as majority of the world is rotting and dying. Women of the worlds conceive and give birth to lumps of flesh or bits of machinery as the worlds themselves require, without any explanation. Zan does not remember, most of the characters do not know and the stories they tell themselves are not helpful.

I was rooting for Zan and her allies even before I learned why I should be. But when I learned why I should be rooting for them, it was pretty damn awesome.

Ratings:

Story – 9
Characters – 9
World-building – 10
Service – 1 There is some sex, but very little is presented as “sexy”
LGBTQ – 0/10 depending on your point of view

Overall – 9

The Stars are Legion is tightly-told tale of a disgusting mess of a world. ^_^

Posted in Queer Fiction | 1 Comment »


Yuri Network News – (百合ネットワークニュース) – May 25, 2019

May 25th, 2019

Yuri Manga

From the twitter feed of Suzuki Paisen, a “sexy” harem Yuri manga has begun serialization in Shonen Jump Plus. You can read a sample of Tonari no Heya kara Aegigoe ga surun desukedo… (隣の部屋から喘ぎ声がするんですけど…) in Japanese on the Shonen Jump Plus website.

Via ANN, Towa Oshima, creator of High School Girls, will launch a new manga about frenemies, Daishinyyu, (大親友) in Young King Bull magazine. Given the many years of Yuri or nearly-Yuri  from this creator, we can expect hijinks, breast jokes and gags aplenty. ^_^

Still Sick by Akashi has been licensed by Tokyopop, according to the TheOASG’s Twitter feed. I reviewed this office Yuri romance this spring and I’m actually quite positive about this coming out in English.

We’ve got a couple of new things up on the Yuricon Store (which is now functioning better than ever, thanks to our web weaver):

Yagate Kimi ni Naru Saeki Sayaka ni Tsuite, Volume 2 (やがて君になる 佐伯沙弥香について), the second light novel following young lesbian Saeki Sayaka, which I am reading right now. ^_^

Ohsawa Yayoi’s first serialized story, Strange Babies (ストレンジベイビーズ 完全版), is getting a Complete Edition. And, now that 2DK, GPen, Mezamashitokei is over, we’ve got news of her upcoming series, “Hello, Melancholic!” (ハロー、メランコリック！) which will have  60-page debut in a future issue of Comic Yuri Hime. This new story will follow a Yin/Yang sempai-kouhai pair. Mismatched personalities do seem to be all the rage right now. And since the ad says its going to debut on the magazine that’s on sale in June, I’ll presume it’s the August issue.)

Kodama Naoko’s Uminekosou days, Volume 1 (海猫荘 days)  is now available.

Ichijinsha’s Surechigai Kyodai Kanjou Yuri Anthology (すれ違い巨大感情百合アンソロジー) is another example of mismatched pairings, with deep emotions.

 

Live Action

Last year we saw the Revolutionary Girl Utena live-action stage musical and it was actually pretty good! Now via about every YNN correspondent and media outlet, we have the scoop on the Black Rose arc musical. Ikuhara is going to be supervising again and most of the main cast is returning. ANN has the details and the first visual from Shōjo Kakumei Utena ~Fukaku Hokorobu Kuro Bara no.

 

Sailor Moon News

Viz has announced additional voice roles for the upcoming release of Sailor Moon Stars according to ANN.

The newest Sailor Moon 4D experience at Universal Japan includes the Outer Senshi. Check out the promo video on ANN.  (The Sailor Moon franchise is doing well outside the usual 2nd and 3rd dimensions, isn’t it? ^_^)

 

Other News

Via Yuri Navi, Yagate Kimi ni Naru/ Bloom Into You is getting a set of LINE stamps if you’re on that platform.

I was working on my day job when I encountered this amazing manga, The Story of Basic Immunology. This comic appears on the Japanese pharmaceutical company Kyowa Hakko Kirin’s website in Japanese and English. My coworkers found the manga (and the overlap of my worlds) very amusing. ^_^

 

Do you have questions about Yuri? Write in and ask and I’ll do my best to address them on the Okazu YNN Podcast, 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!

Posted in Yuri Network News | 1 Comment »


Western Comic: When I Arrived at the Castle (English)

May 23rd, 2019

Despite the increase in lesbian vampire (or not-a-vampire) stories in recent years, there has not yet been a lesbian horror renaissance. Recently in a twitter conversation several folks were speaking about how in many genres including, but not limited to, both BL and Yuri, horror is often transformed into something “sexy.” As a result, the horror of that horror is never fully felt or addressed, because its presented to the reader wrapped in a cloth of sexual desire.

In my TCAF panel with creator Emily Carrol, (a recording of which you can listen to, thanks to Jamie Coville!) she made the point that, for her, horror must be unresolvable for it to work.  And for me, the horror must have lingering discomfort or it’s just fear and not “horror.” When I Arrived in the Castle ticks all these boxes.

We begin in the middle of a story, one for which we will learn a beginning, but not the beginning and for which we will never truly know the end. An apparently nervous cat-woman arrives at a castle where a predatory female something will taunt her emotionally and physically. Maybe she and we will learn a truth, but never the truth.

Presented in black, white and red, with a variety of visual styles, the art leaves us as unmoored as the narrative and prose.

All though the narrative progresses in a straightforward fashion, the tale is nonlinear and climax does not bring resolution or knowledge. In the end, we are left with unanswered questions, unquestionable feelings and a pervading sense of having seen something, but what, exactly we’d be hard pressed to describe. 

If you are interested in lesbian horror, this is about as close to and as far from Carmilla (original novel or recent web series based on it) as you can get at the same time.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 9
Characters – ????
Service – 6 There are nudity and sexual situations, but whether it’s salacious really depends upon you
Lesbian – Yuppers

Overall – 9

 

This is a brilliant work of horror and you should all read it to learn something about yourself.

 

Posted in Western Comic/Comix | 2 Comments »