Yuri Network News – (百合ネットワークニュース) – January 18, 2020

January 18th, 2020

Starting the week off with a bunch of new items on the Yuricon Store!

Yuri Light Novel

Via ach on  Twitter, Inori’s Watashi no Oshi ha Akuyaku Reijou. (私の推しは悪役令嬢。) is available in Japanese on US Kindle. The author is comfortable sharing the English fan translations on her Twitter, so I can feel free to share Jingle Translation’s link, this as well. I cannot vouch that they have permission for their other translations, so you’ll have to use your own moral compass for those.

Via Senior YNN Correspondent Sean G, a new volume of Iori Miyazawa’s scifi thriller Otherside Picnic has been released by J-Novel Club, so we’ve put Volume 1 and Volume 2 up on the store.

 

Yuri Manga

We’re still reading Hana ni Arashi ( はなにあらし) so Volume 3 is up on the store. ^_^

Éclair Blanche: A Girls’ Love Anthology That Resonates in Your Heart, the second of  the Éclair anthology series from Yen Press, has a March release date.

In Watashi no Yuri ha Oshigoto Desu! Volume 6 (私の百合はお仕事です!) by Miman, we turn full-on to dealing with what is going on with Mitsuki.

I’m really digging Usui Shio’s adult life drama Kaketa Tsuki to Donuts, Volume 1 (欠けた月とドーナッツ) from Comic Yuri Hime.

Akili’s Vampeerz, Volume 1 (ヴァンピアーズ ) is a vampire Yuri romance, falling somewhere between goofy and erotic.

Pocket Shonen Magazine online has Magnum Lily, (マグナムリリィ) a manga about a girl discovering boxing, if that is your boom. ^_^

 

Yuri Anime

Jennifer Sherman at ANN reports that Asteroid in Love (streaming on Crunchyroll) episodes are being paired weekly with a series of educational shorts, which is a nice bonus. ^_^

Oshi ga Budokan Ittekureta Shinu is up on Funimation.com raw for non-subscribers. I will have thoughts about it that I will share, after I do my usual post-series read meditation to get my blood pressure back under control.

 

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Other News

Time Out magazine has this hopeful article on Minato Ward in Tokyo passing a “freedom of expression” policy to protect LGBTQ people, and allow for school uniform of choice for students.

Cynthia Medina at Rutgers Today takes a look at Why Are Manga Outselling Superhero Comics?

The great Torsten Adair has a brilliant article over at the Comics Beat, that I hope you will read past the somewhat aggressive headline: We are not in a “golden age” of comics. He’s right – and he’s right about what age we are in. Totally worth the read. ^_^

 

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LGBTQ Manga: Stop!! Hibarikun! Complete Edition, Volume 1 (ストップ!!ひばりくん! コンプリート・エディション)

January 17th, 2020

Some series are famous because they create a whole new chapter of fandom. Others spearhead a new style of art or story telling. But there are some series that are just ahead of their time and should not be forgotten. Eguchi Hisashi’s Stop!! Hibarikun! is among the latter. Serialized in the early 1980s Shonen Jump magazine, this manga is a classic.

In Stop!! Hibarikun! Complete Edition, Volume 1, before Sakamoto Kousaku’s mother dies, she asks her son to go live with an old friend of hers. He’s got children roughly the same age and will welcome Kousaku. When Kousaku arrives at the Oozora home, he finds mom’s old friend to be a yakuza boss with 4 children – among them, Hibari-kun. Assigned male at birth, Hibari knows that she is a girl.

The manga progresses as a comedy, much in the artistic style we’re used to in, for example, Ranma 1/2. Lots of face faults, grimaces, falling over, nosebleeds, etc. Dad is not at all happy that Hibari insists she is a girl, but other than his pointless raging about it, her sisters seem to have little to no concern. She passes at school, until a mean girl confronts her in the locker room, demanding to see her without her shirt. One of her sisters masquerades as Hibari, so she passes the inspection, and the rest of the girls in school go back to treating her as one of them, despite random plots by the resident mean girl. Thugs sent after Hibari go down, because she’s the child of a yakuza leader….she knows how to fight. When Kousaku joins the boxing club, so does Hibari.

Kousaku’s overreactions to Hibari are the main “comedy” and they can become tiresome. I mean that generally – that kind of goofy overreaction is just…tiresome. I was watching something and every reaction was just “EEEEHHHH~~~~?????” over and over at louder decibels until I had to stop. I ended up watching some morning live-action Japanese drama afterwards, just to relax. Hardly any shouting. Phew. When you remember that this would have run at the same time as hyper-masculine Fist of the North Star, and City Hunter, you can kind of understand that this would have been a breath of fresh air…even if it was intended as a parody of shounen romance manga.  There are moments you forget that this is meant to be a gag comic, though and those are worth it.

The best part of Stop!! Hibarikun! is Hibari herself. She is occasionally sad that her body is not in sync with her identity, but she knows who she is and doesn’t really care that other people struggle with it. She’s comfortable showing interest in Kousaku, and teasing him about it. She’s physically and emotionally strong enough to hold her own when she’s being bullied by one of the girls, or one of the guys. She’s an awesome female lead in a series full of mostly unworthy supporting characters.

Ratings:

Art – 8 Cute, and stylish when it comes to Hibari and the other girls, gooftastic for the guys
Story – 7 I mean, it’s a sitcom. So…gags
Characters – Hibari is a 9, her sisters are 8 and everyone else just sort of trickles down from there
Service – Yep. Nakedness is hi-larious
LGBTQ – 10 for Hibari, who knows who she is. It all trickles down from there

Overall – 8 When its good it’s very good, when it’s not it’s more meh than awful

I’m very pleased this classic manga has been collected into a complete edition and grabbed this copy when I saw it on the shelves in one of the bookstores in Japan (I think it was in an actual bookstore, rather than a manga store, in fact.) I’ll be very interested to get the rest and see what I think of the story. 

Here’s the OP of the anime for your viewing entertainment. That may lead you to look for some of the anime on Youtube. You may find it there if you look. (Please do not link to any of it here. Read the atmosphere. Thank you.)

 

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Yuri Manga: Vampeerz, Volume 1 (ヴァンピアーズ)

January 16th, 2020

Ichika attends an old school
Where she’s befriended by a very cute ghoul
Her feeling and fears
Are tempered by tears
Is love with a vampire scary or cool?

What is there to say about Vampeerz, Volume One (ヴァンピアーズ)
That hasn’t already been said, already been done?
The atmosphere is dark and creepy
The love story isn’t deep-y
Blood-sucking as an aphrodisiac doesn’t stun.

Akili’s art is quite staid
until moments of service are laid
out for those who enjoy
which is never me, oh boy,
and my attention wanders, unpaid.

Ratings:

Art – 7 Overly not-evocative, in a highly evocative setting
Story – 7
Characters – 7
Yuri – 4
Service – 5

Overall – 7

Entry 2,847,436,372 in “How Erica knows she is not goth.”

 

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Yuri Manga: Hana ni Arashi, Volume 3 (はなにあらし)

January 15th, 2020

Chidori and Nanoha have a secret, we are told in Volume 1 and Volume 2. They are lovers, we are told. And we will have to believe what we are told, because what we are shown is two young woman in a romantic relationship that, for completely sensible reasons, they prefer to keep secret from their friends. They aren’t doing a particularly great job of hiding it, but the relative self-absorption of people means they are hiding in plain sight. The only one who has cottoned on to their relationship is Nanoha’s younger sister. She, admittedly, has had the benefit of seeing them during their off-school hours when they, for one moment, let their guard slip and were holding hands, while on a date.

In love, probably. Lovers? No. Not yet. They are still in very early stages of their romance. Holding hands is where we are at.

In Volume 3 of Hana ni Arashi (はなにあらし), we accompany them as they celebrate Chidori’s birthday, and the gang goes over Nanoha’s house for a summer sleepover.

Unusually, this volume does not just end on a generic feel good moment, but with Chidori spotting someone we don’t know, but she clearly does, talking about her “kouhai” on the phone. What this will mean to us will wait until the next volume to find out.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 6
Characters – 6
Yuri – 3
Service – 2 There was some gratuitous Chidori decolletage for us, the readers, not for Nanoha, which was depressing.

Overall – 6

I guess I am reading this series now. ^_^

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Haru to Midori Manga, Volume 2 (春とみどり)

January 13th, 2020

In Haru to Midori, Volume 2 (春とみどり) having committed to being a foster parent for her late childhood friend’s daughter, Midori struggles daily to separate her feelings for Tsugumi from the child who looks so much like her. Haru is trying to create a life with this woman who clearly loved her mother, but who seems to have little life of her own.

Tsugumi’s belongings arrive at Midori’s place, and her child’s first thought is to throw it all away, starting fresh. Midori, though, goes through it, knowing the value of items that have no value but are irreplaceable. Haru watches Midori interact with her own mother, able to see the bonds between them, and reflecting on her own bonds, now permanently severed.

In turn Haru and Midori become ill. Haru finds herself comforted by this woman who is not her mother, but finds it in herself to care for her. When it is Haru’s turn, shes not surprised, but still befuddled to be mistaken for her mother, by a feverish Midori.

The gyre turns and turns, spinning Haru and Midori in a circle around their memories of Tsugumi, but every spin, brings some small change in them. Haru’s new life begins to take form and almost amazingly, so does Midori’s. Midori who now wears new clothes to work, and is teased by Haru and her mother and has, at last, started to realize how little she has moved forward since Tsugumi left.

This series is neither melancholic nor nostalgic, although we spend a lot of time looking backward. If it were literary, I’d read it as if it was a memoir told by an adult Haru about this moment in her life. “That time my mother’s friend (who was in love with her) took me in after her death.” It’s a sad series, because death is sad, but there’s bits of humor and comfort that keep it from becoming maudlin.

This is only Yuri in retrospective, as they individually unpack Midori’s feelings for Tsugumi. I hope that they can be allowed to come to care for one another without it becoming romantic, as that would reek of lazy writing.

I have no idea what will become of Haru and Midori, but wherever they end up, I think this has been good for both of them. I can easily imagine that they will come to rely on their relationship through Tsugumi less and on each other more.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 8
Characters – 9 A lot of time is spent in interior monologue
Yuri – 3 Only in retrospective, as they individually unpack Midori’s feelings for Tsugumi and
Service – 0

Overall – 8

Still awkward, yet sincerely and appealingly so, much like Midori herself. Still ongoing online at Comic Meteor, I’m looking forward to a third volume.

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