Comic Yuri Hime, August 2024 (コミック百合姫2024年8月号)

July 29th, 2024

On a dark green background, in an elaborate gold frame/flower arbor, two girls look intimately at one another. A gorl with short dark hair has both hands on the cheek of a blonde girl.After the behemoth of an issue last month, you might be concerned about the slimmer volume for Comic Yuri Hime, August 2024 (コミック百合姫2024年8月号)…don’t be. It jumps right in to a new chapter (and a “new chapter”) of Takisham Eku’s “Sasayakuyouni Koi wo Utau,” as Miki’s sempai from wind ensemble struggles with how to appropriately convey her feelings to the kouhai she both treasures…and likes as a person. Miki remembers how Himari felt tortured about Yori, now she’s in the same boat!

Lirium and Nana dig into their shared power in Isekai fantasy “Muryoku Seijo to Munou Oujo ~ Maryoku Zero de Shoukansareta Seijo no Isekai Kyuukoku-ki ~” by Tamasaki Tama. They may be powerless along, but together they are quite explosive.

In “Kanaria ha Kiraboshi no Yume wo Miru” Fumino is envisioning a life in fashion, with her new model, but there are forces that may work against her – including her own mother –  in this historical piece set in the Taisho period by SheepD.

“Osoto Gohan wo Isshi ni?” has, finally, and not all that welcomely, introduced a conflict.  Fuka is distraught when she learns that Yomogi might have to move. What will happen to their meals and time together?

Did you know that Lily is among the most popular characters in “Watashi no Oshi ha Akuyaku Reijou.”? She is. Not mine, however. And this interstitial arc is very much about her feelings for Rae. As I am not a fan of one-sided obsessive loves, the fact that this arc is at least tied into the royal investigation into corruption keeps us moving forward.

Utatane Yuu’s “Odoriba ni Skirt ga Naru” finds Kiki and Michiru not vibing, but Kiki can’t quite understand why (Again. Still. But differently.) A talk with her beloved and admired older sister – who was their teacher’s partner when they were the star pair- gives her some insight as to what to do.

When confronted with a sudden crisis, Clarice takes charge, even at the risk of her own life in “Gakeppuchi Reijou ha Kuro Kishi-sama o Horesasetai!” with art by Somtime and story by Suo.  Frost-sama is blown away at her actions (ngl, so was I) , and also enraged by her response when asked why she did it. I am confused at to why Frost is trying so hard to get rid of Clarice. Clarice tries to get closer to Frost, but fails, during a game of chess. I like this story and look forward to Frost unclenching.

“Gara no Hime” by Korose this issue was a tear-jerker as Hime and Isana run across broken automatons who have been left activated but unable to fulfill their programming for centuries. Their resolution to set them at rest was touching.

Kodama Naoko’s “Utsotsuki Hanayome to Dousei Kekkon-ron” shows us a slightly stronger Shigizawa than we’re used to (stronger than most of Kodama-sensei’s protagonists are until the final crisis, in fact,), as she pulls herself back from making a terrible mistake with Gotoh, and addresses the gorilla in the room, finally – why did Gotoh run away from her husband? Gotoh’s response is understandable and also still frustrating.

In “Koharu to Minato” Minato has been working hard, so Koharu takes her out for a professional massage.

Yakan starts a new series, “Lolita to Ane” which will give us all a chance to once again learn about the freedom in wearing gothic lolita along with elementary schooler Miyuki.

And, of course, there are plenty of comics I did not read or did not mention in this chock-full volume. It’s still a whole lot of Yuri for the price!

Ratings:

Overall – 9

The September issue is in and I’m reading it now. ^_^ Always playing catch up with this magazine.



Summer Lucky Boxes! – All Claimed

July 28th, 2024

I am *still* cleaning out stuff that I picked up in Japan last year! As a result, I have 3 Lucky Boxes this round.

All are premium boxes with media, manga, candy, toys and goods from Japan. They also include other flat fun things like artbooks, stickers, bookmarks or postcards which are equally random and frequently bizarre (and often not at all Yuri.) As always, there are random pieces of paper like memo pad sheets and individual flake stickers of random things like PreCure or cute food.

My promise to you is that you’ll get random things, sometimes in other in random things. ^_^ I assure you that this is all 100%, unadulterated stuff.

This round we have:
1 Large USPS Flat Rate, 1 Priority Mail Box and 1 Medium USPS flat rate box.

Large Box 1 – $60 – Claimed
Priority Box -$45 – Claimed
Medium Box 1 – $50 – Claimed

***

To be eligible to buy a Lucky Box, follow these instructions carefully. Please. Thank you. Failure to follow all of these instructions will disqualify you. It’s not personal, they are all claimed pretty quickly and I don’t have time to track you down for a piece of information.

1. You must live in the Continental USA (contiguous 48) only, no APO/FPOs. This is disappointing for me too, so I apologize.

2. You must be over 18, I am not policing books or recipients.

3. Email me with the Yuricon Contact Form with the subject “Lucky Box.” Use an email you check regularly, because I will reply asap. The first person who responds to my email gets the box.

4. *****Please include your name, age, mailing address. ***** Tell me which box you want. Even if you’ve given me your address previously, please include it, I am very lazy.

5. I will contact you at that point and give you details about payment by Paypal. Please be prepared to check your email and get payment out so this post doesn’t linger. Thanks in advance. These will be shipped out asap, as well; the whole point of this is to get these out of my house. ^_^

Thank you and enjoy!



Yuri Network News – (百合ネットワークニュース) – July 27, 2024

July 27th, 2024

In blue silhouette, two women face each other. One wears a fedora and male-styled attire, one is in a dress and heels. Their body language is obscure - they may be dancing, or laughing or fighting. Art by Mari Kurisato for Okazu

Yuri Manga

Huge news this week, as the folks behind quarterly, crowd-funded Yuri manga magazine Galette have announced an upcoming Kickstarter for an English language edition! Sign up now on Kickstarter to get updates and be informed when the Kickstarter launches. This is big news, as the magazine features some veteran creators, like Yorita Miyuki, Morinaga Milk and Hakamada Mera.

Galette is currently crowdfunded in Japanese on Pixiv Fanbox, I hope they open an English-language ongoing option for support. Fanbox is available in English as well. (Although Pixiv is a morally questionable company, management having been accused of sexually harassing employees.)

Sheep Princess in Wolf’s Clothing, Volume 3 is on shelves now. Grab the next volume of this furry, Yuri, fairytale from a link on the Yuricon Store!

Looking for something a little less cute? Otherside Picnic manga, Volume 11 might scratch that itch, with the Mountain Ranch and cult of Satsuki Uruma followers. Guest reviewer Sandy Ferguson caught us up to date in his review of Volume 10.

Adult Life can be complicated, as Haru and Hina learn in Throw Away the Suit Together, Volume 1, which hit shelves this month.

 

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Become an Okazu Patron today!

 

Muromaki-sensei has begun a 101 Yuri Situations challenge on X. Check out the hashtag #百合シチュ101 for updates.

Sasayakuyou no Koi wo Utau, Volume  10 (ささやくように恋を唄う) is on the Store and so is the Sasayakuyou no Koi wo Utau Comic Anthology (ささやくように恋を唄う 公式コミックアンソロジー) with stories by Utatane Yu, Yukiko and Yuama!

Koharu to Minato: Watashi No Partner Ha Onna No Ko, Volume 2 (小春と湊 わたしのパートナーは女の子) continues the love-love story I reviewed this week here on Okazu.

 

 

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Yuri Light Novel

It was my genuine pleasure to read and review The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady, Vol. 7

 

Yuri Games

Via zhufree on X, Steam has a “ new #baihe game which lesbians made for lesbians“! 永日的凝视-The Gaze of The Eternal Sun is currently in Chinese only, although zhufree says the creators would like to do an EN translation, but do not have the money to do so.

 

Other News

Unseen Japan ( a recommended site to follow on the social platform of your choice) has the news that Netflix is launching the very first same-sex dating show in Japan, called The Boyfriend.

And in a completely bonkers decision, the folks behind Lycoris Recoil are dragging NFTs from their grave to auction off. According to the announcement, a “portion of the money will go to the creators in charge.” The auction site is pretty slow to load. A quick summation of the response was captured beautifully by this poster, who said, “I’d rather have a second season than an art auction.”

 

Overseas response seemed to be pretty negative, while Japanese response was split a little more evenly.

On a happier note, Netflix has posted the Sailor Moon Cosmos trailer to Youtube and Kodansha has announced a box set for the first 6 volumes of anniversary manga of Sailor Moon. Rafael Antonio Pineda has the details on ANN about that.

Kenichi Sonoda (Gunsmith Cats, Riding Bean) was awarded an Inkpot Award at San Diego Comic- Con to recognize the impact he has had on his industry. Joseph Luster has the news on Crunchyroll.

Via Yuri Navi, the manga series Hana wa Saku, Shura no Gotoku (花は咲く、修羅の如く) by Takeda Ayano and manga artist Mushu, currently being serialized in Ultra Jump magazine, will be made into a TV anime. This is about a girl whose love of reading brings in friends as she helps out with her school’s broadcasting club. Looks to be a nice everyday slice-of-life, cute girls doing cute things cutely, anime. I’m all for that.

 

If you’d like to support Yuri journalism and research, Patreon and Ko-Fi are where we currently accept subscriptions and tips.  Our goal now, into 2024, is to raise our guest writers’ wages to above industry standard, which are too low!

Your support goes straight to paying for Guest Reviews, folks helping with videos, site maintenance, managing the Yuricon Store and directly supporting other Yuri creators. Just $5/month makes a huge impact! Become part of the Okazu family!

Become a part of the Yuri Network, by being a YNN Correspondent: Contact Us with any Yuri-related news you want to share with us.

 



The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady, Volume 7

July 26th, 2024

A young woman in a pink dress, and red cape, her blonde hair tied on both sides with ribbons faces us, her palm outstretched, other arm akimbo. Behind her, a silver-haired girl in blue, a yellow bow in her hair, holds one fist up to her chin. A palace can be seen in the distant background above a city.So, you’re a Princess with memories of another world where “magic” tools existed, an obsessive interest in research on magic that is opposed by a lot of the nobles and the academia of your country and you’re always getting in trouble for pursuing that research, and your brother does something so gob-smackingly stupid that the country will have to turn to you for leadership, only you fall in love with your brother’s ex-fiancee and she with you and in the course of remaking the monarchy, you become a dragon and she becomes an immortal spirit. And the two of you do remake the monarchy with her as Queen and you as her consort, and save the country, reconcile with the nobility and academics and your brother and gather around you a team that includes a vampire, and humans from all the classes….

…where do you go from here?

This is the question that is front and center of The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady, Volume 7.

In most fairy tales, “happily-ever-after” marks the end of the story. So what if the princess (and prince and country) suffered trauma and loss to get to the wedding? So what if the prince had been a frog or the princess a swan, they get on with their lives. I’ve long looked for stories that stop and take a sober look at the after happily-ever-after. I love epilogues for that reason and sequels that take place 10 years later.  So what did the Heroes of the Revolution do when they got home? They could hardly pretend to be ordinary people anymore.

Piero Karasu has, to my immense joy, actually taken up the mantle of what happens next and presents a grander tale than I could have imagined. As ruling Queen, Euphylia has a vision…for Anisphia…to make their country a center of magicology research. But the capital is simply not the appropriate place to create this. So she conceives of a plan so grand it will require a new city, with Anisphia as it’s architect.

Anis, having embraced her inhumanity, now has to dig deep back into it to learn how to lead the people she has gathered around her.

Sure this series has its fill of dragons and vampires and werewolves, of magic swords and flying cars, but it is centered around the idea of answering the question, “what if someone wanted all those magic things to matter?” And when those someones are two women who are deeply in love, who have sacrificed their human lives to make their country a better place, they do matter.

Don’t think for one second that this is a profound book, though. This volume is full of small, human conversations, about dreams and hopes and fears, about a shared vision for a better future and the understandably selfish desire Anis and Euphie have to just stay together and ignore the world.  It’s not brilliantly written, but the love Anis and Euphie have for one another is explicitly stated – I believe this may be the first time they say they love each other openly – and their vision for their country is, well, vast. There’ll be plenty of room for them to grow into it and more stories to tell.

Ratings:

Art – I just cannot with this art. It needs to be epic and they look 6.
Story – 8
Characters – 9
Service – Rather less than any previous volume
Yuri – 10

Overall – 8

Do I want to read a series about two magical women building a city of magical research? Hell yes, I do.



Koharu to Minato: Watashi No Partner Ha Onna No Ko, Volume 1 (小春と湊 わたしのパートナーは女の子)

July 25th, 2024

Koharu to Minato: Watashi No Partner Ha Onna No Ko, Volume 1Two women smile at one another holding tapioca teas. One is taller with collar-length black hair that fades into lavender, wearing a fashionable black suit and accessories. The other is shorter, with long light brown hair, casually dressed in a green tee and jeans with her arm around the other woman's waist. (小春と湊 わたしのパートナーは女の子) is a fictionalized autobiographical comic essay on the real-lives of the creative team, Daruma and Hiarron, which has been running in Comic Yuri Hime magazine. Originally in the end pages of the magazine, it has recently been moved into the body. Conveniently I found some time recently to finish up this first collected volume in the middle of a very busy week. 

The main point of this book is that Koharu and Minato are adorable together. 10 years apart in age, Koharu is a bit of a free spirit, naturally a bit butchier than Minato, while Minato tends to be a fashion plate. The two of them are good for one another and their relationship is wholesome as can be. (As I write this review, my wife and I have just shared a bowl of cereal for an afternoon snack and we’re feeling very wholesome ourselves, so, like, I get it. ^_^)

The story, as such, becomes more interesting when they tell they story of how they met online and ended up meeting, then dating long-distance and eventually moving in together. I will say that I find myself oddly interested in the minutiae of their lives together. ^_^

There is no major conflict here. Maybe they go out for boba tea, or they have a date to see a movie. They live together and are very in love. It’s the kind of manga you’ll want to read a small section at a time, so you’re not overwhelmed with the cuteness. The art here is loose and comfortable, a style that suits the narrative very well.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 7
Characters  – It’s never not weird to score a person’s perspective on themselves. They both seem very nice. 8
Service – 0
Yuri – 10

Overall – 8

Although this is a fictionalized autobiographical look at their lives together – and they do discuss marriage at one point – there is little discussion of queer life in Japan (although that may be addressed in the next volume. For that reason, I am scoring this a a Yuri, not  LGBT comic.

This series began as a digital comic, but there’s a definite “meant for publication” feel to it. Despite that, it is currently in digital format only, so only available on Kindle in Japan, multiple JP digital manga sites and Bookwalker outside.

Volume 2 hit digital shelves in May, and if I need more comfort food Yuri, I’m sure to reach for the next volume as well.