Yuri Anime: Yurikuma Arashi The Complete Series, Disk 2 (English)

August 25th, 2017

While watching Disk 1 of Yurikuma Arashi, the collaborative effort between Ikuhara Kunihiko and Morishima Akiko, I spent most of the time searching for meaning. While watching Disk 2, I gave up on that and just let the story play out while I stared at it.

For once, the confusion wasn’t a surfeit of plot, but an excess of same. Kureha, Ginko and Lulu all had their own fairytales, all of which overlapped at moments that they met, but were otherwise wholly different and unmanageably massive. The Severance Court adds to to confusion by adding restrictions on all of the characters that served no purpose other than creating plot complications so that the several fairy tales can’t possibly all have happy endings…until they do.

The happy endings were the surprising twist at the end, since we’d all have a reasonable expectation of at least one of them ending alone and miserable but, no, this fairy tale was going to end with the two princesses living happily-ever-after, goddamn it. Even if we had to kill a few other people to make it happen.

Unfortunately, the translation on this disk was distractingly bad, with at least one gaffe that my wife protested. “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” was a thing that was said a number of times this disk, which makes me think the team they assigned here got confused and just gave up and no one checked their work.

Equally annoying was the technical side, which I suppose must have been the same for the first disk, but for some reason didn’t affect me as problematic. The controls on the menu were beige, and would light up light pink when clicked. I had to get up and lean over the TV to see the color change. I’m old and my eyes are crap, but the one thing I am very sensitive to is color and this was brutally bad. Please run title screens by someone over 40, Funimation. Thanks.

Ratings:

Art – 8 Weirdly happy, but still weird.
Story – 7 …and they lived happily ever after, somehow.
Characters – 7 Bears all the way down
Yuri – 14 million
Service – 7

Overall – 7

It wasn’t bad, but it was so service-y and creepy in places that I can’t call it “good,” either. It was certainly a thing we watched, wasn’t it?

Thank you Yuricon Superhero Dan P for giving me a chance to relive my adoration of a wonderful evil psychotic lesbian in Yurika.

Posted in English Anime, Ikuhara Kunihiko, Morishima Akiko, Yuri Anime | 3 Comments »


Yuri Doujinshi: Yuricon Jimoto Hougenhen

August 24th, 2017

Today’s review is not so much about content as is about form.

Yuricon Jimoto Hougenhen, available in Japanese as ユリコン: 地元方言編, is a Yuri doujinshi collection based around characters who speak in specific Japanese dialects. Artists include names well-known to us here at Okazu, Kitao Taki and Takemiya Jin as well as others whose work I’m now interested in tracking down, Ichiji and Kanarase.

Accents focused on are Kouchi, Saitama, Hokkaido and the inevitable Osaka. The stories are all cute rather than fetishy or compelling, with a goofy idea behind the collection as a whole. But very interesting is the fact that we can get this doujinshi on our Kindle devices/ apps! Now that is amazing.

The collection is untranslated from Japanese…this is not an English edition. But it is the very same edition that Japanese readers can get on their digital devices, which makes it a really awesome shift in the globalization of digital works AND a great way to practice reading Japanese dialects at the same time. ^_^
And, because this is a doujinshi – and therefore creator owned – you know the folks who made it are getting paid from your purchase. It’s a win all the way around!

Ratings:

Overall – 8 A little goofy and sweet.

I’m not going to lie to you…getting this is cool but not nearly as cool as buying directly at a comic event. However, as most of us can’t pop over to Japan for every event, getting doujinshi digitally is running a close second. And you won’t have to have ever say things like you’ve organized quaternary storage for your collection, which I did, last weekend. ^_^; Here’s all of Yuri Shimai, Yuri Hime, Yuri Hime S, Yuri Hime Selection and Comic Yuri Hime from 2003-2016.

I love digital books. Just sayin’. ^_^

Posted in Digital Manga, Doujinshi | 4 Comments »


Yuri Manga: Azuma-san to Itakura-san ha Koi wo Suru. (吾妻さんと板倉先輩は恋をする。)

August 23rd, 2017

Being the manager of the Chorus club is a lot of work. Itakura-san is in charge of new members, keeping the chorus together during practice and keeping the energy high as they get close to competition time. In Azuma-san to Itakura-san ha Koi wo Suru. (吾妻さんと板倉先輩は恋をする。), what Itakura-sa has no time for is Azuma-san, who wants to join the club late in the game, with really mediocre singing. She just doesn’t have time for this! So, then, why can’t she get the underclassman out of her mind?

Itakura-san reluctantly allows Azuma-san to join the chorus and, after a little tutoring, gets the young woman to fit in seamlessly. And only then is Itakura-san able to see just why Azuma-san is on her mind all the time. Luckily for her, Azuma-san feels the same way. It’s  a nice little Yuri story.

Unlike the previous story, “Yuujyou Shiraben” is not a nice story. When Aizawa Yuuka’s class gets a transfer student with the same exact name, Yuuka thinks it’s pretty funny. Aizawa Yuuka and Aizawa Yuuka become friends, naturally. But Yuuka sees the other Yuuka beating her academically, and in sports and even taking her friends, and starts to fantasize about killing the girl with the same name. In fact, she’s pretty sure she actually did kill her, but there she is, day after day. And day after day, there’s the other Aizawa Yuuka, still thinking they are friends. It all comes to a crisis when Yuuka realizes her jealousy about Yuuka is because she’s in love with her. Oh, okay, that makes perfect sense. Not. We’ve all had serial fantasies about killing the people we love. Not.

So as cute as the first story is, the second story is pretty much the opposite. ^_^ Whether this collection is worth reading will be entirely a personal decision on your part. I think Itakura and Azuma, whose story is more than half the book, were worth spending at least a little time on.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 7 for “Itakura,” 5 for “Yuujyou”
Characters – 8 for “Itakura,” 5 for “Yuujyou”
Service – 1 on principle for “Itakura,” 3 for the violence in “Yuujyou”
Yuri – 5 “Itakura,” 2 for “Yuujyou”

Overall – 6

Posted in Yuri Manga | No Comments »


Discovering New Yuri 2017 Presentation

August 21st, 2017

At Yurithon 2017 I did a presentation called Must-Read/Must-Watch Yuri.  At Flamecon 2017, the same presentation was presented as Discovering The Best New Yuri Anime and Manga.

I promised to put the entire presentation up here, so folks could draw on the links, rather than taking photos of the screen. Not that I didn’t want them to do that, but this is SO much easier, I hope! For reasons, the videos were making it impossible to upload as a Powerpoint (and not everyone has that, so I’ve taken out the videos and converted the presentation to PDF. The links should work for you. Only the Utena Blu-Ray and Citrus anime have no links, as they currently have no ETA. 

 

 

 

Posted in Classic Yuri, English Anime, English Manga, Events, Gift Guides, Yuri Anime, Yuri Manga | 1 Comment »


Yuri Network News – (百合ネットワークニュース) – August 19, 2017

August 19th, 2017

LGBTQ Comics Event

August 19 and 20 (today and tomorrow) is Flamecon, NYC’s only all-LGBTQ comic event! I’ll be presenting the Discovering Yuri Manga (which they have inexplicably named “Into the Depths“) at 1:00 on Sunday. See you there! Sunday, they are doing a Youth Day promotion. All attendees under 21 can enter for free! What a lovely idea. So bring a young friend who loves Yuri !

 

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Yuri Manga

YNN Correspondent Rob has written in from Italy to let us know that Girl Friends by Milk Morinaga is being published in 5 volumes in Italy!

Sakura Trick wraps up in the October issue of Mangatime Kirara magazine on sale September 27th. Comic Natalie reports.

Also from Comic Natalie, Ours magazine, (home of After Hours manga) is starting up a high school Yuri drama called Atashi no Sempai.

Awajima Hyakkei, (淡島百景) Shimura Takako’s webcomic about an all-female performing troupe that in no way is anything like Takarazuka, has made it to Volume 2.

Oh oh! And! Konno Kita has a new Yuri manga collection called Lily Lily Rose from Birz Comics, which I think is a great publisher for her slightly off-beat creeptastic, but beautiful, Yuri.

Hakusensha is putting all of Shimizu Reiko’s Kaguya-hime on e-book, with the first three volumes free and the rest 30% off on their e-book site (in Japanese, there is no licensed translation.). This series has it all, Yuri, BL, incest, clones, alien mold, survival on an island, an ancient feudal Chinese kingdom and utter craziness. I recommend it highly!

Fujeida Miyabi’s Colorful End Contents are available on Comic Walker for free. This is just one chapter for his Comic Cune entry, but it’s nice to see his work again. And, while I was searching Fujieda-sensei’s work, I see that his “headphone girl” doujinshi collection Aamairo Crossover is available on US Kindle!

 

Anime News

Crunchyroll is doing a spotlight on Aria the Animation, which they have added to their streaming catalog, just as Nozomi/RightStuf is running a Kickstarter for an Aria dub release! AND Komatsu-san at Crunchyroll reports on the special long promotional video for Aria the Avennire – which is headed to Blu-Ray, He notes that “all three episodes in one 60-minute disc was announced in May. The set also comes with a bonus DVD that includes two stage reading parts by the voice actresses from the events in June 2016 and April 2017.”

Nozomi also announced a definitive Blu-Ray edition of the complete Revolutionary Girl Utena TV series and movie at their Otakon panel last weekend. (I’m sure it will be amazing…and just I can’t get past the screwed up dimensions of the model images on their press release. It’s stupid, but the boxes are just so out of proportion…)

Crunchyroll also has a spotlight on Yoshitomi Abe’s series Haibane Renmei, which is on my “to rewatch” list.

One more from Crunchyroll News. Anime Studio Mappa listed a new anime spearheaded by Utena director, Ikuhara Kunihiko. No more details available at this time, but I’m sure we’ll hear more as time goes on. Scott Green also reports on an issue of Eureka magazine that focuses on Ikuhara and his work. (Some of you may remember that Eureka magazine ran the Current State of Yuri Culture issue from December 2014, as well.)

 

Other News

Gyan28-san has put together a really huge, comprehensive list of Japanese LGBTQ groups online if that interests you. It interests me, so I have a smaller, still-growing Twitter list of JP LGBTQ resources to follow.

The Guardian has a lovely photo set called Love Island! LGBTQ Japan – in pictures.

Know some cool Yuri News you want people to know about? Become a Yuri Network Correspondent by sending me any Yuri-related news you find.Emails go to anilesbocon01 at hotmail dot com. Not to the comments here, please, or they might be forgotten or missed. There’s a reason for this madness. This way I know you are a real human, not Anonymous (which I do not encourage – stand by your words with your name!) and I can send you a YNN correspondent’s badge.

Thanks to all of you – you make this a great Yuri Network!

Posted in Yuri Network News | 4 Comments »