We’ve hit a point this year where were have enough English-language VNs and sims that it’s absolutely worth collecting them in one place. To that end I’ve added a Yuri Games & Visual Novels page on the Yuricon Store.
Now the Yuricon Store is home to the most comprehensive listing online or off, of Yuri Manga in Japanese and in English, Digital Yuri Manga, Yuri Anime on DVD or BD, Yuri Light Novels, Yuri Drama CDs, Yuri Goods and Yuri Games! And we’re adding more all the time.
The new category is fully searchable, by Developer, Name, or genre focus. Links are available to physical copies and digital where they both exist. So have some fun on Yuricon’s new Yuri Game & Visual Novels page.
Dangerous Women: Tales of Queer Villiany is at just about 2/3 the initial funding goal in our first week! I encourage you all to take advantage of the excellent backer pricing and rewards available to you and help us reach our initial goal quickly. You can also support us by sharing the campaign on your own groups and lists.
Stretch goals will give more money to the writers and we have a really cool stretch goal planned, so please help us out and back this awesome prose anthology of queer women and their quests for power.
I came home last night to find this news – Kodansha has acquired Ichijinsha. The publisher of Comic Yuri Hime will now be a wholly-owned subsidiary of one of the three largest publishers in Japan. What that will mean for Comic Yuri Hime is as yet unknown, but consider that negotiations must have been going on for many months and Ichijinsha has planned for Comic Yuri Hime to go monthly in 2017. It may mean something and it may mean nothing for us. We’ll have to wait and see. I found the article on Comic Natalie, but here is ANN’s writeup in English.
ANN also tells us that the Akuma no Riddle manga is coming to an end this winter. It is available in English in print from Seven Seas and in digital format on Global Bookwalker.
Events
LGBTQ Comics Consortium Prism Comics will be bringing great LGBTQ comics to Stan Lee’s Comikaze in Los Angeles on October 28-30 and New Jersey Comic Expo in Edison, NJ on November, 19-20. Contact Prism if you want to volunteer some time!
Yuri Anime
Crunchyroll will be streaming Sound! Euphonium 2, according to Crunchyroll News.
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!
The train wreck that is the plot of Saito Chiyo-sensei’s Torikaebaya, Volume 9 (とりかえ・ばや) just keeps getting wreckier and wreckier.
Sarasojuu who was born as a woman, but should have been a man, has been masquerading now for a while as a woman…as her sibling Suiren, in fact. Suiren, who was born a man, but should have been a woman, has been playing the part of a male courtier as Sarasojuu.
Complicating things, Sara has fallen in love with the Emperor and Suiren with Toguu-sama, his female heir. In a botched attempt to meet Toguu-sama once more, Suiren and Sara protect Toguu-sama from being assassinated, but must be punished for violating protocols and endangering her in the first place.
I desperately want the Emperor to clue in on what’s going on, but as decent a person as he is, he’s showing no signs of that. And he’s being pressured to choose a male heir over Toguu-sama by enemy factions in the government.
This volume almost exclusively follows Sara as Suiren. And I’m feeling uneasy about it, because she’s starting to assimilate into her “switched role” as a woman. It doesn’t feel right to me at all.
BUT, in Volume 9 one really super important thing happens for which I am extremely grateful. Poor Shi-no-hime, Sara’s wife in name only, with two children by Tsuwabuki, lost, almost utterly alone, is redeemed. Her family petitions Sara’s family to dissolve the marriage, when they receive an offer from a much older man. The dissolution is approved, with genuine regrets on Sara’s part, but Shi-no-hime is not moving for love, but a sense of duty to her children. As she sets off on her trip to her new husband’s house, Tsuwabuki sweeps up and rides off with her. At his summer home, he promises to take care of his children if she’ll have him. They – finally – are allowed to be together. Thank the gods. At least Shi-no-hime gets a happy ending. Of all the characters in the book, I felt worst for her.
As I read, it dawned on me that if either Suiren and Sarasojuu were gay – or, to be more precise, if they were allowed to be gay as the sex they best suited, this story would be very different. But instead, Sara is finding her life as Suiren less uncomfortable, while Suiren is still managing as Sarasojuu. If they are to find happiness in love, I fear it will have to be as their birth sex. There doesn’t seem a way through this in which they can both, be the sex they wish to be and have the love they wish to have. Even having the tenguu switch them now would only make things worse, as Suiren loves Toguu-sama as a man and Sara loves the Emperor as a woman. Aughs. So many aughs.
The Handmaiden, from director Park Chan-wook is, in a word, spectacular.
Based on Sarah Water’s exceptional novel Fingersmith (which itself was given the live-action treatment as a BBC miniseries), The Handmaiden is a pretty fair retelling of the story, set in Japanese-occupied Korea.
Kim Tae-ri plays Sook-hee, the small-time thief and conwoman recruited to become a maid for a wealthy eccentric’s ward, Hideko, played by Kim Min-hee. Both actresses were fantastic and, had I not already known the story, would have blown me away at the plot twists.
The setting works. The characters switch back and forth between Japanese and Korean fluidly, each language functioning as it’s own symbol. The clothing and homes presented are a pretty wonderful period setting. But the thing that seemed strangest at the beginning of the movie, the main house being of western design, makes perfect sense in creating a space that is nowhere and nowhen, even as the story particulars place the story firmly in a particular place and time.
Like the book, the first part of the story is told twice, once from each woman’s perspective and, like the book, it’s eyebrow-raising to realize just how much seeing it from one perspective changes everything. The final part of the movie is where it deviates from the novel, but other than one scene that could have been cut out completely, the end is satisfying, if a bit pandering.
If you’re a long-time reader here, you know my biggest gripe about Japanese live-action is the pacing and lack of appropriate intimacy. Kisses are dry-mouthed and passionless. Korean live-action works do not suffer from either of these problems. I’m not a huge consumer of Korean dramas or movies, but every one that I’ve watched has been smartly paced and the romance or sex has been appropriate to the story.
Which brings me to the sex. There is some. And the camera gets way closer than I like, but otherwise is fine. Unlike other viewers, I prefer to imagine that I’m not in there with them, that I’m not part of the scene at all. Not as voyeur or participant. That said, the sex is only slightly cinematic and thankfully, not extended to the point of being boring. (Which was part of the problem with Blue is the Warmest Color, that the sex scenes went on and on and on and on… the actresses became exhausted and the comic creator was disgusted.)
There are some deviations from the book – several are consistent with the characters as they are presented. The penultimate scene and final scene could have been cut whole and nothing would have been lost. But the movie still was a pretty solid adaptation of an excellent book – and how often do I say that?
The movie will be coming out from Magnolia Pictures in English on October 21, 2016 and will be available on Amazon Instant Video. I recommend it highly. Check out the trailer for yourself.
Ratings:
Characters – 9
Story 9 (Except for the last bit)
Cinematography – 9
Lesbian – 10
Overall – 9
There is some graphic violence (and some implication of other icky things) but it’s not what you think.
“Yes, you burn with passion, yes, you desire vengeance and control, of course you have devastating plans and amazing powers, but there is so much more to supervillainy than that.”
Dangerous Women: Tales of Queer Villainy, from Northwest Press features 13 stories by queer, non binary and women of color authors about queer, non-binary and women of color supervillians. Get to know mad scientists, evil geniuses, master manipulators and superpowered sociopaths and their wives and girlfriends. ^_^
If we hit our stretch goals on the kickstarter, the creators will get bonuses, so your support is very important to us. For as little as $5, you can get a DRM-free digital copy and as little as $10 gets you a print volume! Support Dangerous Women…and you might get to live. ^_^
Erica Friedman is the Founder of Yuricon, ALC Publishing Lesbian Icon. Speaker, Writer, Editor/Adapter, LGBTQ manga tastemaker, 百合人. Proud to be a MLS. Learn more >>
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We’ve hit a point this year where were have enough English-language VNs and sims that it’s absolutely worth collecting them in one place. To that end I’ve added a Yuri Games & Visual Novels page on the Yuricon Store.
Kickstarter News
