Yuri Network News – (百合ネットワークニュース) – September 10, 2016

September 10th, 2016

YNN_Lissa

Yuri Manga

New items up on the Yuricon Store today:

2DK, G Pen, Alarm Clock  Volume 3 ( 2DK、Gペン、目覚まし時計。3) by Ohsawa Yayoi.

The second volume of 12 Minute Etude  (12分のエチュード ) by Nakahara Tsubaki.

Kuzushiro’s menagerie of high school girls gag comedy, Inugami-san to Nekoyama-san, Volume 5 (犬神さんと猫山さん)

And Katakura Ako’s dark romance Last Waltz, Volume 2 (ラストワルツ).

I know that Ohsawa Yayoi’s Black Yagi to Gekiyaku Madeline and Strange Babies remain fan favorites in scanlation form, so I hope some of you will consider purchasing the brand new Black Yagi to Gekiyaku Madeline Perfect Volume (ブラックヤギーと劇薬まどれーぬ 完全版). Get this entire web-idol strange romance series in one volume and with new content!

As always, check back regularly for new manga, anime, novels and good on the most comprehensive Yuri store on the internet.

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Live Action News

A new Cutie Honey movie is in the works, according to Komatsu-san over at Crunchyroll News. He has the links for the first glimpse of Mariya Nishiuchi, who will be starring as Hitomi Kisaragi in CUTIE HONEY ~TEARS~ singing the theme song on Avex Mode’s official Youtube channel. It’s the same story over again, but for once doesn’t look cheesy at all. I’m not sure how I feel about that. ^_^ Sister Jill is *finally* awesome, though – I approve completely. All supervillians ought to be awesome.

 

Anime News

Crunchyroll News has the scoop on the second season of the Sound! Euphonium anime, which is slated to debut in Japan in October.

 

Other News

This is completely off topic, but it’s so important I thought it worth mentioning. Crunchyroll has the news that  Kochira Katsushika-ku Kameari Kouen Mae Hashutsujo, known as KochiKame is finally ending after 40 years. If you’ve been to a Japanese bookstore, you’ve probably seen this manga, with it’s distinctive thick-eyebrowed police protagonist. This is an iconic manga and the ending of it marks the end of an era.

Crunchyroll and Funimation announced a joint partnership this week. It’s a good choice for both of them. Funimation was mostly relying on Hulu for streaming, but they’ve just dumped most of their anime and Crunchyroll wants to get into DVD/BD distribution. It’s not a merger, the two are just partnering, and it will be interesting to see where it leads. Justin Sevakis has some great insight into this news over at ANN.

 

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 | 3 Comments »


LGBTQ: Steven Universe, Season 2 (English)

September 9th, 2016

As much as I talk about Steven Universe, I’ve been remiss with reviews. With that in mind, I’m taking some time this month to get caught up on reviewing this amazing cartoon, so we can talk about things like representation and diversity in American cartoons, something I started in my review of Adventure Time.

In Season 1 of Steven Universe, we meet and instantly dislike Steven Universe, the half-magical son of carwash owner Greg Universe. Steven, his father and his guardians, the Crystal Gems, live in a small seaside town, based loosely but lovingly on Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. (A town, not at all coincidentally, which is popular with gays and lesbians. It’s a bit like a mid-Atlantic Provincetown.)  Steven appears and acts about 8 or 9 years old. He’s whiny and annoying, but about halfway through the first season, you start to get a better sense of him and his obviously not-at-all-human guardians.

In Season 2, Steven and the Crystal Gems develop as characters. We spend a lot of time watching the Gems not really comprehending humanity, interacting with them awkwardly – but loving them for Rose Quartz’s sake – and watching Steven struggle with nascent and unpredictable powers. Bits of their backstory starts to filter through the noise, and we get a better sense of the Gems’ feelings of obligation for Steven’s well-being, but also watch them deal with his need to be independent of their protection.

While this tug-of-war is going on, Steven is, little by little, introduced to his mother’s legacy. But more importantly, he starts to develop himself outside the heir to his mother’s legend the Gems require him to be. And when we meet his friend Connie, Steven suddenly becomes much, much more human.

I’m going to go on record that I adore Steven and Connie’s relationship and would have watched this cartoon if this was the only relationship in the series. They are terrific together. Connie’s overprotective, overachieving parents have raised a fine young woman. Almost immediately we can see that Steven and Connie genuinely care about each other and really enjoy each other’s company. They make a great partnership even this early on in the series.

One of the things I very much like about the series is the extremely diverse voice cast and characterization. Even before the cartoon gets into sexuality (which it will in a big way,) it’s diverse in other ways, including ethnicity and body type. But my perspective is that of a white woman, so any visible diversity seems, on the face of it, as a good thing. While Garnet, voiced by singer Estelle, reads to me as a woman of color, there’s some really terrific writing about Pearl as a PoC character, and why SU still doesn’t do black characters right. It’s all worth reading. I’m not the only one watching SU carefully for representation. That there is so much to parse is part of why I like the series.

We can summarize Season 2 as being about the humanizing of the characters – all of them, really. Greg gets fleshed out, the Gems start thinking of Steven as a separate entity from his mother, their leader, and Steven and Connie push each other to be better as people and friends. The people of Beach City start to develop as more than just background images, and suddenly you find yourself joining Ronaldo in his quest to to keep Beach City Weird. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story- 10
Characters – 10
Service – Not visually
Yuri – 5 Pearl’s idolization of Rose is most definitely a crush

Overall – 10

By the end of Season 2, I’d forgotten how whiny Steven was in Season 1. And by the end of Season 2, I was fully hooked, lined and sinkered. ^_^

Posted in English Anime, LGBTQ, Steven Universe, Western Cartoons | 8 Comments »


Steven Universe ~ The Answer (English)

September 6th, 2016

AnswerSUWell, how fortuitous! Just this morning, I was reading and sharing an article on PBS.org, Rebecca Sugar, Cartoon Network’s first female creator, on writing LGBTQ stories for kids, and lo and behold! my copy of The Answer, arrived. ^_^

The Answer is a hardcover children’s storybook, based on episode 22 of the second season of the Cartoon Network breakout hit, Steven Universe. The episode deals with the origin of Garnet, in which a powerful Sapphire and a common Ruby change fate to be together.

In the episode and the book, we are introduced to the Gems of Homeworld who are bent upon taking over Earth, opposed only by the Crystal Gems led by Rose Quartz. A Sapphire with foresight knows everything that will happen, including her own fate, but the rash behavior of one of her Ruby guards changes…everything.

The cartoon episode is absolutely grin-making, with a catchy little ditty sung by the two gems as they ponder their combined fate. I wondered how they would adapt that into a book?

They did a teriffic job. The illustations by Tiffany Ford and Elle Michalka, are swell, without trying to be the same as in the cartoon. But what really makes the book work is the border in which Ruby and Sapphire carry on a meta-textual conversation.

Artwork from "The Answer" by Rebecca Sugar, author, Tiffany Ford, illustrator, and Elle Michalka, illustrator. Photo courtesy of Rebecca Sugar

The story, written by and adapted for this book by Rebecca Sugar, is everything good and right with Steven Universe. Ruby and Sapphire confront being different, acknowledge what and who they are and learn to accept it with Rose Quartz’s help. This is an epic, colorful coming out story about two queer characters in brightly colored pictures with loving and accepting language, drawn and written especially for queer kids.

I hope I don’t have to tell you what to do now, do I? Get this book for yourself and a second copy for your local library. Tell the library this is a children’s book from a very popular TV cartoon. Tell friends with kids about it and lend your copy to them. Give it as gifts to child relatives and friends. Suggest this thing until people roll their eyes, because this book is a game-changer.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 9
Characters 10
LGBTQ – 10

Overall – 10

I cannot imagine what my life might have been like if Steven Universe was in existence when I was young, but I like to think it wouldn’t be all that much different than it is now.  The important thing is for the next geeky, queer kid who comes down the pike will have a book like this to read. How awesome for them. ^_^

Also, I think I want a poster of the cover. (*_*)

Posted in Steven Universe, Western Cartoons, Western Comic/Comix | No Comments »


SYNCANDI Multimedia Comic

September 4th, 2016

issue01-jp-COVERSYNCANDI is a sci-fi multimedia web/digital comic. Subtitled “real love in a synthetic world,” it portrays a moment of existence for Sync, an augmented human who has, over time, become 90% synthetic and Ikkyu the synthetic human healer Sync has kidnapped in order to extend her own life.

Sync takes Ikkyu into an “abandoned experimental zone”, Genies Res, to await her death as freely as she can manage. They are, of course being hunted by the corporate overlords. Ikkyu meets a shaman who may be the key to healing Sync.

The art is better than average, but not great. I’d call it a talented amateur level. Characters sit upon the backgrounds, rather than within them. The story synopsis having been established on the website, is then sort of ignored for what is supposed to be a romantic interlude between these two synthetic humans…without any effort made at building the relationship.

Let me overthink this for a moment. Ikkyu is a healer. It stands to reason that she’s naturally empathetic. It’s well known that patients develop profound emotional attachment with the medical professionals who treat them. It would, therefore, seem like a little effort needs to be made for this “relationship” to not seem kind of..icky? But Sync is supposed to be the tough, but fragile, non-verbal type, ala Xena, while Ikkyu is clearly meant to be the obvious femme to Sync’s butch. With their relationship established when we reach Genies Res right at the beginning of the comic, there’s nothing to tell us how they got to this place where they are both okay sleeping with each other. In a print comic I might allow this. There’s no excuse for not taking some time to walk us up to this point in a digital offering. 2 pages, and we’d be in sympatico. 4 pages and we’d feel the characters at a much deeper level than we do.

The story is told through digital comics and multimedia. And it has some interesting features. The website includes a story trailer and a music video which, if watched alone is a mere curiosity, but watching it after issue 4 of the comic, where I left off, could very well be the next “issue” itself. The site also contains a blog which contains Ikkyu’s Journal, which gives readers insight to the story from another perspective.

The story has updates monthly.

Highly influenced by cyberpunk and Japanese culture, the story itself is available in English- and Japanese-language versions

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 7
Character – 7
Yuri – 8
Service – 6

Overall – 7

Syncandi is a decent enough idea and with a few small refinements in future issues, could become compelling. All it needs is a little depth and a little polish.

Thanks to Roberto of STUDIO SYNCANDI for the review copy!

Posted in Western Comic/Comix | No Comments »


Yuri Network News – (百合ネットワークニュース) – September 3, 2016

September 3rd, 2016

YNN_MariK

Yuri Manga

It’s an online Yuri manga bonanza this week!

For those of you reading Shimura Takako’s Awajima Hyakkei (淡島百景) series online, the final issue will be posted in October, according to Ohta Publishing’s twitter account. Presumably this means that the series, about a group of young ladies who have entered an academy for a famous all-female musical performance troupe, will get a second print volume this winter.

Via Godley Malabanan, the creator of  World Canvas, we have news of Spring Roll, by spring, that follows “The daily life of two girls who somehow fell in love with each other” on LINE’s webtoons.

Thanks to YNN Correspondent and creator Ari North, who wrote in to tell us about their comic, Always Human, “a manga-influenced webcomic about nanobots, genetic engineering and two women falling in love.” Also on LINE’s webtoons, this sounds like an amazing series. Science fiction author David Brin described it as “a reflection on genetic engineering, body image, beauty, and gender identity, as well as what it means to be human”. Well, cool!

And YNN Correspondent Bing C has written in with more news from online comic platform Lezhin. “Lezhin has recently announced the winners of the 1st Lezhin US Comic Contest.  Two new Yuri webcomics won second and third place:

Never Knew I Wanted won 2nd place.
How Juliet Lied won 3rd place
Bing suggests “to check out the growing number of Yuri/GL webcomics in English on Lezhin, scroll down to the webcomics under the heading “Girls Love”. Some of the Yuri/GL webcomics currently there were previous Lezhin Comic Contest winners.”

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Yuri Anime

Crunchyroll News has the report that Glitter Force, the localized version of Smile PreCure is getting a second season on Netflix.

Live-Action

I don’t really know what to make of this….there are plans for a live-action adaptation of Saki, the mahjong, moe and Yuri epic manga that I keep assuming will be finished any day and keeps chugging along.

The Grand Stage Live website has been updated with an image of the flyer for the show and I thought I’d tell you about the flyers. ^_^

When you go to a Japanese anime/manga store, there are racks for flyers for new releases, shows, anime movie premiers, doujinshi events and in-person events. The flyers interest me a great deal, because we always hear about how technologically advanced Japan is and never really think about that. In fact, every event I have ever been to there, comes with a half ton of printed matter. So check the link and imagine picking this up at Animate in Ikebukuro. (Actually, if anyone sees this somewhere, can you grab me one? I’d love to have a copy.)

The amazing, fabulous, wonderful Lumberjanes comic has been greenlit for a live-action movie. And now it has a director, Emily Carmichael. Woot!

Other News

The Yayoi Museum in Tokyo is holding a retrospective exhibition of artwork by Yamagishi Ryouko. She was a member of the genre-defining 24 year group (which includes Moto Hagio and Riyoko Ikeda and other influential and extraordinary artists.) Here on Okazu, Yamagishi is primarily known for her creation Shiroi Heya no Futari, which I credit as being the first “Yuri” manga. The exhibit will run from September 30-December 25. If you get a chance to visit, do let us know how it is!

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 | 2 Comments »