Yuri Network News – (百合ネットワークニュース) – July 9, 2016

July 9th, 2016

YNN_Lissa

LGBTQ Comics

From YNN Correspondent Shannon L, Heathen, by Natasha Alterici, is a Norse tale of a young Viking woman who sets off to defeat a god with the help – and love – of a Valkyrie. Bitch Media gave it rave reviews. Click the link on the title to get a preview of the work. I’m adding it to the to-read pile.

Also from Shannon, and I quote, “Lesbian bountyhunter in SPAAAAACE.” Satellite Falling looks quite good. I guess my summer reading is going to have to be a pile of western works again. ^_^

Panels has a discussion of Magically Queer Webcomics that’s worth taking a look at.

 

LGBTQ Events

San Diego Comic Con is coming up and they have a small set of LGBTQ panels that look interesting:

Thursday, July 21
5:00pm – Queer History in Comics (Description: LGBT)
6:00pm -LGBTQ Geek Year in Review
6:30pm – SuperheroIRL: How Pop Culture Media Brings Justice and Healing (Description: LGBT)

Friday, July 22
10:00am – Queer Representation in All-Ages and Youth Media (Description: LGBT)
7:00pm – The Gay Agenda in Horror: Terrifying Subtext (Description: LGBT)

Saturday, July 23
4:00pm – We Are All Heroes: The Changing Landscape of Comics, Geekdom, and Fanboy Culture (Description: LGBT)
6:00pm Gays (and more) in Comics (and more): Year 29: Queerly Inspired (Description: LGBT)

And over on the east coast, Flamecon in Brooklyn is moving to a larger venue. They’ve got a new no-weapon-looking-things-at-all policy for cosplay in support of post-Orlando trauma  and on Sunday, August 21, they are giving free access to teens in partnership with the Ali Forney Center. I’ll be presenting during Flamecon and will be massively jet lagged, so watching me flounder ought to be funny. ^_^

From August 3 to7th in Tokyo, a play called Fragment Edge will include a story that touches on girls in love. Comic Natalie has the report.

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Yuri Anime

Again from Shannon L. A new Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha spin-off anime, Vivid Strike! has been announced. Komatsu-san on Crunchyroll News has the details.

Crunchyroll has added the Sound! Euphonium OVA to their lineup, Scott Green reports.

Other News

Kinokuniya has announced a new promotion called Bibliobattle in which you have a limited amount of time to present the content of a book, and fieled questions about this book. Winner is chosen by majority vote and I have to say that this eerily similar to the “Read Fight” described in  the Light Novel R.O.D., Volume 10.

Takarazuka is coming to New York City in just a few weeks and seats are still available. See Takarazuka performs Chicago…it’ll be a hoot.

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 »


Yuri Anime: Yamibou, Disk 3 (English)

July 8th, 2016

YamiboWell, here we are at Yamibou, Disk 3.

The disk begins with an arc that immediately has the potential for being extremely good or extremely horrible, but manages to thread between them for something that doesn’t need to be in this series at all, but isn’t terrible; about a colonization ship that would have just failed in space if Lilith hadn’t been there. Hazuki is pretty much window dressing for the arc.

In the middle of the space ark arc, we digress into an extremely tedious arc with Gargantua and his trolls, that ultimately turns out to be the climax of the whole story. Eve/Jill/Hatsumi returns, sends Gargantua and Ritsuko to live happily ever after, while leaving Hazuki in an alternative version of the one she came from in which she has, at least, a mother.

We learn that Eve is not, in fact, Hazuki’s sister, but Lilith’s sister, who should have been tending the library, but was traveling through the books.

It’s not a great ending, but not just because Hatsumi leaves Hazuki with a weird obsession about the child she will one day bear or because we return to the most tedious service of the series, but because it could have been, with one tweak, a much, much better ending.

If the point of the series had been to tell Hazuki’s story, all they would have needed was to bring Hazuki to the library until she died. She’d have her Hatsumi and lived happily ever after, the end. But that was never truly the point of the series. Traveling through the stories was the point and Hazuki was merely the vehicle.

For an incredibly messy ending with loose ends all over the place, it wasn’t as stabbingly awful as I remembered it. It still think the incest and child thing is creepy at best, but your mileage will obviously vary.

I did quite like Tamamonomae’s floating compound, and the idea that if there is a library in which all the books are worlds, then there could be a compound which had access to them all. I would love to see someone with talent take a stab at that, although, on second thought, I think Borges already came close in the stories “The Library,” “The Garden of Forking Paths” and “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”, all in Labyrinths. (I strongly recommend this book if you have not read it. It deeply informs my writing and my reading. ^_^ So if you want to understand me, this book is a great place to begin.)

The art really didn’t hold up well. It was surprising to see that this was Studio Deen, although, they did get much better with time. As excruciating as it was to watch this again , I don’t think I hated it and maybe even can find some “like” in there for it.

Ratings:

Art – 5 Still crappy art
Story – 6 How *easy* it would have been to make this a good story
Characters – 7 How *easy* it would have been to make this a good story about good characters
Yuri – 6
Service – 8 It almost disappeared there for a bit, but then came back with a vengeance.

Overall – I’d give this series a 7, exactly what I gave it the first time around in 2004. ^_^

Hazuki is still gay. She’ll spend years falling for girls who look or sound like Hatsumi for a while, then settle down with a nice girl and have that daughter.

Once again, many thanks to Media Blasters for the review copy and for bringing this early Yuri Anime out in English!

Posted in English Anime, Yuri Anime | No Comments »


Yuri Anime: Yamibou, Disk 2 (English)

July 5th, 2016

YamiboYamibou, Disk 2, is about as good as this series gets.

We learn a little about Jill/Eve/Hatsumi’s backstory, who Gargantua is and his relationship to Jill/Eve/Hatsumi and Hazuki has a few opportunities to be a little more than just a sailor-fukued Heathcliff. And, in doing so, brings humanity to the series, rather than just an unending string of fetishized tropes.

In the episodes with Quill and Fujihime, we get to see a glimpse of Hazuki outside of her burdensome desire for Hatsumi and she seems like a nice person. And, yet again, I find myself desperately wishing I could pluck the nice young lesbian out of the crappy story, take her home, talk to her about life and put in her a better story. ^_^;

Ratings:

Art – 5 It’s still crappy art
Story – 6 “Better” doesn’t mean “good.”
Characters – 7 Such brief glimpses, but you can imagine what it might be like
Yuri – 8
Service – a grillion and one

Thanks so much to Media Blasters for the review copy. It was nice to see the Fujihime episodes still didn’t totally suck.

Posted in English Anime, Yuri Network News | 3 Comments »


Sailor Moon ‘S’ Trailer Screened at Anime Expo

July 4th, 2016

Viz Media held a special Sailor Moon panel yesterday at Anime Expo, where they announced the cast, timing and extras for the first part of the Sailor Moon S video release, ANN has all the details, as you might expect.

S was slightly delayed because, after complaints about the visuals and sound in earlier sets, Viz announced that they were changing the process.

Well, the new extended trailer, dubbed, is up on YouTube and I have an opinion about it. ^_^ If this is what we’re going to be getting for the dub – this may well be the best dub ever made. I do not say this lightly. I don’t much like dubs, but the video and audio quality here looks and sounds…well, terrific.

Watch the trailer for yourself and let us know what you think in the comments!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zV2O9T1zZc

Posted in English Anime, Sailor Moon | 7 Comments »


Yuri Network News – (百合ネットワークニュース) – July 2, 2016

July 2nd, 2016

YNN_MariK Top news this week are some interesting license announcements from Anime Expo 2016 last night.

Yuri Manga

Yen leads the pack with the announcement that they have licensed “Violence Yuri” manga Murcielago, by Yoshimura Kana. I’ve reviewed Volumes 1-7 and if you’re not sure if this title is for you, definitely read my reviews. It’s an ultraviolent, vile and horrible manga, and I would never recommend it to anyone else, but I like it. ^_^

Yen had a bunch of news this week, including an agreement with BookWalker Global which will carry their English manga. If you are still resistant to paying for online manga, either because you don’t have a phone or tablet, or you don’t like subscription models, let me assure you that Bookwalker Global is the perfect solution. Their reader works great on a laptop or desktop screen, and they have a very large bookstore to choose from in both English and Japanese – with a pretty well-developed Yuri catalog in Japanese. In my opinion, it’s the online bookstore we’ve waited for and I really like using it, especially for light novels. I recommend it highly.

Viz has also blown us away with their news – a deluxe box set of the Revolutionary Girl Utena manga slated for 2017! If you are not familiar with the manga, be warned that the TV manga is significantly straighter than the anime. But artist Saito Chiho brings her signature elegance to the whole thing and it’s worth reading both TV and movie manga for 2 more wholly unique takes on the story. Like the TV anime and movie, the same characters are reworked differently to create a whole new story. (Additionally, the movie manga changed my life completely, so there’s that. ^_^)

Undoubtedly, there will be more news out of AnimeExpo, so keep tuned!

If you (like me) didn’t think to preorder the most recent issue of Nakayoshi magazine, you (like me) found out that it has completely sold out everywhere! Komatsu-san tells you why over at Crunchyroll News! (Hint: Cardcaptor Sakura is still super popular.)

All over my Japanese language feed last night was news of Nagata Kabi’s Pixiv manga now going to print, Sabishi-sugi Rezu Fuzoku ni Ikimashita Report (さびしすぎてレズ風俗に行きましたレポ) about the mating behaviors of native Japanese lesbians. ^_^;

And great news from our friend Niki Smith, who has a new graphic novel length work coming soon. Crossplay is about a group of friends figuring out sexuality and gender identity through cosplay and fandom.  She says “There will be more than a few women living happily ever after together.” Can’t wait to see it!

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Other News

Steven Universe will be returning on July 18th with new episodes! I am actually dying to see how the Peridot arc concludes, but I’ve enjoyed the sideline into Ruby and Sapphire’s relationship. ^_^

Completely off-topic for Okazu, but wow, two women have been signed by a minor league pro baseball team! Kelsey Whitmore and Stacy Piagno will be playing for the Sonoma Stompers this summer.

You remember the lesbian classic movie, But I’m A Cheerleader!, don’t you? If not, run out and rent it right now, I’ll wait. ^_^  I know that when I watched Natasha Lyonne and Clea DuVall in that movie I was kinda hoping that DuVall was actually gay. She’s so interesting. Well, apparently she is and she is reuniting with Lyonne and another Cheerleader co-star Melanie Lynskey for her directorial debut, Intervention.  DuVall and Lyonne will be paired once again as a lesbian lovers.  I’m definitely going to watch this.

Taneka Stotts is spearheading a very exciting Kickstarter for Afro-Futurism comics that I wanted to let you know all about. I’ve backed Elements: FIRE because it sounds simply amazing. It blew threw 1/3 of it’s goal on day one of crowdfunding – which is not yet over – so signs point to this being a successful project. (And again proves how delusional it is when publishers insist there is no audience for comics/literature/anything at all by and for people of color.)  I hope you’ll go take a look and consider backing this and other diverse indie comic projects! It really makes a difference.

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 | 7 Comments »