LGBTQ Comic: Sunstone (English)

February 18th, 2015

sunstone1If you’re paying attention to the larger world of comics, the name Stjepan Seijic will be known to you. A popular webcomic artist, he has recently taken over as artist on the Image Comics series Rat Queens – presumably after Top Cow had picked up this work by him, and after the previous artist was arrested. I had encountered this work some months ago and since then, it’s being poking at me, reminding me of…something. I just figured out what that something is.

Sejic’s series Sunstone is a very adult comic, about two women who are into BDSM and who encounter each other online. Ally and Lisa meet and find that they are very compatible with each other and each other’s lives.  There is no “plot” per se. This is a slice-of-life where the lives are lived by two adult woman who enjoy BDSM.

I have long said that BDSM is well-suited to a format like text or comics, where everything can be beautiful and sensual without any banal reality. In Sunstone, Sejic’s really captured everything I mean by that. The characters are attractive and sexy. No one has acne, or is glumpy, or has a verbal tic. Even when they fret and stress it’s idealised and cute. Which works, but also leaves me wishing someone had a verbal tic or something. ^_^;

As I’ve said, there is no plot – as Lisa tells us right way, in fact. There’s no evil wizard, no rescue from the tower, just adult lives that intersect, intertwine…and, assumably, at some point in the future, part.

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On the positive side, this book is really beautiful. On the negative, I found myself wandering off mid-scene a few times. Lisa and Ally are too flawless as people, and the subject of BDSM, while sort of interesting for me for a ten minute conversation isn’t interesting enough for me for an entire comic.  I did find the “Making of” section in the end and the lots of pretty pictures very much worth my time. I’m definitely not complaining.

There was just that something poking and nagging at me as I turned page after page feeling like I had read something like this somewhere before….

…and then it hit me!

Maka-Maka. You remember it, right? Volume 1 and Volume 2 by Kishi Torajiro, were put out by Media Blasters in 2008 and 2009. These two volumes were arguably the very best work MB ever did in print. The story followed two women, Nene and Jun, and their friends-with-benefits relationship.The art in Sunstone is prettier, and the BDSM is portrayed very sincerely and positively (no 50 Shades-ish lack of consent or comprehension here) but there were specific expressions that were so similar I had to laugh. I’m not saying Sejic copied – I doubt he even knows Maka Maka existed – just that some of the character’s expressions, are similar enough that the one reminded me of the other. Lisa’s expressions, particularly, reminded me of Jun on a few panels.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 5 Slice-of-BDSM-life
Characters – 7 Likable, which makes it all work. No one here is a jerk.
Yuri – 8 Ally and Lisa definitely like each other. Love could happen.
Service – How do I even score this!? The story is pretty much a collection of nudity and sexual situations.

Overall – 6

It was not a compelling story for me, but it was beautiful to look at and I’m glad to have had a chance to read it. If you are interested in BDSM, you’ll get more out of it. For those who are interested, Volume 2 will be available in May 2015.

Posted in Hentai, Western Comic/Comix | 5 Comments »


Yuri Manga: Comic Yuri Hime January 2015 (コミック百合姫)

February 17th, 2015

CYH0115To say that the January 2015 cover of Comic Yuri Hime (コミック百合姫) alarmed me is not an understatement. Since the repatriation of Yuri Hime S content into Comic Yuri Hime, I have had the nagging sense than the editor is trying again to shift the content away from “stories women – perhaps even lesbians – like,” to “stuff that appeals to fanboys.” When the magazine originally relauched, it had become less “typical fetish”y, slightly more adult, more lesbian and a teeny bit darker. In recent issues, it’s ended the lesbian series and strongly ramped up the Yuri fetishtry.

The cover has a purely moe piece of art, accompanied by the decision that alarmed me. Instead of the usual Kanji 百合姫, the magazine title is written in hirigana as ゆりひめ. Why would that matter, you may ask? Moe is not just the cutifying of characters, or the simplification of the art, it is also very much about keeping female characters infantile. It’s about obsessing about their “innocence” “awakening” and “budding”  and other euphemisms for puberty. In Eureka’s Yuri Culture issue, Rica Takashima wrote an essay on the relationship between “Yuri” and this tendency to never move lesbian love or life beyond high school or enter the real world. It keeps the idea of “Yuri” firmly locked in that not-real-life space of school life. Lesbians die after leaving high school in this version of Yuri. Or, more appealing to ultra-conservative male otaku, they get married, leave their careers, have babies and remember that one affair fondly. The end.

Rica makes a pretty good case. Women’s progress in Japan is stagnant. You’ll notice that, for all that both BL and Yuri have grown in popularity, there has been an almost complete lack of movement on LGBTQ rights in Japan. I say almost, because a few years ago, it was reported that Japan would recognize Same-sex marriages of Japanese citizens done outside the country, but has yet to actually do so. This week Shibuya Ward announced that they would discuss the idea of issuing SSM certificates. Unfortunately Western media reported it as if they were definitely going to, but it is not a certainty. We’ll find out next month when (if) the vote is actually held….

And here we are, looking at the last of the Yuri magazines and watching it shove “Yuri” back into the school life closet where lesbians just disappear after high school and Yuri is no longer even allowed it’s kanji, but has to use more childish hiragana.

There is a textured little sticker image on the cover that says “The contents are the regular Comic Yuri Hime.” I am neither reassured, nor pleased. The situation is getting worse, if the March issue is any indication. As bad as the Yuri Hime S cover art was, it was never this horrible. To be honest, I can’t even credit this as “art” in any meaningful sense. Two blobby heads with few features, no discernible setting. This is not what I am looking for in Yuri.

It’s 2015, and my choice once again appears to be creepy tit-squeezing and bodily fluids-soaked porn and infantile love stories. Yuri has been almost completely disappeared back to 2000s level. I am sure it’s just a dip before the next peak, but UGH. Like women’s rights in the political sphere, it seems that every decade female Yuri fans  are forced to remind the powers that be that we’re still here and this stuff stuff skeeves us.

That all said, the stuff I still like in the pages of Comic Yuri Hime remains stuff I like. I even found myself not disliking this issue of “Yuri Danshi,” as the Yuri Joshi contingent joins the crew of delusionals.

Of all the stories I am reading, the one I flat out enjoy the most is “Love Desu,” by Kuzushiro. It’s horribly violent, not at all cute, and I gasp with relief when I get to it. In this issue, the one character shot a bobby pin into the other character’s eye. Thank the gods for this story. Thank Kuzushiro-sensei too. One more blobby face with a blank expression and I was going to gouge my own eye out with a bobby pin.

Ratings:

Overall – 7

I’m asking nicely – can’t someone please write a decent pro sport Yuri series? Please? I am so so so so so so done with school drama.

The May issue of Comic Yuri Hime is also available for pre-order.

Posted in Comic Yuri Hime, Yuri Manga | 18 Comments »


Yuri Short Story: Yoshiya Nobuko’s Yellow Rose (English)

February 15th, 2015

yellowrose Today’s review comes under the category of “At last!” Dr. Sarah Frederick’s discussion and translation of Yoshiya Nobuko’s Yellow Rose (黄薔薇) from her Hana Monogatari collection is available to us in English on Kindle from Expanded Editions press. It was worth every penny of the 299 pennies it cost – and to be perfectly honest, I would have paid considerably more to have it.

This epublication begins with a very excellent discussion of the time frame of the story, the symbolism it contains in the context of early 20th century Japanese literature, conjecture about the lacunae within the story and other literary and historical commentary. The kind of thing that reawakens my dormant inner Comp. Lit. major and makes me ridiculously happy. Even more personally meaningful, Frederick includes a small, but pointed rebuke to academic authors who do not acknowledge that reader’s impressions have both meaning and weight in popular thought. You may remember that that was my primary criticism of Passionate Friendships – that being cautioned to not see something as “lesbian” when, through my filter it could not be read as otherwise, is wasted effort. ^_^ Here Frederick acknowledges my point as, if not objectively verifiable, then at least subjectively valid.

The introduction was at least as good as the story itself. That alone would have been worth reading this for. But then, we get to enjoy one of the two “Yuri” stories from Hana Monogatari. In Yellow Rose, we meet a just-graduated young woman who is off to her first job as a teacher, only bare years older than her students and the student with whom she forms a romantic relationship. It is a short, fraught story with a surprisingly bleak ending. Even more unusually bleak, when compared with Otome no Minato a scant decade later. But, perhaps more importantly, while the ending is neither happy nor sad, it also does not contain the “marriage or death” ending that will plague Yuri narrative from the 1960s well into the 2000s.

The translation itself is…well, wonderful. Frederick is able to capture the early 20th-century constipated sentence structure while keeping both the narrator’s voice and the narrative whole.

In short, this was tail-waggingly good and if you are at all interested in early Yuri, early queer lit or basically anything that we care about here at Okazu, you should absolutely get this Kindle edition! (If you don’t have a Kindle or kindle app, you can read it on Amazon’s in-browser Kindle reader.)

Ratings:

Art – 9 The cover art is adapted from a Takabatake Kashō illustration ,“Bara no gensō” (薔薇の幻想). It suits this edition well.
Story – 8
Characters – 8 For such a short story, the protagonist is surprisingly three-dimensional.
Yuri – 6
Service – 2 That distinctively early 20th century verbal sensuality-service

Overall – 9

Thanks to Dr. Frederick for shout-outs to both Yuricon and Okazu. An unexpected surprise. Thank you!

Lastly I want to note the obvious, intentional irony of the one incontrovertibly not-‘S’ character in Maria-sama ga Miteru being the Yellow Rose, Torii Eriko.

Posted in History of Yuri, LGBTQ | 6 Comments »


Yuri Network News – (百合ネットワークニュース) – February 14, 2015

February 14th, 2015

YNN_MariK

Yuri Manga

Yuri Hime Comics is releasing Rakuji Tarahi’s Nijiiro Secret (にじいろシークレット) this week.

Later this month, I’m surprised and a little excited to see Volume 5 of Himawari-san (ひまわりさん), a series in which nothing happens and, like the Talking Heads’ Heaven, who knew that nothing could be so exciting?

Next month we’ll see a collection, Cider to Nakimushi, by Kanno, the creator of Anoko ni Kiss to Shirayuri wo (缶乃作品集) and the fourth volume of  Tsuki to Sekai to Etoile (月と世界とエトワール).

Next month will also see Tono’s Pink Rush (ピンク・ラッシュ) from Hirari magazine. Also from Hirari is Komura Youko’s Hontou no Kanojo (ほんとのかのじょ ).

A little creepy-looking, but out this month is Hana to Uso to Makoto (花と嘘とマコト).

Komatsu-san at Crunchyroll News reports that Shimura Takako plans on releasing 8 books in 5 months! This will include Awajima Hyakkei (淡島百景) which we reported on last week. ^_^

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Yuri Novel

Along with the manga and the anime, Ikuhara Kunihiko and Morishima Akiko are releasing a Yuri Kuma Arashi novel (in at least two parts, based on the title – ユリ熊嵐 上.

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Yuri on JP Kindle

There’s a lot of material popping up on JP Kindle. Frustratingly, those of us without JP IP addresses cannot access them. As a result, I’m not adding them to the Yuricon Shop just yet. Here is a small selection, in Japanese:

まんがで綴る百合な日々 おためし無料版 女×女のバカップル同棲日記

女性カップルで感じ合う最高のセックス 未経験の快楽にハマる百合娘12人のレズビアン事情

百合ガール！ 眠れるレズビアン体質が目覚めた７人の

思索部vol.1 紅葉抄

As with Amazon.com Kindle, the quality of writing and formatting will be variable, but if you have a JP-enabled Kindle and pick any of these or others up, consider writing us a review!

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Yuri Anime

Funimation has announced that they will be doing a dub of Yuri Kuma Arashi.

And Viz is premiering a clip of their Sailor Moon dub at the climactic first season ending.

Aria is about to have a 10th anniversary and to celebrate a Blu-Ray set and a new anime is planned. Scott Green reports on Aria the Avvenire on Crunchyroll News.

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Other News

Happy Black History Month! Here’s 100+ LGBTQ Black Women You Should Know from Autostraddle.

It’s a fairly blatant bit pandering, The Hoopers, an all-girl idol group who dress “like boys” (you know, in pants) is launching in Japan. As boys they don’t work, as girls in suits, they work just fine.^_^

And let’s finish off this week with this Complex.com article – Wonder Women: How Female Characters and Creators Are Battling to Make Comics Better.

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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 »


Yuri Manga: Hakugin Gymnasium, Volume 2 (白銀ギムナジウム 下)

February 10th, 2015

HgGn2When we left off at the end of the first volume of Hiruno Tsukiko’s  Hakugin Gymnasium (白銀ギムナジウム 下), Eimi and Fiona are both gone, and Toutou and Eris acknowledged their feelings for one another.

Volume 2  begins with Chloe and Athena who, separately, come to realize that they mean a lot to one another. In the course of this arc, we also learn that the Gynasium – which has been home to so many girls – is going to be closed.

Toutou and Eris, who are now the age Fiona and Eimi were when they left, find Fiona. Living alone, outside town, making a living as a piano teacher, Fiona is fine…she says. But we can see that while she is “fine” she’s not happy.

Toutou and Eris reveal that the Gymnasium is going to close and ask Fiona to participate in the closing ceremony. She agrees. Secrets come to light that night that heal some old wounds and open others.

The day of the closing ceremony comes and Eimi also comes to say goodbye to her true home. And, finally, Fiona and Eimi have it out, laying bare their feelings and what went wrong.

The Gymnasium closes,  but as we follow Fiona returning to her home from town, and finding Eimi there waiting for her, we have to hope the the other stories have as happy an end, and that Miss Maria was completely, totally wrong.

Like the first volume, the art is old-school (an old-school story about an old school) and the ending is, as well. As much remains opaque as is settled. Will Toutou and Eris be able to be together as Fiona and Eimi are? Has Eimi renounced her family in order to remain with Fiona? How about Chloe and Athena…are they a first love that is untenable, or do they go somewhere together? And what about all the children who were at the Gymnasium because their families didn’t want them?

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Yuri – 8
Service – 1

Overall – 8

Questions remain unanswered, but hey, at least Fiona and Eimi are together.

Ratings:

Posted in Yuri Manga | No Comments »