Yuri Network News – (百合ネットワークニュース) – February 3, 2024

February 24th, 2024

In black block letters, YNN Yuri Network News. On the left, in black silhouette, a woman with a broad brim hat and dress stands, a woman in a tight outfit sits against the Y. Art by Mari Kurisato for Okazu Yuri Manga

Italian manga publisher Toshokan has licensed Sal Jiang’s Black & White. Check out their catalog for preview pages.

Via YNN Artemis, Aneido’s  18+ The Murderer and Her Runaway Desire is available in English as a digital download.

Titan Manga has licensed The Elegant Courtly Life of the Tea Witch written by Ameko Kaeruda, illustrated by Yorifuji to be released in November, according to ANN’s Joana Cayanan. I read a bit of this, it was really cute.

 

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Light Novel

Yen Press announced the license of Hitoma Iruma’s Yuri romance My First Love’s Kiss.

 
Yuri Live-Action

Check out this trailer for Who’ll Stop The Rain, a Chinese lesbian movie by Su I-Hsuan that’s hit up a bunch of film festival circuits. ^_^

Via YNN Correspondent Patricia B, The Japan Society has scheduled a showing for Summer Vacation 1999, an adaptation of Moto Hagio’s BL classic, Heart of Thomas. I reviewed this movie back in 2005. It was a really interesting, featuring an all-female cast playing the parts of the boys in the story. That added an interesting gender fuckery to the quality of the storytelling.

 

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Other News

Congratulations to our good friend James Welker on his new book, Transfiguring Women in Late Twentieth-Century Japan: Feminists, Lesbians, and Girls‘ Comics Artists and Fans, which will be  available from The University of Hawa’ii Press in July. This is going to be totally worth reading and, with a cover like that, I want it on my shelves. ^_^

Netflix has put the whole movie of Nimona in its entirety on Youtube for free. Give it a watch, it was a nice little queer fantasy.

Via Sr. YNN correspondent Sean G, we have new that the perfect figurine can be made, Check out this Chautury Panlunch, aka Chuchu, from Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury, by Figurise Standard.

 

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Posted in Yuri Network News | No Comments »


Metallic Rouge, streaming on Crunchyroll

February 23rd, 2024

Two women, one with long black hair and pale skin, wearing a shorts and suspenders and one with brown skin, pale hair and glasses in a jersey jacket, snack in front of a futuristic landscape, with the massive body of a mecha in the distant sky.You ever watch something so familiar that you spend the whole time wondering where you’ve seen it before? ^_^ I’m not saying Metallic Rouge streaming now on Crunchyroll, is derivative, but it definitely feels like a lot of other things I have seen.

To begin with, the opening moments of the anime are so evidently by the team that brought us Carole and Tuesday that I wondered if the story was going to tie in, somehow. No…but it sure could have been and worked just fine. A single newspaper cover in common would have been fine. Instead we’re in the glitter/grungy world of planet Mars that the story treats like a single city. Have you ever noticed how often whole planets are treated as if they are one town? One culture, no other languages, food, or politics. Heck, even small cities have more than one of those. But no, “Mars” is one place.

There’s a Noir-ish quality to our primary pair – fighter Rouge and her handler Naomi, mostly in the sense that the two of them do missions for whomever they work for. The background story of who everyone works for is messy, with a shifting cast of organizations vying for who know what.

There is a human racism plotline that feels so familiar but I cannot place it. It’s racism lite, as it so often is, in anime. Upperclass vs underclass. Bad people are bad, and mean people hurt the demi-human Neans and there’s no complexity to any of it. Like a child’s garden of racism. Neans are the underclass that humans created in order to treat them like crap. Yup.

There is mecha, in the form of hardsuits, which feels very Bubblegum Crisis, as Rouge takes on other hard-suited baddies for reasons that shift every episode. With, I should add, some very sticky music that is more of a single riff that echoes in your brain, than a song, per se. I get Devilman Lady vibes off the music.

And there is a very 90s OVA quality to the whole thing. Each episode or two is it’s own arc, and will come to an end…even if it’s not resolved in a meaningful way. Rouge’s memories are already the big mystery, but to be honest, I don’t really think this anime will bother filling in the details in a meaningful way, any more than Carole and Tuesday wrapped up any of it’s storylines before the big pay-per-view concert that resolved nothing – don’t think we’re going to forget that, Bones, because we are not.

Is this a Yuri series? Nah. Nor is it trying to be one. It’s a buddy story and that’s just fine. With mecha, fighting, and repetitive, epic music, and a cast that appears to be the same 5 people back for every other episode. I appreciate that kind of cost-cutting. It works better than just underfunding the animation. Points off for the evil clown, though. Mars has enough problems, it doesn’t need evil clowns.

Ratings:

Art – Very pretty
Story – Many things stick to this wall
Characters – Sure, why not
Service – Why are all “clubs” in the future the same one tawdry sex club? Get an imagination people!
Yuri – 0 and not likely to go past “I got your back, as long as you’re not stabbing mine”

Overall  – 8

Not everything has to be high art. We can just like some pretty crap with fighty robots, then forget it existed after its over. It’s okay. ^_^

Posted in English Anime | 2 Comments »


Comic Yuri Hime, February 2024 (コミック百合姫2024年2月号)

February 22nd, 2024

In an elaborate gold frame on a dark blue background, Two school girls in winter coats stand, one holding the others' arm, looking at us.Comic Yuri Hime, February 2024 (コミック百合姫2024年2月号)  is an excellent volume of this magazine. Right off the bat, the stories about evenly split between stories I am reading and stories I am not reading. 50% is an almost unheard of percentage for me. But there is another thing in this issue, I want to discuss, because it was really good.

I talk a lot about Yuri literary fiction here on Okazu. I’m unapologetically as much a literature nerd as I am a comics nerd. Many school years of reading literary fiction somehow did not manage to break my interest in the idea of fiction. In fact, this year I am actually a judge for an award for independently published fiction and overwhelmingly, the books I have been reading are very interesting. Reviews to come when the embargo is lifted.

So yes, in this volume Aki and Shiho go out on a date in “Sasayakuyouni Koi Wo Utaa” finally, and Rae comes up with a bold and dangerous plan to rescue Yu from an imposed gender curse in “Watashi no Oshi ha Akuyaku Reijou” and the climax to “Kimi to Tsuzuru Utakata” was a fucking sucker punch *even though we knew it was coming for the entire story.* And the King in “Kiraware no Majoreijo to Dansou Ouji no Konyaku” is a dip and we applauded Eve for yelling at him, and Kiki and Michiru danced their hearts out…even though Kiki was injured and it was really stupid, in “Odoriba ni Skirt ga Naru.” These and many other continuing stories were great.

And we got the first chapter of a very old-school shoujo romance feeling “Toi Et Moi” by Nakato Nui. And “Daiuki Desu!”  by nmi, among others both of which were very good.

But what I really want to talk about is the short story, ” Tsuitou Juu-shunen Tokubetsu Kiji  ‘Tousakusha Sakakiba Mizue no jinsei’.” by Maruchou. This translates to Special Article On The Tenth Anniversary Of Her Death,  “Plagiarist Sakakiba Mizue’s Life.” This was the grand prize winner of the 5th Yuri Literary Short Story Contest, co-hosted by Pixiv, Comic Yuri Hime, Shinchobunko, Early Wing and Shosen Bookstore. And yes, it absolutely deserved the prize.

This was a fantastic fiction that is presented as a non-fiction about the life of a person who “everyone knows,” but who never existed, with interviews with people who knew her and one of the best endings I have ever read in my life. Oh my gosh, this was SUCH a good story.  You can read it for free on the contest website. Please go read this, even if you just use google translate. Seriously, it was gorgeous work. 10/10.

So both thumbs up on this issue.

Ratings:

Overall – For the short story alone, it’s a 10

I also have the March issue here and am digging right in!

Posted in Comic Yuri Hime, Magazines, Yuri Manga | 4 Comments »


I Don’t Know Which Is Love, Volume 2

February 21st, 2024

A pretty girl with long black hair and gray eyes, reaches toward us with lightly lavender-tinted fingernails, blushing and smiling at us.by Luce, Staff Writer

Welcome back to the rollercoaster Yuri harem series, I Don’t Know Which Is Love, Volume 2.  In Volume 1, our protagonist is Mei Soraike, a girl who fell in love with a female friend at high school, and upon getting her heart broken, swears that she will reinvent herself and get a girlfriend in college! Within a few days of starting, she ends up with five candidates, all of whom are vying for her attention. At the end of volume one, Karin said they should just go out, and then Riri arrived…?

Within ten pages of starting, Mei finds herself between Karin and Riri while they’re asking who she wants to sleep with. Indecisive… and experiencing ‘too gay to function’ (Mei often experiences this), she elects to sleep on the floor instead. She ends up in a charged lecture with Prof Maria, and later, she finds herself in a three person play with Karin and Minato (somewhat for their own ulterior motives), joins Riri on a photoshoot to try and improve her acting, goes out to see a play with Minato to try and get her voice right, and ends up practicing with Kaori… and when the script says french kiss, she does! 

DareKoi remains an enjoyable rollercoaster, never lingering long on any one moment, although it doesn’t quite feel like it is rushing either. It knows what the reader wants – girls flirting and kissing, and by jove, you get that. Sprinkled on the top are some of the love interests wondering if they love Mei, too. What I like is that the harem have positive interactions with each other – while they are kind of fighting over Mei, they are also their own people. Minato and Karin knew each other before they knew Mei, and they remain friends, and Riri and Karin also seem to know each other. 

Honestly, I’d be quite happy with a polyamorous ending – it would be fun if the answer to Mei’s question of ‘which is love?’ is ‘all of them’, as I like to think love can take many different forms. It likely won’t, but the playing field is pretty even for the time being. Karin has asked Mei out, but Mei doesn’t feel like she’s ‘near her level’ – but that she’ll try! What I like about Mei is that although she’s generally passive in so much as everything seems to happen around her, she is trying. She only has one frame of reference for love, being her old friend, so her inexperience makes sense. Speaking of that old friend, her face hasn’t been shown as yet – I’m not sure we even have a name – but I can only assume that she is going to pop back up at some point. I hope Mei does okay when that happens. She’ll probably be either on a date or in a compromising position, knowing this series, but it does it with such heart that I’m looking forward to it.

Ratings:

Story: 7
Art: 8
Characters: 7
Service: 5
Yuri: too Yuri to function

Overall: 8

I Don’t Know Which Is Love, Volume 2 is available now in print and digital from Yen Press!

Posted in English Manga, Luce, Staff Writer, Yuri Manga | 1 Comment »


Amayo no Tsuki, Volume 6 (雨夜の月)

February 20th, 2024

Two girls wearing Japanese yukata for a summer festival, look at each other with intensity as fireworks explode above them.Do you remember Morinaga Milk’s series Girl Friends? It was an incredibly popular and influential Yuri manga in the early 2010s, so more than a decade ago. The story followed an introverted girl, Mari, who becomes friendly with an extroverted girl, Akiko. Akiko is Mari’s first real girl friend. And, then, they start to fall in love with one another.  I bring this up because a number of Yuri series begin in a similar emotional space – someone has not previously had a close friend and then their feelings begin to change. Saki and Kanon have both had a close friend before. They both know how friendship feels. They both know how it feels to feel betrayed, or lost when that friendship cracks.

In Amayo no Tsuki, Volume 6 (雨夜の月) a whole lot of things happen that remind us that this story is absolutely not handwaving *anything.* This is a remarkably profound story that is not at all taking shortcuts, even when we might expect it to.

First, in the wake of telling Kanon how she feels,  Saki has decided that it’s time to speak to Akira, the hair stylist whose “friend’s” story of first love with another girl seemed awfully personal. It’s an important conversation for Saki, because she starts to accept her feelings for Kanon. She has no clue where she is going with them yet, but she she’s starting to understand that this is who she is. Secondly, Kanon is also wondering what to do with her emotions. She’s got no name for this maelstrom she’s feeling ask Saki asks her a favor under the bright lights of a fireworks display.

Whether or not they become a couple is entirely irrelevant to me. Watching them work through complicated feelings about other people and with other people to talk to, is very much the crux of the matter. But, this volume isn’t leaning back on just this one piece of the story, either. Saki meets up with Ayano and once again offers comfort and a way to move forward for the other girl and Tomita comes back to school, openly admitting her disability, and apologizing to her ignored friends in a touching scene.

Yeas ago, I was reading a comic that cleared the low bar of the Bechdel-Wallace Test but inspired me to create the Friedman Addendum to the Bechdel-Wallace Test, which includes these three criteria:

Does female character have agency?
Does she have society?
Does she have personality?

In Amayo no Tsuki, Saki has society. Her friendship has helped Kanon to build the same for herself… and that is what makes this volume so amazing. If these two fall in love, it won’t be because they are sheltered in a world of two, blocked from the rest of society. It will be because they want to face that world together.  In the meantime, Kanon is not only finding her own ways to make friends and be part of her class’ activities, she’s also finding her own individual voice as a writer.

The final story follow Kanon’s sister Rinne and how she learns to be braver about openly displaying empathy for others with help from her sister’s experience.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 10
Characters – 10
Service –  Saki and Kanon in yukata is also a form of service ^_^
Yuri – 5

Overall – 10

This was a fabulous volume of a series that is already carved out a permanent place in my heart.  I recently did an interview with a media platform in which I was asked where I saw the future of Yuri. The answer is – this. This intersectionality with disability, gender, race, mental health – these crossroads where we explore with it is to be a human with a body and mind that is not always under our control or are othered by people who are not us. This is where I see Yuri going right now and I really like it.

This series is available in English, as The Moon On A Rainy Night from Kodansha,  Volumes 1-3 are out and I have, of course, reviewed them here on Okazu. ^_^

 

Posted in English Manga, Kuzushiro, Yuri Manga | 3 Comments »