Yuri Network News – (百合ネットワークニュース) – February 17, 2024

February 17th, 2024

A blue silhouette of a girl with a white flower in her hair, embracing the earth. Blue block letters read YNN Yuri Network News. Art by Lissa P. For Okazu.

Yuri Manga

Some news from Seven Seas this week. They have licensed Mochi_Au_Lait and majoccoid’s Ikemen Onna to Hakoiri Musume (イケメン女と箱入り娘) series as a 1-volume omnibus under the name Handsome Girl And Sheltered Girl: The Complete Collection. I reviewed Volume 1 and Volume 2…and I missed “the joke,” but primarily because I was desperately hoping that that wasn’t the joke. But, it is. A naive woman assumes the handsome person she’s met is a man… spoiler, she is not. Alex Mateo has details on ANN.

Seven Seas also wants to remind you that How Do I Turn My Best Friend Into My Girlfriend?, Volume 1 is up for pre-order right now. By  Syu Yusaka, creator of Monologue Woven For You, this manga series hits shelves here in March!

New Items on the Yuricon Store!

Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna, Volume 5 (作りたい女と食べたい女) has hit shelves in Japan just as the TV drama is airing NHK. This story of found family is just so good.

Odoriba ni Skirt ga Naru, Volume 4 (踊り場にスカートが鳴る) by Utatane Yuu continues to be an interesting look at body image and self-esteem through the lens of ballroom dancing.

Relationships are not always forever, as we discover in Tsukiatte Agetemo Iikana, Volume 12  (付き合ってあげてもいいかな). YNN Staff writer Matt notes that a Tsukiatte online merchandise lottery is opening up shortly at Oshi Chara (this is in Japanese and they probably will only deliver in-country, so you’ll need a shipping company like Tenso or White Rabbit to give you a JP address.) 1 ticket is 770 yen (a little over $5 USD right now.) The lottery runs through March 25.

Kimi to Tsuzuru Utakata, (君と綴るうたかた)  by Yuama has ended in the March issue of Comic Yuri Hime.  I’ve added Volume 5 and the final volume, Volume 6, to the Yuricon Store. The Summer You Were There, Volume 4 just hit EN shelves last month from Seven Seas!

 

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Yuri Audiobooks

On the heels of my review this week of Volume 3 of I’m in Love with the Villainess Audiobook, Volume 4 is out now!  They’ve thwarted the Pope’s assassination, but the tensions in Nur continue. This has been a very rewarding way to re-experience this series. Narrator Courtney Shaw does a great job.

 

Yuri Light Novels

It’s been a month since I reviewed Heimin no Kuse ni Namaikina!, Volume 3, the finale of this series, but we’ll be getting I’m in Love with the Villainess: She’s so Cheeky for a Commoner, Volume 2 of Claire’s perspective in April in English.

I mentioned this last week, but as a reminder  Karasu Piero’s new LN series, Seijou-sensei no Mahou wa Sunderu! Ochibore no Kyoushitsu (聖女先生の魔法は進んでる!1 落ちこぼれの教室 ) is hitting JP shelves this upcoming week. Adriana Hazra has more details on ANN.

 

Yuri Literary Fiction

The second volume of Zerogo, Yuri Literary Fiction magazine, (零合 百合総合文芸誌 第2号 ) actually exists in the universe! Yay! I reviewed the first volume last autumn and found it to be one of the best Yuri short story collections I have read. This second volume already intrigues me, as they are serializing some new works, which means that they definitely have a plan for future volumes, at least.

 

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Yuri-ish Anime

Check out Twitter for a key visual on the Look Back anime official account. Alex Mateo has details on ANN. This one-shot by Chainsaw Man creator Fujimoto Tatsuki was a profound read. I reviewed it here on Okazu in Japanese and English.

Crystalynn Hodgkins has the news about the music for the upcoming Sound Euphonium 3 anime series over at ANN.

 

Other News

Via Sr. YNN Correspondent Sean Gaffney, ANN’s Monique Thomas and Christopher Farris take a look at a roundtable by Nick, Chris, Nicky and Steve on When Your Fav Anime Couple Is Problematic, with some of our own Yuri favs popping up.

Scholar James Welker has put together a list of fan (doujinshi) events in Japan. It’s on Facebook, so you’ll need an account to read it, but this is an incredible resource for those of us who research in fan spaces.

Polygon has done a survey of 4000 anime watchers and broken it out by the numbers in Who Watches Anime?

 

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Posted in Yuri Network News | No Comments »


I’m in Love with the Villainess Audiobook, Volume 3

February 16th, 2024

Two young women, wearing white dresses, one with blonde ringlets and one with medium length brown hair stand with two blonde children, one in a pink dress, the other in a blue dress.When I reviewed Heimin no Kuse ni Namaikina!, Volume 3 (平民のくせに生意気な！), I said I would tell you all about my weakness. Well, as I read this volume I realized that my weakness is, of all things, the twins. I don’t much like children, or children characters and stories that show or use violence or exploitation against children usually make me really angry. But these two….youch. They gouge me right in the feels.

So Courteny Shaw’s narration of I’m in Love with the Villainess Audiobook, Volume 3 had me a blithering mess for pretty much every scene that covered the changing circumstances and lives of twins May and Aleah, the adopted daughters of Rae and Claire.

Shaw’s voices for the characters are very good. I could half-listen and still know exactly who was speaking. Her iteration of Aleah’s voice is especially interesting, as we know Aleah grew up int the slums, but she speaks with an approximation of Claire’s highborn accent and style.

The story wraps up the final pieces of the Revolution arc, then quickly launches us into the Nur arc, which gives Shaw a chance to crete voices for key characters like Philene and Dorothea, as well as Frieda’s excruciating mishmash of accent.  ^_^

By this point in the story, inori-sensei’s writing had really settled into a rhythm which makes this book move incredibly quickly. It helps too, that this volume includes many side stories from other character perspectives…and a big ole’ goopy happy scene for us to enjoy.

Ratings (for the adaptation only):

Overall – 10

As I have said of Volumes 1 and Volume 2, the only downside is the occasional odd pronunciation, but as the audiobook is in every other way, an excellent production, I’m just rolling with it at this point. Most importantly, this series makes the light novels more accessible  and I am 100% for that! Maybe reading the LNs wasn’t to your taste, but you want to know what happened after the anime? Try the I’m In  Love With The Villianess audiobooks – they are worth a listen.

Volume 4 hit devices this month, so we can even more demons, Sword Gods and food battles in the empire!

Posted in Drama CDs & Audiobooks, I'm in Love With the Villainess, Light Novels | 2 Comments »


Mabataki (まばたき)

February 15th, 2024

A woman lies on the floor, her orange hair spreading around her like a river flowing towards us.Mabataki (まばたき) is a collection of short stories by Battan, creator of Run Away With Me, Girl. This is another manga I picked up while in Japan (I think this one was picked up at the Shibuya Animate) because I had not seen anything about it. It was interesting, more than entertaining and both very good and not-good in places. It is also variably Yuri, depending on how much overt romance you require in your Yuri

The first story, arguably the Yuri-est of the bunch, follows a young woman who is called by someone else’s name when she purchases cigarettes from an elderly kiosk vendor. It is instantly obvious that the elderly woman imagines the young woman to be an old love from her high school days. It it poignant, and sad and ultimately not resolved in any meaningful way.

The other stories explore relationships between girls and women in varying uncomfortable ways. A girl who has everything offers a kind of patronage/friendship to girl who has nothing, and is rejected, at least in part because she didn’t understand a damn thing about the other girl.

The story that was the best was also the least entertaining for me. “Hatsunatsu no Soshiki” follows a girl who has just lost her mother. Around her, following her, with her at all times, crowding the space she occupies, are word ballons filled with all the places people have told the girl where her mother is. This is an uncomfortable, but very well done story about how personal grief is.

The final story follows a  woman who meets a mermaid, maybe while on a vacation. This was a surprisingly sweet little story and I’m glad it was the final one in the collection.

Honestly, if you like Battan’s art, you’ll probably like this collection. You might even want to suggest it to Kodansha to license. As I read it, I discovered that I don’t particularly like Battan’s art. It was a shock to me, as I rarely have negative reactions to art in manga unless egregious service stands in for plot, and character. For some reason, as I continued reading, I just had the most viscerally negative reaction to this art. I’m not entirely sure why, but let’s just say I am not a fan.

Nonetheless this collection takes on some big emotions: Grief and loss, life and love and does some interesting things with them.

Ratings:

Because I found the art so unpalatable and it’s a collection, we’ll just got straight to an overall score

Overall – 6

I don’t regret reading this book, but I can’t imagine I’ll retain much beyond “Midori no Maka no Mizutama”‘s visual of grief crowding around  the main character.

Posted in Miscellaneous | No Comments »


I Don’t Need A Happy Ending, Guest Review by Eleanor Walker

February 14th, 2024

A woman and her maid embrace gently, on a bed surrounded by draped cloth.Hello, it’s 3 opossums in a trenchcoat disguised as a person back for another review. You can find me dotted around the Internet as @st_owly. Today I’m reviewing I Don’t Need  A Happy Ending, a collection of short stories,  by Mikanuji, the creator of Assorted Entanglements. I liked that series well enough to go in blind on this one when I saw it in the bookstore so here we go.

I’ve always had a soft spot for short stories. Telling a complete tale in a limited amount of pages is a skill unto itself, and a good short story anthology should have something for everyone. With that in mind, I cannot recommend the first story in this book, “I’ll Never Fall In Love With You”. It’s rapey, creepy and everything I dislike about yuri manga written for the male gaze all rolled into 36 convenient pages. 

Happily, the second story in the book is much more pleasant. This is the titular story “I Don’t Need A Happy Ending” and features a historical forbidden love story between a mistress and her maid. Unlike in the first story, the characters actually feel like people rather than sex objects, and without giving too much away, they do get their happy ending. I will freely admit I’m a sucker for historical romance and as someone who adores Victorian Romance Emma, by Kaoru Mori, this scratched the same itch. 

Back to the present day for “I Don’t Know What Love Is,” which features a nihilistic college student and her adoring kouhai. I didn’t particularly care for this chapter either, but it did at least have more plot than the first one and the characters are adults this time. The author also really likes drawing people having sex in (semi) public places.

4th in the collection is “A Day off from Work” in which two childhood friends finally realise their long held feelings for each other. Short and sweet, it’s always nice when two people find each other.

The penultimate story in this volume also appeared in “Whenever Our Eyes Meet: A Women’s Love Anthology” which is also available in English from Yen Press. Another office romance, this time the new temp at the company is the main lead’s fling from the night before, and she’s not out at work. More semi public sex and everyone is happy.

Finally, we finish with a sequel to “I Don’t Need a Happy Ending,” which begins with a timeskip of several years, and that is merely a convenient plot device for more illicit sex. It takes 3 pages before they’re at it.  

Overall, your mileage may vary. as to be expected with an anthology. The author definitely has certain tastes which are reflected in this collection, and if her tastes don’t align with yours you might leave disappointed. For me “I Don’t Need a Happy Ending” and sequel were by far and away the standout of the book, with the others ranging from “get me the brain bleach right now” to “ok that was cute but utterly forgettable.”

Ratings:

Art – 8. The sex scenes are well done and the boobs don’t look like balloons. 
Story – Anywhere from 3 to 7
Characters – Anywhere from 3 to 7
Service – 10. This one is rated M and shrink wrapped for a reason
Yuri – 7. It got better as it went on. 

Overall – 6.5

 

Posted in Eleanor W, English Manga, Guest Review, Yuri Manga | 1 Comment »


The Moon on a Rainy Night, Volume 3

February 13th, 2024

Two girls in bed, bathed in a golden glow. A girl with light-colored hair girl watches a dark-haired girl intensely as she sleeps.I’ve been filled with joy reading this series since my first glimpse at it almost two years ago. In my review of Volume 3 of Amayo no Tsuki, (雨夜の月) I said, “we get the last piece that would make this series perfect, IMHO. Whatever happens now, I am in the front row, rooting for everyone.”

Representation is a complex matter. It’s incredibly powerful just to see or read about someone who is like ourselves. In this way, this series has been fantastic, in providing excellent representation of disability and the way accommodation can function when people understand what it is intended to do. But in both narrative and real life the best representation is to actually meet someone like yourself and understand how their lives play out. In The Moon on a Rainy Night, Volume 3, Saki meets two critically important people.

First, she randomly meets a hair stylist in training who, quite disconcertingly, “sees” Saki, in a way that she is not yet ready to see herself. Akira’s gaydar absolutely pins Saki, and the younger woman is on the receiving end of a cautionary tale about first loves which makes her more self-conscious about the skinship between Kanon and herself. This becomes a bit of a crisis, as Kanon’s sister asks Saki to keep Kanon company one night. Kanon sleeps over and Saki is ecstatic and panicking all night long.

And then, Saki meets Kanon’s former friend, Ayano, who warns her about the price one pays as a caretaker. We can see right away that Ayano’s situation was different, and tragic on several levels –  but the warning Saki receives is, once again, reasonable. In both cases, she is seen and understood, and yet, not understood. Representation is complicated. Saki is going to have to figure this one out for herself…but not on her own, one hopes. Kuzushiro is pulling out all the stops here.

While translation, lettering and editing are all fantastic, technically, this book is a bit problematic. On the Okazu Discord, we recently had a discussion about the indifferent quality of recent print books from Yen and Kodansha. This book arrived with the cover cut too short for the pages. I might have assumed that was a fluke, but a second copy – from a different company – was the same. My last few volume of books from Yen have likewise been not-great quality. She Loves To Cook, She Loves To Eat had pages cut unevenly, and both publishers have had low-ink faded pages in recent volumes. As I type this, I notice the spine is not lined up correctly in one of the two copies I have. These are production issues that need to be addressed. I hope they’ll both improve their QA a bit this year.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 9
Characters – 9
Service – Really not
Yuri – 4, LGBTQ – 6

Overall – 9

Volume 3 put this series on my top ten lists for last year (and Volume 4 and Volume 5!) It’s a tremendously good series, with a LOT to say about life. If you’re not reading it yet, I really think you should.

Volume 6 of Amayo no Tsuki is out in Japanese and Volume 4 of The Moon on A Rainy Night, will be headed our way in April.

 

Posted in English Manga, Kuzushiro, Yuri Manga | 2 Comments »