Houkago Kanon Contest Winners!

March 18th, 2012

Back at the end of January, I announced a contest in conjunction with my review of Houkago Kanon and yes, I am *finally* getting around to announcing winners. (It’s only been about 6 weeks, so not the worst delay ever.)

Here were the rules of the contest:

The name of this book is Afterschool Kanon, where Kanon is the name of a Japanese deity.

Using this same formula, come up with the title and a *one-line* description of a Yuri story. For example, “Bathtime Hecate: Keiko discovers a Greek deity living in the medicine cabinet in her bathroom, how will she keep the goddess of witches from ruining her new life at the sorority house?” Yes, that’s awful. That’s the *point*. Make me groan with awfulness.

Well, damn, a few of you blew me away, both good and bad.

I have a pile of books here, from which I will pick utterly random things to send to winners and as usual, I make no promises or guarantees that it’s a good book. (In fact, the point of this contest is to get rid of a few crappy books, so…erm, yeah.) Winners, if you’d kindly email me at anilesbocon01 at hotmail dot com, I will get your prizes out to you asap!

The grand prize winner is Jennifer Linksy with a genuinely faboulous pitch:

Gloaming Eos: When Sakura arrives to take up her new position as activities director at a retirement community, she finds herself surprised by how energetic… and surprisingly beautiful… one of the residents is.

Not only did Jenny have a fun pitch, but went so far as to actually write it up!

Winner Stephen mixes and matches Greek mythology and Shakespearean drama in classic style:

A Midsummer Night’s Hera: Tired of Zeus’ infidelity Hera decides to turn the tables by seducing all the women of Athens but soon finds herself unable to stop there and plots to re-make the world as one filled only with women… women completely devoted to Hera.

Winner Atarun made me laugh out loud with this entry:

Dear Shub-Niggurath: cute, ditzy Hikaru unknowingly enters a hellish high school where all men are cultists and she gets chosen to be sacrificed to tentacle-adorned Cthulhu – her only hope for survival is to surrender to the calling of unpredictable, dark, showy Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young, all-powerful goddess of fertility.

And Natalie sent in this romantic comedy idea:

Midnight Eros: Shy, lonely Miyu had given up trying to get the attention of the girl of her dreams – until one night she discovered the Greek god of love and passion living under her bed! Can Eros help Miyu finally find love?

Thank you for all the entries, which were funny, wonderful and painful…sometimes all at the same time. ^_^

I love the stuff you guys come up with. You’re all so darn smart and creative!

Posted in Miscellaneous | 1 Comment »


Yuri Network News – March 17, 2012

March 17th, 2012

What a good day to talk about Yuri. It would surely have given St. Patrick apoplexy, along with the carousing and misbehavior now commonly attached to his name day. ^_^

Other News

This week had a lot of important news, some of which I wanted to share, and a few rants I really need to get off my chest.

First, the CBLDF announced that the criminal charges were dropped in the “Brandon X” case. The case was ultimately settled on non-criminal charges. CBLDF director Charles Brownstein talks at length about this case and the fact that, ultimately, it did not go to trial and therefore did not create a legal precedent. He makes a lot of excellent points and I hope you’ll read this fantastic interview Tom Spurgeon did with him on Comics Reporter. (And I am so excited to be able to link to Tom’s site. He’s been kind enough to link to me many times over, so back atcha Tom!) The CBLDF is still paying off more than half the legal fees so any help you can give them, even donations as little as $5, are greatly appreciated.

Also of great importance has been the saga of content sellers vs content publishers in regards to Digital Manga Publishing. Although I have very little motivation to read their stuff (and have some issues with their Digital Manga Guild, as I consider it to be a race to the bottom for quality work for fair cost,) I like the folks there personally. Recently, both Apple and Amazon have delisted DMP’s BL titles. Apple demanded DMP pull Yaoi from its Apple app and Amazon told DMP that they couldn’t sell through Kindle. As you can imagine, I was livid at this. I wrote the Apple and Amazon CEOs. Clearly I was not the only one, as 24 hours later, Amazon rescinded. Apple has not.

Those of you who follow me on Twitter have seen my rage at Apple and their randomly enforced, bizarrely Victorian business practices that seem to somehow always be against LGBTQ-themed content. I started my computer days on an Apple, but now you could not pay me to buy any of their products. I am so strongly opposed to their obscure and cloaked content policies, their anti-LGBTQ focus and even more opposed to the willful blindness of Apple users who keep insisting I must be mistaken. I am not mistaken – Apple was, once, a very progressive company. Now they are just another large company who does not hire full-timers, they farm everything out to contractors, who are clearly given too much room to be repressive, and they treat foreign workers like animals. Come ON folks. Apple is “The Man.” Their culture and their policies are totalitarian. I get it – they were cool when you were in school. They aren’t cool anymore. You should say something about that to them.

While I’m ranting, I would like to repeat myself once more about the Yuri market. Now that Poor Poor Lips is doing well at JManga, there is some cognitive dissonance about it being released in print. This is abstracted from a comment I made on Facebook about the matter:

Fans assume there are tens of thousands of people out there reading Yuri. Sales in the west run at about 1% of audience. It’s just a really freaking small niche. There are not enough fans to support a load of Yuri titles…that is why there are not a load of Yuri titles in print in English. Best Yuri titles do somewhere between 2500-3000 in sales, which is still short of the 4000 copies or so to make enough money to keep going. Even top selling mainstream titles like Naruto barely reach 15,000 copies sold here in the US and that’s barely enough to make Japanese sales lists.

To all Yuri fans who somehow think that there are a legion of fans being under-served here….there aren’t. There are a few of you. And of that few, only a fewer few actually buy Yuri. That is why there is so little Yuri here. There are not enough people to make it profitable. Yet. Give it more years, more promotion and more support from the fanbase.

Think about this. How many copies of Poor Poor Lips do you *really* think would sell? Now, multiply that by three volumes. Be honest – how likely do you think selling 12,000 print copies of a cute, but not particularly world-shaking series, is there? 

There is no relationship between sales on JManga and success of a print volume. Print needs WAY more sales to cover costs and make it worth printing, shipping and distributing. That is *exactly* why JManga is a great idea – it’s a place to get out all the niche titles we want to see that really don’t have a decent chance at making a profit in print.

I don’t meant to be harsh, but…stop. Please stop living in a fantasy where there are a million Yuri fans and 10% of them want to buy books. This is not true. WHEN it is, there will be more Yuri than you can handle. Right now, there are a few hundred people who will buy anything and a few hundred more who will buy when it’s cheap enough and convenient enough and simple enough. And the rest simply do not count at all, since they have no intention of buying anything, from anyone, ever.

Okay…rants over now. ^_^

***

Snatches of Yuri

A collection from Hana to Yume comics called Kanoujo no Namida ga Yuki Datoshitara (彼女の涙が雪だとしたら) includes at least one short in which there is Yuri.

Idol Pretender ( アイドルプリテンダー ) seems to think it has BL and Yuri, at least based on the obi copy. While there’s definitely some Yuri-like behavior, the jury appears to still be out. It’s a Champion Red title, so even if there is Yuri, don’t expect it to make you happy.

I honestly have no idea if this is good or not, but if you like Transgender Yuri, take a look at Hero no Himitsu (ヒーローの秘密), Feel free to write up a review for us!

And Smile Style (スマイル・スタイル) has been all over the Yuri lists in Japan. It’s moe school life Yuri. Just the way so many like it.

***

Random Stuff

There will be a Yuri Danshi Drama CD…with character songs, in June. As much as I adore Drama CDs, I’m giving this one a pass. ^_^;

Bruce made me promise to tell you that Wandering Son, Volume 3 is available for Pre-order on Amazon.

To end this report on a really, really positive note, April will be bringing a new Maria-sama ga Miteru Light Novel, Maria-sama ga Miteru ~ Farewell Bouquet (マリア様がみてる フェアウェル ブーケ) –  in which we will be seeing, for the first time, Yumi as Rosa Chinensis! Yay! Okay, now the series can end if it has to. ^_^

***

That wraps it up for this week.

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.

Posted in Light Novels, Maria-sama ga Miteru, Yuri Network News | 11 Comments »


Magic Knight Rayearth Anime Second Season, Disk 2 (English)

March 15th, 2012

For some reason, the Second season set of Magic Knight Rayearth is numbered as if it is the continuation of the first season, so the the individual disks are numbered 5,6 and 7. So this review is of the Disk labeled 6, just so you don’t get confused.

On Disk 6, Hikaru, Umi and Fuu set off to defeat the enemies that crowd Cephiro now that their Pillar is gone. Accompanying Hikaru is Lantis, Zagato’s younger brother. The three girls battle another giant robot in space and we meet our honorable foe – Eagle of Autozam. He tells us of the tragedy his planet faces if he doesn’t get the resources of Cephiro. More interestingly, we learn that he and Lantis were friends.

The girls run into multiple minions of Debonair-sama, our newest evil sorceress; among them is Halcyone, Zagato’s former minion. And, we meet Nova, the evil-twin-like character, whose power echoes Hikaru’s and whose one desire is to kill Hikaru – because, she says, she loves her.

There are two really excellent things about the battle being taken into space – way less of Puu, which can only be considered a victory for sanity, and Eagle and Lantis. Their backstory is by far the most interesting piece of the story yet to be told. I’m sorry to say that Nova remains, for me, an utter bore. However, if you like evil/alternate-twin Yuri, then maybe she will do it for you. My attention is rarely captured by monomania.

Fuu and Umi has been relegated to the position of Hikaru’s backup team, and the fight between Debonair and Cephiro (and every other country and Cephiro) takes a step back to let the battle between Hikaru and Nova become the plot driver. Hikaru suffers more hit points than her magic can handle and, as the disk comes to a close, she is bereft of sword, Ma-shin and confidence.

Obviously for Cephiro to survive, Hikaru will have to power up. And we still have one disk to go.

I find watching this series invokes a kind of nostalgia in me. Although I never really watched it the first time around, Media Blasters glowly yellow subtitles that always looked so old-school, are very much at home on this hand-drawn, no CGI to be seen, anime. It’s easy to get caught up in a fantasy where that was a purer time, but realistically, for the folks making the anime, the deadlines were just as tight and there was just as much – if not more – work to do. Also, wow are the body shapes on all the characters weirdly out of proportion. Any one one of the girls would be too thin to hold up a shoe, much less a sword. So, nostalgia be damned, in many ways the animation being put out now is a million times better than this. Just sayin’. Nonetheless, for family friendly anime – especially for girls who want to be the hero – this kind of thing can’t be beat.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Yuri – 4, but it’s all creepy
LoserFanBoy – 1

Overall – 7

My favorite disk so far, as Eagle loses it after Lantis confronts him. ^_^

Posted in English Anime | 1 Comment »


Yuri Manga: Hoshikawa Ginza 4-chome, Volume 2 (星川銀座四丁目)

March 14th, 2012

In Volume 1 of Hoshikawa Ginza 4-chome (星川銀座四丁目), we are introduced to Hoshikawa Minato, a teacher, and one of her students, Matsuda Otome. Hoshikawa-sensei had saved Otome from a life of neglect and emotional abuse and taken guardianship of the girl.

As Volume 2 opens, they have been living together for 2 years. We get some flashback chapters of their first encounters and the subsequent meetings with Otome and her parents that lead to Hoshikawa-sensei taking the girl away from her family for her own preservation.

But, although Otome has returned to school and is showing herself a capable student, Minato wants Otome to take supplemental lessons in order to do well on the upcoming middle school exams. Otome throws a hissy fit and enrolls in the school – but leaves Minato’s house. She asks her cram school teacher to let her stay. The fit is a bad one and Otome’s decision hurts not only Minato, but also a girl in cram school who has a crush on the teacher. Of course, it just about destroys Minato.

When she’s aced the exam, Otome returns to Minato, where they have a tempestuous reunion.

This manga continues to be the most problematic story I’ve ever liked. I really don’t care for the setup and the characters aren’t terribly real (and the story completely jumped the shark when a random cram school teacher allowed Otome to stay with her, for whatever reason…,) but they are also sympathetic and Minato is very well aware of their situation. I can’t really say I like it…but I can’t really say I don’t, either. Obviously, I’m still reading it, but not without trepidation. Volume three is going to step up my level of discomfort as Minato and Otome will have at least one discussion about the future of their life together and their relationship.

Ratings:

Art – It’s still Kurogane Kenn, so for me 4, but for others 8
Story – 7
Characters- 6
Yuri – 8
Service- 10

Overall – 7

So, while I can’t say I enjoy this book, I have to at least give it credit for being really honest, sometimes brutally so, about the problematic nature of the main relationship.

Posted in Yuri Manga | 1 Comment »


New Essays on the Yuricon Essays Page

March 13th, 2012

I’ve been remiss and am finally digging in and clearing a back log of items to post to the Yuricon site. First up – new Essays for the Yuri Essays Page:

The Evolution of “Recognition/Assertion of a Lesbian Identity” vs “Akogare” in Manga – by Katherin Hanson

The Impact Of Globalization On Yuri And Fan Activism – by Yaritza Hernandez

These are both fantastic essays – please read them when you have a moment. As always, if you have any Yuri scholarship you’d like to share with us, please contact us at anilesbocon at hotmail dot com

Let me also take this opportunity to remind you all that the What Yuri Means To Me Project is always open to anyone who wants to share their personal story of discovering and enjoying Yuri! This project is our “oral history” (only we’re capturing it in writing right from the start) so please feel free to write your story up and send it to us.  We look forward to hearing from you!

Posted in Yuricon | No Comments »