Yuricon & ALC Publishing on the Web

November 13th, 2011

I haven’t done this in a while, so I thought I’d update you all on where you can find Yuricon online.

Yuricon Website: http://www.yuricon.org

Yuri Studios on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/yuristudio

Our Yuri AMV contest has days left to go! (http://www.yuricon.com/2011/10/02/amvcontest2011/ for submission guidelines)

New! Yuricon on Google+: https://plus.google.com/b/118154903094514227258/

Yuricon & ALC Publishing on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Yuricon-ALC-Publishing/52246397526

Yuricon on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Yuricon (I also post about Social Media and LGBT issues here.)

Yuricon Mailing List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Yuricon and the Yuricon Announcements Only List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Yuricon_announce/

And, obviously, here on Okazu: http://okazu.blogspot.com/

Get your updates just about anywhere online. ^_^

Posted in ALC Publishing, Okazu News, Yuricon | No Comments »


Yuri Network News – November 12, 2011

November 12th, 2011

Extremely short news report this week, I’m pounded with work.

Yuri Event News

Sailor Moon and Aria (also Doremi and Tamayura) anime director Satou Junichi will be a guest at Ushicon in Austin, Texas in February. Texan readers – if any of you are going, please let us know how it goes!

I’ll be a guest at Yaoi and Yuri Con in The Netherlands on April 1, 2012! I’m very excited to be able to meet some of the Yuricon and Okazu fans there. If you’re in Europe, I hope you’ll come by, and say hello! I’ll be on a Yuri panel, of course, and hope to do a lecture, as well.

***

Yuri Anime

Sentail Filmworks has announced that they’ve licensed A Channel. I couldn’t watch this, so if you’re picking it up and want to write a review for Okazu, by all means, please contact me!

Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika is being adapted into a 3-part film project. They are so not done milking this yet. The anime is being released by Aniplex USA this winter.

***

Yuri Manga

Don’t forget that next week, the second and, sadly, final, volume of Ame-iro Kouchakan Kandan (あめ色紅茶館歓談) hits the shelves. There is a deluxe version with Drama CD and a manga-only edition.

Also out next week is the January issue of Comic Yuri Hime (コミック百合姫).

The third volume of Blue Friend (ブルーフレンド) hits the shelves next week as well.

***

That’s a wrap 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.

Thanks to all of you – you make this a great Yuri Network!

Posted in Yuri Network News | 3 Comments »


Yuri Manga: Private Lesson (プライベート　レッスン)

November 11th, 2011

You may remember a volume of manga licensed and released by Seven Seas called Voiceful by nawoko, a collection of stories that ran in Yuri Shimai and Yuri Hime magazines. This was a collection that skirted lightly on the side of Yuri, but was deeply embedded in the idea of music.

Private Lesson (プライベート　レッスン), the new Tsubomi collection also by nawoko is slighly more Yuri and just as much about music as ever.

The main story follows Tamago and her older cousin, Toriko, who teaches her how to play the piano. Tamago is suffering with a crush for Tori-neechan, but doesn’t really have any idea what it is she’s feeling. Quite accidentally, Tamago is made aware of another person with a crush on Tori-neechan. As a result, Tamago is introduced to the complex world of adult relationships, which always seem cool when you’re a kid, until you learn that adults don’t have a clue.

The story about Tamago and Toriko is all right as a first crush story, but there’s an easter egg in this collection. Tamago has a classmate who doesn’t speak much, and who was also was being taught piano by Toriko. Ryuuhara had difficulties bringing herself to speak when she was young and we can see that she’s not a big talker now. In a flashback we see that the girl next door, Miki, was able to pull her out of her shell – and they now have a relationship that goes beyond just being friends.

The real love story here, though, as it was in Voiceful, is music. While we don’t get essays on music, we can easily see that what nawoko loves best is the joy on the face of someone playing music beautifully.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 7, Ryuuhara’s side story was a nice bonus – 8
Characters – 7
Yuri – 7
Series – 2

Overall – 7

Private Lesson will not probably blow your socks off with “wow”, but that isn’t what nawoko does. Let the story flow, like the strains of Diane Walsh playing Schubert’s Sonata in A Minor as I am doing as I write this review. That’s about right. ^_^

Afternote: I just learned that this piece was featured in Nodame Cantabile, too. That makes it even more perfect.

Posted in Yuri Manga | 2 Comments »


Yuri Manga: Himitsu no Recipe (ひみつのレシピ)

November 10th, 2011

Underclassman Wakatsuki is reasonably sure she’s gay, but not entirely, so she convinces her sempai, the president of the cooking club, to y’know, kiss her, just to see.

And so, Morinaga Milk’s Himitsu no Recipe, (ひみつのレシピ）begins with a very cheap, servicey opening, and then desperately tries to make a story out of it.

Now that she’s convinced she likes girls, Wakatsuki is also convinced that she likes Buchou. A lot. A lot a lot. And, um, she really wants Buchou to like her back. So Wakatsuki joins the Cooking Club and plots to be closer to the club president, who is almost completely oblivious of her not-all-that-mixed signals.

For her part, Buchou really wants the Cooking Club to be successful and she’s putting her heart and soul into recruitment and training, pretty oblivious of Wakatsuki’s ulterior motives.

Unfortunately for readers, the heart aching sincerity of GIRL FRIENDS is pretty much completely absent in this series. The first chapter very much reads like a one-shot. The overall feel was that the first chapter was a tryout to see if Morinaga-sensei and the Tsubomi editors got along and when they did, they just told her to continue with these two characters.

It’s hard to be sympathetic to Wakatsuki, who would be completely sympathetic if she had her crush, treasured it, fantasized about it, and told herself the whole story in her head, as we do with crushes. But it’s impossible to really like her the 5th or 6th time Buchou has pushed her off and said, “No.” Because sexual harassment isn’t funny or cute or, really, entertaining, no matter how moe the art is.

The big summer training camp is coming up and Wakatsuki has her battle underwear ready to go. I’m almost hoping that Buchou fends her off, gives her what for and throws her out of the club. From my perspective, Wakatasuki needs to be trained properly.

I’m sorry this manga isn’t better, but it had such a bare bones opening and really hasn’t developed any muscles since.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 4
Characters – 5
Yuri – 6
Service – 6

Overall – 6

If you were a big fan of GIRL FRIENDS, I think you might be better off skipping this. If you just love Morinaga Milk’s work on principle, then definitely get it. It has her signature art style, but I know she can write better stories than this.

Sorry all the recent reviews have been grumpyish, but we’re getting down to the bottom of the pile of things I bought in September. And I’m saving the best for last. ^_^

Posted in Morinaga Milk, Tsubomi, Yuri Manga | 7 Comments »


Ribon no Kishi The Musical (リボンの騎士 ザ・ミュージカル)

November 9th, 2011

Since Princess Knight, recently released by Vertical Publishing (Volume 1 and Volume 2)  is moving ever closer to the top of my to-read and review pile, I thought it might be nice to finally watch all of Ribon no Kishi The Musical (リボンの騎士 ザ・ミュージカル)

This production is Takarazuka-esque, but in fact was not a Takarazuka production. Instead it starred members of pop idol groups Morning Musume and v-u-den. The three-disk edition I have included multiple versions of the same musical, with different lead actresses and casts. As I am not the audience for which this was intended, and indeed know next to nothing about Morning Musume except that, when I saw them 5 times on TV on New Tear’s Eve, the 14 of them, dressed in kimono and geta, were barely able to jump rope 40 times in unison.

It has been years since I last read Ribon no Kishi (Knight of the Ribbon). I have the three-volume set put out in 1974, based on the redrawn Nakayoshi magazine release of the story. My memory of it is relatively clear and the story in the musical, although rewritten in places and full of random musical numbers, was relatively simple to follow. With the exception of the many month interval between me watching Volume 1 and Volume 2, and so I was quite confused by the jailers little song and dance number at the beginning of Volume 2. I got over that, though.

I chose, with completely randomness, the Takahashi Ai version, but there were at least two other cast versions on these disks. Again, I’m not a MM fan, so seeing specific members was low priority, but even I know Ogawa Makoto, so it was kind of nice to see her on stage. (I believe I know her from her participation on Kunoichi, so nothing to do with her time with MM.) I knew people who cared more than I did would insist I be precise here and they have, yay fandom – the main character that changes cast member is Ferdinand.

Okay, so, Takahashi Ai did a really good job at playing Safire, I thought. Even when the camera or spotlight wasn’t on her, she gave it her all. And I liked her costuming quite a bit. The evil duke wasn’t all that ominous and there were some backup singers and dancers that weren’t helping. In general the singing was…okay. Lots of only partially hit notes, but the group pieces were mostly all very fluid and nice. Not her fault, but the costume on Prince Ferdinand did not work. It was pink and frilly and had the opposite effect of making Ferdinand boyish.

I’m never going to love musical theater, no matter how many Takarazuka tapes (or related all-female musical theater troupes) I watch, but compared with, say, The Scarlet Pimpernel, I thought Ribon no Kishi The Musical was enjoyable. Perfect Sunday afternoon background noise while I worked. I’d look up and there’d be Takahashi Ai, dressed dashingly as Safire and then I’d go back to work smiling.

Ratings – Overall – 7

Not the best all-female musical theater I’ve seen, but definitely not the worst.

Posted in Ribon no Kishi / Princess Knight, Takarazuka | 2 Comments »