‘By Your Side’ Interview at Kinokuniya NYC

December 2nd, 2022

This week, I had the incredible pleasure of being interviewed a Kinokuniya NYC in midtown New York City. I cannot begin to tell you how much fun this was! Thanks so much to everyone at the store, especially Ariel, the interviewer. We held the interview right as people walked into the store, so we had quite an audience. I signed some books – and even had a few folks there pick some up. Thanks to the folks who came by!

Once again, I’ll ask you to give this video a watch and a “like” on the Kinokuniya Youtube Channel. It helps them and lets them know that they made a good choice to have me. ^_^ Here’s the whole interview:

 

 

If you’d like to share some shorter clips, they also had me do a pitch for my book… ^_^

 

…and then read a short segment.

 

Please feel free to share any of these and comment on YT! Thank you all for making By Your Side a success and thanks again to everyone at Kinokuniya NYC and Kinokuniya USA for their support.

You can find By Your Side: The First 100 Years of Yuri Anime and Manga at Kinokuniya, online or at bookstores near you!

Posted in Events, Interview, Okazu News, Yuricon | 1 Comment »


Umibe no Cain (海辺のカイン)

December 1st, 2022

For those of us interested in Yuri, the name Kimura Minori might not be the first one of the Magnificent 49ers who comes to mind, but like so many of her peers, she did contribute to genre. Umibe no Cain (海辺のカイン) was written in 1980-81 and it feels very much like a look from outside at a queer life, but woo was this a bitter cup of manga to drink.

The story follows Mori Nobuko, a gender non-conforming afab person and Sano, a woman she meets in the park. Sano invites Mori to stop in for some tea and cake and the two strike up a friendship. Sano is a designer of children’s clothes. Mori can tell she really likes children and wants girls to have clothes that make them happy. This triggers a series of painful memories for Mori. We learn about her mother who has treated Mori less well than her other, more conventionally feminine child. Mori has a lifetime of gender dysphoria  and loathing of dresses and skirts, all of which is incredibly painful for her to recount.

Sano and she get together regularly, Mori even moves to the same town – she was actually there looking for a place to live when they met. Sano invites her to a show of her designs, Mori invites Sano to see her perform at the bar she sings at. All the while, Mori’s struggle with her gender presentation comes out as they talk over late nights and a lot of cake.

Mori finally goes to see her family, dressed in a fashionable suit with a skirt and in doing so, says goodbye to the person her mother wanted her to become and gets the rid of the guilt she feels. She goes back to Sano’s and tearfully recalls how awful and small a person her mother was. Sano’s response is to note that Mori’s mother did not sound adult at all.  The two of them go out for a drink and Mori gets quite drunk and admits that she is in love with Sano. They go back to Sano’s place and make love, but Sano quickly distances herself from Mori.

Mori finally drops by Sano’s and is not let into the house. Sano begs her to say that that night was just because they were drunk and it was curiosity, but having been freed of her self-loathing by Sano, Mori cannot do that. In tears, but smiling sadly, she walks away…and leaves that town forever.

So, yeah, this was  a pretty painful read on a bunch of levels. It hit all sorts of clothing dysphoria buttons I have and the ending was sad and bitter and angry-making. It was 1980, for fuck’s sake, not 1950. I was happy that Sano cared enough about Mori to help her dismantle her own forest of thorns, but frustrated that she wasn’t willing to be honest with herself.

As the anime gives us The Rose of Versailles‘ Oscar, we also have Umibe no Cain‘s Mori. These will be later joined by Maria-sama ga Miteru‘s Satou Sei and all of those sexual and gender minorities out there who have to carve our way out of our own forests of thorns.  ^_^;

As I read this volume, I found myself mentally bargaining for it – maybe it wouldn’t be that bad. If this had been written pre-1970, I would have accepted it at face value, but in 1980, I just found it a distasteful narrative. Mori deserved better. I want her to find a nice gal who likes her for who she is. ^_^;

Obviously there’s no way I can call this queer representation, but it seems like a solid piece of queer perception and I can’t help but think of media like this poisoning people’s minds, so that the kids who grew up with this, would hit the 90s writing those stories of death or marriage that fill my shelves. What might the world have looked like if Mori and Sano had been allowed to be happy? Whatever it is – that’s the world I want to see in my manga. I don’t miss 1980 and I don’t miss manga like this being the only queer thing on the shelves.  That said, I did appreciate the honest discussions of what now call gender dysphoria. In the end, I only wish we had had an equally honest discussion of sexuality.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – Like sticking pins under your nails
Characters – 9 So fully fleshed out, it actually hurt more
Service – mmmmm….a very little bit of nudity. Mom was kinda creepy. Let’s go with 3
Yuri – 6 Emotional intimacy and sex

Overall – I am very glad I read it, but I resented it a lot. It left a very bitter aftertaste.

You can find this from 3rd party sellers and used manga stores, OR you can read it digitally on ebook Japan!

Thanks to Rachel Thorn for giving me the impetus to get a copy of this manga!

Posted in Classic Yuri, Yuri Manga | No Comments »


SAL: Stories About Love

November 30th, 2022

Sal Jiang made quite a splash last year with both Black & White (白と黒~Black & White~) and Ayaka-chan ha Hiroko-sempai ni Koishiteru (彩香ちゃんは弘子先輩に恋してる) being picked up by publishers in Japan, and Black & White: Tough Love at the Office making it’s debut in English.

Today we’re looking at SAL Stories About Love, a collection of shorts by Jiang-sensei, put out as doujinshi or in collections, extra chapters online and the like.

The first story is a short romance, followed by a two-chapter series about a woman and the gender-noncomforming person she falls for.

Following this is a story that amused me no end, as two women in an office fight over the same umbrella, not realizing a coworker has taken one of their umbrellas. The escalation of their war is petty and amusing and their reconciliation is also kind of fun.

This is followed by a romance between a newbie at a food hall and the employee who trains her, a large woman, who the other employees, all college women, assume is interested in the guy who comes by to talk to her all the time. When he finally confesses, she rejects him and the newb and she walk off arms around one another.

This followed by some bonus chapters from Ayaka-chan ha Hiroko-sempai ni Koishiteru. The volume is completed with a delightfully smarmy holiday season story called “All I Want For Christmas Is You.”

It’s a great volume to get a look at how Jiang-sensei’s art and story telling has evolved. If you like either of her serials, this is a nice pickup, as well.

Ratings:

Art – Some of these are early enough that we can see the development in her art
Story – Variable, but I think the stories work best when petty rivalry is the plot. ^_^
Characters – Mostly all likable and sweet
Service – There is some nudity and sexual situations
Yuri – 10

Overall –  8 A solid collection

Posted in Yuri Manga | No Comments »


I Can’t Believe I Slept With You!, Volume 3

November 28th, 2022

In Volume 1 we met hapless Koduka, an adult chronologically, but so at loose ends that she is unable to function, really, as an adult and her hopeless landlady who, under the guise of a terrible contract, is actually making Koduka’s life better.  In Volume 2, Koduka comes to realize that she’s falling for her landlady, and start to make steps to put her life in some kind of order.

In I Can’t Believe I Slept With You!, Volume 3, Koduka has finally understood what she wants out of her life…and that includes being with the landlady as lovers. Only, the landlady, who is carrying a ton of emotional baggage is making it harder than it should be. We have hit “two people who like each other and should be together, but are not, for reasons” territory. This might be very irritating, except that Koduka is working so hard at adulting and being a good, kind, and thoughtful, person, that neither we, nor the landlady can resist.

Christmas brings a happy ending for our couple and we’d be perfectly within our rights to take that at face value. In fact, we have to,  because while Koduka has worked on herself and realized who she wants to be, the landlady’s story is left for us to imagine and is not so much as touched upon. The creator mentions this regretfully in her afterword and I am torn about it. On the one hand, the story feels unbalanced by it’s absence, but on the other, it was probably pretty obvious and banal (landlady falls for tenant, is rejected, things go badly.) In any case, we are meant to be satisfied with Koduka’s redemption, as she was the protagonist. It was a pretty good redemption, too – Koduka gets a job that suits her and that she likes, she starts to talk to people, she and the landlady become friends with another not-a-lesbian who moves in. Koduka’s extra lovey-dovey Xmas Eve plans are likely to melt most cold hearts.

Art – 8
Story – I don’t want to be the movie scrooge, I’ll call it an 8 out of holiday generosity
Characters – 8, same. The landlady even gets a first name
Service – 5 some sexual situations
Yuri – 8

Overall – 8

As a three-volume short series, Miyako Miyahara’s I Can’t Believe I Slept With You is not ground-breaking, but it’s an easy, fun, dare I say, heartwarming series. A veritable Hallmark movie of a Yuri manga.

Now I’ll go settle in to my seasonal holiday grumpiness. ^_^

Posted in English Manga, Yuri Manga | 3 Comments »


Pink Theory GAP The Series (ทฤษฎีสีชมพู GAP The series)

November 27th, 2022

Mon is excited, she’s starting her new job at the company run by Sam, on whom she has had a crush since she was a child. But the kind Sam she remembers from when they were young, has turned into a bitter and mean-spirited woman, a person who apparently delights in making the people around her miserable.

Caught in a passive-aggressive relationship with her crush, Mon is trying to figure out how to be what she wants to be to Sam, while Sam doesn’t seem to know what she wants, at all. What we, the viewers can see, is that Sam is living in a emotionally abusive environment, with a sadistic and unyielding grandmother who has given her a deadline on her dreams.

Pink Theory GAP The Series (ทฤษฎีสีชมพู GAP The series), is a live-action Yuri series based on the novel of the same name by Chaoplanoy. This series is streaming on the Idol Factory official channel on YouTube, with English subtitles, with a new episode every Saturday night Thai time. This series had pretty solid marketing and a positive response to the trailers, so I was expecting something pretty good. Now that I’ve watched the first two episodes, I think I can safely say that we’re getting something that is, in fact, pretty good. ^_^

Becky Armstrong plays Mon and Freen plays Sam. Both are doing a decent job with their characters, and there is pretty good tension between them, even aside from the slow, belabored, lingering still moments when they come within 6 inches of each other. Also good is the supporting cast, especially Mon’s coworkers, who live in fear of Sam’s whimsy.  Several of the actors are known to me from the previous Idol Factory series I watched. It’s kind of nice to see “familiar” faces in different roles. I quite like Yha in this story, she’s definitely our greek chorus and rather dry. I’m also pleased that Sam has some friends, and we – rather unusually for live action – are introduced to a butch lesbian as well as the usual crop of very femme lesbians.

The negative side is pretty small. It’s a rom-com, so the comedic elements are excruciating as they almost always are. Drunk, screaming coworkers is not actually funny, in any format. My idea of things that make me cringe are different from yours, so I’m always not-okay with obsessions as a form of normalized character building…that said, Mon’s obsession with Sam is the basis for her taking the job and her overall character, but not the focus of the story. Furthermore, Mon isn’t a morose or weepy character and it’s very easy to like and support her, which I think works to the story’s advantage. I describe the story as Devil Wears Prada with social consciousness.

On the positive side, the characters have some depth; there are reasons that Sam is an abusive jerk and that Mon won’t put up with it, even though it breaks her heart to have Sam look her the eye and have no idea who she is. There is also clearly a side plot or two, I’m pretty sure Sam’s fiance Kirk is setting her up for failure. But going in to this knowing they will get together and it’s going to become socially conscious, gives me hope that there will be even more depth.  I’m looking forward to the final boss confrontation and if they will defeat Evil Grandma,. (They clearly will, I’m just pretending there’s some doubt.)

As the first fully Yuri Thai Live-Action, I’ve got to give props to Pink Theory GAP The Series…they’ve set a pretty high benchmark.

Ratings:

Cinematography – 7 Tropey, but decent
Characters – 7 Same, with Mon being so likeable that it all works
Story – 7 Same. It’s a rom-com, until it becomes a drama.
Yuri – 8 It’s pretty strong off the mark, but I’ll give it somewhere to go when they become lovers
Service – 4 A little here and there. Not grotesque, just “sexy” in a very thin definition of what makes a thing sexy,

Overall  – A strong 7 with room to go up.

At some point, I have going to have to read the novel, aren’t I? ^_^

Posted in Live Action, Thai Drama | 11 Comments »