Comic Yuri Hime May 2024 (コミック百合姫2024年5月号)

April 25th, 2024

Framed by an elaborate gold frame on a deep blue background, two girls in old-fashioned Japanese school uniforms sit on stairs below a landing, reading a book and sharing confidences.We’re the beginning of of Q2, and Comic Yuri Hime May 2024 (コミック百合姫2024年5月号) has settled in for a lovely variety of Yuri manga – from the openly queer, to fantasy, to toxic relationships and a fair amount of goofy stuff in between.

This issue begins with a new story, featuring a well-worn trope that…I don’t hate for some reason.  “Saborinara Houkenshitsu de Douzo? Despite the fact that I don’t utterly hate the “hot, young school doctor and student” trope, I am always reminded of my own school nurse who was a horrible person, incompetent, hated kids and thought we were all lying all the time, as a wrinkled prune of a person. I wonder if our nurse was young and cool, what I might think about this trope. ^_^

On to “Sasayakuyouni Koi wo Uta”! This time Yori-sempai is staying over Himari’s house, and yet again, they face the issue of consent and what Himari wants. I expect this will be resolved this time.

I’m pretty happy with the way “Gakeppuchi Reijou ha Kuro Kishi-sama o Horesasetai!” is shaping up, even though the premise is a bit violent in both emotional and physical ways. Clearly, we’re going for a Bakarina internal monologue stule here.

“Salvia no Bouquet” has shifted towards a more typical school story but, again, I’m quite enjoying it. It’s really hard to dislike Ellen or Stella and magic, school, Yuri romance…okay. Extra points, though for the denouement here, when the spell was a failure, but also very much a success.

“Kiraware Majoureijou to Dansou Ouji no Kon’yaku” s taking itself a little seriously before it has a right to, but we are assured that there *is* a plot on the way!

And “Gan no Hime” is likelwise developing a plot, and one that radically changes everything we knew about this world. I do not love the art, but the story is very good. It’s the only scifi we have in the magazine now and I have high hopes for it.

Shikabane Shoujo to Ai ga Omoi Sei-kishi no Toubatsu Gakuen Life is waffling between being a VERY SERIOUS STORY and a light magical school adventure and I’m not sure which I want it to be, honestly.

In the final comic essay, by Kobara Yuuko, which is a review of a “Yuri” film, this month the topic of discussion was Liz And The Blue Bird, which, I will remind, I thought fantastic. Highly recommended.

Overall a solid volume with a lot for people who have tastes vastly different than mine, as well as those who like the kinds of things I like. ^_^

Ratings:

Overall – 8

The June issue is in JP bookstores and waiting for me at Kinokuniya. ^_^

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Yuri-themed Board Game Sisters of Dangerous Yuri Council (ヤバ百合会の妹たち), Guest Review by Lee Sanhwa

April 24th, 2024

The cover of a card game box with Yuri trope character types of "girls at a private school", featuring the classic dark-haired beauty and a younger pig-tailed girl as the main characters.Yuri Ranbou, which I reviewed earlier this month here on Okazu, is not the only Yuri-themed board game developed by Stromatosoft. Here is Sisters of Dangerous Yuri Council, (ヤバ百合会の妹たち/ YabaYurikai no Imouto-tachi) an “Onee-sama-taking Yuri auction card game”!

Set in classic Marimite-style Yuri world, it provides even more competitive gameplay (and more toxic Yuri) for up to five players. If this interests you, then please read on.

General Information

Players: 2-5

Time: 15 Min

Age: 7+ (Difficulty-wise, not content-wise)

In Sisters of Dangerous Yuri Council you become one of five ambitious first-year students at a prestigious girls’ academy, who all aim to become a member of the powerful student council. To achieve the goal, you have to gain the favor of four current council members. How? By having many meaningful times with them. Studying together, playing tennis doubles together, showing your strength, or “accidentally” showing your softer side……. But remember, you are not the only one who wants to get close to the four onee-samas. There will be conflicts, conspiracies, and some unexpected consequences.

All players start the game with fifteen “Action point” cards, numbered from 1 to 15. In each round, after one of the “Event” cards is presented, all players bid one of their action cards simultaneously for it. Whoever bids a card with the highest number takes the event card. But if two or more players bid cards with the same action point, those cards are excluded from the bid, meaning that you always have the possibility of taking a good event card with an action card of low point.  

The event cards show various situations occurring between you and one of the student council members, from shopping to intimate emotional exchange. According to the event depicted, each event card has a designated “Favor point”(-5 to 10) and 1~2 “Attributes”(Affection, Charity, Intelligence, Sturdiness, and Evil). The favor point is the goal of the game: the player with the highest total favor points becomes the winner. The first four attributes are symbols of each council member. If you acquire three event cards that share one of those attributes, you get an “Attribute Combo” card which gives an additional 5 favor points, because your onee-sama really favors you now! 

The “Evil” attribute is somewhat different. 5 out of the 6 “Evil” events have negative favor points, and depict negative situations such as verbal abuse, physical violence, or sexual contact seemingly without consent. Taking a couple of those cards obviously won’t help you win the game, but if you manage to take three or more of them, you can erase all negative favor points you have on top of gaining an attribute combo card. And the only evil event card with positive favor points? It’s named “The Fall”, with 10 favor points and a line of flavor text saying “The student council? I don’t know them well, but I’ve kinda slept with every single member.” Yes, this game allows you to win by continuing evil deeds. It’s quite difficult, but still possible.

The gameplay of Sisters of Dangerous Yuri Council is all about decision after decision. You must read your opponents’ minds, plan ahead, and sometimes change your strategy mid-game. One can say it’s even simpler than Yuri Ranbou, but you need to think way more fiercely in this simple bidding game. Or you’ll end up being a near-faceless antagonist in a Yuri manga, who abuses the protagonist a couple of times and then gets expelled forever. Note that those fierce strategic elements tend to go bland in two-person games, since unlike Yuri Ranbou which provides additional rules for 1vs1 games, Sisters of Dangerous Yuri Council just lets you play without the same-number-elimination rule. In my experience, this results in frequent deadlock situations.     

As a Yuri-themed board game, Sisters of Dangerous Yuri Council is more explicit and “twisted” compared to Yuri Ranbou. Regardless of what the package says, it’s definitely not for seven-year-old children, and maybe not for some mature Yuri fans. But if you have two or more Yuri colleagues who can fully enjoy toxic Yuri, then maybe this game is for you. 

Ratings:

Art – 9 (Beautiful, I like them) 
Gameplay – 8 (Simple, fun, AND strategic)
Characters – 1 (Similar to Yuri Ranbou)
Service – 8 
Yuri – 9 

Overall – 8

Like Yuri Ranbou, I’ve purchased this game at a board game store in Yodobashi Camera Shinjuku Nishiguchi. As far as I know, Stromatosoft’s official online store does not provide global shipping.

Erica here: Fantastic review, thank you! I laughed out loud at the idea of 7 year-olds being able to play this game. If so, watch out for those children, phew!

Although Stromatosoft does not do shipping, with shipping or buying services (Tenso/Buyee, Japan Rabbit, etc) you’ll be able to get it shipped to you, should you want to. So start up that evil card collecting today. ^_^

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Queer and Feminist Perspectives on Japanese Popular Cultures Symposium & Rainbow Book Fair Event Reports

April 22nd, 2024

Banner image for Queer and Feminist Perspectives on Japanese Popular Cultures SymposiumI know I have been a bit spotty this month, but today’s post is, in part, the explanation of why. ^_^

First, I participated with my co-presenter Willow Nunez, on Yuri Cafe Anchor, at Queer and Feminist Perspectives on Japanese Popular Cultures Symposium. My very many thanks to Aurélie Petit and Megan Rose for all their hard work getting this together. There were three days of presentations, over multiple sessions, which tried to account for various time zones. Ultimately I as able to see many, but not all the presentations. The keynotes were outstanding and the presentations thought-provoking. They were all recorded, so hopefully you’ll all be able to watch at least some of them when they get posted. The link above is to the ticket site, but go ahead and checkout the presentations – really fascinating stuff.

In addition(!), Willow and I plan on working up our portions of the presentation into an article which I will hope gets published. If not by the journal I want to submit to, then it’ll go up on Okazu. ^_^ This symposium was handles in what I know now to be an academic fashion, with each presenter given about 15 minutes to present. So when those videos go up, they will be fun, short watches.

So, that was amazing and I really hope it continues. It was a fantastic symposium, with lots of great presenters. We need more of this perspective.

Also, April saw my return to in-person events for the first time since 2022. It’s still pretty stressful for me to be in a room with other people who are not masked. (Please be considerate of other people – at least if you are inside, wear a mask. I will be masking the rest of my life, because almost dying from Long COVID was not fun.)

May be an image of 3 people and textOnce the Sympoium was completed,  I hustled to get myself together for Rainbow Book Fair at The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community Center in New York City. I had not been back to that part of town in ages. It was nice to return for such a fantastic event. This is a free event, they only ask $3 dollars donation. I was part of the Queer Comix group with Rica Takashima, Jennifer Camper, Carlo Quispe and a pile of other amazing, fun, talented people.

It was…really nice. Everyone coming in had amazing stories, hair, clothes, attitudes, load of smiling faces and welcoming people. It was like a big warm hug of an event. Friends stopped by, which was lovely. Good to see you Anne, Mari, Hazel and Grace! And we made a ton of new friends, as well. ^_^

I was able to introduce Yuri to a bunch of people who had never heard of it, and folks who had were excited to see it represented, which was a definitely feel-good moment. At least one person who followed me on social media came by to get a copy of By Your Side: The First 100 Years Of Yuri Anime And Manga.

If you couldn’t make it to NYC, don’t worry, I’ll be doing a BYS Special with original prints by Rica of the cover art. Keep your eyes peeled for that. I have about a dozen books in the house and would love to clear them out. ^_^

Thank you so much Rica for tabling with me. It’s always fun to hang out with you. Rainbow Book Fair is a great place to experience a wide range of queer creativity. I’ll hope to see you there next year!

Life is getting weird and fun and complicated again, and I’m looking forward to it. Hopefully I’ll see you at a future event. ^_^

Posted in Events | 1 Comment »


Rainbow Book Fair Today

April 20th, 2024

No YNN report today as I will be at the Rainbow Book Fair, from 12-6 at the The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center at 208 W 13 St, NYC. Come get copies of By Your Side: The First 100 Years of Yuri Anime and Manga signed by Rica Takashima and I. See you there!

Posted in Miscellaneous | No Comments »


Train To The End Of The World Anime

April 18th, 2024

4 girls in Japanese school uniform sit and stand on the roof of a Japanese railcar. One holds a dog, one stands looking out into the distance.What makes good science fiction?

This is a question that I have been asking a lot as I watch Train To The End Of The World, streaming now on Crunchyroll.

In the near future, a young woman, Yoka, is scooped up by a famous Japanese sculpture of an owl and deposited in the middle of a huge gathering. She is clearly unwilling to be the center of so much attention, but is forced to click a giant “7G” button that will enable something something. As she hits the button, reality is scrambled and nothing on Earth is ever the same again.

In a small, provincial town west of Tokyo, Yoka’s friends are now living among wild animals who used to be the adults of the town. Shizuru, the leader of Yoka’s friends, is obsessed with finding Yoka, as they had parted on bad terms. With the help of a transformed railway employee, she enables a single train car to try to try and find her friend. With too little preparation, Shizuru and her friends Reimi, Akira and Nadekko are heading to Ikebukuro, 30 train stops away from their town and into some of the best science fiction I have encountered in anime.

In my opinion, dystopias are far too easy. We, in 2024, can understand exactly how we got to Blade Runner, Mad Max, Akira, or even Silent Mobius. But in Train To Nowhere, the dystopia makes no apparent sense. Some things work, some do not. People are changed from town to town in unpredictable ways. The unpredictability is, for me, one of the key features of this series. This isn’t just about getting somewhere attacked by persistent gangs or capitalists or even demons. There *may* be gangs, but why and how they formed will be more interesting than just hoarding gasoline or water. 

Secondly, I have decided as I watched, good science fiction ought to make me feel slightly uncomfortable. And not just “oh gosh, will /some pointless violence that probably feels very rape-y or just be rape/ happen to our female protagonists?” (Again, I think of that female character in one of The Saint novels who asked out loud, exhausted, bored and annoyed at the threats being made at her, “Why does it always have to be rape?”) No, good science fiction makes you uncomfortable because even if you understand what might happen, you may not understand what the consequences are.  In Train To Nowhere, the girls’ movement through subsequent towns may have repercussions we cannot imagine. What might happen when they arrive in Ikebukuro – what has become of Yoka? Neither we, nor her friends know or can guess.

And then, there is what readers of Okazu will undoubtedly see as either Yuri or Yuri-adjacent. Shizuru’s friendship with Yoka was close and the loss of her friend weighs heavily upon her. That loss compels her to learn how to drive a train through an unimaginably bent reality. That’s certainly a level of intimacy that I find compelling.

There is a manga adaptation of the anime that is currently on Kadokawa’s Comic Walker in Japanese (which is down, as I write this, so check back later.) It really surprises me that this an original anime first and is not adapted from a novel or LN. This is exactly the kind of science fiction I would have imagined came out of the SF genre in Japan.

Ratings:

Art – 8, especially when it comes to the newly configured landscapes
Characters – 8 A good ensemble, but I relate best to Akira, the person least likely to walk into the creepy bath
Story – 9 The episodes favor visual impact over narrative coherence, but its still very decent
Service – Mild, and ignorable
Yuri – As I see it, 6

Overall – 8

We haven’t had the time the characters have had to learn to accept this new reality – and many of the viewers are indeed responding as if they have been thrown into it. “WTF am I watching?” was a common response to Episode 1. As for me, my response was that Train To Nowhere is good science fiction, and whatever happens, I’ll be watching.

Posted in English Anime | 2 Comments »