Yuri Network News - June 2, 2012

Yuri Manga

The third and final volume of GUNJO by Nakamura Ching is on sale! (羣青 下 ). This series still remains the most amazing manga I have ever read. I hope you'll support the artists and buy the book.

Fujieda Miyabi's Twinkle Saber Nova, Volume 4 (special edition) is up on Amazon.JP. I'll be honest, I didn't even realize this was continuing!

Distressing news from Tsubomi, Higashiyama Show's Prism is suspended for the moment because of concerns about plagiarism from photos on the Web.

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Yuri Anime

Okazu Superhero Eric P. wants you all to know that the trailer for Funimation's reissue of Yoshitoshi Abe's Haibane Renmei is live on its own webpage, along with episodes available to watch online. (You'll need to have registered and endured their horribly slow site, but for free streaming, it's a decent deal.)

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Other News

We have a winner of the Revoutionary Girl Utena Apocalypse Arc Box set contest on Yuricon! Thanks to Nozomi/RightStuf and to winner JoAnne S.  - and to all of you for participating!

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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!

Out of the Office for a few days

Just fyi, due to life, I will not be posting for the next few days. Feel  free to revisit the over 2000 previous posts that are here for yucks. I'll see you back here next week.

Yuri Anime: Revolutionary Girl Utena Movie/Adolescence Of Utena (English)

Included with the third Revoutionary Girl Utena box set from Nozomi/RightStuf is the Revolutionary Girl Utena Movie: Adolescence Of Utena.

I credit this movie, specifically, with being the beginning of my "career" as a spokesperson for Yuri. Because of my interest in the movie, my discovery of a Yoshiya Nobuko reference in the movie manga, and my interest in the literary and artistic references drawn upon for the series, I ended up being invited to present this movie at the Frameline Film Festival in San Francisco, the British LGBTQ Film Festival and the Tampa LGBTQ Film Festival back in the early 2000s. I was able to meet and interview Ikuhara Kunihiko at Big Apple Anime Festival and because of this movie, CPM was an early sponsor for Yuricon events. I have a lot to thank this movie for. Not least of which is for being a fantastic movie.

It is a fantastic movie, with extraordinary visuals, and two of the most spectacular scenes I have ever seen on a screen - the dance on the dueling ground, and the castle car. As much as I consider the TV series a more subtle and sophisticated creation, its the movie I watch more often.

I find I have never once published the intro I gave this movie a decade ago when it first came out in English, so rather than explain to you what I said, here is the actual intro I gave the film, in front of hundreds of people who liked anime and the series...and thousands of people who had no idea what the hell they were getting in to.


In 1994, on Sundays at 7 PM, the Shinjuku Ni-chome, Tokyo’s gay and lesbian district would come to a screeching halt. Why? Because for the first time ever, Japan was watching a lesbian couple on their TVs, as part of the popular animated series, Sailor Moon These characters, Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune, were very clearly portrayed as a couple – with personal issues to work out, as well as greater ethical dilemmas - all within a framework of defeating the Monster of the Day as sailor-suited magical heroines.

The director of that pivotal season of Sailor Moon had instructed the voice actresses to play the characters as if they were a married couple. In 1997, that same director Ikuhara Kunihiko, along with veteran comic artist Chiho Saito and the creative team at Be-papas, turned their sights once again to the “magical girl” genre of Japanese animation. The result of their collaboration was the wildly popular series Revolutionary Girl Utena.

This 39-episode television series utilized symbolism from earlier popular shoujoai or, "girls love" series – character designs and settings, were inspired by pioneer of shoujoai, Ryoko Ikeda’s Rose of Versailles and Brother, Dear Brother. Ikeda herself had incorporated imagery into her works that were established at the beginning of the twentieth century, by lesbian author Yoshiya Nobuko. Yoshiya’s Flower Tales set the standard for girls’ literature, and ultimately girls’ comics and animation, as well. Yoshiya was also responsible for the creation of the “shoujoai” genre with her story Two Girls in the Attic, another story whose themes and imagery echo strongly throughout the Utena series.

What you are about to see is the movie based upon the earlier television series. It was not meant to be a resolution of the series, it was meant to be a reflection of it – the same story as seen through a slightly distorted lens. The movie highlights the conventions of Japanese animation, even taking them to extremes. The subtle surrealism of the television series has been left behind and replaced with overtly surreal elements, a non-linear narrative and perhaps most confusing, scenes that are wholly dependent upon knowledge of the television series. What does this mean to you, the viewing audience? Well, it means that the best way to view this movie is to simply let it wash over you, like the roses over the dueling ground.

What significance does this movie, this cartoon, have for gays and lesbians? Many Japanese - as do many Americans - see comics and animation as being just for kids. But as we know, as we breathlessly waited for Willow and Tara to kiss on Buffy, the Vampire Slayer; every image, in any media, is progress. And with gay and lesbian youth, images that appear on television or in the movies have an even greater impact. This movie, like the television show it is based upon, adds one more positive image to the library.

In the United States, Yaoicon was formed to increase awareness of the portrayal of gay men in Japanese comics and animation, while at Yuricon, we're focusing on our own line of translated and original comics, and next year will be holding a ground-breaking event in Tokyo to celebrate lesbian stories in Japanese animation and comics with their creators. We at Yuricon firmly believe that our support, our creativity and our energy will bridge the enormous gap between fans here in the West and in Japan, and feed back into Japanese lesbians’ and gays’ efforts at being recognized openly.

And with that hopeful thought, I’d like to present to you, Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie.

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We did hold that event, and we have continued to bridge that gap. I've traveled the world, spoken on several continents about Yuri, presented movies and manga and anime to people in hundreds of countries through this blog.

As I watched the movie this weekend - again - I'm reminded that in many ways, it did give us the power to Revolutionize the World. How cool is that? ^_^

Ratings:

Overall - 10

Revolutionary Girl Utena Anime, Volume 3, Disk 4 (English)

At last, the conclusion to the "Apocalypse Arc" of Revolutionary Girl Utena.

There will be spoilers in today's post. Please do not read past this if you have not yet watched it, or do not wish to know any details.

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These final three episodes live in my mind as masterworks anime. And now, more than ten years later, I watched them again, fearing that I had made more of them in my memory than they were in reality.

I hadn't.

The climactic moment for me has always been and will always be the quiet conversation over tea and cookies, when Anthy says that she's poisoned the cookies...and Utena keeps eating, then admits that she too has poisoned the tea...and Anthy takes another sip.

Out of context, this moment probably doesn't seem like much, but for me it is *the* moment of the series. Everything is understood between these two, everything is forgiven, even the betrayals to come.

Akio is revealed for what he truly is...nothing at all.

The revolution of the world comes and goes and only one person notices it.

Once again, as Anthy quietly points out the obvious to Akio, "You have no idea what happened here, do you?" I applauded. Once again, as I watched Anthy step out of the gates of Ohtori, my heart is filled with joy for her.

Fans really didn't like this ending the first time around. It's too ambiguous, too open-ended. We don't know what will happen.

For me, it stands as the best ending to an anime series ever. The possibilities were endless, even the fanfic was extraordinary. Because we didn't know, we could create a thousand different reuinions, a million different futures. At the end of the story, I wanted only to revisit some of these endings (especially those I wrote for myself, obviously ^_^) because in my mind, I know *exactly* what happened.

As, I hope, do you.

Ratings:

Overall - 10

The final Utena box set contest ends today, at midnight my time. Winners will be announced in a few weeks, because I have some personal stuff to take care of this week. Please get those final entries in!

It is my hope that this re-release of Revolutionary Girl Utena was as much fun for you as it was for me. Thanks, Nozomi/RightStuf for making it possible. And thanks for your donation of a spiffy third box set and Duelist's Ring as a contest prize.

Yuri Network News - May 26, 2012

Yuri Manga
The July issue of Comic Yuri Hime (コミック百合姫) is out in Japan.

June will be a double-barreled festival of Hayashiya Shizuru books -  Hayate x Blade, Volume 16 (はやて×ブレード) and Jigoku NEET (地獄ニート)! More crazy humor in our Yuri, woot.

And just a reminder, Kimino Tamenara Shineru, Volume 1 is now available on JManga.com. Let them know if you like it! (They have a Faceook comments field right on the page itself.)

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Snatches of Yuri

Yume Yori Sutekina (ゆめよりすてきな) seems Yuri-ish, like so many MangaTime KR comics these days.

Yurikam ~ Yurika's Campus Life (ゆりキャン~ゆりかのキャンパスライフ) is actually getting a Volume 3. I weep.

And Kanojyo no Kamera to Kanojyo to Kisetsu  (彼女とカメラと彼女の季節) is appearing on all the Yuri lists, so there must be something to it.

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Random News

Kochi Indies Magazine Cover Illustration Contest has been announced.  Western manga artists welcome! Submission Guidelines have been posted on Crunchyroll (follow the previous link)  in English, so there's nothing stopping you. ^_^

Just what we needed! A new Kekkou Kamen live-action movie is in the works. I hope this one doesn't suck like the last one did.

Random House/Kodansha is looking for an editor, ability to read Japanese is a must. Ability to live on very few dollars a day will probably also help. ^_^


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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.

Revolutionary Girl Utena Anime, Volume 3, Disk 3 (English)

The"Apocalypse Arc" of Revolutionary Girl Utena is going to spend the rest of the anime blowing us up like a balloon and piercing us with pins, just to watch us go "pop!"

I don't know what to say about this arc other than I wholly wiped it from my memory the first time around and am not at all pleased at having to remember any of it this time. And not to spoil anything, but we learn three things during this arc and not one of them makes us any happier.

The shadow girls tell us what we've been guessing for a while, that the true story lay somewhere deep in our subsconscious where all fairytales live - and we're reminded yet again that the story started with something like a fairy tale. The beginning, which seemed innocent in the beginning takes on a much, much darker meaning now and there is nowhere on the screen to look that does not bring us pain.

I'm reminded of the hatred shown to Akio when fans saw this series the first time. It's a fair bet to say that he remains the most loathesome anime character I've ever encountered.

Of the two things that keep me going towards the end, one of them is revealed in this arc. Knowing Anthy's true story makes me love her even more, but I do not pity her. Because...

One more disk to go, only a few days left in the contest to win this boxset. Only a few more episodes to the end that I long for, that I cling to like a mirage in the desert. I wonder what my reaction to it will be when I watch it again for the first time in a decade?

My original review for this disk was going to be something like - ARRRRRGGGGHHHHH.

I'll withhold ratings until the end. I can't speak of this disk without spitting.

Yuri Manga: Kimino Tamenara Shineru (English) now on JManga

At last! Now you can enjoy the goofy gags of Heian period gag comic KiminoTamenara Shineru by Kuzushiro, translated and edited by ALC, lettered by Carl V. on JManga!

In addition, to help you better enjoy the comic, Erin and I wrote a short essay about the Heian period, Imperial life and some choices we made about translation and transliteration. You should be able to read the essay as long as you have have registered on Jmanga, regardless of your subscription. I sure hope you enjoy reading this book as much as we enjoyed working on it. ^_^