Today, all around the world, 1st anniversary Women’s Marches are being held once again. However you identify, please consider taking some time to turn up and stand up for human rights and civil rights in the face of this regressive and corrupt administration in the United States (and elsewhere.)
Yuri Anime
ANN reports that Citrus is listed as a 4-volume DVD release in Japan. The series is streaming on Crunchyroll and Funimation will stream the English dub.
Also on ANN is the new Cutey Honey Universe trailer. No glimpse of Natsuko yet, but fingers crossed that this Honey has her Lestrade.
News from YNN Correspondent Verso S -tickets for the Asagao to Kase-san OAV have gone on sale in Japan and include an extra theater listing. To celebrate, the Asagao to Kase-san official website has posted an album of the images used for the pin badges sold at the Yurimate display in Ikebukuro. (All of which I bought for this winter’s Lucky Boxes!) They also have news of an interview with Takahashi-sensei in the March issue of Davinci magazine. Davinci is a mainstream “women’s” magazine, which has previously run lesbian manga, so clearly there is an ally on staff there.
Bruce has been validated, as ANN reviewers have confirmed that the Yuri is considerably upped in the final episodes of Girls Last Tour.
Yuri Manga
Coming in for the first use of the “all the men are dead, only women have survived (but kept all the gender roles we currently have for reasons)” award is Eden no Otome (エデンの処女), which you can read by clicking this link to it’s page on Comic Ruelle. Konohana comes to private school Shirosakuya Gakuin, which is said to have a beautiful garden. While in the garden, she sees an equally beautiful student, and finds herself on the wrong side of classmate Aoi. There are 12 chapters up online (in Japanese) for you to take a look at.
Likewise, a few chapters of Watashi no Kobushi Uketomete! (私の拳をうけとめて！) are online at Web-ace. In this story, a woman recognizes a saleswoman at a clothing store as the girl who always wanted to fight her in school. She ends up being asked out on a date. Hilarity ensues, I guess. I have only read the first chapter so far ^_^
Another item from YNN Correspondent Verso, regarding a Chinese manhua Tamen de Gushi, 从你的名字开始 ). “Regarding the -possibly indefinite- postponement of the publication of a second volume, due to demands to omit certain scenes / censorship by Chinese authorities, a message from Tán jiǔ’ on the official publication site for the series has started circulating online. Apparently the author declined to comply with the demand to remove the confession scene between the two female leads and the publication of the second book was put on hold as a result. Series continues as webtoon, as far as I could tell.” Here is the original message in Chinese, posted on January 15.
ANN has an update on the status of Rose of Versailles from Udon Press. I can confirm that it is in process as I am involved a teeny, weeny piece of the process. (I try to not scream too much when I work on it, but fail pretty regularly.)
Other News
Speaking of Rose of Versailles, just this week, an interestingly awkward development occurred when Director of Publishing at UDON Entertainment, Matt Moylan, made a (now deleted, but the Internet is forever) comment about “fake diversity” (which is the new white supremacist meme) which, he felt, included LGBTQ content – and race. And gender. Uh-uh. What then does he define as “real” diversity?
I went to ask this question on Twitter and found I had pre-emptively been blocked, which was fine with me. ^_^
Given that Rose of Versailles is, in actual fact, about a woman who cross-dresses her entire life and is shown to be explicitly biromantic, I found it ridiculous that this man is involved in a inherently non-white medium and have made a point of letting Udon know. As I said on Twitter, “The unmitigated gall of a white man being bitchy about diversity in manga, which is a Japanese media[sic], would be hilarious if we weren’t all just tired of hearing white men whine about every fucking thing.” Mind you, this came on the back of the no-woman-version of The Last Jedi and- I kid you not – a Science Fiction Guild demanding science fiction “the way it used to be.” I don’t have to remind readers here that both diversity and political sentiment have been part and parcel of science fiction (and indeed, all human endeavor) since the beginning. It is no longer okay for us to just roll our eyes at this but do nothing to stop the most-represented groups in media whining that they aren’t represented enough.
Which brings me to next news item – another fantastic article on Anime Feminist, this time on the search for Latinx representation in anime, Angely Mercado’s My Road to Finding Better Latinx Representation in Anime is an worth reading. You may, if you are a member of a presumed-majority group, question why anyone might look for themselves in media that you believe would not have any representation, but then I ask you to ask yourself – why wouldn’t a person do that? If I can name a Jewish character in manga, why should Angely not be able to see Latinx characters? If I know a bibliomaniac or lesbian or Taijiquan-using character, why would someone else not be able to point to Indian or Russia or any other ethnicity and expect to see characters that reflect them? That is exactly how humans consume media. (If you’ve never had once in your life to have to ask “where am I in this media?” you probably are a straight, cis white male in a western country. Everyone else does have to do this, fairly regularly.)
And, let’s wrap this up speaking of representation on a positive note… Rebecca Sugar noted on Twitter that GLAAD’s Media awards have a new Outstanding Kids & Family Programming category for LGBTQIA-positive kid’s programming! How amazing is that?!? Now if we can get them to add a Manga category.
Become a YNN Correspondent by reporting any Yuri-related news to anilesbocon01 at hotmail dot com with your name and an email I can reply to!
Thanks to all of you – you make this a great Yuri Network!
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