Are the novels translated officially or fan translation?

They are translated officially and they're probably the best translations I've ever seen TBH? There was like one weird point out of eight books, and considering how metaphorical and psychological Otherside Picnic gets I'd imagine it's a way harder job than a typical present day romance or something like that.

The way Sorawo eventually has her breakthrough to get past this was one of the funniest long running punchlines I've ever seen lmao.

Care to share? I actually don't remember it.

Does Sorawo thinking this jog your memory:
"I... I wanna see it!!!!!!!"

With how much young Joe and Kanna resemble Aya and Mitsuki, it feels like there's an obvious parallel being established. This both cements the romantic aspect of their relationship. Of course, the potential doom that could also mean has been there for a while. Hopefully they'll learn from their elders. Maybe Aya will move to America to stay with Mitsuki or something

Ay my girl is back! *cries in withdrawal. Please don't get canceled or licensed

Why would you not want it to get licensed?

Indeed. It's wacky that someone who clearly likes artists products also doesn't want them to make money and be more motivated to create more stuff. Most mangaka aren't exactly swimming in cash, and yuri is hardly the most profitable genre to begin with.

These days you don't even need to fill your house with manga volumes. Just buy a digital copy now and then, or donate directly if it's possible.

There are cases where a licensing is bad, there's sketchy companies that treat the manga poorly with translation or publishing and at least give off a vibe like they barely pay the original artists. Somehow most Jump manga ends up this way lately, the official translation of Golden Kamuy for example is absolutely dogshit compared to the fan scanlation on mangadex, and I seriously doubt it makes the author much of anything since it's hosted on a shitty app with a $2/mo subscription.
Thankfully Kodama's a big enough name to easily attract a good publisher like Seven Seas or Yen Press.

Ahhh, the words we've all been longing to hear!

For novel readers:
Too bad that Sorawo is too emotionally stunted to accept them or do anything about it for ages from now.

The half of the conversation she had with Satsuki at the end there was so creepy and ominous. Can't wait until the next arc in the manga form.

Imo
Sorawo isn't stunted or anything, she has PTSD and strongly flinches away from any strong emotion before she even really consciously feels it, a common symptom called "dissociation" that for whatever reason is almost never portrayed in fiction. A word novel Sorawo uses to describe Toriko's looks a few times is "stunning" and I eventually realized she's not using that as a metaphor or anything. Toriko is actually literally overwhelming for Sorawo, because she's still shutting down when she feels something strong.
The way Sorawo eventually has her breakthrough to get past this was one of the funniest long running punchlines I've ever seen lmao.

They tend not to be all that gendered in my experience? I can't actually remember seeing one off the top of my head that specifically assumes all the readers are women

The implication that Michi and Young Michi might be acting independently makes me think of the situation from Honkai Impact 3rd with Senti and Fu Hua. As I'm aware most people on the english speaking internet have not and will not play HI3, a spoiler summary:
Fu Hua got shot in the face by the primary antagonist of the story. Realizing this was about to happen, she used her special supernatural powers to turn into a ghost and haunt a magic feather (there's a technobabble explanation for this but it doesn't matter). However, Fu Hua's body did not die as she expected: The antagonist picked her almost dead body up and put it in a magic healing tank (again, technobabble) and the basically but not quite fatal bullet wound healed over the course of a few months. The newly healed brain then developed its own new personality, one still thinking that she is "Fu Hua" but also someone who is impulsive and totally cool with revolutionary violence rather than a stoic and austere person who strictly controls her actions like Fu Hua is. There's a whole arc with this new Fu Hua as a villain, but eventually she gets converted to the good guys and gets nicknamed Senti (short for Sentience lol). A lot of people ship Fu Hua and Senti, which imo is fun, although some people bristle at it claiming that two people sharing the same body hooking up would be incest somehow lol.

Would any of this be remotely relevant? Probably not. But hell, maybe Michi had a near death experience that created a ghost of herself without actually killing her. It'd be a better plot than some kinda split personality-based concept at least. Another possibility I can imagine is that "young Michi" is not actually Michi but a dead twin sister she blocked out the memories of or something?

I guess no one is going to mention Neo has a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT artstyle from the rest of the manga. She escaped from a Vampire Miyu book.

Hehe, you got that right. But we are still within the framework of vintage shoujo style!

Btw I thought the ghost in the shed would be more important in the story... but it was just a mook who went down with one punch? Bit disappointed there.

lol same, If figured ol' multieyes was a primary antagonist. Honestly still kinda conflicted about the rather extreme deescalation of tension that comes with Girl Neo coming through and bullet timing all the ghosts in the school. Wonder if we're going to end up rebounding hard from this in some way.

https://floatingintobliss.wordpress.com/2017/11/27/yuri-isnt-made-for-men-an-analysis-of-the-demographics-of-yuri-mangaka-and-fans/

Very good article. It's an important point to note that yuri was born in shoujo manga magazines, ie periodicals notoriously made for girls by girls! I remember another useful resource, a guide of yuri from the 70s to the 90s, and indeed all the stories listed come from shoujo mags:

https://www.yuricon.com/oldessays/shoujo-yuri-manga-guide/

The conclusion from the demographical analysis in your article is as expected:

Yuri manga is primarily made by women and primarily consumed by women.

And also:

But this is not to exclude the presence of men in the creation of yuri manga and in its fandom. Men certainly are present.

Yeah they are present but in the way Playboy and Penthouse also had a female readership lol. The cishet men readership of yuri manga: not the target but it's there.

I don't know what the point of overstating it like this is. Both that 2019 Dynasty demographics poll and that "unscientific survey of Japanese yuri fans" cited in that wordpress post find men to be about ~45% of readership, because that's basically the percent of the whole ass human population I'd expect to be straight men. If I assume Yuri Hime and S had roughly equal readership (a huge assumption lol) then their polls show the same thing, 30+62/2=46%. These are very interesting results, because they indicate that men are not disproportionately represented among the readers of lesbian fiction as some might claim, but that's not an insignificant slice of the population either.
There are indeed men among us, and as long as they behave themselves I don't personally see a problem with that lol.

Flowerchild is just aiming at the Flowerchild demographic lol. Although "A Face You Shouldn't Show" feels incredibly yaoi to me personally.
A Scummy Gap Student With a Hard Life Calls Upon a Lady of the Night meanwhile is obviously made with an audience in mind that transcends both age and gender: scumbags. :P

last edited at Nov 16, 2023 1:37PM

^ Personally I'd take Cockney over Americæn any day.

This is like if an American scanlator wrote every line of dialog from every character like a rootin tootin cowboy lmao

last edited at Nov 16, 2023 11:15AM

The one-trick pony author is back...

This is such a baffling opinion. I have no idea how someone could look at NTR and Days of Love at Seagull Villa and go "yeah these are the same thing". There's a shared theme or two, but every author has those if they put any of themselves into their art lol.

Oh, please... These 3 stories are resumed by the same 3 core things: Cheating, a passive MC who is pushed around by a bitchier female character and bissexuality. It gets repetitive after the third or fourth time.

...did you actually read Seagull Villa? Because none of those elements are actually "core" to that story, they're the inciting incident of MC moving to the island, but the actual plot of the manga is about accepting yourself and others as queer, and embracing and supporting your fellow queers. She isn't even bisexual, there's a scene where she thinks "This is the first time I've ever fallen in love with a woman... wait, have I ever even fallen in love with a man?" and realizes she was only with her ex-bf out of social expectations. Seagull Villa basically lacks any male characters in any sort of major role, you only see the ex in one singe scene and he's faceless and forgotten. "I Married My Best Friend to Shut My Parents Up" similarly has no bisexuality nor male characters, and is similarly about the MC realizing and embracing she's gay in defiance of heteronormative society. "Cheating" has really only been a significant element for Kodama in NTR and a couple one-shots like "Domestic Adultery" (which I don't recommend anyone read, not because the manga itself is bad but jesus christ that cockney british translation on mangadex is a war crime in scanlation form)

The main throughline of Kodama's writing imo is not "cheating" or anything like that, but "women discovering their relationship to heteronormativity is alienating and toxic, and seeking alternatives to it".

last edited at Nov 16, 2023 8:44AM

There's almost certainly more cishet men reading yuri than wlw, simply as a matter of demographics: they just outnumber us existing in society. But the manga themselves, at least in the case of any worth reading, are artistic works, not mere "content" made for "consumption". They are based on real interests and feelings, not simply a reflection of the audience demographics. I saw a review of a yuri manga made by a female author the other day where the reviewer, an American man, claimed that it's just "male gaze" material meant for guys who like "girl-on-girl" and I got so mad lol.

Yuri Hime isn't shounen lol. It had a shounen spinoff in the past, Yuri Hime S, but the main mag is sold based on the niche interest, not an age/gender demographic. One of my pet peeves with general manga fandom in the West is how way too much emphasis is put on magazine advertising demographics being cast onto individual manga, especially since the "male" demographics are actually just "default," much like how we tend to see masculine clothes as gender neutral compared to feminine clothes. Shoujo and Josei have basically atrophied to the point of being genres more than general demographics (not that "Josei" really existed as a specific slice of manga publishing to begin with). "Shounen" and "Seinen" mags publish a ton of stuff you'd assume by stereotype should be in those categories, like how one of the big Shounen Jump manga is "young woman pursues a career in traditional Japanese stand up comedy".

last edited at Nov 15, 2023 3:41PM

The one-trick pony author is back...

This is such a baffling opinion. I have no idea how someone could look at NTR and Days of Love at Seagull Villa and go "yeah these are the same thing". There's a shared theme or two, but every author has those if they put any of themselves into their art lol.

I'm so confused by the bonus chapter, what's the significance of "12 years and six months" other than being one eighth of a century?

Dorothy-sensei keeps drawing Seta more and more feminine lol. Maybe the shocking twist ending of the series is that Aizawa will eventually possess his body and trans it to her liking. The world's first afab trans woman idol.

hmmm I'm not sure about this, I didn't like the bit with the phone, I thought it was kinda tacky and it crossed boundaries as it could potentially get her fired, especially if it's something important. Also that thing she said about "you can't say no", uhm actually she can, retracting consent is something that is important especially in a BDSM relationship (which this one seem to be) as the people in them need to have total trust in one another, I would say it's essential. I know this is a work of fiction but sometimes I worry if people who are reading these things get the wrong idea.

Oh no if I ever become a sadist hostess and get stalked by a masochist actress, I might be influenced by an erotic comic to cross ethical lines! Thank God you're here to warn me otherwise!

Edit: and by "cross ethical lines" I mean "say something that is clearly roleplaying and not literally true in context because I know it will excite my partner," definitely would never want to do that, it's very unethical for some reason I guess

last edited at Nov 5, 2023 3:11PM

For example, I have a few strictly lesbian acquaintances IRL who have been really confused and kind of distressed about being attracted to specific men, only for those “men” to later turn out to be trans women.

This seems really common. Basically all the trans lesbians I know irl, if they had relationships before coming out, it was with "straight" or "bi" women who later settled on being lesbians. And quite a few of the lesbians I know have experiences with "guys" who were secretly eggs lol.
I think it's a similar phenomon as a close group of "normal" friends in school where everyone thinks everyone else is straight and then one person comes out of the closet and suddenly "oh wow we were all queers of some sort huh!" It's why I find yuri comics where basically everyone is some sort of gay as more realistic feeling than when it's two queers floating alone in the hostile waters of heterosexuality. It happens, for sure, but it's just less relatable to me compared to the former scenario lol.

Aya got mad at Koga for a while for sharing her secret with that guy and not her

No. She got mad at Mitsuki because she found the playlist she sent to "Onii-san" on her phone. However, she thought it wasn't worth getting mad at that because she found someone who shared her passion for music. She found other reasons to be close to Mitsuki.

You're definitely misremembering lol. Finding the playlist is what confirmed to Aya that Mitsuki was the record shop clerk she'd been talking to, but she had suspicions building up to that point where she noticed similarities, specifically features Mitsuki has that she found attractive about "onii-san", such as in chapters 14 and 17. She discovered the playlist in chapter 18 and is overwhelmed by the revelation, but is back to smiling at Mitsuki being really cool for her in chapter 19. She's only mad after she overhears Mitsuki and that guy talking specifically about this secret in chapter 21, thinking "why can you tell it to that guy and not me?"

While someone could force a straight reading onto this like some kind of disgusting hetero, that doesn't mean anyone else has to go along with it and treat that reading as valid, lol. Especially not when the continuing story has made it clear Aya still likes her, the extras showing they'll eventually be together in the future, and the artist's twitter media tab being 100% sapphic content.

When she realized that she is a girl she stopped considering a relationship, nothing changed about Mitsuki appearance or behavior.

Uhhhh when exactly did this happen?? I'm pretty sure it did not happen lol. Aya got mad at Koga for a while for sharing her secret with that guy and not her, but there's zero indication she ever dropped a romantic interest in Koga, because Aya was not attracted to some conceptual fake "male form" she imagined, she was and is attracted to Koga, who remains the same sexy butch she's always been.

By the way, it's worth remembering there's absolutely nothing particularly masculine about the reasons Aya was first attracted to Koga:
https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/the_guy_she_was_interested_in_wasnt_a_guy_at_all_ch01#2

last edited at Oct 25, 2023 10:46PM

"Aya is straight because she misunderstood Koga for a guy" is a hilarious take. She has literally the exact same discovery of her sexuality as the "shelter girl" from "Handsome Girl and Sheltered Girl": "Oh I've never been attracted to a single guy my whole life, never even found them remotely interesting, but oh! There's this one specific guy I like, I finally found my type I guess! ... Oh my type is 'butch woman' and I am a homosexual. I get it now."

It frankly feels both incredibly rude to butch women to say other women liking them are just straight, and rude to Aya to assume she's too stupid to know what she likes. Remember when Koga came out to her at the school festival, just to say "let's be friends" and Aya was clearly crestfallen because that's not what she was hoping to hear? Despite knowing for quite a while who Koga was?

Just reread this again and it's still one of the all time greats. SAD comparing it to "The Feelings We Must All Endure" is apt, since while they're very different manga in a lot of ways they both share the theme of the realistic struggles queer women face in heteronormative patriarchal society, and how there is happiness in spite of that but it requires bravery and hard work.
Also both have a main character who comes out of a shitty comphet relationship and immediately turns around and becomes a top, lmao. No wonder you were feeling terrible dating a straight man, girls!

Sixi being so dedicated to Xiaoen that she left Peachtown for college and then returned to it after following her lead, coupled with her grumpy protest now, makes me suspect her not getting that Xiaoen was in love so far for the story was wishful thinking or willful ignorance on her part. Sixi likes Xiaoen, but Xiaoen in the past telling her dating is pointless would have discouraged her from acting on it. And now Xiaoen is in love with someone else. Poor Sixi. :(

Anyway I think the person Makino will introduce to the rich boy will be her own mother. He seems to have a taste for annoying unfiltered women (he liked Makino putting her feet up on the table and picking her nose after all), and who is the one annoying unfiltered woman Makino knows who is straight and clearly values money more than love? That's right, Toxic Mother.

No problem sticks around particularly long in this series, so I don't see the fiancee being a problem for much longer. Also thinking it's gonna be Riri, which I know there's logistical issues possibly, but I can imagine that's only gonna make rich boy even more set on trying to win her over.

God, remember Maron being suicidal and Makino just instantly fixing it by going over to her apartment and offering to be friends. Lol that was by far the biggest nadir of this comic.