Yuri Holidays

Just for funs, last night I found myself watching Ninja Scroll. I remember playing a game called Nexus back in the day, and overhearing some people talking about Ninja Scroll. I'm glad I didn't try to watch it back when I was 14, cause it's pretty damn filthy!
No real yuri, though it was quite good. The closest it comes to yuri is when a snake comes out of a demon woman's vagina and bites another woman. "Did she just score?" I found myself asking.
The women were all pretty hot though, and there were a gay male and bisexual male character. So for lack of anything more relevant to discuss, I recommend you check out Ninja Scroll.

I got this lesbian mermaid ornament for my Christmas tree. No lie, she has a leather jacket and a rainbow necklace.

You know whose art I really can't stand? Azasuke Wind. First of all, the douchebag has a password to keep white people out of his site. I can understand why, but that brings me to the next reason I hate his stuff. He draws rape and bondage and all that usual stuff, which isn't that odd in itself, but the stuff he draws always has this corpse-like, drooling, dead look to it. And people fucking love that shit, apparently. Christie from DOA covered in semen? Oh my God, sign me up!
Basically he draws these high-quality images of various anime and videogame characters being raped and molested in various manners. He tends to draw many versions of the same image. For example, one of Christie from DOA with her ass in the air fully clothed, one with her ass in the air nude, one with her ass in the air, nude, covered in semen, etc. And you have two facial expressions to choose from; distressed, and really distressed! ARE YOU HORNY YET?
And it's always so pasty and nauseous looking. And people love that shit. He has to password protect it to keep out the leeching whities.
Take this picture of Lei Fang from DOA, for example. That doesn't say "desire," to me. It says "Guys, I think I ate too much."
Nausea is such a fucking turn on.

The reason I'm talking about Azasuke Wind is because Ninja Scroll reminded me of two of our nation's most cherished ninja jailbait stars, Kasumi and Ayane from DOA. They slash quite well, because their hatred for each other is clearly masking a deep sexual tension between the two of them. Or something. And Ayane has big jugs, hurrrr.
But since I have a little bit of a ninja bug now, I'm thinking of them fondly.
DOA is a great series for lesbians, in my opinion. This lesbian, anyway. For multiple reasons. One, it has lots of supercute girls who don't get much of the skank treatment. Two, the DOAX games revolve arounf building your friendships and relationships with the other girls in order to give them clothes and accessories. It's sort of like one of those oldschool Barbie dressup games, but with hotter dolls and a relationship aspect. And they're all female athletes too, which a lot of girls are into.
Finally, Hitomi and Lei Fang are pretty much presented as a fanservicey cutegirl "couple" from the get go. They're just begging us to pick our favorite lesbian couple. Blame it on the differences in gender roles between Japan and America, but it just reads like a girl's game.

Even though Kasumi and Ayane are the big stars of DOA, I was always more of a Christie/Lei Fang girl myself. They make the best volleyball team! And while Christie is reserved and stoic (and hot as hell with butch appeal) Lei Fang is outgoing and goodnatured and adorable.

And the topic of yuri and ninja wouldn't be complete without a mention of Juline, a ninja manga with plenty of yuri subtext. It's by the same author as Vampire Priness Miyu, as I recall, and it's very good.

Women are Ecchi

I heard there is a Sasameki Koto anime now. Is it any good? I tried the manga but I guess I didn't really like the art. Not enough ~sparkle~ for me. But the anime seemed better.
I've been going crazy with school. Also, personal sidenote, my parents are getting divorced and I'm moving.

I read a bit of Hanjuku Joshi. I really enjoyed it, for a while. Then it started to seem just a bit pornographic. Is this really for women? If so, I'm impressed. Women are ecchi.
I like the main characters though, and their personalities. I'm glad they are going outside the onee-sama thing, as much as I like that also.

I really wish I had more Strawberry Panic to read. I can't believe they only published two volumes. I was just getting into it. I know Strawberry Panic is for boys, but it seems like yaoi with all girls. Everyone is in some sort of unrequited gay crush, or power exchange, etc. It seems like sort of a scary school, what with all the raep taking place in the library. But probably pretty exciting, once you get over the whole... molestation thing.
Of course as a fantasy land, it works just fine.
God there are a lot of characters, though. That's one thing that bothers me. I guess it relates to the fact that SP was originally a series of short stories, character bios, and images published in a guy's magazine. Or as Wikipedia tells me, anyway.
Also, yay for butch characters. I don't give a damn what y'all say, I calls 'em like I sees 'em. Amane is butch, and so is Kaname, that tan girl who has a crush on Amane. I agree with Shion, butch/butch love is so yaoi-esque and titillating.
I'm such a sucker for butch girls. Oh my god.

Since I'm apparently still thinking about SP this much without having read it in months and months, I suppose I should try to get more!

I really miss Strawberry Marshmallow also, lolicon as it was. Funny story, I watched Strawberry Marshmallow with this girl I had a crush on, with the intent of seduction. She liked it!
But she still dumped me later.
...
Anyway, are there really only five volumes? I wonder if I can find more.
Also wondering if I should branch out and try some genderswapping "yuri." Why not? I'm bored.

Yuri flavored kisses

Soo I'm back, finally. Long story, family drama.

Anyway, how about that yuri?
Actually I've had a pretty dry spell. Not a dry spell that was pretty, a spell that was pretty dry.
I've started to like Hen again, after we get past the whole straight underage rape thing. I'm going to do us all a favor and not even address that.
Actually I take that back. WTF. What the hell was that all about? Was that supposed to be funny? Are we supposed to be amused that Chizuru got what she deserved, or something? Holy crap, man. Christ. If you've read up to where I have, I trust you know the part I'm talking about.
But anyway, if it's any consolation, it gets good again after that. I can't wait til I can read Japanese fluently enough to cut out the whole scanlation step.

Kannazuki no Miko is on my netflix queue, so in the next couple weeks I should be all over that. I'm beginning to miss Marimite as well. I think the changing of the seasons is reminding me of it. That show always focuses on the seasons so much.

Other than that, I've been out of the loop. So you tell me, what's new and fun in the world of yuri?
Hm... I wonder if a subscription to Yuri Hime would be doable for me...

Mars Needs Yuri

The other day I was shopping at a Newbury Comic store, and they had a lot of unusual manga.
For one, I saw a manga based on Chinese legend, with most of the characters played by cute girls. The name escapes me, but I paged through it and it was pretty hot and there seemed to be some yuri elements. So if you're hard-up, go check it out. Just ask for the "manga based on a Chinese legend with the characters replaced by cute girls." I'm pretty sure that's what the actual summary said.

In addition to that, I saw they now have shoujo/josei manga based on Harlequin romance. This is a cool idea, I always liked the fact that romance novels exist, even though I'm just a little too gay to read them myself. But if the josei market can form a link with the romance novel crowd, that says good things about bringing more explicit josei manga to English-speaking people. Right?
Then we just need to convince them to make yuri, and we're set! WIMMINS NEED PRON TOO, DAMMIT
We need a manga version of Tipping the Velvet. That would be awesome.

It's like she's surrounded by flowers

I'm gonna be away until the 14th, so updates will probably halt until then.
I leave you with HLS.Meditate on this and get back to me.

You know, I just realized that in my yuri folder there is a lot of trashy hotness, but a fair amount of "good" stuff too. Like so:I think I'm going to start collecting yuri pictures where the girls look like they're trying to puke into each others' mouths. Just for lols.

I want to see Nabiki screwing female Ranma. Or just about any of the female characters, really.

Hottest Tachi, and Butchphobia

Recently I made a poll on shoujoai.com to find the hottest tachi. 'Tachi' means 'butch' in Japanese.
A bunch of people claimed Juri from Utena isn't a tachi.
Now, I'm gonna start by saying that everyone needs to make up their own mind on matters like this. We can't know for sure how a character officially identifies, and we can't always know how the character was even intended to be read. But that being said, here's why I never for a second read Juri as anything other than a gorgeous, androgynous, dominant lesbian.

• Like Utena, she wears the male uniform.
• She's known as the "prince" of Ohtori.
• She's the captain of the fencing team (which doesn't necessarily mean anything on its own, but it adds up).
• She has a delicious ansgty infatuation with Shiori, a definite femme. This infatuation is handled differently from other girl/girl relationships in the show, such as Utena/Wakaba or Utena/Anthy. This gives me the impression that while Utena may form friendships with girls that skirt the line between admiration and infatuation, Juri's affection is immediately recognizable as "abnormal". There's nothing Class S about it, it's a big fat lesbian crush, and Juri knows it. This is why she wants the power of Dios, to break free from the sitgma associated with homosexuality. This, combined with the fact that she never bangs any dudes, makes her the only Lesbian with a capitol L in the series.
• She's all buddy-buddy with Miki, a very femme petite boy. I read this immediately as an obviously dominant and masculine woman paired with a feminine and submissive boy, just for kicks.
• Some people said "She can't be butch, she's super super feminine with her long hair." All her long hair reminds me of is Lady Oscar from Rose of Versailles. Also, I don't think you can really count long hair as a signifier of femininity when almost every guy in the show has longer hair than her.
• In addition to her long hair reminding me of Lady Oscar, it reminds me of Takarazuka. Otokoyaku sometimes play roles with long luscious hair.

There are more points I could touch on, but I think you get the point. Of course like I said, there's really no way to prove or disprove it, unless Juri were to somewhere say in the series that she identifies as a tachi or someone who worked on the series were to say so.
But that being said, I don't think that should forbid us from speculating. I'd say calling Juri a tachi would be a pretty safe assumption, though assumption it may be.

But that brings me to another point. This whole thing reminds me of a conversation I had with a couple friends of mine a while back. I got into a little "discussion" with two friends of mine who are both lipstick lesbians, because I said Ellen Degeneres and Shane from the L Word were butch.
My friends both swore up and down that there was no way that Shane and Ellen were butch. "They don't look like men, they're just not super girly! You can be ungirly without being butch," they said.
This broke my brain cause like, hello, Ellen and Shane are both lesbian icons of butchness. When butchlovers everywhere complain about the lack of butch lesbians on TV, they'll always finish with "Well, at least we have Ellen and Shane. Sort of."
I mean yeah they're not super butch, but come on. Ellen is the queen on the pantsuit. She's about as butch as you can get on daytime TV without sending the middle-aged housewife demographic running for the hills.

So yeah, my opinion is that people are biased because people don't like butches. They're not going to give the benefit of the doubt, they're going to get hung up on details and see what they want to see. And of course they're going to claim they're being openminded. That's the part that really burns me, I think. People have practically told me it was offensive to call Juri, Shane, or Ellen butch. How dare I stereotype and pigeonhole people like that? "Women can be free from the constraints of femininity without being a beer-swilling, pitstained, misogynist, butch," they spit.
Well, maybe I'm not the one being offensive. Butch women exist, and they're awesome. Maybe you need to revaluate your low opinion of them, if it threatens you when I look at someone you admire and say "butch." And stop trying to ruin my fun.

Otaku Fuel and a Dry County in Yuri Land

So I went to a comic store near my house. I don't go there often because it's a little out of the way, but today when I realized I forgot my ID and wouldn't be allowed in the porn section, I made a beeline for the manga to see if they had much yuri on their ample shelves.
I saw they had High School Girls volumes 3 and 4, but I really don't fancy spending $10 on a manga mid-series when I only expect it to have slight yuri.
They also had volume 8 or something of Gatcha Gacha. Or is that Gacha Gatcha? Either way I know it's not Gacha Gacha (minus the T), which I always see everywhere and confuse it for its lesbianic counterpart.
However I still wasn't quite sure I had the right one, so I left it. And this stupid store didn't have Strawberry Panic or Strawberry Marshmallow at all. What gives? Did they have them in the porn section?
This is the same place where I always feel like the second I step through the door, everyone is looking at me thinking "WEHAT THE FUCK, A GIRL? IS THIS A TRICK?"
It makes me want to march up to the front counter and demand "do you have a yuri section?"
They probably don't, but visibility, yo.

So anyway, check this out. Does anyone remember this movie from their childhoods?


I think it made me gay, because it has exposed nipples in some scenes. Actually I remember thinking her sisters were pretty hot, what with their 80s-tastic eyeshadow. Except for the sister with the green afro-mullet. That was a bit much, even for me.
I wish I could get a hold of the Japanese version of this movie. The title is Andersen Douwa: Ningyo Hime.
Ok, so that wasn't exactly yuri related, but it should be dammit. What little gay girl doesn't love mermaids? I know I did. Mermaids lead to unicorns, which lead to rainbows. It's all connected, there is no spoon.

So in summery, I need to find a bookstore where I can read a bit of the first volumes of Gatcha Gacha and High School Girls and find out if they're worth my time.
They also sell a bunch of those little plastic figures with their breasts and asses hanging out. You know, the ones which serial killers collect? Except they were all like $30.
Don't you know there's a war on? For Christ's sake.