December purchase first impressions.

my bl order for December came today! \o/ Well most of it because I also impatiently tossed Kojima Lalako and Tomoe Fumi’s January releases in my cart. But everything that was actually released in December is here so I figured I would do an ~unboxing~ first impressions post since I haven’t read any of them yet and it would at least give you a chance to see what I got  in case I go AWOL again this month.

was feeling pretty antisocial and hermit-y today and didn’t feel like showering the second I got up so I put up a little note to let them know they could just leave the package. For a nice long time the DHL people knew to just leave it but idk I think the dude who used to deliver my stuff either got a new route or quit and this new person isn’t so fast on the uptake so he always knocks and waits for my signature s o b.

BUT HEY here is my precious unnecessarily large box full of cheesy homoerotic romance so let’s get to this unboxing now shall we.

Kusama Sakae 10th Anniversary Artbook!

wahhhh it’s been forever since I last posted again. ;; So sorry. The holidays have been crazy stressful and unfortunately I kind pf psyched myself out of doing reviews for those other books from my last order and my new order is taking forever to ship and I’ve been too shy lately to post cover or release news and just sd;flj;dgsdggd and here I was hoping to make 2013 much more productive blogging-wise than 2012 was. orz;;;;

but—!! Today I did get my Kusama Sakae artbook and I am super excited and it’s absolutely gorgeous so I figured I’d share some of my favorite pictures. That’s an okay post and an okay way to kick off 2013, right?

tbh I was actually really worried there would be a mistake with my order since at one point in early December I thought I lost my wallet and had to cancel the credit card I was pretty sure I ordered it with. orz;; Which was horrifying since the book was (supposedly, but idk since it’s still up on Comi Comi iirc) limited edition pre-order only ahhhhh. But luckily I was able to change my card with my pitiful minimal Japanese skills and evidently everything went off okay because I got a email early Sunday saying it had been shipped.

warning: nsfw. And also some shota.

BL Guidebook “Light BL e Youkoso”

So as I said, part one of my purchase came in the mail today and I haven’t really even started looking through many of them yet but I nonetheless wanted to talk a bit (or maybe a lot idk) about a specific book I bought because I think there’s a bit of a misunderstanding of what the book is. And that book would be the recently-released Light BL e Youkoso which a lot of people seem to be thinking is an anthology of light, sweet BL stories but actually it’s a guidebook.

As you can see the cover is by Kumota Haruko so its garnered a lot of fanfair. And it’s a really good book, albeit not what a lot of people are probably expecting, so I will try to go over what this book has to offer if not actual comics.

September ’12 Order: part 01

well not everything is here yet obviously, so I’ll have to do another one later. But the first part of my Amazon order arrived this morning and yesterday my Honto order from early this month came so I have lots of books suddenly and I figured I’d talk about them a bit.

can you see Twin sleeping on the bed? He kind of blends in with the blanket.

August ’12 order

Well I was going through my books that arrived from my order in August and I figured a lot of people said it would be okay it I just talked randomly about BL-related personal stuff so. Here’s my boring post about the books I’ve gotten so far from my August order. Still yet to arrive are Castle Mango (I shoved it in my order when it was still supposed to come out in August so now they’re just treating it like a perorder orz) and Yamada Maya’s book through drap (which should be here today actually) so I can’t really talk about those. But I can talk about my other stuff that has arrived recently so sdgh;ldsg;s

Initially I was just taking out the inside pamphlets from the books and placing them in the special box of BL stuff where I keep pamphlets and special papers and extras. Unfortunately I had to start using another box recently—

—since the other one is too full. Thank goodness I am an obsessively storage-oriented person so I had an extra box lying around ready to become a BL pamphlet container.

Anyway, onto talking about my actual books.

sorry in advance that this post is kind of long and image-heavy. /;w;\

Kusama Sakae 10th Anniversary

A big congratulations to Kusama Sakae, who has been publishing BL for ten years now. She is a very amazing artist as well as a wonderful storyteller. I will always remember the first works I read by her, Yumemiru Seiza and Nikushokujuu no Table Manner, as two of my all-time favorite BL works. She has such a wonderfully unique art style, and a way of creating characters and plots that catch you off guard. The BL genre is made more wonderful by her existence, and I truly thank her form the bottom of my heart for all the effort and creativity and love she puts into her stories. Thank you so much, Kusama Sakae, congratulations on ten years and I hope there are still many more to come!

Anyway, Libre has taken it upon themselves to set up a special page for Kusama Sakae’s 10th anniversary, co-hosted by the publishers of drap and dear+! In all there will be a special commemorative obi collection of Kusama’s characters, a twitter interview, as well as a special artbook release.

the book comes out December 31st, but orders for it will be held between September 3rd and October 31st. It can be purchased at Libre’s official shop, Animate, or ComiComi Studio. Supposedly it will be a collection of even her rare and hard to find illustrations from other publishers as well as doujinshi-only releases. I’m incredibly excited about this, because like I said on tumblr there is really no other artist whose work I would love more to own in artbook form. Her color illustrations are just gorgeous and it’s about time they were compiled and put on high-quality paper for the world to enjoy at full artistic value!

As for the twitter interview, it will be held September 13th at 7pm Japan time! If you have a question you would like to put up for consideration (in Japanese preferably, though if you really want to ask something I’m sure they wouldn’t mind English too much) you can use the hashtag #10kusama and @ reply Libre Sillikat’s account (@libre_sillikat). The time period to put out questions for consideration is until September 10th!

Once again, congratulations to Kusama Sakae on 10+ years of hard work and wonderful releases. Thank you so much for sharing your talent with us, sensei!

Dame BL Anthology | Full Review

Finally! I finally finished the whole book! orz;;; Well. Kind of, since there are some stories I didn’t read super closely. But I at least got a good idea of what all the stories were about so now I can post small summaries here and help all of you decide if you want to buy the book or not. Personally, I love it—initially I had my doubts, thought that even though I LOVE the Moe Danshi Gatari series that doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll really like this as well, but even though I don’t absolutely adore all the stories the book as a whole is fantastic and was well worth the money.

Anyway let’s take a look inside! Vague warning for R-18 content though this book is, for the most part, mostly clean and plot-driven.

DAME DAME DAME.

Dame—that wonderful phrase that is in almost every BL sex scene. That phrase people love to hate. That glorious phrase that has now become a book.

I checked Bookman’s site today and found true happiness. I hadn’t realized at all that Kumota Haruko also had the cover, so when I saw it I just shrieked and threw my hands into the air. KUMOTA HARUKO, YOU SEXY BEAST. I’m sorry I doubted you! I love you; please come back to my bosom!

Details on the stories and mangaka inside can be found right here, which is sd;glj;dgssdfgs exciting!! Admittedly it has a lot less mangaka than I thought it would, but I have to realize that this is an actual comic anthology—it’s not like Moe Danshi Gatari where they can fit a ridiculous amount of mangaka in one tiny book just because everyone only has two pages to express themselves. I’m pretty stoked to see Rotta Ikumi and Mochimeko in the line-up, though they all look (and sound!) pretty fantastic. Also, I’m going to have to crack out my Japanese dictionary so I can read Cotorino Deathco’s column on “BL without sex scenes” because that sounds pretty interesting.

Also, I don’t think I mentioned it here but actually the release date for the Dame BL anthology was pushed back: it will now be released on the 25th! Also, the preorder page was finally added to amazon! Luckily this means I can stop checking amazon ten times a day while I wait for an update lmao. orz;;;; Now to just peacefully sit back and wait for the 20th to put in my order and hopefully get the book relatively quickly, because if I have to wait any longer for this book I just might die from the giddiness.

For now, though, I will just sit here and gaze adoringly at the cover and that little sneak peek of lacy panties and beautiful high heels that only allow you a tiny taste of what’s to come.

“Dame BL” anthology

So Bookman, the publishers behind the “Moe Danshi Gatari” essay collections-turned-artbooks everyone loves so much, are finally releasing the “Dame BL” anthology! Initially they announced it in the back MDG2 with the tentative release date of “early summer 2011” so when that date passed I figured the plans for the book must have fallen through and I was thoroughly disappointed. But who would have known the book would be set for an official release almost half a year later?

I initially heard of it when someone I follow tweeted about Kumota Haruko’s blog post about it. Somehow I’d totally missed her post (that’s what I get for never getting caught up with twitter… orz) so it came as a huge shock to me. But sure enough, Kumota announced on her blog that she’d have a story running in “Dame BL Anthology”, to be released on November 1st. Go here to check her site and the cute illustration she did to fit her ‘dame’ theme: foot fetish. Yes, those are a man’s legs.

However, try as I might I wasn’t able to find any other information on the book even after Kumota announced it (aside from a small conversation on twitter between Uno Zinia and Psyche Delico) so part of me was still like “no way… it’s too good to be true, isn’t it?” But—! Today Kijitora updated about it, announcing that the book and its information have been added to Animate Online. And sure enough, here the book is. It’s still not added to any other site, but the fact that it’s on Animate means I can really start getting my hopes up that the release date is 100% cemented in.

Anyway, here’s the lineup:

Comics include Kumota Haruko, Morozumi Sumitomo, Est Em, Umematsu Machie, Okadaya Tetsuzou, Chiba Ryouko, etc.
Columns include Aoyama Toomi, Kusama Sakae, Psyche Delico, Yoneda Kou, etc.

I can’t wait to see the names hiding behind ‘etc.’—I’m sure you all know who I’m hoping for the most.

For those who don’t know, ‘dame BL’ appeared on the scene a year or two ago because a bunch of mangaka on twitter were having conversations about BL manga they would love to read or write that would never ever be okay’d by their publishers. It created a huge boom even among fans, who started talking about all the weird BL that they thought would be interesting to read as well, such as stories about old men strolling along the street holding hands or maybe two men getting in an argument about their relationship for the whole story. So I guess what we can look forward to with this anthology is a collection of unusual stories unlike most of the BL we’ve seen thusfar.

I’m definitely looking forward to it!

VIZ’s new BL line

So I guess VIZ officially cemented their new BL line at YaoiCon this weekend! It’s called ‘SuBLime’ which is… cheesy, but in a cute way haha. So far their website seems to be incomplete, but they do have an official twitter already:

@SuBLimeManga

As for actual title acquisitions, this blog has a fairly detailed list and lots of information so I recommend clicking them for more news. Initially I was excited about the Kusama Sakae license, but it appears to be an online-only release which is… bleh. Same with Sex Pistols. At least they’re available for a discounted price, I guess. But I am definitely excited about Kano Shiuko’s Punch in full English. I’ll be marking my calendar for that one once a date is announced!

It feels great to have another English BL publisher to even out the playing field.