//when it isn't just a phase

or what i thought josei yuri was

current

• gather source materials
  • linked from wikipedia

thinking out loud

• japan has a national holiday, "coming of age day" to celebrate people who have turned 18 and are thus adults. so if at any point you are reading a manga, and it seems dicey about whether a character is or is not an adult -- especially if they are in a relationship with someone who is over 18 -- know that the mangaka does in fact know what they are doing and you should know what they are doing too. while there is nuance and contradictions galore, it is rare enough that any of the statutory age gap portrayed in fiction actually has anything to do with that, that i am content painting with a broad brush on this subject.
• beginning to think about criteria:
  • men must exist in world
  • a wlw relationship is desired
    • can include
      • romantic/aromantic desire
      • sexual/asexual desire
      • requited or unrequited
    • must be explicit, not implied
  • the partners must both be 18+ (no class s)
  • does not have an ending" the minami q-ta rule
  • exclude oneshots for sanity's sake. anthologies more of a grey area but off the top of my head there aren't many that would qualify so not urgent.

context

• yuri: a genre without borders
• japan: fertile ground for the cultivation of yuri
• beautiful and innocent: female same-sex intimacy in the japanese yuri genre
• the sexual and textual politics of japanense lesbian comics
• yuri is for everyone: an analysis of yuri demographics and readership
• rethinking yuri: how lesbian mangaka return the genre to its roots
• the evolution of "recognition/assertion of lesbian identity" vs "akogare" in manga
• pro amateur comics - yuri doujinshi rica 'tte kanji!?
• https://youtu.be/eqZeCMWDt08
• female subjectivity and shoujo (girls) manga (japanese comics): shoujo in ladies' comics and young ladies' comics
  • primarily about ladies' comics, which is an extension of shoujo that covers more mature themes but doesn't really extend beyond traditional patriarchal values, but touches on josei as a potential third path forward.

  • However these days, we see the term josei manga, which means manga for women, and which tries to replace the term ladies' comics. Although it has not emerged yet, in a strict sense that there are no manga for women of different ages, this genre is gradually moving away from shoujo manga to a women's genre. (791)

  • In the late 1980s and 1990s, a different type of commercial magazine of manga for women came out: Young You in 1987, Young Rose in 1990, and Feel Young in 1991. [...] Their target readers range from girls in their late teens to women under thirty. Yet the genre seems to cover a wider range of readers, since there are characters over thirty and readers' pages often show letters from middle-aged women. Although we manage to distinguish these three genres, the actual boundaries regarding contents, readers, and writers among shoujo manga, young ladies' comics, and ladies' comics are somewhat vague [...] (792)

  • Young ladies' comics also concerns reality and many women writers for this genre claim that they want to write manga which does not end but continues in the same way as the real life they are having now continues. (795)

  • Minami Qta, one of the popular young ladies’ comics writers, denies the concept of ending itself. Her work is quite different from typical shounen (boys) and shoujo manga which offer a clear ending. According to her (Minami 1997: 196), typical shounen and shoujo manga are stories about gaining something. Shounen manga deal with the pursuit of power, money, or a position, while shoujo manga aims at attracting a handsome boy. Yet, to her, ‘‘reality’’ does not cease the moment something has been attained. (799)

master lists

• yuricon: essays
• baka manga updates