In Volume 1, we met Saki, a high school student who plays piano, and her classmate (and piano teacher’s daughter), Kanon, who is hard of hearing. Kanon is initially uninterested in becoming c…
May 5, 2022 • Subscribe
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Amayo no Tsuki, Volume 4 ( 雨夜の月)
Well, wow. A whole lot of story happened in this volume. First, Saki finds Kanon’s former best friend – the one Kanon feel betrayed her – and learns…
Amayo no Tsuki, Volume 8 (雨夜の月)
Volume 7 of Kuzushiro’s school life drama, finished up the school festival arc and, while it had its fair share of maid costumes and cat-eared girls, it also…
Amayo no Tsuki, Volume 3 ( 雨夜の月)
2022 has been an absolute celebration of amazing Yuri manga licenses and releases. Almost everything I wanted to have been licensed has been. Of the two remaining that…
Amayo no Tsuki, Volume 6 (雨夜の月)
Do you remember Morinaga Milk’s series Girl Friends? It was an incredibly popular and influential Yuri manga in the early 2010s, so more than a decade ago. The…
Amayo no Tsuki, Volume 7 (雨夜の月)
Amayo no Tsuki, Volume 7 (雨夜の月) is absolute perfection. It was so good, that the moment I finished it, I started from the beginning and read it again.…
Amayo no Tsuki, Volume 5 (雨夜の月)
In my fevered anticipation for The Moon on a Rainy Night, Volume 1 coming from Kodansha next week, I was thrilled to have the newest volume of the…
Uyanotsuki, Volume 1 ( 雨夜の月)
Saki loves piano. Or does she? She loves taking lessons with her teacher, she’s sure of that. But her teacher is leaving… In Uyanotsuki, Volume 1 ( 雨夜の月),…
Tsuki to Suppin, Volume 2 (月とすっぴん)
This past March I became enamored of Akegata Yuu’s Tsuki to Suppin, a Jousei Yuri manga from Feel Comics, about Akari and Shiho, an odd-couple who are nonetheless…
夜神月 (Yagami Light)
Who is Yagami Light? Yagami Light is a highly intelligent and ambitious high school student who discovers the Death Note, a supernatural notebook that allows its user to…
Kaketa Tsuki to Donuts, Volume 2 (欠けた月とドーナッツ)
In Volume 1, we met Hinako, a woman who is crumbling under pressure to conform to society’s requirements for a “good” life and Asahi, a woman who has…
Tsuki to Suppin Volume 1 (月とすっぴん)
Akegawa Yuu’s Tsuki to Suppin, Volume 1 (月とすっぴん) is an absolutely delightful odd couple romance story. Shiho is a quiet, reserved photographer for bands, with a fondness for…
Oni to Yoake Yuzikiyo (鬼と夜明け 夕月夜)
While shopping in random bookstores in Japan at the end of last year I kept seeing book,s with girls in school uniforms wielding swords. I did that thing…
Kaketa Tsuki to Donuts, Volume 4 (欠けた月とドーナッツ)
Let’s start with the most important thing in Kaketa Tsuki to Donuts, Volume 4 (欠けた月とドーナッツ) – this was the perfect, most exactly correct ending to this series that…
Kaketa Tsuki to Donuts, Volume 3 (欠けた月とドーナッツ)
What is love? How do we fall in love? What does that even mean? How do we make space in lives that are full already, for other people?…
Kaketa Tsuki to Donuts, Volume 1 (欠けた月とドーナッツ)
Uuno Hinako always looks good. Her dress and makeup are always spot on, her hair is always done. She’s always got a smile on her face at work,…
Throwback Thursday: 三月のライオン (Sangetsu no Lion)
As we close out 2020, and complete our 10th year anniversary celebration, we’ve been posting a final series of Throwback Thursday posts from writers, past and present, revisiting…
Junpaku no yoru / 純白の夜/ (‘Pure White Nights’, 1951)
Obscure Japanese Film #161 Michiyo Kogure Ikuko (Michiyo Kogure) is a young woman happily married to Tsunehiko (Seizaburo Kawazu), a banke...
Asakusa no yoru / 浅草の夜 (‘Asakusa at Night’, 1954)
Obscure Japanese Film #156 Ayako Wakao and Machiko Kyo Setsuko (Machiko Kyo) is a dancer at a theatre in Asakusa, where she’s been havin...
Yume no Hashibashi, Volume 2 (夢の端々 下)
In Yume no Hashibashi, Volume 1, we took a journey backwards through the years, following Kayoko and Mitsu as adults. From their senior years back through their different…
Fuzoroi no Renri, Volume 2 (不揃いの連理)
In Volume 1, we met Tanaka Iori, a careerwoman with a job that she does not love, and a former juvenile delinquent girlfriend, Minami, whom she does. Ultimately,…
Wolves of the Night (夜の狼, Yoichi Ushihara, 1958)
A heartless yakuza becomes conflicted on being confronted with the consequences of his actions in Yoichi Ushihara’s slice of Nikkatsu Noir.
Mejirobana Saku, Volume 2 (メジロバナの咲く)
Back in 2020 when I reviewed the first volume of Nakamura Asumiko’s first manga that was specifically meant to be seen as Yuri, I kept my expectations relatively…
Manga Kodomo Bunko (まんがこども文庫) June ED (6月の歌) - Lullaby of the Rain (雨のこもりうた)
Sung by (歌): Naoko Watanabe (渡辺直子) Lyrics (作詞): Tomoko Koike (小池知子) Composition and Arrangement (作曲・編曲): Tokuhide Niimi (新実徳英) Very special thanks to PopKorn Kat for transferring and scanning this record!
Anata no Yoru ga Aketera (あなたの夜が明けたら)
Anata no Yoru ga Aketera (あなたの夜が明けたら), translated on the cover as After Sunrise, Haru Harukawa Collection is a collection of shorts by, obviously Harukawa Haru. Some of these…
August in the Water (水の中の八月, Sogo Ishii, 1995)
How does the world, or perhaps the cosmos, attempt to communicate with us? As Douglas Adams once did, August in the Water (水の中の八月, Mizu no naka no Hachigatsu)…
Watashi no Blue Garnet, Volume 1 (私のブルーガーネット)
Akiyama Haru is a name we’re quite familiar with here on Okazu. Creator of the excellent series Octave, she has participated in many a Yuri anthology and had…
Mondlicht: Tsuki No Tsubasa (2009-2012)
It’s hard to guess the exact date as this was dropped by translators a couple of times, however it should have completed 2012. Available on mangafox here The…
Remembering Every Night/全ての夜を思い出す
In 2017, director Kiyohara Yui released her first feature film, Our House (私たちの家), and established herself as a talent to watch. Though that film at times felt a…
Moonlight Whispers (月光の囁き, Akihiko Shiota, 1999)
A pair of teenagers find themselves in an accidentally sado-masochistic relationship without the ability to understand what exists between them in Shiota’s unconventional teen romance.
Yume no Hashibashi, Volume 1 (夢の端々 上)
Yume no Hashibashi, Volume 1 (夢の端々 上) is a story told by leaps backwards in time, of a relationship between two women that would never have been allowed…
Hametsu no Koibito, Volume 1 (破滅の恋人)
We recently had the pleasure of three guest reviews for Plongée dans la nuit, the French edition of Yoru to Umi, by Goumoto. I had read the first…
The Ladder of Success / 夜の素顔 / Yoru no sagao (‘The True Face of the Night’, 1958)
Obscure Japanese Film #170 Machiko Kyo in the moonlight scene 1944. Akemi (Machiko Kyo) is a traditional dancer entertaining the troops at...
Rainbow Over the Pacific (夜明けの二人, Yoshitaro Nomura, 1968)
An unserious man begins to grow up while chasing love in Hawaii in a cheerful if ultimately downbeat musical celebration of the centenary of Japanese migration to Hawaii.
Episode #54 – Night and Fog in Japan (日本の夜と霧)
In the final episode of the season, Kota of the Against Japanism podcast brings his extensive knowledge of Japanese politics and the Japanese left-wing to bear in this…
Manga Kodomo Bunko (まんがこども文庫) February ED (2月の歌) - Camellia Buds (椿の莟)
Sung by (歌): Yoshiko Mari (真理ヨシコ) Lyrics (作詞): Akahiko Shimaki (島木赤彦) Composition (作曲): Rō Ogura (小倉朗) Arrangement (編曲): Akihiro Komori (小森昭宏) Very special thanks to PopKorn Kat for transferring and scanning this…
Brief Thoughts On: Umi no Yami, Tsuki no Kage
Umi no Yami, Tsuki no Kage earns a stellar recommendation. It's a fine addition to the wonderful niche of vintage shoujo horror anime.
Seasonal Anime Attempt: Garo – Guren no Tsuki
So looking at my long hiatus I noticed that I a little behind on my seasonal anime attempts so with that said and done I’m going to be…
Koudou Ryou no Seizana Hibi, Volume 2 (黄道寮の星座な日々)
In Volume 1, a young woman is sent to the Zodiac Dormitory by her sister with the admonition to “Take care of Alice.” And so, in Koudou Ryou…
Hana Monogatari, Volume 2 (はなものがたり)
In Volume 1, we met Hanayo, a woman whose husband has passed away, leaving her both free to do whatever she wants and confused as to what that…
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Fuzoroi no Renri, Volume 3 (不揃いの連理)
In Volume 1, we met Iori and Minami, an career woman and a server at a izakaya whose relationship is surprisingly not fraught, and Saori and Shizuku, Iori’s…
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Mikanuji’s Fuzoroi no Renri, Volume 5 (不揃いの連理) continues as a smorgasbord of miscellaneous relationships between various couples. In this volume, we take time to expand on a few…
All the Long Nights (夜明けのすべて, Sho Miyake, 2024)
Mismatched colleagues struggling amid contemporary corporate culture find unexpected solidarity in Sho Miyake’s gentle human drama.
Watashi no Oshi ha Akujyaku Reijou., Volume 2 (私の推しは悪役令嬢。)
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Aikata System ~ Gakuen ga Eranda Unmei no Onna no ko~, Volume 2 (相方システム~学園が選んだ運命の女の子~)
What if you entered a school that had a fabled old tradition and it sounded so beautiful and romantic that you couldn’t wait to be part of it…but…
Rhapsody in August (八月の狂詩曲, Akira Kurosawa, 1991)
Three generations reckon with the wartime past after receiving news from estranged relatives in Hawaii in Kurosawa’s humanist drama.
Gakkou no Yuurei (School Ghosts), Volume 2
Starting with volume 2, Gakkou no Yuurei began including live-action segments. Why? No idea. Perhaps live-action is less expensive to make....
Thousand and One Nights (千夜、一夜, Nao Kubota, 2022)
Two women are united by the search for answers in the disappearances of their husbands but take very different paths in Nao Kubota’s melancholy tale of unanswerable longing.
Shinyaku Ribon no Kishi, Volume 1 (新約・リボンの騎士)
Today’s review is in part thanks to the constant evangelizing of Raybon No Kishi on Twitter, who alerted me to some interesting plot complications in this recent reworking…
Yuri Manga: Sore ha, Haru no Arashi no You ni, Volume 1 (それは、春の嵐のように)
Aoi is an office lady who dreams of a “normal life.” She tells her her friend that she wants to get married. Chi-chan appears to accept it. Aoi,…