So here we are again. March-April, our spring edition. Vice-fearless leader wants these opening comments kept short, so... Here it is, and we hope you enjoy it. (bow)
The big news is that Higuri You-sensei did a four-page write-up about Yaoi-con in this month's Bboy. Scans of the manga are here, and translations will follow when I get a readable copy. "I knew it was a manga convention, but I wasn't exactly expecting a yaoi convention." She was much taken with the good-looking older man who bought her artbook and complimented her style. "He looked like the father in some heart-warming American family show." Only- only- there he was with a Yaoi-con badge glittering on his chest. "Uhh- wait- what are *you* doing **here**...??" Poor Higuri-sensei. Gaijin really are as strange as people say we are.
As for that illustration up there...
Remember those early bishounen in the early shounen ai series- Heart of Thomas, November Gymnasium, Mari and Shingo? Remember how the big thing for them was unspoken affection (love, attachment, whatever)? Remember how maybe they might in the big climax scene get to kiss the other guy, maybe perhaps, but mostly not? Different times, different customs, as the French say. Susan picked up the first copy of Boys Pierce Game when we were in Tokyo. What those bishounen are doing now, I tell you, would make a shounen-ai mangaka's hair curl.
Yaoi RPGs, guys. Our answer to hentai RPGs with their bondage and busts and tentacle rape. The wave of the future. Beautiful boys, lots 'n lots of 'em, all blushing and sweating, legs in the air and vibrators in-- uhh, well, let's not talk about the vibrators. All the naughty bits get pixillated out, but of course. The Yuki Kaori-looking illustration above is from Seraphim Spiral, about strange doings in a boys' school. (No, supernatural strange doings, not just the other kind.) Birdie, whose designer's style I know I should know, seems set to turn into an industry, with a booth at Comiket and a calendar and all. Famed BL mangakas Uchida Kazuna and Kano Shiuko have designed a very explicit high-school game, Escape, with lots of action on desks and in showers. Darkness of the Moon is a fantasy adventure that includes elf father-son incest. And whatever the supposed ages of the protagonists, there's still lots of pseudo-shota characters abounding. All of these are for PC, btw.
But the winner by me is a straight adventure RPG called Prince (Oujisama) for which you can buy additional software to add a BL component so our young prince, Lucius, and his companion Celest get a chance to do it. (PC and Playstation, this one, but you can't get the BL extension for PS.) Depending how your system is configured, you can even select who's seme and who's uke! (Is this why the silver-haired monster hunter Shirotaka is seen not only wriggling underneath Celest but also tumbling the (more than well-preserved) 51 year old Sakuragishi?) And as a further plus, in a new wrinkle on Tamagochi, you get to have your very own SD princeling whom you look after and bathe and bring up to be... uhh, well, you know. Hours of fun for the whole family, this one. Only in Japan...(sigh)
--Jeanne
| March-April Table of Contents For back issues click here
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Columns
ReviewsMinekura Kazuya Festival
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Letter from Japan
Focus on Gaming
Focus on Fiction
(Part one of The Mirror of the Heart Series by Freakjoy) Gallery
Translations
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