Another News Update so soon?! That’s right! As has been the case lately, there’s a lot of news to sort through once again, so let’s get started~

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First up, those of you who’ve been depressed since the completion of Saburouta’s Citrus manga can finally turn those frowns upside down, as Citrus+ launched yesterday in the newest issue of Yuri Hime.

In entertainment, sequels/spin-offs are rarely as good as their parent story, but even if this doesn’t end up being quite as entertaining as the original, it’s still more Yuzu and Mei, so no need to complain. Besides, who needs Santa when we have Saburouta giving us such a nice present this holiday season?!

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Next up, the second PV for Watashi ni Tenshi ga Maiorita! has been released, and besides giving us a better look at some of the characters, it also gives us a sneak peek of the ED song. Check it out.

It looks like fans of Uchi no Maid ga Uzasugiru! will likely be all over this concept, and they won’t have to wait too much longer, since the series will premiere on January 8th, so mark your calendars.

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Moving on, Manaria Friends, a spin-off of the Shingeki no Bahamut series, finally has a premiere date. January 20th is when this long-delayed anime hits the airwaves, so let’s hope that the long wait has been worth it.

It seems that this series will consist of ten, fifteen-minute-long episodes, and while it’s unfortunate that this isn’t going to be a full-length anime series, was that a kiss I spotted at the 1:21 mark of the most recent PV?! It sure looks like it to me, so maybe it’s time to get hyped, people!

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In other anime news, earlier this year, it was revealed that Yuru Yuri would be getting another OVA to celebrate the franchise’s tenth anniversary, and now more details have emerged regarding this.

Titled Yuru Yuri,, the OVA will be in the hands of a new director, Daigo Yamagishi, who’ll be making his directoral debut and whose previous credits mostly consist of him serving as Episode Director on a number of different anime.

There’ll also be a change in production studios, as Lay-duce, which most recently produced Release the Spyce, will take over for TYO Animation, which had produced the two Nachuyachumi! OVAs, as well as San☆Hai!. Other staff members of Release the Spyce will also be involved, and it only makes sense, since they did work with Yuru Yuri creator Namori, who was responsible for the original character design.

A crowdfunding campaign will launch on December 25th and run until February 15th, and it will include all sorts of backer rewards for those who choose to support the project.

The manga may be on indefinite hiatus, but let’s hope that this new OVA will lead to another season being made, because this has probably been one of the most enjoyable comedy anime series of the last decade, and because, frankly, we could always use more yuri~

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But wait, there’s even more anime news, and it’s not the good kind of news. I’m talking about Symphogear, which has seen the release date of its next season, Senki Zesshou Symphogear XV, pushed back from April to July.

This is now the fifth season, and the fourth season, Senki Zesshou Symphogear AXZ, was our least favorite season thus far, so let’s hope that XV can turn things around and help return the series to its former self.

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And the news just keeps coming, as we’ll be getting more Uma Musume, in the form of an adaptation of the spin-off manga, Umayon.

The manga focuses on the everyday lives of the characters from the series, but even though that’s not as exciting as a second season would have been, it may still have some yuri potential. Here’s the short announcement video.

The Uma Musume special, BNW no Chikai, is nearly here, so that’ll have to tide fans over until Umayon debuts sometime in the future.

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Next up, Hibike! Euphonium, a series that has drawn some ire from yuri fans, has unveiled a new visual and four new cast members ahead of the film’s April release date.

These new first-years will be joining Kumiko, Reina, and the other returning second-year students.

Here’s a synopsis of the story, courtesy of Anime News Network.

In the film’s story, Kumiko is now a second year and the senior player of the euphonium section. With new underclassmen joining the concert band, Kumiko will have to learn new things in order to deal with awkward and difficult underclassmen. She and third-year trumpeter Tomoe Kabe have been chosen to lead the new underclassmen members. Among the new members to Kumiko’s bass section are euphonist Kanade Hisaishi, whose appearances are deceiving; tuba player Mirei Suzuki, who cannot adapt to her new environment; tuba player Satsuki Suzuki, who wants to get along with Mirei; and double bassist Motomu Tsukinaga, who cannot talk about himself. Between the Sunrise Festival, chair placement auditions, and the competition, a number of problems quickly begin to arise.

I’m sure people will be expecting the worst from KyoAni, and I can’t really blame them for that. Still, if you’re telling me there’s another chance for some KumiRei action, I have to admit that I’m a little interested in this, even though I just know that we’re bound to be heartbroken again…

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Moving on to something pretty cool, Yun Kouga and Sunao Minakata (creators of Akuma no Riddle) and Nio Nakatani (Bloom Into You) recently took part in a roundtable discussion for Newtype magazine, and we learned some interesting things from it. I’d advise checking out the whole article in the link below, but here’s a TL;DR for those who don’t have the time. 😛

• Nakatani and Minakata previously knew each other because they had drawn doujinshi together years ago. Also, Nakatani was an assistant on Akuma no Riddle.
• Regarding Bloom Into You, Kouga is on the Touko x Sayaka bandwagon. *pumps fist*
• When asked how she got into yuri, Nakatani said: “I always liked it, but I didn’t have a particular awareness of it. It was around when I read Kouga-sensei’s manga Loveless, which has no girls in it, that I realized I might like stories about girls.”
• When asked the same question, Minakata responded with: “Even in the past, I was always the type of person who only liked the cute female characters in an anime or manga. Before I knew it, I’m where I’m at now.” The artist said that they don’t have complicated thoughts about yuri, and that they define it as their “natural feelings.”
• Kouga gave her definition of yuri as “girl x girl”, and that yuri is basically “girls getting involved with other girls”, to which Nakatani agreed and added that yuri is about the “feelings between girls”.
• They all then discussed the “play within a play” trope and how both AnR and BIY feature a subplot where characters express their pent-up feelings towards each other. Minakata said that stage plays are often used to depict het love stories, so having two girls in the lead roles emphasizes the yuri, and Nakatani stated that because the characters are performing scripted lines, they’re able to express feelings they’d normally suppress.
• Finally, when asked what is love, Nakatani replied, “You’re basically asking me ‘What is the ending of Bloom Into You?’ Please look forward to the end of the manga!”

So, all in all, it was a pretty fun discussion, and I wish other yuri creators would more frequently participate in these types of things as well~

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In keeping with the magazine news, fans of yuri and sci-fi have have some celebrating to do, as Hayakawa Shobo, the publisher of Japan’s longest-running science fiction magazine (S-F Magazine), has already decided to reprint the upcoming February 2019 issue, due to an overwhelming amount of pre-orders.

This is only the second time in the magazine’s fifty-nine year history that they’ve decided to reprint an issue before release, so needless to say that Japanese yuri fans are very much looking forward to this.

In the issue are short stories from the likes of Iori Miyazawa, Kisetsu Morita, Gengen Kusano, and Ren Hanna, as well as a one-shot manga from Tetsuya Imai, interviews with the editor in chief of Yuri Hime and novelist Ryoue Tsukimura, and also a “Yuri SF Guide 2018” by various writers and critics (but not us :P).

There should definitely be more sci-fi yuri works out there, so it’s nice that the genre is getting such a visible platform to expose more people to some of the good stuff that’s out there.

Props to shadesan for bringing this story to our attention~

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Lastly, the Steam PR nightmare continues, as the digital distribution giant once again is sending mixed messages by banning adult games with young-looking characters.

MaoMao Discovery Team (pictured) is one of the titles affected, and even though it’s not a yuri game, it’s easy to see how this decision by Valve could affect yuri visual novels on Steam. Dubbed “child exploitation”, this latest saga in Valve’s neverending war on fun is sure to rub fans of these types of games the wrong way, especially since it’s not being universally applied to all titles, and there are still a lot of games with more obscene content still available to purchase.

So long story short, Valve seems to have no idea how to apply and uphold policies to the adult-oriented games on their service, and their frequent mishandling of the situation continues to do developers a disservice, as well as alienate fans of these games.

I’m already pretty tired of this whole topic, so even though I can understand where this latest ban is coming from, I think I speak for everyone when I say, “Get your shit together, Valve.” 😛

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