NEW CONTEST: Yaoi AMV Contest!

It's contest time again! This week's contest involves you creating an original yaoi AMV. Here are the rules: Continue reading »

YAOI MANGA REVIEW: Dog X Cat

Quick Synopsis:

Atsu and Junya are childhood friends. Junya has been in love with Atsu for as long as he can remember and finally decides to confess his feelings to his best friend.

Plot/Readability:

Dog X Cat is the perfect representation of yaoi. Plot? What plot? For a title with so many pages I sure did have a hard time finding any true conflict. It certainly isn’t a unique plot by any means; two best friends, one secretly in love with the other. He confesses his love and the rest of the story deals with the relationship you know they’re going to have. Usually this is where we find all kinds of hills and valleys in the way of relationship issues that make them stronger as a couple but not so much here.

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YAOI NEWS: DramaQueen Posts Update

LadyQ posted an update today in the DramaQueen forums. Looks like they're still trying to hang on. Here's what she posted:

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CONTEST: Design my Web Banner!!!

It's contest time! That's right… that plain old banner at the top of the page is only temporary. I need a new one! Here are the rules: Continue reading »

YAOI NEWS: Hetalia gets licensed!

Oh my… the squees, they are loud. >.<  Yep, you heard me right. Funimation has licensed 52 episodes of Hetalia. No further details are available but here is the official press release so you can frame it. ^_^

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SITE NEWS: Bits ‘n Pieces & Lots of Thanks

Wow, what a great launch and turnout there has been! We've had over 1500 visitors to the site this week and I hope each and every one of you has found what you were looking for. I want to take this moment to thank a few people who really helped me out with getting this site up and running:

Alex Woolfson from Yaoi 911 for setting me off in the right direction on how best to set this whole thing up.

Lissa Pattillo from Kuriousity and the new Boys-Luv.com for giving me TONS of CSS coding help. That woman's a saint!

Deb Aoki from About.com: Manga for general blogging do's and don'ts because even after a year, I'm still learnin'!

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YAOI MANGA REVIEW: Dining Bar Akira

Dining Bar Akira/Tomoko Yamashita
Netcomics — 16+ Rating — 175 pages

Quick Synopsis:

Dining Bar Akira ~ Torihara confesses his love for Akira, his straight manager at the restaurant they work at called Dining Bar Akira.

Foggy Scene ~ Yatsue is in love with his best friend Takashi but doesn’t want him to know. He has a one night stand with a guy at a gay bar who ends up being his substitute teacher at his high school (he’s 17 and the teacher is 31). He has feelings for the teacher but acknowledges he’ll always be second to his first love, Takashi.

Riverside Moonlight ~ This is an extremely short story about a guy who has a wet dream about one of his chubby co-workers.
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YAOI NEWS: BLU Responds to Pricing Increase

I'm a bad blogger. I admit it. I did not think to ask BLU or Tokyopop to comment on the pricing increase but luckily they (Tokyopop) are on the ball and contacted me instead. Marco Pavia, (Associate Publisher at Tokyopop) and I had a few back and forth emails to sort out the details and I'm happy to give you a summary of Tokyopop's stance on the pricing increase.

Bad news first, the pricing increase is accurate so we will be paying more. The good news is that we aren't paying more for the same thing. All new releases at the higher price will now include color pages, anywhere from two to four pages (one or two front and back color inserts to clarify that). He also touched on the page quality issue they had last summer, which was due to an issue with the paper supplier at that time. Those issues have since been resolved and anything published since the end of 2009 and forward will have the same quality as prior to the change.

As far as exactly why the pricing change, well that wasn't specifically addressed but the yaoi industry in general was, which I'm sure is why we're seeing an increase. A big carrier of yaoi in the industry is Borders and their issues have taken its toll as well as the fact that many retailers do not wish to carry yaoi due to its content. This can lead to BLU being "stuck with a series that few at retail want to support, and that's a problem". 

For 2010 BLU is committed to communicating more with fans through updates on their new(ish) twitter page, to providing previews to "most or all BLU manga on their site months in advance of publication" as well as updating their site more frequently with new content and news. 

As an ending note, Marco mentioned having an copy of Croquis in his hands, that it looks great and he hopes fans will like it! 

BTW, I checked Amazon and Rightstuf.com with its GotAnime discount and price for Croquis was the same at $10.11 with the retailer's discount to the customer.

So what do YOU think? Is the sting of the pricing increase eased at all with the addition of those color pages? Which would you rather have, color pages with an increase in price or no color pages with a lower price? Speak your mind because they ARE listening. 

YAOI NEWS: Blu Manga Increases Pricing

I remember back when 801 Media got rid of the infamous dust jackets many yaoi fans loved and the stink that ensued. Their reasoning? Printing and production costs have increased and since they release far fewer titles than their sister company Juné, the change was necessary to reduce costs. Now BLU Manga has followed suit but instead of reducing quality, it is increasing its pricing as of January 2010 from $12.99 to $14.99. What do you think? Are BLU’s titles worth the $2 increase in price? Do you think this will help them by bringing in more sales dollars or hurt them by reducing overall sales? Here’s a current breakdown of MSRP's by publisher:

EDIT: BTW, BLU increased their pricing last January by $3. That means in the last year, the prices have increased $5 in total.

*BLU is an imprint of Tokyopop.

Happy New Year & Welcome to the New Site!

It's official! It's January 1st of 2010 and The Yaoi Review has moved from LiveJournal to its own domain! Welcome old and new and I hope you enjoy the new look! Continue reading »