Erica Friedman - By Your Side The First 100 Years of Yuri Anime and Manga

Vista, California
Journey Press

Journey Press
P.O. Box 1932
Vista, CA 92085
Erica Friedman, 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission from the publisher, except as allowed by fair use.

ART CREDITS
Cover art: Rica Takashima, 2022
Cover design: Christine Sandquist

First Printing June 2022

ISBN: 978-1-951320-21-8

Published in the United States of America

www.journeypress.com

In this genuinely delightful collection of essays, Erica Friedman stays by your side, as she takes you on a masterful tour around the Yuri genre. While tracing its long, rich history, exploring many of its representative works (the good, the bad, and the so bad its good), and delving into tricky questions such as what Yuri actually is, Erica is right there with you, by your side, sharing her boundless love for a media genre emanating from Japan that, in her words, shows intense emotional connection, romantic love, or physical desire between women.

The fact that these essays have been written over a number of years for a wide variety of contexts and, as a result, overlap at times, provides us a sense of how Ericas understanding of the genre has evolved over the past several decades, decades in which Yuri has become increasingly popular and increasingly global. (Ericas own role in the development of the genre and its fandom is clear evidence that Yuri is, indeed, a global genre with a global fandom.) I hope you find great amusement in Ericas sometimes different takes, written at different times, on certain Yuri works. As you read, you may find yourself wishing, as I did, that she later came to like a Yuri manga you enjoy that she herself found many faults with in her first discussion of it. While I was somewhat disappointed in one such case, I was pleasantly surprised in another. But whether or not you agree with her evaluation of specific Yuri works and, I should be very clear, she never asks you to agree Im certain youll be able to sense the pleasure she gets from sharing her views about Yuri works, even works she didnt take pleasure in reading.

As a cultural historian, I found myself most interested in the history of the development of Yuri fiction, manga, anime, and other media that Erica delves into in this volume. Much of the history she shares is a product of Ericas years of researching and reading about Yuri in Japanese a language she learned so she could read Yuri as it was originally written. Some of this history, however, entails first-hand accounts of having been there, bringing Yuri fans together over the decades, playing a central role in shaping the way fans and sometimes even publishers talk about Yuri. To me, thats what makes this collection unique. While Ive known Erica for a decade and a half and been friends with her and a fan of her fannish engagement with Yuri for around the same length of time and Ive heard most of these stories before, having them all together in one collection is invaluable for historians and for fans.

While By Your Side might be seen as one fans homage to a genre she has loved for decades, it might also be considered the first in-depth study of Yuri to be published in English. Fans created the field of manga and anime studies. It should thus come as no surprise and wholly appropriate that the first such book in English should be penned by Yuris preeminent fan.

James Welker,
Professor of Cross-Cultural and Japanese Studies,
Kanagawa University

To Yoshiya Nobuko, who laid the stepping stones for the path we now walk.

Erica holds a Masters Degree in Library Science and a B.A. in Comparative Literature (see, Mom, it is a useful degree!), both from Rutgers University. She is a full-time researcher for a Fortune 100 company.

Erica has lectured at dozens of conventions and presented at film festivals, notably the Frameline Film Festival and the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. She has participated in an academic lecture series at MIT, University of Illinois, Harvard University, Kanagawa University, and others. Shes presented panels about Yuri and Queer manga at anime conventions and events around the world.

Erica has written about Yuri for Japanese literary journal Eureka, Animerica magazine, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, Dark Horse, and contributed to Forbes, Slate, Huffington Post, Hooded Utilitarian, The Mary Sue, and Anime News Network online. Since 2002, she has written news and event reports, interviewed Yuri creators, and reviewed Yuri anime, manga, and related media on her blog Okazu, where she hopes you will join her in the conversation.

Founded in 2019 by Galactic Journey's Gideon Marcus, Journey Press publishes the best science fiction, current and classic, with an emphasis on the unusual and the diverse. We also partner with other small presses to offer exciting titles we know you'll like!

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