My yuri collection grows once again

[lagoluna]

guess who just got their copies of Secret Love and Hanamonogatari =u=

Secret Love was actually published a couple of months before what is generally considered the "first yuri manga", Shiroi Heya no Futari (well, first if you discount Sakura Namiki). It hasn't been scanned yet and digital copies aren't sold anywhere so I got a friend to send me her physical copy. (so kind T~T)

Hanamonogatari is of course the quintessential class-s collection, you've gotta read it if you have any interest in this sort of stuff.

Comments

[malymin]

Nice!

Are you going to scan the copy your friend gave you, or would that potentially damage the book?

I'm assuming there's something about Secret Love that makes it, if not yuri, then at least proto-yuri... which makes it interesting that you note that what people popularly consider the "first yuri manga" was published a few months after it. Would you be willing to elaborate on what's going on there, in the yuri enjoyer cultural memory?

[lagoluna]

I really considered scanning it... But given that I'd have to take it apart (the inner page margins get completely eaten up by the spine) I want to at least practice on something a bit less precious so that i don't risk ruining it. That might be pretty far out in the future though

As for why it's been eclipsed by Shiroi Heya no Futari there are probably two reasons:
1) The protagonist's love for her friend, although specifically characterized as romantic, remains unrequited. Very different from SHnF's tragic whirlwind affair

2) it's just really hard to get your hands on it, it's not published anymore physically or digitally. it's only every once in a while that a listing pops up for it online. The only other person I know who's read it is the friend who gave it to me

[malymin]

Ough, yea. Someone I know has some (less ancient, but still out of print) books that are also printed like that, and it makes me feel anxious about how out of print books could seriously use digitizing but these would require literally taking apart the book to do so....

Any idea why it's not being reprinted or published digitally?

[lagoluna]

(late response eek) But anyways it's pretty common for middle-of-the-road showa era girls' manga to just. have their rights lost in copyright limbo when their magazines go under or get bought by other companies and therefore never get reprinted or picked up by any of the major digitizers either. (don't know if that was exactly what happened with secret love but many such cases)

[malymin]

(I'd be a hypocrite if I judged, lmao)

Ugh. I fucking hate Copyright Limbo type situations. I feel like if a work ends up in that kind of situation where it's totally uncertain who it belongs to anymore... it should... default to public domain? As a matter of public good? That way it doesn't matter who the rights currently belong to, whoever has the material in that particular moment could re-publish. As it stands, nobody's even profiting on a work once it's in that situation, so even copyright's dirty capitalistic purpose as monopoly-maintaining has been "failed" - much less any of the more lofty "protecting artists' rights" goals that it dresses itself up in and that people fall for.