Boys Next Door has the latest update on the Yaoi House debacle, in which it appears that founder Kira Takenouchi has stepped aside to allow Elizabeth Cameron to take over as president. Yaoi House will continue to publish Takenouchi’s works.

The pub has also released all of its current authors from their contracts due to all the recent drama, so that they can choose to stay with Yaoi House or try to sell their books to other publishers instead– which I think is an awesome move.

Do any of you remember Yaoi House, an original boys’ love fiction publisher I’ve reported on twice? Well, things have gotten weirder.

Founder Kira originally found God and dumped both Yaoi House and Yaoi Underground, her own paid subscription fanfiction (yes, fanfiction) service. I knew at the time that Yaoi Underground was most selling Taming Rikki, an extended fanfic of the popular BL novels Ai no Kusabi, but it didn’t seem too important since last I’d heard it was going down.

But now Kira has apparently resurfaced and says that she didn’t find God, she found hallucinations, and that she’s extremely bipolar. Between the fans and the investors, it all turns into a giant sludge-puddle of drama, with Kira voicing suspicion that people knew she wasn’t in her right mind and intentionally started taking away her business. (I mean, why would you want to take the business you’ve invested in away from someone who’s not in their right mind? Yeesh.) Meanwhile, the Internets are lambasting Kira for selling fanfiction in the first place (though a couple of people rightfully compare it to doujinshi, which of course is sold for money in Japan, although on the other hand, this isn’t Japan).

If you’re curious about the debacle– which probably won’t have a major effect on the BL industry, but which is kind of interesting in the same way that watching a train wreck is interesting –you can check out a nice timeline of events with quotes over at Dear Author.

Don’t worry; my to-do list includes a whole bunch of articles. So let’s get started with the catch-up first!

Anime:
- I’m trying to include more “interesting read” articles these days, and here’s one: a Gundam Wing retrospective.

- Dot Anime is now officially streaming the first episode of Super Robot Wars OG Divine Wars.

- Off in Japan, two of the Tales OVAs– Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Fantasia — are being released in Blu-Ray box sets.

- In case you didn’t believe me, I just got a press release confirming that FUNi has licensed Save Me! Lollipop.

Manga:
- Debbie at manga.about.com spots DMP’s new Speed Racer website.

- The Yomiuri has an article on manga that focus on traditional Japanese theater forms Noh and Kabuki.

- German yaoi publisher Fire Angels is planning on publishing in English– specifically, they’ll be releasing an English translated version of K-A-E 29th Secret. I’ve heard tell that yaoi is even bigger in Germany than in the US, and/or that their OEL market is huge, so this should be interesting to watch.

- Alafista has the winners of this year’s Japan Mangaka Association Award, which includes Monster creator Naoki Urasawa as grand prize winner for 20th Century Boys and 21st Century Boys. The other winner of the grand prize is Hiroko Minami for Hina-chan no Nichijo. Make sure you check out alafista’s article, which includes the Excellence Awards and special awards.

Movies:
- And if you hate yourself and want to be miserable, check out the first official Dragon Ball Z movie promo pic.

- This is only vaguely tangentially related to anime, but a Witchblade movie is in the works.

- Yes, Speed Racer isn’t doing as well as people had hoped, but at the #2 spot, it’s not completely floundering either.

Misc:
- AkibaBlog reports on various Miku Hatsune itasha (car decor).

- What Japan Thinks informs us of the cutest corporate mascots in Japan, and Japan picks the toucan over the viking kitty. WTF?

- Oh, here, this might explain it: Sankaku Complex discussing the decline in both IQ and lust suffered by Japan’s youth.

Yaoi? Rare? It’s more likely than you think! Well, for titles from 801 Media, anyway. Kuri reports that 801 has announced that a couple of their earlier titles– which remain unspecified –are just about out of their print run, and from the sound of it, they don’t plan to print more any time soon.

As mascot 801-chan says…

These books may be in stock for another year, or we might get a huge order from our distributor tomorrow and mail out the last few books. But there are only a few hundred copies left at the 801 warehouse. So… procrastinate at your own risk!

If you want me to speculate, I’m betting it’s their earliest and most popular titles, like possibly the first volume or two of the highly anticipated Love is Like a Hurricane or the first volume of yaoi superstar Fumi Yoshinaga’s Ichigenme. Other possibilities I’d suggest are Sensitive Pornograph, which was undoubtedly a big hit thanks to its super-hot anime OVA version (even though it wasn’t one of 801’s earliest licenses), and My Paranoid Next Door Neighbor, one of the early releases by popular mangaka Kazuka Minami (aka Haruka Minami).

But that’s all speculation on my part, so I could be way off. In any case, go get shopping!

Some of you may remember that I reported on the strange matter of Yaoi House, a western BL publisher whose owner surrendered all her shares to the shareholders. On that thread I’ve received a couple of comments from a Rev. Tyler Grosset, who is a shareholder and now Yaoi House LLC’s web services head.

The company has (re?)launched its online shop, where you can buy individual books or a regular membership subscription for access to chapter-by-chapter updates of all of the company’s works. They’re also looking for more authors, so if you have a BL novel in you, you might consider getting in touch with them (although writer guidelines and whatnot don’t seem to be available on the new site yet).

BL fans in the US have been extremely patient with Drama Queen, a young yaoi publisher with a number of anticipated licenses that have still not been put out over a year after their announcement (such as Tyrant Falls in Love and Naked Jewels Corporation), and the next issue of their own OEL BL anthology Rush).

Publisher Tran Nguyen, who I will personally vouch for as being one of the cutest people in this business, chatted with Publishers Weekly about the status of the company, who haven’t put out a book in some time (since September 2007, actually). The company has a new financial partner and has a new round of books (including all of those mentioned above) going to the printers. The good news is that during the downtime of not publishing things, the staff have worked on a number of books, so they have a healthy backlog of things to put out now.

I dunno about you, but I’m looking forward to finally seeing Tyrant.

Got a new press release from Juné announcing five new yaoi novel licenses:

• Passion - Forbidden Lovers by Shinobu Gotoh and Shoko Takaku who, yes, also did the manga.
• The Guilty by Katsura Izumi and Hinako Takanaga– Takanaga illustrations? Yes please! It’s also allegedly “reminiscent of Love Recipe,” which is funny since a title like The Guilty doesn’t match up with a wacky comedy like Love Recipe at all in my head.
• All You Need is Love by Jinko Fuyuno and Noboru Takatsuki. No licensed titles from either of these, but apparently Takatsuki has done a bunch of work for boys love eroge like Silver Chaos and Fuyuno is pretty proliferate.
• Dark Walker by Hikaru Yura and Hirotaka Kisaragi; no talk about the creators, but it sounds like a supernatural romance to me (vampires plzkthx?).
• Secret Moon by Siira Gou and Sato Tomoe, more newcomers to the US BL industry. And hey, this one DOES feature a vampire. Score!

Western BL took another hit today: the small-press publisher of BL books, Yaoi House, and its sister site, Yaoi Underground (which sells e-chapters of the owner’s fiction), are reportedly both up in the air after owner Kira Takenouchi announced that Yaoi Underground LLC will be terminated and money returned to investors, while she is surrendering her own shares of Yaoi House LLC and leaving it up to the investors to do what they want with it.

When I came across the post it reminded me to check up on Iris Print, another US-based BL publisher (of both comics and prose) that ran into some trouble a while back. They have managed to get two of their prose books, the novel A Strong and Sudden Thaw and the short story collection Connections up and available on Amazon’s Kindle; regular ebooks are also pending, according to owner Kellie Lynch.

The newest chapter of Prince of Tennis will be its last, according to iza!, who credits the “BL boom” to the series (and that’s probably not an inaccurate assessment).

The manga, by Takeshi Konomi, has been serialized in Shueisha’s Weekly Shounen Jump since July of 1999, and the issue that contains the final chapter of Prince of Tennis just hit stands today. In spite of being a shounen series, it was probably more popular with women than men, who yaoi’d the hell out of it.

Given its popularity, it should be no surprised that the manga has been adapted into a 178-episode anime, three OVAs, two anime movies, a live-action movie, a bunch of video games, and fifteen stage musicals. Eep.

Canned Dogs notes that the second-bestselling adult game on Amazon.co.jp at the moment is a BL game (BL is seekrit fangirl code for yaoi, if you didn’t already know) titled Kichiku Megane about a guy who switches between being an uke (bottom) and seme (top).

More worryingly, they suggest that Otome Road is going to take over Ikebukuro and destroy Akihabar with its butler army, which means - they’re on to us. GO INTO HIDING, QUICK!