Hokay, let’s see. First, the big news of the day: Deb Aoki got DMP to open up more extensively about recent staff losses, which include both layoffs and resignations, and which Kuri also reported on recently. The good news? 801 Media isn’t going anywhere.

Moving right along, how about some of those BL licenses from Yaoi-Con, eh? 801 announced Mio Tennohji’s Don’t Rush Love, Yoshimi Amasaki’s Dog X Cat, Ruri Fujikawa’s On Bended Knee, Kaori Monchi’s Hey Class President!, Yuki Shimizu’s Ze, Rie Honjyo’s Love Skit, and DUO Brand.’s Kiss Your Hair.

DMP scored Toko Kawai’s CUT, Ryouko Tsunoda’s Exotic and Delicious Fate, Momoko Tenzen’s Unsophisticated and Rude, Ciao Ciao Bambino, and La Satanica, You Higuri’s Ludwig, Kaimu Tachibana’s Boys Love, and Makoto Tateno’s How to Capture a Martini. Kuro also reports on Kurashina Sensei’s Passion– these were actually licensed by Juné through Biblos and announced back at Otakon 2006, but when Biblos went under they had to renegotiate the license again with Libre and it’s finally been cleared. Hurray!

Go! Comi has issued a press release announcing its licenses as well: Get the Moon and Bran Doll, both by The Devil Within creator Ryo Takagi.

Yaoi Press unfortunately had to cancel their panel for an emergency, but I’ve been told they’re saving their announcements for another time.

Finally, Deux announced a few new titles as well: Nase Yamato’s Take Me To Heaven, Hinako Takanaga’s Love Round!!, CJ Michalski’s Noodle Shop Affair (Michalski has another US-palatable title?! Sweet!), and Naduki Koujima’s Naughty but Nice.

A few interesting points on those licenses: first, these are all fan favorite creators– Yamato created Pet On Duty (and the utterly un-publishable-in-the-U.S. Chinko no Tsubuyaki); Takanaga is the creator of the renowned Challengers and Tyrant Falls in Love series; Michalski is best known for her wacky, often surreal (and occasionally distressingly shota) titles as well as the more socially acceptable Delivery Cupid; and of course Naduki Koujima is best known for Our Kingdom.

Secondly, all of the titles that I just mentioned (except ChinTsubu) have been published in English by companies other than Deux: Pet on Duty was Broccoli’s Boysenberry line; both Takanaga titles were Drama Queen (and Juné also published Takanaga’s Little Butterfly). Boysenberry published Delivery Cupid, and Juné has published a number of Koujima’s titles (Our Kingdom, Great Place High School, etc).

So, there you have it: Yaoi-Con in a relatively lifeless nutshell. It may seem extra quiet since so many other players (Blu, Be Beautiful, Drama Queen) were not in attendance this year. Meanwhile, I had a lot of fun at NYAF, but I wish I could have gone to Yaoi-Con too. ♥

So, I was talking to a couple of other bloggers lately…and we realized, who the heck is going to be covering Yaoi Con? Boys Next Door will hopefully have a few things to say, but the vast majority of us are going to be at New York Anime Fest, which means we’ll miss out on all the BL news!

So, I know I have some BL fans reading out there. Any of you going to be there? The BL world’s been in quite a bit of upheaval– this and this only the latest developments –so I’d love to talk to anyone who’s planning to attend. Comment here, please!

In a remarkable show of speed, Yaoi-Con has announced a new guest of honor, presumably to replace the much-plagued Youka Nitta: Nase Yamato, probably best known in North America for her Pet On Duty BL manga, published in English by Broccoli.

Amongst the harder-core BL series, she’s better known for a series called Chinko no Tsubuyaki…you know, I was going to talk about the series’ setup, but after I typed it out I decided it’d be better not to traumatize the BL-phobes out there. Suffice it to say that the series is cracktastic, hilarious, and never EVER going to see a release stateside. It’s also pictured above.

But now I’m really sad, because I can’t take my (Japanese) copies of Chintsubu to Yaoi-Con and get it autographed! Boo~