What has a history over a hundred years-old, goes beyond genre, and gets its name from the Japanese word for 'lily'? If you guessed yuri, you and our guest would be in good company! This week, we had special guest Erica Friedman to help us wrap up the season and educate us on the fascinating world of yuri... for the revolution of the world?!
Next week, it's season eight; what changes will we have in store?! One thing that won't change is that we'll have a new episode, this time with Justus R Stone talking about fans of light novels!
## Where can I learn more about Erica Friedman?
If you want to learn more about Erica Friedman's fantastic work on yuri, you're in luck!
- The Yuri New Network (now with podcast!): [okazu.yuricon.com](https://okazu.yuricon.com)
- YuriCon: [yuricon.com](https://yuricon.com)
- Facebook: [@yuriconalc](https://facebook.com/yuriconalc)
- Twitter: [@okazuyuri](https://twitter.com/okazuyuri)
And, you can help support the continuation of that work by becoming a patron of her work on Patreon: http://patreon.com/okazu
## Episode outline
### Fandom Facts
**History and Origins:**
Yuri, or Girls' Love, is a genre of manga, anime, and other Japanese works involving lesbian relationships. It can focus on the romantic or sexual aspects of the relationships (or both). The word itself literally means 'lily', a common Japanese feminine name, and may be derived in parallel to the pre-existing association between the word for rose ('bara') and gay men.
...And of course there's a lot of history, which is why we have Erica to help us out!
**Search Data:**
Interest in Yuri has been [relatively constant since 2004 with some slow growth](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F0jb0t,%2Fm%2F0f9s9). Most spikes in interest appear to be erroneously associated with the genre: a spike in December 2016 most likely corresponds to the finale of _Yuri!!! on Ice_, for example, as does a spike in August 2011 referring to cosmonaut _Yuri Gagarin_.
A quick comparison to Yaoi puts Yuri as just under half as popular but with similar trends.
In terms of search data by country, the top ten are: Japan, Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Thailand, South Korea, Cambodia, Phillipines, Malaysia, and El Salvador (Canada is 30th, and United States is 32nd).
**Fan Demographics:**
Based on a fan survey conducted by [Floating into Bliss in 2017](https://floatingintobliss.wordpress.com/2017/10/14/report-on-the-yuri-fandom-demographic-survey/), we do have some rough data from its almost 700 respondents.
- Gender: A plurality identified as women (47.19%), but fairly equal representation of those identifying as men (44.31%) with the remainder identifying as non-binary / other.
- Sexuality: Of the women who responded, 96.04% listed their sexuality as something _other_ than heterosexual (compared to 23.38% of men)
- Age: The mode age group is 21-25 (though, 16-20 and 26-30 are also fairly represented)
Other neat facts from this survey include:
- Most responses came from Twitter (and there was a higher proportion of responses from women than men on Twitter; a higher proportion of men responded from Reddit)
- Most respondents prefer to read Yuri manga (55.39%) vs watching anime (16.97%) or visual novels (4.46%). 18.56% don't care about which medium.
- The vast majority (84.9%) read both original and fan works
- Over 80% enjoy shipping, and over 50% enjoy shipping but don't see it as a key aspect of their enjoying Yuri.
- Over 40% read both pornographic and non-pornographic content and have no preference for which
The survey also lists favourite manga by groups... so I would highly recommend checking out the survey!
A slightly different survey from the [International Anime Research Project](https://sites.google.com/site/animeresearch/past-results/2016-results) also happened to ask about interest levels in Yuri (and other genres). Of the 300+ respondents (~54% identifying as male), approximately 25% listed Yuri as "Do not l...
