In the little town of Warwick, Rhode Island, yaoi and LGBTQ communities united to create a memorial and overwhelmingly successful first year BishounenCon! 

BishounenCon was the brand new, classy, east coast counterpart to the long running California convention YaoiCon. Like YaoiCon, BishounenCon is founded on embracing the Japanese subculture of "yaoi', or "boy's love," manga, anime, and fandoms with fancentric programing. Juné, the sponsor for both conventions, brought over veteran staff, official bishounen, panels, and main events to really give east coast a taste of what YaoiCon is all about.

Not to be an exact replica of YaoiCon, BishounenCon also embraced LGBTQ culture and communities, giving a safe space for both groups to thrive and interact. Panels like Gay Life: Fact vs Yaoi, But We're Both Guys: Unplacking BL Cliches, and LGBTQ+: Going Beyond Gay gave amazing presentations on gender and sexual variations.

BishounenCon's goal was to become the classier younger brother of YaoiCon, starting with its sharply dressed mascots by Tatouji to new programming events like the Host Club and Masquerade Ball. 

Our veteran bishounen truly dressed to impress and entertain at the Friday night Host Club. Here attendees made reservations with their favourite bishounen and got to have a relaxing date with them. Each bishie brought out their unique charm for their guests and even put on skits for the entire crowd to enjoy.

Saturday nights Masquerade Ball was a nice change up from the usual convention rave. With of local dance studio Twirl the Girl, free formal dance lessons were held an hour early to teach attendees a move or two. Attendees showed up to impress and got to dance the night away to Yuri On Ice hits, participate in a cosplay contest, and even win big prizes in a Juné sponsored raffle!

Our special guest Fox E., amazing cosplayer and drag queen, hosted a Drag Show during the Masquerade Ball with some of the bishies. She stunned the audience with her Final Fantasy X/X-2 Yuna performance, costume change and all! This was many of the audience's first drag show and they had an amazing experience between Fox E.'s spirit, bishies in spandex, and even a shirtless lip sync battle. 

Guest of Honor, Velvet Toucher, had a busy weekend of signings, panels, and taking in the BishounenCon spirit. She was overjoyed to meet fans of her previous work, Lost in the Snow, and encourage everyone to check out her newest work, Eden's Mercy, currently on Kickstarter. 

Overall, BishounenCon's first year was a great success! Final count of attendance was 492!! The attendees were wonderful, courteous, and gave great feedback for us to improve on. A second year has not been confirmed just yet, but keep checking in on the Juné blog for updates for another wonderful year full of even more great programming! 

We would like to thank once more our staff, volunteers, bishounen, special guests, and of course our attendees! 

With the latest rewards program added to Juné Manga, Akadot will be down to its final conversion days. 

Since Juné's soft launch, all yaoi titles have been making their way over from their printed forms on Akadot and digital forms on Emanga. Whether they are print, digital, or guest publications, if it's yaoi it's going to be on Juné! By the end of 2016 all these boys love goodies will be made available exclusively on JuneManga.com

As it stands right now, Akadot carries more than just yaoi, such books as Tezuka, Harlequin, and DMP related titles. However, soon these manga will be finding a new home. Juné isn't the only DMI imprint that is getting a makeover this year, Emanga will also be getting a new look to start carrying all of DMI's mainstream titles! 

What does this mean for Akadot? Once all new websites have been updated with their full inventory, Akadot will slowly be taken down. DMI is making things easier for the fans to buy directly from the imprints they already know and love.

This also means Akadot's current reward points will vanish from Akadot as well. These points will then be transferred over to the corresponding website of the customer's choosing. If they want all their points just for yaoi, please email us at madisong@emanga.com and we will add the correct rewards points to the new Juné rewards system. If the customer wants all their points for mainstream titles, these points will be transferred over at the soft launch of Emanga. 

Here at DMI, we take change as a challenge, something new and exciting! We want to thank all of our fans as they support us through this new transition into new and special. 

As Juné announced our creator spotlight of the month, Anime News Network announced this morning that Asumiko Nakamura's "Double Mints" will be made into a live action film!

At an art exhibit showing Nakamura's famous "Doukyuusei" or "Classmates" manga, it was then revealed that a live-action adaptation of the dark, psychological boys love "Double Mints" manga is slated to come out in 2017 in Japan. 

With the adaption of "Classmates" made into the success movie by Aniplex films, it will be interesting to see Nakamura's signature atypical art style adapted to live-action.

While "Classmates" was the innocent love story of two young boys falling in love, "Double Mints" is a much darker feature with dark undertones of murder, manipulation, and sacrifice. 

Both titles have been translated by DMI and made available for digital download on Juné. Currently Juné only has the digital rights for these titles, but we are pursuing printed version in the future. 

Read "Double Mints"

Read "Classmates" 

In an industry full of every kind of love story imaginable, Juné launches its own original content with a fresh new genre. 

The yaoi genre has been defined as the depiction of boy's love written for women by women. It is chalked full of slender, beautiful men with common themes of forbidden love and dramatic romances. 

Bara, yaoi's counterpart written by men for men, shows muscular manly men with much less plot driven story lines and a lot more sexual encounters. 

The two terms are rarely aimed at the same audience and yet, at their core, come from the same foundation of male-love driven stories. 

DMI's president Hikaru Sasahara, known for being a constant innovator in the manga industry, has found a way to join the two genres with the new term "yabara." It may seem as simple as combing yaoi + bara = yabara, but this new genre has even more hidden behind some clever wordplay.

Steering away from the old stereotypes of mature older semes, pretty boy ukes or even just two overly muscular hairy men, yabara will appeal to each and every body type. Race, age, shape, and size will be explored on new levels to appeal and even broaden the reader's experience to the male love genre. 

Not only will yabara combine the art styles of yaoi and bara, but it will combine its audiences as well. Yabara content is made for the comic book audience as whole. It's intent is to appeal to all the fujoshi, fudanshi, LGBT community, and indie comic book lovers. 

Yabara breaks away from typical plots of both yaoi, known for stories like hidden office love affairs, and bara, known for a whole lot of sex. This genre will bring the male love genre to the masses with modern romances, current events, and true to life tragedies. 

Juné's very first yabara title is not only the first of its kind, but it will also be DMI's first originally produced yaoi title. DMI has produced original content once before with the novel "Vampire Hunter D," making it into a manga for the first time back in 2007. 

"Eden's Mercy," by Japanese mangaka Velvet Toucher, was announced at Yaoi Con 2016. This title will be made in America and produced in English before it will be later translated into Japanese.

Giving English speaking audiences the opportunity to read works from their favourite mangakas first, without having to wait for translations opens up new opportunities for the otaku world. With the announcement of companies like Netflix putting more money into original content, Juné plans to keep with its own trend by producing original yaoi works from both local talents and Japanese artists.