"Plica" and the internet rabbit hole I fell down

Gay idiot attempts to hunt a white whale

Began writing this article December 24th 2024, finished on the same day.

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Number 46 of the Plica series

What is "Plica"? (and what did I think of it?)

Plica is a Japanese webcomic that used to be run in the Anise magazine (for lesbians, discontinued) and was (previously) digitally archived on Love Piece Club (18+, seller of sex toys). The art of the comic (seen on your right) is pretty rough, though I feel like its still worth looking at for a perspective on what it was like to be a lesbian in Japan in the earlier 2000s. The comic includes a few characters, including the titular Plica, all of whom are lesbian women, however the comic is light on character developments. The plot of this comic is also pretty light -- I feel like you could jump in at any point and understand what's happening/being conveyed, though reading in order is still important for understanding what overarching plot there is.

My rating, if I had to give one, is a 6 or 7 out of 10. Did the comic itself change my brain chemistry? No. However, if you want something quick to read that is about lesbians from the early 2000s, I would recommend reading Plica.

Further note, in case it is needed: If you're sensitive to them, Plica does contain depictions of sex and nudity, though they are rather tame (to me, at least).

The moment I fell down a rabbit hole

If you paid attention, you'll notice that Plica was previously archived on Love Piece Club (which I will be shortening to LPC from now on). When I tried taking a look at the site to see Plica at the source, I learned two things: LPC has been operating for more than 20 years (respect!!) and that Plica was gone from their site. One of the links I followed was http://www.lovepiececlub.com/amamiya/archives/000600.html, so I modified the link to see if I could find any trace of Plica that hadn't been removed. What I found is that www.lovepiececlub.com/amamiya would redirect you to https://www.lovepiececlub.com/author/amamiyakarin.html, a profile about one of LPC's past writers. At the moment, I'm inclined to think that "Amamiya Karin" and "Amamiya Sae" (the author of Plica) are different people. The following points are what lead me to this conclusion:

  1. Amamiya Karin has her own website which features stuff she's written. Plica is not among these works, even though I found the style of some cover art similar to Plica's.

  2. Amamiya Karin also has a Japanese Wikipedia page which seems to have no mention of Plica (or rather it's Japanese title, プリカちゃん)

  3. The movie for Plica has it's own Japanese Wikipedia page, and when they mention Amamiya Sae, there is no link.

  4. This may be a stretch, but Amamiya Karin had written only one article for LPC. Translated bits of Amamiya Sae's words suggest she was more of a fan of LPC, so if Karin is Sae, I would kinda expect there to be more articles.

The movie

Oh yes, did I mention there's a movie? This is one of the larger factors for me falling down the rabbit hole, so we're gonna ungracefully pivot focus to this for a bit. The word "movie" suggests that this is animated, however some articles online [1][2] say that there isn't much animation at all, and its mostly voiceovers of the comic strips. Still, there is some new content that doesn't appear in the comics that I wish I could see, but unfortunately the movie almost seems like lost media at the moment.

Back in the day, the movie was distributed by LPC on their website. They didn't ship outside of Japan, however the writers of both articles I found about the movie were able to get DVD copies through proxy services. Today though, as you can guess, the DVD is no longer for sale on LPC's website.

I've exhausted almost every option I can think of in order to find this movie. Searches on the open internet, searches on the Internet Archive, looking at torrents... Only two options remain, which is either to bother one of the article writers I mentioned before to see if they still have their copy, or message LPC. While the first option is technically doable (the writer in question has an open Discord server), I'd rather not expose my belly like that right away. I also feel hopeful about messaging LPC because they have an article which mentions the Plica movie, and it was written as recently as 2022. This makes me hopeful that someone amongst the staff is able to speak on its availability, especially since the founder of LPC was the producer for the movie!

At the moment I've yet to send LPC a message, but if you're curious about the results, I will update this page later on if they respond to me. The results will be listed under a different heading which you can find by scrolling down, if it's there.

  1. http://yurinoboke.blogspot.com/2011/11/realistic-look-at-lesbian-life-in-japan.html

  2. https://okazu.yuricon.com/2007/06/20/lesbian-animation-plica-chan/

The mystery of Amamiya Sae

Cases like this exemplify why older internet stuff captivates me so much. It's like looking at an impact crater where the thing that made the crater disappeared. You see traces of the originator (in this case, the writing, the art, and the movie made by/with the help of Amamiya Sae), but you know nothing about the originator itself. I did manage to find this, what seems to be a short interview with Amamiya Sae. Upon further investigation, this text appears to be a part of "What Yuri Means to Me", which is described as "a written history project, with essay from Yuri Fans and Creators about their experiences with Yuri" on the website this originates from. Given this and the fact that it also comes written in Japanese, I'm inclined to think that this is indeed written by Amamiya Sae herself, but aside from this, I can't find anything else about her.

Wherever this woman is, I hope she is doing well, and I thank her for imparting the world with Plica and making my day a little brighter (or dimmer, depending on what page of Plica we're talking about).

Updates from the rabbit hole

December 27th, 2024

In case you were thinking it: No, I don't have my hands on the Plica-chan movie or a method to obtain it. Yet.

On this day, I decided to look up "Plica-chan movie" on Google once more, just to see if I could somehow find something new... and I did! Turns out someone had uploaded the Plica-chan movie to Youtube... However the videos were privated. I'm somewhat convinced that the private nature isn't due to anything like a copyright claim either, as the playlist I found them in stated that the creator could give permission to view the videos, so they were private on purpose. I tried seeing if the playlist creator was still active on Youtube and... Nope. Their last uploaded and only video on their channel was posted 15 years ago. In the comments section there is reference to other privated videos the account had uploaded (including the Plica videos!!), but they didn't respond to any of them, so I assume the account is straight up abandoned.

On this day I also finally sent an email to LPC regarding the availability of the Plica-chan movie, and they got back to me within the same day! Basically what they said was they'd check for any DVDs or digital archives of the movie, but any updates would have to come after the new year, since December 27th is the last working day for them. Not that exciting of an update, but at least it gives me something to look forward to.

Additional note on that Youtube account I mentioned earlier: While looking at their profile, I found it a little funny their description simply read "I am a Japanese lesbian". Seems like exactly the kind of person to have uploaded Plica-chan to Youtube, right? I hope wherever this person is now, they're doing alright, just like Amamiya Sae.