What do you say about an artist who likes his women well-endowed, mostly or partially naked, and shiny, as if they have been simonized? I guess you say, “Oh, look it’s Urushihara Satoshi.” (And many thanks to alert reader Tatjana who noticed that I mistyped his name!)
Urushihara has a long history of drawing women with women, from random artbook pieces to full-blown manga stories. Chirality stands out as one of the strongest of his many Yuri-friendly works. Translated by CPM Manga, by 2010 this series wass out of print, but you can still find it, sometimes. It’s worth looking for! As you know, I strongly recommend you actually buy your Yuri and support it in the only way that is meaningful.
The story is shounen sci-fi stuff – in the future humans are being atttacked by GMs, a kind of virus machine produced by an uber-machine whose original job was to protect humanity. To fight (and hopefully reform/uncorrupt) Gaia, several beings were created with that contained all of the DNA of every living creature in the world. These beings were called Adam and Eve.
Of course, nothing is ever easy – Adam became corrupted by Gaia and Eve became bonded to a young human girl, Shiori, in her “immature” form. As “Carol Guardian,” Eve vows to protect Shiori at all costs. Time passes and Carol and Shiori meet once again.
Carol is able to transform into a male form at first to protect Shiori, but when a mishap occurs and Carol accidentally injurs Shiori, she finds herself unable to transform. Meanwhile, Shiori begins to remember their original meeting, and realizes that she is in love with Carol, in any form. In fact, more in her female form.
Yes, they do get together, in a very real sex-filled way. And Shiori and Carol not only protect each other and everyone they love, but they save the world while they’re at it. Plot-wise, the story is a little sketchy, the science is very bad (and mostly organized around the women wearing clothes that make them look naked) but as a fun sci-fi Yuri story, where the story is really a frame for the Yuri, Chirality is pretty good.
CPM published Chirality originally as a series of pamphlet comic books, but you can find it as a set of four graphic novels – unless you obsess about the cover art, the GNs are a better deal and a little easier to find. Despite its age, this particular GN holds up pretty well – the translation is fine, the cost is reasonable.
Ratings:
Art – 8
Story – 7
Characters – 9
Service – 8
Yuri – 10
Overall – 8
For hardcore Carol and Shiori fans, Urushihara did do a follow-up story about Rachel Shiori Guardian, Carol and Shiori’s daughter, and her sempai/lover Kaede, in a book called Ragnarock City (link totally Not Safe For Work). It’s mostly torso shots of naked girls – not much by way of story.
Once more, from alert reader Tatjana, Ragnarock City is available in a German language version, for all you Yuri fans who can read German. ^_^
Chirality was the first Urushihara manga I ever bought and I have loved his work since. I’m so looking forward to his new OVA ~ Front Innocent.
But back to CHIRALIRY – I simply love the relationship between Carol and Shiori and their love scenes are the best I have ever seen. I actually did buy a copy of his follow up story, Ragnarock City, at A-kon a few years ago. It comes with a nice three panel image poster of the new character whom I did not know was Carol and Shiori’s daughter (how was that possible, unless Carol found a way to shift into her “male” form again?). But there are english scanlations of it now online.
I just wish they made an anime of Chirality. I would pay good money for that series.
I liked the manga,i have it on..spanish,from Spain. Gods
bah this so old You’ll neeever read it xD
Sure I will. I read every comment. :-)
I really like the relationship between Carol and Shiori, and I especially like the way Urushihara didn’t take any of the obvious outs that other authors might have taken to back off from the Yuri aspect: He could have had Carol transform into a man to pair up with Shiori; he could have had Shiori treat Carola as a passing phase and settle down with some guy at the end of the story; etc., etc.
I just wish that Urushihara spent as much time on story and characterization in his other works as he did in Chirality. I mean, Plastic Little is okay in that regard, but beyond that he seems to spend most of his characterization efforts on creating lavishly expressive nipples.