Shoujo Magazine Yuri Watch: Blue Friend (ブルーフレンド) 2nd Season

June 17th, 2011

Beginning in the July issue of Ribon magazine is the newest addition to the Shoujo Magazine Yuri manga scene, Blue Friend, 2nd Season (ブルーフレンド 2nd Season). You can read the synopses of the “first season” in my reviews of Volume 1 and Volume 2 of the manga.

The second season begins, as so many series do, with the excitement of the first day of high school life. “Today my high school life begins,” says Shimizu Kanako. Kanako is thrilled to be attending a girls’ high school, making new friends, etc. She quite accidentally slams into another girl who reacts, despite her cute appearance, with unusual aggressiveness. Kamei-san is small and cute, but her personality, Kanako learns, is blunt to the point of rudeness.

Kanako quickly makes friends in class, but is startled to find an underlying selfishness in her new friends. They ask her to give them things she bought for herself, and copy her homework. Kamei-san is, in the meantime, quite rude to Kanako’s friends. At first Kanako is angry and frustrated with Kamei-san’s attitude. When Kamei-san speaks the brutal truth about one of the girl’s new boyfriend (“He looks like a llama.”) Kanako wisks her away to dress her down. Instead, she finds her self admitting that she wants to be able to speak plainly, as Kamei-san does.

Her friends desert her and, in retaliation for her new relationship, nominate Kanako as class representative. Kamei-san volunteers to join her. They start becoming closer – Kanako goes so far as to elicit a smile from taciturn Kamei-san when she admits to feeling happy when Kamei-san stood up to be the other class rep.

Kanako decides that she will be more like Kamei-san, and speak plainly what she feels, rather than playing the other girl’s mind games. When two of her former group try to bring her back into the fold, Kanako rejects their overtures, politely, but clearly, explaining that she did not take kindly to the way they treated her.

The chapter ends with Kanako looking at her future as class rep with Kamei-san and thinking, “Today my high school life begins.”

Of interest to folks who care about such things, this series premiered at the front of the magazine. That’s a sign that the previous series did pretty well. Good news, I think.

I admit it – I’m waiting for the boot to drop. There is no way this story is going to be this positive, this empowering, is there? Can it be that the heroine will manage to learn to speak up for herself and be rewarded with getting the girl, too? Nah….

Time will tell what horrible, tragic backstory and what icky-making trauma will fill in the lines here, but I have no doubt that Ebon Fumi is cooking something up.

Tune in to the same bat magazine next month to find out!

2 Responses

  1. Ichigo69 says:

    Erica Friedman said:
    Time will tell what horrible, tragic backstory and what icky-making trauma will fill in the lines here, but I have no doubt that Ebon Fumi is cooking something up.

    Yeah, I know it’s gonna be like this…. It /IS/ Ribbon, after all and not Yuri Hime. Oh, well, I can hope (in vain) that things will turn out well, but I guess I should probably get on the cynical train w/ you, Erica….

    Sigh…………..

  2. Senbei says:

    Finally a series I can buy locally! Thanks for the heads up!

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