Yuri Manga: Aishi no Salome 

June 9th, 2014

aishinosalomeThe June issue of Bessatsu Hana to Yume includes a special edition collection of Takao Shigeru’s Yuri short “Aishi no Salome”.

I first read the news about this collection on Comic Natalie, but the short description did not particularly thrill me. Two “contrasting” girls in a boarding school meet and fall in love. Okay, great! Then what? Nothing, as far as I could tell, so I wasn’t rushing off to get this volume. But there I was in San Jose, CA in a Kinokuniya and there was the volume and I thought, “Oh, okay.” ^_^

Takao Shigeru doesn’t usually draw Yuri, she’s best known for Teruteru Shonen and has a historical drama series “Madame Petit” running now. I guess that’s the big draw of this story, that a manga artist that is relatively well-known drew it.

Aya and Sango are two girls living at a dorm who have something deep and intense between them…but for the life of me, I have no idea what. The 40-something pages of this story contain two screaming matches and at least one emotional breakdown per character, but we have to do a lot of work to imagine that their relationship is worthy of all this drama. But, let’s just presume it is and that when Sango and Aya run away at the end to live together, their kiss is a signal of “happily ever after.” Why not? There’s no reason to assume it is but equally, there’s no reason to assume it’s not.

Ratings:

Art – 9 a pleasant mix of classic and modern
Story – 6 Weaksauce but it was meant as a short
Characters – If only we knew ye
Yuri – 8
Service – 5 Wedding dresses

Overall – 6

It wasn’t bad, just a little confusing. How did this get a special edition?

2 Responses

  1. Off-Course Balloon says:

    A bit too short, this story was; I don’t really like the ending but then again, making super successful stories is hard work.

    On a related note to magazines, in the Dengeki Daioh Genesis magazine, there’s a series by Fujieda Miyabi titled “Tenshoku Crossover” (天色くろすおーばー).
    Is this a Yuri series? As far as I can tell, headphones are a big story plot…

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