Éclair Bleue: Ananta ni Hibiku Yuri Anthology (エクレア bleue あなたに響く百合アンソロジー) is the third of the Éclair anthology series.  The first two, Éclair  and Éclair blanche were firmly set in the world of schoolgirl romance. In this volume, the stories wander away towards hints of there being life beyond high school. 

To be sure, the protagonists are often themselves still in school with a variety of crushes on older women in their lives, but one or twice it slips and forgets that lesbian eventually graduate and yet, remain interested in romantic relationships with other women. Shocking, I know. 

The volume starts off with a color illustration by Hibiki Reine, which felt rather nostalgic, since we haven’t seen much of hers in Yuri anthologies for some time. You’ll recognize many of the names in this collection. Between Galette and Comic Yuri Hime, you’ll likely recognize many of them on sight. My favorite short this volume was “Sato to Namida to Onna to Onna” by Kita Taki which follows an office worker who can see that her coworker is struggling and helps, maybe, her find something to hang on to. I’ve always like Kitao-sensei’s grasp of adult concerns in her stories. Sato’s stability is refreshing, as Fujiwara says. 

The thing I actually like best about the Éclair series, is that it reminds me of the Yuri anthologies I used to obsessively consume before we had an established genre, with magazines and publishers putting out high-quality Yuri. These anthologies have always been important for Yuri creators, giving them a place to get their work to a larger audience (and, in many cases, use that to springboard to a professional level) and also provide the freedom of putting out the stories they wanted to see told. This series is nice for that, because it gives artists who are neck deep in their own series for one publisher a chance to play a bit in a looser-format anthology.

Ratings:

Overall – 8

I may not always like every story, but I will always love these kinds of Yuri anthologies. They are important piece of Yuri history for me. And, for the very first time, you too will be able to enjoy one of these Yuri anthologies in English when Yen Press publishes Éclair: A Girls’ Love Anthology That Resonates in Your Heart this summer!