Miyata Waltz’s collection Onna no ko Ichiban Yawaraka Itokoro (女の子のいちばんやわらかいところ。) is a comfortable example of a collection by a Yuri artist who has not yet matured their work out of the well-worn paths of Yuri storytelling. 

Set in a school, the girls in this collection experience love and loss and jealousy and kindness for the first time. The art is solid, if not outstanding, but I feel that there is potential there. I say this, because at this point, it’s surprisingly hard to tell where an author will go,once they have gotten their iteration of “I drew it because no one else (that I know of, without actually looking to see if I’m right,) is.” And, realistically an awful lot of artists once they get this out of their system don’t have a “there” there. After the tried and true they look deep within themselves and find only the trite and tropey. 

In this particular collection, my favorite stories were the “Bara to Ichigo” mini-series about a transfer student and the aloof girl with whom she becomes friends.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 7
Characters – 7
Service – 0 really not
Yuri – 6

Overall – 7

Right now Miyata-sensei’s work seems to be split evenlyish between Yuri, BL and straight school life stories. The art now is definitely tighter than in this volume, but not more nuanced. OTOH, I admit to a very real personal bias against shoujo-style art in favor of looser, sketchier manga art style.)

I haven’t read a collection like this – a “first time artist” collection in a long time. It kind of felt nostalgic, maybe?