Archive for the Guest Review Category


Y/CON 9 Event Report by Laetitia Albine Kambou

January 3rd, 2024

It’s our very great pleasure today to introduce a new guest writer to you…a person I met online under what has to be some of the strangest circumstances ever…  and I am so pleased to have here! Please welcome Laetitia Albine Kambou with her report of Y/CON 9, France’s Yaoi and Yuri convention. ^_^ Take it away, Laetitia!

It was promising. Even exciting. After a 2022 edition sold out weeks before the event, Y/CON – the one and only convention dedicated to homo fictions in France – moved to a bigger space near Paris for its 9th weekend. More accessible (relatively speaking, because everyone knows how terrible the Paris metropolitan is when you are disabled), with more people able to attempt. Everything went higher, even the ticket, but hey, that’s the price of glory.

November 4 and 5. Two days in what is described as the safest con to be when you are queer. A wholesome crowd eager to discover talented artists in every genre and fandom possible. Yuri, bara, fanart or original creations, books or comics, fluffy or pervy, you name it, they have it. Diversity is everywhere on each side of the tables, alongside a simple and strong feeling to be back at home after one year navigating in the Big Bad Heteronormative World.

Publishers like Taifu, Hana, Akata or Reines de Cœur were just robbed of their merch. In France, LGBTQIA+ sections are nearly non-existant in general bookstores, so the majority of the sales are made on the internet and during cons. This year saw the great entrance of the webtoon format with Kbooks releasing two anticipated titles, Rose and Champagne and The Dangerous Convenience Store, two 18+ yaoi.

But, as much as I enjoyed my days in this bubble of happiness, acceptance and too much money spent on cute goodies and prints, some clouds appeared above the parade. Being bigger seems to make things more obvious, especially when my personal awareness of all problems queer people must face on a daily basis grows equally bigger.

As the name of the organizing team, Event Yaoi, suggests, Y/CON was originally fully about Japanese boy’s love, acknowledging other genres, medias and demographics as the audience make it clear they want more variety. This year, yuri and other sapphic stories received a well deserved recognition during the panels, and more artists were selected because of this content. Yaoi is always dominant but things are in progress.

What needs to be done better are panels and moderation. Sure, some guests came ready to have fun, but also talk about creation, history and representation of queerness, publishing and more, but other panelists showed a disturbing lack of reflection about those same subjects or their own work. After #MeToo and the rise of topics questioning how queerness is portrayed on medias, hearing people saying they don’t see their work as a window or a way to talk about it is a let down, to say the least.

And on that, the casting of the panels was the real issue. With Ttung Gae, korean illustrator of Rose and Champagne webtoon, canceling their venue, it appeared that the majority of the guests were cis white non (visibly) disabled people, contrasting with the more diverse public mentioned before. Such assembly can only result in failing or dodging  to talk about more specific matters, and stay at the surface.

No one, at least for now, asks Y/CON to become a place of activism and claiming equality in a political way. In a country like France, being The Safe Place for a week-end is already a huge step and commitment. But as the people attempting it are constantly and unwillingly subjects to debate, it demonstrates by its very existence that a certain number of voices wish to be heard, and found an echo chamber there. It would be interesting if these voices, in all their diversity, could now grab a mic and get real visibility and interaction with the public.

See you next time, 9-10 november 2024.

 

Erica here: Thank you so much Laetitia, for the thoughtful report. The issues you bring up are common to many events and having folks speak up to con organizers and take an active role themselves, are the best ways to fix things.

I hope to be able to attend that this year, so if you are local to Y/CON do tell them you’d love to see me as a guest. ^_^ But I’ll be just as white and not-visibly disabled as the rest, which would not address this issue at all.





Does It Count If You Lose Your Virginity To An Android, Volume 1 Guest Review by Matt Marcus

December 20th, 2023

A gynoid with purple hair undressed her nonplussed mistress on the cover of Does It Count If You Lose Your Virginity To An Android, Volume 1 Matt Marcus is a cohost of various projects on the Pitch Drop Podcast Network. He is still on the hook for a Xenosaga KOS-MOS x Shion fanfic for their next Patreon goal.

Sometimes, you come across a piece of media that really strikes at the heart of humanity. What does it even mean to be human? To have emotions? What if there were beings that look like us, feel like us, act like us, but are wholly man-made? Is synthetic love still…love?

If you are looking to explore these heady ideas, then may I suggest Pluto by Naoki Urasawa and Osamu Tezuka, now with a fantastic anime adaptation on Netflix (who did not sponsor this post).

However, if you are looking for something less Philip K. Dick and more, say, Philine K. Shlick, you could pick up volume 1 of Does It Count If You Lose Your Virginity To An Android? by Yakinikuteishoku. Now, I hear you saying, “But Matt, shouldn’t the title say ‘gynoid’?” Well observed, dear reader! In fact, the referenced lovebot uses the term herself, but alas, it seems that it failed in focus testing, much like my alternate title Is It OK To Objectify A Sapient Sex Toy?

Here’s the rundown: in a near future where AI isn’t about art theft and Google Glass manages to succeed, Tsuda Akane is an office worker in her late twenties who is very reliable and professional on the clock, but outside of work she’s a complete slob who drinks heavily every night and has no real romantic experience to boot. During a drunken stupor, she places an order for a cleaning robot but what arrives the next day is a super advanced—and very illegal—sex gynoid named Nadeshiko. Akane spends the volume constantly at her wits’ end trying to keep herself out of jail and her incorrigibly horny new companion in check, however much to her chagrin she is very much putty in Nadeshiko’s skillful hands.

I expected this manga to be hornier than a buck hunter’s trophy wall and, sure enough, page one opens mid-coitus. Hell, the central point of conflict is Akane’s refusal to register herself as Nadeshiko’s owner via a fingerprint scan, and I’m sure you can infer what that entails. The premise is so nakedly (ha) transparent in its aims that even when a gag is eye-rollingly contrived (of course that’s where the power switch is! Of course!) I find myself unable to find it distasteful. Don’t get me wrong, it’s pandering as all get-out, but it doesn’t rise to a significant level of grossness unless you give any thought to how rank that apartment must smell.

What really made this volume stand out as more than just I, Robot After Dark is the snappy writing. Huge credit to the localizer Casper Kazor, who really punched up the dialogue to great effect. There are a lot of really fun little turns of phrase that got me chortling, none of which I will deign to spoil. This is one to pick up for tits and giggles.

So, back to the titular question: does it indeed count?

رارا I Evess

(all apologies to KC Green)

Thank you to Seven Seas, who also did not sponsor this post, but did provide a review copy.

Art – 8 All the character designs are cute but the fluids are a touch excessive
Story – 7 It’s a gag comic were sex is The Joke, but the flourishes in the writing elevate it
Characters – 6 This ain’t Bladerunner 2049, but I’m sure no one needs it to be either
Service – 9 Docking it one point for the few services that Nadeshiko will not provide
Yuri – 7 / LGBTQ – 7 Akane seems to be a clueless ladykiller with a cadre of admirers at the office 

Overall – 8 

You cannot fathom how disappointed I was that Seven Seas beat me to the Electric Sheep reference–and on the back cover, no less. So many jokes lost to time, like tears in the rain.





The Two of Them Are Pretty Much Like This, Volume 4 Guest Review by Patricia Baxter

December 13th, 2023
Two women lean on a fence, looking at each other, entwining fingers. One woman has medium-length brown hair, wearing a red blouse and cargo khaki capris. The other has long blonde hair pulled into a severe ponytail, wearing a lavender long shirt and a white skirt.My name is Patricia Baxter (she/her). I am a bisexual autistic writer who has previously written articles concerning how media represents different marginalized communities. You can find more of my work through my personal website “Autistic Observations”.
 
The fourth, and final, volume of The Two of Them Are Pretty Much Like This is, in a word, delightful.  Not that this manga series hasn’t been an absolute delight for me to read these past two years, because it has been, but this volume in particular emphasizes just how special the series was to read.  In essence, this series’ greatest success is the same reason why I also love She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat and If We Leave on the Dot so much; they are manga series centred on the lives of sapphic women who are living happily and without shame for who they are, who they love, and what they do with their lives.  It sounds like a simple thing to take joy from, but in a media landscape so entrenched in heteronormativity it is still challenging to find narratives that even cover a fraction of what members of the LGBTQ+ community experience, or wish to experience, for themselves.  Therefore, instances where we can read a series where the characters who, even if they are not exactly like you, foster a sense of familiarity and empathy to you, are all the more special.
 

Ellie and “Wanko” continue to be a delight to read, as their day-to-day routines and shenanigans do not fail to amuse and warm the heart and they feel like actual people who exist in our reality.  The emphasis on the couple moving forward to the next stage of their relationship, discussing their future in terms of marriage and their respective career paths, adds a new layer to their established dynamics.  This may sound mundane on paper, but it’s enriching for those of us who need to see these ordinary life events occur to imagine our futures for ourselves.There is one element of the book that, while overall handled very well, deserves some criticism.  This volume introduces a new character to the series, a high school student named Kita, who is revealed to be a transfeminine youth.*  They initially assumed that Ellie was a trans woman, and asked her for advice on how to become a woman.  While Ellie cannot be the guide Kita needs to traverse through a gender transition, she is still more than willing to lend an ear and offer positive reinforcement to think about their future.  The main sticking point in this volume is the pronouns used to address Kita are exclusively masculine ones, which is a choice I felt frustrated by.  I’m uncertain if this is meant to reflect how they were addressed in the original Japanese edition, or if it was an intentional request by Takashi Ikeda for the English translation, but having a transgender character only addressed by the pronouns associated with the gender they’ve been assigned with at birth is something many people will find discomforting, as it did for me.  This slight hiccup is unfortunate, as this volume has several instances of queer positivity, but overall I am happy for Kita’s inclusion in the narrative and that their story was treated with empathy and kindness by the author.

In the end, the final volume of The Two of Them Are Pretty Much Like This emphasized just how much I love these characters and taking the time to experience their lives.  I didn’t want the book to end, but I am glad that we were able to catch a glimpse of these characters’ journeys for a little while.

* I chose to use they/them pronouns for Kita in my review because Kita is a transfeminine character, and it is important to address the possibility that they may be non-binary as they are still considering their gender identity for themselves

Art: 8
Story: 9
Characters: 10
Service: 2 (some nudity, references to Ellie and Wanko still having very enthusiastic sex together, but nothing egregious)
Yuri: 10
LGBTQ+: YMMV, 5 – 7 depending on how you view Kita’s treatment in the book
Overall: 9.5





Cherish Every Moment, Indonesian Yuri Anthology Book That Matters So Much More, Guest Review by Lena Tama

December 6th, 2023

Hello! Lena Tama is here again! Unlike my previous article for my Suara Kita (Our Voices) LGBTQ+ community, this article is entirely personal but still matters a lot for Indonesian audiences. On this occasion, I’m reviewing a local yuri anthology book called Cherish Every Moment by a group of yuri mangaka called Yuri Nakama. If you have the chance, say hello to them on their Facebook page!

This yuri anthology book has been quite an enigma since I bought it at the Comic Frontier (Comifuro) convention in May this year. Sometimes I wondered if this book would be worth reviewing or not due to its circumstances, but I did it anyway.

Cherish Every Moment consists of five one-shot titles, but not all of them are in manga format. Of those titles, three of them are manga, one of them is a short story, and the last one is… hard for me to explain, but again I’ll get to it as well. Their stories have one defining theme: To cherish every moment, however we can.

I’m going to review each title and provide a snippet of them as they are in the book. Here goes!!

 

1. Loop of Second Chances by Pianno

Our first title is a one-shot manga about Lucy, a third-grade high school student who gives up her love after being rejected by her crush Anna during their graduation ceremony. Or at least, that’s what Jean dreamed of before she woke up and found out that she looped back in time during her second year, giving her a second chance to get closer to Anna.

Except, it’s already over 50 times by now and every time loop results in the same conclusion: Anna rejects Lucy because she has her eyes on someone else and Lucy’s friend Jean keeps bullying their teacher Mrs. Katerina until their graduation. At this point, Lucy resigns her fate to repeat one year of her high school moment forever like a curse from God.

But not everything is always the same. One time, Lucy picked up an unassuming pen which remained in her possession for dozens of time loops. Anna and Jean allude to their high school moments lasting forever, and Mrs. Katerina is slowly getting closer to Lucy with each passing cycle.

Eventually, Lucy and Jean figure out who’s behind this endless time loop: Mrs. Katerina and Anna. Not only is Mrs. Katerina a witch and the unassuming pen is her magic wand, but Jean is also her superior. Anna asked Mrs. Katerina to perform a magical time loop so that she can be with her crush, Jean, for a while longer, which Mrs. Katerina did thanks in part to her blossoming affection toward Lucy.

Finally having clarity, Lucy accepts the truth and Mrs. Katerina returns the time flow to normal. For the last time, these four girls relieve their high school moment with Anna finally getting closer to Jean and Lucy giving the depressed Mrs. Katerina a chance to get closer to her.

And that’s the end of this story. It took me until the end of the story to realize it was a romcom student x teacher story, but even then that’s quite a stretch given the many bizarre twists. The artstyle is rather simplistic and cute, but it doesn’t detract from its overall story. It kept me guessing for a while, and I like it.

Enjoyment: 6/10
Characters: 7/10
Yuri: 7/10

 

2. Debur Amarilis (Splash of Amaryllis) by Saxifraga

This short story depicts the aftermath of the war between the nations of Floralys and Orkanius which concluded with the defeat of Orkanius and the unification under Floralys. Kairi Physeter, a herbalist and former paramedic for Orkanius army remained in Floralys to help the war-torn areas and victims of war as the only healer available, at least until the arrival of another healer called Elena Crescent, a renowned white mage and leader of Floralys paramedic battalion.

Despite initially standing opposite each other during the war, Kairi and Elena gradually got closer as they reached a level of intimacy unbound by labels over the course of three years. They loved each other and respected the boundary to maintain professionalism at their respective jobs.

One day, an announcement comes in which states that Orkanius’ revitalization has completed and the citizens in Floralys, including Kairi, may return home. After three years thinking only about her job and Elena, the thought of returning to Orkanius suddenly hits Kairi. Her former greenhouse, her Master Herbalist who had long passed away, the subtropical climate of Orkanius which is vastly different to Floralys’ tropical climate, and her own hometown.

As much as Kairi wants to return home, it would mean being separated from the one person that matters so much to her. This is the first time Kairi ever feels distraught by that mere thought and she’s afraid of saying it to Elena, afraid that Elena would feel indifferent if they’re apart after all these three years and their relationship which they have built would crumble.

However, Elena caresses Kairi gently, reminding her that she will always respect Kairi’s decision and that nothing will ever replace Kairi in her heart even if they’re physically apart from each other. At this moment, Kairi realizes how much they love and respect each other, and how far their relationship has come.

Elena follows Kairi as they travel to Orkanius together, back to where Kairi began her journey as a herbalist. Kairi decides to continue her late Master’s study someday, rebuild the untidy greenhouse, and become a better herbalist than she is now. In their embrace, they know that they’re ready to make the decision when the time comes and the bond they have is unbreakable.

I didn’t expect much from this title and ended up intrigued by it. The world building is compact but pretty imaginative to me, and the characters are well-written; they have deep love for each other and they communicate their feelings well.

Overall, I enjoyed this story so much. I hope they can expand the story of Kairi and Elena in the future. One can dream…

Enjoyment: 9/10
Characters: 9/10
Sapphic: 8/10

 

3. The Time Jacker by LoveJuice

I’m going to be honest; I don’t like cute-girls-doing-cute-things stories that don’t add anything else to the table, and this manga does just that. It’s a story about a cute girl doing a time loop to turn back time and save her cute crush.

An unnamed senpai steals her unnamed kouhai’s coffee and dies due to said coffee. Distraught over her beloved senpai’s death, an eccentric cute engineer called Professor. Loly comes to the rescue and gives the kouhai a time machine in the form of a stopwatch to return to the past and save senpai from the deadly coffee.

Indeed, kouhai goes back to five minutes before senpai’s death using the stopwatch, only to meet her past self who got persuaded to throw away the deadly coffee.

Although initially afraid kouhai cannot return to the present time because the time machine/stopwatch only works once before needing to change its battery, it doesn’t matter since she only jumped to the past five minutes ago. Things shortly return to normal and kouhai finds her tsundere senpai alive and jolly. Everything’s as it should be, except for the godzilla in the background wrecking havoc.

There’s a fine line between writing a good comedy and trying too hard to be funny. This title does both simultaneously and I don’t enjoy it that much. Adding to that is the overly cute artstyle that makes the story a bit aggravating whenever it tries too hard to be funny. Many things about it feel too basic and not memorable enough for me.

Bonus points if you see the kouhai as Nishikino Maki and the senpai as Yazawa Nico from Love Live.

Enjoyment: 5/10
Characters: 4/10
Yuri: 3/10

 

4. Our Memories Are Stored in the Clouds by Sakakibara Ryoichi

Now this is the real deal, possibly the biggest selling point of this yuri anthology book and one of the major reasons I want to review it. This is a short story being told in a very unorthodox format: A dialog between two girls in 1999 via email messages.

Before the advent of mainstream internet access and social media, there were only private forums where people could communicate beyond borders like Compuserve where fellow computer enthusiasts across the world shared their thoughts on software developments, tech news, and the likes. Among many forum members who were mostly foreigner guys, Mira was one of the only two Indonesian female members there with the other one being Ghani.

Starting from February 18, 1999, Mira and Ghani became acquaintances on Compuserve and shared their passions with all things computer. Ghani took a liking in software development thanks to her father being a former lecturer for Institut Teknologi Bandung (Bandung Technology Institute) and that she had graduated from college a year earlier, whereas Mira was still attending college at Budi Luhur University during her final semesters and she wished to develop a commercial storage system in the future.

Eventually, Ghani received a scholarship at MIT for advanced web designing while Mira graduated college and was starting a job as a web technician for a bank which she didn’t like due to the disrespect from her male colleagues. Many times, they shared their dreams and frustrations, as well as how much they wanted to meet each other but failed twice.

However, with Ghani’s eventual departure to the US in the Fall season in 2000 for her scholarship, the opportunity finally arrived for them to meet up in real life for the first time. Ghani stayed in Jakarta for one week before her flight and both she and Mira spent their time together, including taking a commemorative picture at Monas (National Monument) on June 30, 2000, capturing Mira’s calm and timid expression which contrasted Ghani’s upbeat and cheerful personality, as well as the genuine camaraderie between the two computer enthusiasts.

Ghani and Mira grew ever closer together in spite of Ghani living her new life in the US. They never stopped sending emails to each other and always poured their feelings into each message, including their desire to experience valentine day together with Ghani wishing to savor Mira’s homemade chocolate someday.

After working for Bina Nusantara University for some time, Mira received an invitation for a Master’s Degree at either Stanford or UC Berkeley next year. Meanwhile, Ghani was also about to participate in her first-ever conference at UCLA which would become a regular activity for her to travel to Los Angeles. With every opportunity coming together, they couldn’t be more overjoyed at the thought of finally meeting up again, this time in the US.

On September 1, 2001, Ghani was excited that her conference at UCLA would come sooner in mid-September thanks to her promotion as a panelist for the conference. With Mira’s blessings, Ghani anxiously awaited her flight from Logan Airport, Boston to LA International Airport on September 11, 2001.

And then, I briefly stopped reading the story. My fingers trembled in fear, realizing that some details mimicked a very particular event which I wish wouldn’t occur in this story. I kept wishing I wouldn’t have to open the next page to find out what really happened after that. But then, I swiped to the next page and the story skipped to September 11, 2021. 20 years had passed since Ghani’s last email and Mira broke the silence by sending an email, along with a picture of her in her 40s right next to the 9/11 Memorial with Ghani’s name engraved on it.

In the last 20 years since they talked, Mira became one of the leading scientists on cloud computing and cybersecurity and she wished to pay her respect for the victims of 9/11. Mira had grown so much, but she remained a single, unmarried cat-lady whose heart only had a place for Ghani, and she hoped her cloud computing systems could send this one email to Ghani up in the sky, among the clouds.

I bursted into tears when I read it for the first time. And after consecutive readings, I still find myself crying so much. Never did I expect a short story with such an unorthodox storytelling method would make me care so much for two people who deserve the best in their life. This stupid, simple, sapphic story…

Enjoyment: 10/10
Characters: 10/10
Sapphic: 7/10

 

5. The Present by Magnolia Team

Whew, that was some powerful angst, so let’s end this yuri anthology on a more cheerful note. The Present is a quick, simple one-shot manga about a blonde girl who seems to have a bad day. She almost forgot about her black-haired girlfriend’s birthday, so she rushed to the nearest florist and bakery to buy a nice set of presents, only to then get caught in the rain and return home rather late.

The black-haired girl awaits her at home and is worried sick, knowing that the blonde girl goes home rather late and gets drenched so badly. Despite the blonde girl’s bad luck at surprising her girlfriend, the black-haired girl insists that what matters the most is her beloved girlfriend being there for her.

In a rather quiet scenery, they both take a bath together, enjoy homemade dinner, and close the day with a simple birthday celebration on each other’s embrace. And that’s it.

The Present is a short and sweet sapphic story. The blond girl and black-haired girl love each other so much in a depiction that is wholly respectful and pretty relatable.

I cried a bit when reading this story the first time but for a different reason than the previous story. I love this simple love story and I wish us Indonesians could experience it freely as well.

Enjoyment: 7/10
Characters: 7/10
Yuri: 8/10

—

And that’s all there is to Cherish Every Moment. Yuri Nakama doesn’t sell this book outside of the local Japanese pop culture conventions, not even in their digital form. People can only buy the physical release during the events which causes accessibility issues for local readers in Indonesia, especially for overseas people. And once the events are over, there’s no way of buying the previous works again.

This is one huge reason I wasn’t sure if Cherish Every Moment would be a book worth reviewing on the internet. I didn’t know if people would want to hear the review of a book that they couldn’t access easily among locals, let alone overseas audiences.

However, the Yuricon community encouraged me to write this review anyway, knowing that this simple yuri anthology book represents so much more for the LGBTQ+ community in Indonesia. In a country where gender and sexual minorities are neither condemned nor protected by the law, we are prone to discrimination by the people each passing day with little to no chance to speak up for ourselves.

Among the handful of local queer books like the ones available on Yuri Nakama and my organization Suara Kita, most of them are produced in-house with little easy access on the bookstores and online marketplace. I’m more representing Suara Kita on this one, but I feel like we have similar risks to face as Yuri Nakama in that our literature is prone to being burned down, torn apart, or review-bombed by the majority of people, as it happened a couple of times in the past.

The fact that there’s a small but dedicated community who produces yuri manga in a respectful manner and a bit regularly, albeit with accessibility issues, is very fascinating to me and they deserve more exposure. I hope this article can help raise awareness of Yuri Nakama’s contributions to queer people in this country. Whether they’re for queer people, yuri fans, anime and manga fans, or the common audiences, their books are worth buying and reading for their contents, to provide critics that can help them grow, and for what they represent.

And last but not least, I hope they can begin selling their books in digital form for easier accessibility among us locals and hopefully the overseas readers as well. I know I can recommend some good books from them just like this yuri anthology book, Cherish Every Moment.

*About author
Lena Tama is an Indonesian trans woman, as well as a translator and freelance writer since 2016. Lena began indulging in the world of journalism in 2020 by joining The Jakarta Post. Aside from writing articles, Lena is also involved in advocating LGBTIQ+ rights and other groups of minorities in Indonesia





Otherside Picnic Manga, Volume 7 Guest Review by Sandy F.

November 29th, 2023

In Otherside Picnic, Volume 7 of the manga we have the conclusion of ‘Resort Night at the Beach of the End’, ‘The Attack of the Ninja Cats’ and the latest edition of Kozakura’s ongoing rebuttal, ‘The Tanuki Guards the Night’. The final chapter of ‘Resort Night at the Beach of the End’ is an intense read as Sorawo and Toriko’s fun on the beach becomes a more traditional Otherside event as they are pursued by a cavalcade of Otherside entities determined to drive them mad. Though they escape, Sorawo receives a glimpse of something that has the potential to impact her relationship
with Toriko.

‘The Attack of the Ninja Cats’ begins with a conversation between Sorawo, Toriko and Kozakura. As well as being a debriefing covering the events of the Beach at the End and the follow-up party in Okinawa, Sorawo discusses a recent encounter with a fellow student, Akari Seto. Sorawo crankily discusses how Akari wants Sorawo to help her with a problem because she has latched on to the idea,

much to Sorawo’s annoyance, that Sorawo is an occult expert and so just the person to help her as she is being stalked by Ninja Cats. Yes, Ninja Cats! One thing I appreciate about Otherside Picnic is how Iori Miyazawa can work with what often seems to me a fairly ridiculous concept and convince the reader to take it seriously. I may have rolled my eyes when I first read about the Ninja Cats, but not for long as it doesn’t take long to realise they are a threat. For a variety of reasons Sorawo initially isn’t interested in helping Akari, including a surprising revelation, Sorawo likes cats and is fearful if she gets involved, she may have to do something that terrible that will change her perspective on cats.

Cranky Sorawo has a cute side! But the crankiness remains as we witness Sorawo trying to cope with the gosh-darned perkiness of Akari, with Toriko not helping. Sorawo and Toriko meet with Akari, and as a result of this meeting we are introduced into a new aspect of connection
between our world and the Otherside through the realm of the Ninja Cats. The Ninja Cats prove to be formidable foes, and the artwork rises to the challenge of depicting the resultant battle. It will be during this struggle that Sorawo will learn more about how her eye can influence people as well as the entities of the Otherside.

With the conclusion of the events of ‘The Attack of the Ninja Cats’ Toriko is confronted by a surprising revelation involving Satsuki Uruma, who continues to be a shadowy influence from the Otherside. Before I forget I should mention that in this volume we also have a Public Service Announcement on the dangers of online shopping while drunk because you never know how people will respond when an agricultural vehicle is delivered to their doorstep!

One of the ongoing themes of Otherside Picnic is how the characters struggle with trauma and its consequences. In ‘The Tanuki Guards the Night’ Kozakura reveals how she deals with the trauma of the consequences of being associated with Sorawo and Toriko. In her story, she shares her thoughts on how she is treated by Sorawo and Toriko. At the end of the story and the manga we discover that Kozakura might need a bigger Tanuki…

Ratings:
Story – 9
Artwork – 9, the usual excellent job of conveying the horrors
of the Otherside.
Character – 8, some different glimpses of Sorawo illustrating
how much she has changed through knowing Toriko
Service – 6
Yuri – 8, there is an important conversation with Sorawo making it clear to Toriko that she considers their accomplice relationship to be an exclusive one.

Overall – 9