Hime looks like an angel. Everyone loves her. She’s kind and helpful and everyone’s darling. On the outside. Inside, she’s a gold digger-in-training and is more concerned with looking like she’s a good person than being one.

In Volume 1 of Yuri is My Job! by Miman an accident brings Hime to a Yuri concept cafe based on a series of novels about girls in passionate platonic relationships at the German mission school “Liebe Girl’s Academy.” Hime is going to have work harder to maintain that perfect image than she ever has before. 

Struggling with the complicated rules of comportment and behavior is one thing, but Hime has no interest in serving people tea and no interest in the daily specials. But she knows status when she sees it, so she violates the norms in order to ingratiate herself with the upperclassmen in the scenario. She’s a crowd favorite and her onee-sama is kind in public…but in private, Ayanokouji doesn’t seem to like her at all.

To complicate matters, Hime’s best friend, Kanoko, discovers her secret! Now she has to work extra hard in front of her besotted and naturally competent friend, who knows her true self. It seems like everything is working against Hime, who is just trying to avoid a repeat of the time she was hurt by someone who knew her secret. Until the past comes to haunt her in the form of…

Yuri is My Job!  is a delightful romp in and out of the tropes of Yuri set in an elite girl’s school. The translation by Diana Taylor captures Hime’s struggles with Ayanokouji, the cafe rules and the random bits of German they use. The oversize format is much easier on my eyes. ^_^ I’ve mentioned this before – I do a lot of my manga reading at night before bed – how nice it is to not be reading 8pt type in Japanese. ^_^

The Kodansha  Comics page for Yuri is My Job includes an interview with Kanako Umezawa, the editor-in-chief of Comic Yuri Hime magazine and an excerpt of my essay Why Is It Always Catholic Schoolgirls in Yuri? 

Ratings: 

Art – 7
Story – 7 
Characters – 7 
Yuri – 4 The cafe concept is Yuri, the story is not, until it is.
Service – 2 Goofy Yuri fan moments

Overall – 7 And I’m really hoping that <spoiler> happens in the future! (Spoiler: It does. ^_^)

When I reviewed volume one in Japanese, the only caveat I had was that the cafe clientèle appeared to be overwhelmingly male when we saw faces and clothes. I had hoped for an increase in female customers to more accurately reflect the readership of the magazine. That does, in fact, happen as the series continues. ^_^