It’s pretty evident that I’m not the average Yuri fan. I don’t read Yuri looking for titillation, I don’t particularly care if a story has sex in it or not. What I’m looking for is a good story.
Short stories are harder than long ones. You have less time to make a reader care about the characters, and less time to develop the situation. A lot of short stories that include sex scenes read like “Plot, What Plot?” stories – even if they aspire to be more than that.
Yuri Hime Wildrose, Volume 4 (百合姫 Wildrose) is a collection of PWP stories and frankly, it doesn’t aspire to much more. This is a collection for the Lowest Common Denominator who want sex in their Yuri and don’t really care much about story, character or plot.
The only stories that stood out to me were Nanzaki Iku’s attempt to *not* do another ShizNat-style story, Morishima Akiko’s story for being something I actually disliked from beginning to end and Takahashi Yostsu’s gang parody.
Nanzaki’s story shows us the relationship between a woman who works at a pet store and one of her customers. It’s sweet, a little dopey and has obligatory sex. It was a refreshing change from his usual. In balance I find myself starting to recognize patterns in the sex scenes he draws and that disturbs me a bit.
Morishima Akiko’s story is set in France, a girl who has to leave takes advantage of the girl she loves in a story that really put me off. It’s classic Cream Lemon, with a super whiny, yet willing to rape to get her way, protagonist. And it’s fake rape, you know, because the other girl wanted it, really. UGH
Takahashi Yotsu’s story was silly. Arisa is the leader of the Wildrose gang, but she falls in love with Serika, they hypercompetent employee at Ichinjinsha bookstore. When Arisa decides to leave gang life for Serika, she finds that her love is actually the Yuri Hime gang leader. Bwah wah wah~~
Other that these, the stories are a mix of unpopular/popular girls, and other blandly typical stories, with sex.
Ratings:
Art – Variable, but I don’t think it got better than a 7.
Stories – 4-6
Characters – 4-6
Yuri – 9
Service – 10
Overall – 5 for me, but more if you think Yuri equals girls having sex.
If having sex is your number one criteria for a Yuri anthology, then this is probably a book you will like. If you’re looking for something with a little character in the characters and oomph in the plot, give this one a miss. I was going to stop getting this series with this book, but Volume 5 is already looking intriguing, so I’ll give it one more try.
Glad I wasn’t the only one who didn’t like Morishima’s story in this volume. In addition to the “I only raped her so she wouldn’t have to sin by asking for it” thing, the one girl looked like a creepy doll.
Hopefully Wildrose will mature a bit, gaining some more character to go along with all that overflowing naughtiness.
I don’t mind that Wildrose focuses on the sexual aspect of Yuri, but it’d be nice if there were more stories that focused on the affect sex has on relationships.
it’s hard to really call Wildrose bad, just not entirely my cup of tea. I do remember some stories just being plain silly fun though lol.
@Erin – Yes, very creepy doll. It seemed as if morsihima was squeezing in about a dozen tropes and seeing what came out. Like playing with playdough, when you put to many colors together, what comes out is kinda icky looking. :-)
@Pocky-san – There’s really no reason to expect YHW to change – it’s never been more than PWP stories for people who want their Yuri to have sex. That’s kind of it’s raison d’etre, in fact. :-)
Well I don’t agree with your entire review. I think it’s good to see a sexual-driven Yuri manga targeted for women. These mangas are not bought by men in Japan, these are placed in the women section in Tokyo bookstores.
To call this loserfanboy rating as 10; I found this quite offensive are you trying to say boys can not appreciate a good Yuri storyline and are just interested in the sexual aspect? I am still a sexual person even though I am a woman.
So a woman wants a little bit of story with a little bit of sex, this is not straight out hentai targeted for men. I like how this manga tries keep a balance.