In Shoujo Holic (少女ホリック) Yui is an average middle-school student who suddenly finds herself in an awkward predicament when her parents inform her that they are moving to England. Yui decides that she will NOT be moving, come hell or high water, so she finds herself living with her very nice aunt out in the boondocks and attending her mother’s alma mater, a girls’ Catholic school.
(As an aside, it’s likely that if you total up all the nuns that make appearances in Yuri manga, they probably outnumber the amount of actual nuns in the whole of Japan by several orders. Just thinking out loud…)
On her first day, Yui meets, is befuddled by and befriended by Kaede, who strikes Yui as being rather monkey-like. She’s short for her age, energetic, tactless, has no boundaries and quickly becomes a very good friend to Yui. They grow closer as the book goes on, until suddenly Yui finds herself kissing Kaede – which throws poor Kaede into a tizzy. Kaede struggles with her feelings until Yui forces them both to confront the fact that they like each other…that way.
The rest of the book follows the reasonably natural evolution of a relationship. There’s nothing out of the pale for two girls in love, until their relationship is threatened not by graduation, but by Yui’s parents returning to pack her up and take her to England with them. In the only semi-significant handwave of the story, Yui and Kaede both take the exams to get into school overseas and move in together as roommates. A totally forgivable and acceptable handwave, I think, as it allows them to live happily every after. :-)
Aoii Hana’s art is not exceptional, nor is it terrible and it certainly was expressive enough to capture the emotions on display during this story. On its own, I’d probably not sing paeans of praise to Shoujo Holic, but compared to a lot of the Yuri Hime cell phone manga this story was sweet, sincere and pretty much right on the mark for a Yuri schoolgirl romance.
Ratings:
Art – 6
Characters – 8
Story – 7
Yuri – 9
Service – 7
Overall – 7
I’m really over using “holic” in the title of a manga series, now. It’s time to let that one go, folks.
