I am feeling like crap tonight on account of food poisoning last night and yet, here I am writing you a review. Aren’t you moved by my dedication and focus? Don’t you want to shower me with praise (and if you’re my wife, kisses?) I thought you might. Thank you.

Today we have Rose Meets Rose, a collection of several Yuri Hime phone comics, by Shinn Yui.

I was reading this book before bed every night and quickly realized that it might not be the best choice for that, as the stories are the opposite of relaxing.

The first story is particularly uncomfortable, as it follows the anger, denial and ultimately, love, between two girls who may well have been responsible for the death of a pedophile who kidnapped them when they were children. It turns out that they were not, in fact, killers, but somehow it didn’t sit well with me that they suddenly found comfort in each other, when five seconds before they loathed one another for the secret they had been keeping.

In the second story, Sen falls in love with a girl in a painting. When that girl, Mai, transfers to her school, she asks Mai to pose nude for her. Mai has a reputation for having had an affair with the man – her teacher- who had painted her, and Sen knows it, but can’t stop herself from obsessing about Mai. The rumors fly about Mai, while Sen tries to protect her from the fallout…and tries to get her to open up a bit. When Mai gets a call from the teacher, all of a sudden Sen sees what a transformation love can make. Taciturn Mai blossoms into a beautiful woman. Mai will be leaving to join her lover in Europe, but Sen never stops loving the girl in the painting. This was my favorite story of the collection.

The third story was sci-fi-ish. Two girls break out in “love” with a rose-colored and -shaped rash. The more intense the love they have for one another, the more of their bodies are covered. After a late-night swim in the pool they are completely covered, of course.

And, finally, a girl with the nickname Dorothy is brought back from wanting to die by a “cowardly lion.” This story was too reminscent of those bad-old lesbianism=mental disease days for me to really like it, even though it had a sweet ending.

In keeping with the rest of the Ichijinsha phone manga, I found this all to be not *quite* satisfying. None of it is bad, the art style is pretty classic – reminiscent of Kakinouchi Narumi (Vampire Princess Miyu, Uta-hime) and now that I think about it, the stories are a little reminiscent of her’s too. But the tragic heroines were too melodramatically tragic for me to ever truly enjoy it.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Stories – 5-8
Characters – 6
Yuri – 7
Service – 4

Overall – 7

So, not stellar, but not bad either. Definitely not relax-y bedtime reading though. ^_^