In Volume 1 of Minamoto Hisanari’s Yuri Manga series, we are introduced to a happy lesbian couple and their happy daily life. Sumi and Kinana are not without worries, but their lives are generally happy. They play house together, go shopping together, sleep in their pluffy bed together, as any couple might.

You might remember that this series was originally created for Yuri Hime S, a magazine that was overtly targeted towards a male moe-centric audience (the audience that now is catered to with Yuru Yuri.) Sumi and Kinana represented creatures rarely seen in that magazine – happy, adult lesbians.

You remember my Friedman Addendum to the Bechdel Test? One of the key points of the Addendum is the question “Does she have society?” So often in Yuri, we are reading a romance story, in which there are two, maybe three main characters. Everyone else fades into background furniture. But life is not like that for most people. Most people have coworkers, neighbors, relatives. And, so do Kinana and Sumi.

We are introduced to new neighbors (who just *happen* to also be a lesbian couple) and Kinana’s twin sister, Kanana, and her girlfriend, Shiroyuki. This world is not heavily populated, but there is society.

As the pages of Volume 2 of Fu~Fu  (ふ~ふ) open, Kina is approached by a strange woman who confesses to her. The resulting crisis is the product of a misunderstanding, but it adds yet another character to our cast, Arata. The rest of the story contains emotional turmoil, reconciliation, long talks, exciting shopping trips to the supermarket and other things that look exactly like a real life together. ^_^

The final chapters center around Sumi’s desire to have rings made for her and Kinana. As “wife and wife,” she thinks they ought to have that symbol of their bond. And so she does, but her friends – their society – want the full wedding ceremony and so they make one. It’s a grin-making climax and one that never fails to set my heart at ease and cause me to look goopily at my own wife, who invariably does the same back at me.

After all, we’re wife and wife. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 9
Character – 10
Lesbian – 10
Service – 3

Overall – 10

If I had my way, I’d have a Drama CD for this series or a single-episode original anime as a deluxe edition of the manga.  A truly lovely series and very fun read.