Today’s post is less of a “review” and more of a heads-up. ^_^ Along with Ichijinsha’s Comic Yuri Hime, and Shinshokan’s Pure Yuri Anthology Hiirari and Hobunsha’s Tsubomi magazine, there is a secret repository of Yuri on Japanese manga magazine shelves. ^_^
Where is this secret repository of Yuri? It lives in the pages of Hobunsha’s Mangatime Kirara family of magazines – or, as I like to refer to them, Mangatime Kirara and all its little wizards. You already are familiar with some of the MTK titles – Hidamari Sketch, K-ON! and Yuyushiki all come from the pages of the various MTK magazines.
Today I’m looking at Mangatime Kirara Miracle (まんがタイムきららミラク). It has several Yuri-ish series that I have, thus, far, mostly ignored. ^_^ All (or almost all) of the MTK stories are 4-panel comic strips. They share format and layout – and a pattern of joke-telling known as Kishoutenketsu – and therefore have the same “flavor” as K-ON! or Sunshine Sketch. As I’ve said in reviews of 4-koma books in the past, they are best read a few pages at a time, or the pacing starts to feel repetitive.
Right now, Mangatime Kirara Miracle is running several “Yuri” series:
Sakura Trick (桜Trick) is a school life comedy-drama. Two volumes are out in Japanese. Volume 1 | Volume 2
Lily (リリイ) is a school life comedy drama that recently started in the magazine.
Loveliest Treasoner (ラブリストリズナー) *just* started running in the April volume. And, yes, it’s a school life comedy-drama.
Do you sense a pattern? ^_^ All three of these series have some actual Yuri. In the rest of the series running in the magazine, like many other mostly-female cast-4-koma series, it often feels like every female character in any given series can be paired up with another without any actual visible emotion, affection or, really, any reason to think that they belong together. /coughLuckyStarcough/ (I know Lucky Star is not an MTK series. ^_^;)
I’m going to sit here and make myself read this magazine/these series today. I’ll let you know at a later date whether you’ll ever be hearing about them again…or not. ^_^
