Well, my friends, that time of year has come upon us once again. 2018 is coming to a close and I have never before had so many riches to work with. This has been the most remarkable year for Yuri I have ever seen in 20 years of obsessing about it. ^_^

I say almost every year, “may our tribe increase” and this year our tribe has surely increased by many fold. My Top Ten list will be as personal, capricious and enraging as always – I will forget things and not mention stuff you liked, some of which will have been there and been taken away multiple times  and some of which wouldn’t have been put there at all – so I welcome you all to add your thoughts in the comments! Which Yuri manga do you consider your top Yuri manga of the year? 

Note on titles: If a series has been released in English, the English title is being used. If not, the Japanese title is the one you see.

Sweet Blue Flowers/ Kiss & White Lily For My Dearest Girl

Sweet Blue Flowers, this new classic of Yuri, wrapped up in 2018 and was already kind of dated a mere 14 years after it premiered in Japan. ^_^;  But this year we saw the completion of a definitive edition by Viz Media. This edition had solid translation and well-researched notes that enriched readers’ understanding of the context; which is just exceptionally important in this series, with its many literary homages and references. Now that we have this in one lovely, complete and exceedingly well-done collection, we can set it firmly on the  “Yuri Classic” shelf where it belongs and move forward into a new age of Yuri.

Kiss & White Lily For My Dearest Girl is the exact opposite story – taking all the classic tropes, creating a few new ones and carefully crafting a story about people we care about out of them. It will end shortly in Japan, but we’ll have it here in the west for some time to come, so settle in and wait to see how it all pans out for Ayaka, Yurine and their friends and peers .

Yuri Anthologies (Éclair, Yuri +Kanojo, OL Yuri)

I’ve talked a lot this year about the important place Yuri anthologies had in the development of the genre. I quite like anthologies for the same reason most people dislike them: Anthologies give you a small taste of many different stories, art styles and concepts. The downside is when you really like a creator and the story ends, but the upside is you have someone new to follow! And these, days, with social media, you can literally follow them and see what they are working on right now.

I want to especially call out the new trend of grown-up Yuri anthologies; collections focusing on relationships between adult women. Yes, please!

After Hours

I adored this story when I read it in Japanese and am just that happy with it now that it is in English. It’s not something we see much – a whimsical and fun romance story about two women who live on the fringes of normal life without being outcast, or broken or weird. They just live their own lives. This story is overtly about building something together – a life, a rave, it’s all the same when you think of it, and you know I believe that with my whole heart.

My Solo Exchange Diary

I’ve never cared so much about a complete stranger as I do Nagata Kabi. I want to support her in her ongoing struggle to live a life with the very real problems she has has freed so many people, both in Japan and in the west, to speak more openly about. Graphic Medicine is, in actual fact, one of the fastest-growing genres in comics and manga. I think it’s important for a lot of reasons, the most important of which is (like coming out of any kind) to let people know they are not alone. Narratives like this remind me how lucky I am every day that I can wake up, work, play online, and write for Okazu. I’m literally one myelin sheath away from having all of that taken from me every day. 

For being one of the manga that has helped define a space where we can be more than one thing at once and still be seen as human, and also for making me hope that Nagata-sensei gets to live her life, My Solo Exchange Diary makes this list easily. 

2DK, G Pen, Mezamashitokei (2DK、Gペン、目覚まし時計。) 

By now, you’ve probably realized that this list is going to have more adults on it than it ever has since I began doing this in 2004. 

2DK, G Pen, Mezamashitokei told a slow-developing romance story, abut two adult women living realistic adult lives in a real world. We saw Nanami pull long hours at the office and Kaede burning herself out building a career in manga, as well as quiet moments of eating food and seeing friends. There was enough fiction to make the real stuff work and enough real stuff to make the fiction fun. I am so happy that we have 8 volumes of this manga, making it the longest-running manga about adult women from Comic Yuri Hime. There was never any doubt in my mind that it would be on this year’s list. ^_^ 

Terano-sensei to Hayama-sensei  ha Tsukiatteiru (羽山先生と寺野先生は付き合っている)/ Goodbye Dystopia (グッバイ・ディストピア)

I’m gonna keep talking about these two titles in the coming year, so get used to hearing about them. ^_^

Goodbye Dystopia is an apparently aimless wander through somewhere by two people for some reasons, very little of which has been explicated after two volumes. I love the art, the timelessness and placelessness of the story and would like it to never end. Imagine Thelma and Louise at walking pace, without any end in sight. Awesome.

Terano and Hayama are just the absolutely cutest things in the world. Two teachers at a girls school are dating and the girls think it’s cute, the administrator thinks it cute and I think it’s cute! I want them to be happy together forever.

Galette (ガレット)

If you’re a regular reader of Okazu, this cannot possibly be too much of a surprise. This crowdfunded, creator-owned collaborative effort by so may excellent Yuri artists is always exciting to read, to see what has been done and by whom. As it wraps up its second year of existence, it’s giving space to great established artists and finding space for new pros and I cannot wait to see what it will do in the future.

Enjoy the Okazu Top Ten Lists?

I always pause here, because as capricious as I am for my likes and dislikes, the top three always are put here for a reason – they are special. This year’s top three positively encapsulate Yuri for 2018 with their breadth of storytelling, style and intent.

Bloom Into You

Sometimes a series just hits the right note. For better or worse, this is Bloom Into You‘s time. With an anime that has done the spirit of the manga a good turn, a novel (which I am reading and it is nailing Sayaka’s inner tone, so that’s good) and an ongoing manga which is shaping up to be much better than I could have ever expected, really, it deserves our attention.

It’s time for me to give Nakatani Nio the credit she deserves. Bloom Into You is my #3 manga for 2018.

Kase-san Series

I always refer to this series as the “little series that could” because of it’s irregular past, but it has become something much bigger than itself with the jump to animation. The manga continues, and it continues to grow, to change, to lead by example. It’s done so many important things including moving people to see it as more than a “love story between girls.”

This series has and is still dealing with things like body issues and self-esteem and friendship. Kase and Yamada are facing the adult world together which is both terrifying and remarkable in a Yuri manga.

Reading the Kase-san series has very much been like watching real people grow up. Yamada’s journey from being someone who did not believe in her own future and whom the people round her thought of as plain old Yamada, has been so much like watching a flower bloom that the analogy becomes a “duh” moment. The series is called “Kase-san” but we – and Kase-san – are always watching Yamada. And it’s been very rewarding watching her grow.

In other years, the Kase-san series has been number 1, but this year comes in second to…

Shimanami Tasogare (しまなみ誰そ彼 ))

So, yeah, I’m spoiling the heck out of this series for you, but I want you to understand just what we’re in for. ^_^

This is not a Yuri manga. It is an LGBTQ manga. It is fully, wholly, 100% grounded in the real world in which kids who even slightly kind of think they (or, who other people think) are not cisgender and heterosexual, deal with very real consequences. This is a manga in which people spew harmful stereotypes and have to be educated over and over and over again, until they, maybe, get it, a little. It is a manga of confrontation, of accepting one’s self even when others don’t. It’s a manga with adult role models, some of whom will never be able to get a happy ending – and how important it is, for those of us that do get that, to share it and let the seeds of it grow.

I am so excited that you’ll all be able to read this in English next year, which is why Kamatani Yuhki’s Shimanami Tasogare is my top Yuri manga of 2018!