Back in the day, I used to use Yuri lists and sites to find random Yuri manga I had missed. That switched for a while to blogs and Amazon recommendations as all the old Yuri lists died. Now I’m back to using Yuri lists and sites, enhanced by Twitter feeds and digital comics news sites and I gotta say…it’s kind of awesome. ^_^ The glut of digital Yuri work coming out is impossible to keep up with, but what a great problem to have!

So I was flipping around on, I think, Comic Natalie, and saw a write-up for Atashi no Senpai (アタシのセンパイ) by Shioya Teruko. It sounded a litle old school but threw it into my Amazon JP box anyway. Well, “old school” doesn’t quite cut it. I felt instantly transported back to the early 2000s, when Yuri was so much more a fetish, not a genre. At which point I finally took a look at the actual book, which, it turns out is a YK Comic from Shonen Gahosha. Oh~~~~~~! The obi clearly states, “That Yuri is a little perilous.” That explains that.

Zukamoto is an average girl who, for no particular reason, is drawn to Okazaki-sempai  – a girl who might as well have a sign over her head that say “I am in an abusive relationship.” Zukamoto sees Okazaki with another girl in a storage closet and it’s instantly apparent that the relationship is not an equitable one. Why Yoshida is torturing Okazaki is something Zukamoto does not know, but she is torn between wanting to save Okazaki and being turned on by the sight of her being taunted.

The story, to its credit, is about the redemption of Okazaki, as Zukamoto convinces her that there’s more to love than feelings of self-loathing. When Yoshida tries to warn Zukamoto off, the younger woman bravely stands up to the school’s star, and her bravery gives Okazaki the fuel she needs to walk away from the kind-of-consensual-but-not-healthy-at-all relationship. The final chapter sees both Okazaki and Zukamoto on a date before Okazaki graduates and being, for the first time in the volume, truly happy.

Whether you consider this a happy or good Yuri story will entirely depend on your individual reaction to the premise. I was mildly put out by the abusive situation as I read, but upon flipping back at the end, I had actually made it worse in my head when I remembered it. It wasn’t okay, but the situation might have been worse, and wasn’t as exploitative as I remembered, I guess. So, is that good or not? It’ll have to be up to you to decide. Depending on how you read the story, it could well be seen as a story of triumph over self-hatred. From my perspective there is a lot left undealt with that would need to be unpacked to make it a “good” story and it wasn’t given that time or handled with the nuance it needed. 

Ratings: 

Art – 7
Story – 6
Characters – 6
Service – 6 Sexual situations, partial nudity, some light BDSM
Yuri – 7

Overall – 7

I will, as I so often do, imagine the characters working out some of that shit in future relationships. I sure hope they do, anyway. ^_^