And so, Shiramine Ayaka’s long quest is over. In Kiss and White Lily for My Dearest Girl, Volume 10, in and around the graduation festivities, surrounded by students leaving the school, Ayaka struggles to figure out her feelings, for her rival, her friend, her confidant, her support, Kurosawa Yurine.
To get herself to that conclusion, Ayaka revisits all the people, all the couples and all the relationships…all the Yuri tropes… we’ve seen in this series, giving us one last time to enjoy them before they and we move on.
As the curtain is drawn on this series for the last time here on Okazu, Ayaka finally figures out what we have seen for basically 10 volumes – that she is in love with Yurine. Yurine responds to this with white lilies and a kiss.
Now we say good bye to this series. It was always entertaining if rarely groundbreaking. Canno-sensei had a chance to spend the last six years on this series, working on her art, her characters, her comedic timing and it shows. Her lines, both drawn and spoken are more confident. After this breakout series, I’m looking forward to seeing where she heads with her work. I hope,of course that she’ll be working on something original, but we can see her current Starlight Revue project, Starlight no Ou on Pixiv.
Ratings:
Art – 9
Characters – 8 Ayaka was, in my opinion, the best character of the series
Story – 7
Service – 0
Goofball grin-making Yuri – 10
It feels like the closing of a beloved picture book, to be set back on the shelf as we turn towards something more adult. It’s not that we love it less, it’s just that it has become less relevant to our lives as we matured.
It’s time to get dressed and ready for adult romance. ^_^
Many thanks to Yen Press for the review copy!
Canno’s next serialization was recently announced as being a love triangle story between a middle school girl and two high school girls, to run in Dengeki Daioh.
I am very curious to read this. I wonder if Canno will again build a huge cast, or limit herself. Or if we’ll see tiny cameos of K&WL characters :)
We have some news on that front in this week’s YNN report!
Stop, it is last volume? I think, that this series will be immortal. I’m not a big fan of yuritopia works, but still.
I agree with you ^_^
I couldn’t have said it better :) I enjoyed this review of the English edition, especially as it says farewell to the series as a whole. (There’s only so much you can say about the plot to this volume, after all…although you still said it well)
There are interesting nods to reality in the series, in spite of it being a Yuritopia. Ayaka’s trouble with her mom and needing to ‘give up’ on her a little in volume 9 for her own well-being, is I think a universal, and very complicated, topic. It’s a very heavy thing to handle rejection by your given family and find love and acceptance outside of that, and it made for some of the best dramatic moments in the series; the mostly silent chapter in volume 5 remains one of my favourite moments in comics.
I’m eagerly waiting for my copy to arrive; there were many word choices in the original Japanese that could have multiple interpretations, so I’m excited to see how they were handled by…Leighann Harvey, I’m assuming?
Whatever Canno works on next, I look forward to seeing all her strengths she’s built up here, unleashed there.
And I’ll always keep hope alive for a sequel series starring Chiharu and Izumi 10 years in the future :)
The term “yuritopia” only speaks about the size of a lesbian cast, this does not stop the show from being realistic or representative outside of it. I apologize if you misunderstood me.
The term Yuritopia usually refers to arrangement of the story to make it appear that the school is primarily Yuri couples. As in Okujou no Yurirei, Kindred Spirits which used the term openly. One of the manga collections was even called “Another Yuritopia.” ^_^
Well, you better know. I learned about this term just recently, when one blog used it to describe works with a large number of yuri couples in the context of this manga.
I’m sorry I took this one for myself, but I didn’t want your gloopy tears to get all over my blog. ^_^
Gloopy tears ? What do you mean?
Erica graciously allowed me to write the reviews for the English editions of vols.6-9, but she surmised, quite rightly, that anything I wrote for vol.10 would be a teary, maudlin pastiche of “I don’t want this to be over!” re-stated endlessly XD
Ah, I get it. My English is still bad, therefore, having misread the message thread, I thought that I had somehow irritated Erica.
In this case, the threading was broken and I was replying to Christian, not Super. I apologize for any confusion.
It’s always best to assume that it’s not personal, unless I tell you it is. ^_^
No problem :) I noticed too late that this answer was not for me, so this is my mistake.
^_^ We’ll chalk it up to technology making things confused.