Last month, we took a look at the Yen Press translation of the second Éclair Yuri anthology in English Éclair Blanche: A Girls’ Love Anthology That Resonates in Your Heart. As I have repeatedly said, Yuri anthologies hold a really important place in Yuri manga’s history and, as a result, I love and adore them as a concept. They give established creators a chance to stretch their skills outside their current works and new creators a chance to gain some publishing chops. Before Pixiv, Webtoons and other online platforms, anthologies were the next step up from doujinshi for new manga creators. I’m still so very excited that you can experience an anthology series like Éclair, with the thrill of seeing familiar names and the joy of discovering new ones.
To that end, today, we’re looking at the fourth in the series, Éclair orange – Anata ni Hibiku Yuri Anthology (エクレア orange あなたに響く百合アンソロジー). Cover art and cover story are by Bloom Into You creator Nakatani Nio, and the table of contents is filled with names you already know, like Cocoon, Entwined creator, Hara Yuriko, and names you might be less familiar with, like Kiriyama Haruka and Kabocha, both of whom do great Yuri work.
I didn’t have a favorite story this volume, although I quite liked most of them (Itou Hachi’s work has always made me uncomfortable and recently I have not been finding it at all enjoyable.) The mix in this volume of school and adult life is pretty solid and there’s even a science fiction story by Yuikawa Kazuno – for whom Kadokawa has put out a collected volume, Éclair Special Kazuno Yuikawa Masterpiece Collection (エクレアSpecial 雑草譚 結川カズノ百合作品傑作選), as they did previously for Kitao Taki last year.
Those of you who liked Kiss and White Lily for My Dearest Girl creator Canno’s story in Éclair Blanche,will be delighted to know that it continues this far along into the series.
Ratings:
Overall – 8
A very solid and enjoyable Yuri anthology. I’m betting that the next color in the series will be noir. Or violet.
Hopefully they didn’t paint themselves into a corner with the color naming scheme – I’m not sure anyone’s going to want to eventually read “Eclair: Puce,” “Eclair: Kind of Pink-ish But More Purply Grey Maybe Halfway Between A Salmony Color And A Bruisy Violet Can We Call It ‘Blurple?'” or “Eclair: #0fac03” :D
Well, they can always switch to different types of work, ethnicity, time periods, genres, etc. But if without jokes, then I personally would be interested to see a yuri anthology that focuses on gender identity or social roles.
I dunno, Éclair Chartreuse sounds elegant…even if the color is a bit garish, it’ll make a fine cover.
Comments like this one make me wish we had some kind of ‘upvote’ button in here, so I suppose I’ll just have to make this comment instead. (Which is probably the way Erica prefers things, come to think of it)
This volume sounds like a lot of fun! I’m looking forward to the English translation one day, so thank you Erica for letting the right people know this was a series ^_^ I like that they’re including sci-fi in here.
And yes, I’m entertaining myself right now with thoughts of an eventual tankouban collecting Canno’s stories in here, with a few bonus pages, illustration cards, the works.
You are correct, I very much like it when people comment. ^_^
I was wondering whether there would eventually be enough content for Canno to have a whole tankoubon eventualy – I guess we’ll see. Probably this and few other stand-alone stories will be plenty. It would probably sell well enough. ^_^