This story begins somewhere in the middle of itself. I was online one day and saw an announcement for the 2nd Yuri Literary Short Story Contest on Pixiv, co-sponsored by Comic Yuri Hime. I bookmarked the contest site to read the stories and went on my merry way. In the middle of doing something else I suddenly thought, “WAIT! The 2nd Contest?” How did I miss that there was a first contest?!? I guess the first one wasn’t as big as the Second and Third versions were. You can see the larger list of sponsors on the contest sites.
In 2019, you may remember that I took a group of folks to Tokyo on the 100th Anniversary of Yuri Tour. At the end of that, I took a day to go back to a few places I hadn’t spent enough money time at. One of those places was the Shosen Book Tower in Akihabara. It has one of the one of the best Yuribu, which contains manga and mooks and artbooks…and that year it had the subject of today’s review, the winners of the contest. It has taken me this long to read it, but the Yuri Bungei Shousetsu Contest Selection 2019 (百合文芸小説 コンテスト セレクション) is genuinely some of the most original work I have ever read in a short story collection. Sadly, this volume does not seem to be available online, but you can read the winners on the Pixiv site.
To be clear, I don’t like every story in this collection, but the stories I read are honestly so original that I’m excited to be talking about this volume. I’ve written before about my contentious relationship with short story collections, so you might understand my delight at reading a book that is filled with things I have not read before!
As I’m reading through the stories, I’m making notes on what the stories I enjoyed are about, or I absolutely would forget. The first story has a girl overhearing another girl’s confession to the girl she likes and a heartfelt conversation between them after that. A body swap story that wasn’t creepy, two women who meet at a flea market, a bunch of girls trying to make an aphrodisiac, two young women who meet on the train (trust me, it isn’t totally unoriginal), two girls who attempt to find students who have gone missing.
My so-far favorite is a wonderful story about the time in 1999 when the demons opened up portals to come to our world and sparked a “spot game” for humans to find those portals…and the tourist trade between the worlds. Our protagonist ends up having an overnight adventure in a mall with an elf girl she sees in the mall food court. Everything about this story was just fantastic, from the voice of the narrator, to the matter-of-fact world building. “Shopping Mall no Eruko to Watashi” by Pickles Ginger (ショッピングモールのえる子と私。 – ピクルズジンジャー), can still be read on Pixiv, and I recommend it for the sheer pleasure of reading a great short story. ^_^
Now that I have read most of this book, I’m genuinely looking forward to reading the next collection, Yuri Bungei Shousetsu Contest Selection 2 (百合文芸小説コンテストセレクション2) which is available on the Booth.pm store for Pixiv (or, possibly if it is on the shelves at Shosen, when I finally get back to Japan!)
Ratings:
Overall – 8
I’m so pleased at the originality of these writers and hope to see more of them in the future.
