Ichijinsha has a whole pile of new anthologies these days, almost all of which fall so far out of my interest zone, I’ve picked up only one of them. This one, Matching App Yuri Anthology (マッチングアプリ百合アンソロジー) or, as we’d say Dating App Anthology, I got purely to round out an order with Amazon JP.  ^_^ I was pleasantly surprised by the collection, but also have some thoughts about how collections are built.

I know I’ve told you all a million times about my experiences with anthologies over the years. Generally speaking, in western anthologies (other than those that are chronologically or alphabetically arranged, they go along a loose-ly defined pattern of arrangement: You start with a strong/popular story or a famous/popular person up front, then have increasingly imperfect/less popular series in the middle, put the weakest story/newest creators in the middle to 3/4 through and finish with a strong/popular story. Manga magazines regularly do this. You’ll see new creators’ one-shots in the middle of the second half of the magazine and really popular (so popular that they only publish a few pages once in a blue moon) in the back to anchor the super-popular stuff up front. It’s not a hard or fast rule, things shift around all the time, and “strong,” “weak” and “popular” are all subject to any number of interpretations but, generally, this is how it is done.

Except, for some reason, Yuri anthologies. Okay, okay, I’m being hyperbolic, but I can certainly think of other anthologies and collected volumes that open with the weakest story; something just so bleah that I’m hard pressed to keep going.

Yeah, this anthology does that. Pretty much every story was nice. The first one was a siscon story and….no. It worked on zero levels. Well, the art was okay. I read it, made a “bleah” face, remembered it had been in Comic Yuri Hime magazine and I had “bleahed it there, too” and forgot to pick the book up again for a few weeks.

Thankfully, the very next story redeemed the volume completely.”Cinderella Night” by Akatsuki Kazu, follows an uber ikemen-cool band member and an employee at the venue who end up bonding over cute mascot items. I loved the art style, the characters and the plot, which motivated me to keep reading.

The remainder of the stories cover a number of possible and  improbable situations; best friends who turn out to be perfect for one another, a match that just works out really well, a gal and an introvert, and an idol who just wants to be liked for herself. You might assume I’d also nope out of this one, but I thought it was quite nice.

The last one is an honest-to-goodness magical girl story, which was also quite excellent. Poignant and triumphant as well, somehow… .

Ratings:

Overall – a strong 8.

Other than that first bleah story, this was, honestly, one of the best themed Yuri anthologies from Ichijinsha. And, of course, the bleah is in they eyes of the beholder. You might love it. ^_^