It has been 2 years since I last reviewed a volume of this manga. Not for any particular reason, just that these two years have been full to the brim of incredible, groundbreaking Yuri and I just sort of forgot to keep reading this series. ^_^ But here we are once again, as I play catch up with the volumes I read in Japanese, and get ready to switch over to the series in English, since it has caught up to where I was when I left off.

As I pointed out in my review of this volume in Japanese, this series does not hesitate to make us feel deeply uncomfortable about our reading habits. MURCIÉLAGO, Volume 17 does something unusual in this regard. This volume introduces a new horrible human being as the bad guy, Sendou, and we are shown quite clearly his being sexually excited by his acts of violence. It is, frankly, quite unusual to be so blunt in this message, precisely because the audience is expected to be men who are sexually excited by the violence in this series. Straight men are generally very oversensitive about looking at male genitalia, as if the admission that they too are turned on by this is too much to handle. But, having been required to be audience to some extremely explicit and unrealistic lesbian sex, I think this is a good thing for the remainder of the audience. Now we can all trade stories about how this series made us feel uncomfortable. ^_^ That said, the one place in the world I’m not interested in staring is some guy’s crotch. (-_-);

On the Yuri side, there is a surprising leap in Chiyoko’s admission that Kuroko is 1) her girlfriend and 2) important to her. Who would have imagined that an actual relationship is forming the maelstrom of monstrous killers in this series? And that Chiyo-chan and Kuroko enjoy a healthy sexual relationship? Certainly, not I.  And yet, there we are. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – Because it’s gotten better, it’s actually messier than usual. More detail, means more gore.
Story – Uh….
Characters – Senpachi’s cool, emotionless old Yakuza guys are boring. Chiyo’s actually kinda cute for once?
Service – We are literally staring at this guy’s crotch constantly and it’s not serving me, I’ll tell you that. (-_ -)
Yuri – Not-ugly lesbian sex, so that’s a win.

Overall – ?

What do ratings even mean when it comes to this series? My commendation to Christine Dashielle on translating and Alexis Eckerman on lettering this weird, violent, lesbian grandchild of  HP Lovecraft fanfic. ^_^

Now that Yen Press has caught up on MURCIÉLAGO, I’ll picking these up digitally…they long ago chewed up too much space on the shelf. Volume 18 has already been released and has been added to the Yuricon Store.