Soraike Mei, on the day of her high school graduation, had her heart broken by the girl she’d had a crush on for three years. In college then, Mei swears, she WILL get a girlfriend! Absolutely! So… what happens when she suddenly has five candidates vying for her time and affections?!Folks, we’ve seen this all before in het manga, now it’s our turn: the Yuri harem. I Don’t Know Which Is Love, Volume 1 does not hang around letting you know that, introducing all five love interests within less then fifty pages. Are you ready? Keep your hands and feet inside the carriage at all times, and hold onto the bars. We have:
Shirosawa Riri: first introduced as boobs (less skeevy than it sounds? Mei is just too gay to function) she is an idol of some sort… Potentially a more racy model than a singer, based on the pictures we see. Takes ‘first girl’ slot.
Todomeki Maria: Mei’s advisor, a professor in psychology, and the very opposite of a stuffy old man, she’s ‘the older one’. She accurately guesses that Mei is ‘into girls’ (for some reason the word lesbian isn’t used), says that there are ‘lines you can’t cross’ with them being professor and student, turns on the professional talk about the advisor side of things… Then tells Mei to let her know if she wants to cross the line. At least Mei is also an adult here?
Minato: on the more butch side of things, Mei meets her when she goes to get a coffee, and again instantly falls in love with how cool she is. They meet again later and Minato persuades her to give her theatre troupe a try, as she really likes Mei’s voice. At a drinking meet up with the troupe, Mei then meets…
Ajima Karin: one of the actors in the troupe, designated by one of the boys as the ‘kiss-crazy’ senpai. And indeed, before she even knows Mei’s name, she asks to kiss her, Mei hesitates for 0.3 seconds (yes, it tells us this) and they kiss. Karin propositions going back to hers together, but Mei has to get back for her dorm curfew. Heading back to her dorm, her roommate isn’t in yet, but while she’s sleeping…
Kunimasa Kaoru: The roommate! Mei is asleep when she comes in, but she immediately stated that Mei ‘reeks of other girls’ and… strips her of her clothes and gets into bed with her. Then proceeds to call her a body pillow for the rest of the manga.
All introduced in 45 pages! A whistle stop tour of Mei’s college girlfriend candidates, but as she says at the end of chapter 1: she just doesn’t know which is love!
That said, I think with the explosiveness of this first chapter, I don’t think any are ‘love’ right now, definitely more lust driven. This is not a chaste harem by any stretch of the imagination: Kaoru (consensually, if slightly hesitant) sticks her face in Mei’s boobs to smell her, it’s implied that Minato gets off to Mei’s voice over a call, Mei looked up hot pics of Riri (seems to be a page 3 type model), and Karin is definitely going for more than kisses and cuddles.
I’ve not seen another manga go at such a breakneck pace. We get all the introductions, then a second encounter with each of the harem members, usually of a somewhat racy variety. The author stated that they differentiated the love interests by having them interested in different things about Mei, (like, uh, her scent… Her voice… I think it’s loosely ‘the five senses’ – Minato is sound, Kaoru is scent, Karin is taste, Riri is most likely sight, which makes Maria touch, I guess) which is a more novel take on it.
The concept does seem to get a little puzzling though – for someone who, in theory, expressedly came to college to get a girlfriend, Mei isn’t open about being a lesbian, which seems odd to me – I know we joke about gaydar, but surely you need to put yourself out there a bit. Wait, no, it’s basically a glass closet, because of how strongly she reacts to women: put it this way, no one questions whether she’s straight. What confuses me more is that towards the end, she states that beyond kissing is something you’d only do with a girlfriend – which feels somewhat in keeping with her as a sheltered lesbian, but also a little odd considering the rest of the book. I mean she’s been fine with girls’ faces in her boobs and being in bed naked with them, but now she objects? Although if she didn’t and decided to go with casual sex, the main conflict would go away, so.
Ultimately, this is a lesbian fantasy manga. It’s just not that deep. Who will Mei pick in the end, if just one? Who knows. Normally in a harem manga, it would be the ‘first girl’ that tends to win out. It’s certainly still possible here, but as Riri’s not a childhood girl or has any sort of long standing relationship with Mei, she is on a more equal footing to everyone else. Mei is not really pro-actively pursuing any of them and is kind of just going with the flow, so it’s more down to the love interests than her, at the moment. Have your cake for now, Mei, it’ll probably work out.
Story: 6
Art: 7
Yuri: 11
Service: 8, no detailed nakedness, but plenty of roaming hands and bra shots
Mei being too gay to function: over 9000!
Overall: 7
If you want a daft, fairly raunchy Yuri harem… Well, this is your only one, I think. But it is fun, and you never really know what’s going to happen next – honestly, I have no idea. Join the lesbian roller coaster, folks. Or as Yen Press themselves tweeted, watch Mei pick up girlfriends ‘like Pokémon’. Collect your picture as you exit the ride.
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I really enjoyed this book, but I loved this review even more!
A very silly book, great fun, but this review takes it over the top. Thanks for six minutes of laughter!
Loved this review! I had a similar reaction to yours, trying to understand Mei’s life in the Japanese college context that I saw in slightly more realistic manga like “Blank Canvas” or “Is Love The Answer?”, but in the end I just gave into the fantasy and stopped expecting pedestrian things like “motivations” more logical than the protagonist’s healthy sex drive. Oh, and I think Riri is “touch”! Because she’s the one who needs to be holding Mei’s hand at all times, and that connects with the notion that she’s a bit clingy. And if I know my harem manga, in a couple of volumes the childhood friend Mei proposed to in high school is going to be back….