In recent years, I have reviewed two kinds of Yuri short story collections here on Okazu: The Pixiv+Yuri Hime Yuri Bungei Shousetsu Contest ((百合文芸小説 コンテスト セレクション) collections and a number of science fiction collections like, Asterism ni Hanataba o Yuri SF Anthology (アステリズムに花束を 百合 SFアンソロジー). I literally have two collections of Yuri short stories waiting to be read. It seems like every year we’re getting more and more Yuri fiction in short stories and light novels. So, the tagline for this new publication being “Where’s The Yuri?” seems to me to be a tad precious, especially with so many of the authors opining that there’s hardly any place for literary Yuri out there. It’s true there is a lot of room for Yuri to grow and I am not at all complaining about there being another collection! Just…look around a bit?
All that said, I found Zerogo: Yuri Literary Magazine (零合 : 百合総合文芸誌) to be the best collection of Yuri short stories I have read. To be very clear – I did not like every story. Two I skipped after beginning them, for entirely different reasons. One was heading in a direction that I did not find entertaining and one was beautifully written, but so full of description that nothing was actually going on. But that left me with 8 long-form short stories that were…pretty damn good, honestly.
My favorite was the second story, “Uso” by Yamaguchi Shun. It was a gritty noir piece that suited my mood that week about a runaway girl who ends up working for criminals and the older woman she falls in love with. It was pretty violent and nihilistic, but I thought it well-written.
This collection had a tremendous variety in terms of the included pieces. Some psychological horror, personal narrative style stories, a really terrific historical piece and a number of science fiction pieces and at least one body horror story. Only one story bothered with a twisty ending, which really made me happy. Overall, the writing was excellent. Different styles, different voices. While most of the authors were new to me, many of them had writing credits elsewhere.
The collection also includes notes from cover artist Shimura Takako, mangaka Mikami Teren, as well as a few illustrations adorning front/back covers inside and out.
Ratings:
Overall – 9
The absolute best collection of Yuri stories I have read to date. According to the Zerogoh Twitter feed, they are working on a second volume, but there has been no new news since summer. As they say, when you consider all the difficulties of staring up a new magazine, you’ll understand. And so I do. ^_^
