I love when the end of the year in Comic Yuri Hime is strong. There is one manga we’re saying goodbye to in Comic Yuri Hime, November 2025 (コミック百合姫2025年11月号), but we’ll get there in a moment.
To begin with hechima’s cover is homey and warm. We’ve had 11 months with these two young women, they are beginning to feel like friends. I’m hoping the December issue shows them a bit older, but I always hope for older adult representation. ^_^
As mentioned on YNN, Futari Escape is getting a live-action series. I’m very interested to see how they’ll do that, as it was heavy on the goofy, travel and goofy, weird fun and low on the Yuri scales.
The opening series is a new one…and I do not yet know how I feel about it. “Hareta Hi no Dress Code” features a girl who wishes she was brave enough to wear the slacks that her school dress code allows, but she also loves dressing in cute skirt and a girl who does dress in the slack because of scars on her legs, but wishes she didn’t have to. I hope very much that this develops into a story of freedom from gender presentation rules.
“Watashi no Yuri ha Oshigoto Desu!” closes the Kanako x Sumika arc, but in a very humanly imperfect way. I do not know what the characters might face, but I hope Nene gets to meet someone nice now. ^_^
Lulu and Ten are accidentally dragged into the relationship issues faced by another student in Ashiaka Waz’s “Chouuchyuu Yori Ai wo Komete,” and it both puts strain on and opens a new door in their own relationship.
merryhachi returns to Comic Yuri Hime for the first time in years with a very cute one-shot, “Touko Swing-By.” Honestly, it was really sweet.
Somtime and suoh’s “Gakeppuchi Reijou ha Kuro Kishi-sama o Horesasetai!” comes to an end. It’s a good end, a very solid end, but I don’t want it to end! Oh well. It was nice. I just wish we could have more! Waaah~~~
And props to the comic essay “Film ni Saku Yurinohana o Atsumete Kimi ni Okuritai” for not just talking about the Utena movie, but presenting an interesting fan discussion that the movie is Yuri, but the TV series is not. I agree that Utena and Anthy are not, in the TV series, a couple, but surely we cannot discount Juri and Shiori? Anyway. Good column.
Once again, there were many stories I read and enjoyed and other I did not, or did not read. It’s an incredibly solid magazine now and I look forward to new series starting.
Ratings:
Overall – 8
The December issue will be out on October 18. There is no cover image available for it yet, but you can pre-order it on Amazon JP now.
Thank you as always for the reviews, and thanks especially for highlighting the film review column! I’m super curious about the different ways yuri gets defined/framed across cultures, and I don’t have as clear a picture as I might like of the situation “on the ground” in Japanese yuri fandom, so I checked out the comic essay right away, and I’m really fascinated by Miyuki’s take. “It’s not really yuri if they don’t kiss / don’t say they love each other / don’t end up together” is a line of thought I’m used to seeing in the English-speaking fan spaces I’m part of, but Miyuki’s argument is way more interesting than that; my understanding of what she’s saying is that labeling the series as yuri would make her feel uncomfortable with *herself* for deciding that what frees Anthy from her abusive relationship with Akio is another Relationship with Utena, as opposed to friendship or platonic love. Because of the framing and messaging of RGU in particular, she doesn’t feel comfortable conceptually forcing Anthy onto that path, but she enjoys the movie as a sort of AU where she’s “allowed” to call it yuri because Anthy and Utena are making out onscreen. The whole discussion really threw me for a loop in a great way; I need to read more of these columns!
Fair point about Juri and Shiori, though. I guess “the series is yuri” and “the series has a yuri subplot” aren’t quite the same? I think they’re all yuri, but that’s just my opinion :p