I had a very fun thing happen recently! I walked in to Kinokuniya and was browsing on their Japanese Yuri manga shelves, tucked away in the Josei section along with BL titles. A book I had never seen by an author I had never heard of was hanging out with KiniOto and other Yuri titles. So, I bought it. Of course I did. ^_^

Back in the dawn of Okazu, I used to frequent Book-Off in New York City, where I often found odd little collections that contained some random Yuri stories. It was in this way I found stories like “Jukkai Me no  Jukka” in the collection Odamari!. It has been a long time since then, and Book-Off in NYC mostly sells English language books now with a small JP manga section, that gets a little smaller every time I am there. So it’s not very common for me to find a new collection, new author, new story the way I used to. Imagine my joy when I found Belladonna no Koibito (ベラドンナの恋人）by Ruu1mm. 

This three-story collected volume begins with the title story a shadowy little tale of two girls, Anna and Bella. Anna is an artist, but she likes to drawn poisonous things. She is discovered in the deep woods by a beautiful dark-haired girl named Belladonna, who says the she is cursed to poison anyone she touches. 

One day Anna shares some wonderful news, that one of her drawings has been sold, but when she learns that it is she who has been sold, Anna runs away to the forest to live with Bella. Their love grows, but a Prince sees Anna’s portrait of Bella and invites her to marry him. I won’t spoil the ending except to say that even in stories like this unhappy endind are less common than they used to be. 

The second story is about a boy and a girl, but the third story is another tale told darkly about two girls, swimming and things not being what they seem at all.

The art is nicely rough – I particularly liked the way Bella was drawn in  different, more sketchy and loose bur dark style from everyone else in the story. Overall a great introduction to a new artist who does seem to move back and forth between BL and Yuri in their work.  

Ratings: 

Art – 7
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Service – 2
Yuri – 8

Overall – 8

It was also really cool to find myself experiencing the joy of  random discovery of a Yuri manga on the shelf here in the US once again. It had been a while and with all the Yuri we’re getting these days in English,  I hardly have a chance to find fun new-to-me stuff in Japanese. ^_^