Koharu and Minato: Happy Life with My Girlfriend, Volume 1 is a fictionalized version of the lives of two very real women, a team that go by the names Daruma and Hyaluron. This retelling of how they met, fell in love and moved in together, is the first collected volume of an ongoing serialization in Comic Yuri Hime magazine.
Overall, this is a very cute and sweet slice-of-life story. There are no great (and very few small) conflicts in this tale. Despite that – or, maybe perhaps because of it – I think this is a really important story. Over the years, Comic Yuri Hime has had a few serialized manga featuring lesbian characters, (thank you Morishima Akiko-sensei, inori.-sensei), occasionally living together (thank you Inui Ayu-sensei!) but it’s not a magazine that tends to wave rainbow flags, or display Pride stickers. Manga in the magazine often include lesbian content without explicit or implicit lesbian identity.
I don’t mean this as a dig against the magazine at all. Sometimes, it’s just not relevant to the story or the setting. Sometimes it might complicate the issue. I do actually like when characters take note of their sexuality in real-world(ish) manga. I am very happy to see a comic essay about a happy lesbian couple running in the only monthly Yuri manga magazine. Even if, in this volume “lesbian” life in Japan isn’t the main focus.
Koharu and Minato meet online, then in person, then start dating and fall for each other. Now they live together and despite small disagreements, are living very happily in love. This volume is full of a lot of lovey-dovey moments as the relationship builds. The art is quite cute, without being overly moe. In this volume they do not talk very much aboutpolitical issues regarding Japanese same-sex couples. Here, it is all very charming and low-key. And lesbian. I’m happy with that.
Ratings:
Art – 8
Story – 7
Characters – As I said in my review of the JP volume, “it’s never not weird to score a person’s perspective on themselves. They both seem very nice. 8”
Service – 0
Yuri – 10
Overall – 8
Volume 1 just came out this week from Seven Seas! Volume 2 will be out in English this summer. And thank you to Seven Seas for providing the review copy for ANN, where I reviewed this for their Spring Manga Guide.
i really wish i could be as positive about this title. on paper, it’s a style of manga i yearn for more of. in practice, the age gap was at minimum problematic. the manga briefly alludes to this fact: “when i found out she was in high school, i couldn’t just laugh it off,” says the at that time 28 year old woman. but the entire manga doesn’t just laugh it off, it fetishizes the younger partner’s youth and perceived helplessness, linking it directly to their attractiveness, and at no point puts any real thought into the problem with all of this. maybe they course correct in later volumes, but this was an immediate drop for me.
They agree to be friends at first and take their relationship very slowly, so while your opinion is valid for you, I can’t really agree. I’ve read this multiple times now and don’t see anything I consider coercive or fetishizing, but if you do, then by ll mean, avoid this series.