To continue the licensing frenzy of Morinaga Milk’s GIRL FRIENDS, Seven Seas has just announced that they will be releasing GIRL FRIENDS in Omnibus form.
The first volume is slated to ship in October 2012.
Archive for the Artists Category
Yuri Manga: Himitsu no Recipe (ひみつのレシピ)
Underclassman Wakatsuki is reasonably sure she’s gay, but not entirely, so she convinces her sempai, the president of the cooking club, to y’know, kiss her, just to see.
And so, Morinaga Milk’s Himitsu no Recipe, (ひみつのレシピ）begins with a very cheap, servicey opening, and then desperately tries to make a story out of it.
Now that she’s convinced she likes girls, Wakatsuki is also convinced that she likes Buchou. A lot. A lot a lot. And, um, she really wants Buchou to like her back. So Wakatsuki joins the Cooking Club and plots to be closer to the club president, who is almost completely oblivious of her not-all-that-mixed signals.
For her part, Buchou really wants the Cooking Club to be successful and she’s putting her heart and soul into recruitment and training, pretty oblivious of Wakatsuki’s ulterior motives.
Unfortunately for readers, the heart aching sincerity of GIRL FRIENDS is pretty much completely absent in this series. The first chapter very much reads like a one-shot. The overall feel was that the first chapter was a tryout to see if Morinaga-sensei and the Tsubomi editors got along and when they did, they just told her to continue with these two characters.
It’s hard to be sympathetic to Wakatsuki, who would be completely sympathetic if she had her crush, treasured it, fantasized about it, and told herself the whole story in her head, as we do with crushes. But it’s impossible to really like her the 5th or 6th time Buchou has pushed her off and said, “No.” Because sexual harassment isn’t funny or cute or, really, entertaining, no matter how moe the art is.
The big summer training camp is coming up and Wakatsuki has her battle underwear ready to go. I’m almost hoping that Buchou fends her off, gives her what for and throws her out of the club. From my perspective, Wakatasuki needs to be trained properly.
I’m sorry this manga isn’t better, but it had such a bare bones opening and really hasn’t developed any muscles since.
Ratings:
Art – 8
Story – 4
Characters – 5
Yuri – 6
Service – 6
Overall – 6
If you were a big fan of GIRL FRIENDS, I think you might be better off skipping this. If you just love Morinaga Milk’s work on principle, then definitely get it. It has her signature art style, but I know she can write better stories than this.
Sorry all the recent reviews have been grumpyish, but we’re getting down to the bottom of the pile of things I bought in September. And I’m saving the best for last. ^_^
Yuri Drama CD: GIRL FRIENDS (ドラマCD GIRL FRIENDS-ガールフレンズ)
Because manga is primarily a visual media, I’m always fascinated by the transition of a manga story to Drama CD. Where something like Maria-sama ga Miteru is primarily communicated in words, a story like GIRL FRIENDS is first and foremost visual. And this manga, as good as it is, would probably make a relatively dull anime, as most of the “action” exists only in interior monologue.
The GIRL FRIENDS Drama CD (ドラマCD GIRL FRIENDS-ガールフレンズ)does a decent job of balancing story framework and character development and, as a result, becomes something slightly different than the manga itself.
The manga starts off, (if you recall from my review of Volume 1,) as a catalog of fashionable girl interests. Hair, nails, clothes, etc., are the primary focus, and Mariko’s interest in Akiko grows from that. Because we’re listening to the conversations on the Drama CD, rather than watching the girls shop, the chapters feel very much like a tutorial. Bearing in mind that the manga ran in Comic High, which is generally targeted to men who want that glimpse behind the gauze curtain of “girls’ life,” this works amazingly well.
Let’s take a step back to the story itself to understand why. Mariko is a quiet, introverted girl. She is studious, has no real friends and generally lives a life of the mind. You know the type – reads during homeroom, lunch and any study periods. She is us. When Akiko breaks past her shell, Mariko finds herself dragged into a world she knows *nothing* about. This is a world in which girls talk about hair, clothes, fashion models, makeup colors and the like, endlessly and with actual interest. Mariko isn’t interested, per se, in the new fall colors for makeup, but her new friends’ interest interests her.
These sections of the Drama CD are the absolute best tutorial on what average girls like that I’ve ever heard. Because there are no visuals, and the spoken words have to provide the actions as well as the words, the dialogue very much sounds as if Mari is receiving training on “How to Be a Girl, 101.” Mariko even considers this, towards the end, as she’s rapidly slipping into “more than friend” feelings for Akiko. She recognizes that she never really had any girl friends before and never really had been socialized, so, she may be overreacting to just having a friend….
As in the anime, it’s the night of the group date that changes everything, irrevocably. After falling apart watching Akko with the guys, Mariko and Akko end up at Akiko’s place. After Akko drinks too much and falls asleep, Mari kisses her, then spends the rest of the week excoriating herself for it. Even after Akko laughs it off, Mari-chan realizes that her feelings aren’t just friendship.
The Drama CD comes to an end, as Mariko admits to herself that this is, quite probably, love. So, this CD covers chapters 1-10 of the manga.
There’s still a fair dollop of silly service in this story. Perhaps in some circles it is common for girls to kiss one another and feel each other up, but I can tell you that that never happened with any group of friends I had growing up. And we were on all sorts of sports teams, camp, school gym, which meant dressing and undressing in front of one another. No groping, peeking, breast size comparison….none of that ever went on anywhere I was. So, I’m still marking all that in the fanservice column as something things boys would like to think girls do.
The CD technicals were quite good. Everyone did a very decent job of voicing their characters. It was all very natural. I found Mari’s interior monologues (which were absolutely necessary to the story) a little cringe-making at times, but that was also necessary to the story. There is one short extra comic insert in the CD case, no cast talk track, though.
Noticably, this was a really long Drama CD. I had to drive quite a distance yesterday and listened to this CD for most of the trip there. Easily an hour, probably more. That was a pleasant surprise, as Drama CDs more commonly tend to be in the 30-45 minute range.
Ratings:
Overall – 8
I wasn’t sure how well this story would translate to Drama CD (I think some series are more suited than others, obviously) but overall found this to be a more than acceptable adaptation of what I considered to be a very good manga about first love.
Yuri Network News – September 24, 2011
Snatches of Yuri
In the June issue of Nakayoshi, magazine “Your Melody (キミノネイロ) starts off with two girls kissing and a chapter-load full of ambiguous feelings…and no real plot. I don’t imagine this is meant to be a “Yuri” series, but you have to admit that Nakayoshi has been turning up the heat these days with lily-scented stories.
Horror comic Naname no Ongaku II (ななめの音楽) looks pretty darn Yuri.
And Machikado Hana da Yori (街角花だより) is scoring high on Japanese Yuri lists.
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Yuri Manga
On her blog, Morinaga Milk-sensei debuts the cover of Comic High magazine with the first reprinted chapter of Kuchibiru Tameiki Sakurairo.
The 15th volume of Hayate x Blade special edition, will include a HxB doujinshi by Hayashiya-sensei! I’ve been a fan of her doujinshi work as Jesus Drug for ages, so I’m dying to see what she does with her own characters.
Italian Yuri fans have something to celebrate – the Italian language edition of Rica Takashima’s Rica ‘tte Kanji!? is now available from RenBooks. To celebrate, they created this adorable commercial spot:
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Other News
From Twitter, Deb Aoki points us to the Today Show website’s article “From Kevin Keller to Batwoman, gay characters take center stage in comic books.” While I think “taking center stage” is obvious hyperbole, it does seem that gay and lesbian characters are more open than previously.
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That’s a wrap for this week.
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Yuri Manga: Omoi no Kakera (想いの欠片)
In Takemiya Jin’s Omoi no Kakera (想いの欠片) Mika is that rarest of all manga characters, a confident, out (to herself and a few important people in her life, at least) and together young lesbian. There’s a cafe in town that she likes to frequent, because she’s interested in the owner – she likes the oneesama type. Mika doesn’t like bullies, though, so the day she sees an attractive older woman being emotionally proked and prodded into tears by two aunty-types, she pours water over their heads, tells them off and ends up involved with the other woman’s life.
Mika must be a drama magnet, because she’s leaving the lesbian bar she frequents and runs into a lover’s quarrel in the hallway. This is merely annoying because they are blocking her egress, but it becomes downright weird when it turns out that a schoolmate of hers, Harada, is one of the participants. Mutually outed, they become friends, until that creates *more drama* when Harada’s little sister tries to warn Mika off her brother. After some random accusations and drama, Mika finally has a chance to put things straight between her and Mayu, that she’s got no interest – no, really, none – in her brother except as a friend. Things might have calmed down, except that Mayu finds herself interested in Mika. She doesn’t quite admit to it, but Mika’s no one’s fool.
In her downtime, Mika learns more about the cafe owner’s life and her relationship with her roommate, a story so complicated that Mika sums up with “I don’t get adults!”
Throughout Mika is a fun, smart, self-assured young woman, who I would be honored to have over for lunch.
This series has been running in Hakusensha’s Rakuen Le Paradis, and it has been one of my favorite series since the very first chapter. It’s ongoing, so hopefully we’ll have much more of Mika and her friends. If you’re looking for a character who isn’t coming out, isn’t falling in love and going all gooey, but is participating in life fully as a lesbian, with some meaningful discussion of gay and lesbian life thrown in for good measure, this is an absolute must-get. In this collection, Takemiya Jin-sensei pushes the boundaries of “Yuri” right dead into “lesbian,” and makes it smart, funny, well-constructed with characters you care about. You know, the kind of Yuri we actually want to read.
Ratings:
Art – 9 I’m a total fangirl for Takemiya-sensei’s art
Story – 9
Characters – 8
Yuri – 9
Service – 1
Overall – 9
If I awarded awards for Yuri, Omoi no Kakera would be a shoo-in. I can definitely call this a Top Ten for the year.
