Archive for the English Manga Category


Monologue Woven For You, Volume 1

February 25th, 2022

Haruka is a young woman who has set aside her dream – she’ll never act again. But fate has something in store for her when meets Nao, a first-year at her university who is working hard to become the actress Haruka will never be. As they spend time together, they realize they have feelings for one another. Almost before they know it, they are thinking in terms of happily-ever-after. Nao’s dream allows Haruka to love theater once again.

But there is something they are not talking about. Haruka is not confessing that she once was in theater. As a result, Nao cannot tell Haruka that she knows. What stress will this put on their relationship? We’ll have to wait for Volume 2 to find out.

If you love live theater as much as Haruka and Nao, you will probably love this manga. ^_^

I reviewed the Japanese edition of volume back in autumn of 2021 when I said, “Because there is so little conflict, I’d recommend this series for a nice girl-meets-girl story, but for one thing. The art is much too moe for my taste…. I’d vastly prefer this story if it were graced with an art style that captured the actual ages of the characters as we are told them. If you like the uncomplicated facial features (and accompanying lack of facial gesture and expression of the oeuvre,) then you will probably enjoy this.”

Other than the fact that the art simply puts me out of the story, it’s a nice enough little volume. The energy of it is sincere, and I appreciate that the narrative eschewed additional complication. When Haruka’s friend comes across them kissing, Haruka doesn’t prevaricate. If she had, I might have stopped reading. I don’t have time to read that kind of story any more. ^_^

The English edition is full color, just as the Japanese was, which is quite nice. The colors are relaxing to the eye  and the conflict, such as it is, will assuredly be resolved with no more than a little bit of tension.

Ratings:

Art – 6 Adequate, but not a style I feel suits the story
Story – 7 Pleasant girl meets girl
Characters – 7 Earnest
Service – 1? Bathing, some mild, partial nudity
Yuri – 8

Overall – 7

Because we are again working on the Yuricon Store plug-in issue, I will note that Volume 1 is available on Amazon, Bookwalker and RightStuf or a manga store near you. Thanks to the team at Seven Seas for thisgentle, full-color Yuri manga!

Volume 2 will be out in June. You can pre-order it on Amazon or Right Stuf now. ^_^

Thanks very much to Seven Seas for the review copy!

 




If We Leave on the Dot, Guest Review by Patricia Baxter

February 23rd, 2022

Hello and welcome to another Guest Review Wednesday on Okazu! I am super excited to welcome a new guest reviewer to our blog. Patricia has been an enthusiastic YNN Correspondent and now I am super pleased to have her as part of our Guest Review staff! Please give Patricia a warm, Okazu welcome! Kind comments are always appreciated. ^_^

My name is Patricia Baxter (she/her). I am a bisexual autistic writer who has previously written articles concerning how media represents different marginalized communities. You can find more of my work through my personal website “Autistic Observations”.

Yukawa Kayoko is a quiet thirty-one-year-old woman working in an office building, who typically hangs up her winter coat on the office coat rack rather than place it behind her chair. Through a series of coincidences, Kayoko finds that a co-worker, outgoing twenty-six-year-old Mizuki Kaori, has accidentally placed her apartment keys into Kayoko’s coat pocket. After this chance encounter, the two women begin to see each other frequently after work, keeping in touch and planning outings by leaving each other notes in their coat pockets. As these meetings progress, Kayoko finds herself surprised to discover that her feelings for Kaori extend far beyond friendship, and, in a moment of courage, confesses her feelings to Kaori. Thus begins this series focusing on the tender romance between two working women.

Inui Ayu’s If We Leave on the Dot is the yuri manga equivalent of cotton candy. Kayoko and Kaori are two extremely cute, nearly permanently blushing, women who wear consistently adorable outfits and eat consistently delicious-looking food together. Every chapter had at least one moment that made me feel at ease, thanks to the various expressions of love felt and displayed by the couple and the embodiment of that love by enjoying the pleasures of everyday life together.

Kayoko and Kaori are probably one of the sweetest pairings I’ve read in a romance manga, yuri or otherwise. Their relationship is built on mutual love and trust that is palpable with each chapter of the manga. And when the few instances of low self-esteem and jealousy creep up on the pair, instead of letting the negative feelings fester for an absurd number of chapters (as some romance manga are wont to do), they have emotionally honest discussions about their feelings, which help maintain and strengthen their partnership. It’s refreshing to read such a wonderful example of an emotionally mature relationship, with a couple able to weather through such relatable insecurities and doubts.

This is made even more intriguing by the fact that the majority of the series focuses on the relationship between two women who are very clearly adults who are established in their careers. While there are quite a few examples of yuri manga focusing on the lives of adult women, a lot of series focus on the lives of university students, or women in their early twenties. For Kayoko to experience her first major romantic relationship at thirty-one, is very reassuring for any readers in their thirties, as it can still be rather difficult to find romances focusing on women older than twenty-something.

Alongside If We Leave on the Dot’s many positive achievements, it is also noteworthy for how it addresses the topic of Kayoko and Kaori’s sexualities. When the series takes time for the couple to think about sexuality, it is typically are less about Kayoko and Kaori’s individual sexual identities and personal self-discovery, and more about how other people will react to or perceive their relationship. One example of this occurs during a company celebration, where Kayako mentions that she is in a relationship and loves her partner very much, but aside from those vague mentions, cannot go in-depth in describing her partner to her colleagues, despite sitting right next to the person she loves. Instead, Kayoko and Kaori have to share a quiet, tender moment, holding hands under the table, hiding in plain sight from their co-workers. Not long after this Kaori goes to meet up with her close friends, despite feeling happy talking about her relationship with Kayoko, she feels “Tired…from dodging their questions”, as she had to misdirect her friends by calling Kayoko her “boyfriend”.

This is a rather massive contrast in comparison to a lot of fluffy yuri romances, where the closest thing to an examination into LGBTQ+ issues is the main character(s) briefly getting confronted by the heteronormative expectations society places on women, and even then it is only there as a cursory issue. Instead of placing her characters in a bubble separated from the struggles of the real world, Inui’s If We Leave on the Dot takes time to showcase and legitimize the frustrations and exhaustion that queer women experience on a regular basis.

With its relaxing and down-to-Earth depictions of the everyday life of a same-gender couple, If We Leave on the Dot is one of my all-time favourite yuri romances that I highly recommend.

Ratings:

Art: 7.5

Story: 8

Characters: 9

Service: 0 for the first three volumes, 2 for volume 4 (due to a bathhouse trip and the couple beginning to sexually explore each other’s bodies in a manner that is sincere rather than salacious)

Yuri: 10

Overall: 9

If We Leave on the Dot is currently only available through the online manga subscription service Manga Planet, though the first chapter is free to read. There is a range of options for subscribing to the service depending on reader preference.

Erica here: Thank you so much Patricia! I agree with everything you’ve said. The mood between Kaori and Kayoko is very relaxing and warm. I loved all four volumes of the series in Japanese, Teiji ni Ageretara. That was my first taste of Inui Ayu’s work  – work that I continues to enjoy. Her autobiographical series, currently running in Comic Yuri Hime, Kyou mo Hitotsu Yane no Shita, has much the same warm, fuzzy feeling, with a bit more LGBTQ+ identity.





I Can’t Believe I Slept With You, Volume 1

February 21st, 2022

Can a bunch of wrongs make a right? Miyako Miyahara is sure gonna try in her romantic comedy I Can’t Believe I Slept With You, Volume 1.

Chiyo Koduka is depressed. Out of work, down on her luck, she’s three months behind on the rent and sees no hope. When her landlady shows up with an offer she can’t refuse, she doesn’t refuse. But she’s not thrilled. The landlady is willing to forgive a day’s rent when Chiyo provides “favors,” which is where they begin.

As the days pass, the landlady’s favors become much less extreme, sliding from playing games together, to a comforting hug. Chiyo is pretty clueless as to why her landlady might be making such a one-sided offer, but we know the truth, and it’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect.

Koduka is clueless, clumsy but she was good at one thing and would really like a chance to do it again. For the sake of the plot, she also has absurdly bad luck, which wore on me. The landlady (we don’t learn her name until the end of the volume,) is kind, thoughtful, competent and very sad. It’s this that colors the whole book for me. As a romantic comedy, when the comedy is rooted in pain, it’s hard for me to laugh.

All of that said, by the very end of the volume, it is apparent to us that the landlady is not a pervert or an opportunist. She’s a very lonely woman in a one-sided relationship. Which leaves is with Koduka. She easy to sympathize with, I think we’ve all been where she is in one way or another. But the hapless doofus is a hard sell for me.  Your mileage might vary of course but, for me, Koduka will be the biggest hurdle in this story. I just cannot find “funny” bad luck amusing. It kills me in Oshi ga Budokan Ittekuretara Shinu, (推しが武道館いってくれたら死ぬ ) every time. Like, we get it. She’s a hapless ne’er do well. Ha. Ha. Ugh.

Kiyahara’s art is solid, most of the scenes take place in a small Japanese apartment, so no grand artistic scale is needed, but the creator does a solid job of making the apartment feel…small. This is something I rarely see, as artists tend to give their characters plenty of room in those imaginary studio apartments.

The strongest moment is the reveal of the name the series was originally going with, “Even if it was just once, I regret it.” This moment in the narrative gave me what hope I have for the series.

Let me perfectly honest here – romantic comedy is not my genre. I find it almost impossible to accept the premise and just roll with it. Hopeless x hapless do not a comedy make, for me. But, if you like romantic comedy you might very well like this series. I think it has a good heart and isn’t planning on torturing either reader or characters, like Oshi ga Budokan Ittekuretara Shinu.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 7, but I hope it does something interesting with itself.
Characters – 7, same.
Service – Implicit, yes, but not overt.
Yuri – 9, but dropping down to a steady 7 as the true story unfolds

Overall  – A solid 7 with plenty of room to grow.

While I have got little hope that this series will be anything different than what it is, I still hope for the landlady to be less forlorn sad and Koduka to become less clueless. Anything less would make it, well, another Oshi ga Budokan Ittekuretara Shinu. One of those in my life is enough.

Thanks very much to Seven Seas for the review copy!





Bloom Into You Anthology, Volume 2

February 15th, 2022

It has a been a few months since we took a look at the first Bloom Into You Anthology. Now, here we are with the the second and final volume the franchise, Bloom Into You Anthology, Volume 2.

Overall, I found this volume to be more entertaining than the first, with stories that interested me slightly more. As I never was a huge fan of Touko and Yuu as a couple, I was glad to see that this story focused a little on Sayaka and Yuu as mutuals of Touko, but not actually friends on their own. I also like that a few stories remember to include the rest of the club and Koyomi, a character I found way more interesting than our principals.

Completely unsurprisingly, the story I liked best remains the story with Sayaka and Miyako that begins with Sayaka doing a little everyday venting about Haru, in Six Years Later, Still By Your Side, by Yodokawa. What made this story appealing to me, is Miyako’s joy in watching her young friend being able to complain about her lover with a confidante. “Besides it’s nice. Getting to hear you complain about a partner of your own.” BAM. There is such power in having people to confide in. Whether it is for serious stuff or life’s little sillinesses, the entire reason I have an fondness at all for this series (other than Koyomi) is the fact that young, unsure, baby lesbian Sayaka just happened to have someone to talk to. That Miyako was willing to step into that role, really elevated what otherwise might have been a sad-lesbian-best-friend scenario.

Kiss & White Lily creator Canno also weighed in with a solid friendship story, which I quite enjoyed. I’m really all in for friendship between girls and women stories right now.

Ratings:

Overall – 8

If you enjoyed Bloom Into You, then there any number of stories which feel like spending more time with good friends. On the whole, I found this anthology a better bet than the first in both art and story. As I said in my review of this volume in Japanese, I only wish Maria-sama ga Miteru had come out now, in this golden age of Yuri, and we would have had all the anthologies in English and I would have been so, so happy. ^_^; But here e are, ready to say goodbye to the modern gateway Yuri series with a very pleasant little volume, spending tome with characters we like.





I’m in Love with the Villainess, Volume 2

February 11th, 2022

I’m in Love with the Villainess, Volume 2 is a super fun volume of this story. In many ways, it’s the first turn away from goofy comedy to serious story. This volume contains the first of many conversations about sexuality and gender that this series will provide. I know I reviewed this back in February, in digital, but I wanted to take a look at the print volume as well. ^_^

For the first time, we really meet the three princes, the love interests of the game “Revolution, “and get to know their personalities. This is followed by the student ranking, where we finally understand that Rae, as protagonist of that game, is overpowered and formidable. And how obsessed she really wad with the game…and Claire.

This is followed by a magical battle against a giant water slime, that forces Claire to save Rae, but also keeps Rae on the lonely path she had set for herself. We know this because this is the volume where Misha asks Rae if she is homosexual. I want to stop and say that the art in that section is devastating, as we see Rae with her usual smile, talking about the old her, about how she’s used to her love not being returned – and –  how she’s convinced herself that Claire’s happiness is enough. Devastating…and irrelevant as we know. Phew.

And then(!) the volume wraps up with the lead-in to the Academy Knights arc…and more magic battles, lest we forget that this is a magic isekai. ^_^

Following the manga is a bonus story about Claire and Relaire bonding, which of course is ridiculously cute, and character descriptions.

Many thanks to Joshua Hardy on translation, Courtney Williams handling the lettering, Nicky Lim for the cover design and the rest of the team at Seven Seas for an enjoyable reading experience.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Characters – 9
Story – 9
Service – 1 Very little for this series
Yuri – 10

Overall – 9