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Okazu Staff takes on Yuri Is My Job, Volume 12

May 13th, 2024

Yuri Is My Job, Volume 12 came out in English from the fantastic team at Kodansha and it was…a lot. I had reviewed it in Japanese almost a year ago, and it was a lot then, too. After discussion with Okazu Staff Writers, I decided that it was big enough and complicated enough that no one person ought to have to shoulder it. So, welcome to the very first Okazu Staff Writers Group Review. Here you will find 5 perspectives on this volume, each from people whose opinions you trust, but who are all quite different people.

CW for this volume and these reviews: sexual assault, emotional manipulation, trauma.

Reviews by:

Luce | Christian LeBlanc | Eleanor Walker | Matt Marcus | Erica Friedman

Luce

Goeido had always been a divisive character, I imagine. Since she was introduced back in volume four, she was shown to be manipulative and callous, something only expounded upon every time she showed up. Last volume, her and Kanoko went to a hotel together – just to ‘talk’. This volume, we get the culmination of that interaction, and boy howdy is it uncomfortable. Not happy getting Sumika and Nene to think that her and Kanoko are in a relationship, she essentially comes on to Kanoko, to prove to her that kissing and sex are important in a relationship. Kanoko is stuck, because admitting that kissing might be important means that Yano kissing Hime meant something, but if it was important, that implies that Hime didn’t mind this from Yano, something Kanoko cannot bear.

The sexual violence warned about on the contents page, I think, (although I’m concerned it’s a bit too easily missed, though I’m happy it’s there) refers to two separate incidents in this volume. The first with Goeido and Kanoko – where Kanoko unwillingly has her skirt and top taken off, and as far as the reader can tell, that’s as far as it goes (however, Goeido is at least twenty, but probably a little older, and Kanoko is 15/16). Equally uncomfortable was the second incident, where Kanoko, on the same day, forces a kiss onto Sumika, and feels up her breasts, without asking for any consent. Sumika pushes her away, and ultimately it shows up Kanoko’s extremely warped thinking, which honestly I have some trouble following. But they talk about it, which is good.

Goeido’s actions are reprehensible, definitely, and as an asexual person, extremely uncomfortable, but not for the reason you might think. I am fine with sex scenes in manga. It’s her implication that love cannot exist without sex, which I would like to vehemently oppose. I feel like this is meant to represent Goeido’s views rather than necessarily the mangaka’s, but it still sticks out as uncomfortable to me. For her, love and sex are completely linked in a way that no one else in the manga thinks about – and I can’t help but wonder if she might be aromantic allosexual, albeit terrible representation for an extremely underrepresented and demonised orientation. But to me, in many ways, it makes sense – her insistence that love is impossible without kissing and sex. Her ability to walk away from Nene when her job requirements changed. Nene states that every time they met up, they ended up in a hotel, having sex.

Honestly, I don’t even really like this interpretation, but it equally makes sense to me. I don’t like it because alloaros, as they are coined, are forgotten, or the characters that might most likely be alloaro are the ‘players’, the assholes who use people for sex then leave without a second thought, which is definitely not defining for the entire group, the same way other stereotypes are not indictive of entire other orientations. But in a manga where romantic love has been shown to tear people up, make them blush and just react in general, Goeido has always felt calculating and calm. Maybe she’s just in control of her emotions, apart from a few surprised expressions. But even with Nene, she’s always shown to be in control of the situation, never reacts much outside of a general pleasantness that she shows to almost everyone bar Sumika.

I think she’s a bit similar to Hime, actually.

Perhaps they are two sides of the same coin – Hime as the ‘good’ side, and Goeido as the ‘bad’ side. They both have a facade of innocent pleasantness, whereas their true selves are far more manipulative and callous. The difference is that Goeido seems to want to stir chaos and hurt people (especially Sumika), whereas Hime, when push comes to shove, wants to help and keep people together. Hime, though, has been forced to grow and change over the series, pushed by the immovable rock of Yano, refusing to back down and let her get away with her manipulations. Goeido hasn’t changed a single bit. She’s stuck on getting back at Sumika – and I’m pretty sure that’s why she came back to Cafe Liebe in the first place. Either to bait Sumika, or to get an in to get someone else to.

Perhaps Nene was onto something – maybe she was attracted to Sumika. As a beautiful lady, perhaps someone not being attracted to her heated so much she wanted to take revenge against everything that meant something to Sumika. Maybe she was just mad that Sumika saw through her facade. Who knows – part of me thinks this won’t be the last we see of Goeido, not that I especially want to see her again. I think I’ll be glad when the air starts to clear, as it might do next volume between Kanoko and Sumika, and we return back to Mitsuki and Hime.

Chris LeBlanc

I will admit, reading Volume 12 a second time to gather my thoughts felt even more uncomfortable than reading it the first time.

I have this idea that most online arguments could be resolved if people would just understand that different things work for different people. Goeido would disagree with this theory, however – I get the feeling she believes everyone else on the planet feels the same way she does about sex and romance, and anyone who claims to have different ideas about these things is being delusional. It feels like everyone in Yuri Is My Job! are on different pages when it comes to this, though, and while that usually makes for enjoyable dramatic conflict, let’s just say that Goeido crosses a lot of lines in this volume.

There’s a part later in the book where Kanoko claims to have been unharmed by Goeido, but this is clearly not the case, underscored by the black gutters and panel borders in this section (a technique normally reserved for flashbacks in manga). Happily, the visual tones eventually turn much brighter as Sumika tries to help Kanoko through this chapter, even leading to a cute bit where she tries slipping into Schwester-speak for a moment before dismissing it.

Eleanor Walker

There are many different kinds of love, and Goeido, one of our central characters for this volume believes that sex and love (and possibly violence, I would argue) are intrinsically linked, and one is not possible without the others. Moreover, anyone who disagrees with her is automatically wrong and must be shown the error of her ways. I am not generally a fan of sexual assault used as a plot device, but this volume handles it pretty well, and it works within the context of the story. However, the full colour spread of Goeido posing in lingerie to open the volume left me viscerally uncomfortable, especially in a series which hasn’t been terribly focused on fanservice. But my favourite moment was when Saionji shows up and reminds Goeido that not everyone thinks like she does.

Kanoko pretends that’s she’s alright after the event, but she definitely seems off to me, and I hope the next volumes have her getting help to deal with such a traumatic experience.

Matt Marcus

I struggled a lot with this volume. On the one hand, I understand exactly what Miman chose to do: they decided that Kanoko needed an extreme push to break her calcified conception of Hime and her relationships in order to drive her character arc forward. Narratively, it’s a sound maneuver, and it is effective insofar as it demonstrates how some people will desperately hold onto a belief despite knowing it will do them tangible harm, and how in turn they can reflect that harm onto others. On the other hand, I think what Miman chose to do was in poor taste and has negative implications to the themes of the series.

Goiedo was an interesting character to me. Sure, she was a bad person, but she was for the most part honest in her intentions. She was very clear with Nene that they were fooling around to make Sumika jealous and to have a bit of fun: nothing more, nothing less. It’s not really her fault that Nene’s feelings developed into romance…OK it kind of is, but she could have continued to exploit Nene’s feelings for her, but that wasn’t the contract they made. Yes, the relationship ended once it was no longer convenient for her which is a shitty thing to do, but nevertheless I found it compelling that she was a villain who meant what she said and held herself—and Nene—accountable.

What Goeido does to Kanoko, however, is simply beyond the pale. It’s one thing to play around with the heart of a sensitive girl, but it’s another to enact targeted psychological violence at the threat of serious intimate violence. To me, at that point she stopped being a believable plot device and turned into a plot contrivance. She is instrumentalized as a mouthpiece of a certain viewpoint on romance without any explanation as for why she believes it. There was an opportunity for this, as she is very familiar with A Maiden’s Heart and no doubt should have opinions on how it depicts relationships between girls and what it represents. As we see on the page, she has feelings on how the characters acted within the confines of the story, but does not take a viewpoint of how the story itself relates to the real world—in a series that is all about meta-narrative.

What tweaks me more, is that Miman wants us to believe that the assault happened…until Kanoko reveals later that it didn’t. And then Kanoko assaults Sumika. It all feels very emotionally manipulative, playing with very triggering subject matter. I think the same narrative turns could have been accomplished without it. Goeido can still be the villain; Kanoko can still panic and flail; Sumika can still be angry and hurt. It just didn’t need to be this.

This narrative turn also unintentionally creates problems for the meta-narrative structure of the series as well. There was always an ongoing tension between the sanitized, pseudo-romantic Class S performances in the cafe and the messier real relationships that were occurring simultaneously. So far, Goeido is the only character who transgressed the Class S “purity” by introducing sex into the story. Given how she’s also now unequivocally a predator, coupled with Sumika’s statement that she has no interest in a physical relationship with Kanoko, frames sexual desire as only a corruptive weapon. It aligns the “real” world with the fictional world of Liebe in that the relationship between girls is only good when it is the pure bond of the Schwesterns. It’s a turn that feels regressive, reminding me specifically of the muddled messages from the Yuri Kuma Arashi anime.

Hell, when you look at the whole of WataYuri, every kiss we’ve seen was given without consent—Yano on Hime, Goeido on Nene, and now Kanoko on Sumika. Physical romantic intimacy is thus represented as always a case of someone imposing their desires on another, starting at its origin (it’s worth noting that five of the six characters mentioned were experiencing their first kiss in this context). When Kanoko offers herself to Sumika, she says, “you have to hurt me as much as I hurt you,” clearly framing sexual intimacy as harmful. Obviously, one can have romance without sex—and that’s a great thing—but Miman seems to be saying that romance, at least between women, should only be without it.

We have had some great discussions about WataYuri in the Okazu discord, and one of the viewpoints raised by Erica and others is that one can read this series as celebrating the potential power of the bonds of sisterhood from Class S stories rather than rejecting it, which is an argument I can support; however, if the series also drags along the negative aspects of those tropes with it into the modern day, I’d rather such stories be left in the past.

Also the hotel should’ve been called Best Schwestern. I mean, c’mon.

Erica Friedman

I have now read these chapters three times. The first in the pages of Comic Yuri Hime magazine, where they were a genuine shock, again in the collected volume where I could take time to be truly angry at Yoko. As an adult, her actions are morally repugnant and criminal. I sat with my feelings about no one in the Cafe being able to see what kind of person Yoko was and, I’ll admit, considered dropping the story. I was that angry.

Now I have read the chapters for third time, this time in my native language and it allowed me a chance to delve into all the nuanced ways this arc has made me uncomfortable. Primarily – I do not like Kanako. I have never liked her as a character. Her obsession with Hime blinds her to everything and everyone else. When she hurt no one but herself, she was tolerable. When Sumika became involved, it was not. I am not a fan of “obsession” in literature, as it has been co-opted by serial killer/stalker “thrillers.” I have been trained to keep waiting for Kanako to snap.

Sumika’s own delusion is pretty high – she imagines that she is above romantic love and attraction and when intimacy with Kanako forces her to rethink that, she does not handle it maturely. Because she, too, is a child. We look at Kanako and see an innocent, naive girl, but forget that Sumika is only a teenager, as well. Kanoko’s inability to “see” other people and understand their motivations is a complicated matter. Yes, Kanako absolutely pings neurodivergent (as does Mitsuki,) but I, personally, have a belief that if you read that much, surely you begin to understand something about people. I did not understand people my own age, but I understood human nature as a whole at Kanako’s age, purely from reading books by and for adults.

So as we watch Kanako walk into Yoko’s hotel room, of course we are screaming at the pages of the book…but also I am screaming at Kanoko. How have she read so much and is unable to see that Yoko is not okay?

Yoko, too, has an obsession. Her only goal is to hurt Sumika. The why is not all that critical to the story, and it will be handwaved into an almost unbelievable act of hurting the thing one loves, as if Yoko is a child in kindergarten aggressively teasing someone they like because they don’t know how to act appropriately. As Matt points out, even though the why is not critical…there should have been an attempt at giving us a why.

This third time, I sat with all the layers of discomfort – not liking Kanako, but also forced to sympathize as she deals with all-too-real trauma. Not liking Yoko, on multiple levels, including the way she is presented to us as a sexual creature (encapsulated in a very uncomfortable-making two-page spread of Yoko in lingerie ), then her words and actions to Kanako making no real sense, as if she’s a cult member trying to proselytize. And Sumika, whose desire to protect Kanako is bifurcated into competing needs for intimacy and responsibility, with no clear understanding of how to do either. And back to Kanoko, who will deal with this trauma…but maybe not take the right lesson from it?

This is a rough volume, about characters making bad choices sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for appalling reasons. But it is an important volume to move both Sumika and Kanoko out of their childish delusions, into more adult delusions. The question I am left with is…is this what we needed or wanted from Yuri Is My Job!?

For such a silly premise, this story has had more than it’s fair share of me shouting at the characters.

Kiss the Scars of the Girls, Volume 1 Guest Review by Christian LeBlanc

October 25th, 2023

Vampires crossed with Class S!
And set in the future, no less.
With a setup so fun
You would think volume 1
Should be more fun than paint drying, not less.

For a story that’s set “in the far, distant future,” Aya Haruhana’s Kiss the Scars of the Girls from Yen Press languishes in Yuri tropes of old. Emille Florence is our bright, cheerful, young and blonde protagonist, who falls for her assigned cool and distant big sister Eve Winter (whose first name rhymes with “Leave,” the very first thing she says to Emille upon meeting her). Maybe it’s the tea parties with cookies and cake, maybe it’s the secret rose garden (“vampires love the scent of roses”) or maybe it’s the school uniforms that the cast of Maria Watches Over Us would think were too old-fashioned, but I’m just not feeling this ‘future’ vibe. (Or this ‘vampire’ vibe, but we’ll get to that.)

Set at an all-girls’ school where students are assigned a “big sister” on their 14^th birthday, Emille spends a great deal of time trying to win over Eve, who, as luck would have it, appears to have hidden, secret reasons for not wanting to get close to anyone. Emille’s friend Yucca Lotus seems to have an unspoken crush on Emille, while Violetta Emme (whose name I keep reading as Violent Femmes) also likes Emille, but not as much as she likes bullying her classmates and obligatory big sister.

Since this is a manga where everyone at the school is a vampire, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this was going to be a book that portrays vampiric content without vampiric identity. Unseen vampire hunters do factor into things, however, attacking the students with swords and shotguns whenever they visit the local town to hypnotize the local ladies enough to feed on them. Vampires are persecuted for their appetites (with no gore, but much blood), but never in a fun, ultra-violent way (which is a missed opportunity in my opinion).

The vampires in Scars work a little differently than the vampires you’re probably used to, in fact: when a vampire turns 14, they start requiring human blood to live, losing interest in the food they used to love eating. The implication here is that vampires are living (as opposed to undead) creatures, seemingly born this way. These vampires also have no trouble with sunlight, fall easily to any type of weapon, and lack the immortality (and mystique, if we’re being honest) of your stereotypical bloodsucker.

Overall, Kiss the Scars of the Girls feels like a missed opportunity. The vampire angle doesn’t do anything to make this Class S story stand apart from other Class S stories, except to give a narrative excuse to have the occasional student die violently. If you’re Ride or Die for Class S stories, then by all means give this book a try, but if you like your Yuri vampires to be comedic, or violent, or even inappropriate, you’ll probably feel like you have no stake in this.

Ratings:

Characters – 4 (Shiki Amakuni, we barely knew ye)
Story – 4 (does very little with either Class S or Vampires)
Service – 1 (scale this a little higher if you’re into shoulders)
Yuri – 5

Overall – 6

Erica here: Thank you Christian for this look at what I found to be a surprising license.

I am reminded by Amazon that I have to tell you that the book is linked to an affiliate link, in case you may have forgotten.

If My Favorite Pop Idol Made It to the Budokan I Would Die, Volume 2 Guest Review by Christian LeBlanc

October 11th, 2023

Like finding a big ol’ slice of salmon in the special parfait you ordered at the maid cafe*, volume 2 of If My Favorite Pop Idol Made It to the Budokan I Would Die is an ugly volume of a very sweet and poignant series.

Admittedly, I know very little of idol culture outside of what Erica’s written about it in her reviews of the Japanese volumes of this series. Maybe Auri Hirao is satirizing and/or critiquing some of the darker parts of idolatry, which would mean the negative impression I get is not a bug, but a feature. Regardless, I can only react to what’s on the page, with the background that I bring to it.

So, what is my background? Well, as an awkward fan, I feel like I have a lot in common with Eripiyo, “the number one stan for Maina, a sidelined member of the underground idol group Cham Jam.” The desire to show support, coupled with a clumsy, almost debilitating awkwardness around those I admire, makes me feel comradery when I see fellow trash like Eripiyo, Kumasa and Motoi being too fan to function around their faves.

On the other hand, I have trouble understanding why fans and performers, especially on this small, local-group scale, can’t just be friends if they want to be. I think that’s why I liked the chapter where Eripiyo and Kumasa run into Aya moonlighting at a maid cafe: it just feels like how things *should* be, imho. An idol and a few fans just casually shooting the breeze and messing around, unbeholden to the forced interactions imposed on them by management. They’re all just people, free to interact with each other. As if they were humans.

I especially can’t relate to the idea that idols aren’t allowed to have a personal life outside of fan interactions. When a member of Cham Jam is rumored – not spotted, but rumored – to have been seen with a man, her popularity within the group drops, she loses fans, and even some of her fellow idols are disappointed in her.

And I’m not even going to get started on how Maina is able to ignore Eripiyo’s signs of suffering to ask her why she isn’t buying many CDs. I don’t think it’s just because Eripiyo says things like “I eat salmon while thinking of you, Maina!”

This all being said, there’s still a lot to recommend this volume. Eripiyo manages to clearly communicate to Maina why she likes her, a feat rarely seen in volume 2 of anything I’ve read. Cham Jam holds a track and field event for some reason, with references to brutal violence happening when they tried this the year before. We spend some time with Yumeri and Maki, who are always a delight to see together. Eripiyo is shown eating a guardrail, and – I said this before, but it bears repeating – is able to tell the girl she likes that she eats salmon while thinking of her. I realize that most Yuri manga would close up shop at that point, but luckily for us, the third book comes out in print…today!

Ratings:

Art – 7
Characters – 6
Story – 5 Rather disjointed volume, in spite of the thread of a popularity contest tying things together.
Service – 1
Yuri – 6

Overall – 7

*Yes, this happens, and yes, Eripiyo is absolutely here for it.

Vampeerz – “My Peer Vampires,” Volume 2, Guest Review by Christian LeBlanc

March 29th, 2023

Last week Christian introduced us to the first volume of Akili’s vampire Yuri comedy. This week, Christian is back with a continuation of the series, so grab yourself a stiff drink and please welcome him back!

***

I don’t want to look like I’m pushy,
Or complain and get labelled a wussy,
But when minors take baths,
What I thought I’d see last
Was a detailed view of their loofah!

In the second volume of Akili’s girl-meets-vampire, girl-likes-vampire, girl-is-asked-to-kill-vampire-and-doesn’t-want-to Yuri romance, Vampeerz Volume 2 – “My Peer Vampires” (published by Denpa and translated by Molly Rabbitt), the romance is starting to blossom, but so are a few…issues we need to look at.

Ichika (14 years old, long black hair, not a vampire) has already told Aria (??? years old, short blond hair, is a vampire) that she likes her in the last volume, and in this book, has decided that she’s entitled to smooches and make-outs with Aria in return for all of her blood she’s been letting Aria drink.

Now, you and I are used to romances where someone is tsundere, and, due to the power of manga, somehow it’s ok for them to keep saying they’re not interested, while the other character is all “Oh-ho, the chase is afoot!” like they’re some ancient metaphysical poet writing about fleas biting them as a conceit for why they should be getting down.

Aria, however, in spite of being old enough to have maybe met John Donne in person, tells Ichika that “I still look like a child and think like one too. I have no interest in romance.” Welp. In Ichika’s defence, she’s only 14, and figures Aria must be just on the verge of getting into romance, or she’s just saying that, or something – she’s lost a fair bit of blood so maybe she’s not thinking logically. This is a romance manga, and if you’re good with this, ok; if you’re a bit skeeved out by the maturity gap and want to go back to reading something more wholesome (like Citrus), that is also a natural reaction!

Now Vampeerz is a comedy after all, so maybe that affects how you feel about lecherous, licensed-doctor vampires abusing their powers of hypnotism to day-drink during their job as school nurse and lustily suck the blood from hapless students who show up when they cut themselves doing school things…which is my way of re-introducing Sakuya, Aria’s supposed mom, who has a larger role to play in this volume (mostly as Aria’s servant; as we learn in this volume, Aria is apparently some kind of ‘big deal’ in vampire circles). “Ha ha ha, classic Sakuya,” you might say, “the way these middle-school girls are wigged out by this grown-ass creeper mackin’ on them is very droll, quite!” But, again, if that sort of thing creeps you out regardless of the lighter tone of the book: it would be sketchy as hell for anyone to try and talk you out of that.

In the final chapter, Aria is given an antagonist in the form of Khara, another vampire who’s after the sacred sword introduced in volume 1 (a special artifact able to destroy vampires when wielded by certain special humans, like Ichika). I gotta say, if your story has more than one person in it who seems to be from India, then it might not be as big of a deal when one of them is drawn with dirty feet and a bad smell from having to stow away in a shipping container to get to Japan. As it stands, when your only person of color is depicted this way, it’s just – you don’t do that. Why would you do that. Like, why.

Ok. With these issues out of the way, let’s get back to what the book has to offer. Well, the art is still fantastic, imho. It’s fun seeing Ichika in love and going for it and pursuing the object of her affections (more so if you can think of her as being on equal footing with Aria). Ichika’s advances are thwarted when Aria switches to drinking fetal bovine serum, which means she won’t have to drink Ichika’s blood anymore and is therefore excused from smooches as compensation. (In case you were curious about how fetal bovine serum is harvested, I just looked it up, and, oh my god, Aria what the hell is wrong with you) Uh, the other chapters have a…fun camping trip, a spooky test of courage…some clothes shopping…those poor cows, uh, let’s just get right to the scores, shall we?

Art – 9 I still really dig the detailed artwork, and Akili’s skill with faces and expressions and tones.

Story – 5 Girl pursues vampire, everyone goes camping, and we get a big fight scene. Hopefully Akili gets to draw more fighting, there were some really cool angles and perspectives in here.

Characters – 4 Jiro (Aria’s manservant from volume 1) doesn’t show up. I miss Jiro. I like everybody else a lot less this time around.

Service – I was not expecting to see a 14-year-old girl’s vulva that clearly through the bathwater. Like, everything’s drawn all wavy and ripply, but now that I look closer, there’s no mistaking it.

Yuri – 7 Smooches happen, even if Aria’s not into it. Sakuya comes onto way too many young girls. Score given is for quantity and not quality.

Overall – 2 I started out closer to a 6 when I was just lightly reading this for fun, but the more things I noticed and the more I started thinking about them, the less fun it got. I was worried about talking you, dear reader, out of trying this book; now, I almost kind of hope that I did?

Final thoughts: if you’ve read Vampeerz vol.2 and really like it, that is wonderful; I’m honestly not trying to talk anyone out of enjoying something. To paraphrase Matt Allex from horror film podcast Horror Show Hot Dog: you like more stuff than I do, that means you’re winning, in a way. There’s a cute story in here if you’re able to gloss over some stuff (just like how the cover is fully glossy now, booo). I just want you to understand that if someone else has some issues with this book, they have some legitimate reasons, and they’re not just being intentional spoilsports out to ruin your day or anything. We cool? Cool.

Erica here: I mean, yes. All of this. And the fact that although the manga continues, the narrative kind of really doesn’t. Akili’s love of pervy peekaboo is openly on display here. When you remember that Denpa Books was originally co-founded by the VP of Fakku Comics, it’s not that surprising, though.

Vampeerz – “My Peer Vampires,” Volume 1, Guest Review by Christian LeBlanc

March 22nd, 2023

So this girl wants a vampire lover.
But first, take a look at this cover!
Dappled texture and flaps
It in no way detracts
From the contents, it adds lots of lustre!

Chocolate and peanut butter. Coffee and donuts. Yuri and vampires. All famously great pairings, and Akili’s Vampeerz, Volume 1 (subtitled “My Peer Vampires” and translated by Molly Rabbitt) is yet another addition to the latter, joining the likes of Killing Me!, Hungry for You, Scarlet, Ms. Vampire Who Lives in my Neighborhood, Vlad Love, etc etc etc. (For more on why there are so many Yuri vampire stories, please see Erica’s video on the subject here: https://youtu.be/rkE3pg-ihvA

So what does Vampeerz have that sets it apart from these other stories? I reached out to publisher Denpa to help me answer that, because I was curious about the cover binding, which I thought was quite thick and classy; it even has those nice flaps you see sometimes. I was told it was gloss, with no extra laminate, whereas most other covers have two layers of film instead of the one layer used on Vampeerz. To my eyes, this produces a cover with a bit of texture in the gloss, an almost dappled toothiness that sets it apart.

As for what the story has that other works don’t? The short answer to that after thumbing through those other works is “less chaos,” but let’s delve into that.

When we begin, Ichika (14 years old, long black hair, not a vampire) is mourning the passing of her grandmother Chiyo. This in turn brings about the arrival of Aria (??? years old, short blond hair, is a vampire), who claims to have been a friend of Chiyo’s.

From the start, it’s obvious to the reader that there was more to Aria’s relationship with Chiyo than she’s letting on, but Ichika is taking a little longer to suspect, maybe in part because she quickly finds that she’s fallen for Aria (I know this pun diminishes you and I both, but it was truly love at first bite for her). In turn, Aria ignores questions about how she can know certain archaic things, and blatantly brushes off any peculiarities with a hilariously patronizing wide-eyed “Wow, golly!” feigning of innocence. She’s a busy vampire with goals, after all. You almost get the sense that she relates to the humans around her the way most adults do to children: she can’t really be up front about what’s going on, because she assumes most people aren’t ready to have those conversations yet. And honestly, Ichika isn’t just a child compared to Aria; she *is* still a child, full stop.

And what are Aria’s goals? It turns out vampires (Aria prefers the older term ‘Lilu’) in real life don’t resemble the ones from movies very much, aside from drinking blood (which is inexplicably sexy, of course, in a similar vein to how women are shown enjoying chocolate in tv commercials), hypnotizing people, and living a long time. It’s this last bit that Aria wants Ichika to help her with: feeling that she’s lived long enough, Aria needs Ichika to be the one to end her, because…actually she was just getting into why it had to be her, when Ichika interrupts her to explain all the reasons she doesn’t want to just kill somebody.

And thus, we have the main story elements of Vampeerz: girl meets vampire, girl is asked to kill vampire, but girl likes vampire.

Getting back to my earlier question, what is there that recommends Vampeerz over the many other vampire Yuri works? Well, Ichika has a cool Emily King wall scroll hanging in her bedroom, for one. The rad cover, like I mentioned. The artwork carries a certain classiness and charm, and the calm, quiet pace invite the reader to take their time and enjoy how this story is being told. There are microscopic touches of slapstick (Aria has to clobber a manservant to throw off suspicion), mystery and the supernatural (there’s a really cool depiction of how a barrier is preventing Aria from entering a shrine), but Ichicka’s growing feelings for Aria are what take prominence.

Lastly, I understand that the use of modern slang and references to memes can take certain readers out of the story, but Aria channeling Steve Buscemi as she introduces herself to her new classmates is both appropriate and hilarious, and I applaud Molly Rabbitt for going there.

Ratings:

Art – 9 I really like the slightly quirky art style, as well as the detailed tones and excellent use of shading.

Story – 6 One girl likes another girl, that girl is a vampire, and with that comes some mystery.

Characters – 5 Jiro (Ichika’s manservant) is really cool and I genuinely wanted to see more of him. The fact that I can say that about a minor dude character in a Yuri romance, as well as the fact that I keep getting distracted by the cool cover, should tell you what I’m too polite to say out loud: I like our leads, I really do, but I also can’t help comparing them to potato water in terms of being able to hold my interest!

Service – 3 Fairly tame for the most part…but while I say that, this is also probably the first time I’ve been able to make out someone’s labia majora while they were wearing pyjamas.

Yuri – 7 Ichika is definitely into Aria. Ichika’s mom Sakuya is definitely into young women.

Overall – 7 It’s missing a certain je ne sais quois, however, the art carries it a lot, and as far as vampire Yuri romances go, it’s certainly the most coherent one I’ve enjoyed.

Erica here: I didn’t want to detract from the joy of reading the limerick right away, so instead I’m jumping in as a final word. Those of you have been following Akili’s work from back in Tsubomi days under another name, will remember that this artist started with porn and this manga has all those hallmarks, without the actual porn part. Sexualizing Yuri vampires? No one has ever done that before! ^_^ Seriously, though, we could do worse than having Akili turn his hand to it. Maybe, also better, but definitely worse. ^_^ Thanks so much to Christian who will be back next week with Volume 2!

Archive for the Christian LeBlanc Category

Okazu Staff takes on Yuri Is My Job, Volume 12