Obscure Yuri Manga
Part 2

This time, blowing the dust off the cover was totally worth it. Onegai Suzune-chan is the kind of dire crap that I really enjoy.

Not to be confused with Onegai Teacher/Twins/Friends, and brought to you by Wani Comics, the same folks who also ran Ikkitousen, you can expect a ton of fanservice and sex, with a soupcon of plot thrown in for good measure.

Amagi Suzune is the 23rd Onmyouji of the Misora Shrine, the scion of a long line of court wizards, if you will. Her ardent, and often horny, girlfriend Karen and she make love just about every freaking place they can.

That’s the plot, so don’t expect much else.

Oh, there’s some demons and spirits and the like, and some of them have sex with Karen and/or Suzune too, but mostly this manga is a gigantic fanservice-y lesbo lovefest. I quite like it, if only because Suzune and Karen absolutely totally love each other to pieces. There’s no assumption that the lesbian sex is the appetizer for either of them – they are totally, 100% a couple.

There’s another lesbian in school, who is a bit over-the-top with her “I like to have sex with girls” attitude, but I’m probably just jealous that she’s so open and annoying at so young an age. She and her girlfriend, and (Karen and two straight female friends) are bewitched by a horny old shrine spirit into having a lesbian pileup, but Suzune beats the crap out of the spirit and everyone has a good laugh and moves on.

Even the inevitable hermaphrodite chapter is fun. A sakura tree/sex spirit that had been previously captured by Suzune makes a deal with Karen – she gets a male appendage for the evening, he gets to go home to his tree. It was a really sweet moment, even if it was utter filth. ^_^

As you can see, literature this ain’t. But for an utterly meritless trashy roll-in-the-hay manga, it’s brilliant. One more reason why trawling used manga stores is, indeed, worth the time and effort. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – Ha. Ha.
Characters – 8
Yuri – 10

Overall- 9

An excellent piece of crap. Yay!

Now *this* is good trash!

Eve no Ringo, (Eve’s Apple,) tells of the continuing misadventures of high schooler Kirika, an up-an-coming young manga artist, as she tries to break into the professional manga world. You may remember from Eve’s Apple, Volume 1, that she was hired by Blue Velvet, a S&M Ladies Comic.

In Volume 2, Kirika gets a brief chance to move into a much more popular shoujo manga magazine, but the Kind Editor’s offer is quashed by a self-proclaimed evil rival. Not content with simply trashing Kirika’s dreams, her rival, Mio, sends faxes to Kirika’s school, telling anyone who finds them what Kirika is doing in her spare time. Insane rival has fantasies of Kirika being gang-raped by drooling guys who assume that she’s a pervert. Instead, when she arrives, rival girl finds that mostly no one knows Kirika, except her small group of friend who think she’s plenty nice.

Why didn’t the faxes work? *Because*, they were faxed to the Doctor’s Office and the person who found them, the school doctor, LOVES Ladies Comics! She gets no less than 5 titles a month! She was so excited to meet Kirika, one of her favorite artists…and then she indulges in a spot of “seduce my favorite artist.” Apparently the school doctor is doing research on sex and what turns people on – and she gets Kirika right in the erogenous zone. But the doctor was only testing out her thesis, so poor Kirika is left gasping and moaning, but quite unfulfilled.

The crazy hardcore older mangaka Miyamae-sensei from Volume 1 seduces away Kirika’s best pal and “research” buddy Matsuda, which leads to a few moments of agonizing and confusion. And Evil Editor takes Kirika on a ride to explore the tawdry world of car sex. No, they don’t have car sex, you goofs. Although Kirika was worried there for a moment, too. ^_^

And, in the end, Kirika explores S&M with Yumiko, who doesn’t “get” it, but wants to make her boyfriend happy. Kirika ties Yumiko up, but she doesn’t enjoy that at all. However, when she’s got Kirika at her mercy – it all begins to make sense, now! And off Yumiko goes. So, once again, poor Kirika is left alone, gasping and moaning with nowhere to go.

Poor Kirika. That was the refrain all through this volume. This is, as I keep saying, utter, dire trash. But it’s funny and fun, and for crap, it’s pretty wonderful. :-)

I really hope Kirika gets some of her own in the next volume, I’m kind of feeling bad for her!

It’s utter crap, but it’s fun crap.

Kawai Kirika wants, more than anything else in the whole wide world, to be a manga artist. Her dream consumes her, drives her – she is *determined* to become a pro. So, when every shoujo manga company she visits rejects her work for being too adult, she takes a risk and goes to a shounen company. To her shock, they accept her…but on one condition. The magazine she’s working for is an S&M manga magazine. The editor, an evil tick of a guy (who will probably end up being good, because you know, he pushed her to be the best she could be) requires her to study up on BDSM and submit a story.

Okay…let me repeat – Eve no Ringo: Evasapfel (Eve’s Apple in English) is utter crap. ^_^

The next few chapters follow Kirika as she studies up on, and participates in, BDSM in ways that are actually quite sweet and silly. In one chapter, she explores what being a typical S&M Oujou-sama might be like, by tying up her best friend in the manga club – Matsuda-kun, who also happens to have a crush on her. She proceeds to whip the daylights out of him, then complain to him that her feet hurt from wearing stiletto-heeled boots. Jokingly, she orders him to lick her feet…but they both learn pretty quickly that they kind of like that.

There’s some more mutual discovery, and ultimately Kirika is drawn deeper and deeper (but with no lessening of her naivete and shock) into the world of S&M comics. A rival author, Miyamae, turns out to be pretty hardcore (she walks around naked and bound to be able to “experience the feeling”) and manages to finagle Kirika into a little light “research,” with some small Yuri-esque service.

Although she’s barely had a page or two published by Editor Evil, Kirika is put in charge of an even newer talent, Yumiko, who promptly blows the last of Kirika’s personal boundaries away, by asking her to play the part of a man and have sex with her (for research, of course.) This is followed by a remarkably silly chapter dealing with vibrators.

It’s all so goofy and cute that it’s not offensive, even while it’s all fanservice. I like it enough that if I encounter another volume, I’ll get it.

Ratings:
Story – 7
Characters – 7
Art – 7
Yuri – 7

Overall – 7

If you’re easily offended, probably not the best choice. But if you can read a chapter about a boy dressed like a nun paddling a girl in school uniform in front of a crazy older manga artist who is laughing like a hyena and demanding that her assistants capture the feeling in ink and laugh, then you’ll probably enjoy Eve’s Apple. ^_^