Archive for the LGBTQ Category


Yuri Manga: Plica-chan

February 28th, 2006

Time for a review of a 100% Yuri manga that is almost unknown here in the West.

Plica-chan, written and drawn by Amamiya Sae, is the bittersweet, realistic story of Plica, a young lesbian looking for love in modern Japan. Emphasis on the bitter, rather than the sweet – not because Plica doesn’t find love, don’t get me wrong! Bitter ’cause she’s just a bitter kind of gal.

The manga, which is written in 4-panel strip style, originally ran in Anise magazine, and now runs in the LOUD News, the newsletter for the LOUD organization. Youcan find the comic archive here. Plica’s comments are often on the nature of sexuality, the relationships between men and women, and between women and women. Erin S. has a section of her Yurizuki site dedicated to synopsizing some of the Plica strips, so you can get an idea of what’s going on.

The whole strip starts on a low note, as Plica returns from an ex-lover’s wedding. But not too long into it, Plica meets Mari, for whom she starts to have feelings pretty soon. But, like most butches, Plica is too unsure to try anything. (I have a theory about most butch women actually being really neko/uke…which begs for an essay on the perception and reality of butch/femme, neko/tachi and uke/seme. But I digress.) Thank goodness femme Mari is, like so many femmes, perfectly willing to go after what she wants. She and Plica have been together since. As I said, it’s a bittersweet comic – rather more real than fanciful, so don’t expect roses and lillies. ^_^

There was one collected volume of Plica-chan, with a section translated into English by none other than internationally known BL scholar Mizoguchi Akiko (a lesbian herself, and one of our guests at Yuricon in Tokyo.)

The art takes some getting used to if you’re used to the more traditional manga style but it’s good to take a break from the usual now and then. :-)

I particularly liked the comic posted on Feb. 21, 2006, where Plica comments that she finds Mari very sexy in a suit, but doesn’t want to tell her, yet, because it sounds so dirty old man that she’s afraid Mari will stop wearing them. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 6 (minimalist, but not unpleasant)
Story – 7 (more bitter than sweet)
Characters – 7 (like real people, they are sometimes very annoying)
Yuri – 10
Service – 1

Overall – 7

Plica-chan is the almost exact opposite of yesterday’s Shoujo Sect – substance over style. If you’re looking for a more realistic look at lesbian life, take a look at Plica-chan.





Carmilla, Issue 5

December 14th, 2004

It’s lesbian, its Yuri, but I still don’t get it.

Carmilla magazine took up the slack in Japan’s lesbian community, even as Anise was failing.

Where Anise was a sort of light-hearted look at the lesbian and bisexual community in Japan, there’s an edge to Carmilla that I just don’t really “get.” In my opinion, it reads like a parody of a lesbian magazine written by gay men.

Like its predecessor (and the lesbian mag before that, Phryne,) Carmilla runs reviews of lesbian/gay/bi/trans hotspots, parties, movies, books, etc. There’s some short manga series – all of which seem to be BDSM-heavy, with lots of bondage, rape and animals – and a few short stories, which I’ve never had the fortitude to try and read. And there’s always, as seems inevitable in Japanese lesbian magazines, interviews with various couples. I cannot, for the life of me understand why people give a rat’s ass about two other people who are not them, but it’s a thing. I get over it.

Overall, there’s an, I don’t know exactly, hardcore drag queen-type sensibility to the magazine that kind of puts me off.

Now, to be fair, I do not regularly read *any* lesbian/gay/bi/trans magazines, not since my free subscriptions at my last job dried up. But while I may be bored by one of the major English-language lesbian mags, Carmilla leaves me feeling…icky. I had read Issue 2 way back when Rica Takashima had brought me an issue as a present, and it hasn’t changed much by Issue 5, which I read last week. So clearly, this is what the mag is, and any problems I have with it are my own. Deep in my heart, I wish for a magazine that reviews art/music/books/films without the usual “Oh look! It has a lesbian in it! We must all rush and support it, even though it bites!” attitude. Interviews with people are usually, tedious. Skip ’em. Give me stuff to watch and read and drop the rest. You know…like this blog! ^_^;

I can’t really rate this, as everything in the mag is variable, but overall, I don’t care for it too much. It makes me long for Anise.