The very first moment I encountered Watashi ni Karada, Utteminai? (私に体、売ってみない?) in Comic Yuri Hime, as a preview of a first chapter for a series running on their Pixiv channel, Yuri Hime @Pixiv, I knew that it was a terrible, awful, horrible, plot…and that I would like it anyway. ^_^

Tsukasa’s mother died when she was young, and her father fell into gambling away his pain. He amassed a huge debt, then abandoned his now-teenaged daughter to pick up the pieces of her life. Which she is, we assume, doing, until a loanshark shows up at her home, demanding she pay her father’s debt. 

Only, this loan shark is an attractive woman, who protects Tsukasa from a second, much less attractive or female loanshark who arrives to collect his money.  Tsurusaki Reiko grasps Tsukasa’s situation pretty quickly and offers her another way out – pay off the debt with her body, (double entendre intended.) The deal is, she will be Reiko’s assistant, housekeeper and companion and work the debt off that way. It’s not how Tsukasa intended to live, but hey, the prospects of being sold into sexual slavery by other, less attractive or female loansharks is even more unsavory. She takes the deal. 

And, in the course of living together and getting to know one another, Reiko and Tsukasa fall in love. I know, I know, who’dathunk it?

Like I said, this is a horrible, terrible plot, with all sorts of not-good things about it. It’s pretty much an argument for how arranged marriages are supposed to work, which is also a whole can of not-okay-worms. And the fact that they end up happily ever after is inexcusable for a Yuri manga in 2018. 

Nonetheless, with complete knowledge of all the really crappy lessons expressed here. I liked it. I knew I was going to, too, because this is such a shitty premise that one either should avoid it completely, or just settle in and recognize it for what it is –  a shitty romance plot. In fact, it’s so shitty, it reminds me a bit of the absurdities that filled Mist magazine, back in the day.  

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 2, but I liked it anyway
Character – 7
Service – 2 Mild given the premise
Yuri – 10

Overall – 8 

We even get an epilogue, in which Tsukasa, now adult, welcomes her loving wife home after a long day of loansharking and kneecapping.  ^_^ Awww…

I am returned from Japan, with a ton of cleanup to do. Gotta make room for new stuff by moving out some of the old. And I had weeded out my doujinshi collection this winter and that’s all gotta go, too.

And, of course, I picked up a bunch of stuff at Yuriten to share with you all. So it seems like it’s time for Lucky Boxes!

This set we’ve got 3 Medium size boxes and one large Premium Box.

Premium Box – $50

Medium Box 1 – $25

Medium Box 2- $25

Medium Box 3 – $25

These are listed out so I can cross them off as they go. Remember, the USPS has downsized the box sizes this year to keep prices down, so if you have previously received a medium or large box, these will be slightly smaller than those in previous years. As a result, I’ve lowered the prices a bit, too.

These boxes are all filled with doujinshi manga, random Yuri and Yuriish goodies,  other non-print media and each one includes a few items picked up in Japan and a few things from the Yuriten. We’ve switched back to the best Japanese candy, the Hana Kuchizuke.  They are pretty and taste good.^_^ The Premium box has got a few special items in it (obviously, that’s why it’s premium, obvs. )

 I can 100% guarantee these boxes are filled with absolute pure crap, with no guarantees of any other kind. 

***

How to be eligible to buy a Lucky Box: Follow these instructions carefully. Please. Thank you.

1- You must live in the Continental USA (contiguous 48) only, no APO/FPOs – sorry about that, really. 

2 – You must be over 18, I am not policing which books you get and since these boxes have a ton of doujinshhi, I really don’t know what you’re getting.

3 -Email me at anilesbocon01 at hotmail dot com with the subject “Lucky Box”. Use an email you check regularly.

4. *****Please include your name, age, mailing address. Tell me which box you want.*****

5- I will contact you at that point and give you details about payment by Paypal. Please be prepared to check your email and get payment out so this post doesn’t linger like a dead animal. Thanks in advance.

This whole process will be handled with utmost capriciousness. ^_^ 

And a special big heads up – this is only one set of boxes. There will be another one in upcoming weeks. If you miss your chance, keep your eyes open, we’ll do this again soon.

And here we are, at last. The final volume of Saitou Chiho-sensei’s magnificent edition of the Heian epic, Torikaebaya. Before you read this review, please make sure you read Jason L’s review of Rosette Willig’s translation of the source material, The Changelings, which we published yesterday on Okazu. I ask you to read it because a great deal of what Jason said about the Willig book is true for this manga version as well.

Quick note: The names of the characters in Willig’s translation are more properly their positions. Chuunagon is a counselor of the second rank in the Imperial Palace, a Middle counselor. (Sei Shonagon is so known because her father held the rank of Shonagon, lesser counselor). Naishi no Kami is the something like a head position among the women of the Imperial court.  In the manga, Sarasojuu was a Chuunagon, and Suiren was Toguu’s Naishi no Kami. Now, at the end of the book, Suiren is Chuunagon and Sara is Nasihi no Kami. Got it? Good, now forget it, because…..

Torikaebaya Manga, Volume 13 (とりかえ・ばや) begins with the malevolent spirit of the evil priest Ginkaku causing a fire to be set in the Imperial palace. Both Sarasoujuu and Suiren leap to assist, but in order to do so, Sara must once again put on men’s clothes. Tragedy is averted and, at last, the Emperor is confronted by both Suiren and Sarasojuu dressed identically as Chuunagon. Suiren and Sara finally get to tell the Emperor the whole story and he, because he is an ideal Emperor, accepts the story and the two siblings and that is that.  The Emperor, because he is an ideal Emperor, then uses the magical abilities the gods have bestowed upon him to bring rain from heaven and quench the flames. 

And here is where almost everything Jason said about gender and sex in Willig’s book is relevant for our tale – except for the focus on sexual violence. For this series, at least, sex is consensual. After Sara’s sexual encounters with Tsuwabuki, which were consensual but left her feeling dysphoric (not that that word was used), all the sex is entirely consensual and, at least in these final pages, welcome.

In the final pages, the conniving head of the women, Umetsubo, takes orders as a nun. The Emperor takes Sara, who now uses her given name, Suzushiko, as a wife. She bears him a male child and heir, thus solving the issue of succession. Suiren, who will forever live as Sarasojuu, marries Ichinomiya-hime (the former heir, Toguu-sama,) and they, too have a child. 

Undoubtedly, the straight, cisgender readers of Flower Comics understand this ending as a happy one. The ending is absolutely a happy one…unless you care about the lead characters’ gender identity. Everyone will be blissfully happy, except for readers of this blog. It is understandable, I think, that we find this ending less than perfect, because, like Jason, we do care that the characters get to be the gender they know they are.

It’s not like it could have ended another way, I knew that from the beginning. I mean, even in Heian Japan, Sara might have had a happy ending if he had been honest with Yon-no-hime and they kept his birth gender hidden, but there would have been no such luck for Suiren. As I finished the pages, I indulged in fantasizing a 21st -century update in which they could have remained the sex they were, and not the one they were assumed to be, and still had a happy ending. But it still wouldn’t have worked, because now they could live as the gender they were and it would have taken all the drama out of the story. 

Ratings:

Art – 10
Story – 9
Characters – 9
Service – 2

Overall – 10

As I’ve said repeatedly, Saitou-sensei’s art has been sublime from beginning to end here. Her storytellng has kept me on the edge of my seat. The ending was happy and beautiful and…still left me unsatisfied.  I guess there’s a lot of limitation to updating classics from a thousand years ago.

My sincere thanks to Jason for his review and to Saitou-sensei and her team at Flower Comics for one of the most beautiful manga I have ever read.

I am here today, my friends, to talk of insect. Not just any bugs, but beneficial, friendly, and dare I say it? attractive, bugs.

And girls.

Girls and bugs are most of the point of reading Mai no Mushi Gurashi（麻衣の虫ぐらし), so if if you’ve mourned the lack of bug science in Yuri, this is the book for you!

Shimizu Nanako helps her elderly grandfather run his small farm. They keep it going by selling their produce at roadside stands and to local businesses. Her best friend Sakurano Mai, helps her out. Mai, is an entertainer at a restaurant, and is the object of a rather service-y gaze by both reader and Sudou Raika, a naturalist who is working on creating better breeding conditions for butterflies in the nearby forest. 

In the course of volume one we encounter bugs that burrow in bark, that fly, that lay there, that crawl; many kinds of bugs, some of which I only now have a passing familiarity with on account of having read this book. I doubt I will ever remember that a namitentoumushi is a ladybug past the time it takes me to write this…but, on the other hand, the world has a weird way of requiring me to remember pieces of information exactly like that. ^_^

Yuri is in the form of Raika’s passive-aggressive dis/interest in Mai. The rest of the story is more about Mai and Nanako’s friendship. Both of them are thoroughly likable and their friendship is no more and no less than a close friendship. The volume ends with a heartrending chapter in which Nanako’s grandfather dies while watching the two young women harvesting the tomatoes for which the farm is known.

This book marks the very last of the pile of random things I picked up at the Animate Yuribu last November. I had no idea what this series was about, so it was a pleasure to find that it was both educational and entertaining. Having finished that pile, I’m very ready for a visit back to see what other delights those shelves hold, probably-a-vampire Yuri notwithstanding. 

For those of you interested in insect and their potential in a Yuri story should definitely take a look at this so-far single volume with it’s special-insert manga card.

Ratings:

Art – 8 Good, if a tad service-y
Story – 6 Slice of life with insects
Characters – 7 Pretty likable
Service – Amegappa Shoujogun the artist, likes drawing naked women, especially Mai
Yuri – 2 It’s not much but it is there.

Overall – 7

I was glad that my last book of the November crop was unique and not a vampire story. ^_^