I didn’t make it past the first chapter of Sexy G-Men Maki & Mina (セクシーＧメン　麻紀＆ミーナ). It wasn’t good enough to be called “dire.” I’m guessing I bought it because there was Yuri in it, but I couldn’t make it far enough in to find it.

The plot, what there was of it, is that in the future all marriages must have sexual relations in order to make babies and it is illegal for a marriage to be sexless. When a relationship isn’t working, Maki and Mina are dispatched to teach the couple how to make babies and enjoy it.

Yep.

So…

Ratings:

Overall – 0

What *was* I thinking when I bought this? I do not know. Yes, I do – it was on all the Japanese Yuri lists and I thought it might have Yuri aside from the painful breast grope on the cover. In other words, I really don’t know what I was thinking.

I can say this – Mori Minako is no Mori Natsuko.

In Blue Friend, Volume 3 (ブルーフレンド), Kanako starts her first day of high school by making friends with a group of three girls, all of whom seem fashionable and fun, so she thinks high school life is going to be pretty swell. She really doesn’t get that girl in class, Ao, who just seems rude. But quickly, her relationship with her new friends starts to sour as Aki presumes on their friendship. Finally, Kanako has had it, and tells the group she’s done with them. Aki begins to retaliate with time-honored bullying, to the mortification of the other two girls. But Kanako walks away without a glance behind her and becomes close friends with Ao after all.

Ao’s outspoken, opinionated personality has a striking affect on Kanako. She’s able to say what she thinks and not hide her feelings and, as a result, she thinks she’d like to be friends with Ao. Ao’s reaction is extreme – she’s been alone for so long, she had no idea how to “be friends.” But she tries.

Kanako tries to be stronger, Ao tries to open up and intermittently, they accidentally get one step too close and the tension between them rises. When Ao kisses Kanako in a puricula booth – because she was told it was totally normal by some schoolmates – she realizes that her feelings aren’t “normal” and she pulls away from Kanako. But Kanako has learned to speak her mind now and she forces the truth from Ao. She later gets a kiss of her own in, but in all honestly, there’s miles to go for both of them before they have room for those kinds of feelings.

The situation with Aki gets worse, and she steals a phone strap that Kanako bought for Ao. Ao finds it, but not before Aki’s jealous bullying is outed for what it is, and she is roundly scolded by her friends and Kanako. The other girls ask Kanako to be their friends again, but Kanako refuses, saying she’s found a better friend in Ao. The two are reunited and after an embrace, we are assured that they’ll walk towards the future together through sweet and bitter.

Although this is really a story about friendship, with the barest edge of tension between them, I liked it loads. For one thing, all of the girls tell the bully off, including what would normally be her henchchicks. Basically, the bully is the lamest character, not inexplicably powerful. Phew. Secondly, it’s okay to have the girls just be friends…to develop the kind of friendship that in Japan is traditionally assigned only to men. A bosom buddy, through thick and thin. There’s an old saying which I can’t be bothered to look up about how women’s relationships can’t last. You know, because we’re weak in the brain and when a guy comes along, we go all gaga over him and become rivals, or something. So just having Ao and Kanako being friends is fine with me.

As a sequel to the first two Volumes of Blue Friend (here are my reviews of Volume 1 and Volume 2 ), it was refreshingly not locked in a story of mental unwellness, or a struggle against bullying. In the way that the first arc sort of “fixed” some of the more horrible tropes of classic shoujo Yuri, this arc “fixes” the bullied student trope. For that, I’d recommend it to a girl child I liked.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story- 8
Characters – 7
Yuri – 2
Service – 1

Overall – 7

It might not quite be Yuri, but there is tension between them and maybe one day, it’ll be something more. Or not. It’s fine the way it is.

Just fyi, due to life, I will not be posting for the next few days. Feel  free to revisit the over 2000 previous posts that are here for yucks. I’ll see you back here next week.

Geting a new volume of Rakuen Le Paradis is, for me, what Girls Night Out must be for more typical women. Its a chance to kick back and read something made, pretty much for me, with just enough “bad behavior” built in that it feels hedonistic, even though realistically, I’m sitting here reading a comic book, just as going out for drinks and bad behavior must make “normal” women feel like they are being bad, while they are, in fact, not really doing much of anything, good or bad. ^_^ Sort of like the woman on the cover of this issue – it looks like she’s being hedonistic, and maybe, there’s a couple of things we might think of that she might be doing, but probably she’s just sitting on a railing drinking a glass of wine. ^_^

In Nishi UKO’s “Collectors,” Takako has changed her hair color, but Shinobu recognizes her from a distance anyway. (I once recognized my wife by her knees, so..,yeah.)

This issue of “My Dear” by Kazuma Kowo, Akito-sempai has to confront his mother with the concept that he is dating Chikako. It’s ugly, but he gets past it, and gets a kiss as a reward. One of my two favorite not-Yuri stories in the magazine.

I will never ever like Kurosaki Rendou’s art, but in “Kanojou Jikken,” [sic] his characters look less strung out than usual, although their feelings are mismatched.

“Seijukuki Jinmei Vega” by Hayashiya Shizuru continues, much to my suprise and pleasure. Vega, it turns out, is really suffering from Washime-sempai’s reluctance to recharge her with a kiss. When an attractive older woman kisses Vega for real, she returns to her full-sized alien form. Typically, Washime-sempai responds in the wrongest way possible. Sigh.

“Omoi no Kakera” hits two very interesting hurdles, as Mika is told that her preference for older woman is merely delusion and denial on her part and the owner of the cafe Mika thinks she likes comes very, very close to having to deal with her roommate’s feelings for her. I can’t say I want Mika to get together with Mayu, though…!

Nishi Uko completes another short “Ni-ju no Mugen” about a woman and what she associates her lover with.

Hisaki Mika throws in a little story about a kouhai that thinks her female sempai is cute in “Kawaiiyo.”

And, while not Yuri at all, but still one of my absolute must-reads. Kazuki and Kanata are too adorable for words, again, in “14-sai no Koi” as they discover that they’d actually like to touch one another when they do the traditional after-festival folkdance. Good heavens, these two are cute.

Typically, I will buy a magazine if I read two stories that run in the magazine. When it’s 6 perissue, like this magazine, it’s a no brainer for me. Rakuen Le Paradis remains my #1 magazine every issue. ^_^

Ratings:

Overall – 8

Shou is depressed. There’s just no other way to describe it, really. She doesn’t like school, she doesn’t like home, the whole town holds no interest for her…life holds no interest for her.

Then she wanders into a teeny little overgrown patch of a park and meets a blind girl who teaches her the value of life.

Kurai Mori, Shiroi Michi (くらいもり、しろいみち) is a fable about appreciating what you have while you have it, because you just never know when you’re going to lose it.

I’d be hard pressed to call this a Yuri story. It’s true that Chiharu, the blind girl, seems to have affection for Shou, and it’s just as clear that Shou feels something about Chiharu, but we never really allow their relationship to develop past “feels something.” The impression is one of had they had time and freedom, they might have come to love one another.

Despite the premise – and I mean that literally, because the premise starts off heavy-handed and dire – I came to really like this series. Upon my third re-read of this volume I figured out why. Chiharu is really everything Shou is not. She dresses in white, and has no vision, but radiates things like light and joy, all of which is tedious…but she also has a snarky sense of humor, which really pulls her out of the stereotype she was falling into. Shou redeems herself at the ends, where she catches up to the lesson she’s been taught and, perhaps, has a chance at becoming a person one day.

Yoshida Chiyu’s art is approachable, but scritchy, somewhere in between typical josei and typical Yuri, if I had to pick an analogy. I like it, and ultimately, I liked this story, despite the brickbat of allegory.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Yuri – 3
Service – 0

Overall – 8

Opposites attract. ^_^