Archive for the Luce Category


I Don’t Know Which Is Love, Volume 2

February 21st, 2024

A pretty girl with long black hair and gray eyes, reaches toward us with lightly lavender-tinted fingernails, blushing and smiling at us.by Luce, Staff Writer

Welcome back to the rollercoaster Yuri harem series, I Don’t Know Which Is Love, Volume 2.  In Volume 1, our protagonist is Mei Soraike, a girl who fell in love with a female friend at high school, and upon getting her heart broken, swears that she will reinvent herself and get a girlfriend in college! Within a few days of starting, she ends up with five candidates, all of whom are vying for her attention. At the end of volume one, Karin said they should just go out, and then Riri arrived…?

Within ten pages of starting, Mei finds herself between Karin and Riri while they’re asking who she wants to sleep with. Indecisive… and experiencing ‘too gay to function’ (Mei often experiences this), she elects to sleep on the floor instead. She ends up in a charged lecture with Prof Maria, and later, she finds herself in a three person play with Karin and Minato (somewhat for their own ulterior motives), joins Riri on a photoshoot to try and improve her acting, goes out to see a play with Minato to try and get her voice right, and ends up practicing with Kaori… and when the script says french kiss, she does! 

DareKoi remains an enjoyable rollercoaster, never lingering long on any one moment, although it doesn’t quite feel like it is rushing either. It knows what the reader wants – girls flirting and kissing, and by jove, you get that. Sprinkled on the top are some of the love interests wondering if they love Mei, too. What I like is that the harem have positive interactions with each other – while they are kind of fighting over Mei, they are also their own people. Minato and Karin knew each other before they knew Mei, and they remain friends, and Riri and Karin also seem to know each other. 

Honestly, I’d be quite happy with a polyamorous ending – it would be fun if the answer to Mei’s question of ‘which is love?’ is ‘all of them’, as I like to think love can take many different forms. It likely won’t, but the playing field is pretty even for the time being. Karin has asked Mei out, but Mei doesn’t feel like she’s ‘near her level’ – but that she’ll try! What I like about Mei is that although she’s generally passive in so much as everything seems to happen around her, she is trying. She only has one frame of reference for love, being her old friend, so her inexperience makes sense. Speaking of that old friend, her face hasn’t been shown as yet – I’m not sure we even have a name – but I can only assume that she is going to pop back up at some point. I hope Mei does okay when that happens. She’ll probably be either on a date or in a compromising position, knowing this series, but it does it with such heart that I’m looking forward to it.

Ratings:

Story: 7
Art: 8
Characters: 7
Service: 5
Yuri: too Yuri to function

Overall: 8

I Don’t Know Which Is Love, Volume 2 is available now in print and digital from Yen Press!





Sheep Princess in Wolf’s Clothing, Volume 1 Guest Review by Luce

November 15th, 2023

A wolf-woman in a butler's suit leans over a sheep-woman in a colorful dress, with flowers floating around them.In the Land of Sheep with ‘Wolfa’ – people with wolf ears and tails, and ‘Sheepa’, those with sheep ears, Aki Rukijo, a Wolfa butler, is the private tutor to Momo Shiudafaris, a Sheepa princess. Princess Momo is known as the ‘frigid’ princess, and rarely leaves her rooms. After an incident with a wild wolf on a full moon which Aki saves her from, Momo has Aki appointed her private tutor, although that’s not really her true aim. On a night of a full moon, when wolves find their instincts harder to ignore, Momo sneaks into Aki’s bedroom and declares that she loves her, and she’ll ‘gobble her up’!

Despite what sounds like a racy beginning for Sheep Princess in Wolf’s Clothing, Volume 1, by Mito, nothing much actually happens in that scene beyond kissing and them getting naked. And it doesn’t happen again in this volume, although Momo is definitely thinking about it. Bluebell, Momo’s Sheepa maid, is fully on board with the princess’s courting of Aki. Aki is more reserved about the whole thing, mostly since she is a commoner, and Momo is, well, a princess. Thus, Momo continuing to try and court her. It’s all rather cute, really.

Momo, being a princess and possibly having some previous bad experience, is somewhat limited in her experience of the outside world – the two of them go on a castle date, which is cute, but Momo wants more. Egged on by Bluebell and aided by Sakaki and Kiku, fellow Wolfa friends of Aki’s, the two of them disguise themselves and go into town, which is suitably adorable, and actually shows them getting on as people, bonding over the play they went to see, and over books.

I wondered if there might be some class difference between the Wolfa and Sheepa, but if there is, it isn’t touched upon much in this first volume. The royal family is Sheepa, although we only see two here, third princess Momo and her mother, the queen, but other than that, no mentions are made. I think there might be other animal hybrids, but they aren’t mentioned by name. It feels very much more of an aesthetic choice than a story-driven one, which is honestly fine. A work doesn’t always need to have something to say in particular, and the mangaka likely just wanted to draw cute girls with wolf and sheep ears; not to mention the role-reversal of the more confident sheep courting a flustered wolf. I can understand that.

Ratings:

Story: 6 – more about cuteness than plot
Art: 8 – lots of blushing, but the art is nice throughout, the colour pages are very pretty
Yuri: 10 – definite courting between the main couple, possible background yuri couples
Service: 3 – Momo in her underwear, and Aki in butler wear. It suits her.
Animal ear rating: 10 – they even flap when the characters get excited

Overall: 9

If you like animal hybrids and a cute story, or always kind of wanted the princess to get with their maid/another woman close to them, this seems like a pretty good bet. Volume 2 is headed our way next spring –  I’ll certainly continue reading. Final aside, Aki reminds me a little of Zakuro of Tokyo Mew Mew, albeit only by looks, and Momo is a bit like a more assertive Elianna from Bibliophile Princess.

Thank you very much to Seven Seas for the review copy! The translation was by Jan Cash, with lettering by Rina Mapa – I didn’t notice any issues with either, which usually means a job well done!





I Don’t Know Which Is Love Volume 1, Guest Review by Luce

August 30th, 2023
A woman with blonde hair looks excitedly at the women which we see reflected in her polished nails.Soraike Mei, on the day of her high school graduation, had her heart broken by the girl she’d had a crush on for three years. In college then, Mei swears, she WILL get a girlfriend! Absolutely! So… what happens when she suddenly has five candidates vying for her time and affections?!
 
Folks, we’ve seen this all before in het manga, now it’s our turn: the Yuri harem. I Don’t Know Which Is Love, Volume 1 does not hang around letting you know that, introducing all five love interests within less then fifty pages. Are you ready? Keep your hands and feet inside the carriage at all times, and hold onto the bars. We have:
 
Shirosawa Riri: first introduced as boobs (less skeevy than it sounds? Mei is just too gay to function) she is an idol of some sort… Potentially a more racy model than a singer, based on the pictures we see. Takes ‘first girl’ slot.
 
Todomeki Maria: Mei’s advisor, a professor in psychology, and the very opposite of a stuffy old man,  she’s ‘the older one’. She accurately guesses that Mei is ‘into girls’ (for some reason the word lesbian isn’t used), says that there are ‘lines you can’t cross’ with them being professor and student, turns on the professional talk about the advisor side of things… Then tells Mei to let her know if she wants to cross the line. At least Mei is also an adult here?
 
Minato: on the more butch side of things, Mei meets her when she goes to get a coffee, and again instantly falls in love with how cool she is. They meet again later and Minato persuades her to give her theatre troupe a try, as she really likes Mei’s voice. At a drinking meet up with the troupe, Mei then meets…
 
Ajima Karin: one of the actors in the troupe, designated by one of the boys as the ‘kiss-crazy’ senpai. And indeed, before she even knows Mei’s name, she asks to kiss her, Mei hesitates for 0.3 seconds (yes, it tells us this) and they kiss. Karin propositions going back to hers together, but Mei has to get back for her dorm curfew. Heading back to her dorm, her roommate isn’t in yet, but while she’s sleeping…
 
Kunimasa Kaoru: The roommate! Mei is asleep when she comes in, but she immediately stated that Mei ‘reeks of other girls’ and… strips her of her clothes and gets into bed with her. Then proceeds to call her a body pillow for the rest of the manga.
 
All introduced in 45 pages! A whistle stop tour of Mei’s college girlfriend candidates, but as she says at the end of chapter 1: she just doesn’t know which is love!
 
That said, I think with the explosiveness of this first chapter, I don’t think any are ‘love’ right now, definitely more lust driven. This is not a chaste harem by any stretch of the imagination: Kaoru (consensually, if slightly hesitant) sticks her face in Mei’s boobs to smell her, it’s implied that Minato gets off to Mei’s voice over a call, Mei looked up hot pics of Riri (seems to be a page 3 type model), and Karin is definitely going for more than kisses and cuddles.
 
I’ve not seen another manga go at such a breakneck pace. We get all the introductions, then a second encounter with each of the harem members, usually of a somewhat racy variety. The author stated that they differentiated the love interests by having them interested in different things about Mei, (like, uh, her scent… Her voice… I think it’s loosely ‘the five senses’ – Minato is sound, Kaoru is scent, Karin is taste, Riri is most likely sight, which makes Maria touch, I guess) which is a more novel take on it.
 
The concept does seem to get a little puzzling though – for someone who, in theory, expressedly came to college to get a girlfriend, Mei isn’t open about being a lesbian, which seems odd to me – I know we joke about gaydar, but surely you need to put yourself out there a bit. Wait, no, it’s basically a glass closet, because of how strongly she reacts to women: put it this way, no one questions whether she’s straight. What confuses me more is that towards the end, she states that beyond kissing is something you’d only do with a girlfriend – which feels somewhat in keeping with her as a sheltered lesbian, but also a little odd considering the rest of the book. I mean she’s been fine with girls’ faces in her boobs and being in bed naked with them, but now she objects? Although if she didn’t and decided to go with casual sex, the main conflict would go away, so.
 
Ultimately, this is a lesbian fantasy manga. It’s just not that deep. Who will Mei pick in the end, if just one? Who knows. Normally in a harem manga, it would be the ‘first girl’ that tends to win out. It’s certainly still possible here, but as Riri’s not a childhood girl or has any sort of long standing relationship with Mei, she is on a more equal footing to everyone else. Mei is not really pro-actively pursuing any of them and is kind of just going with the flow, so it’s more down to the love interests than her, at the moment. Have your cake for now, Mei, it’ll probably work out.
 
 
Story: 6
Art: 7
Yuri: 11
Service: 8, no detailed nakedness, but plenty of roaming hands and bra shots
Mei being too gay to function: over 9000!
Overall: 7
 

If you want a daft, fairly raunchy Yuri harem… Well, this is your only one, I think. But it is fun, and you never really know what’s going to happen next – honestly, I have no idea. Join the lesbian roller coaster, folks. Or as Yen Press themselves tweeted, watch Mei pick up girlfriends ‘like PokĂ©mon’. Collect your picture as you exit the ride.

…




If I Could Reach You, Guest Review by Luce

June 7th, 2023

A woman stands looking out onto a purple night sky, holding a sitting girl's hand.Welcome once again to Guest Review Wednesday! We have a whole bunch of guest for the next few weeks, so let’s this part started! Today we once again welcome back Luce, who will be taking a look at a completed series. Take it away, Luce!

I’m Luce, collector of books and sometimes I even read them. I come bearing a review of a series that’s been out for a while and is complete, If I Could Reach You by tMnR. Enjoy!

The very first pages of the manga, tinged with blue, show us the exact moment Uta realised that she’d fallen in love – the exact moment her sister-in-law became her crush. A year later, Uta is in high school and is living with Reiichi, her older brother, and Kaoru, the aforementioned sister-in-law. No matter how she tries, she cannot get over this love, her ‘too late’ love. If I Could Reach You is the examination of this binary star system of Uta and Kaoru, and how they keep circling each other, never quite able to clear that distance, nor leave.
 
A tragedy, to me, is a story in which fate cannot be fought. It marches on, tramples over all in its path, and death seems the only escape from it. Is this a tragedy? No, not really. But I think it shares some similarities. It is circular, somehow, an invetability to the telling of it. Uta loves Kaoru. Uta knows it’s hopeless, but cannot give it up. She knows that Kaoru sees her as a sister only, which only makes it worse – Kaoru wanting to be closer in a familial way speaks to what Uta wants, but not for the reasons she wants it. The manga is seven volumes, so it’s not so prone to the endless circling that some romance manga seem to get into, but it’s certainly not decisive in its action. It moves quite slowly, building up layers of paint onto the canvas, until you finally get the whole picture – or is it? Some things are left untold even by the end, left to our imagination.
 
The drama felt pretty realistic and down to earth. It’s fairly obvious that Kaoru and Reiichi’s relationship isn’t quite working even at the start – the blurb of the first volume tells you that – but the actual reason is kept right until the end of the manga, as the issue comes together. The fall out is realistic. It’s not so much a soap opera of a shoujo manga, but a more melancholic tide of no one quite being happy, but none are able to address it, nor particularly face it, so it continues.
 
Having said that, I don’t see this as a depressing manga. It doesn’t feel hopeless, to me. It feels like a snapshot of lives not my own, just watching them play out, unable to impact them in any way. There are plenty of moments of levity, and characters that change the tone, not interested in dwelling in pity. Kuro, and her relationship with Miyabi, is an interesting aside, and Konatsu, although she has her own regrets, has her own unique way of dealing with things too. I think this manga is about uneven relationships, really, where feelings don’t quite match each other, and the strain that can put on them – and whether they can survive it. I’m not so keen on the portrayal of love as some unending emotion, unable to be shaken or swayed, but I can forgive that, as I do with many manga.
 
The art is fairly simple, but gives itself space to breathe – the emotions come through clearly. There was a panel in the first volume, where Uta has a dream in class about Kaoru kissing her – the panel of her jolting awake is the thing I remember most. The despair, the horror, perhaps the relief that it hadn’t actually happened, or the disappointment. It was this panel that really caught me, and made me carry on with it. There are lots of big panels and expressions which made me stop – if I had one complaint, it would be that everyone is a little stretched, with long limbs. It’s not unusual for manga, but does make me wonder about everyone’s heights, sometimes.
 
Although I enjoy this series, I’m having trouble with who to advise might like it. It has a little of the realism of How Do We Relationship? But isn’t so swift in its story-telling. It doesn’t really have the clear narrative of many shoujo, and it’s neither a wholly happy story nor a big drama. Perhaps if you like stories with something of an open end, this might appeal. If I had to compare the mood of it, it would be to Solanin by Inio Asano, in its relatively mundane, melancholic realism in depicting messy and imperfect relationships.
 
Story: 6
Art: 6
Yuri: 5
Service: 3 (the odd bath scene, not done salaciously as far as I recall)

Overall: 6

E here: Fantastic review, Luce. “…this manga is about uneven relationships” really puts it all into perspective for me. Terrific. Thanks so much!

 
 




Yuri Espoir, Volume 4 Guest Review by Luce

May 31st, 2023

A girl with lavender hair sits at a table with two water glasses and a carafe looking directly at us, against a purple background with colorful stars.Once again we welcome you to Guest Review Wednesday and welcome Luce back as a Guest Reviewer. This is an ongoing series – we have reviewed Volumes 1-3 on Okazu –  so we’ll get right into it. Take it away, Luce!

Yuri Espoir, Volume 4 opens where the third volume left off, with Kokoro on her date with Mr Hanakago, and goes further into her discomfort with him and the way the world sees her. Amami and Mitsuru see Mr Hanakago, and it turns out Mitsuru knows something of his past, that we get glimpses of, but not a full picture. Amami and Kokoro spend the night at Mitsuru’s house, then we get a few imagine spots by Kokoro about Yuri couples, as per usual.

I will start by saying this volume, and therefore review, has some trigger warnings for self inflicted throwing up, homophobia, depression and suicide.

Some good things about this volume: I liked the relationship of Mitsuru’s parents, and how she doesn’t care how other people see them. They’re all happy, and that was nice to see. There are also three female schoolmates, now grown up, that live together happily, which sounds pretty ideal to me. Kokoro does have two imagine spots, and it’s nice to see her enthusiastic about something, doing her drawing and thinking about cute relationships. I quite enjoyed the last chapter in the main story, the reality being two step-sisters learning to get on, as their parents have moved in together. I do like the variety of relationships portrayed. We also get to see Mr Hanakago’s face and an allusion to his past, the implication is that it wasn’t great.

However. The first scene, we see Kokoro have what looks to be a panic attack. Feeling ill during her date, she tries to make herself throw up, and panics when she can’t, seemingly because if she takes too long, Mr Hanakago will tell her father. It appears to be a one off thing, but still, not exactly what I wanted to see.

But the thing that really got me was that the truth behind one of those imagine spots is, in my opinion, needlessly dark. A girl who clearly has depression starts dating another girl in her class who likes her. Fine. This relationship continues for several years it seems, as they move out and attend college. But her depression stops her from appreciating it, and they start fighting more and more frequently. Snubbed by her girlfriend, they go home separately, and she then sees her girlfriend kissing another of their friends. It turns out that earlier she had killed herself, which is shown on page, and was following them as a ghost – maybe? The time line is a bit confused. But she is a side character. Her death does not advance the main story. The chapter ends with that. It is not discussed, nor the impact shown. The girlfriend’s reaction – whose mother had killed herself when she was younger – is confusing. Not sure if that was a translation thing (seems to be alright for the rest, so possibly more likely the original thing). I might have missed something with regards to that.

If a manga is going to include suicide, I would rather it show the aftermath, not be an afterthought, not shown for the shock value. It may be an end for the person who has died, but it has reverberations for everyone left behind. It happens, I know that. But it’s so far away from what I thought this manga was going to be, I can’t recommend it. It’s been descending into darker tones, with the previous review touching on Yuri Espoir‘s somewhat tone deaf approach to sexual assault allegations, and I’m very disappointed it’s continued this way. I’m also quite disappointed that no helplines or advice are shown at the end of the volume, as it often done when things touch on these topics.

It also concerns me that with the manga going darker – Kokoro has said that she will ‘die’ after high school if she has to marry Mr Hanakago. This was, I believe, started to be that she would cease to be herself in that marriage, but with this volume, I cannot help but wonder if this has a more literal interpretation. I hope I’m wrong, I am hoping for a happier ending right now, but. Who knows? I want to see how it continues for now, but don’t be fooled by the cover – this is no longer a cute Yuri manga.

Really, I feel like this manga can’t decide what it wants to be. Does it want to focus on Kokoro and Amami? Kokoro and Mr Hanakago? Mr Hanakago and Mr Asahina? The Yuri subcouples? Instead it seems to do everything and not really succeed at much. I’m not against having various story threads, and it has been some time since I read the last volume, but it all seems confused. Additionally, I understand that acting against your family can be difficult, but we don’t see Kokoro try much. She complains that the world sees her as a guileless girl who needs help… But she’s not really done much to even give the reader much evidence to the contrary. About the most subversive thing she does is draw Yuri couples and imagine their life. But she’s doing that for her own benefit, basically just shipping strangers together. It was a nice mechanic when there wasn’t so much else going on, but now it’s just cluttering up the book, especially with such dark stories. I want to see Yuri joy, or even just interesting relationships, rather than darkness.

I’m hoping that this manga turns a corner soon – that Kokoro herself makes a real effort to avoid what’s being decided for her. But with whole chapters dedicated to one off stories, I think the going will be slow.

Story: 5, there are lots of words and not much action
Art: 6
Yuri: 8, mostly for Mitsuru’s family
Service: 0
Unexpected trigger warnings: 9

Overall: 5

I will end as Tokyopop didn’t: suicide is not an answer. There are helplines and advice, and things can and will get better. You are more than your darkest hour, and people will miss you, even if you think they won’t. Please seek help.

Erica here: To continue from Luce’s last point. Here in the United States, 988 is the Suicide Help Hotline. Please call.

Thank you Luce. I also hope this story turns a corner soon. It had a great premise, but is still taking itself very seriously in a way that isn’t working for the story…or for me.