Archive for the Yuri Manga Category


Rain and the Other Side of You

May 3rd, 2021

Back in 2019  the folks at Galette Works gave us the problematic Ame to Kimi no Mukou (雨と君の向こう) written by Sakuraka Yukino with art by Momono Moto. I kind of wished they hadn’t. ^_^;

How surprised then, was I to find that Lilyka had picked it up and translated this volume it as Rain and the Other Side of You. When Lilyka ran it’s recent Sakura season sale, I figured that was as good a time to pick it up as any and so here we are looking at a problematic manga for a second time. It hasn’t aged well at all.

Mudarame Aki is a dead-eyed middle-schooler whose aggressive sexual behavior toward her teacher ought to have been the occasion for a house call from Youth Services, Teacher Kanou Yuka is presented as a woman who has no plan for her life, has been unsuccessful with men. When Mudarame-san throws herself at Yuka, she finds herself incapable of resisting.

In my review of the volume in Japanese, I wrote:

Aki[‘s] dead eyes and romantic overtures to her teacher scream “sexually abused” to this reader.

Yuka and Aki’s relationship is not a healthy one, not from the very beginning. Aki is manipulative and uses things like Yuka’s virginity as a weapon against her, which is just gross. Yuka tries going out with a guy and just finds herself going back to seek Aki’s company. When she and we see that our guess that Aki has been abused is correct, it still doesn’t make anything that’s happened okay.

If anything, it was worse on re-read, because it was in English and I couldn’t pretend I misunderstood Yuka’s justifications for not running for a phone and calling Youth Services.

What is good is Momono’s art, which captures Aki’s existential misery so well that it makes it thoroughly impossible to feel anything but pity for her and contempt for the adult who is not strong enough to help her. This is belied by an epilogue in which we see them some years later, looking happily domestic, but the mental gynmastics of this are too much to contemplate.

Okay, let’s set the dumpster fire of the story aside. Momono’s art is one of two reasons I read this book in the first place. She absolutely favors mopey, sad, traumatized characters as we may recall from her books Liberty, Volume 1 (リバティ), and Kimi Koi Limit. But the other reason is also the reason that this book being picked up by Lilyka is a good thing – this was the first of the books from Galette WORKS, the folks behind quarterly crowd-funded Yurimagazine, Galette (ガレット). If Lilyka can get some of those, I will be very pleased for us.

If you do pick this book up, let me warn you that the lettering is a little unsophisticated and the editing a bit shoddy. I’ve written to them to ask that the typos be fixed so if you do pick it up and they haven’t, let them know you think this is important, as well.

Ratings (same as the JP volume):

Art – 8
Story – 3
Characters – 5 No one would get a lunch invitation. Well, maybe the guy who goes out with Yuka, he seemed okay.
Yuri – 8
Service – The whole concept of an adult being attracted to a sexually abused child is a level of creepy I am unwilling to accept as anything other than criminal.

Overall – 5

It was not to my taste at all, where Liberty totally is. I hope you’ll all get to see that one day!

 





Comic Yuri Hime May 2021 (コミック百合姫2021年5月号)

May 2nd, 2021

Comic Yuri Hime May 2021 (コミック百合姫2021年5月号)’s cover story lets us enjoy the sensation of time travel and sharing crepes. Sincerely, this is a lovely story and I want to scream when I read it because it’s in 6 point type, for pity’s sake!

This issue was exceptionally good (for me ^_^) as it has a one-shot by Ohsawa Yayoi (yay!), “Sono hi, Night Date nanode” about an astronomy enthusiast who changes a web designer’s life. Absolutely charming on multiple levels. More like this please!

This chapter of “Watashi no Oshi ha Akuyaku Reijou” gives a teeny glimpse of Relaire, who, okay, yes, water slimes can be cute. ^_^

Usui Shio gets to really plumb the depths of adult emotions in both “Kaketa Tsuki to Donuts” and “Onna Tomodachi to Kekkonshitemita.” I really need to talk about the latter one day, because I think it’s doing itself a disservice if it heads towards romance. I think there is and ought to be a place for platonic intimacy-based family structure in this world.

But the story I want to focus on today is “Futari Escape” by Taguchi Shouichi. It’s been pretty goofy so far and not really “Yuri” but, like “Onna Tomodachi to Kekkonshitemita” works well as a story about two adult women who are a family without romance or physical intimacy. However, this chapter was just a lot of fun as “sempai” decides to buy a child’s food-preparation toy, in this case a hamburger maker. It’s so fun and nostalgic for them both, they end up buying a whole range of food prep toys, including a few that seem awfully unlikely. ^_^

When I was a child of course we also had these kind of toys, but they were never for real food, only sweets. I had an Easy Bake Oven, as most girls of my generation had. My sister was give a tootsie roll maker that I’m pretty sure I was the only one who used. I’ve had a fondness for flavored tootsie rolls since. (Lemon was the best, my sister preferred cherry.) Of course some folks had shaved ice or cotton candy machines (I bought a kitchen version of the latter as an adult, in fact. ^_^) So while we didn’t have kiddy kebob makers or takoyaki or jagariko makers, I can totally see the appeal. ^_^

Ratings:

Overall – 8

As always, this magazine had more series I read and like than mentioned here, and others I do not. And, as usual, “Semelparous” is still utterly, insultingly ridiculous.

The June issue is on shelves now! I look forward to “meeting” Relaire.





Ikemen Onna to Hakoiri Musume, Volume 2 (イケメン女と箱入り娘)

April 26th, 2021

So in Volume 1, I missed the joke. My fault. Perhaps because it wasn’t funny? Ikemen Onna to Hakoiri Musume, Volume  2 (イケメン女と箱入り娘), written by Mochi_Au_Lait, drawn by majoccoid, drops the joke and ….well, I’d really like to say it takes off and becomes wonderful, and it eventually does, but the creators are really committed to the joke and let it linger way too long.

So what was the joke? Kanda Misaki is a woman, only her girlfriend, Okuma Satomi, thinks she’s a guy. True, “Kanda-kun” is handsome and androgynously attractive, with a tendency towards gallantry. She’s Satomi’s perfect boyfriend and despite the fact that pretty much every one else can see Kanda is a girl, Satomi is completely unaware. Meanwhile, they are actually pretty happy as a couple, only for Kanda, there is a big ole elephant in the room.

In Volume 2, something is going to have to shift. On Christmas, as part of their big romantic date, Kanda comes clean. And…Satomi doesn’t believe her. Well, more specifically, she decides on a kind of cluelessness that makes it almost impossible to believe. Naiveté is one thing, but being unsure of a person’s stated gender is kinda ugh and double ugh when they are standing there naked. When Misaki takes off her clothes and Satomi remains unsure, I was not sure I could continue. The way in which this was resolved probably made the creative team happier than it did me, BUT, finally Satomi is on board! At last. And props to Satomi here; she’s supremely unconcerned that the person she likes turns out to be a woman. It really didn’t matter to her.  The rest of the story settles into a pleasant little progression of their relationship and Satomi continuing to be completely happy to have Kanda as her girlfriend.

The art is very much in my wheelhouse. majoccoid’s handsome and cool Kanda is on point. Satomi is cute, but her cluelessness had to be pushed a good leap past what I was willing to accept, but that is the kind of overplaying a gag Mochi_Au_Lait does. While it’s an imperfect story,  it has a much better end than I hoped going into this volume.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 7 If only it had not overplayed its hand, I might have even given it an 8
Characters – 9
Service – 3 Coy nudity
Yuri – 8

Overall – 8





Strawberry Fields Once Again, Volume 2

April 23rd, 2021

As the pages of Kazura Kinosaki’s Strawberry Fields Once Again, Volume 2 opens, I am primed to find spanners in the works and, indeed, that is what happens, in several ways at once.

To begin where we left off, Akira has kissed Pure and in time-honored fiction fashion, Pure has passed out/overheated. Having kissed Pure, Akira pulls away, inexplicably telling herself that the woman who professes her love like 5 times a day, would have been put off by a kiss. (This is how you know Akira really is a lesbian. ^_^;) So that’s one spanner in the works.

Then we find that Pure has pushed Akira to go visit her father who, it turns out is alive and well and has a new family. Which she does and and has a lot of complicated feelings about it, quite naturally. Akira’s distancing from the world is making more sense now. Spanner number two. When Ruri, her brother confronts Pure with a question that seems out of the blue, then we might be forgiven for wondering if we’ve missed something critical because that seems a really big spanner. In a sense yes, we have, but it hasn’t happened yet, so we can be forgiven for forgetting that this is not just a school life Yuri drama. It will however have to remain a mystery as to what it is, until Volume 3. Unless you read my review of the Japanese volume, or remember the advice from my review of Volume 1. Then you know what it is and why the spanners are flying from every direction.

The art gets both tighter and more detailed and sketchier and less detailed in places. Akira’s face undergoes a massive change from the affectless face of Volume 1, as she runs through a gamut of expressions right until the end of this volume, where the biggest spanner of them all throws everything we think about this story into question.

When I originally read Volume 1 in Japanese I had little idea where the story was going, so put off reading Volume 2 for a while. By the time I got through Volume 2, I knew I had to read Volume 3, but was a little intimidated by it, for reasons that will become clear. Nonetheless as I finished the series, it was pretty well put together, with the kind of non-linear storytelling that keep me engaged.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 7
Character – 7
Service – 2
Yuri – 6

Overall – 7

Thank you very much to Yen Press for the review copy, I really appreciate it and am looking forward to Volume 3 – which will be released in June of this year- very much. Thanks to everyone at Yen for bringing this story to an English reading audience.





Galette, No. 17 (ガレット)

April 22nd, 2021

Since I’m doing books that include my A-Team creators this week, it seems like a good day for talking about Galette, No. 17 (ガレット). And, much like my post yesterday, I really wanted to talk about it for one specific story.

Those of you who follow Morishima Akiko’s series Hanjuku Joshi when it ran Yuri Hime, will remember that there were two main couples. We’ve been enjoying the return of Yae and Chitose in Motto Hanjuku Joshi, and this chapter we see the return of Mari and Ran! Now that Mari is in pre-med, we might expect their relationship goes more smoothly, but…nope! ^_^ The reason why is the subject of this issue.

Akiyama Haru’s story is very short, but absolutely lovely, with a magical portal to a ryokan in a women’s basement. “How come we don’t have one of those?” my wife asks.

And the remaining stories give us a number of ways to look at relationships and the people in them. Interestingly, Hamano Ringo’s “Sora-iro Melancholic” continues on and wow is the Bun-chan we see here a different person. She’s really grown since that first volume that I recently reviewed.

The magazine has seen some changes in the past few issues, as I’m sure both artists and supporters have found their circumstances altered by the pandemic, but makes me happy to go through the list of supporters and see some of your names there! I know that as long as I can, I’ll be helping to make this magazine, because I think it needs to exist. They’ve opened up a Pixiv Fanbox in addition to their Fantia page, so now you have another way to help good Yuri manga be created.

Ratings:

Overall – 8

Every day Galette exists is a good day for Yuri. ^_^