When you think about it, there are only a few office romance scenarios possible. Coworker x coworker, boss x employee or two people who don’t work together. Because the power differential is so one-sided when it comes to boss x employee, there’s a lot of potential for abusive relationships. And yet, Yuri tends to kind of not go there. (Of course exceptions exist.)
Recently I was discussing how tachi and neko don’t line up with seme and uke (something I have written about before.) In particular, butch characters are often portrayed as reticent in lesbian media, afraid of abusing any physical or social power; simply unwilling or uncomfortable being aggressors. While this is not always true in Yuri, those series that have featured an uneven power dynamic come across as trying to replicate BL tropes – unsuccessfully, overall. (A new generation of adult Yuri manga has had to find other tropes to… use *. As I’ve noted in the past, Yuri readers tend to be invested in the couple being happy with each other, rather than a sexual act as payoff. It was, therefore, with some interest, that I read Shigoto no ato ha Koishiyou (仕事の後は恋しよう) by Iwashita Kei, which falls into this familiar-to-western-readers pattern.
Kurashita appears to be a very typical clumsy, uninspired, unispiring career woman. She works under Suzuya Asahi, who is everything Kurashita is not – cool, classically attractive, an exceedingly competent worker and a leader. Kurashita find herself being helped by Suzuya and…oddly, finds herself living up to the level of Suzuya’s example. She’s also finding herself attracted to the other woman, but unwilling to even address that in her own thoughts.
Here’s where it all goes Xena.. Suzuya is torturing herself. She’s fallen for Kurashita, but there are so many things that make their relationship unequal, she just cannot bring herself to be honest. Even as the company president is encouraging – even manipulating – them to work together, Suzuya’s in the middle of the kind of mental torture any number of women who have found themselves in love with women they think they cannot have would be familiar with. A happy accident ends up forcing them both to deal with their feelings, but a lot of stuff has happen before they can get there.
The climax of the story has absolutely nothing to do with their relationship, and I thought it absolutely delightful. This manga also addresses some real-world issues in the office, casual sexism, systemic sexism, and what it means to be good at your job. Again, the climax is more about work, than love, which was outstanding.
Kurashita and Suzuya are adorably awkward (especially Suzuya, as she should be) and they deserve every page of their happy ending.
Ratings:
Art – 8
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Yuri – 9
Service – Not really
Overall – A very strong 8.
But here’s the point I want to make about this – the dynamic in this volume reads “lesbian” to me, rather than Yuri, even though nothing else about this volume has any lesbian identity, because of the qualities I spoke of above. It is, in this western lesbian’s experience and experience with media, that the butch is almost never really the seme. Except accidentally. ^_^ This manga is an East Press publication and to be honest, that’s another reason I read Iwashita Kei’s Yuri manga debut tankoubon as “lesbian.”
* YOU try and finish this sentence without finding yourself in the middle of a metaphor for sex.
Volume 1 of Akiyama’s Killing Me!
