“Can’t buy me love,” or so the song says. But Hishikawa Shun is much too young to know that song and and she has much more money than sense, so she approaches classmate Komaki with an offer she could refuse – Shun will pay Komaki for her companionship. And, she’s convinced, more. Komaki doesn’t refuse the first part of the offer, but consistently refuses the additional services requested.

Shouraiteki ni Shindekure (将来的に死んでくれ) is not exactly a likable story, for many reasons. The premise is silly, but it’s played for laughs in a way to guarantee I’ll never so much as crack a smile. Hishikawa is a shouty character, whose reactions to everything appear to be at high decibels and with the ugliest open-mouthed tear-filled weird faces possible. When a bit of creepy service goes over the line, I considered dropping the book altogether, but didn’t.  And I’m kinda-ish glad I didn’t. 

Because, while Hishikawa is a perv and Komaki’s little brother is a perv and I fucking hate comedy based on perving because it’s gross and not at all funny, there’s something here, buried behind the idiotic premise I do find interesting.

Hishikawa has very poor people skills. We can see that even when she speaks with her best friend, Saya. Saya seems to understand Hishikawa’s lack of human skills and explains it for Komaki. And, for her part, I genuine believe Hishikawa when she tells us that she’s genuinely in love with Komaki. I just also think she has no belief in herself as desirable or interesting and doesn’t have enough peopling practice to realize that offering money for friendship and sex might get you want, but won’t get you what you need. In turn Komaki doesn’t actually dislike Hishikawa and she is always very, very clear about her boundaries.  I think that Komaki might just train Hishikawa to become a person.

I sure hope so. 

Ratings:

Art – 4 Ugh
Characters – Anywhere from 3-7 variably in a single chapter
Story – 4 Creepiness is not funny. It just isn’t.
Service – 6 No upskirt, but very much in the creepy.
Yuri – 5 – Buried pretty far down, but it’s there and it’s sincere.

Overall – 5

There’s at least one more volume of this series, but I’m likely to give it a pass. I didn’t care enough and more panels of Hishikawa’s shouty, teary, snotty face, or her shouty weird smile face, is not needed in my life.

Oh, heavens, there’s two more volumes! (Volume 2 | Volume 3). If any of you read them, let me know what happens! ^_^

It’s come-clean time. We’re down to the dregs of the pile of my November impulse purchases. That means we’re scraping the bottom of the Yuri barrel. I’m probably not at the bottom yet, but this one is way down there.

• Sayuri-san no Imouto ha Tenshi, Volume 1 (小百合さんの妹は天使) Yuri. I’m not denying that. And I acknowledge that what I like (sensible stories with great characters that work well together) is not what other people like. But. And I say this with my gentle voice, with all due respect, this book makes no fucking sense.

Sayuri and her little sister were separated when her parents divorced (because in the world of manga, kids are like endtables or armchairs. You get one and I get one.) Saiyuri, now an adult working at a flower shop, and living a normal, if bland life, misses her little sister, but apparently has no access to phones or computers. Or paper and pencil and stamps. Or transportation. So she has not seen her in 13 years,

So one day when she sees her sister again, she’s amazed! But her sister has a halo. And wings. 

Now, I’m just asking for a friend, here, but, if you saw a member of your immediately family with halo and wings, would you not immediately want to know how they died? And when? And then I would wonder why some other member of your immediate family neglected to mention this?  Of course Sayuri does none of these things.

So the book then goes forward with a generic incestuous relationship between Sayuri and her dead little sister.  

Ratings:

I did not pay full price for this book. I bought it at Book-Off for 260￥.There are three more volumes of the series, if this sounds like your preferred tincture of Lily.

I cannot stop telling you how amazing it was to walk into Animate in Ikebukuro and see a giant sign in the middle of the ground floor that  said “Yuribu.” Nor will I stop gushing about shopping for Yuri now that the various bookstores are actually setting up “Yuri sections” on the shelves that are multi-publisher and multi-format, so you can find manga, magazines, light novels and novels in the same area. It’s awesome. 

It also allows me to pick up stuff I wasn’t going to get when I had to ship it to the USA. Most importantly, it allows me to find stuff that I frequently would never otherwise have heard of or seen (and often forget about as soon as possible. ^_^)

Sougou Tovarisch, Perfect Edition, Volume 1 (総合タワーリシチ 完全版 上) by Arata Jiri falls into this last category. ^_^;

Imagine, if you will, a version of Kiss and White Lily for My Dearest Girl in which Ayaka is almost completely unlikable. That’ll get you close to the dynamic here. Kana is neither smart nor stupid, but the existence of cool, calm and likeable Yuu enrages her. This volume mostly consists of Yuu being pleasant and friendly and Kana losing her mind about that. In fact, the story is so strung out with Kana screaming over imagined transgressions, that I finally skipped to the end. Yuu does, in fact, kiss Kana, although I cannot imagine why. Surely there’s someone else less shouty she could fall for. The cover gives you a good idea of Kana’s typical sour expession.

But, if you like the dynamic of a competent and likeable person falling for a shouty person like Kiss and White Lily, in a school that’s less filled with Yuri couples, but characters do have friends, then this series is probably a good bet for you.

Ratings:

Art – 6  It’s busy being busy.
Characters – 6 Kana annoys the heck outta me
Story – 6
Yuri – 6
Service – 1 on principle

Overall – 6 Not terrible, certainly not bad enough to be funny, just kind of “yup, that again.”

I’m going to skip on the second volume and instead plug through the rest of the “I have no idea” pile I got last year, before I go back and pick up more who the heck knows what. ^_^