Archive for the Yuri Manga Category


Yuri Manga: Bloom Into You, Volume 4 (English)

February 27th, 2018

In Bloom Into You, Volume 4, as the Student Council goes into a stay-over training camp in order to work on their play for the school festival, the principal characters encounter issues they’ve brought with them from their past into their present. 

Sayaka is forced to deal with a memory being pissed all over by her first lover. The sempai, in attempting to absolve Sayaka of any blame for their gay relationship, forces her to use Touko to make a point about being gay anyway. Touko doesn’t mind, but the whole thing is awkward and uncomfortable. Sayaka’s then brought into close quarters with the girl she desires, but cannot have. She cannot not see Touko’s interactions with Yuu, she cannot not know what they mean. She has no course at all but to be stoic, which is in unfair step down from just having an unrequited fantasy. I am still primarily reading this series for Sayaka and really want to see her happy by the end of it.

Yuu learns from a friend and teammate from middle school that her current state of dissatisfaction at being overworked with Student Council stuff marks a pretty major shift from her previous lack of engagement with pretty much everything. I read too much manga, I know, but my mind went directly to another MediaWorks manga that used pathological lack of engagement as a plot complication, Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl. Is this a key development moment for Yuu, or just a thing that is told to us to explain her ambivalence? Unfortunately for readers, we cannot be sure if anything we’re presented has weight of meaning. It could easily be a handwave.

We can be sure that something came to some kind of head when we all see Touko get extraordinarily emotional as they rehearse the play. Kanou-san just got way too close to the truth (as Yuu notes privately,) with her script. Touko is competing with the ideal of a dead older sister  who turns out to have actually been a bit of a jerk. She learns her sister used the people around her and is then told, quite incorrectly, that she’s nothing like Mio. But we readers can see that she is much more like her sister than anyone knows.

If the book took a direction that made me happy, Touko would confront her own behavior in regards to Yuu and change. Yuu would be then given a chance to decide if she wanted to be with this Touko. And Sayaka would meet a nice girl. But realistically, I’m just waiting for the magic handwave that will make Yuu decide she loves Touko and they’ll get married on a rainbow-bathed chapel in the sky. Oh, sorry, switched to Kashimashi again. 

Seven Seas has given us an excellent, authentic manga reading experience with this volume, so we can relax and be perplexed by the story. ^_^

Ratings: (quote directly from the review of the JP volume)

Art – 8
Story – 5 This issue has issues
Characters – 8 
Yuri – 7
Service – 4 Bathing scenes with three girls, two of whom are lesbian.

Overall – 8….

I really want to like this series. I just still don’t know if I do. Huh, just like Yuu feels about Touko. How ironic. ^_^

Volume 5 in English hits shelves in June 2018.  Thanks very much to Seven Seas for a review copy, but I had already gotten it for myself. ^_^





Yuri Manga: Sayuri-san no Imouto ha Tenshi, Volume 1 (小百合さんの妹は天使)

February 23rd, 2018

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.





Yuri Manga: Sougou Tovarisch, Perfect Edition, Volume 1 (総合タワーリシチ 完全版 上)

February 21st, 2018

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. ^_^





Yuri Manga: Kase-san and an Apron (English)

February 18th, 2018

Yamada’s life has changed radically since she’s started to go out with Kase-san. She’s always been kind of average and had no confidence in herself, except in relation to the greenery committee at school. But being with Kase-san has taught her some important things. 

In Kase-san and an Apron, the 4th volume of Takashima Hiromi’s high school Yuri romance, during the school festival a tired trope about jealousy is turned into a lesson is about speaking your mind.

Yamada has always been jealous of Kase-san’s talent, her athleticism, her popularity. But when she learns that Kase-san has felt the same way, something important takes root in her, a germ of self-confidence that will continue to grow through the volume. Kase-san has been teaching her to value her own strengths – her persistence, her desire to do things for the joy of it. Guilelessly, Kase-san is also teaching Yamada that she’s attractive just the way she is.

Yamada’s best friend Miwacchi has also started noticing the changes. In her own offhand way, she praises Yamada for deciding on a college in Tokyo, rather than shooting for a local school and a less interesting life. 

The chapters that comprise this volume were originally distributed variably online and in print,  and the collected volume itself came out in Japan just after the official animation clip was released. (I reviewed the deluxe edition which included the Blu-ray of the clip here on Okazu last autumn.)

This series, which got it’s start in a quarterly, now defunct, Yuri magazine, has continued to chug along with surprising strength. This summer that little animation clip will get a theatrical release as a OVA movie and  we’ll be getting more Yamada and Kase-san in days to come! The Kase-san series is the little Yuri series that could. ^_^ It is everything I have looked for in a high school Yuri romance. It’s got honesty and growth and humor and a likable couple who have friends and teachers and family and interests outside the romance. And in the meantime, the artist’s skill has grown considerably. Her panels are tight, her lines are deft and her use of body language (which has always been good) and expression have gotten stronger.

It’s gonna be hard to beat this for best of the year, I think.

Ratings: 

Art – 8
Character – 9
Story – 8
Service – 2 It’s dropped considerably since moving to Wings.
Yuri – 9

Overall – 8

Thanks very much to the folks at Seven Seas for the review copy! This is hitting shelves here in the west this week, so get out there and get yourself a copy!. I’m hoping to take a physical copy of the book with me to Japan and get it signed by Takashima-sensei. ^_^ Fingers crossed.





Yuri Manga: Akaneiro no Kiss ha Okujou de (茜色のキスは屋上で)

February 13th, 2018

Even as Momono Moto-sensei is working her butt off with Galette magazine, Ichijinsha has been licensing some of her work, as well. Akane-iro Kiss ha Okujou de is one of these collections. 

In the first story, Megu asks an older girl at a shop to go out with her, over the loud opposition of her friends. Luckily for her, the other girl  is not all that opposed.

Two friends realize their friendship means a lot to them, and maybe even more, just int time for one to move away. Years go by and they are reunited.

A girl is approached by the subject of her crush and she just has no idea how to react.

A lesbian and straight friend have drunken sex, which leaves two of us – the lesbian and this reader – unsatisfied. I hate this kind of self-loathing “in love with a straight friend who uses the lesbian as a life size vibrator” kind of story.

A childhood mentor and tutor becomes a lover. This story kind of squicked me primarily because we’re told their specific age difference. I’m never comfortable with that, even though I don’t always dislike the concept of an generation-difference story itself. A bit hypocritical, but, I’m human.

And finally, the title story in which to friends discover that they love one another and share twilight kisses on the school roof. A nice, arm, fuzzy ending to a collection by an artists who specializes in the bitter and uncomfortable forms a relationship might take.

I really like Momono-sensei’s art, and while her stories tend to focus on the awkward and uncomfortable bits of lesbian-relationships, when she pulls out the stops and gives characters a happy ending, it’s always quite beautifully done.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – Variable, say 7
Characters  – 7 much less unlikable than in some of her previous work
Yuri – 10
Service – 5 Some sex scenes, a little nudity

Overall – 7

You know I’m going to say this….I cannot wait for Momono-sensei’s “Liberty” from Galette to be collected!