In my review of Volume 1, I said that some things don’t wear well over time and that this series is among them.  For Volume 2 of Hoshikawa Ginza 4-chome, Complete Edition, (星川銀座四丁目) I’ll  say that not only does this relationship not wear well, Kurogane Kenn needed to be told to shut the hell up about it.

Look, this story is creepy. It’s about an underage girl and an adult woman who was, for a short time, her homeroom teacher. It’s presented wit all the bells and whistles that creepy pedo readers like. Otome is the aggressor, her age is mentioned or implied once a chapter, so we can never forget that this is a creepy story for creeps. If the story got out of it’s own way it might be tolerable, but when they keep shoving how creepy it is front and center, it’s impossible to do anything but loathe the story and everyone who likes it.

Even if we ignore the underage elephant in the room, the story actually gets even weirder and creepier without it.

Otome passes her school entrance exam and returns to Minato, having “proved” herself sincere. They move into a new space above a bookshop and the young woman who works at the bookshop becomes unhealthily obsessed with Otome. This chapters signal the nadir of this story. Even should you have been managing to read it up to this point pretending you’re not a giant creep, this moment in the story plainly indicates that, no, in fact, we are giant creeps for reading this. Kenn clearly decided to give up on telling a sweet, heart-warming story and just went straight for “Eh, fuck it. ”

Upon re-reading my review of the orignal final volume, I had said this:

“As I read this volume I was overcome by some emotion, but I was until the very end unable to identify it. This story makes me sad. I couldn’t tell you why, but it makes me inexpressibly sad. Perhaps because of all the nasty service-y bits with which Kurogane Kenn laces the narrative, I feel it is almost impossible to be plain old happy for the two of them. And I should be able to be. They are in love, they are together, the end. So why do I want to cry?”

and

“Ultimately the big fail here was that Otome deserved to be treated better than Kenn was willing to treat her. His gaze throughout this series disgusted me, right to the final volume and the repulsive chapters with Hina. How I wish someone who wasn’t a creepy lolicon had drawn this story. Oh well.”

I guess I had hoped that time and distance would have improved this story for me. Instead it actually made it more depressing.

The end of the story couldn’t come fast enough. And the only thing that redeemed the entire thing was the final, extra few pages in which we see an adult Otome, working in a home office, called to dinner by Minato.  But it isn’t enough. 

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 4
Characters – 6
Yuri – 10
Service – 10

Overall – 5

I’m no longer willing to tolerate creepiness in my Yuri. These are my stories as much as they are anyone’s, and I’m done with manipulative, creepy porno, pedo Yuri. 

In Volume 1 of Ani no Yome to Kurashiteimasu. we meet Shino, a high school student living with her late brother’s wife and, awkwardly, beginning to fall in love with her. 

In Volume 2, we spend quite a lot of time developing both Shino and Nozomi, her sister-in-law, into people. Nozomi’s professional life and adult relationships are developed and we spend time with Shino’s friends, some of whom are aware that she’s feeling attracted to Nozomi. The point of all this is something that made me quite happy as I read it – they get actual time to be fleshed out well past “high school girl” and “sister-in-law.” They both get emotional lives beyond this situation and peers in which to confide. Like people do. So that was really nice.

The complicated relationship both women are struggling with is made secondary to developing them as characters. We get flashbacks on how they met, and how Nozomi came into Shino’s life as a sister-in-law.

They are both very aware of each other, but also want to be a family in the larger sense. Day to day things – meals being made, playing with their cat, planning for the local festival all start to take on a comfortable sensibility, even if separately they can’t stop feeling like everything feels like more than it is. It’s the moments when they both just relax around each other that their emotions become instantly fraught. Obviously.

Shino is holding herself together well until, on the evening of the festival, she sees something that has no place in her world…Nozomi with a man. Shino thinks that Nozomi with a man other than her brother is something she doesn’t want to see, as the scene fades to black.

A short extra chapter includes a story about Shino and Nozomi hugging, ostensibly to reduce stress, which is instantly not helpful for several reasons.

This is such an unusually thoughtful rendition of this tired old trope that I’m still not sure what to make of it. I trust Kuzushiro-sensei implicitly, but what kind of gold she can spin from this lead, only her alchemical daemons know. ^_^; We’ll be able to find out soon enough – Volume 3 is hitting shelves at the end of July.

Ratings:

Art – 8 
Story – 7 Surprisingly thoughtful
Characters – 7 Likeable 
Service – 2 More implied than actual
Yuri – 2 

Overall – 7

 I find that I actually want to know what will happen to them now. Of course I want them to be happy.

Arguably, one of the most famous collections of Japanese art is Hokusai’s Fugaku Hyakkei, the One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji. From the mid-1830s, Hokusai collected and sold volumes of his work starring the always-impressive Mount Fuji. (No, really, it’s always impressive when you see it.)

In the spirit of this masterpiece, Hachiko has created the Yuri Hyakkei ( 百合百景) which contains work that is less memorable and the subject much less impressive. ^_^

Hachiko’s One Hundred Views of Yuri is firmly rooted in a school-girl world. Most of the “scenarios” show two girls and the caption explains the scenario  for us, “When a childhood friend becomes jealous of her childhood friend Yuri.” Sometimes a girl pins another girl to a wall, or a teacher. Groping is reasonably rare, and embracing is reasonably common so it doesn’t feel gross. Scenarios are one-or-few-panel with little dialogue and make for stressless reading

The color palette of the work is exceedingly strange, with emphasis on blues and browns and sepia, and while every couple shown are given unique names, with the sameness of the palette, the level of emotion and commitment to craft, they tend to blur into one another.  In fact, the fact that 200 character names were picked for the various scenarios is the most creative thing about them.

Ratings:

Art – 6 Competent, with that specific color palette
Story – 4 Scenarios with no particular creativity
Character – 2 Not really
Service – 4 A bit, here and there.
Yuri – 6 There’s some genuine emotion, attraction and interest in there.

Overall – 6

I found that this book works brilliantly on the way to bed. With so little to hold on to, it just pleasantly slipped in my eyes and out my ears and left little behind.