In Yuri Manga: Kanojo to Camera to Kanojo no Kisetsu, Volume 1 (彼女とカメラと彼女の季節）Volume 1  we meet Akari, an unremarkable high school student who is mesmerized by an ethereal and odd classmate, Yuki. The only person Yuki seems to be on speaking terms with is Rintarou, who likes Akari. Akari is compelled by her interest in Yuki to take up photography, Yuki’s one passion.

This uncomfortable triangle continues to be uncomfortable through Volume 2 and Volume 3. Although Rin and Akari say they are “dating,” it’s Yuki who looks at Rin while Rin only has eyes for Akari, who obsesses over Yuki.

Here we are at Kanojo to Camera to Kanojo no Kisetsu, Volume 4 (彼女とカメラト彼女の季節), or, as I like to refer to it as I read it “that damned series.” ^_^ Sometimes I use a stronger word than “damned.”

Rintarou, who has been the best human in the series, is still incapable of stopping Yuki from manipulating him. Akari knows what she wants, knows she can’t have her, but won’t stop following her. And Yuki…she’s like a cat. Independent, but also dependent on the people who feed her, she won’t let them go, but doesn’t want them around.

Rin tries to move his relationship with Akari to the next stage. You can’t blame him, really. He’s been really patient and kind, but she’s lying about there being a “them”. When he pushes her to the point where she has to reject him, he’s not surprised, although he is hurt. On the other hand, Akari is shocked to finally realize that she has been lying all along and hurting Rin. She admits to him and herself that she doesn’t like him that way and runs off after Yuki.

Rin also goes to Yuki and allows her to do what she wants with him. She gets him to model in his underwear, something she clearly considers a coup. When he retuns to school, Rin has shorn his messy hairstyle and now sports a buzzcut, bozu-style.

When Akari catches up with Yuki in Tokyo, she sees an animated, lively person, talking about photography with a passion she had no idea Yuki had. Akari and Yuki go back to Akari’s hotel room, where they embrace on the bed, but Yuki, manipulative as always, shows Akari her semi-nude photos of Rintarou.

The books comes to a close, as has every other volume, with Akari wondering what she should do…or even think…about this.

The problem with this series is, as it stands, there can be no resolution. Of any kind.

Yuki can’t stop manipulating Rin and Akari, even though I think she actually cares for them both. They are so beguiled by her, they can’t stop letting her control them.  Sexuality has sort of taken a second place to the psychological drama going on and I have no idea where it might go..if it’s going anywhere.

The art is, as always, nicely composed. The drawings of the photos are great, without being anything like photorealistic.　The characters also have depth, without necessarily being realistic. I’m still calling this a “Yuri” manga because Akari’s obsession with Yuki is still the main driving force of the plot.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Yuri – 3
Service – 3

Overall – 8

I’m still not sure where this story will go, or whether I will like it, but I guess I’m along for the ride.

Tanaka Minoru’s Rock It, GiRL! (ロケット☆ガール) series has been an interesting ride. The apparent protagonist, Kaname, has moved from hapless street guitarist to rock band fame without apparently, noticing. She is pretty much the same soppy, sappy, person in Volume 2 as she was in Volume 1.

However, as we move into Volume 2, and the band (provisionally-permanently known as “The Pinch Hitters”) starts to pick up traction, our attention wanders from Kaname to the more complex, more fascinating, eternally enraged Seira.

In between Seira screaming at Kaname, and raging at the world, we learn her tragic backstory (all art comes from pain, you know) and we learn the nature of the baggage between Kaname and Seira.

Far more interesting than the personal drama was the band gearing up to perform at a music festival, recording a commercial, YouTube-esque video backlash, parties, being asked to do TV dramas and all the random dribs and drabs of being a professional musician in Japan.

The book comes to a shocking (no, seriously, it was) climax at the music festival, and at least half the shock is the fact that I think we can turn our back on Kaname and Seira and they’ll be…okay. Phew.

Ratings:

Art – 8 The art is nuts and Tanaka-sensei knows it.
Story -8 Better than I imagined it would be
Characters – I don’t know what to say, really. I didn’t dislike them, but none of them would be welcome in my house for lunch, either. ^_^;
Service – 0 None, really. Not even the service-y bits
Yuri – 8

Overall – 8

In the end, it was a sweet romance. With a lot of shouting.

In Volume 1 of Itazura Choucho, we met Nanoha and Sakura, two young women in a performing arts school who have an intense relationship with each other and with their chosen means of performing. In Volume 2, each get a coach. Sakura’s is a traditional oni-coach whose demands threaten to tear her and Nanoha apart, while Nanoha faces a crisis with her own abilities.

And, in Itazura Choucho, Volume 3 (悪戯ちょうちょ), it’s all going to come to a head. As the big competition approaches, Nanoha is unable to sing at all, and Sakura has been playing piano at a wine bar to get past the stress of performing in front of an audience. More importantly, she finds that people are responding to her piano-playing  positively.

Sakura forces Nanoha to respond to her feelings, Nanoha admits that not being able to sing makes her feel unable to respond. But Sakura’s playing reignites Nanoha’s love of music and she finds her voice again.

But peace is not yet their lot. Circumstances pull them apart one last time and instead of working together for the competition, they find themselves competing against each other. This time, it’s Nanoha’s coach to the rescue, and Nanoha finds her center. When the competition comes, she stands on the stage and sings, a capella. Sakura is sure she can hear a message for herself in the words. When it’s Sakura time to compete she blows the audience, the judges and Nanoha away with her passion and skill. The butterflies of Chopin’s Butterfly Etude fill the auditorium.

In the final pages, Nanoha and Sakura part, so Sakura can study overseas, but knowing that they will not be parted for long because they love each other.

I wasn’t really sure how to approach this series originally, but  I’m glad I stuck with it. Ultimately, it was more about finding one’s self and understanding one’s own passion than about love, but the love is a pleasant by-product. I came to enjoy the art, which visually communicates many emotions, especially for the performance scenes, although some of the faces started to break up towards the middle of this volume.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Yuri – 6
Service – 1

Overall – 8

If you’re interested in checking out this series as a whole, there is a 3-comic set for sale, and for those of you with Japanese kindle access, there’s a Kindle version, as well.

For the purposes of classification on this blog, I call Yurikago no Otometachi (ゆりかごの乙女たち) a “Yuri” manga, but it is more properly an “S” story. The volume rides a thin line between pulp and realistic and, surprisingly, manages it quite well.

It is the Taisho period and more and more Japanese men are being drafted into  the country’s war efforts. Tamaki is a serious young woman who has no female friends and, even at the girl’s school she attends, is considered a rich girl, an ojou-sama. She receives a letter from an upperclassman asking her to be her little sister and has to have “S” explained to her.

By chance, Tamaki meets Yukiko, another girl in the same year as she and they hit it off as friends. The upperclassman Takaki rejected comes back to taunt her, but Yukiko steps in and protects Tamaki. Tamaki’s feelings for Yukiko are deepening, although she has no words for them.

Tamaki’s world is shaken when she sees two boys kissing in an alley and even more so when it turns out that the “boys” are two girls who disguise themselves to give themselves the freedom to go to the cinema unaccompanied. The two girls are upperclassman Kinuko and her lover Yoshino from Tamaki’s school.

Just as Tamaki is really starting to understand her feelings, real life intrudes. Tamaki is given the chance to skip a year of school and go straight to advanced education (what would probably now be a junior college) but the war is taking more and more men, and Tamaki will have to leave school, as her father has been drafted.

Tamaki misses her opportunity to tell Yukiko how she feels, and everything is lost in the subsequent life changes. Tamaki sees Yukiko with a young man, a suitor or fiancee’. Tamaki seeks advice from Kinuko, but finds that Kinuko has broken up with Yoshino, because the younger girl is too serious and their relationship cannot be sustained beyond school. As they speak of it, Yoshino runs up to confront Kinuko, followed by Yukiko in pursuit, trying to stop her. Tamaki tries to slow Yoshino down, but finds herself cut across the hand by Yoshino who is holding a knife. Yukiko catches up to Yoshino and is stabbed in the scuffle.

Kunuko’s family pays everyone off to get them to forgive and forget. Tamaki, who has been there waiting for Yukiko to recover has not yet seen her friend. It’s not until that nice young man comes with a gift for Yukiko, asking Tamaki to take it in for him, that she sees her friend. She leaves, but Yukiko wakes, hears her voice and comes out of bed, fever and wound and all. Finally, they see each other again and, even as they admit that they wish they could be together forever, they separate with a patently false promise to meet again.

Tamaki learns that the young man who has worked for her father is off to Hiroshima, and while Yukiko returns to the bench at school where she and Tamaki met, Tamaki leaves, promising to never forget her.

I’m not going to lie, this was a sad book, but it was well-drawn and well-told and, as I say, rode the line between melodramatic pulp and a realistic story beautifully. For something that tells an S story with an overt acknowledgement that the story inside the cradle is not the real story at all, Yurikago no Otometachi is a sad, but extremely well-executed look at a same-sex romance in an age that had only S relationships.

Ratings:

Art – 8 Clean, easy to follow, pleasantly free of allegory
Story – 8, sad, but realistically so
Characters – 8 (except, perhaps, Kinuko, who seemed a bit forced)
Yuri – 7
Service – 1, on principle only

Overall – 8

I read stories like this and mentally rewrite them set in our current time with a different ending, to make myself feel better. T_T