When I wrote my article, Yuri: A Genre Without Borders, last year for Eureka magazine’s “Current State of Yuri Culture” issue, I ended it with a short discussion of how Yuri is thriving beyond Japanese borders.* In the article I discussed a number of non-Japanese Yuri collections, including Yuri Monogatari and  Lepakkoluola from Finland. Had I written the article this year, I would have been able to add World Canvas, Godley Malabanan’s Tagalog Yuri comic, the Frey and Freya anthology (which I will review in the future) and Ratana Satis’ Lily Love out of Thailand.

Volume 1 of Satis’ collected webcomic was available only by special order through the author herself, but the story is available online on the translation team website, Three Musqueerteers, who provide unpolished, but more than adequate English translations. You can read it in Thai on Ookbecomics. Update: Thanks to Three Musqueerteers’ Alextasha, we now know that an official English print volume is in the works as well. ^_^

Donut goes to an all-girl’s school, is shy and nerdy, but becomes captivated by a neighbor in the dorm, Pew. Pew is adult and cheerful, and has recently broken up with a girlfriend, she admits. They become close, very quickly. Donut’s not sure what her feelings are, and is especially confused after they get drunk and very nearly kiss. Donut realizes that her feelings are not merely friendship, and runs after Pew, who is about to board a bus for Chiang Mai. Admitting her feelings, Donut finds that she’s still not sure what her relationship with Pew will be like, but the two of them continue to become closer. Volume 1 ends a chapter past the English translation with their first real kiss.

Like Malabanan’s manga, Satis’ story is firmly rooted in basic Yuri tropes, without any sense of irony. This story has been told hundreds of times, but everyone who writes it, writes it like no one else ever has. For Donut, this is all new and terrifying. “But we’re both girls,”  is the repeated refrain of stories like this, like GIRL FRIENDS, or so many before and so many yet to come. And there’s nothing wrong with it, although I’ll always favor UKOZ’s post-all-this relationships. ^_^ But I will give Satis this – Donut is kinda cute and Pew is very honest, and Donut’s friends are all good about when they figure it out. There’s no bullying or ostracization to deal with.

The art is lovely. Professional quality all the way through. The book itself, published through Ookbee Comics, is above and beyond most self-published efforts. For the art and book alone, this was worth getting.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Characters – 8
Story – 6
Yuri – 6 in the story, 9 in the associated art pieces on the website.

Overall – 7 and I look forward to more.

*One of the more interesting critical comments I received on Japanese blogs was that I was being optimistic. I think that I’ve been proven right. My collection of non-Japanese Yuri is growing enough that it’s going to deserve a shelf of it’s own! (First I gotta figure out where I can put a new shelf…) ^_^

In Morinaga Milk-sensei’s  Ohime-sama no Himitsu (お姫様のひみつ), Miu has been given some really questionable advice by her mother. Her mother has repeatedly expressed the need for Miu to care about her looks and be as pretty as possible in order to attract a prince and live happily-ever-after. Worse, as Miu attends an all-girl school, there’s no opportunity to even meet a real prince.

When cool, dashing, athletic Fujiwara-sempai is thrown into Miu’s path, she comes up with a plan to at least try out being a princess for a while, and asks Fujiwara to fake date her. It’s a great idea, only Miu forgets to account for the feelings of the students around her who admire Fujiwara-sempai, sempai’s teammates, Fujiwara herself and ultimately, her own feelings.

As cute as the art is, and as sweet as her writing is, the fundamental flaw here is the plot device I think of “I’m with you anyway, so I might as well fall in love.” We’ve seen it time and time again in romance media where two people, when placed in proximity, find themselves attracted to one another, no matter what actual obstacles could potentially arise.

What if Fujiwara was totally straight and played along only because Miu had power over her? Obviously, there would be no book, but its way more likely than the two of them falling in love just because. Is it likely at all that Fujiwara would fall in love with someone who blackmailed her into dating her? No, not really, but it makes for a more fun book than if she was sulky and resentful for 200 pages, then shed Miu like a winter coat at the first opportunity.

On the positive side, Miu starts to break out of the “must look cute to succeed” mold and starts to become more of a person mid-way through the book. It’s her best friend who lays it out for her, that by monopolizing Fujiwara, she’s effectively stolen her away from her fans. Yumi in Marimite talked about having a “fan’s pride” as well. And I think I can relate. We want to have the right to squee and bounce and maybe even glom on our favorites, but we also acknowledge the need for distance. Should someone cross that DMZ and enter our admired person’s life, we demand that it be real and not just some empty relationship. If a fan, or the admired person breaks that unspoken pledge, it hurts the other party.

Of course by the end, the relationship in this book is not empty at all. Both Miu and Fujiwara have come to realize that they actually love each other as they are and they go on to live happily ever after, after all.

A short extra story “Houkago Kanojo” is (to my eye) a fan story about Honoka and Nagisa from PreCure. ^_^ Smart nerdy girl and cool girl in science club, bond over killing bugs.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 7 Problematic in the beginning, by smooths out over time
Characters – 7 for Miu, she also smooths out over time, but Fujiwara gets an 8 for being real throughout
Yuri – 7
Service – 3 bits here and there

Overall – 7

“I’m with you anyway, so I might as well fall in love,” will never be my favorite romance plot, but it is undoubtedly a popular one. If I were Seven Seas looking to do more Morinaga releases, I’d choose this over Himitsu no Recipe, definitely.

Ayana Yuniko (綾奈 ゆにこ) has worked on the scripts for a number of anime series, including Aoi Hana/Sweet Blue Flowers. In addition, she has written a series of “Yuri essays” which are not “about” Yuri, but are instead little vignettes of Yuri-ish moments that she felt or observed. These essays have been collected into an interesting, if odd, little volume, Chisai Yuri Mitsuketa (小さい百合見つけた).

Ayana’s scenarios range from two girls having an intimate moment while flower viewing, to a rather amusing outing she and several other otaku-types took to Enoshima to Aoi Hana-scene spot. We learn that she’s quite taken with girl idol groups and, as a typical Yurijin (“Yuri person,”  a word I’ve decided today we should use for all Yuri fans, ^_^) is prone to seeing Yuri wherever there are two girls being cute at each other. ^_^

In addition to Ayana’s essays, there are short comics by Aoi Hana‘s Shimura Takako and Philosophia‘s Amano Shuninta, as well as illustrations and a short comic by HEERO.

I described this book as “odd.” It was. I enjoyed it, but was never really sure if I was meant to be taking any of these vignettes seriously. When I learned that these essays were originally written for a Newtype web magazine column, they made a lot more sense, playing to the sensibilities of Japanese Newtype magazine readers who, along with having their antenna set to oversensitive, like the Yurijin they are, would also care about idol groups and schoolgirls sharing ice cream. Oh, well, that makes perfect sense now.

Ratings:

Essays – Variable, I’d say 7
Art – 9

Overall – We’ll average it out at 8

I wouldn’t call this compelling reading, or a must-have, but if you’re a Yurijin, too, you might find it entertaining. ^_^