Archive for the Yuri Manga Category


Yuri Manga: Cirque Arachne (サーク・アラクニ)

May 19th, 2013

Do you remember Kaleido Star? I do. I remember I had a very contentious relationship with the series. I disliked some of it to distraction and loved some of it to tears. The series was constantly made worth watching for the intense relationship between the star of the show Layla and the energetic newcomer, Sora – a relationship that was almost, but not quite, what we hoped it would become.

I am, it seems, not the only one who felt the story needed to be “fixed.” ^_^ Yuri manga artist Saida Nika clearly felt that if there was less “break your self-esteem into shreds to force it to grow” and more “Sora and Layla sitting on a trapeze” it would be better all around, as well. And so, we find ourselves reading Cirque Arachne (サーク・アラクニ). smiling, because even the Amazon JP description say what we can all see – this is the version of Kaleido Star we always wanted.^_^

Thetis, called Teti, is a newcomer to Cirque Arachne and is paired instantly with the show’s current star, the emotionally distant Charlotte. Lotte finds her gaze returning again and again to Teti, finds herself remembering and confronting her painful past, her self-imposed loneliness and, at last, her feelings of attraction for the new girl.

Teti is everything Lotte is not – she’s openly passionate about her love for acrobatics, for her enjoyment of…everything, from high places to delicious kebabs. And Lotte.

While they train together – as Circus Mistress Leni planned all along – they grow closer until, inevitably, they open their hearts to one another. Cirque Arachne will now have two stars, who will face the audience with hands and hearts entwined. Awww.

An extra chapter of Saida’s earlier work “Berry Girl” closes the book.

Because Cirque Arachne was very obviously written for those of us who had seen Kaleido Star and wanted to see it re-created in our own image, the story has little padding. It gets right down to the meat, without much digression. Both Teti and Lotte get just enough backstory to render them individual and apart from their earlier influences. In a sense the story moves too fast,  but because we all knew the rest of the story, it’s just the right length. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 9 Fixed, at last
Characters – 8
Yuri – 10
Service – 4

Overall – 8
Now that’s she’s gotten this out of her system (for which I thank her immensely!) I look forward to more from Saida-sensei. Let’s see what else she can do. ^_^





Yuri Manga: Fu~Fu, Volume 2 (ふ~ふ)

May 9th, 2013

In Volume 1 of Minamoto Hisanari’s Yuri Manga series, we are introduced to a happy lesbian couple and their happy daily life. Sumi and Kinana are not without worries, but their lives are generally happy. They play house together, go shopping together, sleep in their pluffy bed together, as any couple might.

You might remember that this series was originally created for Yuri Hime S, a magazine that was overtly targeted towards a male moe-centric audience (the audience that now is catered to with Yuru Yuri.) Sumi and Kinana represented creatures rarely seen in that magazine – happy, adult lesbians.

You remember my Friedman Addendum to the Bechdel Test? One of the key points of the Addendum is the question “Does she have society?” So often in Yuri, we are reading a romance story, in which there are two, maybe three main characters. Everyone else fades into background furniture. But life is not like that for most people. Most people have coworkers, neighbors, relatives. And, so do Kinana and Sumi.

We are introduced to new neighbors (who just *happen* to also be a lesbian couple) and Kinana’s twin sister, Kanana, and her girlfriend, Shiroyuki. This world is not heavily populated, but there is society.

As the pages of Volume 2 of Fu~Fu  (ふ~ふ) open, Kina is approached by a strange woman who confesses to her. The resulting crisis is the product of a misunderstanding, but it adds yet another character to our cast, Arata. The rest of the story contains emotional turmoil, reconciliation, long talks, exciting shopping trips to the supermarket and other things that look exactly like a real life together. ^_^

The final chapters center around Sumi’s desire to have rings made for her and Kinana. As “wife and wife,” she thinks they ought to have that symbol of their bond. And so she does, but her friends – their society – want the full wedding ceremony and so they make one. It’s a grin-making climax and one that never fails to set my heart at ease and cause me to look goopily at my own wife, who invariably does the same back at me.

After all, we’re wife and wife. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 9
Character – 10
Lesbian – 10
Service – 3

Overall – 10

If I had my way, I’d have a Drama CD for this series or a single-episode original anime as a deluxe edition of the manga.  A truly lovely series and very fun read.





Yuri Manga: Hoshikawa Ginza 4-chome, Volume 3 (星川銀座四丁目)

April 29th, 2013

In Volume 1 we were introduced to Minato, a teacher, and her student Otome, whom she removes forcefully from a household where – on good days – she was being neglected. In  Volume 2, Otome and Minato wrestle with feelings for one another as they live together. Here we are, at the final volume of  Hoshikawa Ginza 4-chome (星川銀座四丁目).

Otome and Minato move into a new apartment. Slightly larger, but less money, it’s a loft apartment over an old used book store. In the early chapters, the girl who works at the bookstore develops a creepy obsession with Otome, and when she discovers Otome’s feelings for Minato, blackmails her into posing nude for her. Ultimately, Otome gives in, apparently out of pity. Hina doesn’t hang around much longer after that. The bookstore closes, leaving Minato and Otome alone in their loft.

But they aren’t meant to be at peace. In response to her request to adopt Otome, Minato receives a communication from Otome’s mother, which prompts her to suddenly and ridiculously ask a former classmate to marry her; in hopes that, if she was part of a legitimate family unit, Otome’s mother might be more favorably inclined to letting her go. When the truth comes out, Otome learns her parents have divorced – neither of them thought to tell her – and that her mother has remarried. She wants her daughter to live with her again. Otome lays the law down…she is still a minor, she will return home, until she is accepted into college. When she is, she’ll come back. And so she does, returning once again, at last, as an adult.

The final chapter of the story proper shows Otome returning home once more after an absence to a very wifely Minato. Clearly we no longer need to worry about them…they are both adults and together, officially.

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 Kurgane 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?

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 8
Characters – 8 See below
Yuri – 10
Service – 10

Overall – 8

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.





Yuri Manga: Itazura Choucho, Volume 2 (悪戯ちょうちょ)

April 26th, 2013

In Volume 1 of Itazura Choucho,  (悪戯ちょうちょ) we were introduced to Sakura and Nanoha, two students at a highly competitive performing arts school. Bucking the weight of tradition and propriety, they have been accepted into the end-of-year competition, despite the fact that they are merely first-years.

Sakura is intense and yet, unfocused, so the mangaka provides her with a focus for her rage. As  with all good “talented performer is talented” manga, she is assigned coach who is awful to her, someone she can rail against, hate virulently and generally get better because of. Meanwhile Nanoha is having issues of her own. Most of Volume 2 is spent with Sakura and her oni-coach.

Both girls, lost in their own training, are hiding their concerns from the other, but friendship and love bring it all out into the open. In a final climax, Sakura breaks her own walls and admits her feelings for Nanoha are more than friendship. Whether Nanoha returns the same level of emotion remains to be seen.

The art style is very girls’ manga, classically shoujo visual setups, but this manga is another Comic High series. And, like several other Yuri series that have run in that magazine, it continues to surprise me at every turn. The  general heightened emotion of training for the competition reminds me of Ace wo Nerae. Unlike most sports manga, the relationship between Sakura and Nanoha is not a distraction from the competition, but a respite for both of them. And, in between both storylines, we see them hanging with friends and doing typical school activities, which is just about unheard of in hobby/sport-focused series.

Ratings:

Art – 8 Not sure if it’s cleaner, or I just like it more now
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Yuri – 7
Service – 1

Overall – 8

I really had no expectations for either of the first two volumes, but now I can’t *wait* until Volume 3. Ayase Mana has made a fan out of me. ^_^





Yuri Manga: Yuri Anthology Dolce Due (百合アンソロジー dolce due)

April 15th, 2013

Almost a year ago, I noted that the Yuri anthology field in Japan was holding steady – and indeed, showing a little growth. Comic Yuri Hime and Pure Yuri Anthology Hirari are still in print, Tsubomi is still updating regularly as a digital comic and Enterbrain’s Yuri Anthology Dolce  must have done well enough, because they released a second volume, Yuri Anthology Dolce Due (百合アンソロジー dolce due).

Like its predecessor, the stories in here are more for the Yuru Yuri crowd, than the Collectors crowd. We have stories about schoolgirls in school clubs, schoolgirls who fall for their best friends, schoolgirls and teachers, schoolgirls, schoolgirls and more schoolgirls…and one random drunken OL story which really stands out because it is the only story in which both characters are not in a school uniform.

The cover art was a “really?” moment for me, as my first thought was, “They got Hibiki Reine to illustrate the cover? No way! …Yes way. The dustjacket and actual book front cover are full color Hibiki Reine works. You remember, she was the original cover illustrator for Yuri Hime, right?  Aside from being the artist for the Maria-sama ga Miteru novels, she set the artistic pace for many of the early Yuri Hime artists. Here, she’s done a sweet duet of a girl and her loving maid and I wish that sentence didn’t make me sad. (-_-); But it does.

Dolce due does not suck, but it’s twenty steps back into the bad old days of Yuri anthologies about girls vaguely kinda liking other girls. It’s so 2003, it’s almost nostalgic. But not in a good way.

Ratings:

Overall – 6

Come on, Enterbrain. You can do better than this.