Archive for the Yuri Manga Category


Yuri Manga: Transistor Tea Set, Volume 1

October 19th, 2009

In Transistor Tea Set ~ Denkigai Jizu, Suzu is a mecha otaku who lives and works in the dark depths of the Electic Town area of Akihabara. Her close friend, a younger girl named Sairi, has a raging crush on her, and helps Suzu cope with daily tasks like waking up and eating.

Suzu is not wholly unaware of Sairi’s feelings, occasionally asking Sairi if she likes her. Sairi is a typical tsundere, so it’s no surprise that her reaction is to scream “Idiot!” and run off.

Sadly for Sairi, Suzu still carries a torch for an old childhood friend, Midori, who had to leave Akihabara to go overseas. They promised to meet again, but that was many years ago. So, when Suzu gets a mysterious phone call and runs home to find that the front part of her shop has been turned into a maid cafe, it’s three steps beyond “a shock.” Complicating matters, is Midori, returned at long last, acting as the cafe’s maid. Midori sucks at cooking, cleaning, making tea and pretty much everything and anything maids might be expected to do. What she wants to do is to be close to Suzu, who probably wants the same thing, but is reacting with typical “comedic” rejection.

The chapters are filled with a lot of self-referential otaku humor, along with some very silly throwaway setups. In one chapter, Midori asks Suzu to build a robo-Maid. She does, but it loses its head (literally) and escapes into the town to create a swath of horror among late-night Akihabara dwellers. I expect the headless robo-Maid to return in some later chapter. You can’t just walk away from something like that. ^_^

The final chapter of the book follows a ghost/love story that has a happy ending and only tangentially involves Suzu and co.

Yuri is the totally one-sided crush Sairi has for not-unaware, but not probably interested, Suzu, and the mutual, but uneven, feelings Midori and Suzu have for one another. It’s not likely to go anywhere, which is kind of a shame, I think I’d like Suzu more if she opened up to Midori, but it’s also not the point of the story.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Characters – 7
Story – 6
Yuri – 5
Service – 6

Overall – 6

The point of the story is that Suzu is a schoolgirl uniform-wearing robotics fetishist and Midori dresses like a maid. The end. ^_^





Yuri Manga; Hanjuku Joshi, Volume 2

October 14th, 2009

Ladies and Gentlemen – we have a winner.

I never doubted for a second that Morishima Akiko-sensei would be the one. I had faith in her, in her ability to gently nudge the boundaries of “Yuri” until they started to blur the lines into “lesbian.” I’ve commented that several of her stories have started to shift in that direction. Notably, her story about the two office workers with a crush on the grease truck chef, and the unprecedented use of the phrase “Kocchi no ke.”

In Hanjuku Joshi, Volume 2 (半熟女子), Morishima has actually written a story that covers that last little piece – the gap between lesbian content and lesbian identity. Let me be very clear here – I do not meant that the characters identify as “lesbians.” I do mean that they acknowledge the challenge that loving another woman brings, and they struggle with the idea of loving that other woman in public. THIS is what I mean when I give Morishima the “Golden Lily” prize.

It’s not like Hanjuku Joshi is the first book ever to cover this area. It’s the first “mainstream Yuri” (if you will allow that) to do so in many years.

Because other reviewers will focus on the sex, let me sum that up in a line: there is sex in Hanjuku Joshi. It’s not actually the point of the story. It’s the icing on the cake.

The point of the story is acceptance – of one’s self, of one’s love, of one’s desire to live a normal, happy life with the person one loves…who just happens to also be female. And the point of the story is that it takes a LOT to get to the point where you can accept that, much less be fearless about expressing it in public. *That* is the point of this book. If you didn’t notice, because you were obsessing about the fuzzy handcuffs, that’s okay. The other point is that Morishima has integrated the main point seamlessly into a smut-filled story, for people just like you. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 8
Characters – 9
Yuri – 9
Service – 7

Overall – 9

Hanjuku Joshi turned out to be a pretty interesting series. I prefer Mari x Ran to Chitose x Yae, but some really critical conversations happen in this book and those were definitely worth the price of admission.





Watashi no Taisetsuna Tomodachi Manga, Volume 1

October 13th, 2009

You all know the phrase “my important friend,” right? It’s an indicator that the relationship is more than friends, even if it’s less than lovers.

So when I heard about Watashi no Taisetsuna Tomodachi (わたしの大切なともだち), by Hakamada Mera, I thought, *at last!* we’re finally going to get something with some meat. Well..yes, and no. More than anything, we get an entirely new riff on the same-old, tired “best friend” plot.

Ebisawa Shouko (Ebi-chan) has failed to get into the art college of her choice. On her way home, she consoles herself by buying some doujinshi. She runs into an old friend, Tachibana, who’s hanging with cool-girl friends from high school. When Ebi-chan’s otaku hobby is revealed, Tachibana lies and says they barely know each other. In tears, Ebi-chan sits alone in a local park, as a shining light passes across the sky. We see that – whatever it was – has hit Tachibana on the head and knocked her unconscious.

Ebi-chan decides to go to a trade school for design while waiting to retake the exam. She is utterly freaked out when one of her classmates turns out to be none other than Tachibana…who has completely lost her memory. So much so, that she keeps a dictionary around to look up words she doesn’t remember.

Ebi-chan lies and says that they were best friends – which is a lie, but also not, as they were very close in elementary and middle school. It’s just that as an otaku, she didn’t run anywhwere near Tachibana’s cool-girl circle in high school.

Now that she’s said they were best friends, Ebi-chan feels responsible for Tachibana. But Tachibana’s not invalid, just has no memory. If anything, her physical skills are unbelievable and it is she who saves Ebi-chan when they are on their class orienteering trip. (The idea that the design school does an orienteering trip hurts my head, I don’t know about you. ^_^)

When Tachibana collapses from overexertion, Ebi-chan has an epiphany. Up until now, she’s been trying to help Tachibana get her memories back. But – what if she hates Ebi-chan for lying about their relationship? Now Ebi-chan is full of doubt, but Tachibana’s new food-obssessed personality is really too cute to resist and she decides to just live in denial about everything.

I don’t even know what to say about this book. It was odd, and kind of cute, but also kind of annoying, but not so much.

It’s obvious that Ebi-chan feels that she wants Tachibana to be her “important friend,” but what Tachibana feels is utterly obscure, except where it related to food. She really, really, really likes food. Whatever one may think of the story, it absolutely, positively is a totally different riff on the mopey best friend story.

Ratings:

Art – 6 It’s Hakamada Mera, darlings.
Characters – 7
Story – 7
Yuri – 1
Service – 0

Overall – 7

The characters are a lot older than the typical Hakamada manga, too, but pretty much look the same, just taller.





Yuri Manga: Tsubomi, Volume 3

October 8th, 2009

Yet again, I find myself almost completely forgetting every story mere days after reading the third volume of Tsubomi.

Really, it’s not that they are particularly bad or anything – they just have almost no substance. And the continuing saga of two older (barely pubescent) sisters who lust after each other’s younger sisters is so…ugh…that the fact that it starts and ends every volume does not help at all. In my desire to wipe these stories out of my mind, I seem to lose grasp of the rest of the content, as well.

Tsubomi is settling into an even fetishier space than Yuri Hime S. With a high percentage of May-December stories (she says euphemistically) and a lot of simply nothing stories I strongly feel that a number of talented artists are having their time completely wasted on stories that do nothing to showcase their skills.

Morinaga Milk’s story is wallowing in a space where nothing at all is happening, and Kurogame Kenn’s story pretty much looks like everything else he’s done. No one is pushing to do anything other than retread the same old tired tropes. I don’t know if this is a good thing for the artists – it’s pay after all – but as a reader it’s really annoying me.

The two stories I have the most hope for are Horii Kyosuke’s (of Junk-Lab/Raku-gun, an artist I really like) “Pedal ni Nosete” and the ongoing saga of Hotei and Ebisu in which nothing happens, but at least it’s not happening to adults.

Ratings:

Overall – 6

I’m edging closer to giving up on this magazine…unless at least one story has some sticking power.





Yuri Manga: Sasamekikoto, Volume 5 (ささめきこと)

October 6th, 2009

In Volume 4, we left Ushio and Sumika not actually saying anything important to one another. Now, in Volume 5 of Sasamekikoto (ささめきこと), the walls between them are not getting any easier to get past.

In fact, it’s safe to say that this entire volume follows two young women who have something *incredibly* important to say to one another, who both find a myriad of ways to not say anything at all.

They smile at one another, and pretend that there’s nothing wrong, but they both hate it. They hate what it’s doing to them. Even more – they hate what it is doing to the other. They can *see* that the other one is suffering, but they are completely paralyzed and unable to say anything that needs to be said. They each hate the fake smiles and brave face the other wears. Most importantly, they each blame themselves for the other’s unhappiness.

Most fans will find this volume frustrating, but it serves two distinct purposes. The first, and most reality-based, is that it indicates that the series is in for a longer haul. No longer is this the goofy love-comedy of two girls in love but who can’t figure it out. Now it is a longer series, full of do-ra-ma, about two girls who are in love but can’t figure it out. Since we’ve made it to 5 volumes, I’d expect at least a few more tear-soaked volumes before it all gets settled.

The second purpose is that the story has, in effect, to be rewritten. The first three volumes were silly. They set up a bunch of untenable Yuri tropes that, one at a time, have been set aside for the more realistic, more dramatic “real” story line. In this volume “Akemi”s modeling career comes to an end, and all the characters but a few – including the actual lesbian couple, who can see the problem easily enough – seem to shift back slightly to allow room for the full-on misery of Ushio and Sumi simply not talking about what’s on their mind.

In the middle of throngs of people, even standing right next to one another, Ushio and Sumi are lonely. Right now they are struggling to find who they themselves are and if they can do that, then they might be able to find one another. Or, well, that’s what I’d do if I were writing this manga.

This series is becoming better on the one side, because it’s dealing with the real gap between knowing what you want and being able to accept that that is what you want, in a world that does not approve of such things. On the other, it’s really annoying because I hate mopey characters. ^_^;

However, I’m more than willing to give Ushio and Sumi some time to get over themselves. I eagerly look forward to the next volume in which I think a *terrible crisis* will rear it’s ugly head. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 7
Characters – 8
Story – 8
Yuri – 7
Service – 1

Overall – 8

More volumes means more teenaged moping.