Archive for the Yuri Manga Category


Gunjo, Chapters 10-13

August 6th, 2009

I haven’t talked about Gunjo (new spelling courtesy of the editors of Morning 2 magazine) in a while. It’s not because it stopped running, although there was a hiatus for a bit of the spring.

It was because, simply, I couldn’t. I could not write about what is arguably the most amazing story I have ever read, bar none.

I tried to verbalize why this was yesterday to the wife and began to cry, because I just couldn’t talk about it.

I last left you after the two protagonists spend a night of loss, love, passion and pain, after we get a glimpse into the lives they’ve put behind them, and watch as the blonde’s former lover is forced by her sheer misery to come out to her parents – who kinda knew and, really kind of liked the blonde.

That’s when this story went from really amazing to sublime. And that’s when I became incapable of writing about it.

The morning after, the protagonists, whom I have given the horrible nicknames BL (Blonde) and BN (Brunette), walk away. I mean that literally. They take a look at the blood they’ve left on the sheets and the towels, and the destruction they’ve caused in the room during their various tantrums, and they drop their purses, and every yen they have on the bed…then they walk away. And almost immediately, a policeman sees them and calls out after them.

They run. They run hard, suddenly realizing that they want freedom…and, when a train nearly hits BL and BN leaves even her shoes behind to run fast enough to save her, they realize that they want to live.

They spend the night wandering in the cold rain. BN is shoeless, and getting a cold as the night wears on. Almost immediately, before they’ve even been able to taste it, their freedom swirls away down the sewer. This was a 72 page chapter – it was indescribable. I felt utterly exhausted and breathless after reading it. They are clearly at their end of their very short ropes, when BL finds a coin and uses it to make a phone call.

She calls her brother. He’s amazed to hear from her and comes to get the two of them. As it happens, it’s her nephew’s birthday so, while BN huddles miserably in the car, BL spends a few happy hours with her brother’s family, coming out to him and his wife. “What’s it like, being a lesbo?” he asks, then apologizes.

BN, filled with misery and self-loathing and a head cold wants out. But BL is driving them both – somewhere.

And here we are, waiting on what will probably be the penultimate or ultimate chapter. I still don’t know how this will end, but I have no doubt that it will be epic. And beyond that, I await – as I hope you do – the collected volume with bated breath.

This really is not Top 10 for 2009 material – this is Top Ten for my entire life material. I’ve never loved such loathsome people so much.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 10
Characters – 9
Yuri – 9
Service – 1

Overall – 10





Yuri Manga: Yuri Hime S, Volume 9

August 4th, 2009

Yuri Hime S, Volume 9 (コミック百合姫S (エス)) is…Yuri Hime S.

I keep wanting to like it, I really do. And mostly I kind of sort of enjoy it. But it is not for me and I am reminded repeatedly of the fact as I face chapter after chapter of stories like “Yuru Yuri,” “Love Cubic,” “Minus Literacy,” “Cassiopeia Dolce” and the new series “Konohana Teikitan.” They are simply not for me. Like or not like is beside the point. I’m the older sister reading a younger brother’s Yuri and just not feeling it.

It’s not even that the golden allure of schoolgirls’ thighs are nothing to me, it’s just that there’s nothing *happening* in these stories, because the fetishism fills the pages so full with cat/wolf/elf ears and bathing suits and underwear that the characters don’t have any time to develop. Take “Shingami Arisu,” a story that had a pretty bloody opening in which our protagonists meet over a murder. Well, in this next chapter…our protagonists meet over a murder. It was pretty much the same *exact* chapter all over again.

Or take “Flower Flower” for instance. In the beginning Nina was tsundere, Shu was all sincere and hopeful and her sister was kind of weird. Now, Nina is intermittently tsundere, Shu is all sincere and hopeful and her sister is really weird. There’s been almost no progress or change.

Many of the stories feel less like a story and more like a story idea repeated over and over.

Which is not to say that there aren’t some good stories here.

Uso Kurata’s “Apocalypse” is pretty standout. Two classmates play an MMORPG and find that their characters’ relationship is several step ahead of their own, but their feelings for one another are totally in sync.

Natsuneko offers a nastly little BDSM short that I would have liked more if it had more body to it.

Orange and Yellow, by Hiyori Otsu was an entirely predictable doofus best friend story that was made enjoyable by the art.

And most standout for me was the massive multi-crossover chapter by Fujieda Miyabi in which characters from Ame-iro Kouchakan Kandan, Kotonoha no Miko to Kotodama no Majyo to, Iono-sama Fanatics (unnamed, because the characters are owned by another company), Alice Quartet and “Otome-iro Stay Tuned” all meet for tea. It’s noted that the Amber Teahouse seems to be REALLY popular with female couples….

Overall – 7

It’s not awful, really. I just keep hoping for better and getting more baths. Sigh.

Oh and utter fail is Yoshitomi Akihito’s “Futari to Futari” which is a rehash of the same story he’s doing for Tsubomi. He’s getting paid twice for the same story, what a cunning plan. Snooze.





Yuri Manga: Tsubomi, Volume 2

July 30th, 2009

I was about to sit down this morning, at an obscenely early hour, while the sun rose into my living room (bringing light and heat, but not joy) when something important happened.

I picked up my copy of Tsubomi, Volume 2, (つぼみ) all ready to damn it with faint praise – how the stories were like eating Spicy Thai potato chips – pretty good, sort of painful and, after a while, you can’t really taste them, because you’ve gone numb. I opened the magazine to realize that if I did so, I’d be lying.

Because the stories weren’t like eating Spicy Thai potato chips (recommended by the way) they were like that hard candy your grandmother had in a dish on the living room table. They were candy, it’s true, and they were different flavors, but somehow they just never satisfied your craving for sweets.

I was going to rag that Volume 2 was just like Volume 1, sort of bland and the same. I was going to hold up one solitary story, “Hotei and Ebisu” as an example of the only different story in the book. But when I started to flip through it, I saw any number of not-schoolgirl stories. Easily a half dozen or so. Why didn’t any of them stick in my head?

Perhaps I was so charmed by the name of the above story (named for two of the 7 Lucky Gods, patrons of mine) or perhaps I wiped the rest away with my usual disdain for Story A. Or, perhaps, I read them when I was dead tired and simply forgot they existed.

While Tsubomi, Volume 2 is not a pinnacle of the art form, I don’t want to do it a disservice by painting it as bland, either. There are, in fact, stories of adults and young women and sisters, yes, and a step-mother and her step-daughter. There are friends and lovers and more than friends, less than lovers and “S” and others.

As I pondered this today (while I wrestled with a complex periodic safety update for the health authorities,) it came to me what the real problem is here. It’s obvious that the stories are not the same and, really, they aren’t even all that similar. The problem lies not in the execution, but in the intent. Most, if not all the stories in Tsubomi live in that ambiguous, tense space before anything is said, through just after something is said, or at least admitted to self. So few of these stories go on to portray a “couple” in any way that resolves itself in my head as life as a “couple,” that all of these vaguely-not-quite-together non-couples all begin to blur.

Nonetheless, after a second read through, I note some stories that begin to stand out. I also notice that many of them include a relationship which would be considered um, illegal, here in the US. I don’t mind May-December relationships, but I prefer the spring chickens to be out of the egg. If you will.

Anyway, upon sober reflection (hey, who knows, maybe my first time through this volume was accompanied by one girly drink in a bottle too many….) Tsubomi Volume 2 is tilling different ground than Yuri Hime. It remains to be see if I genuinely like the garden being planted, or not.

Ratings:

Overall – 7

I’m not throwing it out in disgust, I’m not giving it a place of honor. Let’s see where we are in three months, shall we?





Yuri Manga: Gokujou Drops, Volume 2

July 27th, 2009

Everyday at the Ootori Dorm is a passive-aggressive kind of day in Volume 2 of Gokujou Drops (極上ドロップス), one of the Yuri manga distributed on cellphone by Ichijinsha.

Komari is not *quite* as sappy as she appears, and certainly not nearly as sappy as she started out in Volume 1, but she’s not conquering the universe yet, either. While Yukio and Komari are more of a couple than previously, Komari is well aware that Yukio in no way considers her anything like a partner or equal in their relationship.

Sexual harassment around the dorms is toned down to an introduction to and sexual harassment chapter by yet another upperclassman, Sai, who is considered to be weird even by the other decidedly weird dorm residents. But after that, Komari is left to stress out about Yukio unreservedly.

And stress she does. Yukio goes home with nary a word and no follow up communication at all. Komari puts up with the silence, but is concerned. More for Yukio’s well-being than her own. She calls up all the courage she has and visits Yukio at home, but is coldly rebuffed by her lover. Even I can’t blame Komari for crying herself to sleep for nights on end at this point, and I definitely wanted to slap Yukio for being a jerk. Because…you just *know* its going to be something she could have explained with words. It is, of course. When Yukio returns, she and Komari make up in time-honored fashion.

The final chapter follows Komari and Yukio on a date, during which they have an actual heart-to-heart talk and mutually decide that they’d like to cut the date short for some other body part-to-body part activities.

A surprising end to what I feared would be a creepy, icky book, but wasn’t really at all. My criticism of the first book was that the girl-loving-another-girl was about 1/25 the Yuri, while the remaining bits were girl-sexually harassing-another-girl. In this volume the ratio was flipped. The bulk of the book is Yukio and Komari having a totally consensual relationship. What a difference a volume makes!

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 7
Characters – 7
Yuri – 9
Service – 7

Overall – 7

Like Shoujo Sect the end doesn’t justify the memes, but it does make it tolerably decent as a story. I don’t love and adore the art, but I don’t hate it either. I would have liked to see less fetishism and more lesbianism, is all.





Yuri Manga: Butterfly 69

July 20th, 2009

Butterfly 69 is everything that is good and right about Yuri manga. It makes me happy to be a manga reader.

Right from the first panel of the first story that ever appeared in Yuri Hime, I found Natsuneko’s art appealing. It has vibrancy, an energy that lacks in most manga these days. It’s not just that there’s action and energy depicted. The characters feel lively and real – even when the situations are ridiculous and unreal. Which they mostly are. ^_^

In “Butterfly 69,” the title story and one of my two favorites, we are introduced to Maria, the mixed-race singer of Butterfly 69 and Ageha, the prim and proper President of the Student Council at the elite music school Maria attends. Maria is an affront to everyone and everything at the school, with her crazy clothes and earrings and wild not-really Japanese self. Unbeknownst to the student body and staff, Maria and Ageha are engaged in a passionate love affair. Maria is given the opportunity to make it big overseas, but will have to leave Ageha behind, so she says goodbye the best way she knows how to – with a concert that rocks the school to its core.

Sakura is a young dress designer and her lover Dahlia is a model just about to become the Next Big Thing in “Quilt Queen.” This story reminded me strongly of Mist magazine stories, with the dress designer theme and a conflict straight from the pages of The Well of Loneliness.

Two sisters share a delusion in “Beautiful Pain.” My favorite part of this story, honestly, is that not just once, but twice, someone is hit by a truck. Made me laugh. I know, I’m a terrible person. :-p

In the unique, funny and offbeat story, “Okujou no Kiseki,” two women meet as they ponder committing suicide by jumping from the same roof. The joke is on them because they have been jilted by same girl. What makes this story really different, aside from the silly-awful premise, is that both women actually say they are Lesbian. Mind you, its sort of spit out as a little bit of self-loathing right before they throw themselves off a roof, but hey…. Oh and by the way – the story has a happy ending. Just in case you were worried.

“Spicy Sweets” was the first Natsuneko story to run in Yuri Hime and, as I said, I just liked it instantly then and no less now. Aki is a high school student with the dream of becoming a pastry chef and Yuu is a runaway daughter of a Yakuza household. There’s basically no reason to think they could ever live happily ever after, but they do. ;-)

As an omake for this collection, we get “Butterfly Effect” in which thwarted plans and jerky people keep Ageha and Maria apart – but not for long.

My *only* complaint about this volume is that they should have dropped the sister story and included the vampire story. It was much stronger.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Yuri – 10
Service – 3

Overall – 9

The art is not at all moe, the stories run the gamut from classic Yuri to funky weird to absolutely silly, and in every case are thoroughly enjoyable. The manga is an easy candidate for my Best Manga of 2009. I very much look forward to more from Natsuneko.