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.

There are *so* many ways Morita-san ha Mukuchi (森田さんは無口) could have been annoying. But it isn’t annoying. Not at all. It’s very funny and very enjoyable.

Morita Mayu is, compared with other people, more silent. It’s not that she can’t talk, or that she doesn’t want to talk, it’s just that she thinks before she speaks – she thinks a lot before she speaks and sometimes misses the chance altogether. Or the mood isn’t right, or her timing is off. Honestly, she’d like to speak more, it just never seems to work out.

At home, her mother tries to coach Mayu, but between Mom yelling at Dad or them being really lovey-dovey at each other, Mayu feels the mood is rarely conducive to her saying anything.

Despite her silence, Mayu is not at all ostracized by the kids at school. Once the girls get used to it, they tell her all their secrets because they know she won’t tell anyone. They trust Mayu and like her and she likes them back. There’s one or two girls that find her a little odd at first, but when they realize she’s really nice, and it’s just that she isn’t great at jumping in and talking, they are fine.

Yuri is in dribs and drabs throughout the book. At first, there’s a girl who is a little scared of Mayu, but they quickly become friendly enough to develop a pleasant skinship – mostly playing with each other’s hair. Another girl stalks Mayu throughout the book, and although we never learn her name, when she overhears one of the other girls saying that she “likes” Mayu, she comes down with a case of raging jealousy. And lastly, towards the end of the book, Mayu overhears a confession from one girl to the class president in the Library. The class president thinks she and Mayu are actually very similar – they both hate mess and are always picking stray hairs off people’s school uniforms and retacking falling posters up. She assures Mayu that this thing is pretty common for her, she’s used to dealing with it. Smiling, because she *knows* Mayu isn’t going to say anything, she asks Mayu to not tell anyone for the other girl’s sake. :-)

This manga is a typical 4-koma with a few gags repeated over and over, but it never gets tedious. It never cloys, never irks. And, from time to time, it’s absolutely laugh out loud hysterical. In mostly every way, Mayu is perfectly normal. She likes sweets, she laughs (silently) and she enjoys time with friends. Other than the fact that she rarely speaks, she’s just another girl. So, the laugh out loud moments are less about her silence and more about just something silly. For instance… (Click on the picture below for the full size image)

Do not worry about what is being said in these panels, they don’t appreciably add to to gag. Just notice that the two girls in the foreground are laughing already, *before* we see the gag. Mayu is the girl with dark hair. This strip made me giggle like a child for a good ten minutes.

*This* is the kind of thing that made Morita-san ha Mukuchi work for me. It’s a good example of a 4-koma that is just the right blend of everyday minutiae and silly weirdness. Sure, there’s basically one gag per character, but the story doesn’t ask ridiculous amounts of handwave allowance from us. One handwave and everything else just fits in place neatly.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 6
Characters – 8, closing in on 9 by the end
Yuri – 4
Service – 1

Overall – 8

If Mayu had been ostracized, if she had been full of self-loathing, if the boys and girls in school had been creepy about it, it could have been a really bad manga. Instead, it was a totally fun read and a good example of a 4-koma that makes the format work.

In the beginning, there were the Inklings. From the Inklings were born Lord of the Rings and the Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. These misbegot such things as the Sword of Shannara and the Belgeriad and from these were, ultimately, begot Harry Potter. From Harry Potter came Negima! and now, here we are at the seventh bastard of the seventh bastard, Butterfly Kiss Blade, Volume 1 (バタフライ キス).

Homura and Sakurako (who are NOTHING like Setsuna and Konoka, let me assure you,) attend Prinpikia Academy, which is one syllable shift away from being a pretty great name. It is a school of magic, of course. And there are fights, of course. With giant weapons. There is also a nadesico-type classic beauty, complete with henchchicks and political and magical power who is in love with Homura’s partner, the sweet, kind, passive, frontally lobotomized Sakurako. There are also panty shots, but I’ll come back to them later.

The bulk of the first volume is Shizuka’s ever more pathetic attempts at defeating Homura in order to make Sakurako her own partner in the “shiki.” (Shiki means “ceremony” among other things in Japanese, and it is always surrounded by quotes in this manga. 「式」)

And, um, that’s about it. Every chapter, a fight. Every chapter Homura wins with her ginormous Butterfly Knife. And Sakurako kisses things alot, because that’s how she uses her magic. She doesn’t just kiss other people, she kisses random passing objects, dolls, magic sigils floating in the air.

The art goes from inconsistent to downright horrible. At some point I actually entertained the thought that maybe this was an anthology, because the art changed so much from chapter to chapter, but nope, it was just bad art.

And then there are the panty shots. These are so forced and so intrusive that whole scenes have to be constructed around them and they are given their own panels so we can’t possible accidently miss them. They are pointedly pointless. I genuinely can’t believe that panty shots would significantly up the appeal of this manga. It’s so second-rate in every way, there’s no way you’d buy it just for the service like you might Needless or a similar fightin’ magic schoolgirls loli underwear action thing. (The Wife retorts, “You don’t know me at all.”)

Yuri is fanservice, of course, but there is no doubt that Homura and Sakurako genuinely love, adore and desire one another. Their liasons don’t ever get past foreplay, but it’s no less bodily fluid and voyeurism filled.

If you really like fightin’ magic schoolgirls, Needless and Negima! are way better than this. But if you really, really REALLY like fightin’ magic schoolgirls, then Butterfly Kiss Blade will appeal. Also, if you loved KimiKiss, as this is the same artist.

Ratings:

Art – 6 at best, often not even that
Story – 6
Characters – 6 It’s not their fault they are caught in a derivative of a derivative
Yuri – 8
Service – 7

Overall – 6 And, yes, I *am* being generous.