Archive for the Yuri Manga Category


Yuri Manga: Itoshi wo Tome (Volume 1)

July 8th, 2009

Set in the Heian period, Itoshi wo Tome ~ Kimi ga Kokoro ha ~ (愛しをとめ~君がこころは~) is a story about noblewomen Tachibana and Sakura, whose older sister had been a lady of the Emperor’s palace, but had died. Sakura is living with Tachibana’s family as a courtesy.

Tachibana falls in love with Sakura’s tearful face early on but as much as they wish it, their story is not as simple as “Happily ever after.” First, Tachibana is betrothed to the stupidest, most cheerful doofus ever. His words are decorated with ASCII art just to give you an idea of his depth and intelligence. When he discovers Tachibana and Sakura locked together in an embrace, Sakura is able to convince him to be their friend and ally.

But a far, far worse threat is around the corner. Tachibana remains engaged to her doofus, knowing he won’t press the issue – but when Sakura is called up by the Emperor to be one of his women, there is no escape. Tachibana wails that as a woman she is powerless, but then comes to the surprising conclusion that even as a man, she would have had no power over the whims of the Emperor.

To protect her beloved Sakura, Tachibana takes her place in the Emperor’s bed. It is not a happy moment for either woman and eventually Sakura interrupts to stop what she cannot bear to see or hear.

The Emperor claims that he has no intention of separating them, instead asking them to have sex in front of him, to “prove” their love. They do, because it’s that or have sex with him (the saving grace of this scene is that he is young, attractive and not doing anything that would make a Yuri fan cry while he watches.) Unrealistically, he allows them to leave, unharmed. And despite my and Tachibana’s suspicion, he appears to be as good as his word. The book ends with them in each others arms thanking the gods that each other exists.

I can’t say I liked this book, really. It wasn’t vile or anything, but it just didn’t grab me. The art wasn’t up to either the Heian clothing or the “beautiful people” that populated the Imperial Palace. The few glimpses of actual Heian-style art served to really pull us down to reality on what was considered beautiful during that time – something I did quite like. I would have liked a more elegant style, something more Mist-like.

Mostly, I just didn’t like the story. It was very “Plot? What Plot?” Tachibana and Sakura barely talk before they are having sex and the sex isn’t really portrayed well. (If you do that to breasts, guys, it hurts. I recommend not doing that if you don’t want to be slapped.) The scene where the Mikado has them have sex in front of him is, perhaps surprisingly, perhaps not so much, the sexiest scene of the book.

The *best* scene of the book, IMHO, was a moment when Tachibana carves Sakura’s name (桜) into her arm with a knife. Sakura grabs the knife and threatens to carve Tachibana’s name (橘) into her own arm. That’d be a heck of a carving.

This manga is a collection of another of the cell phone manga distributed by Ichijinsha. I’m not sure I’d subscribe to it – there is better out there.

Ratings:
Art – 6
Story – 5
Characters – 7
Yuri – 8
Service – 6

Overall – 6

OTOH, it didn’t suck massively, either. I’ve read better, I’ve read worse.





Yuri Manga: Red Garden, Volume 4

July 6th, 2009

Red Garden, Volume 4 is 272 pages of blood, weirdness, violence and undead girls who look very fetching in that frock.

As you can see clearly from the cover, Kate steps forward to openly take her place as the lead character in this volume. It’s been apparent that, although the story is *said* to revolve around Lise, it really revolves around Kate.

Kate and Herve’ come together, and are ripped apart, Kate fends off Evil, Psycho Lesbian TM Paula who, completely unlike the wonderful, kind, sincere Paula of the anime, is a loathsome, unstable creature in the fine tradition of carnivorous lesbians in most media. But don’t worry – she dies. Then she comes back and turns out to be real nice after all. But she dies again anyway.

Kate is set apart from Rose, Rachel and Claire at the end when, in order to save everyone, she is forced to sacrifice herself. Although they mourn their loss, they are able to move on and live the lives that had been taken from them. Kate, however, does not die, but lives in this series’ version of Tir-na-Og, the Red Garden of Roosevelt Island, with her beloved friend Lise. Which is why I am calling this a Yuri Manga. Surely even the undead can live in a Boston Marriage? ^_^

As with all the other volumes, there is violence, there is fashion, there is raw emotion and shoujo-style SHOCK! eyes. There is also an amazingly nice set of panels with all four of our heroines in the uniform of Grace, which is way more effective than I would have expected.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Yuri – 4
Service – 3

Overall – 8

It’s really hard to ignore the importance of clothes in this manga. What they are wearing is at least as important as what they are doing. ;-)





Yuri Manga: Ghost Talker’s Daydream, Volume 3 (English)

July 1st, 2009

You know what I just love? I love when people who aren’t lesbian or gay tell us what we feel and think. So, how convenient that “what lesbians feel” is described for me in Ghost Talker’s Daydream, Volume 3.

Saiki Misaki is an exorcist, She can see and talk to ghosts; spirits of the dead that are still attached for some reason to this plane. By seeing and speaking with them, Misaki facilitates their passing on.

In Volume 3, Misaki is asked by a lesbian friend, Shizue, to exorcise the spirit of a runaway who she didn’t sleep with, but didn’t help, either. The runaway, Arisa, and the woman who brought her to the lesbian bar, Naori (who, we are helpfully told is “gender dysphoric,”) die together, but Arisa continues to haunt Shizue. In discussing Naori, Shizue kindly explains to Misaki that all lesbians have fallen for a straight woman at least once and cursed the fact that they were a woman. We have, have we? All of us? Oh well, yet again, I am a bad lesbian. Thanks for confirming that.

Naori saves Shizue from Arisa’s anger, Misaki sends them all on to their next life and Shizue gets to live with guilt to go along with her shame.

It’s sort of touching, sort of annoying, sort of creepy because, even in death, Arisa, Naori and Shizue don’t manage to cut any ties. Now *that’s* typical lesbian behavior. ^_^

The next story follows Misaki’s civil servant friend/sidekick in a weird little sleep-deprivation-driven dream, followed by a story about ghosts needing Misaki to guide their granddaughter, and a violent little epic of rape, murder, ghosts and taxicabs.

I’m not really sure what to make of this manga. It’s clearly for Dark Horse’s target adult male audience. Misaki dresses like a whore, but obsesses constantly about her virginity. There’s almost sex, and implications of sex and mentions of sex, without there being any real sex, something I will never understand. Dark Horse does a nice reproduction job, though, so it’s easy to read and reasonably entertaining.

On a day when I was in a good mood, I’d be inclined to be charitable and say I liked it. Today I’m in a foul mood, but can’t bring myself to excoriate it. I’ll stick with “it’s sort of touching, sort of annoying, sort of creepy.” It’s also not really “Yuri.” The characters are actually Lesbians. That’s kind of a nice change. Too bad they need to “explain” stuff wrong.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – Variable, let’s say 7
Characters – 6 (No one I’d have over for lunch)
Yuri – 0, Lesbian – 6
Service – 8

Overall – 7

My sincere thanks to sponsor for today’s review, Okazu Superhero Daniel P, for introducing me to this series. I’ll stick it on my “to read some more one day when I get the chance” list! ^_^





Yuri Manga: Assistant Denki Keika, Volume 1( アシスタント伝奇ケイカ)

June 29th, 2009

Imagine, if you will, a reader of Sasamekikoto who finishes up a volume of that particular high school Yuri drama and thinks, “That was great. But you know, it would be so much cooler if they were older, maybe, yeah, like assistants to manga artists, and there was an evil overlord trying to stop them and they had to defeat him then have really raunchy lesbo sex.”

That’s pretty much what you get in Volume 1 of Assistant Denki Keika, (aka Keika, the Romance of The Assistant or アシスタント伝奇ケイカ.)

Keika is a Sumi/Fumi/Sachiko/Chikane/Simone classic Japanese nadesico beauty, armed with nibbed pens and the refuse from a million tones and a fistful of angry “get the fuck out of my way.” So when soon-to-be-manga assistant Tamae is attacked by the evil overlord’s henchmen, Keika’s appearance is welcome. She saves the damsel, they spend the night together and use the tools of their trade as sex toys. There are bodily fluids.

They are joined in their violence and sex by Tsumugi, an absurdly cute cross-dressing young man. (If you count Sasamekikoto‘s Sumi as Keika and Ushio is Tamae, then Tsumugi is this manga’s Akemi. If you care.) He has a massive crush on Keika, who has no time for him, and is glad to sell him out to the truly bizarre manga artist Ooba, in a chapter I immediately scoured out of my brain. There’s only so much room for weird sex there and this was just past my tolerance point.

I really liked just over half of this book – especially after Keika and Tamae have sorted out the fact that they actually really like each other. There are moments of sweet nothings between them, pecks on the cheeks and snuggling that are awfully cute. Their sex is still full of bodily fluids but, in every other way is sincere. But the giant dildo/fake vagina thing at Ooba’s place and the massive sucking away of sexual energy so she can draw kind of really didn’t do it for me. I’m not opposed to finding out what happens, I just don’t want to use my own money to do so. ^_^

The next to last chapter takes whatever semblance of cognitive dysfunction we’re using to make this series work in our heads and throws it out the window, runs after it stomps on it and kicks it across the yard for good measure. Tamae and Keika are wandering through a park when they come across these two suspicious looking statues. behind the hedges they note a number of female couples going at it, and they take some reference photos, then are overcome and join the pack. They come to in their own apartment, the photos are pictures of themselves having sex and the suspicious statues are now covered in lilies and even more suspicious-looking. I have no idea what that last chapter was meant to be, but it clearly pointed out to me that this book is essentially crap and if we’re trying to make it make sense in our heads, we are wasting our time. So I stopped trying. ^_^ The last chapter is plain old weird.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 5
Characters – 7
Yuri – 8
Service – 10

Overall – 6

I really can’t say I liked it – but I really can’t say I disliked it. There were some really good things, but some really bad things…bad enough that I’m not sure I want it in the house. It’s a very problematic manga. I still kinda liked it, though.





Yuri Manga: Comic Yuri Hime, Volume 16 (Part 2)

June 5th, 2009

The second half of  Comic Yuri Hime, Volume 16 (コミック百合姫) starts off with what I consider to be an interesting turn of events. In “Honey Mustard” Morishima Akiko details a silly little story of two careerwomen, Kaori and Mitsuki. Some years ago they were lovers, but are now good friends – then rivals, as they fall for the ubercute server at the window of what we used to call in college a “grease truck.” Mai finds both women attractive in their own way, but her coworker, Chiho is less enthusiastic because she is, quite clearly jealous. The story itself is cute. It’s nice to see more adult characters, but that is not particularly what interested me.

What interested me was something Chiho said. In response to Mai’s comment about how attractive both Kaori and Mitsuki were, Chiho says “My gut tells me that those two aren’t like us.” In fact, she uses a phrase “Kocchi no Ke.” I’m not sure I’m going to be able to explain this right, so my apologies if I cock this up but in this sense “ke” is a group or way of existence. In English we might say, “My gut feeling is that they aren’t family” in the sense that the speaker is gay and so is the person being spooken about. “Kocchi no ke” (*this* way) not “socchi no ke” (*that* way.)

Japanese is a language of implication. This little phrase “kocchi no ke” implies a lot. The way Chiho says it implies that she and Mai are gay and she thinks that Kaori and Mitsuki are not. The next panel clarifies that, yep, Mitsuki and Kaori are women who love women. And to me, it’s the absolute closest we’ve ever had in this magazine to the recognition that there is a “world of L,” a “ke” that is not “non-ke,” the slang word for straight.

In any case, in the end Kaori and Mitsuki realize that Mai and Chiho belong together and they think that…maybe…they do too.

In “Renai Kouzou Shiki,” Maki finds that a bitter curse made 13 years ago rebounds on her exactly as she wished. Only now she has to deal with the consequences. This was a really fun story, because Chisato is so grounded and mature at 13 that it totally works and isn’t icky at all.

Kaoru is growing her hair a little longer and Mayu is thawing out a little, going so far as to be seen touching in public, in “Apple Day Dream.”

For fans of girls in bandages, a fetish I have barely registered before as such, but am starting to see some interesting patterns, “Kyoumei” explores a super violent world, and bonds of affection that can grow even in the harshest, bloody environment. I find I do not disapprove. :-)

Ichijinsha Iris Light Novel “Otome ha Hana ni Koi o Suru” gets an intro manga in which we can see that all the typical Yuri tropes are covered so we don’t worry that there’s any original ideas we’ll have to deal with. Phew.

It’s climax time in “Creo the Crimson Crisis!” Creo, Suoh and Suoh’s sister battle for survival in the face of Suoh’s transformation. Urara is saved by Kiki who fights the other visitor from Creo’s planet for her. Suoh finds herself grasping at things, only to see them slip through her fingers and although she wins the battle, it’s begining to look like there’s a war on that she’s being sucked in to.

“Mukashi mo Ima mo Kore Kara mo” is a very decent sequel to the story last issue of Kadou and Miya who are both crushing on Rinko-sempai and the fallout as Kadou and Rinko actually go out. Happy endings are had all the way around, as Rinko is able to find her true love and Kadou is freed to be with Miya.

A non-linear tale of love, and loss and coffee in “Imprinting no Coffee” was hard to follow, but one of the best in the book.

All is wrapped up by letters, and envelopes and ads.

Overall, an amazingly strong second half to what has to be one of the best overall issues of Yuri Hime so far.

Ratings:

Overall – 9