Archive for the Yuri Manga Category


Yuri Manga: Girl x Girl x Boy Otome no Inori

September 22nd, 2008

All too often, stories with love triangles are unsatisfying.

It’s natural for us to pick the pair we want to succeed and find any other form of resolution irritating. We often wish no one settled with anyone, rather than the “wrong” couple work out.

Girl x Girl x Boy is the story of a love triangle with a satisfactory ending.

Fuuka is in love with her best friend and classmate Riri, who protected her, when they were younger, from the bullying of the boys at school.

One of those boys, Itta, was the one of the worst bullies – Fuuka can still remember how cruel he was to her. So she is not pleased at all to have Itta transfer into her high school, be seated next to her – and worst of all, confess that he likes her!

Fuuka’s having a hard enough time with that, but when Riri admits that she likes Itta, it’s just intolerable.

The story follows the three of them as they try to maintain balance between their mutually exclusive likes and dislikes. As a result of that balance, they pull together as friends, but the specter of sexual attraction doesn’t ever truly go away. It comes to a head in an abortive attempt at a threesome in a hotel…something that splits them up as friends, and destroys the possibility of them becoming lovers in any combination.

Itta breaks the impasse by reminding the girls how much fun they had as a trio of friends. He asks Fuuka and Riri to recapture that feeling between them, because he’s transferring to another school. His announcement forces Riri to deal with her fears about Fuuka’s and her feelings, ultimately bringing the two girls together. When Itta returns, he admits defeat in love, but insists on reestablishing his place in the triangle. The end of the book sees the three of them as friends, but Riri and Fuuka as a couple.

There were some decent things about this book. Fuuka’s feelings for Riri start out as an extension of her gratefulness for the other girl’s protection. I was concerned that this was too fragile a feeling and it would be destroyed by Riri’s waffling, but ultimately, Fuuka’s feelings grow into a more mature love.

For her part, Riri is the one torn by her feelings of love for another girl. Reticence takes a hold of her as she watches a show on gay people who have had to give up all hope of family life in order to be with their lovers. She’s just not willing to do that. And so, she chooses Itta as a way to avoid dealing with it.

Itta starts off as a total jerk – not taking no for an answer, being obnoxiously persistent, the usual. But ultimately, he ends up being the most honest of the three. His feelings for Fuuka aren’t complicated by concerns about society’s approval, but he does fight a cool sempai off – going so far as to scold the sempai for almost outing Riri and Fuuka.

I can’t say I really *liked* this book. It wasn’t bad in every way – in fact, it wasn’t bad in any way. The art was okay, the story was okay, the relationship ended in the way Yuri fans might hope, but nothing really stood out, either. It was a pretty predictable tale from start to finish.

When I think about Girl x Girl x Boy I feel like I didn’t like it. But when I take a second to really consider it, there wasn’t anything objectionable. So, I guess it’s more that it had no oomph, and that all the tropes have been covered by stories I liked better.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 7
Characters – 7
Yuri – 7
Service – 2

Overall – 7

As a fairly realistic expression of the feelings of two babydykes, it was totally satisfactory. As entertainment…it was totally bland.





Yuri Manga: Magie Paire, Volume 3

September 9th, 2008

The plot of Magie Paire, Volume 3 remains the same as that of Volume 1 and Volume 2 – Maria, having now found herself a powerful onee-sama at a school for mages, is still incapable of performing any magic herself. Well, not unless she has Unyuu the magical creature on her head, that is.

As you can see by the cover art, Maria’s problem takes second place to the inevitable cosplay one comes to expect with Takagi Noboyuki manga. So, while it’s true that Maria is going to spend some small amount of time in pursuit of her latent magical powers, she’s going to spend way *more* time getting in and out of bathing suits, gym clothes and maid costumes. Fans of this series have priorities, you know. ^_^

For a change, Maria spends an entire chapter clothed and working on her magic, as she approaches the issue of flame. Since her Paire, Reina-oneesama, is a Flame Master, they conclude that Maria ought to be able to work with small fires like a candle. After much effort, she seems to have developed the ability to…extinguish a flame. Very useful if one can’t, say, exhale. ^_^;

In terms of Yuri, a particularly erotic little sprite gets loose in the school and makes Maria strip down, cover herself in ribbon and offer herself to Reina as a birthday present. And Maria picks up a few upperclassmen who’d like to spoil her with kisses and hugs as she’s so utterly adorable in that maid costume she wears for the school festival.

And, oh yeah, Reina-oneesama picks up an newcomer as an admirer who challenges Maria’s right to be her Paire…of course.

After that, Maria sets her sights on getting stronger and spends the rest of the volume in a variety of costumes appropriate to various sporting and fighting situations.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 5
Characters – 6
Yuri – 4
Service – 7

Overall – 6

I happen to have picked up a recent issue of Gum Magazine the manga mag in which this series runs (as does Ikkitousen and a host of other crap) and I can assure you that Maria will gain her powers…but not before many more clothing changes.

If there’s one lesson we can take away from Magie Paire it’s that the appropriate outfit is at least, if not more, important than one’s attitude. ^_^





Yuri Manga: Gunjou, Chapters 8 and 9

September 5th, 2008

Erica is on vacation and is likely having way more fun than you are right this moment. Except for the bits when’s she’s feeling a bit socialist and irritated by the excess of early 20th-century landowners and captains of industry. Tacky bastards. In any case, expect delays…with…stuff…and stuff, until she gets home and caught up on sleep and reintegrated into life.

Squee! Two whole chapters of what is unconditionally my favorite manga of the year.

In Chapter 6 and Chapter 7, the blonde (called “Sensei” by the Japanese fandom, on account of her being a vet,) and the brunette (likewise referred to as “megane” for her glasses) have spent a tempestuous evening, full of heightened emotions, dark despair, sexual tension, passion and fury. We left them in the tub, as the blonde lets the brunette see the tearful face she makes – as she tries to kill her.

In Chapters 8 and 9, we take a step back to see the moments before the beginning. When BL and BN have met again for the first time in many years, and how their akashic ties slowly, surely and irrevocably become intertwined in a way that affects not only their own fates, but those around them.

We know what happened to BN’s husband – after all, his murder is the beginning of everything in this story. But, what happened to BL’s life when she picked up one day and walked out of it? We know that she has an ex-lover. What we learn here is that she and her lover had been together for almost ten years and that her lover had gone so far as to call her parents and invited them to visit, because she wanted them to meet the person she wanted to spend her life with. They do arrive, but never get to meet that woman….

We see the results of the violence, the cascade of emotions that catapult them eventually into a life on the lam. We see the friends, the coworkers, the normality that BL walks away from. In counterpoint to this, we see the misery, the drudgery, the physical and emotional agony, and the utter hopelessness that BN faces every day.

In fact, we gain such a clear picture of how we got here, that the only question that remains has *got* to be – where are we going?

In her blog, Nakamura-sensei has discussed the sadness with which she contemplates the end of this series. It makes me lonely to think of a life without Gunjou, so I can understand her feelings – and their aren’t even my characters! ^_^;

Here’s my thoughts on the end of this series. I think that the *best* we could hope for is that they die together. But that’s not the way this series has gone at all. So, my real guess is that when the police catch up to them – and they will – the blonde will confess to the murder and to having kidnapped and beaten the brunette, turning her into a helpless and sympathetic victim. The blonde will take the rap and by doing so, will free the brunette for the first time in her life of being beholden to anybody at all.

It’s not what I *want* to happen, of course. ^_^ That’s what I *think* will happen.

In the meantime, I wait with bated breath for my next monthly fix of the most amazing manga I’ve read in ages.

Ratings:

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

Overall – 10





Yuri Manga: Kaprekar, Volume 1

August 26th, 2008

A few months ago, the manga Kaprekar, popped onto our radar and we reported it in the “Snatches of Yuri” segement of the weekly Yuri News report.

So I picked it up just to see what the deal was. Here’s the deal: Yuna and Uno are two girls with a past. At the end of their physical and emotional ropes, they sold their lives to the organization Arca, and were given new lives – and an amazing power to merge and transform into the magical/bad science being Karepkar when they kiss. Kaprekar fights “Craimu” – Monsters of the Day created by unsatisfied desires in the hearts of the miserable, hapless and hopeless. Kaprekar crushes the heart-shaped, blood-filled gems in the MoTD’s hearts to defeat them. Kaprekar’s (and therefore Uno and Yuna’s) handler is a guy they call Yamada (Provisional). He’s in love with Kaprekar and pretty mean to the girls, and is more an accountant than anything else. Because Yuna and Uno still owe loads of money to Arca for their surgeries, so Yamada makes them do work to pay back the loan.

Now all this sounds like it could be a decent story, but it’s not really. Because instead of developing the characters and their reasons for giving up everything to become Kaprekar, or looking at their lives and motivations now, the story does the typical service-y situations and focuses on bikinis at the beach and wacky school stuff.

Later in the book, Yuna and Uno rescuse a kid who is very close to becoming a Craimu, and decide to keep him around as bait, since his unhappiness will draw Craimu like ants to sugar. He’s a miserable little shota of a kid, who takes up the role of personal assistant to the girls and works his way into their hearts – but mostly only because he makes them food. He also supplies a series of role reversals as we get to see him sexually harrassed by a female classmate, only to have her turn into a Craimu that has to be defeated. I was shocked, I can assure you. ^_^

What about the Yuri? Well, Yuna and Uno care about each other – but the only reason they kiss is to turn into Kaprekar. I think it’s safe to say that yes, they do love each other. Other than that, it’s all in your head. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 7
Characters – 6
Yuri – 3
Service – 4

Overall – 7

In the end, Yuna and Uno are no closer to paying off their debt than they were in the beginning. And so we look forward (or not, depending on what you like) to Volume 2 where, no doubt, more of the same will happen. ^_^





Yuri Manga: Yuri Hime, Volume 13 Part 2

August 19th, 2008

Part two starts with some color introduction pages to the new line of Yuri novels that Ichijinsha has published, Wild Bouquet and Period. (Yuri Hime S came with a sample of each that I haven’t yet read. I’ll get there eventually.)

This is followed by “Adachi no Yukue” drawn by the artist who did the “Aoi Shiro” manga for Yuri Hime S. This is a period piece about two students at a girls’ finishing school. Asahi and Komachi are in love, but Asahi knows that it has to come to an end and, indeed, she receives a letter from her family which tells her to leave the school and come home to be married. To her deep distress Komachi doesn’t protest, but wishes her happiness. They leave the school together and stand on the train tracks as the train comes, speaking of their love and the future they won’t have – but at the last minute, they push themselves off the track and survive, deciding to leave together and find a place where they can stay together forever.

Akiko Morishima once again touches a little on what it actually means to be a woman in love with another woman in “Ruri-iro no Yume,” in which we meet Rokujou-san the morning after she wakes up in bed naked with a female coworker, after a drunken romp in the hay. In her mind, Rokujou has always assumed that she wants the usual – marriage, a house, a kid whose name she has already picked out, but instead finds herself irresistibly drawn to the company of Mikuni, her unabashedly not interested in guys coworker. Night after night they go out, drink, come back to share a bed, but still, Rokujou holds this totally average dream for herself. One night, while out with her coworkers, she lets her dream slip – Mikuni reacts by suddenly having plans and leaving. At work, Rokujou meets Mikuni for lunch up on the roof as usual and everything seems normal, but when they finally get to the point, Rokujou surprises herself by admiting that, yes, she is utterly average and normal – and loves Mikuni.

Takahashi Mako’s “Untitled” was quite possibly the least bad thing I’ve seen from her. The characters appear to like one another, not be violently insane and no blood appears.

On the other hand, “Sesshoku” was a dreadful little drag through the failed first love pile, with hideously drawn characters. And even though it technically had a happy ending, I can’t say it made me feel happy.

“Sweet Peach” continues, with a look into the protagonists tragic past and a bunch of stuff happening in her current wacky future, but I can’t get past the perverted hamster and the elf ears. My limitations, I know.

Hanatsu Yaya wins the award for the most distubing manga of the book, with “Futari no Mirai” about, you guessed it, twins. Only this time, one of them has only one eye and no arms and thinks the other one would be better without her. The other twin agrees and tries to kill her, but don’t worry, they end up living happily ever after together.

In “Apple Day Dream” Kaoru continues to think about Mayu’s breasts.

I can’t believe I’m about to say this but – I actually *liked* Hakamada Mera’s “Kono Onegai Kanaugara.” Three friends are inseparable, until one day one of them sees the other two kissing. There’s some angst and misunderstanding as it’s assumed that she will begin to hate them, but her real concern was that they never *told* her. Of course she likes one of them, as well, so we can expect a love triangle thing in the next chapter. How awkward.

Once again, I was surprised to find that “Usotsuki Engage” was a continuation of the teacher-student story that I continually find myself surprised by. You’d think I’d remember one day that this story is a series. lol Nanao wants to go away wth Matsumoto-sensei for summer vacation, but the teacher uses Nanao’s studies as an excuse to not go. Nanao is considering not going to college at all, and wants to move in with Matsumoto, who says no, flat out, but gives the girl her key. Yes, they are lovers after school, but what are they really? Nanao wonders. She confronts the teacher, who gets upset and asks her to consider her feelings. Nanao runs out of the room in tears. Another series I really want to know what will happen in the next issue!

And this volumes draws to a close with “Nanami to Misuzu” which I will continue to skip.

So, overall, a really strong volume. Not nearly as many sisters as in Yuri Hime S, but the one story was way creepier than anything in S, so this volume both wins and loses in that respect over its brother publication.

I can’t face the next volume knowing that “Strawberry Shake Sweet” will draw to a close, but I will fervently pray that Hayashiya-sensei will create another, equally as wonderful series for us. In the meantime, I really liked 8 of the 19 stories and only really didn’t like 4, so I think the average has gone up.

Overall – 8

I look forward to many of the upcoming collections, especially “Clover” and Kazuma Kowo’s series that I can never remember is a series. ^_^