Archive for the Yuri Manga Category


Comic Yuri Hime November 2023 (コミック百合姫2023年11月号)

November 5th, 2023

The upper half of the cover is mostly white, with a short text essay about touching hands and the joy of being with one's dearest. On the bottom half of the page, two smiling girls run through a crisp autumn day as gingko leaves fall around them, holding hands. The darkness has passed and, as the year ends, our cover story protagonist finds warmth and joy being with her dearest. I know this is the penultimate cover for this year, and it’s been more a series of impressions than a story, but it still has been a ride. Overall, I think this may be some of mebachi-sensei’s best work that I’ve seen. I’m always interested to see what the new year offers. I quite like the new-cover-design-every-year model they are going with now.

Comic Yuri Hime, November 2023 (コミック百合姫2023年11月号) very much feels like the theme is “endings,” even when stories are on-going! Arcs will end and new ones are about to begin. The magazine begins with a new story by Kodama Naoko, “Usotsuki Hanayome to Dousei Kekkon-ron” in which a straight woman imposes herself on a closeted lesbian / not-terribly-happy coworker. Since Kodama-sensei usually offers happy endings for her stories, I’m not really worried, but I am agitated at the lack of boundaries Nagisawa sets for Gotoh, then gets pissed that they get crossed. This is pretty much Kodama-sensei’s niche, but it’s not for me.

“Watashi no Oshi ha Akuyaku Reijou.” is a new chapter for the manga which follows a friendly dodgeball game between our principals…that will lead into Yuu’s “Tears of the Moon” arc and the biggest reveal to date. Have to admit I laughed at Cardinal Lily’s beserker form. ^_^

In “Watashi no Oshi ha Akuyaku Reijou Maid Kitchen,” Rae and Lene bond over drinks and confidences, then blow Claire away with a team-up on swan-shaped choux creme to impress her guests.

We’re not yet done with Kanako’s melancholy yet in “Watashi no Yuri Ha Oshigoto Desu!” In the meantime, Sumika suggests they stop dating, as that really wasn’t good for either of them…and Kanako is left to grasp for a lifeline yet again. Honestly, I hate this arc, but it has to be done. We have go to get to the bottom of this infection before it can be healed and Kanako is adept at hiding what she’s feeling. I just hope there’s somewhere healthy for her to go.

“Kiraware Majoreijo to Dansou Ouji no Kon-yaka” has his it’s first real complication, in which Ciel’s secret is explained…and her parents ignore her desires completely. Eve stands up for Ciel, but will it be enough?

Usui Shio’s “Onna Tomodachi to Kekkon Shitemita” all but wraps up as Kurumi suggests to Ruriko that their feelings are the same and how about a real wedding ceremony? This series will end on that in next month’s issue. A Yuri wedding is once again the end-all-ending. You know me…I am not satisfied. There is more to a relationship than just a wedding ceremony. ^_^;

“Osoto Gohan to Issho ni” is taking mealtime back outside – this time on an overnight camping trip! Who among us hasn’t obsessed over the cute, but useless, lantern for a camping trip? ^_^

And Shurika and Mari are getting the hang of relying on one another in battle in “Shikabane Shoujo to Ai ga Omoi Seikishi no Tobatsuu no Gakuen Life.” I’m not gonna lie – this, “Kono Yo de Ichiban Sutekina Owarikata,” and “Garan no Hime” feel like disappointment. There’s a ton of set-up and the story setting is complicated, but the vision for the narratives has been severely limited in scope. I want the story to be as big as the world you set it in, creators and editors!

Ratings:

Overall – 8

As always there are stories I am reading and have not mentioned and stories I am not reading – I have never once even attempted “Oomuro-ke” because I cannot care at all about a story in which nothing happens, that is a spinoff of a story in which nothing happens. ^_^; But if that kind of thing is your jam, then you’ll love that and other stories that I don’t discuss that run in monthly Yuri manga magazine Comic Yuri Hime!

The December issue is already on shelves and so far has been really good. ^_^

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Superwomen In Love! Honey Trap and Rapid Rabbit, Volume 5 Guest Review By Maru Malandra

November 1st, 2023

Two smiling women holds hands and lay back on a bed of lilies, with their giant mecha hovering behind them.Welcome today to our newest guest reviewer here on Okazu. ^_^ Maru Malandra is a VTuber affiliated with GATTAI!! The Live. She loves Yuri, mecha, idols and Tokusatsu! Find her streaming Gunpla and all sorts on Twitch, JRPGs on YouTube, and yelling about how gay she is on what’s left of Twitter.

(Shorthand Note: “kaijin” refers to person-sized humanoid monsters, while “kaiju” refers to giant ones.)

After finally confessing their feelings for one another at the end of  Volume 4, our heroines are enjoying their blossoming romance and a brief respite from Antinoid attacks. Has X given up? Can peace finally reign? I think we know the answer.

The final volume of  Tokusatsu/Yuri adventure, Superwomen In Love! Honey Trap and Rapid Rabbit, Volume 5 is simply a joy. Sometime-sensei shares her passion for both genres, and it all just works. The Tokusatsu references come in hard and fast, but rather than distract from the storytelling, they elevate it. Antinoid boss X is confronted by one of her generals in a philosophical battle meant to draw out X’s real feelings. This is one of the emotional and artistic highlights of the book, an all-out fight where Sometime-sensei showcases her talent for action that feels kinetic, laden with raw emotion, and evoke the page-turning momentum of the biggest names in Shonen manga or live-action Tokusatsu.

Our heroines’ rest is short-lived thanks to X’s transformation into a giant Kaiju, a process that revives all the defeated monsters… because of course it does! It’s a Tokusatsu endgame, and as the stakes ramp up, old enemies and allies alike come together to fight for a hopeful tomorrow. Moe, the kaijin-human hybrid, finds herself drawn to help, as her loving mamas (and former evil generals) Kyoka and Melt support her. The Hina sisters return and also join the fray with new hero suits.

Melt Out provides an upgrade to our ragtag group to battle X’s titanic form. In a dual tribute to the transformation poses of the Ultraman series and the combining robots of Super Sentai, our heroines grow into giant vehicles! Together, they form White Lily Queen, a church wedding-themed robotic behemoth piloted from enormous lily-shaped cockpits. Battle ensues, and it is not long before catastrophic urban destruction gives way to the battlefield of the soul.

It is here that Hayate and Honey face X one final time. The villain brings out all of her anger, her jealousy towards Hayate, and her unrequited love for Honey as she battles our heroines. But X cannot win against the power of kindness, compassion, and the sheer sentient need to love. As understanding is finally given to X’s wounded heart, a gigantic lily is seen erupting on Earth from orbit… and that’s as much of the story as I want to spoil!

While this may sound facile, the story lands its final story beats with aplomb. Superwomen in Love!’s central theme is a Tokusatsu staple: what defines a person? Is it their species, or what is in their heart? In 1971, Shotaro Ishinomori gave us Kamen Rider, the tale of a man who struggled with the meaning of his humanity after being turned into a cyborg against his will. The recent, adult-oriented series Kamen Rider Black Sun showed us a world where kaijin are second-class citizens. And yet, despite a ruling class that attempts to divide them, humans and kaijin are just regular people existing in an oppressive world. And when it comes to romance, hero-monster love stories are quite common. A week before this review was written, the current season of Super Sentai King-Ohger, showed the engagement of a Ranger hero to a former kaijin villain, as they looked after children in the post-apocalypse.

At the end of the day, Superwomen in Love! follows in the footsteps of its Tokusatsu forebears. It is our capacity for both hatred and kindness that defines our personhood. This very kindness lets former enemies become lovers—lets them embrace their former enemy and confront her messed-up feelings.

This manga exceeded all of my expectations. It’s an exciting Yuri romance as well as an entire Kamen Rider season’s worth of stories, all in a tight 5-volume narrative. Despite its frequent references, I feel this is a perfect starting point for Yuri fans wanting to dip their toes into Tokusatsu, and vice versa!

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 9
Characters – 10
Service – 0 Salaciousness, 10 in terms of Tokusatsu fan service!
Yuri – 10 (There’s giant lilies everywhere while the volume studies what love actually is)
Suit and Monster Design – 10 (I want figures of every hero and monster! Especially with all those cool transformation diagrams from Sometime-sensei!!)

Overall – 9 (Give me an anime!)

If you enjoyed this journey and would like to check out some Tokusatsu, I strongly recommend Kamen Rider W (“Double”) for live-action streaming on Youtube, or SSSS.Gridman, streaming on Crunchyroll for anime.

Thank you for reading! This is Maru signing off, and as always…

Fight Forever, Heroes of Hope!





Amongst Us, Volume 1: Soulmates

October 30th, 2023

In front of a backdrop of the sky through large windows, two women embraces enthusiastically. The taller, with long, white hair, holds the shorter black-and-white haired woman in her arms.In Amongst Us, Volume 1: Soulmates, we meet cellist Veloce and her girlfriend, conductor Blackbird. Veloce is a rich kid who ends driving her brother to meetings in their family car, Blackbird loves sweets and can’t cook. Their life is full of pleasant bickering and they are very in love.

They are also alternate universe incarnations of characters of the same name from creator Shilin Huang’s epic fantasy comic Carciphona – a comic begun in 2006 that now is in it’s 8th volume. In that world Veloce is a hunted, broken magic user and Blackbird is the otherworldly being who wants her, one way or another. Magic in that world is expressed by music. They are both so lovely together, even from the beginning, Huang would post AU versions of the two characters, in lovely and contentious situations in our real world. Amongst Us the webtoon began about 6 years ago and in 2020, I contributed to a Kickstarter for the comic and, so reviewed this volume previously.

Luckily for all of us, Seven Seas has licensed this beautiful AU story (although not the original fantasy comic as of yet….) so we can enjoy a much goofier Blackbird and a less broken, but no less handsome Veloce, as well as other visitors from the Carciphona cast in what is mostly a rather light-hearted odd-couple comedy slice of life. The strips have been adapted from webtoons quite well and Huang’s art is…always…breathtaking. As I said when I reviewed the Kickstarted volume, Huang’s art is always worth coming back for. And here I am at, more than a decade later, still coming back for more.

Seven Seas’ edition here is lovely, full color and just…gorgeous. Since there was no translation this time, I’m going take a moment to thank everyone who worked on the production side here, Production Designer Stevie Wilson, Production Manager Lissa Pattillo, Prepress Technicians Melanie Ujjimori and Jules Valera, Print Edition Editor Robin Herrera, Cover Graphic Designer: M. A. Lewife and Shiling Huang for the logo and cover art. Why am I pointing out all these people? Because it has always been my position that if manga fans knew how many folks it actually took to do the work of getting books out to you, they would appeciate how much work publishing really is! So thanks to the folks at Seven Seas and to Shilin Huang for drawing us pretty magical musicians.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – A goofy 8
Characters – 8 Divorced from their origins, they still seem pretty intense. ^_^
Service – 0 That postcard of Veloce in an evening dress was smokin’. But no, not really.
Yuri – 10

Overall – 9

Many thanks to Seven Seas for the review copy and reminder that links to books go to affiliate accounts. Your support is greatly appreciated!

 





Kiss the Scars of the Girls, Volume 1 Guest Review by Christian LeBlanc

October 25th, 2023

Two girls in dark old-fashioned Japanese school uniforms, look at us. One, with long, dark hair embraces a younger student with light brown hair. This image is an Amazon affiliate link.Vampires crossed with Class S!
And set in the future, no less.
With a setup so fun
You would think volume 1
Should be more fun than paint drying, not less.

For a story that’s set “in the far, distant future,” Aya Haruhana’s Kiss the Scars of the Girls  from Yen Press languishes in Yuri tropes of old. Emille Florence is our bright, cheerful, young and blonde protagonist, who falls for her assigned cool and distant big sister Eve Winter (whose first name rhymes with “Leave,” the very first thing she says to Emille upon meeting her). Maybe it’s the tea parties with cookies and cake, maybe it’s the secret rose garden (“vampires love the scent of roses”) or maybe it’s the school uniforms that the cast of Maria Watches Over Us would think were too old-fashioned, but I’m just not feeling this ‘future’ vibe. (Or this ‘vampire’ vibe, but we’ll get to that.)

Set at an all-girls’ school where students are assigned a “big sister” on their 14th birthday, Emille spends a great deal of time trying to win over Eve, who, as luck would have it, appears to have hidden, secret reasons for not wanting to get close to anyone. Emille’s friend Yucca Lotus seems to have an unspoken crush on Emille, while Violetta Emme (whose name I keep reading as Violent Femmes) also likes Emille, but not as much as she likes bullying her classmates and obligatory big sister.

Since this is a manga where everyone at the school is a vampire, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this was going to be a book that portrays vampiric content without vampiric identity. Unseen vampire hunters do factor into things, however, attacking the students with swords and shotguns whenever they visit the local town to hypnotize the local ladies enough to feed on them. Vampires are persecuted for their appetites (with no gore, but much blood), but never in a fun, ultra-violent way (which is a missed opportunity in my opinion).

 The vampires in Scars work a little differently than the vampires you’re probably used to, in fact: when a vampire turns 14, they start requiring human blood to live, losing interest in the food they used to love eating. The implication here is that vampires are living (as opposed to undead) creatures, seemingly born this way. These vampires also have no trouble with sunlight, fall easily to any type of weapon, and lack the immortality (and mystique, if we’re being honest) of your stereotypical bloodsucker.

 Overall, Kiss the Scars of the Girls feels like a missed opportunity. The vampire angle doesn’t do anything to make this Class S story stand apart from other Class S stories, except to give a narrative excuse to have the occasional student die violently. If you’re Ride or Die for Class S stories, then by all means give this book a try, but if you like your Yuri vampires to be comedic, or violent, or even inappropriate, you’ll probably feel like you have no stake in this.

Ratings:

Characters – 4 (Shiki Amakuni, we barely knew ye)
Story – 4 (does very little with either Class S or Vampires)
Service – 1 (scale this a little higher if you’re into shoulders)
Yuri – 5

Overall – 6

Erica here: Thank you Christian for this look at what I found to be a surprising license.

I am reminded by Amazon that I have to tell you that the book is linked to an affiliate link, in case you may have forgotten.





She Loves To Cook, She Loves To Eat, Volume 3

October 23rd, 2023

Last winter I reviewed Yuzaki Sakaomi’s Volume 3 of Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna (作りたい女と食べたい女), expressing my delight over the entire volume – even squeeing throughout. Today I was able to revisit those moments of joy with the release of She Loves To Cook, She Loves To Eat, Volume 3 out now from Yen Press.

In Volume 1 we met Nomoto Yuki and her neighbor Kasuga, two women who bond over their use food as a form of escape from stress and entertainment. In Volume 2, Nomoto realizes that her feelings for Kasuga are more than friendship.  Here in Volume 3, Nomoto finds another friend and confidant with her online pal Yako, a woman who loves food, but doesn’t care about cooking.  And Kasuga befriends the neighbor who lives in between then, Nagumo, a young woman with a very fraught relationship with food. The four women build a family together, a space in which every one of them is accepted for who they are and their needs are accommodated. This volume is moving and funny and adorable in equal measure.

Yako gives Nomoto a primer in sexual diversity, freeing Nomoto up to stop comparing herself to other people and find her own story. Yako’s light-heartd acceptance and casual speech really blasts barriers away, so it’s an especial delight to have Caleb Cook’s outstanding translation here. In this volume we also get to see the core issue between Kasuga and her family, which is, simply, lack of respect. This is echoed by Nagumo, so they become close over the shared experiences of dealing with family that blames them for not being compliant. I don’t think I have to tell Okazu readers how powerful a message that is. When Kasuga comes to understand how she feels about Nomoto, there are layers and layers being addressed.

In this month, where we have I’m In Love With The Villainess in anime, with heartfelt discussion of queer experience, this manga is the perfect pairing for even more discussions of diversity within sexual and gender minorities. ILTV is a great ice-breaker for folks unused to these conversations in their entertainment, but She Loves To Cook, She Loves To Eat, Volume 3 is rooted in real experiences and reflects the kind of community that we as queer fans create for ourselves.

An outstanding volume of one of the best LGBTQ manga of the last few years.

Ratings:

Art – 9 Yako and Nagumo give Yuzaki-sensei a chance to ramp up expressions to 11
Story – 10
Characters – 9 (only to give them room to be even more wonderful)
Service – 0  Unless, like Nomoto, you consider watching Kasuga eat “service.”
LGBTQ+ – 10

Overall – 10

I was also pleased that letterer Phil Christie get to retouch S/Fx, at least on some pages, where it wouldn’t affect the art. More of that, please!

There is one more volume available right now in Japanese, but since Chapter 40 of the manga, the series has been on hiatus due to the manga artist’s health. Were’ all wishing Sakaomi-sensei a safe recovery.