Archive for the Yuri Anthology Category


Joshi-kou no Ouji-sama ha Watashi Shika Ganchuninairashi Yuri Anthology Comic (女子校の王子様は私しか眼中にないらしい 百合アンソロジーコミック)

December 1st, 2023

In a fervent wish that this next week be a week of discovery of amazing things, today I’m beginning with a new anthology and new imprint! Joshi-kou no Ouji-sama ha Watashi Shika Ganchuninairashi Yuri Anthology Comic (女子校の王子様は私しか眼中にないらしい 百合アンソロジーコミック) from LatteComi, is one of two Yuri anthologies they’ve just put out. As the title indicates, this volume is centered around the theme of the school prince.

This was a nice little collection, honestly. You’d think the theme of “school prince” was played out, but no, these are all solid takes on the trope. Which is not to say that they are all wholly original. The very first story, by Pya, is about Ruka and Rena, a Prince/Princess pair who looks shockingly like two familiar Sailor Senshi and a second school Prince who looks awfully like a French noble we know well. The story is, nonetheless quite cute, as Ruka and Rena complain about each other’s foibles to the hapless protagonist in “True Blue Baby.”

“M-na Ouji ni Aishikatta” by Junrei tells the story of Horimiya, a student who learns the prince’ secret, so they become friends, then more.

My favorite story happened to be by Takemiya Jin and combines two things she loves a lot – gaming and Yuri. Two girls who share the love of a specific character in a specific game find each other years after they first meet…and once again, the game brings them close. This was a very gentle and charming story that had me smiling the entire time. ^_^

A prince helps another student at a performing arts school get past her stage fright, and a girl is reunited with her prince at long last, but feels utterly inadequate, in other stories in this collection. All of these work perfectly fine as shorts, and the collection ends with character designs from each artist.  The whole collection was enjoyable without requiring deep emotional commitment.

Ratings:

Art – 8 Quite good
Stories – 8 Fun, with little depth
Characters – 8 YMMV, but there wasn’t anyone I disliked as a character
Service – There are different kinds of service, but no nudity or creeping.
Yuri – 8

Overall – 8

Most importantly, it was quite nice to see a new imprint. LatteComi is specializing in BL, Yuri and isekai. I hope it does not go the same way as the last two BL and Yuri imprints went, which is to say, they both do only BL now (there’s a trivia question – which two imprints am I referring to? They both came in to being and died in the last 5 years. If you get the answer, I’ll send you a prize!) 

If you’d like to give this anthology a try, there is a 15-page sample on Bookwalker JP for you to check out. Let me know what you think in the comments, if you do.





My Next Life as a Villainess Side Story: Girls Patch

July 10th, 2022

My Next Life as a Villainess Side Story: Girls Patch is something we get very few of in the west – a series-focused manga anthology. And, in this case, it’s even rarer – a Yuri doujinshi collection for a not-really-Yuri series, which makes it that much more of a throwback to the kinds of anthologies I used to spend a lot of time on. ^_^

The series in this case is My Next Life as a Villainess, the goofy, light-hearted harem isekai about Katarina Claes who, on account of a minor head injury as a child becomes suddenly aware that she is a character in a game – in fact, she is the game’s villainess, with a very bad end awaiting her. In Katarina’s attempts to avoid her fate, she befriends all the main player characters, including the game’s protagonist. 

Katarina’s friends are more than just besties, as her sincerity and kindness has made them all fall in love with her. Girls Patch is a collection that focuses on the female characters., Lady Mary, Sophia and in-story game protag Maria, and their desire to be as close as possible to Katarina. 

Like the originating My Next Life as a Villainess Light Novels, the stories in this collection are cute, sweet, only every so slightly risqué, with a strong emphasis on Katarina’s clueless charm. Also like the originating novels, the art is simplistic. Nothing deviates from the scenarios set by the novel series. Which makes Girls Patch a relaxing interlude, but offers little substance. This is a series for folks who love the characters as they are written and want to see more of them, not folks who would like to see a little deviation from the script. In other words, this is another Ichijinsha anthology, where creativity takes a back seat to the scenario as written.

That said, if you love the fact that Sophie, Mary and Maria are in love with a clueless Katarina – if that vibe is your jam – then you will enjoy this book. It is indubitably cute AND sweet AND touching and ever so slightly Yuri.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – Not really, but that’s not why you’re reading
Character – 100 THIS is why you are reading
Service – 3, maybe 4, depending on your feelings about Katarina’s face on Mary’s chest
Yuri – The feelings are there, but that’s all we can hope for…let’s call it a 5

Overall – 7

When series anthologies were the best and often only way we got more time with the characters, artists felt freer to explore the relationships outside the scripted versions. Love affairs were (and still are) among the most popular topics of doujinshi stories, in which fan artists and writers capture the characters we don’t see in the original text. This current crop of company-created doujinshi collections aren’t willing to do that, which always leaves me feeling….but, why bother, then?

If you love the series as written, you will love this collection. If you were hoping that this was going to be the Yuri stories you wanted for Katarina and her female harem…this is not that.





Bloom Into You Anthology, Volume 2

February 15th, 2022

It has a been a few months since we took a look at the first Bloom Into You Anthology. Now, here we are with the the second and final volume the franchise, Bloom Into You Anthology, Volume 2.

Overall, I found this volume to be more entertaining than the first, with stories that interested me slightly more. As I never was a huge fan of Touko and Yuu as a couple, I was glad to see that this story focused a little on Sayaka and Yuu as mutuals of Touko, but not actually friends on their own. I also like that a few stories remember to include the rest of the club and Koyomi, a character I found way more interesting than our principals.

Completely unsurprisingly, the story I liked best remains the story with Sayaka and Miyako that begins with Sayaka doing a little everyday venting about Haru, in Six Years Later, Still By Your Side, by Yodokawa. What made this story appealing to me, is Miyako’s joy in watching her young friend being able to complain about her lover with a confidante. “Besides it’s nice. Getting to hear you complain about a partner of your own.” BAM. There is such power in having people to confide in. Whether it is for serious stuff or life’s little sillinesses, the entire reason I have an fondness at all for this series (other than Koyomi) is the fact that young, unsure, baby lesbian Sayaka just happened to have someone to talk to. That Miyako was willing to step into that role, really elevated what otherwise might have been a sad-lesbian-best-friend scenario.

Kiss & White Lily creator Canno also weighed in with a solid friendship story, which I quite enjoyed. I’m really all in for friendship between girls and women stories right now.

Ratings:

Overall – 8

If you enjoyed Bloom Into You, then there any number of stories which feel like spending more time with good friends. On the whole, I found this anthology a better bet than the first in both art and story. As I said in my review of this volume in Japanese, I only wish Maria-sama ga Miteru had come out now, in this golden age of Yuri, and we would have had all the anthologies in English and I would have been so, so happy. ^_^; But here e are, ready to say goodbye to the modern gateway Yuri series with a very pleasant little volume, spending tome with characters we like.





Boyish² Butch x Butch Yuri Anthology

February 10th, 2022

Today is a double-your-pleasure review, as I have both the Japanese and the English language collections of Boyish², the crowdfunded Butch x Butch Yuri Anthology to talk about!

The Japanese edition arrived first, so that was my first impression of the collection. I appreciated the variety of stories. A little fantasy, a little school life, a little adult life, a little comedy, a little tragedy, a little adventure… we got a nice mix. With 11 artists, I was able to really enjoy different interpretations of what “Boyish” (which is like cute butch, baby-dyke, you know…boyish) means to each creator. With butch x butch, some of the stories looked a little like a BL manga, but I felt that the emotions in the stories showed that even the most masculine characters were women.

The stories were pretty easy to read in Japanese…and then the English edition arrived! I was able to check my interpretations against what was a pretty solid translation. The lettering was easy to read and s/fx were translated, which freed me to re-read the volume, paying more attention to the art. Which was really a lot of fun.

I liked all the stories for different reasons. Nekobungi Sumire’s stories have a little whimsy, a little science fiction/fantasy. There were a couple of school life stories that didn’t go the way I expected and one or two that did. Mint’s dark fantasy story, “Sea Foam,” felt and looked so much like a MIST magazine story, that I instantly loved the art and adultness of the setup.

My two favorite stories come at the end of the book. Host Natsuo Mutsumi does a fantastic little coffee shop story that stars a black barrista, Gray, and her Japanese soon-to be girlfriend (spoiler!). They are absolutely adorable. I hope to see more of them. And Hanakage Alt flexes her love of muscled women in the final story, “I’ll Sculpt My Abs.”

The covers are the same for every edition, so you’ll get the same cute image from Akizora Sawayaka regardless of which edition you get. And you can order a poster with the cover image as well on the Booth.pm site. There are 4 editions available of this anthology, all with the same cover, so be careful when you order: Print editions in Japanese and English and digital editions of the same. Shipping for the print editions will need to be done through a shipping service, like Tenso. Booth.pm does not ship overseas. Which is why the ebook is a great choice – it’s an instant download. Last note – this book was crowdfunded, so there may be limited copies of the print version available.

Ratings:

Overall – 9

Obviously, if butch x butch is not your cup of tea, then this might not be to your taste. But as a filler for what I see as a huge gap in Yuri, I think this volume did a bang-up job. My congratulations and thanks to everyone who contributed!





Matching App Yuri Anthology (マッチングアプリ百合アンソロジー)

December 22nd, 2021

Ichijinsha has a whole pile of new anthologies these days, almost all of which fall so far out of my interest zone, I’ve picked up only one of them. This one, Matching App Yuri Anthology (マッチングアプリ百合アンソロジー) or, as we’d say Dating App Anthology, I got purely to round out an order with Amazon JP.  ^_^ I was pleasantly surprised by the collection, but also have some thoughts about how collections are built.

I know I’ve told you all a million times about my experiences with anthologies over the years. Generally speaking, in western anthologies (other than those that are chronologically or alphabetically arranged, they go along a loose-ly defined pattern of arrangement: You start with a strong/popular story or a famous/popular person up front, then have increasingly imperfect/less popular series in the middle, put the weakest story/newest creators in the middle to 3/4 through and finish with a strong/popular story. Manga magazines regularly do this. You’ll see new creators’ one-shots in the middle of the second half of the magazine and really popular (so popular that they only publish a few pages once in a blue moon) in the back to anchor the super-popular stuff up front. It’s not a hard or fast rule, things shift around all the time, and “strong,” “weak” and “popular” are all subject to any number of interpretations but, generally, this is how it is done.

Except, for some reason, Yuri anthologies. Okay, okay, I’m being hyperbolic, but I can certainly think of other anthologies and collected volumes that open with the weakest story; something just so bleah that I’m hard pressed to keep going.

Yeah, this anthology does that. Pretty much every story was nice. The first one was a siscon story and….no. It worked on zero levels. Well, the art was okay. I read it, made a “bleah” face, remembered it had been in Comic Yuri Hime magazine and I had “bleahed it there, too” and forgot to pick the book up again for a few weeks.

Thankfully, the very next story redeemed the volume completely.”Cinderella Night” by Akatsuki Kazu, follows an uber ikemen-cool band member and an employee at the venue who end up bonding over cute mascot items. I loved the art style, the characters and the plot, which motivated me to keep reading.

The remainder of the stories cover a number of possible and  improbable situations; best friends who turn out to be perfect for one another, a match that just works out really well, a gal and an introvert, and an idol who just wants to be liked for herself. You might assume I’d also nope out of this one, but I thought it was quite nice.

The last one is an honest-to-goodness magical girl story, which was also quite excellent. Poignant and triumphant as well, somehow… .

Ratings:

Overall – a strong 8.

Other than that first bleah story, this was, honestly, one of the best themed Yuri anthologies from Ichijinsha. And, of course, the bleah is in they eyes of the beholder. You might love it. ^_^