Archive for the Yuri Manga Category


Ai ni Airashi Itoshi Anata (愛に愛らし愛しいあなた)

August 14th, 2020

Suzuki Yufuko’s Ai ni Airashi Itoshi Anata (愛に愛らし愛しいあなた) was not at all what I expected it to be. No, scratch that. It was exactly everything I expected it to be…only it turned out to be kind of charming. ^_^

Takimoto Mako is a senior in high school. He mother is an actress and often away, or hungover, and her father is a famous manga artist and is also often away. Mako is…average. She knows it, in fact she clings to her identity as an average girl with surprising fierceness.

One day at a cafe, the rumors of the “goddess” of the cafe, swirl around and a beautiful woman enters. Everyone is watching the goddess, but only Mako sees that she has her phone recording Mako and her friends’ conversation. Mako confronts her and suddenly finds herself outside on the street, where the goddess is offering her money.

Sonoda Aino is a young adult who is longing a bit for her school years. The people in her company are nice, but she find them crushingly dull and longs for the free chatter of high school girls. It’s a little creepy, but harmless and she begs Mako to not tell anyone. She’ll do anything, if Mako won’t get her in trouble.

Mako does have a problem that Aino can solve…so Aino stands in for absent parents at a meeting with Mako’s teacher. It all goes well and they both relax a bit. Mako is adamant that Aino shouldn’t record conversations,  (’cause that’s bad, duh) but the two of them become friends.

It’s kind of accidental that Mako starts to think of Aino differently, but her friends notice, and not all of them are happy for her. When her best friend’s jealousy causes Mako to doubt Aino’s affection, she breaks up with the older woman. It takes a confession by that same best friend to inspire Mako to make it right…and a confession from a completely different party to give her the whole picture. Mako and Aino make up.

The epilogue is wholesome. Four years later, Mako is graduating college, Aino is celebrating her last year in her 20s and they will, we can expect, live happily every after.

So yeah, it’s exactly what the cover looks like. And with that the premise, it really could have been horribly creepy. That was certainly what I expected yet, somehow, it just…wasn’t. It was instead kind of sweet. This was a Wings comics, and perhaps Wings Yuri has now developed a house style –  sweet Yuri with just a little real-world, but not too much. Real without being gritty.  In any case, the art is very teen-magazine-ish. I kinda liked it for this story.

Ratings:

Art – 8 Pretty things are pretty, cute things are cute
Story – 8 Better than the sum of its parts, for sure
Characters – 8
Service – 1 on principle only
Yuri – 8

Overall – 8

I’d like more “real without being gritty” Yuri in my life, please, thank you.





Comic Yuri Hime, August 2020 (コミック百合姫2020年8月号)

August 12th, 2020

I just want to take a moment before I even begin this review and offer a tip of my hat to cover artist Rolua, who in a few cover pieces told a decent short science fiction story. ^_^

There are a couple of new series starting in Comic Yuri Hime, August 2020 (コミック百合姫2020年8月号). Yuri Light Novel Kundan Folklore is being serialized by creative team SukeraSparo. We’ll get to that in a second. Because, the magazine opens up with a huge spread for “Watashi no Oshi ha Akuyaku Reijou,” the light novel series which has been licensed by Seven Seas as I’m in Love With the Villainess. I didn’t hate it, but it sure veers close to fetishtry that does not overlap my own. ^_^

Rei, a miserable worker at a black company, wakes up one day in the otome game she had been playing, “Revolution.” although the game was specifically designed to partner the lead with one of the princes at the school, Rei had fallen in love with the obnoxious bully and rival for your choice’s attention… Claire. The harder Claire tries to bully Rei, the more Rei likes it. ^_^; This series is funny and just a tad creepy and I’ll be interested to see where it goes.

In Miman’s “Watashi no Yuri ha Oshigoto desu!” Kanako finally says some things Hime needs to hear, and Hime agrees to attend Kanako’s birthday event at the cafe. It feels very much as if we heading for a climax in this series…but we’ve got a few more bumps to deal with before we get there.

Something completely unexpected has happened in “Hello Melancholic” by Ohsawa Yayoi and I find that I really, honestly care about Minato now and desperately want her to be happy. ^_

“Kundan Folklore” looks…pretty interesting! Better thn that visual novel and let me  assure you that I’m surprised to say that. It’s front-loaded to be a scary family legend story, but it’s also a story about mismatched friends and protagonist who works hard to be where she is. I hope I like it.

Kodama Naoko’s “Umineko Bessou days” is also heading towards an ending, Sadly the complications are scraped from the back of the plot complication closet and just completely failed to keep this reader engaged. I don’t dislike this story, but it could have been so good. It was instead very average.

I adore the color washes give to Kon-chan’s dialogue in Inui Ayu’s autobiographical manga. Whatever the color of the “Hime Cafe” section of the magazine, is the color of Con-chan’s key lines. It’s adorable and I hope they keep it for any collected volume, should we get one.

Ratings:

Overall  – 8

As always, there are other stories I read and enjoyed and others I read and did not and a few I don’t read. A pretty even bell curve of interest and something for mostly any Yuri fan. The September issue is already out and has an amazing cover! I do like a woman with tattoos.





Bloom Into You, Volume 8

August 11th, 2020

As we pick up Bloom Into You, Volume 8 by Nakatani Nio, out now from Seven Seas, it’s almost inevitable that the unctious strains of “My Way” come floating into our minds. ^_^

Yuu and Touko at last find each other and, more importantly, find themselves. They let go of the bonds they had imposed upon themselves, and in that, find freedom to be themselves, together. It is a fitting ending to a series that had such a tenuous beginning that I could not see them together without them losing parts of what made them, them. I wasn’t wrong, but Nakatani-sensei did it all her way…and, it worked.

When you’ve waited 7 volumes for a narrative climax, it’s often easy to feel vaguely let down by the end. For Bloom Into You, it’s very much the opposite. I originally expected a train wreck at the end, but the story and characters were given the time they needed to develop. I’m confident that Yuu and Touko can be happy together, maybe even moreso because they took the long way around.

An epilogue is always appealing to me. This volume’s epilogue is filled to the brim with catching us up on everyone and everything. If there is a flaw to this volume, its that everyone has done too well, and is too happy. ^_^ But I’m not complaining, as that is still rare and precious enough to just be enjoyed.

More importantly, we have a tantalizing glimpse into Sayaka’s future….a story that is currently playing out in Bloom Into You Regarding Saeki Sayaka, Volume 1, Volume 2 which is out now in paperback and digital and Volume 3, which will be available later this year. I happily recommend all 3 volumes.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 9
Characters – 10
Service – There is a sex scene. Whether you consider that service or not is entirely up to you.
Yuri – 10

Overall – 9

Several of the after-series publications mentioned in the afterword have come to pass already. I’m currently reading the short story collection of Nakatani-sensei’s work from the Éclair anthology series, Sayonara Alter (仲谷鳰短編集 さよならオルタ). I have not yet obtained the artbook, Astrolabe, (アストロラーベ). If someone has it and would like to review it, drop me an email!





Hitogoto Desukara, Volume 1 (ヒトゴトですから!)

August 7th, 2020

Hitogoto Desukara, Volume 1 (ヒトゴトですから!) , by Yuni is a very funny, outrageous and ever-so-slightly enraging workplace comedy manga.

Komori Mio is a self-proclaimed sales ace. She’s got skills closing contracts, especially with beautiful female clients. Komori hopes – and expects – to be rewarded for those skills…and is quite put out when the next transfers are announced and instead of a high-flying position overseas, shes transferred into HR. In HR she is assigned to very plain Yamanobe Kyouko to learn the ins and outs of helping employees with their problems.

Let me stop here and unpack this situation, (and my feelings about it.) I don’t know the specifics of how internal company transfers work in Japanese companies, beyond that annual transfers happen regularly between departments and locations but, based on 4 decades of working with larger corporations I have some thoughts:  1) This is enraging. We know no top male sales employee would be be transferred into a support position. 2) This is ridiculous. A top sales person in any industry is usually moved up into management where those same skills that are great for sales are toxic for managing people.  3) This is parody. Every company I have ever met has HR for one purpose – to protect the company from the humans they employ. This is not to say that all HR everywhere is terrible, it’s just that I have never met, or heard of any, that isn’t. ^_^;

One night Yamanobe and Komori end up running into each other as they, separately,  bring a date – female in both cases – to a hotel. They suddenly realize that, for the first time ever, they have a true peer in the company and agree to support one another in their womanizing. And so Komori learns that the skills she used closing contracts and getting women into bed, work for reassuring coworkers. And, separately, getting women into bed.

4) This is a comic. Let’s just agree that we should accept that absolutely nothing we’ve seen or are about to see can be used to be angry about this enraging, outrageous, ridiculous manga, shall we? If we don’t agree on that, we’re just going to spend 174 pages being angry. ^_^

Despite this appalling premise, Komori and Yamanobe are serious about their job.  After a young employee fails to return to the office, they visit her, only to find that she really hated everything about the job. “Kids today,” Komori says, and Yamanobe who, like Komori is not old at all, says “Do not go there.”

Under Yamanobe’s guidance, Komori begins to really get the hang of HR and helping people find solutions to their problems. Komori’s a little intrigued by Yamanobes refusal to take on a lover, but we can guess that powerful, beautiful, annoying as fuck, Kujou Natsu might be at the root of that.

Komori’s passion for HR comes to a screaming halt at the end of the volume, when Yamanobe declares her disqualified to be an interviewer. Why? Tune into Volume 2 to find out!

I love Yuni’s stylish art, I think the characters are a riot and the premise is so awful that I enjoyed it immensely. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 9
Characters – 9
Story – I won’t. I can’t.
Service – 1? Even in bed, everyone is covered up
Yuri – 9 Between the two of them, we see them with at least half dozen women

Overall – 8

I’ll be definitely getting the next volume. This is not so much a Yuri story in the office, as an office sitcom about 2 lesbians.





Aikata System ~ Gakuen ga Eranda Unmei no Onna no ko~, Volume 2 (相方システム~学園が選んだ運命の女の子~)

August 4th, 2020

What if you entered a school that had a fabled old tradition and it sounded so beautiful and romantic that you couldn’t wait to be part of it…but once you did you found the system was broken and toxic?

Nao has been partnered with Asagiri Ibuki and she find that she’s genuinely falling in love with her sempai. Ibuki is kind and thoughtful and it definitely seems like the feeling is returned.

Kairo has been partnered with Abiko Yuuka, but while Yuuka and she have become lovers, Kairo is sure she’s being used. Abiko-sempai is emotionally manipulation and occasionally abusive and even when she is being kind, it hurts.

Both Nao and Kairo can see that Ibuki and Yuuka have a past. Ibuki lies about it to Nao, but Yuuka tells Kairo the truth.

Kairo is also going through a little crisis about herself. She refers to herself as “boku” and it’s pretty obvious that she’d like to be more princely. I think she’d specifically like to be Nao’s prince.

Yamada from the newspaper club says it first…the Aikata System is not working. People are being hurt. It’s broken and it needs to be broken up.

Aikata System ~ Gakuen ga Eranda Unmei no Onna no ko~, Volume 2 (相方システム~学園が選んだ運命の女の子~) did not go *anywhere* I thought it would and wow, am I impressed. Creator Hakamada Mera is showing us a version of Marimite‘s souer system that is a poisoned well, and I find that, as difficult as this book is to read or enjoy, it’s a compelling story.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Service – 3 Partial nudity, sexual situations.
Yuri – 6

Overall – 8

Although I was deeply distressed by Abiko-sempai’s treatment of Kairo, I was relieved that by the end of this volume, Kairo, Yamada and Nao are all aware that this system is not working. I think it would be interesting to see the first-years band together and take down the system, although that might be asking too much of this series. ^_^