In Volume 1, we met Akari, a human who fell asleep on a late night train and found herself in Prisontown, an otherworld purgatory for demihumans. She is given a “wife”, frankengirl Mary and each of them are assigned work duties every day by notes tacked to their door. Akari is well liked, but inefficient at best, and often incompetent. The other denizens of Prisontown become accustomed to helping Akari out of a jam, and Mary often does her own work, then helps Akari.

In Prisontown e Youkoso!, Volume 2 ( 監獄街へようこそ！ ) Akari and Mary quietly, sweetly fall in love with one another, but Mary’s body being made of random pieces makes her quite self-conscious. Even more than her body, the crime she is here to expiate weighs on her heavily. As the main holiday of the year – the Lantern Festival on Halloween night – approaches, Mary tells Akari the story of her crime. Betrayed by the creator she loved so dearly, Mary killed her…and the little sister she adored. Akari, of course, forgives Mary and the two of them spend a magnificent night together…only Akari knows it will be their last. She will be returning to the human world when the festival ends.

In the final chapter from the serialization, Akari sees Mary once more on Halloween back in the real world. The epilogue of the collected volume changes the tenor of this ending slightly, by letting us know that this meeting becomes an annual affair, and both Mary and Akari have grown, and their love has stayed the course.

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

Overall – 7

If you like Neji’s demihuman stories, this is certainly another  story for you. ^_^ It’s still a pretty flimsy ending, but the second epilogue definitely make it all go down a little easier.

Tsukiatte Agetemo Iikana, Volume 1 ( 付き合ってあげてもいいかな)  begins with Miwa and Saeko meeting on campus by slamming into each other during club recruitment chaos. Miwa is somewhat hesitant by nature and Saeko is very outgoing and cheerful. When it turns out that they have a class in common Saeko invites Miwa to meet her circle – they’d be band if they had a singer. Miwa and Saeko hang out together and with the band, and one day Saeko ask Miwa if she’d like to try dating her?

Miwa is torn. She likes Saeko, but she knows Saeko wants a physical relationship and she’s not prepared for that. Saeko’s cool, though and they start dating.

How their relationship evolves is fun and annoying and realistic and annoying. Did I mention that it’s really annoying? Because, honestly, it is. About 2/3rds through the book, I had a glimpse of what the backstory was going to be and I was annoyed by it. It seemed to me that having sex was both the big plot complication and the reward, neither of which makes all that compelling a story for me. Then, when it turned out I was right, it was no less annoying. AND then when one of the band members pointed out the obvious, I was so happy I cheered. Once that was actually said out loud, I thought maybe we could leave that whole backstory and move forward. It remains to be seen if that is the case in Volume 2, which should be out in June.

Despite all this, I actually enjoyed the story and rooted for Miwa and Saeko. I’m happy that they are working through the things they are working through, because those things are real things that must, sometimes, be dealt with. After being discovered kissing, they have an actual coming out scene of a sort, in which they sit the band down and tell everyone they are dating. Everyone is really quite nice about it. But it’s still pretty unusual to see anything like that in a Yuri manga.

In a lot of ways, Miwa and Saeko remind me of Bloom Into You‘s Yuu and Touko – they are older, but it’s a not-entirely-dissimilar set up for the relationship.

Tamifull’s art tends towards goofy over fine line work, but is competent enough. While the whole of the narrative isn’t quite “male gaze” it certainly starts off that way and has some moments when it veers back into it. In a lot of ways, Saeko is written like “men think lesbians think” while Miwa is written the way “men think straight women think.” That’s more of a general impression, but since this is a Shounen Sunday Comic publication, I’m pretty confident about that impression. ^_^ The manga itself runs on Shogakukan’s manga UraSunday site, or their phone application Manga-One. You can read a sample of the manga (in Japanese) on either of these or the Shogakukan comics site. The series is currently up to chapter 15.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – This is the tough one, It’s kind of sweet, but occasionally hits a sour note. Let’s call it a 6
Characters – The main characters are so far a solid 7, but the various band members I’m giving an 8
Yuri – 9 / LGBTQ – 5
Service – 4

Overall – I’ll say an 8, with potential to drop on weak characterization.

That said, I’m certainly willing to continue reading it and I’m betting we’ll see it licensed soon enough. Now that Shogakukan is in the Yuri biz, they’ve got callers at their door.