Archive for the Yuri Manga Category


Yuri Manga: Comic Yuri Hime October 2018 (コミック百合姫2018年10月号)

September 6th, 2018

Comic Yuri Hime October 2018 (コミック百合姫2018年10月号) starts with a cover embued with picturesque peace and calm, as the recent series of covers have been detailing the daily experiences of a pleasant Yuri couple. This month (which is labeled October, but shipped in August) shows them at the beach. This is followed in the front pages by a bloody horror comic. I don’t mind the blood, I do mind the mental instability tied with Yuri. That’s pretty last century. 

In “2 DK, G Pen, Mezamashitokei” Kaede and Nanami are both lost at sea, suffering from what I call “Jondalar Syndrome.” All they need to do is talk, but. Koyuki’s sick to death of them, and I kind of sympathize with her.

Anna is walking around, pondering the meaning of life as an  android in “ROID” whenshe’s discovered by…someone….who seems to know who and what she is.

Takemiya Jin is back! With “Itoshi Koishi,” a young woman comes to understand love.

In “Goodbye Dystopia” Miyuki is starting to think about someone other than herself for, as far as we know, the first time.

New story “Ririshitoshite Karenna Hana no You ni” began and I have so much hope for it, it looks totally up my alley, but for the first time I can ever recall, the art put me completely off. It’s really not good.

Sumika is still determined to sake Kanako from herself in “Watashi no Yuri ha Oshigoto Desu!”

My new favorite  story “Hayama-sensei to Terano-sensei ha Tsukiatteiru” is delightful, as Hayama-sensei is interrogated by her students in a way that sounds exactly right for young women. ^_^ The actual plot conflict is stupid, but the teachers are adorable together.

And Citrus ends. With a wedding. But I’ve talked about that on last week’s YNN podcast. I’ve got nothing more to say, except Mei still doesn’t look happy. 

A strong volume and I am looking so much forward to “Scarlet” which starts next month. No surprise. Girls in uniforms w/swords! Yay!

Ratings: 

Overall – 8

The November issue hits shelves mid-month and there’s a bunch of stuff I’m looking forward to! 





Yuri Manga: Prisontown e Youkouso! (監獄街へようこそ!)

September 3rd, 2018

Neji’s Prisontown e Youkouso!, Volume 1 (監獄街へようこそ!),  is a Yuri youkai Alice-in-Wonderland-style story about a human, Akari, who finds herself on a late-night youkai train and falls into Prisontown, an otherworld underworld inhabited by demi-humans of many kinds, including her newly assigned “wife” Mary, the frankengirl.

Akari is cheerful about her new circumstances, and would like to be more friendly with Mary, but Mary is reticent, even standoffish. Where Akari is clumsy and fails at her assigned tasks (feeding the basilisk, I understand, but delivering stuff to the hunchback in the bell tower should not be that hard,)  Mary is competent, hard-working and cooks and cleans for the two of them. 

The Cheshire Cat (who naturally calls Akari “Alice”) lets her in on Mary’s secret past, but instead of driving the two apart, it may be the thing that brings them together. At the end of Volume 1, it appears that Akari and Mary have broken past the barriers between them and are now truly “wives.”

This story will be a natural fit for Seven Seas, who has already licensed Neji’s other Yuri demi-human romance as Beauty and the Beast Girl. Ten bucks says that the title of this one will be “Alice in Prisontown.” ^_^

Ratings:

Art – Fun if you like youkai-humans
Story – Slightly handwave-y, but srlsy, who cares
Characters – Akari’s sweet but clumsy, Mary’s competent and aloof. Guess which character I like.
Yuri – 7
Service – Some. A number of the demihumans are seductive-ish,if that’s your boom. Girls with horn, animal ears, tails and body parts, that sort of thing.

Overall – Fun, not my fetish, but as half-humans go, I like youkai over animals, so let’s call it a 7

The story is continuing in Comic Yuri Hime, so it might have to develop a plot, We’ll see.

If Seven Seas is still mining the monster girl vein, they should resurrect Tokimeki Mononoke Gakuen, Volume 1 and Volume 2 from Yuri Hime, for some serious youkai-human Yuri interaction. That series was amazing. And horrifying. 





Yuri Anthology: Yuri + Kanojo Heroine-doushi no Happy End (百合+カノジョ-ヒロイン同士のハッピーエンド-)

August 31st, 2018

The third Yuri + Kanojo Yuri Anthology Yuri + Kanojo Heroine-doushi no Happy End (百合+カノジョ-ヒロイン同士のハッピーエンド-) isn’t about heroines so much as about happy endings.

The first of the series, Yuri +Kanojo, established the first-person aspect of the stories. In  this book, we were the protagonist, as if the stories were all dating sims. In the second anthology, Yuri+ Kanojo Suki ni Nattemoii? (百合+カノジョ 好きになってもいい?), we were introduced to stories of characters that extended past school life into adulthood. 

In Yuri + Kanojo Heroine-doushi no Happy End, we are treated to stories that move through time. The girl we meet and fall in love with in school is still with us in college and the two of us will be together as young adults. The woman we met in college will be the face we wake up to in the morning as we build our careers.  And the woman we met in the office, is there for us when we turn 40. 

Most of these stories are told in three parts  – our earliest days together, a few years later as our relationship is more settled and finally as we are an established couple. The stories once again begin in high school, move backwards to middle school, then progress into adulthood. 

There is no lesbian identity here, but in one of the stories about adult lives, an engagement ring makes an appearance. This volume also includes two stories about “foreign” protagonists, American Diana Lauren and the last story follows Italian Laura Leone. You can tell, because they each say random things in their native tongue. ^_^

Ratings: 

Overall  – 9 I really like the passage of time and the characters growing older.

Of the Yuri+ Kanojo collections, it will come as no surprise that I like this one the best, as it looks into adult life. It’s a fun Yuri anthology that requires no commitment or engagement and passes by in short vignettes. in which the girl always gets the girl.





Yuri Manga: Galette, No. 6 (ガレット)

August 29th, 2018

I’m running a bit behind now on Galette magazine. I blame the fact that we have so much amazing Yuri and LGBTQ manga and media this year that I’m having trouble keeping up with just the stuff that comes out in English, much less all of it from Japan. It’s a pretty great problem to have, but I want to make time to review Galette, No. 6 (ガレット) before Galette,No. 7 gets old. ^_^

“Philia to Eros no Aida” by Yorita Miyuki seems to be coming close to a finish, unless some new drama rears its head.

Hakamada Mera’s “Fuwafuwa Futashika Yumemitai” has hit the perfect middle ground for this creator and she’s really in her sweet spot of characters feeling feelings that include physical attraction, admiration, and companionship.

Ito has a story about heavy girl finding some one who likes her for her in “Saikau ni Saku.”

Morishima Akiko takes a Yuri story to the one location no one would ever expect it to be set in this chapter of “Motto Hanjuku Joshi,” as Chitose and Yae visit a boy’s school. ^_^

In Takemiya Jin’s “Watashi no Unmei no Hito” an Omega propose to a Beta, and everyone seems okay with that…until she meets an Alpha.

“Toma-kun” by Amano Shuninta gives Toma-kun a rival, but it’s hard to be a rival when the other person makes you swoon. 

And, in Kitta Izumi and Momono Mono’s “Liberty” we find out just why Liz reacts the way she did over the earrings…but it doesn’t excuse her at all. 

This issue has some lovely photographs and more color pages than ever before.  This only downside to this entire volume is that the new soy ink smells like, well, soybeans. I mean, good it didn’t catch in my throat the way soy ink usually does, but the you can always tell what room this magazine is in. ^_^;

Other than this one thing, No. 6 is once again a book chock full of Yuri manga by Yuri creators for anyone who loves Yuri!

Ratings: 

Overall – 9

You can check out previews of the stories on the Galette website on Pixiv.

Galette is available in Print, on US Kindle, JP Kindle or as a PDF if you subscribe to the Gold Course on the crowdfunding site Enty. 

Remember, this is a creator-owned publication, the money you give them goes straight into paying the folks who work on this book. Please, for pity’s sake, don’t read scanlations of this magazine. For only a few dollars you can have a legitimate Kindle version and help support Yuri creators. Use Google translate on your phone, or learn Japanese, but please, stop rewarding people who illegally distribute content they have no right to distribute. 

 





Yuri Manga: Mushroom Girls In Love (English)

August 24th, 2018

Well, I’m not gonna say that this wasn’t a really original book. In Mushroom Girls in Love, Murayama Kei creates a multi-layered society and an entire planet ruled by sentient mushroom beings. There is a royal ruling class, a military, scribes, herders and traders. According to the “Shroompedia,” the world was once inhabited by “gods” but now only the simple fungus folk live here.

On this world, all the beings are female-bodied, but in a blatant rejection of biology, some mushroom people still are “husbands” and others “wives” who are meant reproduce. If two fungi marry but are not compatible they might die from rot. Arriala and Erriela get married and are not compatible. Arriala almost dies, but surgery is performed to remove her spores (which I’m gonna be honest, gagged me a bit.) Because of this inability to reproduce  which grants her an immunity to the royal curse, a Princess desires Arriala and kidnaps her. Erriela defies family, tribe, custom, law and the royal family to get Arriala back.

They are reunited, and leave both scribe and herder tribes behind them to join the traders and make a new life for themselves together.

I’m not gonna say that this wasn’t a really original book.

I’m probably also not gonna say it was an enjoyable book. Between the fungus-infected spiders and the extreme grotesquery of political infighting in the royal family, I kind wished both Arriala and Erriela got to be plopped down in another story completely. 

But it sure was original. 

Ratings:

Art – Both pretty good and pretty ick at the same time
Character – The leads were epic, everyone else was a total fungus
Story – Again epic
Yuri – Arriala and Erriela are very much in love
Service – 10 if you are a mushroom fetishist

Overall – I really wish Bruce were alive so he could have argued the pro side on this for me. Here is his review of the Japanese original as a stand-in. 

I wonder if it hadn’t been mushrooms, how I would have felt about some other plant form. “Dandelion Girls in Love”? I have no idea. I’m probably gonna think twice before eating mushrooms for a few days.