Toxic Yuri Demo

April 29th, 2026

Image of the main menu of the game Toxic Yuri. On the left is the Toxic Yuri icon. A purple squishy heart with the words Toxic Yuri surrounding a small cartoon skull. On the right is the main heroine of Toxic Yuri Doku-chan. A girl made of purple slime about three heads high in proportion wearing a burlap dress.by Ashley P, Staff Writer

I’m from the UK so I love a good pun title. So when I saw the demo for the new yuri visual novel Toxic Yuri by Yuri Kissaten I felt nationally bound to write about it.

Ol-san is, an… OL, working in a Kyoto based company. She’s in a bit of a slump, even office mixers feel like a chore. It is on the way back from one of these mixers that Ol-san runs into Doku-chan, a tiny woman made of hazardous slime that Ol-san decides to take back to her home.

What follows is the next first chapter of the full game ‘Toxic Yuri’ where Ol-san has to deal with the usual fantasy of saving a cute monster/monster adjacent woman but with the usual problems you might think of when you suddenly have to look after a tiny person made entirely of purple slime who has to eat soap to not smell like a trash fire.

Most of the choices in this early part of ‘Toxic Yuri’ determine how kind Ol-san is to Doku-chan. She can be cruel and controlling or kind and understanding. The demo gives you three rankings toxic, tepid, and tonic depending on your choices but there will be more than three endings in the final game. That said this means that right now the demo is mostly setting up flags for a later period that we don’t get to in the demo.

It is a sweet start to a story (depending on player choices) but it is difficult to root very hard for Ol-san and Doku-chan to get together. Doku-chan is naive to the point of it being farcical so no matter how Ol-san is portrayed it appears a bit like the fantasy of having a girlfriend falling into your lap and doing whatever you want while being hapless and adorable. I don’t want to make too many assumptions of the average Okazu reader but I don’t think that is really the kind of relationship we want to read about.

However I think this story is winding up to drop another, possibly half dissolved, shoe on the reader later. As I said earlier the story seems to be setting flags for a greater turn in the full game. Often those denouement in video games where all your choices come to a point can be very satisfying.

Looking at ‘Toxic Yuri’ as a demo; there was not much to make me want to read beyond the first chapter: except for Ol-san’s co-worker Fujino-san. Fujino is clearly the main character in a shakaijin yuri story happening off page and she actually is able to clash believably and entertainingly with Ol-san. Hopefully the full game will have much more Fujino-san.

Ratings:

Overall – 7



No YNN This Week

April 25th, 2026

I had every intention of doing a YNN this week, but decided that my first week off in months was more important. ^_^

See you next week!

 

 

 

 

 

 



Watashi o Tabetai, Hito de Nashi, Volume 11 (私を喰べたい、ひとでなし)

April 23rd, 2026

On a background of clear sky blue, two young women in the same Japanese sailor-style uniform, of white blouses and dark blue skirts and ties stand. One girls long black hair creates waves around them, as she reaches out to touch the face of another girl with collar length pale hair.Wow, was this a great volume. In Watashi o Tabetai, Hito de Nashi, Volume 11 (私を喰べたい、ひとでなし), Hinako, Miko and Shiori are enjoying the school festival for which they and their classmates have worked so hard.

But first, Shiori has something she needs to tell Hinako. And she knows that, although she pours her heart out to the human girl in front of her, telling Hinako that she intends to be with her as long as she lives, she is only partially successful. But she is rewarded with a real smile from Hinako, at last.

We also get a little interlude in which we once again see the two-mouthed woman, Ayame, in her new job at an ice cream truck. Upon seeing a mysterious woman walk by, Ayame quits. 

Back at the school, Hinako’s aunt lets her know she’ll be dropping by the school festival. Miko has some questions, but before she can ask them, Tsubame the tanuki arrives with a gift for Hinako and a warning…there is a strange human walking around the festival. Hinako has already gone to the gate to meet her aunt….and all of us, Shiori, Miko and Tsubame and we readers, head over to see this aunt. 

When they arrive, Miko asks Hinako “what do you see?” If your hackles weren’t up before, they are now. Who they see is another piece of the puzzle that is Hinako and Shiori’s story….

This was another fantastic volume of a slow, creeping sensation that something is not right. It was just so good. The juxtaposition of the cheerful school festival, Miko and Shiori being the most “human” we’ve seen them…and this fear the yokai feel…is just fab.

Yuri in this series has always been Miko’s possessive friendship of Hinako, but in this volums we see that beyond just a yokai harem, whatever Shiori feels for Hinako might be something more than protection, or obsession. Maybe, it might be a kind of love? We’ll have to tune in next time and see. 

Ratings: 

Art – 8
Story  – 9
Characters – 9
Service – 0
Yuri – something is building. 

Overall – 9

This Monster Wants To Eat Me, Volume 1-5 are out now from Yen Press, Volume 6 is on the way in May!



Can I Call You Unnie?, Book Signing Event Report

April 22nd, 2026

A green cream melon soda next to a copy of Unnie'tte Yondemo Ii Desuka? by Hanakage Alt at Anchor port rainbow Tokyoby Sasori, Okazu JP Correspondent

Nothing excites me more than a yuri event, and in April we have not one, but two book signings for Can I Call you Unnie? (オンニって呼んでもいいですか?) by Hanakage Alt . (Reviewed here on Okazu last week by Erica.)

The signing I participated in was on 4/12, at iconic yuri manga cafe/bar: ANCHOR Rainbow Port Tokyo, also featured in the actual manga. The second signing will be at bookstore (マルジナリア書店) on 4/26, tickets seem to be still on sale as of writing this article if you happen to be in Japan!

Can I Call You Unnie? manga is about a K-pop fan meeting her fav graduated idol through a dating app, with fluffy moments in abundance. The manga was released per chapter on app/web through CandleA on Comic Walker, but now celebrates its first full Japanese volume release. It’s available from multiple retailers in print and digital formats on the Yuricon Store.

I was a huge fan of Hanakage Alt sensei’s work, and reading it per chapter was a great experience. Full of adorable dates, concert flashbacks, and cliffhangers after each chapter. As a fellow concert fan, a lot of the content resonated with me. I loved how it included both Korean and Japanese languages at key moments, to keep the content realistic for their characters and source material. I could tell Hanakage Alt sensei loved K-pop as much as they loved yuri.

So on 4/12, I lined up at 10am at ANCHOR in Shinjuku Ni-chome, for my first book signing. It’s pretty common to ask for doujin and yuri manga signatures at events, such as Comitia or Comiket, if advertised by the artist’s social media, but seeing it as a whole event was a first time experience for me.

A photo of a staircase, with a placard on the wall for ANCOR rainbow port Tokyo, the Yuri cafe in Shinjuku Nichoume

The flow of the event was as follows:

  • Sign up before hand to participate.
  • Go to the event by 10am to draw a lottery ticket for the signing.
  • Line up in order by number.
  • Purchase a drink at the venue and a book to have signed by the mangaka.

A copy of the manga "Unnie'tte Yondemo Ii Desuka?" with a illustration and signature by creator Hanakage Alt-sensei from the event.

An image of the book signing lottery ticket, with at by Hanakage-sensei, and a message handwritten in English that reads "Thank you Sensei, I Love Your Work!"

After drawing our lotto tickets, we lined up, went inside the cafe, and sat at the bar. Hanakage Alt-sensei and their staff introduced themselves and had a very beautiful floral stand and book signing area near the counter. Complete with acrylic stands of their characters and their mangaka mascot plush. I appreciated how inclusive Hanakage Alt-sensei was of their fans, welcoming all yuri/gender/and nationalities to participate. Their English pronunciation was equally fantastic, despite the event being in Japanese. I think they were very excited about engaging with foreign fans as well as local ones. Participants were also allowed to buy them a drink and give them small gifts, which was such an interesting and fun way to interact with them.

Two cards of illustrations by Hanakage-sensei of the main characters of "Unnie 'tte Yondemo Ii Desuka?"

 

The staff was very sweet and allowed me to write in the Anchor cafe’s memo guest notebook. I was happy to see so many English and other languages besides Japanese in the guest book, as well as cute yuri doodles from various fandoms, and even some art from well-known Yuri mangaka. I’d highly recommend visiting ANCHOR if you are ever visiting Japan, even outside of this event if you are a yuri fan, they even have rainbow cake! ANCHOR also has a pixivFanbox for local yuri events and special perks for book signings.

Acrylic standees of the main characters of Hanakage-sensei's book and a small plush "mascot" round, white character with small arms and legs, and a sakura blossom on it's "head."

 

If you enjoy Can I call you Unnie? as much as I do, be sure to buy the manga on the Yuricon Store or at various Japanese book stores, they even come with cute sign cards depending on the store. Sales support really helps with future volumes and hopefully localization. The official tags for the series on X are #オンニて #CICYU so please use those as well. If you’d like to tag Hanakage Alt-sensei in English, they have a bluesky for English comments.

Thanks again for the lovely opportunity and I’m looking forward to future yuri book signings!

 

Erica here: Please welcome our newest member of the writing staff here on Okazu! Sasori-san will be our Japan correspondent going forward. Hopefully this will bring us up close and personal with more Yuri events. Welcome Sasori-san!

 
 

 

 



Koharu and Minato: Happy Life with My Girlfriend, Volume 1

April 20th, 2026

Two women smile at one another holding tapioca teas. One is taller with collar-length black hair that fades into lavender, wearing a fashionable black suit and accessories. The other is shorter, with long light brown hair, casually dressed in a green tee and jeans with her arm around the other woman's waist.Koharu and Minato: Happy Life with My Girlfriend, Volume 1 is a fictionalized version of the lives of two very real women, a team that go by the names Daruma and Hyaluron. This retelling of how they met, fell in love and moved in together, is the first collected volume of an ongoing serialization in Comic Yuri Hime magazine. 

Overall, this is a very cute and sweet slice-of-life story. There are no great (and very few small) conflicts in this tale. Despite that – or, maybe perhaps because of it – I think this is a really important story. Over the years, Comic Yuri Hime has had a few serialized manga featuring lesbian characters, (thank you Morishima Akiko-sensei, inori.-sensei), occasionally living together (thank you Inui Ayu-sensei!) but it’s not a magazine that tends to wave rainbow flags, or display Pride stickers. Manga in the magazine often include lesbian content without explicit or implicit lesbian identity. 

I don’t mean this as a dig against the magazine at all. Sometimes, it’s just not relevant to the story or the setting. Sometimes it might complicate the issue. I do actually like when characters take note of their sexuality in real-world(ish) manga. I am very happy to see a comic essay about a happy lesbian couple running in the only monthly Yuri manga magazine. Even if, in this volume “lesbian” life in Japan isn’t the main focus.
 
Koharu and Minato meet online, then in person, then start dating and fall for each other. Now they live together and despite small disagreements, are living very happily in love. This volume is full of a lot of lovey-dovey moments as the relationship builds.  The art is quite cute, without being overly moe.  In this volume they do not talk very much aboutpolitical issues regarding Japanese same-sex couples.  Here, it is all very charming and low-key. And lesbian. I’m happy with that.

 

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 7
Characters  – As I said in my review of the JP volume, “it’s never not weird to score a person’s perspective on themselves. They both seem very nice. 8”
Service – 0
Yuri – 10 

Overall – 8


Volume 1 just came out this week from Seven Seas! Volume 2 will be out in English this summer. And thank you to Seven Seas for providing the review copy for ANN, where I reviewed this for their Spring Manga Guide.