This is not the Fu-Fu you’ve been waiting for. This is not Minamoto Hisanori’s Fu-Fu. This is not a serious story about language and rights and perception wrapped in 6 layers of adorable-ness.

This Fu-Fu is the Fu-Fu that, in a series of 4-koma strips, flirts with saying something serious, but never quite does. This is Fu-Fu Dengeki 4-koma Collection (ふーふ―電撃4コマコレクション).

In this Fu-Fu, Furika and Fuyuta are the player names of two characters that met in an MMORPG. They became friends, and eventually were married in the game world. In that world, Furika is a cute bunny girl and Fuyuta is a handsome bird man. In real life, it turns out, they are both high school girls in the same grade at school.

The manga begins with some very affectionate displays of affection between them in public and their disbelieving classmates’ reactions. After an extended kiss, they’re asked, “Are you two lesbians?” Their response is, almost predictably, “No, of course not.” They then clarify that in the game, they are married, so this is obviously totally normal.

There is some space spent on classmate reactions. Predictably the boy representative is less concerned, although somewhat confused by the gap between their behavior and their words. A female classmate, Okada, is outright disgusted, which prompts the boy to say that it doesn’t bother him…he’s not sure how he’d react if it were two guys. Which then brings up a mis-timed reaction from a third classmate, male, about gay guys, implying that he himself might be gay…something that is quickly swept aside in denial.

And that’s about where it all stays in Fu-Fu.  Furika and Fuyuta are in love, married in the game, physically affectionate in person, but in no way are they lesbians.

This manga is a 4-koma, and the formula, while less obsessed with wacky humor than, say, Hyakko, or  Ichiroh!, is still meant to have a bwah~wah~wah~~~~ feel about it.

The second half of the book takes a slightly more serious turn, as Fuyuta (as we’ll continue calling her,) begins to get an inkling that her feelings for Furika are more than just in the game world. There are some awkward bits when she tries to push their relationship to deeper levels of intimacy, but fails, and even more when Furika won’t let her go when she starts to realize her feelings may indeed be “lesbian.” The book ends at a most uncomfortable moment, when Fuyuta lies to Furika about having a boyfriend, so this playing at being married must stop.

I’m not entirely sure what I feel about this book. It’s not serious enough to take seriously, it’s not silly enough to dismiss. Some real issues are touched upon, but not meaningfully, and the humor isn’t quite funny enough to carry the book.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – Starts at an amusing 7 and ends at a somewhat frustrating 7
Characters – I waffle on this, they are so inconsistent. Let’s call them 6
Yuri – Also inconsistent, 6
Service – 2

Overall – 6

It very much feels as if this started with an idea and suddenly had to develop a plot when it continued longer than planned. If a second volume is released, we may see a new direction entirely, as Fuyuta and Furika work through the gap between perception and reality. Of course, I hope they come to the gayest conclusion possible. ^_^

Aido (愛い奴) by Onazuka Kahori, follows the life and loves of Ureha, a young woman who had some years earlier had an affair with another woman, but is now seeing a young man who is quite serious about Ureha – he’s even proposed, but she has yet to answer him. She’s sure she loves him, but something is holding her back. And then she meets Saori, a woman who lights Ureha’s passion in a way that Ichiru, her boyfriend, never has.

When Okazu Superhero Katherine H. sent me Aido,  she suggested that it very much seemed to her a more modern version of Moonlight Flowers and I can totally see that. Both are about finding one’s true self and rejecting expected roles, so one can become the person one truly wants to be. Unfortunately, where Moonlight Flowers does this with elegance, Aido wallows in vulgarity.

Ureha, as a high school senior had already had a passionate love affair with another girl, and had set it aside as one does with childish things. Ichiru is clearly in love with her, but he starts off dissatisfied at Ureha’s lack of commitment and spends a great deal of the story acting suspicious, mean and churlish. He eventually falls into the time-honored pattern of “if I can’t get what I want, I’ll just take it.” A classic scoiopathy. Here’s a relationship tip – if you go on and on about how you’re *sure* the other person’s going to leave you – they will.

I don’t want to say I object to Ureha and Saori’s relationship, but I can’t say I see a lot of positives in it. Saori’s first act is to humiliate Ureha and that pretty much is their dynamic throughout. It makes it hard for me to like Ureha when she’s put herself in the position of choosing one jerk or another. Unlike Sahoko in Moonlight Flowers, she’s not escaping one demeaning relationship for a relationship between equals – she’s escaping a perfectly acceptable relationship for a demeaning one. Where Kaoru in Moonlight Flowers is cultured, elegant, successful, Saori is a name in the gay bar scene; big fish, small, desperate pond.

The difference between the classic Yuri of Moonlight Flowers and Aido is also reflected in the art. Flowers is, as I said, elegant, classic, clean, where Aido is messy and hard to follow.

Ultimately, Ureha’s choice could seem like a great middle ground to many, but in the end I was unable to find any real enthusiasm for Ureha raising a child whom at a young age, already seemed pouty, cynical and selfish, just like her mother.

There are some positive messages to be gleaned from Aido, though. The main clear and present message that is directed at all straight women is that they really had better never have lesbian sex, because it is just so much more amazing than anything they will ever have with a guy. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 4
Story – 5
Characters – 4
Yuri – 9
Service – 4, unless you’re into scat, then 9

Overall – 5

Where I found Moonlight Flowers romantic, elegant and beautiful, I found Aido‘s treatment of the same theme to be merely crude.

Beginning in the July issue of Ribon magazine is the newest addition to the Shoujo Magazine Yuri manga scene, Blue Friend, 2nd Season (ブルーフレンド 2nd Season). You can read the synopses of the “first season” in my reviews of Volume 1 and Volume 2 of the manga.

The second season begins, as so many series do, with the excitement of the first day of high school life. “Today my high school life begins,” says Shimizu Kanako. Kanako is thrilled to be attending a girls’ high school, making new friends, etc. She quite accidentally slams into another girl who reacts, despite her cute appearance, with unusual aggressiveness. Kamei-san is small and cute, but her personality, Kanako learns, is blunt to the point of rudeness.

Kanako quickly makes friends in class, but is startled to find an underlying selfishness in her new friends. They ask her to give them things she bought for herself, and copy her homework. Kamei-san is, in the meantime, quite rude to Kanako’s friends. At first Kanako is angry and frustrated with Kamei-san’s attitude. When Kamei-san speaks the brutal truth about one of the girl’s new boyfriend (“He looks like a llama.”) Kanako wisks her away to dress her down. Instead, she finds her self admitting that she wants to be able to speak plainly, as Kamei-san does.

Her friends desert her and, in retaliation for her new relationship, nominate Kanako as class representative. Kamei-san volunteers to join her. They start becoming closer – Kanako goes so far as to elicit a smile from taciturn Kamei-san when she admits to feeling happy when Kamei-san stood up to be the other class rep.

Kanako decides that she will be more like Kamei-san, and speak plainly what she feels, rather than playing the other girl’s mind games. When two of her former group try to bring her back into the fold, Kanako rejects their overtures, politely, but clearly, explaining that she did not take kindly to the way they treated her.

The chapter ends with Kanako looking at her future as class rep with Kamei-san and thinking, “Today my high school life begins.”

Of interest to folks who care about such things, this series premiered at the front of the magazine. That’s a sign that the previous series did pretty well. Good news, I think.

I admit it – I’m waiting for the boot to drop. There is no way this story is going to be this positive, this empowering, is there? Can it be that the heroine will manage to learn to speak up for herself and be rewarded with getting the girl, too? Nah….

Time will tell what horrible, tragic backstory and what icky-making trauma will fill in the lines here, but I have no doubt that Ebon Fumi is cooking something up.

Tune in to the same bat magazine next month to find out!