Archive for the Yuri Manga Category


Yuri Manga: Linkage

September 9th, 2009

“Do you remember, the moment your love first began?”

Thus begins Linkage, the collection of Yuri Hime stories by Kurata Uso.

These stories are linked only by their exploration of that one moment, when two people realize that they share the same feelings as one another.

Two office workers who misunderstand their importance to one another, a young flutist and the woman who loves her, a rebellious schoolgirl who falls for a blind girl, two sisters who have always been close, and an AI researcher and her creation. None of these really has any ‘link’ to one another. The links are forged between the women in the relationships, and between them and us as we watch their love blossom into something real.

There’s little here that stands above and beyond the Typical “Story A,” really, except that that characters are well drawn and well conceived. Despite the fact that only one of them even acknowledges the difficulty of the admission of loving another woman, these stories are pretty darn good.

The best, if over-sentimental, story follows rebel-chick Keiko and her gradual fall into love with blind, brave and honest Haruka. It was sappy – good heavens it was sappy. It not only involved brave, plucky handicapable Haruka undergoing dangerous surgery, but ends with Keiko’s softer, gentler side being praised by the rest of the class. Who could stay dry-eyed in front of a thing like that?

Yes, this is a collection of girl meets and girl likes and other girl likes her back the end, stories. Don’t look for more beyond that or you will be disappointed. Nonetheless, there is at least a little variety in age and circumstance and, the whole office affair and Yoshino in a suit to start the book off works for me.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Stories – Average 8
Characters – 7
Yuri – 7
Service – 1

Overall – 8

I would very much like to see a longer story by Kurata. I think there’s some solid story-telling potential in there, and hope to see something beyond just a one-shot.





Yuri Manga: Tetragrammaton Labyrinth, Volume 6 (English)

September 6th, 2009

In Volume 6 of Tetragrammaton Labyrinth, what was always implicit becomes finally explicit.

As Angela, Meg and their allies face the evil, insane and powerful Gilles de Rais, and find that their own power comes up short against his, he raises the issue that has been the leitmotif of this entire series. Killing the living, raising the dead and stealing souls, he attests, is not for personal power. No, he commits heinous acts of brutality for *love.*

It will come as no suprise that this fails to convince Angela to sympathize, but it brings up the obvious. De Rais asks Angela if she has anyone to love – truly love – give up her life for love. Well duh, dude.

The final acts play out exactly as one expects. The good guys peel off one at a time to fight the bad guys, so we can be sad at our losses and the final confrontation has reversals and lots of screaming and blood and severed limbs. And, the ultimate sacrifice, as Angela gives up everything to keep Meg at her side.

In the final pages, Angela and Meg get to acknowledge in death (or undeath) what they could not in life and their love, which was always the unstated obvious is now, at last, just obvious.

And no one lives happily ever after.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 7
Characters – 7
Yuri – 7
Service – 8

Overall – 7

For a manga that was built around loli and guro among other things that aren’t my schtick, it had a pretty decent ending.

Once more it is my great pleasure to thank Okazu Superhero Eric P. for sponsoring today’s review! This volume was the best of the series, I think. ^_^





Yuri Manga: Tenbin ha Hana to Asobu, Volume 1

September 1st, 2009

In Volume 1 of Tenbin ha Hana to Asobu (天秤は花と遊ぶ), Yohko is a transfer student into the elite Lotus Girls High School. She’s tremendously energetic and, it turns out, athletic, but she’s not clueless or clumsy. She’s just not elegant. Certainly, not as elegant as Shuu, the lavender-haired beauty who takes Yohko on a tour of the school.

Upon meeting Shuu, Yohko’s reaction is rather unusual – she claims to smell blood and asks Shuu if she’s hurt. No, Shuu answers, but looks like there’s something more to behind it.

Shuu shows Yohko around, but after hours Yohko realizes she’s forgotten something, and runs off to the the infirmary where she comes in on Shuu apparently drinking the blood from the school doctor’s neck. The school doctor confirms what Yohko thinks she just saw – Shuu is a vampire. Not only is she a vampire, but at the moment she is genderless. Depending on whether she drinks more male or female blood, when she turns 18 she will become male or female.

Yohko promises to protect Shuu’s secret and with it, Shuu. She attaches herself to Shuu’s hip, despite Shuu’s protests. The next time Shuu starts to feel weak from lack of blood, Yohko offers herself without reserve.

Now Yohko and Shuu are inseparable, even when rumors start to spread through the school. There’s something going on, the students whisper to one another between Shuu and the school doctor. And there is – he’s her older brother.

There’s a short story in which we learn that of the many girls who fawn over Shuu, there is at least one whose feelings go deeper than just admiration. But it is Yohko that Shuu relies on and it is Yohko she misses when she’s not around. And, she confesses to her brother, something weird is happening – recently, Yohko’s blood is starting to taste…good. Her brother reassures her that that is normal for someone she loves. Loves? Loves?! Shuu is very concerned but, as the book draws to a close, that may not be her worst trial – it appears that someone has learned her secret. Oh no, Volume 2 where are you?

When I mentioned this book a few weeks ago in the “Snatches of Yuri” section of the news report, I said I wasn’t sure whether I liked it or not. Honestly, I’m still not sure. It’s not that surprising that the Next Big Thing, i.e., vampires, appeared in Yuri. (In fact, I’m reading *another* Yuri title right now with a Goth-Loli loli schoolgirl vampire and as you can imagine I’m just loving it….) I neither like nor dislike vampires, so that isn’t helping. The first time around, I was leaning more towards dislike and this time around I’m leaning more towards like, I guess.
If you like both vampires and schoolgirl Yuri, this would probably be an okay mix.

I’m still on the fence. I guess I’ll see what Volume 2 brings.

Ratings:

Art – 7. Typical moe.
Story – 6
Characters – 7 Yohko is a little atypical – smart and energetic and competent
Yuri – 3, with potential
Service – A surprising 1 Hardly any underwear at all, Poor FanBoys

Overall – 7

I do think it’s interesting that “Story A” has been done so many ways now that Yuri is starting to branch out past it, and bring in other ways to tell the same story differently.

The title is really odd, btw. “Tenbin” is scales or a shoulder pole used to carry heavy things. The image I get is a scale or shoulder pole with two baskets overflowing with flowers. I assume it is some literary reference I am not getting.





Yuri Manga: Ame-iro Kouchakan Kandan, Volume 1

August 31st, 2009

At last.

In a small, friendly town, down at the end of the main street, in a spot just by the edge of the park, is a shop where you can sit and relax and have a cup of excellent tea. It’s called the Ame-iro Kouchakan, The Amber Teahouse, and the series is Ame-iro Kouchakan Kandan (飴色紅茶館歓談). This volume tells the story of this store and the people who make it so wonderful.

The store owner is Seriho, a sweet, somewhat helpless woman. Luckily for her, she is assisted in the day-to-day operations of the shop by one very intelligent young lady, Sarasa. Sarasa, it is soon apparent, has a second agenda. It is not just the tea shop she loves, but the tea shop’s owner.

This first collected volume follows Sarasa and Seriho as they wrangle with the complexities of running the tea shop and with their feelings for each other. The story of how Sarasa became an employee, originally told in the second [es] Eternal Sisters anthology is gathered here, as is the fateful story in which Sarasa and her friends forever change the destiny of the Amber Teahouse with a Tanabata special, that originally ran as a Yuri Hime extra comic.

Seriho seems to be a natural doofus, and one is never *quite* sure if she is aware of Sarasa’s feelings for her but, then, one is never *quite* sure what her feelings for Sarasa are, either. She likes her, that much is obvious. When Seriho comes right out and asks Sarasa to be by her side for 50 years, it’s really hard to know if she means it the way we think she does.

Sarasa is besotted, full stop. She changes her college plans to be by Seriho’s side for those 50 years. I think if they were to actually kiss, she might pass out. In fact, I really try hard to not think about that inevitable moment. I leave it in the future where it belongs. I did very much enjoy the part where Haru physically holds her back from using her free time on the school trip to run back to town, just to see Seriho. Also kudos to her parents for suggesting she stay out all night with her friend – Go Mom and Dad!

Sarasa’s classmates Haru, who runs the website Jinx, and Hinoka, are a not-quite couple. Hinoka seems to be sure that Haru has a thing for her, and Haru is just as sure that she does not. ;-)

The final chapter of this volume is the inevitable cross-over with Alice Quartet, so Fujieda can play dress up with his characters. A harmless little obsession of his that I forgive because he’s got good design sense.

This is quite possibly the most moe thing I like, and I chalk it up to Fujieda’s great characters because, let’s face it, the story goes like this – Seriho is cutely helpless and Sarasa helps her out. ^_^ However, the tension between them is undeniable (so much so that characters from other Fujieda series point it out all the time!) and while they are unlikely to share more than that damnable chaste kiss, I do not care one whit. (From the Anglo-Saxon wiht, for “amount.” Let it never be said that Okazu is not educational.)

Yuri in this series is a pervasive atmosphere, rather than a single event or couple. The teahouse may be called “Amber” but it is the scent of lilies that flows through the door onto the street. Despite their age difference, Sarasa and Seriho make a good couple and I look forward to seeing them getting together body, mind and soul, since they already have two out of the three covered. :-)

What was left undone in my review of these stories uncollected can now be done:

Ratings:

Art – At its nadir 5, at its zenith 8, but forever and always very moe.
Story – There is no story, but it’s an 8 anyway. ;-)
Characters – 9
Yuri – 8
Service – 2

Overall – 8 with a hope that future volumes push up to 9.

“At last” I said, and I meant it. It’s nice to have the whole story in one handful now, and not running about all over the place in pieces. ^_^





Yuri Manga: Yuri Hime, Volume 17 (Part 2)

August 24th, 2009

The second half of Volume 17 of Yuri Hime (コミック百合姫) starts off with another very doujinshi-style story.

Which makes me wonder…why do I think of them this way? Probably because I first encountered them when I began collecting original Yuri doujinshi. These stories that I think of as doujinshi stories are almost always high school settings, almost always kind of imperfect, good-but-amateur-ish art and almost always about those first steps to admitting that the characters are in love. They end with the moment that both characters acknowledge that they feel the same way about one another. Rarely do they go much further than that, but I do tend to like it when the stories do. Kimochi no Katachi (originally published as the Tact series) by Sakuraike was one of those series, Volume 1 and Volume 2, but then spent more time looking back before Satsuki and Kino got together than forward.

In any case, in “Watashi no Kawaii Hito,” Ika met Sempai a while ago and, after Sempai confessed to her, they’ve been going out. But, when the other girls in class star trashing talking onna-doushi, and the teacher talks about “playing pretend” with same-sex relationships, she thinks she might be the only one who is serious in their relationship. She nabs herself a beard to stave off her own breakdown. Sempai fights back – literally, with a palette over the head of Ika’s hapless male companion, and the two of them have to face each other’s feelings head on.

Rina wants older neighbor Kana to take her to the festival in “Mizu Fusen, Kingyo, Ramune” but Kanna, who had a past relationship with another woman, doesn’t want to relive those days. When she gives in, her worst fears are realized, as she runs into her former lover.

“Tsumugi Ito” by Uso Kurata wins. It is something I’m not sure we’ve ever had in Yuri Hime yet – an adult couple who is together, has been together and is dealing with a very real and very grown up issue. (One story an issue – do you see the pattern? One story an issue is about adults, edging slowly closer and closer to that “L” word….) Kae plays the housewife to Nao’s businesswoman, but new responsibilities at the office keep Nao later and later, and she starts pulling away from Kae. Kae forces the issue and they face their actual, real, very grownup relationship problem – together. I love Kae laying it out on the line to a totally stressed out Nao. Great story, drawn well with a really satisfying – if slightly pat – ending. More of this, please!!

Kind of harsh story in the new “Nekodomekan” chapter. Suzune and Emi are lovers, but Suzune’s untimely death plummets Emi into depression, until she visits the Black Cat Mansion.

Sumika comes right out and asks Takase-sempai to be her lover in Kowo Kazuma’s newest, “Sayonara Folklore.” Sumika has grown to hate their school, which has really weird rules and traditions, but has definitely come to love Takase. They have an argument, but when they make up, Sumika gets her answer.

Amane fell in love with Yuki back in school and, after they became lovers, had to admit that she loved women. When “Sore ga Kimi ni Naru” takes place, Amane has been years out of school but, when an accidental meeting on the train platform brings her face to face with a Yuki look-alike, it all comes back to her.

The art of “Soulphage” repulses me. The characters look 5. I don’t care what they do or why. They could all get hit by a truck. Instead I have no doubt that the genki lead will get her sempai. Bleah.

Tae is still laboring away to be near Yui (and pay her back for he lost necklace) in the next chapter of “Mizu-iro Cinema.” Tae insists on doing something summer-vacation-y, but thinks it’s all coming to an end when Yui is told she’s returning to Tokyo. Tae’s all ready to say goodbye when Yui says, “What are you talking about? You’re coming too.” Well, DUH, Tae. ^_^

Class appeal rankings are the source of much contention in “20, 21” but after some wrangling with the numbers, Asagao and Fuji find each other.

In “Apple Day Dream,” Kaoru, with longer hair these days, makes the same jokes as she always has…

And in the Hana Monogatari-themed story of the volume (also a pattern I’ve noticed) “Cosmos no Saku Niwa” a sprit and a girl meet, then the girl finds the real girl behind the wandering spirit, for a happily-ever-after ending.

So, there was some really good, some really good that was also really bad and some really okay. Overall, an excellent volume, I just wish the cover story wasn’t so stabby-making.

Overall – 8

If some of those one-shots actually continue, I think the next volume (out October 18) should be quite good.