Archive for the Yuri Manga Category


Yuri Manga: Butterfly 69

July 20th, 2009

Butterfly 69 is everything that is good and right about Yuri manga. It makes me happy to be a manga reader.

Right from the first panel of the first story that ever appeared in Yuri Hime, I found Natsuneko’s art appealing. It has vibrancy, an energy that lacks in most manga these days. It’s not just that there’s action and energy depicted. The characters feel lively and real – even when the situations are ridiculous and unreal. Which they mostly are. ^_^

In “Butterfly 69,” the title story and one of my two favorites, we are introduced to Maria, the mixed-race singer of Butterfly 69 and Ageha, the prim and proper President of the Student Council at the elite music school Maria attends. Maria is an affront to everyone and everything at the school, with her crazy clothes and earrings and wild not-really Japanese self. Unbeknownst to the student body and staff, Maria and Ageha are engaged in a passionate love affair. Maria is given the opportunity to make it big overseas, but will have to leave Ageha behind, so she says goodbye the best way she knows how to – with a concert that rocks the school to its core.

Sakura is a young dress designer and her lover Dahlia is a model just about to become the Next Big Thing in “Quilt Queen.” This story reminded me strongly of Mist magazine stories, with the dress designer theme and a conflict straight from the pages of The Well of Loneliness.

Two sisters share a delusion in “Beautiful Pain.” My favorite part of this story, honestly, is that not just once, but twice, someone is hit by a truck. Made me laugh. I know, I’m a terrible person. :-p

In the unique, funny and offbeat story, “Okujou no Kiseki,” two women meet as they ponder committing suicide by jumping from the same roof. The joke is on them because they have been jilted by same girl. What makes this story really different, aside from the silly-awful premise, is that both women actually say they are Lesbian. Mind you, its sort of spit out as a little bit of self-loathing right before they throw themselves off a roof, but hey…. Oh and by the way – the story has a happy ending. Just in case you were worried.

“Spicy Sweets” was the first Natsuneko story to run in Yuri Hime and, as I said, I just liked it instantly then and no less now. Aki is a high school student with the dream of becoming a pastry chef and Yuu is a runaway daughter of a Yakuza household. There’s basically no reason to think they could ever live happily ever after, but they do. ;-)

As an omake for this collection, we get “Butterfly Effect” in which thwarted plans and jerky people keep Ageha and Maria apart – but not for long.

My *only* complaint about this volume is that they should have dropped the sister story and included the vampire story. It was much stronger.

Ratings:

Art – 9
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Yuri – 10
Service – 3

Overall – 9

The art is not at all moe, the stories run the gamut from classic Yuri to funky weird to absolutely silly, and in every case are thoroughly enjoyable. The manga is an easy candidate for my Best Manga of 2009. I very much look forward to more from Natsuneko.





Yuri Manga: Morita-san no Mukuchi

July 17th, 2009

There are *so* many ways Morita-san ha Mukuchi (森田さんは無口) could have been annoying. But it isn’t annoying. Not at all. It’s very funny and very enjoyable.

Morita Mayu is, compared with other people, more silent. It’s not that she can’t talk, or that she doesn’t want to talk, it’s just that she thinks before she speaks – she thinks a lot before she speaks and sometimes misses the chance altogether. Or the mood isn’t right, or her timing is off. Honestly, she’d like to speak more, it just never seems to work out.

At home, her mother tries to coach Mayu, but between Mom yelling at Dad or them being really lovey-dovey at each other, Mayu feels the mood is rarely conducive to her saying anything.

Despite her silence, Mayu is not at all ostracized by the kids at school. Once the girls get used to it, they tell her all their secrets because they know she won’t tell anyone. They trust Mayu and like her and she likes them back. There’s one or two girls that find her a little odd at first, but when they realize she’s really nice, and it’s just that she isn’t great at jumping in and talking, they are fine.

Yuri is in dribs and drabs throughout the book. At first, there’s a girl who is a little scared of Mayu, but they quickly become friendly enough to develop a pleasant skinship – mostly playing with each other’s hair. Another girl stalks Mayu throughout the book, and although we never learn her name, when she overhears one of the other girls saying that she “likes” Mayu, she comes down with a case of raging jealousy. And lastly, towards the end of the book, Mayu overhears a confession from one girl to the class president in the Library. The class president thinks she and Mayu are actually very similar – they both hate mess and are always picking stray hairs off people’s school uniforms and retacking falling posters up. She assures Mayu that this thing is pretty common for her, she’s used to dealing with it. Smiling, because she *knows* Mayu isn’t going to say anything, she asks Mayu to not tell anyone for the other girl’s sake. :-)

This manga is a typical 4-koma with a few gags repeated over and over, but it never gets tedious. It never cloys, never irks. And, from time to time, it’s absolutely laugh out loud hysterical. In mostly every way, Mayu is perfectly normal. She likes sweets, she laughs (silently) and she enjoys time with friends. Other than the fact that she rarely speaks, she’s just another girl. So, the laugh out loud moments are less about her silence and more about just something silly. For instance… (Click on the picture below for the full size image)

Do not worry about what is being said in these panels, they don’t appreciably add to to gag. Just notice that the two girls in the foreground are laughing already, *before* we see the gag. Mayu is the girl with dark hair. This strip made me giggle like a child for a good ten minutes.

*This* is the kind of thing that made Morita-san ha Mukuchi work for me. It’s a good example of a 4-koma that is just the right blend of everyday minutiae and silly weirdness. Sure, there’s basically one gag per character, but the story doesn’t ask ridiculous amounts of handwave allowance from us. One handwave and everything else just fits in place neatly.

 

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 6
Characters – 8, closing in on 9 by the end
Yuri – 4
Service – 1

Overall – 8

If Mayu had been ostracized, if she had been full of self-loathing, if the boys and girls in school had been creepy about it, it could have been a really bad manga. Instead, it was a totally fun read and a good example of a 4-koma that makes the format work.





Yuri Manga: Butterfly Kiss Blade, Volume 1

July 16th, 2009

In the beginning, there were the Inklings. From the Inklings were born Lord of the Rings and the Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. These misbegot such things as the Sword of Shannara and the Belgeriad and from these were, ultimately, begot Harry Potter. From Harry Potter came Negima! and now, here we are at the seventh bastard of the seventh bastard, Butterfly Kiss Blade, Volume 1 (バタフライ キス).

Homura and Sakurako (who are NOTHING like Setsuna and Konoka, let me assure you,) attend Prinpikia Academy, which is one syllable shift away from being a pretty great name. It is a school of magic, of course. And there are fights, of course. With giant weapons. There is also a nadesico-type classic beauty, complete with henchchicks and political and magical power who is in love with Homura’s partner, the sweet, kind, passive, frontally lobotomized Sakurako. There are also panty shots, but I’ll come back to them later.

The bulk of the first volume is Shizuka’s ever more pathetic attempts at defeating Homura in order to make Sakurako her own partner in the “shiki.” (Shiki means “ceremony” among other things in Japanese, and it is always surrounded by quotes in this manga. 「式」)

And, um, that’s about it. Every chapter, a fight. Every chapter Homura wins with her ginormous Butterfly Knife. And Sakurako kisses things alot, because that’s how she uses her magic. She doesn’t just kiss other people, she kisses random passing objects, dolls, magic sigils floating in the air.

The art goes from inconsistent to downright horrible. At some point I actually entertained the thought that maybe this was an anthology, because the art changed so much from chapter to chapter, but nope, it was just bad art.

And then there are the panty shots. These are so forced and so intrusive that whole scenes have to be constructed around them and they are given their own panels so we can’t possible accidently miss them. They are pointedly pointless. I genuinely can’t believe that panty shots would significantly up the appeal of this manga. It’s so second-rate in every way, there’s no way you’d buy it just for the service like you might Needless or a similar fightin’ magic schoolgirls loli underwear action thing. (The Wife retorts, “You don’t know me at all.”)

Yuri is fanservice, of course, but there is no doubt that Homura and Sakurako genuinely love, adore and desire one another. Their liasons don’t ever get past foreplay, but it’s no less bodily fluid and voyeurism filled.

If you really like fightin’ magic schoolgirls, Needless and Negima! are way better than this. But if you really, really REALLY like fightin’ magic schoolgirls, then Butterfly Kiss Blade will appeal. Also, if you loved KimiKiss, as this is the same artist.

Ratings:

Art – 6 at best, often not even that
Story – 6
Characters – 6 It’s not their fault they are caught in a derivative of a derivative
Yuri – 8
Service – 7

Overall – 6 And, yes, I *am* being generous.





Yuri Manga: Miyuki-chan in Wonderland (English)

July 10th, 2009

Wow, it’s only a few years ago, but reading Miyuki-chan in Wonderland feels like stepping back a million years into the past. To a time when Tokyopop was *the* name in manga, when they were cutting edge and hot. And CLAMP was the name on everyone’s lips all the time. From X to Chobits to…well just about a zillion series, whatever CLAMP touched turned into money.

Miyuki-chan is a collection of 6 short, service-filled stories of hapless high school girl Miyuki, as she wanders through dreamscapes loosely based on Lewis Carroll’s iconic works, games and CLAMP’s own work. All of these are filled with primarily female characters, mostly adult, and almost all focused on feeling Miyuki up or stripping her down. A psychological reading of the book could easily attribute all sorts of pent-up lesbian feelings to Miyuki but, as she’s completely fictitious, we have to just assume that CLAMP really likes drawing women in underwear. ^_^

The Yuri in this manga is really Yuri – there are no lesbians here. Just fictitious female beings groping a fictitious female character. There’s no emotion at all involved, unless you count titillation as an emotion.

Personally, the best line was when Miyuki cries out, “Oh no! I’m in some weird movie version of the X manga!” which made me laugh because, like there was a non-weird movie version of the X manga? ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 5
Story – 5
Characters – 5
Yuri – 4
Service – 7

Overall – 5

The upside of the manga is you don’t have to listen to that *horrible* music, but the downside is you don’t get the great seiyuu voices, either.

This manga volume shipped to me with no Hero’s name attached. (Boo Powell’s.com, not letting me know who my Hero is!) If you were the sponsor for today’s review, will you please step up and claim credit? Thanks so much from all of us!





Yuri Manga: Itoshi wo Tome (Volume 1)

July 8th, 2009

Set in the Heian period, Itoshi wo Tome ~ Kimi ga Kokoro ha ~ (愛しをとめ~君がこころは~) is a story about noblewomen Tachibana and Sakura, whose older sister had been a lady of the Emperor’s palace, but had died. Sakura is living with Tachibana’s family as a courtesy.

Tachibana falls in love with Sakura’s tearful face early on but as much as they wish it, their story is not as simple as “Happily ever after.” First, Tachibana is betrothed to the stupidest, most cheerful doofus ever. His words are decorated with ASCII art just to give you an idea of his depth and intelligence. When he discovers Tachibana and Sakura locked together in an embrace, Sakura is able to convince him to be their friend and ally.

But a far, far worse threat is around the corner. Tachibana remains engaged to her doofus, knowing he won’t press the issue – but when Sakura is called up by the Emperor to be one of his women, there is no escape. Tachibana wails that as a woman she is powerless, but then comes to the surprising conclusion that even as a man, she would have had no power over the whims of the Emperor.

To protect her beloved Sakura, Tachibana takes her place in the Emperor’s bed. It is not a happy moment for either woman and eventually Sakura interrupts to stop what she cannot bear to see or hear.

The Emperor claims that he has no intention of separating them, instead asking them to have sex in front of him, to “prove” their love. They do, because it’s that or have sex with him (the saving grace of this scene is that he is young, attractive and not doing anything that would make a Yuri fan cry while he watches.) Unrealistically, he allows them to leave, unharmed. And despite my and Tachibana’s suspicion, he appears to be as good as his word. The book ends with them in each others arms thanking the gods that each other exists.

I can’t say I liked this book, really. It wasn’t vile or anything, but it just didn’t grab me. The art wasn’t up to either the Heian clothing or the “beautiful people” that populated the Imperial Palace. The few glimpses of actual Heian-style art served to really pull us down to reality on what was considered beautiful during that time – something I did quite like. I would have liked a more elegant style, something more Mist-like.

Mostly, I just didn’t like the story. It was very “Plot? What Plot?” Tachibana and Sakura barely talk before they are having sex and the sex isn’t really portrayed well. (If you do that to breasts, guys, it hurts. I recommend not doing that if you don’t want to be slapped.) The scene where the Mikado has them have sex in front of him is, perhaps surprisingly, perhaps not so much, the sexiest scene of the book.

The *best* scene of the book, IMHO, was a moment when Tachibana carves Sakura’s name (桜) into her arm with a knife. Sakura grabs the knife and threatens to carve Tachibana’s name (橘) into her own arm. That’d be a heck of a carving.

This manga is a collection of another of the cell phone manga distributed by Ichijinsha. I’m not sure I’d subscribe to it – there is better out there.

Ratings:
Art – 6
Story – 5
Characters – 7
Yuri – 8
Service – 6

Overall – 6

OTOH, it didn’t suck massively, either. I’ve read better, I’ve read worse.