All too often, stories with love triangles are unsatisfying.

It’s natural for us to pick the pair we want to succeed and find any other form of resolution irritating. We often wish no one settled with anyone, rather than the “wrong” couple work out.

Girl x Girl x Boy is the story of a love triangle with a satisfactory ending.

Fuuka is in love with her best friend and classmate Riri, who protected her, when they were younger, from the bullying of the boys at school.

One of those boys, Itta, was the one of the worst bullies – Fuuka can still remember how cruel he was to her. So she is not pleased at all to have Itta transfer into her high school, be seated next to her – and worst of all, confess that he likes her!

Fuuka’s having a hard enough time with that, but when Riri admits that she likes Itta, it’s just intolerable.

The story follows the three of them as they try to maintain balance between their mutually exclusive likes and dislikes. As a result of that balance, they pull together as friends, but the specter of sexual attraction doesn’t ever truly go away. It comes to a head in an abortive attempt at a threesome in a hotel…something that splits them up as friends, and destroys the possibility of them becoming lovers in any combination.

Itta breaks the impasse by reminding the girls how much fun they had as a trio of friends. He asks Fuuka and Riri to recapture that feeling between them, because he’s transferring to another school. His announcement forces Riri to deal with her fears about Fuuka’s and her feelings, ultimately bringing the two girls together. When Itta returns, he admits defeat in love, but insists on reestablishing his place in the triangle. The end of the book sees the three of them as friends, but Riri and Fuuka as a couple.

There were some decent things about this book. Fuuka’s feelings for Riri start out as an extension of her gratefulness for the other girl’s protection. I was concerned that this was too fragile a feeling and it would be destroyed by Riri’s waffling, but ultimately, Fuuka’s feelings grow into a more mature love.

For her part, Riri is the one torn by her feelings of love for another girl. Reticence takes a hold of her as she watches a show on gay people who have had to give up all hope of family life in order to be with their lovers. She’s just not willing to do that. And so, she chooses Itta as a way to avoid dealing with it.

Itta starts off as a total jerk – not taking no for an answer, being obnoxiously persistent, the usual. But ultimately, he ends up being the most honest of the three. His feelings for Fuuka aren’t complicated by concerns about society’s approval, but he does fight a cool sempai off – going so far as to scold the sempai for almost outing Riri and Fuuka.

I can’t say I really *liked* this book. It wasn’t bad in every way – in fact, it wasn’t bad in any way. The art was okay, the story was okay, the relationship ended in the way Yuri fans might hope, but nothing really stood out, either. It was a pretty predictable tale from start to finish.

When I think about Girl x Girl x Boy I feel like I didn’t like it. But when I take a second to really consider it, there wasn’t anything objectionable. So, I guess it’s more that it had no oomph, and that all the tropes have been covered by stories I liked better.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 7
Characters – 7
Yuri – 7
Service – 2

Overall – 7

As a fairly realistic expression of the feelings of two babydykes, it was totally satisfactory. As entertainment…it was totally bland.

The plot of Magie Paire, Volume 3 remains the same as that of Volume 1 and Volume 2 – Maria, having now found herself a powerful onee-sama at a school for mages, is still incapable of performing any magic herself. Well, not unless she has Unyuu the magical creature on her head, that is.

As you can see by the cover art, Maria’s problem takes second place to the inevitable cosplay one comes to expect with Takagi Noboyuki manga. So, while it’s true that Maria is going to spend some small amount of time in pursuit of her latent magical powers, she’s going to spend way *more* time getting in and out of bathing suits, gym clothes and maid costumes. Fans of this series have priorities, you know. ^_^

For a change, Maria spends an entire chapter clothed and working on her magic, as she approaches the issue of flame. Since her Paire, Reina-oneesama, is a Flame Master, they conclude that Maria ought to be able to work with small fires like a candle. After much effort, she seems to have developed the ability to…extinguish a flame. Very useful if one can’t, say, exhale. ^_^;

In terms of Yuri, a particularly erotic little sprite gets loose in the school and makes Maria strip down, cover herself in ribbon and offer herself to Reina as a birthday present. And Maria picks up a few upperclassmen who’d like to spoil her with kisses and hugs as she’s so utterly adorable in that maid costume she wears for the school festival.

And, oh yeah, Reina-oneesama picks up an newcomer as an admirer who challenges Maria’s right to be her Paire…of course.

After that, Maria sets her sights on getting stronger and spends the rest of the volume in a variety of costumes appropriate to various sporting and fighting situations.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 5
Characters – 6
Yuri – 4
Service – 7

Overall – 6

I happen to have picked up a recent issue of Gum Magazine the manga mag in which this series runs (as does Ikkitousen and a host of other crap) and I can assure you that Maria will gain her powers…but not before many more clothing changes.

If there’s one lesson we can take away from Magie Paire it’s that the appropriate outfit is at least, if not more, important than one’s attitude. ^_^

A few months ago, the manga Kaprekar, popped onto our radar and we reported it in the “Snatches of Yuri” segement of the weekly Yuri News report.

So I picked it up just to see what the deal was. Here’s the deal: Yuna and Uno are two girls with a past. At the end of their physical and emotional ropes, they sold their lives to the organization Arca, and were given new lives – and an amazing power to merge and transform into the magical/bad science being Karepkar when they kiss. Kaprekar fights “Craimu” – Monsters of the Day created by unsatisfied desires in the hearts of the miserable, hapless and hopeless. Kaprekar crushes the heart-shaped, blood-filled gems in the MoTD’s hearts to defeat them. Kaprekar’s (and therefore Uno and Yuna’s) handler is a guy they call Yamada (Provisional). He’s in love with Kaprekar and pretty mean to the girls, and is more an accountant than anything else. Because Yuna and Uno still owe loads of money to Arca for their surgeries, so Yamada makes them do work to pay back the loan.

Now all this sounds like it could be a decent story, but it’s not really. Because instead of developing the characters and their reasons for giving up everything to become Kaprekar, or looking at their lives and motivations now, the story does the typical service-y situations and focuses on bikinis at the beach and wacky school stuff.

Later in the book, Yuna and Uno rescuse a kid who is very close to becoming a Craimu, and decide to keep him around as bait, since his unhappiness will draw Craimu like ants to sugar. He’s a miserable little shota of a kid, who takes up the role of personal assistant to the girls and works his way into their hearts – but mostly only because he makes them food. He also supplies a series of role reversals as we get to see him sexually harrassed by a female classmate, only to have her turn into a Craimu that has to be defeated. I was shocked, I can assure you. ^_^

What about the Yuri? Well, Yuna and Uno care about each other – but the only reason they kiss is to turn into Kaprekar. I think it’s safe to say that yes, they do love each other. Other than that, it’s all in your head. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 7
Characters – 6
Yuri – 3
Service – 4

Overall – 7

In the end, Yuna and Uno are no closer to paying off their debt than they were in the beginning. And so we look forward (or not, depending on what you like) to Volume 2 where, no doubt, more of the same will happen. ^_^