Archive for the Yuri Manga Category


Yuri Manga: Yuri Hime Wildrose, Volume 2 (百合姫 Wildrose)

July 29th, 2008

Yuri Hime Wildrose, Volume 2, (百合姫 Wildrose) is the second collection of slightly more explicit short stories by authors from Yuri Hime and Yuri Hime S. Most of the stories are one-shots, but there is at least one continuation from the previous volume.

In most cases, the stories are set at schools or involve schoolgirls, although there is an ocassional adult to break up the monotony and add a little illegality to the proceedings. lol Mostly the stories are sex as affirmation of yes, we really love each other, which is a nice step forward from sex as experiment into what do girls do together? (I am always honestly boggled at this question. I’ve gotten it – quite earnestly – from both men and woman from a number of nations, and I still don’t have a good answer, because it seems so obvious to me. I guess not though, if one’s idea of sex is limited to one action only. But I digress.)

Since incest, or something close to it, is all the rage right now, there are a number of sisters/onee-sama-imouto/cousins-who-are-close-like-sisters to chose from. (This trend continues into both Yuri Hime and Yuri Hime S, btw. So once again, the LCD wins and I wait through yet another cycle of fetishes that aren’t my thing, until the tide turns and possibly my thing will become more popular. Although…probably not. lol) Chi-Ran’s story refreshingly remains about sex between two people who know nothing whatsoever about one another. Not even each other’s names. ^_^

And Natsuki x Shizuru fans will appreciate that the blatant parody this time is not Marimite, but a faux Shiznat thing that was actually quite nice. If you can imagine Natsuki as the older student, closing in on graduation and Shizuru as her lover/kouhai and add sex, you’ll have a close enough idea about the goings on.

Of course I did not like each story equally, but overall I think I liked this volume more than the previous one. I can’t think of any story that was standout wow, but nothing that made me cry, either. ^_^

Ratings (variable, so everything is averaged):

Art – 6
Stories – 7
Characters – 7
Yuri – 9
Service – 7

Overall – 7

This book is sort of the middle step between soft Yuri and porn, so if you’ve bemoaned the fact that there’s little in that middle space before it becomes full-blown fluid-spewing hentai, then you’ll probably like this book a lot.





Yuri Manga: Gunjou, Chapter 7

June 27th, 2008

While everyone else in the mangaverse is talking about the July issue of Morning 2 magazine because of the wonderful new manga series by American artist Felipe Smith, *I* want to talk to you about Morning 2 because of the story that’s the main contender for best Yuri Manga of 2008, Gunjou.

This manga is so awesomely dysfunctional that it makes me want to dance around in joy every time I get a new chapter. :-D Chapter 7 was complete and total win. Here’s the quick background: A brunette, who is a straight, married woman – whom I refer to as BN – asks her close friend, a blonde lesbian (BL,) who is in love with her to murder her husband. BL does the murder, and BL and BN are now on the run from the police together. Before you read today’s review, go read my review of Chapter 6, so you can catch up on where we are.

BN is in her room, thinking miserably about how BL wishes she had killed her, rather than her husband. She is clearly missing BL, although she can’t admit that. There is a knock at the door. BN answers it to find BL telling her how lonely she is, and drawing her in for a kiss. They fall to the floor. BN apologizes, saying that she’s got her period, so BL says fine, we’ll do it in the bathroom.

They have raw, totally unsexy, yet completely sexy, sex. It’s nasty, emotionally and physically. It was awesome.

But never once does the emotional brutality these two inflict on one another let up. There is a fabulous scene where, after they had have sex, the blonde pulls out a towel and snaps it, then reaches out to put it around BN’s neck. She, not at all surprisingly, reacts like she’s about to be strangled. But, in one of those random moments of tenderness, BL just makes a big fluffy bow out of the towel. It was so incongruous and out of place, yet strangely fitting and sweet.

In the course of conversation, BN asks what BL looked like when she was killing her husband – what was the look on her face.

They go to bed and sleep a little, but BL gets up and pulls a razor out of BN’s handbag. BN wakes up and they decide to take a bath. BL comments on BN’s bruises. As BN replies, we see the bath from outside the curtain, and hear the scream.

In the final pages, we see the blood running down BN’s arm from the hand that stops the razor blade from cutting her throat. “You’re crying” she says. “Now you know,” BL says, “what I look like when I kill a person.”

Total wow. There is nothing like this manga – how I wish I could make you all read it. It is beyond wonderful. I mean, sure, its awful, but in a good way – “awe full” if you take my meaning.

Ratings:

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

Overall – 10

So, let other have their “Saint Oniisan” and “Peepo Choo” – I’m the number one fan of Gunjou, and proud of it! This is the perfect Evil Psycho Lesbian story. Best evar, IMHO.





Yuri Manga: Kannazuki no Miko, Volume 1 (English)

June 25th, 2008

Just for fun, you might want to compare my review of the Japanese edition of Kannazuki no Miko from three years ago to this one. I bet at least some things have changed.

Today’s review is brought to you by Ted the Awesome and the word amai. :-)

Amai is an interesting word. It means “sweet” and is used, as one would expect, about pastries and other sweet things. In the same way that we describe someone as “sweet,” in Japanese a “sweet girl” will be amai just like a pastry might be. But amai has other meanings in Japanese as well. Where we would say “you’re too soft on her” or “you spoil him,” the word amai might be used. And there’s amai as in “naive,” which you find used in fight scenes in which the hero is confident about his/her giant robot piloting skills and the bad guy screams “Amai!” as they launch an underhanded, treacherous attack which inevitably fails to win.

So amai is more than just “sweet” as we understand it in English. It implies a kind of naivete which, in a mild case is simply indulging (another person) too much, and in its extremity is a sort of dangerous cluelessness.

This is all to preface this next sentence: In the first volume of Kannazuki no Miko, Himeko is amai.

She is sweet in the conventional sense, and kind and good – but she’s also dangerously naive and dotes on the people around her, giving into their whims without question, to the detriment of their well-being – and her own. As a result, she is forced into the role of victim by both the people she trusts.

Why, one has to ask, if both Souma and Chikane love Himeko so much, do they allow her to be bullied, outcast and victimized instead of stepping up and claiming their friendship publicly? Setting aside for the moment the fact that Kaishaku’s writing skills are total ass, lol, let’s look at this objectively.

If either Chikane or Souma *had* stepped forward and said – get your hands off her, she’s my important friend, okay, maybe the talking behind her back and bullying might not have disappeared, it would have at least been notched down. If BOTH of them had said “Get your hands off my Betty!” the rest of the school would have backed off, and watched the drama play out with immense satisfaction and titillation. But neither does. Although both Souma and Chikane profess to love Himeko, they let her dangle, unprotected, on the edge of a precipice every day – only showing their “true” emotions when they are alone with her.

It seems particularly nasty behavior in the light of their professed desire to “protect” Himeko…when they are the reason she needs protecting in the first place, right?

Basically, both Souma and Chikane are fail. ^_^;

Souma’s fail is slightly more forgivable, because he’s the basic stuttering non-verbal manga boy. Chikane’s fail is quite literally epic, because she *knows* the whole story and isn’t giving Himeko a single piece of information. Ultimately she brutalizes her physically and emotionally, because in her warped view, it’s to “protect” Himeko from knowledge of the situation.

Himeko’s fail is that she is completely, totally amai. She allows the whims of others to take control of her life, she indulges them by not having an opinion of her own, she naively forgives even the basest behavior, and she never once takes an interest in the truth of what is going on. Not really.

The truth is that the the myth cycle the Orochi and the Priestesses are playing out, is quite thin. The story, really, revolves around the love triangle and Himeko’s victimization by herself and the people who profess to love her.

Tokyopop’s team did as good a job with the material as they could. It’s not a good story, nor is it well-drawn, but they made it make as much sense as possible. I applaud them for that. It’s not as easy as they made it look. The original was actually quite nonsensical. ^_^

Whether you like Kannazuki no Miko will depend on a lot of factors, but if you are the kind of person who goes by the equation zOMG Yuri!=Good!, you’ll probably like it lots.  ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 6
Characters – 6
Yuri – 8
Service – 8

Overall – 7

Of course, we’re all interested in finding out the fate of the second volume, which is slated for release in about a week or so. I expect that as it’s one of the licensed titles, it’ll see the light of day eventually, if not actually next week. Sadly, some members of the team who made soup out of this stone are no longer with the company, which is a genuine loss.





Yuri Manga: Sasamekikoto, Volume 2 (ささめきこと)

June 23rd, 2008

Yuri, as I have mentioned, is not the same thing as lesbian. There’s some overlap, of course, but Yuri as a genre has an awful lot of not-really-lesbian-at-all tropes, with which we’re all familiar.

Sasamekikoto, Volume 2 (ささめきこと)  does something quite interesting with some of our more familiar rehashed conventions – in a sort of meta-Yuri manga, we get several layers of Yuri convention running on top of one another, each at a different angle to the others.

Sumika, a girl in love with her best friend Ushio – who loves cute girls, but not Sumi – has been blackmailed to join a club that consists of women who love women (and their friend Kyori who is just a member to make the requisite number.)

But first! A “funny” chapter about Sumi on a date with the guy, Masaki, who likes her, who has a side career cross-dressing as internet idol and model Akemi-chan, and whose little sister is extremely creepy.

After that, the story settles down a bit into something that looks like this:
Classmates ask Sumi whether Tomoe and Miyako are lesbian, but Sumi avoids answering. The two come back and tell the classmates that they shouldn’t be asking other people about their identity. The classmates get all riled, calling them “rezu” and “hentai” when quiet Aoi-san stands up and tells them all to be quiet – that one, the classroom is for studying, not this, and two, real love between women looks like these novels that she obsesses about. lol The novel covers look *awfully* familiar. (And, btw, the novels are penned by Ushio’s brother, something that both Ushio and Sumi don’t want Aoi-san learning. lol)

When Aoi-san runs out after having been emotionally brutalized, Sumi goes after her to see of she’s okay. Aoi-san instantly forms a crush on Sumi and assumes that she too is a fan of the novels. Ushio walks in on them at a touchy moment, which sends her into tears, not so much because Sumi might like the other girl – she’s more worried that Sumi isn’t a fan of those damn novels!

Tomoe, as club president of the jyoshibu, decides that the club should go on a club overnight. However, a misunderstanding forces Sumi into helping Aoi-san with her doujinshi for “Yuri Fest,” a summer doujinshi event. So instead of going with Ushio to the beach, Sumika finds herself helping her new friend making a doujinshi and selling it at this Yuri otaku event. Sumi’s day is made when Ushio ditches her summer vacation, and comes to the event to visit her.

Then, everyone goes to the pool, tickets courtesy of Aoi-san’s thankful parents. Kyori, in a moment of epic genius, separates Aoi-san, Miyako and herself into the “kids” team – basing this on relative size – and leaves Tomoe, Ushio and Sumika to be together. Tomoe gets the drift immediately and goes off on her own, so Sumi and Ushio finally get some alone time. Aoi-san spends the entire time trying to escape to be together with Sumi, but finally sees what we have seen since the beginning, that Sumika and Ushio are in love with one another. And sad as she is, she backs off. On the train, Tomoe talks about how beautiful their love is – especially because they can’t see each other’s feelings. She calls it “delicious.”

The final chapter follows Sumi and Ushio just missing one another at a local festival but, when they finally do connect, the relief and joy on their respective faces speak volumes.

So the trick here is that were have a 1) girl who loves another girl 2) who loves her, 3) but they don’t recognize it yet, and who is the 4) object of a crush of a girl 5) who likes Yuri light novels, and they are in a 5) club for girls who love girls, and hang with a 6) lesbian couple. You see what they did there – the creator layered several “Yuri” tropes on top of one another for a reasonably effective comedy.

And it is quite funny. My favorite moments are when Sumi and Ushio fall into a visually wacky private language that’s basically not describable, but is lol funny.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Yuri – 7
Service – 4

Overall – 8

I wasn’t sure if the whole “best friend who loves her best friend from a distance thing” was going to work for me, but in Sasamekikoto, it absolutely does work.





Yuri Manga: Strawberry Marshmallow Volume 5 (English)

June 13th, 2008

I have a new personal rating system for “funny” books. Because really, and I know it’s me, most “comedy” leaves me staring blankly wondering what was so funny about that. My new rating is based on the number of times – preferably in public – that the funny thing makes me snort.

Strawberry Marshmallow, Volume 5 is a three-snort book.

I was reading the English edition on the train yesterday and I have no doubt that the guy next to me was not made happy by the snorting and occasional fits of giggling. Too bad dude. Next time sit next to the lady with too much perfume.

Volume 5 is a “Best of Miu” book. If you are a member of the Cult of Miu (anyone want to make a graphic for us? I’ve got no time, and am in any case totally not a creative designer when it comes to fannish web graphics) you will need to get this volume.

In fact, it is my opinion that Volume 5 of Strawberry Marshmallow was single-handedly responsible for making this week not suck for me. Therefore it is with extra special appreciation that I thank Ted the Awesome for his sponsorship of today’s review.

So, in my original review of the Japanese edition of this volume, I focused primarily on the chapter that everyone is all zOMG! about, because Miu uses the word lesbian – but that is not why I focused on it. I focused on it because the emails between Chika and Miu made me snort with laughter. In English it is still the best chapter and the most snort-making. (It also has a weird translation thing that’s happened in every other volume. In this case it’s *Chika* who suddenly becomes British.)

What works best in this volume is those moments when the dynamic is between Miu and Chika. Matsuri is supposed to be cute, I guess, but comes off as nothing more than pathetic. Ana has somehow become Matsuri’s lady-in-waiting. And Miu points it out, too. Nobue is there for a few gags, but is not the focus of Miu’s obsession nearly as much as previously (although the one chapter where she is, is the first chapter I ever read of this series and, as a result, I am rather fond of it.)

But where previous volumes were all about Miu, this one has subtlely shifted to be about Miu and Chika. I approve. So much so that I wrote a fanfic about them. It will one day go up on “Worldshaking” Fanfic, where I keep all those little expressions of my otaku disease.

In the meantime, read Volume 5 right away and join the Cult of Miu – you know you want to…join us, join us~~!

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 7
Characters – 8
Yuri – 2
Service – 4 (Bunny ears, cat ears, playing dress up…in a magazine for adult men. So, yesh.)

Overall – 8

I originally scored it an overall 7, but I’m adding on the extra point for the third snort. I cannot wait until Ichigo Mashimaro 6 comes out – it has the greatest arc EVAR.