Hello and welcome to Guest Review….Thursday. Yeah, I dropped the ball yesterday and simply forgot to post this. But I didn’t want you to miss this terrific review by Senior Kiss & White Lily Correspondent, Christian LeBlanc of 3DComics! So please welcome Chris back and give him your kind attention as he breaks it all down once again for us.

Let’s cut right to the chase: this penultimate Volume 9 of Canno’s high school “Yuritopia” Kiss & White Lily For My Dearest Girl (translation by Leighann Harvey, lettering by Alexis Eckerman) is a better end to the series than Volume 10, and if you enjoy these books well enough but happen to only own a few volumes, you owe it to yourself to add this one to your collection, because s*** gets real.

How real? Well, one girl forgets her toothbrush after sleeping over at her girlfriend’s house, someone else gets so angry at the world that they turn to cosplay to cope with it all, and in the climax of the series, another girl tells off their mom and then makes out with the girl she likes! (Suggested listening for this scene: your favourite pump-up music, be it something from Sailor Moon, Kill La Kill, or, if you want to get real campy, the opening 27 seconds of “Everything Louder Than Everything Else” by Meat Loaf.)<

With that out of the way, let’s back up a little and talk about our final new pair of characters. Asuka Sakurada finds herself repeating her final year of high school due to a basketball injury that made her miss too many days (it must have been a concussion or something, because she’s only shown with a broken leg in flashbacks, and I assume the poor girl would have had access to crutches). As a senpai forced to join her kōhai, she gets a *huge* chip on her shoulder about it, attending only the bare minimum of classes, refusing to integrate or socialize with anyone, etc. Her self-destructive attitude becomes extreme enough that she turns to that most delinquent form of rebellion, cosplay, which is how she meets Mikaze Hagimoto. Asuka cosplays a character who has a lot in common with Mikaze and vice-versa, the two hit it off, and we quickly see them making out on school benches, fashion wigs and all.

All of this is framed as a tragic romance, by the way – the first two words in the book are “It’s over.” If you’re like me and have a predilection for the melancholy, it means good times all around: put on your favourite gloomy Cure record and enjoy the tearful scenes that are to come. (I joke slightly, but it does get dark for poor Mikaze, who takes the break-up very hard indeed: the color has gone out of her world, she can’t concentrate in school, she starts skipping classes…we see later on in flashbacks that she spent at least one night alone with Asuka, which perhaps sheds light on why she’s having such a tough time, if things had gotten that intense between them.)

I think a much stronger ending would have seen these two making peace with each other as friends, but, you’ve already seen the cover, and you’ve probably read at least a few volumes of this series before, so you’ll just have to put on a different Cure record, I guess (one of their happy ones, that make you want to live). This is why Volume 2 will always be my favorite, by the way – Chiharu is rejected, but we get to see her *move on*, and she gets the entire volume in which to do so. Here, it feels like Canno wanted to explore a good break-up story, but had to wrap things up in order to get her characters posed happily for the cover shot; Asuka’s sudden change of heart even feels more like a plot requirement than anything sincere.

As for flagship characters Ayaka and Yurine, both characters get the plot resolution that the entire series has been building towards. Both of their chapters start with the same event (viewing exam results, the only thing that makes Ayaka feel alive…I worry about how she’s going to cope after high school, actually), and then follows either Ayaka or Yurine for the rest of their respective chapters as they resolve their plots in a neat bit of parallel story-telling. Yurine even gets a call-back to the very first chapter of the series, which makes it feel like a better ending than Vol.10, even without things “officially” wrapping up.

For analysis, let’s back things up again a bit. Ok, a lot: having lived and died centuries before Yuri began 100 years ago, René Descartes likely did not anticipate getting the opening quotation, “Conquer yourself rather than the world!” In this book, this means bringing about change through internal, rather than external, factors. Ayaka can’t change how her mom feels, but she can change how she accepts and internalizes the support she gets from others. Yurine doesn’t stop feeling alienated because of how she performed on any external exams, but by realizing she’s been gradually becoming a “normal girl” with her own community of friends all along. Mikaze tries to become someone “special” enough to win back her ex-girlfriend, but realizes it’s much healthier to try and accept the break-up, who she is, and that neither partner should have to change to suit the other. And Asuka stops cutting herself off from everything, after realizing she’s gone too far in cutting Mikaze out of her life. To drive the point home, Asuka’s pocket mirror keeps getting passed back and forth between her and Mikaze, further reflecting (sorry) this focus on the self and internal change.

In all, it’s a wonderful volume of Kiss & White Lily – we get closure for plots that have been in motion since the very first chapter (along with some related tender scenes), Ai Uehara and Kaoru Machida each get some good scenes to help lighten the mood (Ai could be one of Yuri’s best supporting characters ever, if we only got to see her more often), Asuka and Mikaze bring some enjoyably melancholy drama, characters in Kiss Theater flit in and out of cameos as always, and anyone who’s ever been on a cover of K&WL appears in at least one panel.

Canno’s Continuity Corner: there’s an incidental panel of Ayaka and Yurine starting Year 2 from Volume 3 (this time drawn as background characters); Lyrical Seira, which Asuka and Mikaze are cosplaying as, is the anime from their childhood that Sawa and Itsuki went on a movie date to see in Volume 5; there’s some bonus Valentine’s Day vignettes at the end featuring our cover-stars from Volumes 5, 6 and 7; we briefly see Yurine’s little sister again (poor Sumire – this marks her last appearance in the series, and she only gets the one panel, just like in Vol.7). In one of my favourite tiny details, the exam results show Nagisa and Hikari from last volume placing in the top 10, consistent with their characterization as high achievers – not only that, but Nagisa is even 4 places higher, which fits with how she had complained “Why does everyone always put Hikari and me on the same level? I have better grades!” while a visual of their test results shows her getting 98 vs Hikari’s 97.

Ratings:

Art – 9 The thicker blacks compared to the Japanese edition aren’t as destructive this time around; I looked, but couldn’t find any tell-tale moiré patterns. A point is still taken away for how much art gets trimmed off the edges, though. Canno’s art is gorgeous, expressions are delightful, and backgrounds really contribute to the atmosphere in a few key scenes.
Story – 9 Plot resolution, dramatic tension, sweetness, cosplay…this one has a lot going for it.
Characters – 10 Ayaka and Yurine have grown a lot as characters, and their relationship has evolved over time to reflect that. Asuka and Mikaze with their cosplay were a fun change of pace as well.
Yuri – 8
Service – 3 As Erica said in her review of the Japanese edition: “I’m not gonna lie, that kiss was pretty hot”

Overall – 10

I still remember back in April 2018, how excited I was when the 2-page colour illustration from the opening was teased on Twitter, showing Ayaka and Yurine holding hands while they emerge from a cold, snowy winter and walk off into the warm spring-like foreground together; I immediately retweeted it stating “THEY ARE HOLDINGS HANDS THIS IS HUGE THIS IS NOT A TEST” in all caps. It’s still one of my favorite illustrations from the series.

And, you don’t have to be a genius like Yurine to know how things will end up, but you’ll still want to see how it all happens in the final Volume 10, which is set to come out on October 29, 2019 from Yen Press.

Erica here: “anyone who’s ever been on a a cover of K&WL appears in at least one panel.” Foreshadowing the entirety of Volume 10, frankly.
Christian, you deserve an award for this review. It was absolutely brilliant and got both laughs and thumbs up from both members of the household here at Okazu Central. Well done.