by Eleanor Walker, Staff Writer

After the shocking events of volume 12 and the Okazu Staff’s first ever group review, Yuri Is My Job! is back with volume 13 and the aftermath of those events. Content warning for discussion of sexual assault.

As I hoped, this volume focuses on Kanoko and her past and, to a lesser extent, future. We learn, via a conversation between Sumika and Kanoko, how Kanoko became friends with Hime, and how her feelings developed. The best way I can describe this is that it all feels very realistically teenagerish. The not wanting your only friend to start going out with someone because then you’ll be all alone is certainly something I remember experiencing, although my best friend wasn’t the popular girl, unlike Hime.

Frustratingly though, Kanoko doesn’t seem to have moved on or learnt anything from the whole ordeal. She’s still obsessively infatuated with Hime and a complete doormat to everyone else, and although she says in the last chapter she wants to face her head on, to me the only way she can do this is confess to her, which she steadfastly refuses to do. I just want to shake her and tell her you cannot put aside your own feelings to make others happy, it will all end in tears like it just did with Sumika!! Her fear of romance taking her friend away is beyond healthy at this point, and she really needs help. Whether she will get it remains to be seen.

One thing I did appreciate is this page though, where Mai, in a rare moment of actually acting like a manager, says to Kanoko that even though nothing physical happened, she was still threatened and hurt. It’s nice to see the story acknowledge that (sexual) violence doesn’t always have to simply be a physical act but also a mental one. I’m still in two minds as to whether it was even necessary to begin with, but I am glad the author is taking it seriously in the aftermath.

I can’t honestly say I’m enjoying the series at the moment, but I am interested to see how we move on from this arc. In the afterword of the volume the author says this arc should conclude in the next volume, but unfortunately, the series has been on hiatus in Japan for about a year now due to the author’s health, and at the time of writing, there is no indication of when it may return. There are 3 chapters which have been released in the magazine which have not yet been published in graphic novel form.

Whilst nowhere near as viscerally intense as the previous volume, to finish I am going to quote Erica from our volume 12 review:

“The question I am left with is…is this what we needed or wanted from Yuri Is My Job!?” and after this volume I’m inclined to think not. I can’t work out what the end goal is or where the story is going to go from here and I can’t help but feel the author may have written themselves into a corner they can’t get out of.

To be continued.

Ratings:

Story: 5
Art: 7
Characters: 5
Yuri: 6
Service: 2. Thankfully nothing nearly as egregious as the colour spread in the previous volume. One brief scene of Sumika getting changed but no details visible.

Overall: 5