Today is an extra specially lucky day for all of us – we have a new Guest Reviewer! Tomo K. has graciously offered to write up a review of Matsumoto Tomoki’s Prunus Girl. You may remember that Tomo told us about this manga, which runs in Square Enix’s Monthly GanGan Joker last month.

I hope you’ll all extend a warm Okazu welcome to Tomo! Kind words in the comments fields will be appreciated.

Prunus Girl (プラナス・ガール) begins on the day when the result of Maki’s senior high entrance exam is posted. He meets a cute girl and it looks like a fated encounter, but the girl, Aikawa, later turns out to be his classmate and an 男の娘 (otoko-no-ko: a male who looks/dresses/acts completely female).

I found it amusing how quick the other students adapt to Aikawa, with the girls treating him like a female friend, and the guys accepting him because he’s cute. Even the teachers let him wear a girl’s uniform at school, because what he is wearing is a school uniform after all.

Aikawa seems to like Maki quite a bit, telling Maki he’d prefer to be “a girl” in front of him, barging into Maki’s dorm room and insisting they sleep in the same bed, barging into the dorm room another time and borrowing Maki’s (male) uniform and wearing it to school the next day. Maki realizes he does enjoy spending his time with Aikawa, but he’s not sure whether it’s because Aikawa’s his best friend, or whether it’s because he sees Aikawa as a girl.

Now for the Yuri part. In vol. 2, Hanazaka, Maki’s friend from junior high, transfers to his class and introduces herself to everyone by tell them that she likes girls.

Then in vol. 4, Wakakusa, Maki’s first love and Hanazaka’s ex-girlfriend, transfers to the senior high as well. Wakakusa has chased Hanazaka to the school, demanding to know why she’d
been rejected.

Now Hanazaka turns out to be the only daughter of a company CEO. He expects his daughter to get married and have the groom be his successor, so of course he protests when his daughter declares she’ll never get married and will spend the rest of her life with Hanazaka. So Hanazaka had left to prevent a breakdown of her girlfriend’s family relationships.

In the end, the two do get back together, and Wakakusa tells Hanazaka she will make her father congratulate the two, no matter how many years it takes.

I’m looking forward to seeing how Maki and Aikawa’s relationship evolves, as the Yuri episode seemed like a foreshadowing of problems the two’ll face if they decide to go out as a couple.

In the latest episode in the magazine, Maki and Aikawa are dressed as groom and bride at the school’s culture festival, running from the other students, as the student council suddenly declars that any student that captures either of them will be granted a one-day date with them. So Maki is carrying Aikawa like a princess, and is dashing around.

Art – 7
Story – 6
Character – 7
Yuri – 4
Fanservice – 6
Overall – 7

Vol. 5 is scheduled for a spring release.

Thank you so much for this review, Tomo. This is exactly why a Yuri Network is so important – we would never have known about this series without you!

For fun, we unbagged/boxed all of our stuff this time, even the wife’s piles of stickers and postcards. Click on the picture for a larger image. Let the detailed examination begin!

Up against the pillow are all the calendars I got. I have more calendars than I have room for calendars….

I jokingly refer to a certain set of magazines as “Manga Time Kirara (and all its little wizards)” around my house. When, mere hours ago, I stood in a store and faced down the many, many Manga Time magazines, I was reminded why. There are a truckload of these, ever so slightly dissimilar magazines that, when looked at as a whole are all pretty much identical.

And because Yuri is on the list of acceptable fetishes for this particular set of just-slightly-dissimilar 4-koma manga, many of the series found in the pages of these many magazines have some Yuri. For instance, Morita-san ha Mukuchi, which effectively has one joke (Mayu doesn’t talk) and two possible Yuri characters.

I picked up Warratte! Sotomura-san (笑って！外村さん) by Minamori Minamo, expecting one joke and no Yuri, and was right about one of those things.

Sotomura Natsuki is a very nice girl, who likes typical girly things but, has a very unfortunate smile. Unfortunate in the sense that when she “smiles,” she’s likely to terrify people and make them think she’s about to punch their lights out. This, combined with a natural shyness that is expressed in terse sentences…and the fact that she wears her school skirt long, makes Natsuki look like, well, a gang boss. Everyone in her class is convinced that she bosses her poor younger brother around, beats up children and animals and gets into fights before school. In reality, her brother and she get along perfectly well, she likes children and animals and is likely to ruin her uniform climbing up a tree to rescue a balloon or a kitten.

This is the one joke in the manga. Natsuki smiles like wolf grins and talks like a gang boss. That’s it.

Haruno, a girl from another class, befriends Natsuki after she realizes that that leer *is* Natsuki’s smile. So now Natsuki has a friend. This made the difference between this being a very sad manga and a totally tolerable one. Natsuki also has an admirer.

Early on in the manga Natsuki saves a girl from being bullied and later in the manga, the girl reappears, ready to become a good gang member, dedicated to protecting her boss. But, of course, Natsuki is missing this completely, as she inappropriately replies to the girl’s request to call her Onee-san, by telling her to call her Anego (gang patois for “Big Sis.”)

Her admirer takes up bokutou to better be able to protect the boss and shadows Natsuki, (much like the glasses girl stalks Mayu) and possibly admires her more. And that’s about that for that.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 6 (It skirts being too full of pathos for my taste)
Characters – 6
Yuri – 2
Service – 1

Overall – 6

As I say, there’s only one joke, so reading too much of it at once can be too much. I suggest reading manga like this in small chunks over a few days for maximum fun.

Just wanted to share this with you – it’s the Life-size Gundam from the Yurikamome train: