Archive for the Yuri Manga Category


Superwomen in Love, Honey Trap & Rapid Rabbit, Volume 2

September 24th, 2021

In Volume 1, we meet Hayate who is a part-time performer and superhero, Rapid Rabbit. When Antinoid Army executive Honey Trap fights and defeats Rabbit, she pull off her helmet and falls head over heels for Hayate. Ditching the evil Antinoids for the side of good, Honey and Hayate now fight together.

In Superwomen in Love, Honey Trap & Rapid Rabbit, Volume 2, the cast grows larger. We meet Cool Down another Antinoid executive, who has a Yuri fetish and X, the mastermind behind the evil army attacking humanity.  On the side of good, we meet Orb Owl, a young woman motivated to protect her older sister.

What story we get in this volume is more of a series of questions, than an actual story. Why is X leaving dimension tools around and why does she want to turn humans into monsters? At the moment, we don’t know, but let’s set that aside for a sec. I’ll get back to this in a moment.

Yuri here is implicit, but not, explicit. Honey Trap is very in love with Hayate, two of the Antinoid execs, Suigetsu Kyouka and Melt Out appear to be a couple, Hina seems kind of obsessed with her sister and X seems very obsessed with Hayate. And, again Cool Down is obsessed with Yuri as a whole.

But…what is this story about? I was super excited at the idea of sentai-style Yuri story about adults, but at least here in Volume 2, there’s no story, really. And while there are adults, there’s nothing about it that feels like it is written for an adult audience. I’m not talking about sex, that’s just the trappings of adulthood, the kind of thing that children think makes something “adult.” I’m talking about solid, nuanced, writing with humor and content. This feels more like a series of gags and costume designs strung together than a story.  Probably, I’m asking too much of the series, but you can’t fault a reviewer for trying. ^_^;

That said, if you love sentai series, and the thought that goes into every costume and superpower, with a dollop of goofy. monster of the day style roboto-enemies, slathered with a Yuri icing, then you’ll definitely enjoy this series. Yuri love will save the day in Superwomen in Love.. ^_^

Ratings:

Art โ€“ 8
Story โ€“ 7
Characters โ€“ 7
Service โ€“ 2 Costumes and some of the angles
Yuri โ€“ 4

Overall โ€“ 7

Shout outs to the entire team at Seven Seas from bringing us this niche-y fun series. I look forward to reading the third volume which will be out in winter 2021!

 





Fuzoroi no Renri, Volume 4 (ไธๆƒใ„ใฎ้€ฃ็†)

September 23rd, 2021

Fuzoroi no Renri, Volume 4 (ไธๆƒใ„ใฎ้€ฃ็†) by Mikan Uji, is both a whimsical look at several Yuri odd couples and a profouns story about about found family and making a space for one’s self. In this volume, the whimsy is set aside a little more than usual so we can talk about what happens with young people who are rejected by their families.

To do this, we spend a little extra time with Minami, which is finding herself becoming introspective about her relationship with Iori, and her fellow orphan Shizuka, who is being asked by Saori to admit her feelings for her defacto sister.  There’s some really emotional scenes here, as both Minami and Shizuka have to take stock of what they were to one another and what they fear giving up if they give themselves wholly to another. I am pulling for Minami and Iori, well Minami, really. Iori needs to stop drinking so much. Shizuka and Saori face a couple of high hurdles, not least of which that that they are both very young and forever is a long time.

Accompanying this is a few melancholy pages with the gym teacher who ends up confiding in a student who work in a maid cafe, next to the lesbian bar she doesn’t have the confidence to step into.

All of this makes for an unusually serious volume of this mostly-light-hearted manga. It does leave little room for the manga artist and her editor who are falling for each other online, if only because in comparison, their story seems dopey. But the other effect is that I am more invested in these characters than I was when they were just gags as they were in the previous three volumes.

Ratings:

Art โ€“ 8
Story โ€“ 8
Characters โ€“ 9
Service โ€“ 4 A little bit more than usual
Yuri โ€“ 10

Overall โ€“ 9

Mikan Uji-sensei’s author notes are one more in a long series that reference how lonely manga artists are in lockdown. A study could be done on how manga artists, specifically, are doing working alone, or almost alone, in their rooms these days. It might be a coincidence, but an awful lot of the comedy manga I read has become more serious in recent months. I wonder if there is a correlation.

 





School Zone Girls, Volume 1, Guest Review by Luce

September 22nd, 2021

Another Wednesday, another Guest Review – and this one comes with a built in bonus, as Volume 1 will be followed next week with Volume 2! Please welcome back Luce, with a review of School Zone Girls, Volume 1, out now from Seven Seas in print and digital. Luce, the floor is yours!

Iโ€™m Luce, the owner of a book collection too big for the room I currently inhabit. I own a lot of yuri manga, and Erica kindly asked me to review Volume 1 of this manga. I can be found in the Okazu Discord under the name farfetched, and on tumblr at silverliningslurk. Now, on to the review! 

School Zone Girls shows us the daily lives of two friends; Sugiura Kei, a short-haired, short-statured generally sensible girl, and Yokoe Rei, a beautiful but nonsensical girl. Alongside their fellow students, it depicts their high school lives and adventures. Or misadventures, as we see very quickly.

In many ways, this feels much more like what actually happens at schools than any shoujo. Romance drama? I don’t remember much of that, more having daft conversations with friends, the weird things you were into and all the things school said you had to do but you didn’t want to. School Zone Girls is very much this. The chapters are short, with a four-koma style comedy about them, despite being normal manga form. There are no school princes of any gender here, just people in often ridiculous conversations and situations of their own making. Kei and Yokoe are the kind of friends that you don’t really know how they’re still friends – and neither do they – but they do care about each other underneath the bantering. I love it.

One of my favourite things is the expressions. They’re not ridiculous (most of the time), but get the emotions across very well. The characters also look distinct from each other, with different eyes and such, which I appreciate. There are a set of twins who look very similar, and they’re about the only ones you would mix up, but they have different uniforms, as they go to different schools, so that’s sorted too. Speaking of uniforms, I really like the uniform of this school. I haven’t seen anything else like it in manga. Never mind all the sailor uniforms, this is the one Iโ€™d want.

As for yuri, the blurb on the book makes no secret of the fact that Kei and Yokoe like each other… but maybe can’t admit it. This isn’t so much a blushing rom com though – more of the comedy, without the stupid set-ups. By halfway into the book it’s clear that Yokoe is very aware of her feelings, whilst Kei is… not really there. Mainly, Yokoe is usually annoying her too much to actually dwell on it while they’re together. There is a great scene where Yokoe confesses because she thinks Kei isn’t listening… Turns out she was kind of listening. But misconstrues it anyway. When you consider that Yokoe often proposes to Kei when she’s in her post-exam ‘anaphylactic shock’ (nothing to do with allergies), perhaps it’s not so weird. It feels like a character that is so often daft that she no longer knows how to be serious about something even when she wants to, something that’s touched on more in the second book. If anything, I find it hard to believe they will get together, just because it almost feels like them getting together might ruin the dynamic of the manga. But we’ll see how that goes! I’ll trust in Ningiyau, since they’ve done a good job so far.

Ratings:

Art: 8 for the faces. The ‘serious’ art is pretty nice, although pretty standard for decent manga
Story: 6 
Characters: 9, I love them all, but I hope the twins reconcile in later books
Service: 1 purely because a bra gets mentioned once. I guess they were in swimsuits at one point? Itโ€™s not a male gaze series at all.
Yuri: 6? More friendship based at the moment than romantic

Overall: 8

It’s daft, but I really enjoyed it. Second book in the series is already out in digital and print, which will have a guest review next week, and the third will be along shortly I believe. 

Erica here: Thanks so much for this heads up. I know I could sure use a goofy, fun series on my  tablet these days. Next week we will indeed have Volume 2 on tap, with a review from Chris.
 




Watashi o Tabetai, Hito de Nashi, Volume 1 (็งใ‚’ๅ–ฐในใŸใ„ใ€ใฒใจใงใชใ—)

September 21st, 2021

Hinako’s family died in a tragic accident. Most of what she remembers is falling into the deep, deep ocean. So when, one day, she stops to look at the sea, she feels profound emotions. As something bubbles up from below, a girl with eyes the color of the ocean gains her attention.  The next time she walks by the water, that something rises. A sea creature attempts to drag Hinako down, but the girl shows up again and explains that she is not human. As scales and claws appear on her, she fights off the creature, then tells Hinako that she will protect her, until Hinako has matured….and then she will eat Hinako.

The next day that girl appears as transfer student in her class. Oumi Shiori, explains to Hinako that her flesh is – or will be – exceptionally delicious and she has claimed it for herself. She can see that Hinako wants to die, but she won’t let that happen…yet.

Watashi o Tabetai, Hito de Nashi, Volume 1 (็งใ‚’ๅ–ฐในใŸใ„ใ€ใฒใจใงใชใ—) is a millefeuille of a school-life drama wrapped around a dark story of depression and loss, wrapped around a subversion of the Japanese fairytale of mermaids, whose flesh, if eaten, is delicious and brings immortality; wrapped in a youkai story. And in a mere 162 pages, Naekawa Sai hits the nail on every one of these. This story is as tight and dry as a drum-head.

If you ask me if I like horror, I will vociferously tell you that I do not. I don’t enjoy being startled (adrenaline and I have a long, unpleasant history) and I don’t care to be grossed out. But there is a note of psychological horror I don’t mind, monsters are fine and, above all, good writing can make a heck of a difference. The end of this volume contains a scene so creepy and violent that I ought to have been both startled and a little grossed out, but both art and story work so beautifully that it was merely a breathtakingly excellent scene.

So, if you do like horror, I hope you will give this series a try and I’ll can shake to see if anyone at Yen might consider licensing this, because, honestly, it is damn good and dark.

Ratings:

Art – 8 Solid, but really favors blood-spatter on Shiori’s face
Story – 8 Intriguing and dark in different ways
Characters – 7 We hardly know them, yet. I feel like there’s a lot left to learn
Service – Blood. Violence. Monsters From the Deep. Secrets.
Yuri – Hinako’s BFF is possessive, Shiori is infatuating

Overall – 8

I’m hooked. (This is an entirely inappropriate fish pun.) You can get Volume 1 and Volume 2 in print and digital now. I think you should.

 
 

 

 





SHWD (ใ‚ทใƒฅใƒผใƒ‰), Volume 1

September 16th, 2021

Kouga is a woman who wants to make a difference. She wants to be part of the elite Special Hazardous Waste Disposal team – the team that fights the Dynamis, an inhuman form of mental and physical pollution.  Kouga joins Sawada, a tough as nails supervisor and eventually, they are joined by their American counterpart, Leone, Leo to her friends. Kouga is likable, Sawada’s the jaded veteran, Leo is a study in contrasts.

In Volume 1 of SHWD, by sono.N, the monsters are huge, but the women are large, strong and up to the task.

The details of what, specifically, the Dynamis are, is wholly unimportant to me at this point. If they become more interesting, along the order of Silent Mobius‘s Lucifer Hawks, that’s fine, but right now they are those inhuman baddies that poison human minds.

This is a series that gives us something we rarely see, even in action series – beefy, large, muscular women. When we meet Sawada, she’s doing one-armed pushups on a dumbbell. Kouga out-masses her by a lot. She, Leo and Sawada are large-bodied, large-chested, large-muscled women who fight to save people from an enemy that drives them mad. In this volume, we get a single page back story on Kouga, and instantly understand her issue with the Dynamis is personal. And we do see Kouga take her enemy head on – along with Sawada’s knife skills and Leo’s marksmanship – with a giant fucking ax. ^_^ 

There’s a fair dollop of love for the women’s bodies in this series, and a bathing scene, so we can appreciate them up close and personal. None of this is done coyly – this series is a love letter to huge, muscular woman. I really enjoy the heck out of it, from the very first time I encountered it at Comitia as doujinshi series, to this collected volume.

Clearly we’re going to get more of Sawada’s story and Kouga’s experiences. There’s no Yuri here in Volume 1, but I can see Sawada and Kouga going there eventually… .I peeked at the next chapter last night and yep. Kouga’s really cute about it, too. ^_^ Here in V1, the extended backstory we get is Leo’s.

Where this book is likely to go, I’m not sure, but I hope it takes us somewhere fun. In the meantime, you can read the original doujinshi this series is from in English from Lilyka! So if you’re looking for women with shoulders big enough to handle the burden of the task ahead of them, talk a look at the first 5 doujinshi, the 1st year anniversary and the Sports Day Edition of SHWD on Lilyka or, if you want to check it out in Japanese, take a look at the Comic Ruelle & Comic Jardin site where new chapters can be sampled.

Ratings:

Art – 8 Honestly great, despite kind of being exaggerated in a bunch of different ways.
Story – 7 Solid action story storytelling
Characters – 8 Also exaggerated, but fun.
Service – 5 Yep No nipples or genitalia, but lots of nekkid women with massive shoulders.
Yuri – Not yet, but shortly.

Overall – 8

I picked this and a few other Yuri series from up Comic Ruelle & Comic Jardin when they ran what they labeled their Heterdox Yuri Festival, including Sal Jiang’s Black & White, which I adored. This promotional name has absolutely delighted me, so I kept all of the inserts in all the books, just because they make me smile. ^_^ Yay for Yuri that bucks the trends and gives us strong women who look like they can lift you with one hand.

Bet on Sawada’s backstory being that her partner/lover was polluted by the Dynamis and attacked Sawada, so she had to kill her?  ^_^