Archive for the Yuri Manga Category


Even Though We’re Adults, Volume 2

August 6th, 2021

Yesterday I said we were playing a “choose your own adventure” in reading works by creators you already had opinions about. Yesterday, we walked down Path #1 with a work that was pleasantly excellent. Today we’re doing a second path, as we look at Even Though We’re Adults, Volume 2 by Shimura Takako.

In Volume 1, we met Akari, a lesbian who has had some bad luck with partners and Ayano, a married woman, for whom Akari falls. If indeed that was the sum and total of the plot, it would be merely all right, but in this series, nothing ever is exactly what it seems to be.  Ayano is not at all the person she appeared to be and, we learn in this volume, there was a whole other Ayano in school, where she was tall and boyish.

Akari …well, she’s a decent human and it’s hard to not like her. She’s just looking for someone to be happy with and it’s not at all making her happy that she has feelings for a married woman. In fact, she’s pretty damn pissed about it. In this volume we also learn that she has previously been down this road and it did not go well for her, so we can completely sympathize.

Even Ayano’s husband Wataru is decent. He’s a guy whose life has been thrown into a series of chaotic situations and he’s trying to stay afloat. When his father becomes ill in Volume 2, he and Ayano get roped into moving back with his abrasive mother and shut-in sister. He too, one can completely sympathize with.

So, you may wonder why I consider this a path down the “what is this going to be like?” game. And to explain that, I have to tell you a secret. … I don’t actually like Shimura Takako’s work that much.

I don’t hate it, I just think she’s either a straight (or officially closeted) woman who has made a career of writing queer characters who…don’t act like people actually act. Her works has been insightful only rarely and sometimes torpedo their own good intentions.  As a result, she’s gotten a huge amount of queer cred, most of which I think is unearned. More damning, her storytelling has been…inconsistent. Sweet Blue Flowers is a narrative mess with flashes of brilliance, but Wandering Son is literally filled with repeated scenes and conversations.. On top of that, her endings are occasionally pat and irritating. So, call me very pleasantly surprised that all the characters here (except, so far as you know) Mom, are written with nuance and sympathetic perspective.*

These characters have been written with the kind of nuance I crave in manga…especially manga written for adults. Sure, sex and violence have their place, but surely being adult means we can more layered and thoughtful writing, too, not just more violence and sex. Here everything is just working in concert to create a strong whole.

So for a creator whose work has, in the past, left me feeling disappointed or even exploited, Even Though We Are Adults is an absolute masterwork of storytelling. The art is perfectly fine, but it still is finding its stride and I talk about that in my discussion of Volume 2 in Japanese.

Ratings:

Art – 7 with flashes of 9
Story – 8 Not easy, but well told
Characters – 7 easy to sympathize with, but like? That’s another story.
Service – 0
Yuri – Yes, definitely. Akari is gay, Ayano may be bi or questioning but it’s all question marks now.

Overall – 7

*I’m not the only one to feel exactly this way, as the Mangasplaining Podcast spent an entire excellent episode talking about this series and they touch on all these things. I love this podcast, not just because some of the folk on it are friends. ^_^ It’s a great podcast for folks who love manga, I recommend it highly

Volume 3 will be available in October and while I have already reviewed it in Japanese, am looking forward to it in English as well. Translator Jocelyne Allen’s work is always fantastic. Casey Luca on adaptation,  Rina Mapa on lettering and retouch, Hanase Qi’s great cover design and Shannon Fay on Editing; The entire Seven Seas team is doing excellent work here for a terrific reading experience of a complicated, adult story.





Futari ha Daitai Konna Kanji, Volume 2 (γ΅γŸγ‚Šγ―γ γ„γŸγ„γ“γ‚“γͺγ‹γ‚“γ˜)

August 5th, 2021

Okay, so here’s a mood. You like a creator, so when they announce a new book or series, you’re cautiously optimistic at the least. You know it might not be as good as the last thing you saw or read, but you have hope. And then you read or watch the thing….

This is a choose your own adventure and we will be walking down several possible paths together in the immediate future. ^_^ Today we are going down Path #1… You liked the creator’s last work you read and Volume 1 was very good.  And then Volume 2 is fantastic. Yay! Sasamekikoto creator, Ikeda Takashi’s Futari ha Daitai Konna Kanji, Volume 2 (γ΅γŸγ‚Šγ―γ γ„γŸγ„γ“γ‚“γͺγ‹γ‚“γ˜) is really good. SO much better than I hoped. With one exception.

Volume 1 introduced us to Sakuma, a script writer who seems to be best known for porn, and her lover Wako (called “Wanko” for her puppy-like qualities,) a young voice actress getting her start. They live together, have careers and are generally happy people. Spending time with them is…nice.

Volume 2 is more of the same. They start the volume off by getting ready for a flower-viewing party in the spring. When they arrive, no one is there, and they wonder if they got it wrong. but no…they are there in time to see everyone else arrive. And they have a lovely time.

Wako gets a job with two other women for an on-going series and her personality is perfect for the hyper younger sister she plays. The two other voice actresses tease her a little, but ultimately ask her if they can talk with her. After work, they tell her, in confidence, that they are actually lovers and want to to start a “Yuri” entertainment company with Yuri Drama CDs and the like… There is a laugh-out-loud moment as Wako enthusiastically explains that she’s *also* got a girlfriend and heck yeah, she wants in. The next panel is a night scene of the street, with words coming from the bottom corner, “Seriously?” It completely slayed me. Even crazier, Sakuma is a script writer…and, it turns out, one of the seiyuu has worked as a voice for one of her scripts!

We follow one of their friends who is quite gay. A person working on Wako’s new series remembers her from school and Sakuma’s birthday is coming up… . Sadly, the final chapter is that godawful “surprise birthday party” plot that I want to see burned with fire and the ashes locked away forever as forbidden.

Ratings:

Art – 9 Loose, light where it needs to be, realistic and well-formed where it needs to be
Characters – 9 I’d have them over for lunch anytime ^_^
Story – 8 Slice of not-my-life. 1 point off for the surprise party
Service – 5 Nudity and acknowledgement of sex, but not more. It’s more just like, knowing an adult couple as friends.
Lesbian – 10 and then sure, Yuri – 10

Overall – 9 Fun, relatable and way better than I anticipated, but that one point off for that goddamned awful surprise birthday party plot.

With the exception of causing trauma in order to create a surprise, which I just hate in real life and fiction equally, this was a fun, sincere and funny manga – especially when Ikeda let’s his characters be goofy. For my money, that’s when his work is at its best.

Also excellent is the running leitmotif of Wako, then Sakuma, having stress dreams about Wako being an idol. That felt way real.

 





Farewell to My Alter, Nio Nakatani Short Story Collection

August 3rd, 2021

Farewell to My Alter, Nio Nakatani Short Story Collection, from Yen Press works equally well as a Yuri collection, a science fiction/fantasy collection, or a collection of Nakatani-sensei’s stories from the Γ‰clair anthologies +. Anyway you look at it, this book has a variety of stories that all are firmly rooted in “short story” telling beats, with a requisite number ironic, ambiguous or open endings.

My favorite story is probably the most obvious, as a Virtual Designer fails to notice the reality right in front of her.

The art for this collection spans a pretty good range of time before and during Bloom Into You, and it’s not hard to see that Nakatani-sensei’s earlier chapters are less polished than her later. As I wrote in my review of the Japanese volume:

“If you’re a huge fan of her work, or you like short manga stories with slightly uncomfortable edges, you’ll want to get this collection. It definitely is an excellent overview of her art changing over the last decade or so. as it evolves quite considerably from beginning to end in a way that would not be obvious if you didn’t see the stories laid out one after the other…”

Technicals here are well-handled by the team at Yen Press. Since they only give me two names, I can only call out translator Eleanor Summers  and letterer Erin Hickman for their efforts, and so I will. It’s never easy to do this and I always appreciate the care and attention they give to it.

Ratings:

Overall – 7

For fans of Bloom Into You, this is a great way to survey a creator’s artistic development, along with some solid speculative fiction by Nakatani Nio.

Thank you very much to Yen Press for the review copy!





白と黒~Black & White~, Volume 1

July 30th, 2021

Content warning: The plot here is 100% manipulation, violence and sexual violence.

Shirakawa Junko is beloved in her office. The younger employees look up to her with deep admiration, bordering on crush. She’s competent and, of course, completely suited to onboard the new employee, Kuroda Kayo. Almost immediately, Kuroda and Shirakawa begin to undermine each other, each seeking to establish dominance in the office, and in sex.

白と黒~Black & White~, Volume 1 by Sal Jiang, is so frickin’ nasty, I literally grinned my way through it. ^_^ Kuroda and Shirakawa constantly snipe and undercut each other in public, they attack each other in private in the office, The sex they have is full on power performance. This is not a pretty book about an office romance. This is a violent story about two terrible people being terrible to one another.

I love it. ^_^

For one brief moment, the two principals gang up to take down another terrible person and that’s a fantastic moment of triumph, but it does not change their relationship one iota. Moments after they bask in the glory of destroying a go-between and getting the business for themselves, they are at each other’s throat. Literally. My favorite panel is an image of Shirakawa about to slam her teeth down on Kuroda’s neck. Which she totally does.

You may wonder how no one in the office notices that the two other hate each other? Well, their boss totally does…and set them up as partners because he thinks it’ll be funny.  Did I mention I love this manga? I really do.  The first volume ends with the most delightfully improbable plot complication, as Shirakawa and Kuroda find that they are now neighbors. ^_^

Jiang’s art is terrific – clean and stylish, cute and approachable, and nasty af, in turns as the narrative requires. The characters are terrible people, but they sometimes do good or kind things, which gives them nuance. Neither of them is a sadist to the pleasant office drones around them. They are, however, two dominant humans fighting for dominance in every way possible.  Yeah, baby. I’ll take as much of this as I can get.

Ratings:

Art – 8
Story – 10
Characters – 10
Service – 7 Not a lot of nudity, but a lot of sex and violence
Yuri – 7 See above

Overall – 10

You can read sample chapters of 白と黒~Black & White~ in Japanese on the Comic Ruelle & Comic Jardin site online.

Volume 1 is available in print from Amazon JP, CD Japan, in digital format on JP Kindle or from Bookwalker JP. However you get it, be ready for a throw down. ^_^





Ise-san and Shima-san, Volume 2 (δΌŠε‹’γ•γ‚“γ¨εΏ—ζ‘©γ•γ‚“)

July 29th, 2021

It’s been a couple of years since I read Volume 1 of this manga about two friends who share daily “challenges,” by Tokuwotsumu. At the end of that volume I said, “They support one another, confide in each other and just generally are very good friends without complication.”

So, we might expect that in Volume 2 of Ise-san and Shima-san, (δΌŠε‹’γ•γ‚“γ¨εΏ—ζ‘©γ•γ‚“), we get some complication. And we do get some complication, but not at all what we might have expected. And what we get is absolutely delightful.

First, we are asked to look backwards at how Ise-san and Shima-san became roommates in the first place. And it is here we are handed our first surprise. Ise-san asks Shima-san to share a place and is shocked to find that the other woman’s reaction isn’t…well…encouraging. Devastated that Shima might not enjoy her company as much as she enjoys Shima’s, Ise finally tracks her down and asks if Ise doesn’t want to room. What Shima tells her is unexpected – she is a woman who loves women. Ise had no idea, since Shima’s always popular with guys, and yeah, no it doesn’t change a thing about her friendship with Shima. So they become roommates and embark on an adult life of enjoying their days together. ^_^

That said, it does change something, when Ise is approached by a guy in the office, asking her to talk to Shima on his behalf. Ise is taken by surprise and half-asses a response, but then is taken by surprise again when Shima reacts angrily – Ise knows how she feels, how could she even consider it? Ise tells the guy she cannot do this for him, and she and Shima make up, but…this whole scenario had me screaming at the guy who is presumed to be an adult – wtf?!? This isn’t school, ask the lady out yourself, sheesh. But Shima has a great point about how they are so close, but they aren’t lovers or family and it puts them in an awkward position sometimes.

As the volume winds down, Ise-san is confronted with a challenge and a secret of her own. She’s being offered a promotion and a transfer. And, that would lead her to have to move. Away from her happy life with her friend. She breaks down at last and Shima is totally there for her. They promise what they can promise, that right now, they are there for each other only. “More than Friends, Less than Lovers” fits well here…and we really need to talk about how it is WAY past time that society allows a legal bond that reflects this kind of found family. Why do we get to entrust everything to someone just because we have sex with them, but not because we *trust them with everything*?  It’s bizarre that parents and children are family, but our best friends whom we trust most or siblings, even, aren’t for purposes of medical and legal issues.

Back to Shima and Ise – they sleep in the same bed, holding hands and get ready for work the next day, 100% ready to defend their happy existence. They sit down to talk to to the boss about it and the boss says, “Oh, didn’t I say? I meant both of you?” Bwah~bwah~bwah~~~. ^_^  The volume ends on their newest challenge – finding an affordable place to live in Osaka!

Shima and Ise are intimate without being lovers throughout, although…that is more on the table now than it was previously. Their emotional bond is definitely right on that line. I still couldn’t tell you why, particularly, but I love Tokuwotsumu’s art. It always makes me happy.  In the end that was exactly what this series did – it made me happy. ^_^

Ratings:

Art – YMMV, but for me 8
Story – 8
Characters – 9  They feel like real people
Yuri – 7 Let’s be honest  – a “relationship” already exists here.
Service – Nuh-uh.

Overall – 8

Honestly? Delightful. And just what I needed this week – a story about two women who are there for one another.

Thanks, CW, you were absolutely right about this story. ^_^

You can nab this in print from Amazon JP or CD Japan, and in digital from Amazon JP Kindle or Bookwalker Global.