It’s rare that you find a yuri that operates on the premise that women like sex and that maybe, like men, they might have a friends with benefits situation that only later turns into love.
Frankly, as a woman who likes sex with women, I’m here for it.
The problem, naturally, is Ayako is married and Saori wants more from Ayako than a quick roll in the hay, once a week, at a love hotel. Thanks to an after-work dinner that becomes a solo date, Ayako starts to warm up to this idea. Things grow more and more romantic between the two until, one day, a scandal breaks in another department–a different boss is caught in an affair with his secretary/underling and the two realize that there are serious consequences to the game they’re playing.
What follows is a rather basic premise, in a way. Saori and Ayako agree to a break for the safety of both their jobs, but this gives Ayako a chance to have a kind of “come to Jesus” moment regarding her marriage. Ayako only started fooling around with Saori as a way to get back at her husband for his own wandering ways. However, as time has progressed, she’s come to realize the things that Saori gives her that he can not (possibly including, one presumes, an orgasm.)
Look, is the plot weak? Yes. Yes, it fully is.
However, how many yoai have I read with even fewer excuses for a couple to be together? MANY, MANY…
MANY!
So my hot take is, why not let women have a lovers to romance plot line for once? It happens so often in yaoi, it’s sort of presumed that men will START by falling into bed before falling in love. Oops, I slept over after the office party and “accidentally” had gay sex! At least these women must have started with some kind of mutual attraction, you know? And, frankly, I know people presume women aren’t all that into it, but that’s simply not true. I know plenty of lesbian women who are love ‘em and leave ‘em types. I, myself, have had hook-ups JUST FOR THE SEX. This is a real thing.
That being said, the sex in the manga is only sort of explicit. There is nakedness and a lot of things happening that you can figure out if you have some context (including why it’s significant when the femme cuts her fingernails), but it’s not nearly as straight-forwardly porny as a lot of yaoi.
Still, I enjoyed it. I love having adult women doing adult recreation! The art isn’t super cutesy, and I really loved that Ayako actually sort of looks like an American lesbian? And speaking of butch/femme heteronormativity, the expectations are flipped here? The short-haired “girl-boss” is the femme in the bedroom.
Would I recommend it? I mean, if you are reading for the story, possibly not. It is available in an official English translation from Yen Press and, you know, look for the link above if you are okay with pirate scanlations
I liked The Moon on a Rainy Night enough, however, to track down the scanlation (linked above) and read all the volumes available there. However, if reading pirate scans is not for you, good news! If it’s in my library, there’s an official English license. You can buy them wherever fine books are sold.
SPOILERS
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Normally, I’m not a fan of high school yuri.
I will admit that one of the things that turn me off is present in this series, and that is a super-sweet romance that seems to consist of a lot of unrequired yearning and zero kissing (much less actual sex). This is also why I am not super fond of high school yaoi. For whatever reason, high school yaoi seems much more willing to cut to the smut, as it were. But then that just irritates me because I hate the gender essentialist assumption that posits that boys are just sluttier than girls. I’m for equal opportunity smut! Or, if we’re drawing some kind of Puritan age-limit line, then let’s have more stories of adults having sex, shall we?
In the case of The Moon on a Rainy Night, I don’t mind because there’s so much going on that the story really isn’t about just two girls falling in love. The manga would actually work just as well without the romance.
Our main character, Saki, literally runs into her love interest. Kanon. One fateful rainy night, they accidentally collide on the street. Flustered by the situation and Kanon’s beauty, Saki tries to apologize, but the girl leaves as if she hasn’t heard a thing.
Turns out? She hasn’t heard a thing because Kanon is hard of hearing.
This fact comes out the following morning when Saki starts her first day of high school. She is seated next to (drum roll, please) none-other-than this enchanting stranger. When the teacher explains that Kanon needs some extra care as she is hard of hearing, Saki starts trying to make friends.
Kanon, who stood up to tell the class that she’d rather NOT have their help, is–surprise, surprise–still aloof and cold.
Luckily for the story, Saki is, as she puts it, too dumb to hear “no.”
Inevitably, the girls do become friends and a good portion of the story is fictionalized “PSA: Hard of Hearing.” Which, when I put it like that, it sounds uninteresting, but actually the story is written well enough that I found the information came naturally as part of the burgeoning friendship.I actually learned a bunch of things from this manga, including being introduced to the Japanese literary genre, i-novels.
The girls become closer because Kanon’s mom is Saki’s new piano teacher. Turns out, Kanon’s family is very musical, despite Kanon’s deafness. Kanon was a “genius” piano player in her youth until she lost her hearing to a fever. So, there is a whole sub-plot about Kanon trying to figure out what ELSE she can do with her life and repair her grief over the loss of her music. By the time the scanlations run out, Kanon is trying out novel writing and is learning to conduct her class’s chorus for the (inevitable) school cultural festival.
We also find out at some point that Kanon has had a failed middle school relationship. The person she thought was her bestie wasn’t actually in it for love, more a sense of duty. At the same time,Saki knows she’s a lesbian. In fact, she’s a bit terrified of people finding out because she’s been rejected by a friend in middle school for being suspected of being “that way.” So, there’s a lot of tension throughout about Saki’s motives for being friends with Kanon, which, of course, triggers her fears that people know she’s actually hot for Kanon.
How Kanon doesn’t know is a little surprising, as Saki is likely to literally blurt out “OMG, so hot!” in sexually tense moments, but it’s established that Kanon is at least partly straight, having crushes on male pop idols and movie stars.
In volume four, we start to see the beginning of Kanon’s sexual awakening. Because crowds are too much for Kanon, Saki’s mom suggests an at-home festival at their place. They share a near kiss and Kanon spends a lot of time “wondering about that feeling” afterwards. There is hope that she’ll eventually put the pieces together.
And I want it to work out? I ended up really liking these young women and their relationship.
However, as I said, even if you’re not in it for the romance, there is plenty here to keep you occupied. All of the side-characters actually contribute to the story and you learn more and more about them as the series continues. If you like slice-of-life stories about people banding together to do something worthwhile, I feel like you could enjoy the story just for those elements. There’s a really strong “what is equality versus fairness” theme throughout, including a discussion about subtitling in commercial films. This series introduced me to
So, I sort of feel like, so long as you’re okay with the romance plot, even a non-yuri fan could enjoy this one.
The art is lovely. It’s very clean and cute, but not in an overblown way. I like the design of both characters. There’s a bunch of other stuff out there by this mangaka, so I may be checking those out in the next few weeks!
I do recommend this, but you have to at LEAST be a fan of slice-of-life to enjoy it. The pace is slow and gentle. Even the romance seems to operate under, “Well, maybe if you don’t make a big deal out of it, it won’t be a big deal” (<–the actual advice of the lesbian hairstylist to our heroine.)
So, yeah, if this sounds interesting, give it a try. Apparently, there are 9 volumes ongoing in Japan. Official translations seem to be up to volume 6.
Aya is a popular stylish girl who happens to be a mega fan of 90s rock. One day, she wanders into a record store and is struck by the handsomeness of the clerk working behind the counter. Even better, this clerk shares the same musical taste! Impulsively, Aya shares her contact information with this hottie that she internally dubs “oni-san,” big brother (a common phrase used to describe approachable men.) As it clear from the title, it turns out that this boy that Aya is crushing on is actually her classmate Mitsuki.
Mitsuki is an introvert who doesn’t like to stand out… at least not at school where, as we know from a thousand of these high school manga, she could get bullied for being herself. So, she goes into full nerd mode. Even though she prefers to dress in pants and has tattoos and piercings, she dutifully drags herself into school in her uniform. But, only does this because she once because she once broke a friend’s heart for trying to be herself…
I have to say? I already relate. If I had a dress code in high school, I would have fought tooth and nail to not have to wear a skirt. I hate them. I will say, speaking of representaion, it’s nice to see a butch lesbian make an appearance in a yuri. It’s also really nice to see a butch lesbian who is also fucking HOT.
I’m not going to go into a huge amount of detail about this plot because there is, actually, a lot going on. It’s one of those sprawling epics where you even start to care about the love life of Mitsuki’s uncle who owns the music shop and some of the goings-on in the lives of the other “stylish” friends of Aya’s. I will say, however, that the main thrust of this manga is two-fold. First, that there is a kind of power in shared music to being diverse worlds together–witness this love affair between a punk and a stylish–but, also, there’s several other scenes where the mangaka makes a point of noting that sometimes, scary-looking people aren’t all that scary once you find the thing you have in common with them.
The second note, pun INTENDED, that the mangaka keeps hitting is that it’s really, deeply important to find someone who loves you for you…. all of you–not some cooler image of yourself that you project or the you that fits in best.
Several of the relationship crises btween Aya and Mitsuki are around this subject and it’s really so deeply refreshing to see Mitsuki come out of her shell to show the rest of the world what Aya has seen all along. And, not to please anyone (not even Aya), but to be AUTHENTIC to who she is.
This is just what I needed to be reminded of after Just Like Mona Lisa.
You will notice, too, that this is another manga that is experimenting with color. In this case, the manga was intially published on Twitter and then picked up by Kodokawa Publishing in 2022 (Yen Press bought the official English language rights this year, 2024). I really have to say that I’m enjoying this trend. It must be getting cheaper to add color to interiors or something, but I have to say that this electric green really makes the whole thing pop and really fits with the punk/stylish vibe.
I will say that this manga defines slow burn. It’s over 100 chapters and there has only been hand holding. However, it’s very clear that romance is in the air, from the start, there’s a lot of heat between Aya and Mitsuki. The whole thing is very compelling so far. In fact, I had one of those, “Wait! Where’s the next chapter??!!” moments when I got to the end of what’s available online. This is one where I’m going to keep an eye out for the official publication so that I can support this mangaka.
At the library, I came across this lovely, wholesome yuri, She Loves to Cook and She Loves to Eat. In a lot of ways, this feels like someone said, “What if, What Did You Eat Yesterday? but lesbians?!” Except, unfortunately, it turns out that women have complicated relationships with food all over the world.
Nomoto, just like the title tells you, loves to cook. If she has any problem, it’s that, as a single gal, she has a tendency to make way more than she can reasonably eat. One day, on the way home from work, she runs into her neighbor, Kasuga, a big woman who clearly likes to eat.
I have to tell you? I was immediately in love with Kasuga. She’s possibly the butchest woman I have ever seen in a yuri. She’s fucking huge and has a belly, but is not portrayed as “ugly fat,” or even “custesy fat,” do you know what I mean? She looks LIKE ME. Like, I have wider hips, bigger boobs, and am way, way shorter, but this is my body type. I’m just kind of a presence. Big, taking up space, enjoying the fuck out of my sixteen buckets of KFC.
I love her.
And, so does Nomoto. At first, this is a friendship of convenience, ala, “I like to cook, you like to eat, let’s make an arrangement.” But, very quickly, we see Naomoto adore the way that Kasuga eats–she full-body enjoys a good meal.
I could have read pages and pages of these two women just cooking meals together, shopping, and eating, but, early on, we get a hint that there’s a dark cloud around Kasuga’s relationship with food. She refuses to be shamed into eating less, but it’s clear she gets harassed. Part of why she quickly agrees to eating in with Nomoto is not only because it reduces cost, but also because she doesn’t have to put up with cooks and waiters who will short change her and not offer her the portion-sizes she wants.
Which is only the tip of the bullsh*t iceberg.
It turns out that Kasuga grew up in a “traditional” household where it was simply understood that the girls and women of the family got fed second, ate the leftovers that the men and boys couldn’t finish.
What is frustrating about this tidbit of information is that I normally like to corroborate what I read and link to articles to show that, yes, this a thing. But, if you google this idea, all you get are articles on why it’s healthy to eat less and how the Japanese are so GREAT at staying thin, and you can too with portion control! You can put in the ACTUAL WORDS ‘food abuse in Japan’ and what you get back are 10 great ways to stay thin, the Japanese way!
It’s enraging.
Because this is abuse.
And THANK GOD that is how it’s framed in this manga. Kasuga still gets pressure from her family to return home and be a dutiful daughter, they even pull the “you need to care for your aging mother,” but she simply refuses. She’s like, look, you fed the boys, let the boys do the work for once.
They later get a new neighbor who has been shamed about her inability to eat much. I’m less clear about what’s going on with her (she reads to me as someone with a fairly serious eating disorder, but it’s presented as ‘just her way of being,’ which it very well might be). Regardless, both Kasuga and Nomoto find ways to include her in the fun without the pressure to partake.
Nomoto also does something you don’t see as often in yuri, too, which is that she has that scene that I’ve talked about in yaoi, where the main character suddenly decides that ‘maybe gay?’ and actually does research into it. Nomoto’s is very natural, actually? She does some Googling and gets some information, but what really makes her start to understand her own lesbianism is connecting with a fellow food blogger who retweeted a link to a lesbian movie.
What I love about this manga is that I was briefly worried that the new blogger was going to become a rival love interest, and be the thing that pushes the two women together… but no. The mangaka doesn’t go there. Women don’t exist to tear each other down. Instead the blogger becomes a confidant immediately, someone for Nomoto to have as a sounding board for her new feelings.
And then the blogger comes out as ace/aro, and I’m like, IS YUZAKI-SENSEI TRYING TO MAKE A PERFECT MANGA FOR ME??? Because they have succeeded.
Anyway, if you can survive some of triggering food related stuff, this might also be a perfect manga for you. I love the art. Everyone is drawn cute, but real. Like, our new neighbor also looks like a traditional lesbian? It makes me very happy. I will recommend it heartily to anyone who can read about food.
Or watch…. as there is a live-action tv series, although finding a version of it that’s not riddled with spyware may be difficult. It looks cute as f*ck, though.
Another autobiographical manga, this one by Hiranishi Meiri about that one prefect, short-lived romance that ruined all further chances of finding love.
There are a lot of reasons I ended up feeling ‘meh’ about Kanojo ga Dekinai Onna / The Girl Who Can’t Get a Girlfriend, but this message that love has to be perfect (or god forbid, it’s somehow more noble to love one special person and no one else for the whole rest of your life) has always struck me as kinda bullsh*t, even a bit toxic and damaging.
SPOILERS
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So yeah.
It always feels awkward critiquing an autobiographical manga. Like, this is Mieri’s lived experience. I honestly and fully respect that. She has every right to feel how she does for the reasons she does. She went to a lot of effort to commit her story to paper. She’s also insanely brave to then have this very personal story published for all the world to see. That is very admirable and not something I could do. (Fiction, yes. My inner life and inner secrets, hell no!)
However, Mieri is not my friend. I am experiencing her real life story as a reader. Even though she lived through and worked hard on all of this, I’m not obligated to find her dating problems interesting or meaningful to me.
Even if we are both butch lesbians.
You may very well counter with: well, if you didn’t like it, then don’t review it! Two things: first, when I started this blog, I committed to reviewing everything I read no matter how embarrassingly smutty or whether or not I liked it. I didn’t actually ever expect to gain a readership of any size, so these reviews were for me. In many ways, they still are. But, more importantly, I, myself, find it helpful in deciding what to read next reading both good and bad reviews. The reviewer’s dislikes might be my likes, for instance. Or, maybe, if they’ve described their issues well enough, I might be able to discern that what they dislike would be similar to my dislikes and so I can chose to not waste my time on it.
But, my not liking (or finding ‘meh’) a manga is in no way meant to be some kind of edict that EVERYONE needs to dislike the story for the same reasons I did.
Okay, enough disclaimer.
Here’s the basics of the story: Mieri is a late bloomer. She goes through a lot of life thinking that she’s probably straight, even though all her crushes so far have been on fictional female characters.
Relatable.
In college, Mieri meets Jay, who is exactly her type. She even SMELLS good.
It’s at this point Mieri discovers one of her lifelong problems: she’s a butch who likes other butches. This section is, for me, probably the most interesting. As someone who grew up in the Late Jurassic, I’m kind of disappointed (and yet not entirely surprised) to discover that lesbians are still dividing up this way. In what is becoming typical of these kinds of queer autobiographical manga, there is a chart explaining very basic 101-level information. First there is a description of types of lesbians: butch, chapstick (in-between), and femme. Then, there’s the pairings–femme/femme, butch/femme, and (rare pair) butch/butch. If you are like me, you probably immediately noticed no pairings for chapstick lesbians. They exist, but they are apparently hanging off the org chart.
This is immediately where I start to go… mmmm. Because if you’re identifying a problem in your life as “the choices are so narrow, I have nowhere to fit!” and you don’t even list out all the possible choices, I begin to wonder if the problem is your unwillingness to see all the possibilities.
This concern continues because, going back to Jay, we see Mieri attempting to figure out how to flirt and failing miserably. Again, this part is very relatable and, in its way, funny. Except that because Mieri thinks that the dating pairings are so rigid–specifically butch/femme–she starts trying to become a femme for Jay. To the point of wearing wigs.
Then, Jay gets a girlfriend who is… you guessed it, butch.
At this point Mieri resolves to be more authentic and just devote her life to trying to find the butch girlfriend of her dreams. Which, despite where you might think this is going, she has a bit of a rocky patch, but then does. Mieri finds Ash on a dating app. They date and it’s great?
Eventually, Mieri who has been going to university in America has to return. Ash and Mieri are nervous about this and what will happen to their relationship, but Ash gives Mieri a promise ring and they resolve to try to have a long-distance relationship. Ash finds someone else and breaks up with Mieri.
The ending also follows the pattern of autobiographical manga in which there is a spiral down into depression. Then, a slow discovery that if you love yourself, you may never find love, but at least you love yourself and that’s f*cking something.
The story is fine. The art is very cute. I actually sort of envision myself internally, much as Mieri draws herself, so that’s fun for me. My problem is that this story just doesn’t feel big enough to be worth it. I mean, this is unfair. But, many people have a first love that goes south for one reason or another and have to get over it. Tons of people have long-distance relationships that blow up exactly like this and so Mieri’s version of it doesn’t feel like it even rises to the level of My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness‘s “And I was so desperate that I hired a prostitute” which is, at least, an outlandish response to all of the problems of dating other women.
Again, this is unfair of me and I know it.
I feel like I’m asking Mieri to be more desperate or more broken, and this is a real person’s life, not entertainment, per se. I will note that it *is* marketed as entertainment, but, normally, a story doesn’t have to be horrible for me to be entertained. I love slice-of-life fiction where people just live their lives, so it’s not as though I expect everything to be high-stakes and high-octane.
It’s not that I got to the end of this manga and said, “Girl, get over yourself.” I absolutely have been through this kind of emotional ringer, Likewise, I know plenty of other people who have clung to the heartache of a first lost love and the pain is REAL. In many ways, the problem, for me at least, is that the story is so common that I got to the end and just thought, “Well, okay. Good for you,” which is just strangely unsatisfying.
And, as I started this review with, I also think that being so focused on the first love for so long is the kind of story I’d like to see get less press, be less spotlighted. It perpetuates the myth that there’s only one person out there for all of us. I hate that idea, and it has never been true in my life. Love is a verb. You have to work at it with whoever you pick and, yeah, that one person was special, but there are a lot of people out there who are also special and also for you. It’s not “settling” to find someone who doesn’t hit every single button, it’s expanding your tastes, your horizons.
Mieri, for the love of god, try dating a chapstick lesbian. Maybe you’ll discover that nearly butch is butch enough.
Still, give it a try if it sounds interesting. Then come back and tell me your take. That way, the next person might have a couple of opinions to chose from.
Longtime readers have heard me complain that rarely do I find yuri that features adults. Even rarer are those that are smutty enough for my tastes. Whelp, good news, everyone! Asumi-chan is Interested in Lesbian Brothels fits both!
I will admit right up front that this may be the first yuri I have ever read in which I skimmed the plot, looking for the porn.
SPOILERS
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It’s weird, too. I’m not particularly impressed with Itsuki-sensei’s art style when she is just drawing her heroine going through her daily life. As you can see above, it’s OKAY, if a bit cartoonish in the face. I think it’s telling that all of Itsuki’s work previous to this have been in amateur press doujinshi.
But something happens to her art once the clothes come off. It becomes wildly sensual and sexy. (I would show you what I mean, but the cover above is about as risqué as I want to go on this blog.)
I tell myself this is why I skimmed whole volumes of text looking for the next sex scene.
Yeah, I’m an ART appreciator.
So, the story…. right, there’s a story. Honestly, it’s not too far beyond what’s on the tin, as they say, a lot of the plot is, in fact, Asumi just going out to lesbian brothels. But the reason that Asumi gets hooked on hookers is because she’s searching for her first love, Mai. Asumi and Mai had a very awkward coming of age moment in which Mai offered to kiss Asumi, they did, and afterwards Asumi basically said, “Meh.” Asumi has since realized her mistake, but not before Mai moved away. She is desperate to find Mai again after all these years and tell the truth: she has no idea why she wasn’t impressed with the kiss.
Mai, at some point, becomes a prostitute.
I don’t honestly remember how it is that Asumi discovers this, but she goes on a quest to visit every brothel in town, try every woman in them, until she reconnects with Mai. The reason she can’t just look through pictures is because the photos rarely include full faces. So, she’s just going to have to do it the hard way (as it were), one woman at a time.
A task she takes on with gusto.
There is a bunch of plot around how expensive this habit is, but eventually Asumi gets a system in place to keep up her addiction “cycle.”
I mean, there’s much more to this story? But, I have almost no opinion on it, since I wasn’t reading the for the words. I did sort of enjoy the moments in which Asumi has some self-discovery around what turns her on, how to please her partners, etc.
There are four volumes of this on-going manga out in Japan, Seven Seas, its English language publisher, isn’t far behind, with 3 out right now. I will tell you? The reason I decided to check this manga out is because it was one of the volumes I spotted at Barnes & Noble. Wrapped in plastic, but absolutely available (as it were!) on the shelves.
Do I recommend it? I have no idea. If you’re as slutty as I am and in the mood for lesbian sex, yes! Go for it.
I don’t normally read anything that can be categorized as ecchi, but I made an exception for Liberta. But… I mean… hello there, hot, lesbian vampire! How are you doing?
I will say that one of the things that attracted me about Liberta is her hair… honestly, her whole Goth punk look. Okay, so it’s true that I’m 100% a lesbian from the late-1980s, but this character looks like someone I would ACTUALLY date. That’s not something that I say about a lot of the women is yuri. Am I disturbed that the mangaka is a guy?
Yep. A little bit.
Especially since the sex is kind on hot.
SPOILERS
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First of all, if you check out the scanlations that I linked to, don’t be put off by the number of chapters. These chapters are SUPER short, so short, in fact that I initially suspected that this manga started out as one of those Twitter shorts that a lot of mangaka seemed to be doing on their personal feeds during the pandemic. The fact that the art style switches to what looks like rough cuts / story boards in the later chapters, I’m going to continue under this assumption.
It’s still worth checking out, IMHO.
If you are allergic to ecchi (which I would honestly understand,) I can tell you that the graphic scenes start in chapter 27. Previous to that our heroines have plenty of implied sex, all of which happens off-screen.
Liberta starts when our human heroine, Asahina, finds herself cornered, in an alley, by her erstwhile date. It looks like things might be headed for the typical assault, but, suddenly, the dude’s face splits in half and he becomes some kind of horrific monster. It seems that Asahina might end up kaiju food, except some kind of bullet blasts through his head.
Then, we get this image and the line that fully sells me on this entire concept:
I mean, right? Everyone knows that tentacles are a third date thing.
Asahina’s rescuer then basically says, “Since that guy was a dud, how about you date me instead, cutie?” Asahina doesn’t even hesitate for a single second (because, seriously, why would you?) and says, “Yes.”
Thus begins the adventures–and sexy-times!–of Asahina and Liberta.
After the new couple run off to immediately have sex in a love hotel, we start to learn some things about them. Liberta is a blood demon. She’s basically a vampire, but with a couple of extra tricks up her sleeves. She has the ability to use her own blood to transform her arms into guns. It’s kind of Chainsaw Man-esque, except lesbians and not nearly as deep in terms of world-building. Later, when Asahina is inevitably transformed as well, we discover that a lot of the myths about vampires are false. They can stand sunlight, although too bright and they get disoriented, and can eat all the human food they want. Also, blood is great, but really, it’s the iron they need (one presumes because the body/arm guns are made of… iron? Steel?)
I will tell you right now that Libera is not the kind of story you invest in for the world-building, so I mean, don’t think to hard about.
The main action part of the plot follows the fact that Libera is constantly being hunted by assassins because she did something to piss off the reigning vampire princess, who seems to make an appearance in what is touted as the final arc, just as the scanlations run out.
We learn quite a bit less about Asahina. When we first meet her she’s an average office lady (the female equivalent of a salaryman) who is the conscientious one at the company she works at. After coming in late after nearly dying at the hands of tenacle-date, Asahina’s boss chews her out and tells her that with this sort of bad attitude, she might as well quit. Much like when Liberta asks her out, Asahina spontaneously, but unhesitantly says, “Great idea. Yes. I quit.”
This, of course, is all the pretense the two women need to immediately start shacking up. I mean, there is no actual U-Haul on scene, but this feels extremely accurate to my life experience.
Between the high octane action and the eerily sexy lesbian stuff, I have to say Liberta is possibly my favorite yuri so far. I’m kind of disappointed that I am so easy, since the whole thing is clearly somewhat thrown together and unfinished.
There are a lot of things that happen that I’m not to go into because I would very much like to recommend this to anyone who has any interest in yuri. It may not be to your taste, but I found it to be a tremendous amount of fun, sexy, and worth the twenty-five minutes it took me to read. Would I spend money on it? Debatable. I mean, if they finished up the art, yes. But, as I said, currently it’s very light, which I think it more typical of ecchi, so maybe that’s fine? I really do like the art, and, in a later scene where Asahina is cornered by some enemies of Liberta, the action is actually extremely well drawn.
I think my main hesitation is my own embarrassment over having really enjoyed ecchi.
For lesbians this cute, I might just have to figure it out.
It’s been a while since I reviewed a yuri, but, by chance, among my library finds, was this slow-burn lesbian romance, Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon.
Since I am always on the lookout for love stories between grown-ups, I was happy to find this story of two average office ladies who shift from friends to lovers at an incremental, snail’s pace. In fact, by Volume 2, all we’ve gotten to is the hand holding…
SPOILERS
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I mean, there’s a reason why, when I want smut, I end up reading yaoi. Is there even smutty yuri? That’s what I want to know! (I’m sure there is, so feel free to rec me in the comments!)
But, back to this story….
The back cover copy goes like this: Uno Hinako throws herself into makeup, fashion and falling in love, hoping that will make her seem “normal” to the other people at her job. But no matter how hard she tries, she’s a self-doubting mess inside and her attempts at “normal” romance with men just keep failing. When she starts to think she might be alone forever, a new normal presents itself in the form of her relationship with Asahi Sato, a level-headed woman who works at her company. It starts as respect, and then it becomes far more intimate.
I will say that I like our main character Hinako much more than I thought I would. I am a lesbian who is much ore like Sato, so fashion and make-up totally baffle me. But, Hinako’s self-doubt narrative hints at her inner conflict. She does all of this make-up stuff because that’s what girls are SUPPOSED to love. She reminds me of myself in high school, honestly, right down to dating lots of guys and ending up breaking their hearts.
She isn’t entirely sure why Sato makes her heart do funny things, but the first time we see them meeting in the office, this is how Hinako reacts:
I am not entirely sure why, but I relate SO HARD to this.
Initially, their interaction is work related, but this is the start of the two of them talking about something besides “hey, do this one report or other.”
The title of this manga is what it is because our two heroines have their first real chat when Sato runs into Hinako one night after Hinako has had yet-another disastrous date and is feeling ‘made wrong’ since she can’t feel excitement over being with a boy. She’s collapsed in the street, sobbing. Meanwhile, Sato is returning from a doughnut run. We all love a good fried doughnut and so the two women sit together in silence and eat good food. Restorative to the soul.
After that, the women start walking home together. Sparks begin to be kindled…
… and by the end of volume two, they are HOLDING HANDS.
I understand that a lot of the appeal of yuri is this soft, friendly “romance,” but as a lesbian I find this five hundred page lead-up to a kiss to be somewhat frustrating. Ironically there’s a scene where Hinako is feeling “gross” because her fingers lingered on Sato’s hand for five extra seconds. Girl, I was finding excuses to kiss girls in high school by suggesting they needed to practice on me for their boyfriends. You have no idea how “gross” lesbians can be!
But, no of this is a REAL complaint. As you can see, the art is really quite lovely, the relationship is built carefully, slowly, but honestly very believably. I’m sure by the time we get to volume 4 (which Baka-Updates thinks is the final, complete tankoban,) it will all feel very worth it.
Do I recommend it? I do. Though if you are an impatient reader like me, you might want to wait until the fourth volume is out in English (and/or scanlated.)
A new manga friend just finished reading Now Loading..! and recommended it to me. It’s a single-volume, Nocute little lesbian office romance in a gaming company.
SPOILERS
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Now Loading…! is one of those slice-of-life manga that attempt to give you an insider’s take on an industry–sort of the opposite of a lot of the salaryman stories where everyone seems to be in some kind of nebulous ‘sales’ job. In this case, the manga shows off some of the daily life inside a video game designing company.
The back cover copy reads: “Takagi finally gets the job she’s always wanted, working at a game publisher – but not only is the game she’s put in charge of managing kind of falling apart, one of the directors, the legendary Sakurazuki Kaori, seems to have it in for her! What’s Sakurazuki’s deal? Will Takagi get her sucky game off the chopping board? And can the workplace of her not-quite-dreams lead her to a fairytale romance?”
I suspect that if you are a Nintendo/gaming enthusiast this story might be appealing, if only for the game and gaming-related jokes, like when Kaori shows up and one of the other office workers, the “mom friend,” thinks: “A wild Kaori appears!”
The romance itself is predicated on the idea that I’ve seen in a lot of yaoi, which is “one kiss can turn you gay!” and the fantasy that you can spontaneously kiss your “as far as you know straight subordinate” at work and not get sued for sexual harassment. In this case, too, the aggressor is the boss. What happens is that, while consoling her underling, Takagi, on the failure of game she developed, Sakurazuki leans in for a spontaneous kiss.” She regrets it immediately, but, of course, this instantly set Takagi off on the “did I like it? I think I liked it!” path that leads directly to the classic amusement park date and love confession.
I mean? I can see the appeal of this fantasy because I really wish it were this easy for queer women to find each other. If only, I could have just kissed the girl I liked in high school and she would have instantly turned gay for me. Alas, I did come up with a lot of reasons to kiss my high school girl crushes (“hey, let’s practice kissing for boys!”) and SOMEHOW I AM THE ONLY GAY ONE. SO WEIRD.
Why, it’s almost like you can’t actually make someone gay!
But, that doesn’t mean that this story isn’t adorable, because it is. I particularly liked all the characters around our main couple, including the two bickering/in-love co-workers and the mom-friend. There’s a particularly funny, “Asking for a friend” story that Takagi tells one night at after-work drinks that reveals at least one completely clueless colleague, who never figures out that the friend is Takagi.
So would I recommend this one? As I say, it’s not particularly queer, but it is still a very cute lesbian romance, if you understand the difference. So, yes? I would think that the people who will get the most mileage out of it are queer gamers. Also, if you’re just looking for some light yuri, heavy on the sweet and cute, this one might be for you.
The general story of Tsukiatte agete mo ii ka na / So, Do You Want to Go Out, Or…? is that one night, after a boy/girl mixer, Saeko and Miwa drunkenly come out to each other. After talking about how hard it is to find dates with other women, they agree to just try it out with each other.
What follows is a VERY MESSY, very realistic relationship manga.
It’s also very gay, in that the manga tackles all sorts of issues with being queer–from homophobia to just random observations and ruminations about queer life. Like the time that Miwa realizes that everyone tends to assume everyone else is straight, like they are.
The women are fairly dysfunctional, but, as I said, in a very realistic way. There’s a lot that happens that is very familiar to having that first girlfriend for the first time and all the awkwardness about it all–who do you come out to? Is it okay to have sex in your family home? What do you say when people give you the side-eye, or worse, suss out that you are, in fact, together? What about sex? Can you “count” lesbian sex as “real” sex?
I mean, maybe this resonates with me because I’m an old queer. I have no idea if this feels real to people who are coming out as queer today. Miwa and Saeko are very ALONE and that fear of never being able to find someone else like them definitely motivates a lot of their more dysfunctional decisions. This was written in 2018, but there’s no sense that Miwa or Saeko are aware of the larger internet community of queer folk out there, although we do see that a lesbian couple on a TV show was instrumental in Miwa’s coming out. (Representation matters!)
There was some debate in the comments section on the site I read this on about whether or not the story would follow the arc of the one-shot (which is included as a chapter 0 in the link I’ve posted above.) Readers seemed disappointed that two women who stumbled into a relationship together might find happiness somewhere else.
I’m not so sure I agree.
I sort of like the idea that they are just doing some figuring out together and that maybe their “true love” exists elsewhere. That’s not a story we get very often? I would really, really love it if they broke up and stayed friends like so many of the lesbians I know in real life. It wasn’t even that long ago that I called an ex to help change the brakes on my car, and there’s usually this big, understood joke that we all just sort of stay in the same deeply fraught friend group, after.
You don’t see that part of lesbian life depicted much.
Also, I really liked that the mangaka gave some thought to the straight people in Miwa and Saeko’s lives. The majority of Miwa and Saeko’s friends are straight and some of them know about the couple and some of them don’t. Saeko has a really great guy friend, who is straight, and Miwa has a guy who crushes on her but decides to be a good best friend. Again, these are not relationships the you often see modeled in a yuri.
To be fair, the initial picture I posted is about as steamy as it gets. We never get full nakedness or many active sex scenes. Instead there’s a quick jump to the sweaty afterwards, talking, and more talking, while lying together mostly naked in bed, with all the salient bits fairly well covered.
I feel the average shounen fan service gets smuttier than this.
Speaking of, Miwa’s crush is the ubiquitous otaku. He has a backstory flashback–like a lot of side characters get, actually–and we get this lovely line when he first meets Miwa.
I have no idea, however, if I should recommend this one. It will really depend on why you read yuri.
If you’re in it for the sexy-times, there really aren’t a lot of them. Saeko talks about being horny a lot, and, they do get it on, albeit off screen, but it’s not what I would call “smutty” by a longshot.
If you read yuri for the relationship and the romance… I don’t think this one is going to work out in a traditional sense. Read the one-shot and decide from there, I would say.
I probably enjoyed this because it is deeply slice-of-life. There’s a lot of people just hanging out and living their lives as college students in Japan. If you’re weird like me and that’s your jam, you will probably really enjoy this one.
The other consideration, if you start this, is that it seems to be still on-going. You may have to wait for scanlators to do their thing.
As I’ve said, I like it? I’m not sure I LOVED it enough to anxious be waiting for chapters to drop? But, if I stumbled across the tankobans, I would probably buy them. I like the art style. I find Miwa very attractive, actually. It can be a bit cartoon-y, but it’s the kind of cartoon-y that I tend to like.
Edited to add, according to Mangakast reader Marfisa, this is “…up to volume three and has been licensed in English by Seven Seas, with the slightly altered title ‘How Do We Relationship?'” THANKS for the additional info, Marfisa.
