Ten years? Ten years? Of just kissing? How could a couple manage to go that long without going all the way?

Just to toss in another idea here-- When I saw the "pure yuri" comment, I wasn't thinking in terms of "lesbian relationship" but rather Yuri as a genre. I feel like the goal of yuri stories is often to represent girl-girl relationships as something pure or chaste...at least, in some publications. Which, as others have pointed out, could well be a holdover from an earlier era, where stories that stepped over that line always seemed to end in tragedy.

Vankomycin posted:
Prism has, so far, the best depiction of awkward first time teenage sex I've seen.

Hanjuku Joshi is a close second, though.

Thank you! I'll have to check these out!!

Based Tamamusi.

But are those other two some sort of real-life Kase-san and Yamada?

Kaze and yamada has done it

What kind of twisted foreplay is just kissing for 10 years?

It's gonna lead up to an explosion of magnificent proportions

So when's Tamasui going to write about the "dangerous liaison" she had with her senpai?

This.

I always thought the idea to keep yuri pure came from the fact that they're pretty much usually underaged. .... but the dark side of the internet made me realise this wasn't true.

"pure" well I guess people live as they want,but a "pure" relationships with only kisses.. no thanks. I'd pull my hair and die and go running

Other than that nice color, nice drawing.

This is probably, genuinely, the most unpleasant manga I've read on this site. Whoa.

The tags did nothing!

This makes me sad, and lowers my opinion of Tamamusi. Whatever that couple is or isn't doing, if it works for both of them and they're satisfied, there's nothing to say there. However, to look down on the alternative as being less "pure" is nasty, and Tamamusi's characterization of it as "noble" is also quite unpleasant in what it implies. That these attitudes still seem quite prevalent among yuri artists - I have seen quite a few voice or suggest similar views - is perplexing and disheartening.

This makes me sad, and lowers my opinion of Tamamusi. Whatever that couple is or isn't doing, if it works for both of them and they're satisfied, there's nothing to say there. However, to look down on the alternative as being less "pure" is nasty, and Tamamusi's characterization of it as "noble" is also quite unpleasant in what it implies. That these attitudes still seem quite prevalent among yuri artists - I have seen quite a few voice or suggest similar views - is perplexing and disheartening.

Man, who knew a simple two page comic was enough to characterize an entire person.

It's quite enough to express an unpleasant attitude, which for me it did.

last edited at Apr 23, 2018 2:34PM

People seem to be reading something in the tone that I'm not getting:

pg. 1 ["Back in the day, I was clueless about yuri. Since then, I've learned and changed, so now I'm on team yuri."]
pg. 2 ["I saw that couple again, and found out they still just kiss. I had no idea that 'purity' thing really existed--amazing!"]

Given that the narrator obviously has had sex with women, I read that "noble" and "an incredible yuri" as mostly ironic--the narrator's reaction in the last panel is like, "Holy crap--really?" and definitely not, "Wow--that's so admirable!"

I feel like the connotations are heavily colored by the word choice used in the translation.

I'm not criticizing the translators and saying they got it wrong; I just don't think we should read too far into what Tamamusi's commentary here may or may not be.

last edited at Apr 23, 2018 2:42PM

That is certainly a possibility, but as I said, these sorts of views about the "purity" of non-sexual yuri in contrast to carnal lesbianism are not uncommon.

last edited at Apr 23, 2018 2:49PM

People seem to be reading something in the tone that I'm not getting:

I would actually say that you are reading irony into it that really isn't there. Tamamusi's style is usually not ironic when writing like this.

I'm not condemning her or anything, it's just the obvious reaction to this story - and, by the way, the reaction would be the same regardless if the narrators final comments are ironic or not - the biggest unpleasant feeling I had wasn't the narrator's textbox, but the "don't lump us in with someone like you" panel. That's the one that feels bad, less what the narrator thinks.

I have not seen the original words, and am not sure if the page would come across as even half as judgemental in the original text, of course, but...

@Sezter94:
While I wouldn't go so far to see Tamamusi different over this, you seem to overreact more to a negative opinion in a forum than Cryssoberyl to the story. If someone reads this story in such a way as to suggest certain hangups on part of the author, thinking back on cheery amnesia might find those hangups there too. Go back a page and you'll see others note that parts of cheery read really weird. So please stop that.

Yeah, I, don't think we're supposed to see this as some kind of inspiring message about purity or anything. It's just an author telling a funny story. I feel like maybe if there were more than two pages, there would be more time for the joke to breathe and thus be communicated more clearly. But the fact that it's so short and abrupt has made it sort of confusing.

I wanted to bring my moon signs reading skill to use and see what words were used in original, but I can't find it. Was it really published in Galette 5 and if it was, which page?

^it's from Petit Galette 5.

Tamamusi's style is usually not ironic when writing like this.

So what would count as Tamamusi writing like this? Because I’ve read a number of her stories before, and they seem to have quite a few examples of:

a) women actually having sex with each other, and liking it

b) making fun (often mild fun, it’s true) of yuri tropes and people having expectations derived from yuri

Exclamation mark spam is usually exactly what the character thinks. That!

And yeah, poking tropes is what makes this oneshot so odd - it's suddenly taking one trope to 11. Some may take it as fun, to others it's not so fun.

Difficult to know the real intent, though. Couldn't find the raws. I trust the translators, but it'd be nice to know!

"From the bottom of my heart, I felt t that I had witnessed an incredible yuri...." That doesn't read as ironic to me. I think Tamamusi is being honest here. Maybe there is something noble about a chaste relationship. At the very least, there is nothing noble about a purely sexual relationship but a relationship in which all partners truly love and care for each other will always be noble regardless of how much sex is involved.

h3x posted:

^it's from Petit Galette 5.

Right I always ignore those, I hope i can still see them.

So, I went back to re-read it and I didn't quite get the impression that she was saying "A relationship where you haven't done anything but kiss is noble, unlike those relationships where you DO have sex." This could be me forcing my own interpretation onto it, but the way I read it was more like "It is noble to still be in this relationship, DESPITE only having kissed." Basically, understanding that humans have urges, and for them to still be in love, despite having not done anything more than kissing is noble. This is, of course, disregarding the idea that they might simply be an asexual couple, but asexual representation is already so sparse and hard to come by, even members of the LGBT community tend to be pretty ignorant about it.

I feel like the girl's comments about her non-sexual relationship being "pure" were supposed to be seen as funny. Like, perhaps SHE was being serious, but the person that's supposed to be author, to me anyway, appears to be making a face that suggests "Wait, are you serious?" Her hypocrisy is supposed to be humorous, not taken as some kind of gospel.

To me, this comic isn't making a statement on the purity of sex, even comedically. For most couples, sex is an important part of the relationship, enough so that it can make or break it. For them to have an attitude of "we don't really need it" is probably what she's interested in. The idea that the love extends beyond sexual urges, which is what the author feels is noble.

That isn't to say I necessarily agree with this message, either, in that I feel like sex can have varying degrees of importance depending on the individuals in question. But I don't feel like it's trying to say that couples who choose to have sex are impure, unclean, or whatever else.

I haven't seen the raws but I guess "noble" is translated from 尊い in which case that's otaku slang and doesn't really mean "noble".

Reejun posted:

I haven't seen the raws but I guess "noble" is translated from 尊い in which case that's otaku slang and doesn't really mean "noble".

Thinking maybe "precious" or "sacred" would probably have been a better choice of wording.