This isn't manga, but recently I've been flipping through DLsite's ASMR sections (all of them except the het ones lmao because I'm even more averse to heterosexuality than I am to men and sometimes the BL ones are moe) and it seems there are three or four major producers of decent 18+ yuri ASMR content, with two circles seemingly headed by women. SukeraSono, the beloved studio whose other divisions are behind Kotonoha Amrilato and OshiRabu, does all ages content.
prussian blue has a neat catalogue and seems to direct voice work in a way that's less "eww what the hell this sounds like a low budget hentai OVA" without crossing the threshold into realistic and therefore uncomfortable for me personally because if this woman isn't a character I'm gonna get hung up over the fact that she didn't consent to me, as an individual, personally and specifically. There's a lot of accompanying materials, including character design sheets and scenario notes, which is really nice. I concluded the character designer is a woman because of the art style and the fixation on fashion and makeup. Either that, or they know their target audience weirdly well, because damn all these characters and scenarios land squarely in my strike zone. Except the mommy student x babby teacher one, because what? I mean I guess the combo of mommy gf + calling the listener sensei is pretty novel, but that ain't my thing.
Manazurukouya ci-en something or other is headed by Rena Sonohana's voice actress, who contributes some R15 voicework but otherwise has industry friends or something (it's the same three people every time) voice the 18+ work. I don't really like these because the voice work and scripts sound too much like a real person/real people and it spooks me, but that's probably a good thing for others. I think these scenarios tend to be less vanilla and more geared towards niches/fetishes/charm points; there's ghost sex and twincest and stuff. Again, not really my thing, despite the founder being cool as hell. She is also on YouTube with a VTuber avatar as Manatsuru Kou, check her out. She played the Japanese translation of Butterfly Soup and like immediately reacted to the kids pretending to use guns to shoot down a dragon while larping like "Ah, this is definitely America."
Natukon produces yuri work as well, but... eh. What's with the voice directing? I do appreciate that like 70% of the pack I bought was some cute setup and some relaxing tracks, but like, the relaxation tracks were just "hey this is asmr come getcha ears cleaned come getcha back washed" and I'm not Japanese enough for this LOL. The one pack I bought had a female knight being down calamitous for her princess as they flee pursuers and when the 18+ track rolls around it would be really cute and romantic but the voice actress sounds like she's acting for some nondescript H OVA. It was a bit sad.
Finally, I see yubinotacto a lot. I think their scenarios and voice directing look good, but their niche is TS yuri, AKA gender bending, so you're paying extra for the 20-40 minute prologue track that puts the listener through the gender bending process, and guess what? I don't need that. LOL. As such, I haven't bought them and don't know what the content is like, but for those lacking a vagina, you might be interested, or otherwise happy to know there's a niche for you.
Oh yeah, these usually include a text script, but it's just text, and it's not as easy to interpret as an accompanying manga. And because the scenaroos are usually more complex than "Asumi hits up Sayaka again" you're gonna need some actual Japanese listening skills, though not much.
The prussian blue packs have an accompanying novelization in PDF form that includes narration/descriptions from the listener character's point of view, plus the listener character's dialogue, which is unvoiced in the audio (makes sense, since it'd cost more, and their stuff is female targeted so it doesn't need two voices to be yuri). I can't read that much, though, so I lament greatly. I can provide pdf raws for a kind translator, but the stipulation would be that the resulting translation be published in plain text, so as not to devalue the graphic design work and to like, kinda have some integrity in piracy. Which is a funny thing to say on a scanlation site, but this stuff is smaller than official published manga while expecting a larger payout than doujinshi published at conventions, and I usually purchase manga that I read here anyway, while I can't necessarily trust others to do so.
last edited at Jul 31, 2023 9:37AM
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