It's very strange to read five chapters of a manga and feel like I'm still looking for the end of the intro. The title is bombastic and yet our protagonist is thus far entirely too reasonable and mild to live up to it, even explicitly thinking "I have no right to tell her what to do". It's hard to even predict where the plot would be going because so far it feels like it's done before it started: she's straight my guy, it's time to give up on her, graduate high school, go to college, and come out of the closet there like a normal lesbian. What other path could there be for our hero at this point? Maybe all this stuff is like an introduction establishing her hangups before we jump forward in time to her meeting a girl who actually presents a real possibility of romance with her.

last edited at Sep 10, 2023 2:58PM

Too add to the explanations, it's a LINE manga, ie, it's published mainly for mobile.

The chapters are short, to adapt to the fast paced reading of mobiles users, on their way to school for example.

These 5 chapters, in a "normal" manga, would amount to about 2 chapters and half.

In Japan, the release schedule was much faster (maybe a ch per week), so reader engagement was probably higher, but I don't have that kind of time (releasing the green manga every week is already kind of difficult).

Anyway, there's a pay off later and there are several other couples that have yet to appear. It's definitely a yuri manga.

Even if she's making out with the guy, from the 5 chapters we've seen, she's ALWAYS thinking of the other girl. Like they're always thinking about each other (and music). Even in this chapter she's thinking of the other girl as she's kissing the guy...

I really don't get why people are so impatient with this series when imo this is very clearly yuri. Even people who have read ahead is assuring us it's yuri so I just don't understand the complaints. Seriously guys we're only 5 chapters out of over 100 and I know people have been far more patient with series that drag on slower than this one >_>

Honestly, it's because there's a guy prominently involved. Any bisexual love triangle where the guy is presented as a serious option gets this reaction here, whether it's this manga, the new Murasakino manga, Lemonade, or even Run Away With Me, Girl. A certain subset of yuri fans is ideologically opposed to the presence of men in their yuri as anything but an obvious antagonist or a "yuri danshi" type, even in cases where it's super obvious from the beginning it won't end het -- and I agree with you, even without hearing spoilers (or, you know, reading the title lol) the manga has been laying heavy hints that Aikawa cares for Katagiri much moreso than the guy.

Anyway, my defense of this manga isn't "it's only beginning" but that even just the five chapters translated at the moment are extremely high-quality. Katagiri and Aikawa are both interesting, complex characters, and their personalities have been communicated through their actions and not exposition. Aikawa in particular I find very compelling; her natural love of music ground down by the expectations of her family and the restrictions placed upon her playing, she now finds herself without passion or interest and is desperately looking for something she can earnestly devote herself to. I particularly like how Katagiri and Aikiwa's love for each other is combining with their mutual inferiority complexes to ironically create tension in their relationship; they both put the other on a pedestal and so neither feels like they can be honest with the other. This manga is accomplishing a rare feat of tying together each of their individual character development with their relationship, so that both can only grow as people inasmuch as they come to understand the other and so grow closer. Really looking forward to future chapters!

How are there 110 chapters and we've never heard of this prior though? It's also drawn in a way that suggests it was published in a print magazine. Also the title is "Boys Gilding the Lily Must Die" but this seems much less about boys and much more about Society(tm). I'm so confused in terms of what's going on outside the narrative proper that it's distracting from the actual content of the story.

Not to mention how much this setup is meandering in terms of per-panel work. "I've seen this all before" is an understatement

Edit: The fact that it's a LINE manga probably is contributing heavily to the "I've seen this all before" vibe. Zoomers these days never read the absolute oodles of yuri manga with this exact same drama

last edited at Sep 10, 2023 8:37PM

Too add to the explanations, it's a LINE manga, ie, it's published mainly for mobile.

The chapters are short, to adapt to the fast paced reading of mobiles users, on their way to school for example.

These 5 chapters, in a "normal" manga, would amount to about 2 chapters and half.

In Japan, the release schedule was much faster (maybe a ch per week), so reader engagement was probably higher, but I don't have that kind of time (releasing the green manga every week is already kind of difficult).

Anyway, there's a pay off later and there are several other couples that have yet to appear. It's definitely a yuri manga.

This explains the weird pacing. I don't think I can stick to something with pacing that doesn't match it's potential release schedule. Maybe if another group picks it up.

Too add to the explanations, it's a LINE manga, ie, it's published mainly for mobile.

The chapters are short, to adapt to the fast paced reading of mobiles users, on their way to school for example.

These 5 chapters, in a "normal" manga, would amount to about 2 chapters and half.

In Japan, the release schedule was much faster (maybe a ch per week), so reader engagement was probably higher, but I don't have that kind of time (releasing the green manga every week is already kind of difficult).

Anyway, there's a pay off later and there are several other couples that have yet to appear. It's definitely a yuri manga.

This explains the weird pacing. I don't think I can stick to something with pacing that doesn't match it's potential release schedule. Maybe if another group picks it up.

So wait a while and read a few chapters in a burst.

I really like this story so far, especially the title stands out to me. "Gilding the lily", adding unnecessary decoration to something beautiful. It applies well to this story, whether it be third-parties tainting Aikawa's love of music, or how Aikawa is put down for having a gilded trumpet, all the while Aikawa herself enjoys playing with the gold trumpet.

Yasako posted:

How are there 110 chapters and we've never heard of this prior though?

LINE manga are region locked to Japan.

They're not published in any magazine, whether online or physical.

This manga surfaced only when volumes were published.

last edited at Sep 11, 2023 2:43AM

The Tags are kinda confusing is it a more of a yuri or het love triangle? or equal possibility? I'll find out on my own

I would say it's more het since she makes out with the dude in almost every chapter. lol

Overall, what I feel about this manga is that it's interesting as a regular manga but somewhat disappointing as a yuri manga. I think when it comes to storytelling, the "journey" is as important as the "destination". If 80-90% of the "journey" is het stuff, I'd feel I wasted my time reading it regardless of how it ends.

Yeah it's really hard to say from the perspective of an English reader. Like others have mentioned, despite having several translated chapters, they are short, so if you compare this to a longer manga, it's like we're only on chapter 3 right now.

Maybe the het stuff drops off after a bit and then there's a slow build yuri romance for most of it. We'd need a JP reader to read ahead and provide some very light spoilers (in spoiler text), such as "yes, there's a good amount of yuri in most of the story".

Anyway, my defense of this manga isn't "it's only beginning" but that even just the five chapters translated at the moment are extremely high-quality. Katagiri and Aikawa are both interesting, complex characters, and their personalities have been communicated through their actions and not exposition. Aikawa in particular I find very compelling; her natural love of music ground down by the expectations of her family and the restrictions placed upon her playing, she now finds herself without passion or interest and is desperately looking for something she can earnestly devote herself to. I particularly like how Katagiri and Aikiwa's love for each other is combining with their mutual inferiority complexes to ironically create tension in their relationship; they both put the other on a pedestal and so neither feels like they can be honest with the other. This manga is accomplishing a rare feat of tying together each of their individual character development with their relationship, so that both can only grow as people inasmuch as they come to understand the other and so grow closer. Really looking forward to future chapters!

Yes, they have an interesting relationship to one another and a lot has been set up in a short time. Agreed.

last edited at Sep 11, 2023 1:36PM

Too add to the explanations, it's a LINE manga, ie, it's published mainly for mobile.

The chapters are short, to adapt to the fast paced reading of mobiles users, on their way to school for example.

These 5 chapters, in a "normal" manga, would amount to about 2 chapters and half.

In Japan, the release schedule was much faster (maybe a ch per week), so reader engagement was probably higher, but I don't have that kind of time (releasing the green manga every week is already kind of difficult).

Anyway, there's a pay off later and there are several other couples that have yet to appear. It's definitely a yuri manga.

This explains the weird pacing. I don't think I can stick to something with pacing that doesn't match it's potential release schedule. Maybe if another group picks it up.

wait like me, untill like half of the manga is translated and then give it a go, tho the comments are so over the top that is funny XD i know how much yuri fans don’t like guys in yuri, i blame the chapters with the explicit make out with the dude XD

I find the concept of YuriHasa quite funny, in that I can't help but think that it is knowingly in conversation with Hibike Euphonium. Maybe that just speaks of my shallow reference pool, but I don't know of any other piece of Japanese media that is about the drama between girls in a brass band, and where "boys got between yuri" (at least, from a lot of yuri fans' perspective).

I also noticed that Yuniko Ayana (a self-described yuri fan, whose anime main writer credits include Given, Bang Dream, and Flip Flappers) has been retweeting Yomogimochi's tweets promoting YuriHasa, and even tweeted about being interested in adapting it to anime. Ayana also recently sat down for an interview/discussion with Ayano Takeda, known for writing the Euphonium novels (their topics included Bang Dream It's MyGo!!!!! and Euphonium). I don't know if Takeda and Yomogimochi know each other (they haven't interacted on Twitter), but I wonder what a discussion between them would look like.

As for the release schedule, YuriHasa started as a 16-week limited trial series in March 2021. After a hiatus, it continued full serialization in December 2021. It seems to update weekly, with occasional breaks without a full update, similar to webtoons.

I'm glad I went digging because I found a thread from last year with all of the previous thumbnails Yomogimochi had used for the series up to that time. One of them is especially steamy.

last edited at Jan 23, 2024 9:33AM

Some people are still saying it's "not yuri" (or it's "trash") because Aikawa kissed a boy.

Some people are still saying it's "not yuri" (or it's "trash") because Aikawa kissed a boy.

Those people are definitely wrong, but the "controversial" aspect of YuriHasa seems to be intentional. There are other Yuri manga that feature some F/M content, but those men are usually either faceless, incredibly pathetic, or outright abusive. So I think this manga might bother some people more because this boy is just kind of normal, which might make them feel like their frustration with the boy is a bug, not a feature.

Still, it's pretty clear that these het kisses are drawn as unromantic as possible. Chapter 1 opens with one, but it is greyed out, and the main focus of the page is Chihaya's reaction ("I should probably leave"). And the other kisses in chapter 4 and 5 are completely "censored".

The case of this "doomed" male love interest is also unusual in that the relationship between the girls would already have plenty of conflict without him. Unlike in e.g. Even Though We're Adults or Run Away With Me Girl, the presence of the boyfriend character in YuriHasa isn't a "problem" that one of the leads is stuck with, and more like a small, inconsequential variable, at least from what we can see on page in these first couple of chapters. He wouldn't even seem completely doomed, if it weren't for the highly confrontational title (and his lack of inclusion on the volume covers, and other off-page information).

last edited at Sep 21, 2023 3:15PM

That was a weird chapter. Or maybe it felt that way because it's been a while since the last one.
But I guess the ship is sailing nicely. Ish... No idea who that was at the end
Thanks for the chapter!

all the flashbacks have made it kinda difficult to trace the sequence of events in this series, so I reread from the beginning really attentively and I think I have the timeline pieced together, in case I'm not the only one confused.
Aikawa loses her desire to play music at her previous school after receiving harsh criticism and being told not to play the way she enjoys.
Aikawa transfers into the current school, while her mother? reminds her that she is expected to continue music, (with the gifted silver polishing cloth for the silver trumpet she was told to use, even though she loves the sound of gold trumpets).
Aikawa heard Katagiri practicing on the roof and decides to get close to her to try to rediscover her love of music, and she seemingly does, beating Katagiri in the audition and being overjoyed that Katagiri wants to play with her even after losing the audition. But the band director or w/e recommends that she quits, which seems like its going to lead into the present day events, where Aikawa is dating the boy "until the competition" where she will presumably quit taking music seriously.

Best guess at this point is she's trying to distance herself from Katagiri in preparation for leaving the brass band?

Still really loving this manga, Aikawa and Katagiri both thinking of the other as this perfect, pure music lover and of themselves as a dirty selfish coward is a fantastic dynamic. Thanks for the translation!

The Tags are kinda confusing is it a more of a yuri or het love triangle? or equal possibility? I'll find out on my own

I would say it's more het since she makes out with the dude in almost every chapter. lol

Overall, what I feel about this manga is that it's interesting as a regular manga but somewhat disappointing as a yuri manga. I think when it comes to storytelling, the "journey" is as important as the "destination". If 80-90% of the "journey" is het stuff, I'd feel I wasted my time reading it regardless of how it ends.

80% is not het stuff. We're at chapter 5 out of 110 and still going strong. It's a story that has a point and is developing, and allowing it's characters to develop and deal with their complicated issues. That's all. We haven't even met the vast majority of it's characters yet or it's other couples. It just started. Your criticizing the "journey" when you just took one step out of the front door.

I actually read ahead up to around chapter 20 though, and my opinion is valid at least to that point.

Of course there are many more chapters but I think 20 chapters is more than enough to get a sense of what kind of story it is.

Wait a moment, please spoil me ! I really wanna know if i should wait until at least 20 chapters while only reading comments to get a feeling if the manga is worth investing in it!,

was coming here to comment on who's the heck is that new character in the last page, instead I just now find out that this has 110 chapters. What the ever loving fck??? How???

Just a quick question, but does anyone die or attempt murder/suicide in this. Cuz the title of the manga is a bit extreme, but everything so far has been tame.

anw, thanks for the chapter!

Nooo why you would end like that : c

It's hard to even predict where the plot would be going because so far it feels like it's done before it started: she's straight my guy, it's time to give up on her, graduate high school, go to college, and come out of the closet there like a normal lesbian.

Well, now as of ch. 7, clearly that girl isn't straight. In theory she could be asexual, but in terms of desire for boys I've never seen anyone so thoroughly ignore a kiss she's supposedly involved in. She treats making out like it's a quaint folkway she's respecting although it bores her--like she's going to a Rakugo show with a friend who's into that even though she's not interested herself.

Huh. Tokyopop picked it up. Two volumes out this fall.

Huh. Tokyopop picked it up. Two volumes out this fall.

It's definitely popular so makes sense.

Huh. Tokyopop picked it up. Two volumes out this fall.

It's definitely popular so makes sense.

Don't get me wrong. I like it so I'm glad it's picked up. It's the Tokyopop part... It's got to be 1 to 50 BL over GL there. Probably more. I can't even think of more than a couple GL of note and they're either done or about to be and neither are of this tone. It seems like an odd match.

Huh. Tokyopop picked it up. Two volumes out this fall.

It's definitely popular so makes sense.

Don't get me wrong. I like it so I'm glad it's picked up. It's the Tokyopop part... It's got to be 1 to 50 BL over GL there. Probably more. I can't even think of more than a couple GL of note and they're either done or about to be and neither are of this tone. It seems like an odd match.

Fair, although unless a publication exclusively pushes girl's love, wouldn't BL always win out on sheer volume? They handle all the Ana Sanchez girl's love releases (Sirius, Alter Ego, Alter Ego 2) and a few other good ones, so I've never really thought about their content strategy much. I don't assume customers will care who the publisher is though, but I don't know anything about that anyway. I'm mostly talking out of my ass.

last edited at Mar 23, 2024 6:48PM