Picture this.
You run an eye over a list of recently updated manga on the platform of your choice. Perhaps you're sleepy or tired or not in a particularly perceptive mood, because the details aren't sinking in, but you're sharp enough and hungry enough to feel that old familiar thrill that has never left you even after years of daily yuri reading- yes, that thrill aroused by the sight of a first chapter in a new story. You let yourself hope. You begin to conjure up arcs, theories, adaptations, all based on the slightest glimpse of a title. It's self-indulgent, perhaps, but you've been fed well recently- there's been so many new stories, so many interesting directions, and you're certain that this age of yuri shall be looked upon in the future as a golden one. How blessed you are to be a part of it, to enjoy the prospect of reading the first chapter of what might just be the Big New Thing. You wait impatiently for the pages to load in, each strip fueling the furnace of your fantasies. Vampire yuri? Hell yeah. Vampires will never be old. They're overused, but yuri, after all, has a way of refreshing the most trite tropes. Hot predatory monster women? Hell yeah. Give me all you have and more. Devote the means of production solely to this. We are so back. Backer than the dead come back to life. Vampire yuri! What shall they think of next?
But wait. This isn't right. Something's missing. You read back through the chapter, searching your heart for the source of this strange numbness, for the little crack into which every trace of excitement you'd built up has vanished. It can't be the art- that's sublime. The premise is lovely as well. Maybe it's not revolutionary, but it ought to be cute, at least? Charming? You've seen Minori Chigusa's work before. She's the kind of artist who's literally made the Omegaverse feel like heart-pounding rapture. These dames are totes adorbs as well. Sensual. Plenty of blood gushing about. Not in your veins, though. You're hollow. Oddly disappointed, but in a familiar way.
Think. Think hard. Where have you felt this before, this nagging sense of mediocrity? This ineptitude of almost remarkable uniformity, consistently colorless, devoid of fulfillment for all the ingredients that have been slopped into it, the artistic equivalent of a nothingburger? It's not realistic enough to compellingly portray some aspect of the human psyche or social scenario, not meditative enough to successfully lull a reader into the tranquil vibe zone of an iyashikei, not nearly interesting or amusing enough to function as a zany screwball comedy about dysfunctional wackos bouncing off each other, not sexy enough despite the abundance of uncreative and laboured sex jokes to fulfill either the erotic or the comedic potential of an ecchi romp, and not even terrible enough in all its bullish approaches towards the lowest kind of drama to become entertainingly bad like a certain citric trailblazer from a darker age of yuri. It just... exists. It tries to talk to you, which would be the logical next step to existing, certainly, but you're struck by how utterly banal this piece- and you can only really call it a piece, a chunk, a sort of blob that may or may not have been broken off of something that wouldn't have been especially meaningful even if it was a larger pile of meh- is, and continues to be, buzzing like the whine of an insect you cannot trace and which does not even have the hunger, the drive, the bug-fetish conducive need to give your blood a bit of a suck. And the funny thing, funnier than anything you've read here, is that even this hypothetical non-hematophage is more vampiric than any character in this ostensibly vampiric chapter you've read.
Ah. There it is. You've got it now. You understand the nature of a bloodless wound, and name that old oppressor who has often cut, with a movement as deft as it is blunt, every bit of fun and personality out of multiple initially promising yuri manga you've read in the past. Their name hangs high over this latest slough of despond, and you berate yourself for being, in your drowsiness and your blind and silly belief that all yuri is good yuri, so ignorant as to let yourself be bland-blasted again.
You've been Teren Mikami'd. Another lily without a color or a scent. You sigh, shouldering the burden of hope, now somewhat heavier, again, and continue on. Next time, you tell yourself. Next time I'll know better.
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