The fact that Manatsu has to fend off flashbacks to the weekend where they crossed the line together is a funny but also underrated detail. I think it's pretty cool that despite being a yuri series about high school girls, this series strikes a neat balance where sexual intimacy is an expected aspect of the relationship but without the story being specifically erotica.
Of course it's not that I don't like smut, I just think this middle ground is important, especially because of how much school girl stuff still dominates the genre. I'm sure there are stories where keeping some ambiguity about whether the two girls want each other carnally might be a benefit, but in many other cases the hush-hush about sexuality just feels kind of cowardly or conciliatory. What matters to me here is not that the audience witnesses the sexual intercourse directly (in case that needs to be said), but that it's not a mystery to the audience whether sex is on the table on the relationship. Even small details like one of the leads trimming their nails before a sleepover or googling "how do two girls do it", can serve as a foot in the door for the topic even without necessarily explaining anything to the audience.
I didn't know I had a take on this at all until I read this series. I guess for me a lot of this is about a years-long gripe with the kind of inherent sexism and lesbophobia in a large segment of the genre keeping up ambiguity just for the love of the game when straight romance curiously doesn't do this, but I assume sex being less of a taboo to touch on in yuri works about teenagers might be even more important to younger readers.
I might be forced to eat my words about this series not being erotica if Amazaki Suika shifts gears and makes the next sex scene last for a whole chapter, but I'm sticking to my guns for now.
last edited at Oct 6, 2025 3:33AM
