This is so peak. Taisho-era yuri firing on all cylinders, baby.

I wanna see a toxic tag, and also this was pretty mild compared to, well other stuff, but it was an ok attempt!

Do we have a toxicity tag or smthn LOL?
Girl got mind broke and manipulated into this relationship— isn’t BDSM supposed to be consensual? I’m prolly just overthinking thinking…

At this point, with all the toxic yuri works being uploaded lately, I really think a toxicity tag is definitely needed.

As far as I know there is next to no consensus on what "toxic yuri" even means. I believe it's more practical to use content notes for whatever specifically might be upsetting for certain readers instead of relying on entirely vibes-based concepts like "toxic".

Besides, series usually make it obvious what kind of vibe the main couple will have going on, and oneshots due to their length can't really be "toxic" without qualifying for at least one other warning tag that is already in use on the site.

All the bullying aside, I was kind of disappointed that she kept saying punishment this, punishment that, but we never see her actually doing any punishing.

Right? Feels like all of the fun stuff got glazed over.

Huh, I guess that's why this felt a bit underwhelming. Compared to its length maybe too many pages were spent on setup and not enough on the payoff. I do like the way the artist draws the eyes though.

last edited at Sep 4, 2025 10:55AM

Wow the whole friend group is a mess now. I mean it already kinda was after last chapter, but still.

Also, this is the second time that a girl tried to kiss Michi in the infirmary and third girl had to intervene. I don't know what this means yet but I'll continue to monitor the situation.

Side ship really giving those visuals. The vibes are so good right now.

I think very few manga, yuri or otherwise, deal with catching feelings in a situationship and what to do when it's over. Like, they both caught feelings, but Nagi needed to end for both of them. I think that tracks really well.

Yeah, I love the way their relationship is both deeper than anybody around them suspects but also back to zero in a way. A lot of this chapter has a similar similar to the way many fluffy yuri series start, with Manatsu trying to muster the courage to speak to Nagi and Nagi being confused by her behavior. The fact that this vibe is ironically an aftermath of their brief but intense secret affair is both funny and melancholic.

The school trip will be fun! There will be so much gay in their room the other two won't know what to do with each other.

The school trip may provide an opportunity for at least one of them to get encouragement or advice from a third party. Their group of six will presumably spend a lot of time together, which makes it more likely that one of the other four picks up on the vibe between them. Manatsu's friends know that she has hung out with Nagi before so they might notice that Manatsu suddenly can barely speak to her. Or being in this group could compel Manatsu and Nagi to interact to protect their mutual secret and to avoid making things awkward for the group.

last edited at Sep 2, 2025 4:06PM

I think my brain got overwhelmed with new information yesterday because I feel more okay about all of this after sleeping on it. Fuck it, we ball

"Even though she's a girl" / "but we're both girls" bro I'm so tired of this trope in GL.
Like it's totally fine for women to fall in love with each other lady, this isn't the 1900s!
After like say the age of 12 or something I'm sure you know that lesbians exist, especially living in the modern world with access to mass media.
I wish those types of corny lines would go away from all yuri.

Having heard of the existence of queer women is not the same as actually knowing any in person, let alone internalizing that identity for yourself. This trope endures because it references something true, and it's an easy way to pair a same-sex romance plot with a basic arc of self-discovery. I can relate to this sentiment when this trope is used as an excuse to actually shut down a same-sex romance plot, but I don't see why yuri should be purged of it.

It's pretty common in fiction that the main purpose of a statement is to make it even more satisfying when it's proven wrong. "I'll never join your band," says the mean bassist girl, even though we all saw her happily playing music with the other girls in the opening animation. "There is no way you will counter my special attack" says the enemy of the week, right before the battle shonen protagonist counters his special attack by punching really hard. "But we're both girls", "it's not that I like girls or anything", and similar lines should not be taken any more seriously when the pop up in yuri; the irony is the point.

I did not say it was not a matter of taste. I like to think I don't need to couch everything I say into a dozen different caveats and disclaimers, just so nobody assumes that I consider my opinions divinely ordained.

But then reading back, apparently I did soften my comment with several instances of "as for me", so maybe there is no number that would be enough.

last edited at Aug 25, 2025 1:46AM

I feel like there is a contradiction between the awkwardness of Mitsuki's jealous interjection and the way it immediately gets turned into an epic aura farming moment for her. Like the "lol they're dumb teenagers stop whining" retort to the "red flag" concerns (which I don't agree with either, to be clear) doesn't make sense to me because the text itself seems to think this was the coolest shit ever. Mitsuki being awkwardly jealous is a cute concept on its face, and of course I understand the potential appeal of a "back off she's mine" moment. The weird part is that this interaction transpires in front of a crowd that reacts with an over-the-top amazement that has become predictable.

This could be partially an effect of the 4-page curse. Maybe there was a time when the series had room for some nuance and a range in emotional intensity, but for a while every chapter has felt the same amount of intense whether it was angsty, happy, or epic. Which might be because the creator feels a pressure to keep the audience stimulated with every chapter. Ironically, the lack of proper highs and lows (in intensity, not mood) makes the end result less stimulating, at least for me.

last edited at Aug 25, 2025 1:36AM

It's amazing how boring this manga has gotten. The first chapters that focused on actual yuri were really emotional and fun to read, but now I'm considering dropping this. Hopefully it will get more interesting and we get so see more....yuri.

I agree. I think it's about time the yuri tag got removed.

Why? The first volume is entirely yuri, as is at least one character’s backstory. Just because volume 2 focuses on a het couple doesn’t mean the tag isn’t still applicable.

"The first volume" is the issue. With how volume 2 has been going, it feels like a general romance manga that just happened to have a yuri pairing in its first volume. If it keeps going that way, the yuri tag should be removed from the work and added to applicable chapters instead.

That being said, I'm giving the story the benefit of doubt for how volume 2 ends. There's still a chance it will redirect towards yuri. If it does, if both volumes are yuri with a bit of het in-between, then having the work marked as yuri with specific het chapters is right.

Tags aside... I didn't get into this manga to read a straight story, and I also find myself losing interest with how volume 2 has been going - and that's indeed because there hasn't been yuri in them.

I think the argument for Love Bullet not being a yuri series in its entirety holds some water. But calling the whole series a "general romance" does not hold up to scrutiny. There is no male character in the male cast, none of the main characters have a male love interest, and the series places great emphasis on their relationships with each other. The straight pairing in volume two is central to the job that the main characters are taking on, but that does not change the primary genre of the whole series to romance, let alone straight romance.

Love Bullet seems to use romantic love (with an obvious bias towards F/F) to facilitate drama and action, from the perspective of the cupids. I think the emotional catharsis of volume 1 is Koharu bursting into tears after she completes her first job (the successful formation of the F/F pairing). The matchmaking activity exists to support the character development of the cupids, much more so than the other way around.

last edited at Aug 24, 2025 12:54PM

This File gives only a taste of what we don't know about Toriko, the things inherently hidden from Sorawo's point of view and the things Sorawo doesn't bother to ask. It's frustrating and unnerving, in a good way.

The page where Sorawo can see Toriko in the first bathroom mirror makes me wonder what kind of expressions were on Toriko's face the previous times she was separated from Sorawo and worried about her. In most visual storytelling it would be normal for the audience to see that kind of stuff, but here it feels oddly intimate. Though the mildly voyeuristic effect from the one-sided nature of the reflections in this File and Sorawo briefly gaining access to some of Toriko's visual memories, probably adds to that.

Instead of yaoi hands that doppelgänger has yuri hands.

If the doppelgänger was involved in the novel version, I totally forgot, which makes it creepier. Well, and the fact that she only shows up on a few pages and disappears from view quickly each time. Yikes.

Being a woman is different from being a manga heroine.

The people arguing that the protagonist of this manga is not a (trans) girl have resorted to arguing that no manga character is a woman. Truly this thread has produced heretofore unseen wonders.

That's not my point. I'm saying that wanting to be recognized as a woman, biologically, psychologically and socially is different from wanting to be a idealized fictional figure.
A girl who wants to be Superman doesn't want to be a man, but the fictional superhero

Your comments remind me of the webtoon I Want To Be A Cute Anime Girl where the main character initially insists that she does not want to be a girl, just an anime girl.

Jokes aside, the closest I get to sympathizing with the plausibly-deniable haters on here is that I'm really not into forcefem stories in general. I suppose by the strictest definition, though, this is one -- and the MC being broadly deeply in favor of those changes right from the get-go helps a lot in making it palatable, rather than it coming off like slow torture the MC begrudgingly accepts over time (so, yeah, not a hard guess where I sit on the cis-trans scale here).

Well, there is a strain of forced feminization stories that are created by trans women. The protagonists in these are often trans girls/women (initially) in denial. (I like the one that's about how the feminizing torture basement provides better transition care than the UK's National Health Service, though that one is considered a "deconstruction".)

last edited at Aug 21, 2025 1:05AM

This story is quite unambiguously positive about her appearance. People are so used to irony that they can’t accept that something might be exactly what it seems on the surface, and not part of some elaborate plan that actually the main character being presented as the bad guy.

Sigh. Would be a terrible shame if we started erasing trans-adjacent stories because they show the slightest hint of problematic elements. Can we not do that please?

I don't think it needs to be removed but I don't know what you mean by people being overly suspicious. Like this oneshot looks pretty bad if taken at face value. I don't think anybody mentioned the main character being a bad guy, the manga just makes him look insane and pitiful. "Crazy but in a pitiful way" is a popular type of transmisogynistic caricature.

I can't man --

I never thought that stealing someone's lip balm can be so be intense and comically evil.

"Batman, do you know what this is?"
"No, Joker, don't do it-"
"Yes Batman, this is a lip balm, and there is no law stopping me from throwing it in this river"
"N-no, don't do it"
"I'm gonna throw it"

The lip balm that broke Wakaba's back

You're telling me. This feels like the school girl BS version of making someone bite the curb

It could be the lowest point in the narrative. Like when in The Dark Knight (2008) Batman fails to save both his childhood friend and Harvey Dent from the Joker's time bomb, which leads to the former getting killed and the latter becoming the villain later known as Two-Face.

I hope this sudden development is not a sign of the manga being on the chopping block. Yuri Hime has been pretty ruthless lately. They did say they are going to debut one series per issue for the next 12 months, so something has to make way. Odoriba and Garan Hime just ended and will be joined by Black Knight next month.

Edit: Holy shit Wanna Skip School in the Infirmary is ending too. YH is not taking prisoners.

pain

I have to wonder if the editors making these decisions realize no one will be willing to get invested in anything new they publish if it's got a 60% or higher chance of getting axed within a year anyway.

Ah the Netflix (and other services) issue, many series get cancelled so less people engage because they're expecting the cancellation, which leads to more things cancelled. It really sucks all around. I hope Yuri Hime stabilizes because these cancellations suck :\

Odoriba ni Skirt ga Naru will be at least 6 volumes long and Garan no Hime is the type of fantasy/sci-fi yuri that very rarely manages to survive past 3 volumes regardless of magazine (not based on a light novel and not isekai or slice-of-life).

I'm a lot more surprised by Gakeppuchi Reijou, I expected at least one more volume.

I bet if this was adapted to a movie in Hollywood it would sweep at the Oscars

I'm not sure what to expect from this one though. Before any concerns about whether there will be any on-page lesbianism: 46 pages should have been enough to create a strong impression about these characters, but even with Sappho Scan's explanation of the title, it's hard for my imagination to latch onto anything. The dynamic between Hotaru and the annoying high school girl feels especially underdeveloped, even though most of this first chapter is spent on their interactions. Two characters who interact so much should ideally have some chemistry even if they're not going to be a Thing.

The illustration on the title page is kind of fire though so I'm seated for one or two more chapters at least.

last edited at Aug 13, 2025 3:29PM

Not even sure there'll be any actual romance. We had to wait the very last chapter of Maitsuki for a kiss.

Yodokawa's yuri is always very subtexty.

It doesn't have to take the form a kiss to have romance. There were plenty of it in Maitsuki, the story was mostly about it. Just because Yodokawa is discreet in showing display of affection, doesn't mean there isn't an actual romance going on.

As for the new title, not sure what to think about it yet. I'll follow along to see where it goes!

The romance genre typically puts more emphasis on conflict and the process of falling in love while slice of life focuses on the process of everyday life and the little things that can make it wonderful. So I would argue that slice of life may be the primary genre of Maitsuki, if only by a small margin. But the series is completely upfront about the way the main characters feel about each other and the fact that they become a couple, so it's not at all "subtexty" in terms of depicting a lesbian relationship. Subtext is about meanings that are not directly stated or shown in the text.

last edited at Aug 13, 2025 3:13PM

Of course, I get where you're coming from. It's not that I am against using the male gaze and the fetishization of lesbians as critical tools, I just don't like invoking them in place of more tangible criticism. I find it more worthwhile to admit what I specifically didn't like, what gave me the ick in concrete terms.

My axe the grind with this oneshot was that it introduced an uncomfortable tension (is the audience meant to identify with this guy and to assume/hope he has a chance with these girls?) and never resolved it, while failing to make up for it by delivering even on the fundamentals. These flaws in the work might have something to do with the way straight men view women and lesbianism, but I'm not comfortable drawing that kind of conclusion unless I have a good case for it.

Wow this had a nice vibe going until it got completely ruined lmao
The fact that the guy was IN the character introductions was a big red flag in hindsight I guess...

For me, the vibes were off from the start. The fact that there was a named male character on the intro page was already so goofy that I had to laugh. Then the girls couldn't shut up about this guy, and the sex was also pretty flavorless. The fact that the very same named male character saw and interrupted them just takes this from boring to "ick", it didn't ruin anything actually good.

Male characters in Yuri can sometimes be good friends and/or provide interesting narrative elements, but I dislike the inclusion of the guy here. Him discovering them at the end, a lot of the dialogue being about jealousy because one of the girls keeps looking at him, he feels weirdly central to the story for no good reason. Plus they knew he was outside, and it was so weirdly obvious to me that he'd discover them.

Couldn't have said it better myself. I'm fine with stories that are bisexual (cuz I am) but this one sure isn't - it definitely swings more to the male-gazy fetisihization side. I kinda hated it.

It felt a little too much like he was the audience self-insert character, I think, probably because he was weirdly central to the narrative despite us knowing literally nothing about him. I think a version of this story even with him could've worked but it wasn't executed very well.

Yeah, and I hate male self-inserts in "yuri" with all the fucking fiber of my being - you know the specific ones I'm talking about. It's hard not to see them as pandering (aka fetishizing). I'm okay with there being an "observer" in a story that readers can relate to, but I prefer when they're fellow himejoshis or at least aroace - and not straight men who frankly do not belong there. If you're a straight man who enjoys yuri that's fine, but like, I don't think they need a self-insert in stories that are not about them.

I don't believe "male gaze" and "fetishizing" are helpful analysis because people say that about any and all yuri without any rhyme or reason. No, if there is a problem here, it's that this oneshot fails to treat even the audience with the bare minimum of respect: the lesbian sex it depicts ends not on an orgasm but the reaction shot of a guy.

This is anticlimax in the most literal sense: the sex scene ends on the very moment of the boy interrupting them, and the oneshot ends on the next page, with the girls laughing the whole thing off like a pair of vapid NPCs. It's not uncommon in yuri porn that somebody accidentally sees the couple when they do it somewhere they're not supposed to, but being seen by somebody does not tend to end the fun. For example, in (don't laugh) 'Fingering Karaoke' by Aweida, the couple only learns that the store clerk saw them on CCTV after they get dressed and leave the karaoke booth, and they're still incredibly embarrassed even though the store clerk is a woman.

It's cool that Itsumi has tremendous aura even while wearing something that ridiculous

It's such a trip to be able to peer from 2025 at the reactions of an artist who later became known for yuri manga, to the events in Utena as the show was airing all the way back in 1997

How come this series is not tagged with Slice of life, School life, or Romance

Like it should be at least one of these things

YOU HAVE THE POWER (to suggest tag changes)

I was asking because I have not read this series for a year. You know, I figured someone here would know better.

I went ahead to suggest SoL because that's probably still true

last edited at Aug 6, 2025 2:23AM

This chapter was awesome and I'm relieved to learn I was not the only one who found the ribbon tying kind of erotic.

Also, I'm happy to report I managed to resist the temptation to read what Temp said or to reply to anybody with a Take about Class S. Is this what being normal feels like?

How come this series is not tagged with Slice of life, School life, or Romance

Like it should be at least one of these things

It feels weird to me that yurihime is ony 20 years old. Sure there was yuri shimai before but to think that the modern form of the magazine, a juggernaut of the yuri genre, has only existed for 20 years is still really crazy.

Well, the association of 'yuri' with lesbianism goes back to the 1970s, but 'yuri' only became established as a genre (or rather, as a demographic) under this name in the early 2000s. It took until 2003 for a publishing company to take a chance on running a magazine focused on lesbian-themed comics and light novels; that was Yuri Shimai. So in a way it's the concept of lesbian-themed comics and light novels that you can just buy in a book store in Japan, that is just about a quarter of a century old.

isn’t this just the yuri version of “super attractive perfect girl ends up with antisocial loner whose sole redeeming quality is that they are somehow the first person to ever show basic kindness to the girl”

Useless Princess

I would not call Yukari antisocial and she's not particularly resentful of popular girls, unlike Kurokawa (from Useless Princess) before her makeover. Yukari seems to be just a shy and awkward girl, who entertains stray thoughts about envying popular girls as if they were fairly tale heroines but doesn't take these musings that seriously.

last edited at Aug 4, 2025 3:14PM