Oh how nice indeed, any more recommendations on shoujo style yuri anybody???

Yuri Espoir!!

TIL a "cotton anniversary" means a second anniversary for married couples, because the traditional gift is cotton. Thus the "cotton wedding" invitation to celebrate the second volume, probably.

Loving that a yuri novel was popular enough to get basically a Broadway adaptation and that tons of clearly straight characters are going out of their way to watch it

This is my favorite April Fools joke I've seen this year. It's fun seeing the same things my friends and I worry about when we translate. Also, as much as I normally dislike student/teacher type age gap stories, the story and art were cute. It helps a lot that the teacher is actually just a maladjusted college student. I also really liked the depiction of finding someone's passionate fandom attractive, it's almost too realistic to usually come up in yuri.

For a while I've been biased against older yuri. It just seems consistently worse, less serious and certainly less in touch with lesbian themes. Akiko Morishima is completely the exception. I'm posting here to recommend specifically her Office Romance series, which is 10/10 for me every single chapter. While her works about teenagers are good, this is one is incredibly timeless and sweet, and it features luxurious wedding dress symbolism.

is please leave my house on dynasty or under an untranslated name? i can't find it in the directory

It's not available here, but you can read it on mangadex.

Love triangle was nice and all, but the Tower of Babel reference was what really elevated this for me. That's two for two stories from this anthology so far that've referenced scripture in a hilariously overdramatic way. Basic bitches go to drama school, but real theatre kids attend Catholic all-girls academies. Yeah, the lesbian thing's all well and good, but the primary draw is getting to say shit like, "Onee-sama, I've Immaculately Conceived this omelette for you" while everyone applauds. This is the Class S we need.

+1

Waiting for a girl to angstily say she's an abandoned sacrificial lamb, that would be really funny especially if they extended the metaphor

It feels like it should be frowned upon to come to your sworn homoerotic sister for love advice about someone else. Not that I'm objecting to it, angst is so much fun.

Well, I just binged the whole series on Mangadex. I'm satisfied with this as a work in the yuri genre. This is a cohabitation story where the two main characters are the most important people in each other's lives, and there's no implication that they would leave that lifestyle for someone else. As a story in general, though, there are problems. It's heartwarming that they work out their self esteem issues through each other and learn not to suppress the parts of themselves that are unattractive, but most of this happens in the last volume through internal monologue, not action or even dialogue. The pacing is extremely off. I liked the first two volumes where they slowly got closer and had slice of life moments, but I have to wonder why more drama didn't get completed in them, and why there was a subplot at all, although I do like the popular gyaru. There's also a major plot hole: if the gyaru didn't destroy Aiko's book, then who did? and a major part of the story that I think could have used some explanation: what was up with so many coincidences in a row of Mao's story predicting natural disasters, unless somehow her editor was editing in information from weather forecasts? Overall, though, I don't regret reading it. It was definitely a unique manga, and the struggles of Mao in particular were compelling to read. It's beautiful and a little unreal, two fucked up people as if by fate fitting perfectly together.

last edited at Feb 28, 2022 11:19PM

I've read some of this on Twitter where the author releases it. Last I saw there were a good 9 updates uploaded, usually around this length or a couple pages longer.

This manhua is definitely taking the politics of omegaverse in a radically different direction from most stories. Usually alphas are analogous to men and omegas to women, with all the dominance and submission socially induced in our world instead biologically wired so that readers can fetishize women completely giving up their power as their "true", "natural" state. Most often, in the bodies of men, because this is for straight women sexualizing what they're afraid of, but not wanting to direct it onto their own bodies. In this story, though, those motivations don't really apply. Alphas aren't privileged, they are discriminated against for their lack of control-- the opposite of real world patriarchy. It's seems more like the underlying idea is internalized homophobia, hiding from your desires because they make you less socially acceptable. That's a much more common trope for lesbians and speaks to what's already written about in yuri. Of course, it still falls into accepting your inherent biology and not being allowed to choose your conscious urges instead, which gets... a bit gross, if you think about it.

Ahh, lonely, jaded Zhang Guo fascinated by the innocent, cheerful Dai Yi... This dynamic is too good, I hope we keep getting Zhang Guo's perspective. What a heartthrob.

Is there any pet play yuri? :}

I love Her Pet on Lezhin.

A couple of comments about the "straight girl turns gay after meeting a butch" trope: this does happen in real life, famously to Elvira and her 19-year partner. And what we're shown in this story, of Kobayashi repeatedly rejecting guys and trying to find the perfect one is actually.. pretty common for people who don't realize they're lesbians yet! Anyway, I don't care if she's mostly straight and realized a part of herself because of the handsome woman. Boy was Akira drawn handsomely, and the embarrassment of getting caught knocking down Kobayashi's whole act was very compelling. The cigarette kiss is great because it is spontaneous. Akira can't pass up the opportunity to respond to Kobayashi's feelings even though she's smoking, and then she quickly pulls back so that the memory of it compounds in Kobayashi's mind until she decides what to do about it.

The story hasn't really interested me yet, but the designs for the Locked Tomb characters are killer. This is definitely a lesbian-gaze series through and through.

I'm definitely not a fan of the new directories, because I have a long to read list and like to pick randomly from it. I guess I might have to manually make my own to keep doing that.

Maybe it slipped through the sands of time, or maybe there's a good reason it's not popular, but either way you remember and treasure that manga.

Some examples from me: I love the philosophical wanderings and struggle to get closer to an unattainable crush in Sugar wa Otoshigoro, but it got dropped for its tragic ending. Mai no Mushigurashi got featured on Dynasty, but still didn't get many readers. Maybe that's because it's about bugs, but it's such a beautiful love story...

last edited at Jan 26, 2022 4:51AM

If I'm remembering correctly, Tinder especially has a reputation in Japan for being filled with people just looking for friends, and there's explicit advertising about this. Anyway, I loved this story before any of the romance for how it showed a really good friendship developing, one where you can drop your insecurities and feel wanted and respected. It doesn't always turn out this great, but that's often what meeting other gay and trans people is like. It's so hot how in the kissing panels, Kaede asked Ayaka whether she wanted it, and Ayaka was so confident in saying yes.

So..I liked WDTFS and Moonlight Garden. What now? xD

Try Opium. Savior is another good option if you're okay with butches.

Honestly not finding this amazing, but the localization by the translator is so good and funny that I want to keep reading.

My favorite part of this is when the dysphoric bartender's partner really looks at them and tries to see them in the light that they want to be seen... not exactly androgynous, more of a strange fantasy, but not as simply a woman either.

I can honestly see this happening in the run where Eva became the Golden Witch. And under duress, Natsuhi just might defer to the new head of the Ushiromiya family... Love their expressions, love this art.

This makes me want to get into Touhou...

Honestly I think leaning into what counts as masculine behavior for a new tag is unhelpful. Once you get past childhood, the difference isn't very dramatic. I mean, feminine girls can be good at sports, and in fact that is what most sports manga about girls are.

I think what we need is some way of masculine looking characters being identified regardless of age or behavior. I guess it could be, if they don't have the behavior to fit into Tomboy, they go into this tag instead. Of course, I'm speaking from what I want. I am feeling sad that there's potentially a lot of manga about masculine looking women floating around that I'm not seeing. The question is whether just short hair is enough and where you draw that line. I don't know that "I know it when I see it" is adequate.

Lmao, yeah, I found that out and read everything in Not yaoi a while ago. If anyone reading this is looking for more butchxbutch, the Boyish^2 anthology should start selling its online version later this month.