Oh wow, I remember this story. It was kinda messed up. I was gonna say that this chapter was surprisingly cute as a result of that, but then the ending...Well, the chapter was mostly still incredibly cute though.

I should probably reread the earlier chapters to refresh my memory, but I am actually pretty impressed with this chapter. I think I might like this series, lol. A lot of thanks go to Kawaii scans for scanlating it, and I will be looking forward to future updates.

Haha, this was cute. The characters also resembled Yumi and Sachiko.

Hmm, I thought the end of Pure Water Adolescence pretty strongly implied Kowo was a woman. Could only draw guys --> implies yaoi/shounen-ai -> implies fujoshi.

As for this story itself, I'm not really too fond of the type of attitude where someone tries too hard to hide their true self. At least, to the extent of lying or saying something you don't truly feel. So yeah, the MC troubled me a bit in this story, but as you guys said, the pacing (and reveal at the end) were very good. Kowo is also one of the top mangaka whose works I am super excited to read.

Yup, I loved this back then when Zefiberyl was scanlating this. Was one of the main reasons I might have actually bought in to JManga's service too. Now that the latter has shut down, I did seek out and look through the second volume awhile ago.

I think my favourite part of this series was how impossibly gorgeous Teishi was...and how she kept innocently leading Sei Shonagon on. Truly a dangerous fruit, lol. I haven't seen many yuri series deal with this type of dynamic before (i.e. quite rather exquisite temptations), and it also made for some great comedy.

Although I've only got speculation as far as facts go, volume 2's afterword did imply that that would be the end of the series. I could have asked for much more. I'm not really familiar with the mangaka's other works but I hope they will dabble again in yuri.

last edited at Apr 14, 2013 8:28PM

Haha. Tora (I guess we can call her that?) is pretty weird. Following Yamashita (wut? we still haven't found out what the main character's first name is?) around without doing anything. I agree that this chapter was cute, but where it's going is still a mystery.

Dunno what to make of the sempai character just yet. Well, going by the volume cover from the first chapter, seems like she'll just be one of those fanservice-providing voyeurs/perverts, lol. I'll be looking forward to seeing how Yamashita and Tora's relationship develops.

Thanks! Off to a great start.

To be honest, I'm not usually much a fan of Hakameda Mera, but her art is somewhat more attractive here. As I remember, I was also ultimately pretty unimpressed with her storytelling in President and Vice-President and All You, but I'll hold off one making any judgements for this series yet. The story seems decent so far, at least.

In any case, Hakameda does have a rather distinct style compared to other yuri mangaka out there, so reading this was refreshing for the variety. I'm glad to hear there will be a couple more chapters coming. Thanks to Fly by Yuri for the continued efforts!

last edited at Apr 14, 2013 1:56AM

There is nothing "bad" or "pretend" about Sisterism's development of Yoshiko and Haruka. It simply ended before it reached a resolution. The fact that the series was forced to end does not retroactively cancel out any of the previous developments. All of your posts are full of completely illogical exaggerations.

After I read through ch. 30 and saw that no buildup had been established for Haruka and Yoshiko to have an ending despite ch.31 being the last chapter, I was relieved when I saw that ch. 31 didn't do anything unreasonable like try to force an awkward finale between them. The fact is that the romantic resolution you guys are thinking of would have been worse writing than what we got. Trying to frame your fan-disappointment around 'bad-writing' is completely nonsensical when you think about the limitations Yoshitomi-sensei faced.

Altogether, the entire fallout from the ending to this series has been completely ridiculous. You guys forget the fact that there is even an untranslated bonus chapter which still has yet to be released coming from the final volume. You can hardly make any judgements as to the 'writing' of the entire series until you have seen that. The ridiculously hasty and negative way people have approached this ending is needlessly unconstructive, and the bandwagoning and circlejerky commentary on the side has been totally embarrassing.

There will be obviously less grounds to exclude het versus other fetish stuff in terms of objectionable content but I do have to say I appreciate the move away from het except for exceptionally good or amusing content. Particularly because, in comparison to the fetish tags (where you can just decide "do I like this fetish or not"), it takes more effort to evaluate whether a het series is worth reading or not I appreciate a stricter filter on the het content.

Basically, in the end I do even follow a number of het series, so it's not like I think it's all completely worthless or something. I am certainly okay with not having a blanket ban on het content. However, I do hope that Dynasty will strive to limit it in general to series which are at least marginally worth reading. Because there are more than enough 'omnivorous' manga hosts out there, and part of Dynasty's appeal for me is its more limited/stricter focus, which means I have to do a lot less filtering here than I have to do at other sites.

The end of Tsubomi has been an established fact for 4 months now, Yoshitomi had enough time to make an at least decent ending. Morinaga pulled that off and so did Hakamada. Hell, I'm pretty sure another volume would've been in the cards if he had wanted to. And even if that wasn't the case, extenuating circumstances don't make a product any better. You don't have to turn someone's opinion into some kind of personality flaw because they're not "getting it."

In fact it looks like Sisterism didn't even do any web-episodes, so really the end of the magazine publication marked the end of the series. Committing to another volume purely of web-releases would've probably meant going something like ~10 chapters without any magazine fees for manuscript submissions, which definitely sounds like an unreasonable burden to me.

Meanwhile I'm not blaming anyone for wanting Haruka and Yoshiko to have ended up together but I think all the complaints about the ending are being blown totally out of proportion. In the end Sisterism was a comedy series, it is not totally wrong for it to have ended that way. You did get resolution for two couples, it is not such an utter travesty to leave one out. The overall affect of the ending ('Most couples are now living in blissful yuri happiness; our main pair will take a bit longer') is definitely decent for what Yoshitomi had time to do. Even if the last chapter wasn't exactly what most people wanted I think it is wrong not to appreciate it for what it actually was.

Haha, sorry but what I posted was just an explanation, not an argument. Yoshitomi-sensei ran out of time/chapters due to Tsubomi ending, decided not to resolve Haruka and Yoshiko's relationship, that's it. There's nothing to argue over. If you're dissatisfied with the ending you just have to deal with it. You can blame the author all you want, doesn't change the fact that the magazine ending was out of their control. Meanwhile, calling the ending boring just shows that you didn't appreciate the series for what it was anyway.

Before anything else, I'd like to mention that Sisterism seems to have been caught up in the overall fallout of Tsubomi ending, as this was one of their series--something which a lot of people, including myself, seem to have missed. The Tsubomi series were given a chance to wrap-up through their web-only chapters but that obviously puts a bit of a limit on the room left for development.

Anyway, as for Haruka and Yoshiko's relationship development itself, as I said earlier I thought the ending was fine. The point is, overall if you think whether Sisterism was a comedy or a drama/romance series, I think you would lean towards comedy. So if Yoshitomi-sensei only had a couple chapters left and had to decide whether to end the series on a comedic note or with big romantic drama, I think it's more natural that he would stick with the comedy.

The reason Akira/Mari, and Sakura/Mai, happened to get confirmed romantic endings was because it was more natural/easier for those couplings. But as for Haruka and Yoshiko, since there's such a big misunderstanding between them, resolving it in a quick and easy manner would be totally awkward. So if the series was going to have to end anyway, I would rather let Yoshiko and Haruka continue on the way they have, and imagine a sweeter resolution for them in the future once they've matured a little bit, compared to a forced ending right now.

As far as whether yuri fans should buy it, I would totally say go for it, lol. The volumes are basically $10 each on Amazon, and you're getting a huge ~500 pages for each volume. As I said, for the most part I'm actually really impressed with the translation, and moreover it's nice to support the localized yuri market.

Finished going through my print copies...damned good stuff. This must have been my third or fourth time rereading the series, lol. I have to say, I came to appreciate the technical detail all over again that Morinaga put into things like hair care, nail care, and fashion, etc. When people talk about Girl Friends' sense of reality, (combined with Sugi-san's mastery of goukons and other aspects of handling men), that's the kind of thing they mean, and I have to say compared with other yuri series it's the type of thing which never really gets emphasized.

This, combined with stuff like the characters' thoughts/concerns about the future and college/career choices makes Girl Friends a really worthwhile read for pretty much anybody, and more than justifies the length. The only part which felt slow was when there was a fairly long stretch after Akko realized her feelings where misunderstandings kept happening and a resolution to their relationship kept getting delayed for arbitrary reasons. However, that issue still got resolved with more than enough time left to explore their burgeoning relationship. Ultimately Girl Friends is a fantastic series.

To comment on the print translation, I was quite impressed actually. The wording mostly felt completely natural. Unfortunately there was a tendency by Seven Seas to keep quite a lot of the original Japanese vocabulary which makes Girl Friends a bit hard to recommend to non-anime/manga fans. On the other end of the spectrum of over-localization, most of the text messages used a lot of 'netspeak' and abbreviations (like "u" for "you", etc.) that was kind of obnoxious and took you out of the story. Also, for some bizarre reason (I assume the original volumes weren't lacking them), Seven Seas only included translations of the author afterwords for volumes 1, 2, and 5. That was kind of disappointing.

To speak about Morinaga in general, I feel like one of her strengths which came out in this series (as well as another of my favourites, the Kisses/Sighs series) is the severity/weight of love. The longing/suffering Morinaga puts her characters through often twists/changes them in a way which persists even after they get together. In a sense, what Morinaga's works get at which I have not really seen with other yuri series is a sense of being completely dyed in the other person, in a way which cannot be turned back, irrevocably shaping the person afterwards. The sense of humanity in how Morinaga manages to show that love makes you both strong and weak (sometimes) is something that I'm really impressed by.

Saki is drawn by a horny lesbian (lol). The fanservice in it is outrageous--especially the manga. However, it is also blatantly gay and a pretty worthwhile mahjong series. The anime and manga go in a set; there's a fair amount of (canon) expanded stuff which is in the anime but not the manga, but as the source the manga captures some subtleties better.

Overall I do recommend it as one of the most entertaining ongoing yuri series, but it pretty much helps if you're open to learning a bit about mahjong. The (large) fanbase is basically almost all yuri fans, but a large proportion of it have gotten into mahjong as well.

Haha. An even bigger cliffhanger than last time. The wait will indeed be harsh.

While I appreciate the friendship focus, the drama lately has gotten away a bit from what I felt was the best part of the series, which was the dialogue and character interaction. I really want to see Fujiwara and Yuri interacting again soon.

Also, if the friendship issue gets cleared up, I do wonder how the story will proceed to develop the romance/yuri component. No doubt, I think, Suga Atsushi will have something exciting for us in store.

I just ordered the licensed version from Amazon a week ago, since I was buying other stuff/manga anyway. Dunno how the translation will be, but it's pretty exciting to have more print yuri manga, I guess. I preordered Kisses, Sighs, and Cherry Blossom Pink as well; hopefully if Morinaga's stuff is successful they'll start to license some of the tankoubons which haven't been translated, lol.

In any case, Girlfriends is pretty much a classic and gateway to yuri, lol. I don't recommend any yuri fan to miss it, or pretty much most of Morinaga's work in general, though.

Ahh, that might be the issue then. The container looks to me more like a flask/test tube, rather than a martini glass. That's what lead me to the conclusion that the potion was still in progress.

Honestly, the thing with the male teacher prevents this series from going onto my favourites, and overall not much depth has been established for the characters yet so the only yuri component thus far is pretty much sexual ("I got turned on by my little sister", lol). Still, though, the art for this series is good and I think we can have reasonable confidence in a happy conclusion, so even if the plot-twists are a little cliche I don't think there's anything wrong with people having a lot of fun with it.

I'll confess that "Notes from the Garden of Lilies" is still by far a better series as far as I'm concerned, but that isn't really a reason to pile this series with criticism. It's still decent yuri in the end. I think we can all agree that the teacher/'love triangle' sucks but that doesn't that this series won't overall still manage to be enjoyable.

The way I understood it was that the potion was partially made and Marisa was out to gather the rest of the components. Then she knocked away the still incomplete potion.

Also, the principle reason for Reimu coming around was just her feeling of "I kinda wanted to see you", so the rice crackers was just an excuse.

Overall I liked this doujin (the art is nice) but the story definitely isn't complete yet, so I do hope to see the suggested Reimu perspective or other ReiMari pieces the author mentioned.

Ch. 2 was really sweet. The unique setting of this series makes it a nice diversion from a lot of the other yuri series out there.

"My little sister turned me on." Ooh baby. This is an amazing start, lol. The art is gorgeous as well, I like the thick lines and stuff.

I read somewhere the suggestion that the Teacher's kiss was forced, that makes a lot of sense for the logic behind Aihara's actions.

The writing for this one seems kind of crazy but I think it will at least definitely be very fun to read. I hope the characters can realize their feelings quickly so that we don't have to suffer through more forced het, though. Aside from that this is quite an impressive manga, I especially also like the unexpected friend character, "Harumin", lol.

Haha, sounds like a good time ;). I'll be looking forward to the releases. Mad props to you guys for doing this, and thanks as always for the worthy effort.

Chalk up a win for the random chapter feature. This one was quite fun--lewd, heartwarming, and sweet, all in one. Too bad this seems to have been a one-off author, she doesn't even seem to have a mangaupdates page. I would have been interested in reading more.

The title is somewhat awkward though, I don't know how anything in particular could be "less" than a boyfriend, lol. The heteronormative connotations...not something I particularly care to see in a yuri manga.

last edited at Apr 5, 2013 10:17PM

Haha. Well, at least it was a great example of Sisterism's classic perversion and comedy. I'm pretty okay with Haruka and Yoshiko remaining idiots for a bit longer given the resolution for the rest of the couples. Ending it like this kind of feels like it is more true to the series as a whole. It was a great reminder of why I enjoyed this so much in the first place.