Yukari has eroded the boundary between pocky sticks and lips.

Sora out here, biting the hand that feeds her. What a degenerate.

Reimu is winning at danmaku, pocky and life.

Therapist: Alright, we're gonna try some dream reading today. What did you dream about last night?
Adachi: I enacted half the positions from the Kama Sutra with my best friend. What does this mean, doctor?
Therapist: You're probably into her.
Adachi: That can't be right, we never got around to enacting the other half. I should probably just buy her a book for her birthday.

Symphogear S1 was just this fascinating ping-pong match between Hibiki and Tsubasa, with Chris as their little gay, bouncing ball.

Renko and Maribel are such a bittersweet couple. Trapped in a soulless, hyper-capitalized plutarchy, they realize that the last traces of fantasy dwell within their minds, and devote the rest of their adolescence to finding miracles. But the further they get into those occultic worlds, the further they grow from each other, and it's so tragic to see Renko caught between trying to hold on to Maribel and wanting to let her achieve her potential. The one person she loves and trusts above everything is slowly, inevitably becoming alien, and it's simultaneously everything she's wanted and dreaded.

The real kicker is that Renko can't even stop this- Maribel's growing awareness of the psychic is a slippery slope, and now that she's gotten started, it's impossible to pull her back. The only thing that Renko can do is eternally encourage and support her, never able to step back or prepare herself for separation, because she knows that she's Maribel's last link to humanity. There's no couple that embodies the phrase- 'The journey matters more than the destination'- than these two, because the journey might be the only thing they can share.

I recently watched Feel Good on Netflix, and enjoyed it more than any show I've seen in recent memory. It's an excellent WLW romance between a Canadian stand-up comic and an upper-crust Brit girl, and touches on a lot of highly-pertinent issues like gender roles in lesbian relationships, perceptions of queerness among social classes, intersectional issues, drug addiction and so forth in a funny, charming way that never gets too heavy or too irreverent.

I'm honestly astonished at just how much depth and complexity they crammed into six episodes, especially with space left over for some crackling humor, though the fact that the series is based off an actual lesbian woman's life might be one of the reasons it feels so rich and realistic. There's just so much warmth and softness in every single scene, though it never crosses into the realm of wish-fulfilment and is always prepared to explore the various obstacles to queer romance, both in terms of interpersonal and external issues.

It's not exactly conclusive, because it's hard to cram a whole life into six episodes, but even if Netflix doesn't renew it for a second season, which they're notorious for doing with queer works, the first season is still incredibly smart and heartwarming. It's everything I ever wanted from a WLW romcom.

Based on the discussions above, it seems to have had a non-yuri ending. One possible explanation is that the translators saw this and lost interest, which is known to happen with stories that take a disappointing turn. However, nothing concrete has been stated, so this is just speculation from my end.

Look, some people find this series boring and some others find it funny and charming, but after a few dozen (maybe scores, maybe hundreds) of posts claiming "This doesn't fit my personal definition of 'yuri'," the only response left is,

Duly noted--so fucking what?

This forum's interesting that way. On Reddit, for instance, you have tons of salty people complaining about stories not fitting their expectations in discussions for pilot chapters or episodes, but the vitriol peters out by around the fourth or fifth episode, or the tenth chapter, or what have you (and you'd be especially hard-pressed to find criticisms of popular shows on their respective subreddits). The idea is that people who find that a series isn't for them choose to leave after a certain point, because consuming entertainment that doesn't entertain you is rather counterproductive, unless you're getting paid to write a critique or have legitimate criticisms about why something is problematic (these criticisms being generally more substantial than Where muh tribbing?). On Dynasty however, you've got people on the tenth, or twentieth, or hundredth page of a discussion bringing up the same criticisms that you'd see on the first page.

This might partly be because we don't really have chapter discussions here, so someone reading chapter one of a series in 2020 can't complain about it on a 2017 discussion thread. It's also fair for people to go This is my first time reading this, and my impressions are x, y and z. But even when you filter all that stuff out, you come across folks that sound like they've been keeping up with a series for dozens of chapters and still want it to be something that it never promised, or even wanted to be. I guess you could chalk it down to something like stupidity or denial or instigation or hate-reading, but it still doesn't seem to explain this level of dedication to ranting about something that doesn't give you any rewards. It's like making up a narrative about an abusive relationship with a celebrity on the Internet who doesn't even know who you are.

Ultimately, I guess that some series, by virtue of not 'progressing', become perpetual motion machines.

last edited at Nov 13, 2020 3:29PM

I've read both the AdaShima manga and the LN, so I wasn't going to watch the anime, since I figured it'd just be the same story for the fourth time. Then I learned that Akari Kito is voicing Adachi, and now I just have to check it out. She also voiced Momo in MachiMazo and Reimu from Touhou Cannonball, which proves that she can take good lesbians and make them godly.

The fact that this series is set within an alternative version of Japan that instituted an all-woman wing of the armed forces way back in the early 20th century still feels kinda surreal to me. Like, I get that your average yuri series won't get anywhere near long enough in serialization to both explore the main relationship in depth and flesh out the details of the world, but it's honestly just such a fascinating setting that we'll never learn more about because this series seems to be approaching a climactic arc. It's a shame, because the premise seems ripe for a 500-chapter, alternate-history period war drama about WLW romance in the backdrop of battle, with soldiers striving to hold on to hope and maintain their relationships even in the face of wartime nihilism and despair, but there's never going to be anywhere near enough demand for it.

I'm not one of those people who argues that if something isn't popular, then it won't be good, but I honestly wish yuri as a genre was more popular, because works like this and Roid just make me wonder about all the wonderful stories we could get if yuri manga had enough demand and security in serialization to approach the depth and scope of works like Kingdom or One Piece instead of being super-niche and primarily oriented with wrapping up the main romance in, like, forty chapters at best.

Then again, even Hirohiko freaking Araki wasn't allowed to put a lesbian romance into Stone Ocean back when it was running in Shonen Jump back in 2002, so I guess mainstream Japanese magazines are just way too focused on pandering to straight male or female demographics to give queer stories the platforms they need. The most popular example of lesbian rep in a recent mainstream series I can think of was Christa and Ymir in AOT, and we all know how terribly Isayama handled that. At least we still get anime-original stuff from people like Ikuhara, so all hope isn't lost, and Urasekai Picnic, which'll be airing next season, is a legitimately great horror/mystery series that also happens to be yuri, so maybe things are taking a turn for the better.

To get back to my original point, I'm guessing this series will probably be ending in around three chapters with a love confession, shortly before Indou and Kagami prepare for deployment. The prospect of them possibly being blown to bits by artillery or dying in trenches in the various terrible wars that punctuated the 20th century kinda puts a damper on the fluffiness of the yuri, but that's military romance for you. It would've been nice to see the author exploring a relationship between soldiers on the battlefield, but I guess a full-blown war drama would be simultaneously too dark and too long for this series to segue into. I hope they at least give us, like, one panel in the last chapter showing that Indo and Kagami survived all the wars and retired safely in some cozy corner of the countryside, though.

Wouldn't be an online forum without at least one unsettling Internet mystery. Be interesting if we turned this thread into something productive, though. Like a rant thread or something, built specifically for railing against general tropes and stuff that you don't like. Instead of clogging up discussions on a story's forum page or getting too salty on Dynasty Cafe, all dark emotions shall be redirected into this mysterious thread.

Be even better if we followed a general format, like- "Once upon a time, there was a perfect yuri manga. The girls had great chemistry, the story was developing wonderfully, and then in the penultimate chapter, a random guy strolled in and started to date one of the girls. Delete this

Just a random suggestion, though.

Well i don't want to be so harsh because you don't seem to be that objective on the subject. I mean it's good if it work but i don't think I will bet on any of this claims.

No, you're right. I just measured out the average amount of saliva spilled in the kissing scenes and it's considerably less than anything in a Mira doujin. After counting the number of times the girls talked about their feelings, I can confirm that it's less than 10% of what you'd find in Girl Friends. I tallied up the number of overall girls, and despite multiple checks, I found that they were far less than anything in WataMote. The manga is also about love triangles, but nobody actually ever talks about triangles, unlike Bloom Into You, which has flowers in the anime adaptation's OP that clearly indicate that there is blooming involved. I also asked the lesbian living two floors down if she knew about it, and she asked me why I was shaking my smartphone at her at 3 in the night, clearly proving that this series is Not Popular. I don't know how I could've been so naive instead of approaching a piece of media with Absolute Facts. Rest assured that this mistake will never be repeated.

I have now stowed my Feelings and Tastes in a briefcase and flung them into the nearest river. Having now attained peak objectivity, I'm off to the Louvre to yell at random tourists about why the Mona Lisa is only a 7.6/10, because she barely even has good tiddy. Thank you for enlightening me about the right way to read manga.

The trio has finally united! Is this what all those Marvel fans felt back in 2012 when the Avengers movie came out? At any rate, they've all got promises to keep and miles to go before they sleep (with each other).

Current status of our three protagonists:

Akira: Continues to cement her status as the manga's most complex, brilliantly-written character. The way she grapples with her entitlement versus her recent sense of inferiority, the way her sentiments and feelings both tie into her manipulative side and undermine her attempts at plotting, the way she's constantly trying to figure out the best way to make each individual happy, but still can't come to terms with the idea of the collective- it's all so excellent. Someone give Canno a goddamn medal.

Rin: Suffering from success right now. She's multi-track drifting between wise elder lesbian and dense harem lead with incredible efficiency, but still perfectly manages to perform her role as the triangle's grand unifier. Now that she's gotten a taste of what it's like to be in the audience, how'll she deal with it? Part of her wants to hold on, part of her wants to let go, all of her wants to kiss more girls- poor Rin. She better get some big dividends after this.

Mayuki: Suffering from success. Our queen literally can't stop topping girls. She laughs in the face of your fragile heterosexuality, and steadily becomes the center of your world. Can't wait for her to start dual-wielding lesbians. Her biggest worry right now is that she can't turn around without flattening five skyscrapers with her monster clit. Akira better give up on her basketball career, cause she ain't gonna be able to walk after Mayuki's done with her, and Rin's gonna find out that this airhead is worth an entire polycule's worth of gayness all by herself.

All in all, this continues to be one of my favourite ongoing series, and if Canno maintains this level of quality, it'll easily cruise into the history books. Hopefully, we'll get more lesbian polycules if this series is successful enough.

^ The last time a 2hu's head ornament came off was when Reimu knocked Shinki's side-ponytail undone. The ensuing explosion destroyed the PC-98 universe and necessitated the creation of a new one.

Not only does Serenata have good taste, but also good predictive abilities, too! Here's the top 10.

Alice X Marisa having more doujins than ReiMari will never cease to amaze me. On the one hand, you have the OG Touhou ship that's been around since the 90s, and on the other you have a small-but-popular pairing that's based on shared traits in character design and some minor interactions back in PC-98. Then Imperishable Night rolls around and gives us some excellent MariAli food, just as Touhou's popularity is exploding and Internet forums are growing increasingly popular for the distribution of memes and fanart. Many doujins are written, much shipping is conducted, and the fandom revels in the wonders of snarky greenhorn witch x kuudere professional magician. The heat dies down a bit, as is wont to happen with every flash-in-a-bottle ship, and then we get Subterranean Animism, another extremely popular Touhou entry that rekindles MariAli right up, especially with that legendary sleepover ending.

Once was a miracle, twice is a pattern, and reading patterns is the one thing Touhou fans excel at. MariAli becomes even bigger, even as IOSYS releases their iconic, memetic song, cementing Alice's fandom portrayal as a Marisa-obsessed nerd, while Marisa is typecast as the cheerful harem lead. As is the case with many, many, Touhou characters, memes overcome reality, and the MariAli train moves at light speeds, fed by some minor interactions in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody. At this point, ReiMari are ahead on Pixiv, particularly as more recent manga have shown us just how much time our two leads spend together and how affectionate they are, but MariAli is still a towering juggernaut that dominates the history of Touhou shipping. And with Cheating Detective Satori finally bringing Alice back into the fray and involving Marisa in her story, who's to say that MariAli won't experience a third grand resurgence? Only time will tell, but you bet I'm excited to find out.

This ship is like the Leicester City of Touhou pairings, and I feel like someone ought to make a YouTube video essay about just how meteoric its rise was. Personally, I prefer ReiAli, both because it's interesting and because the idea of the last link in the triangle being as popular as the other two is immensely compelling. But though I'd argue that it's a bit too late in Touhou's lifetime as a series to have another grand, scene-defining ship, ZUN has surprised us before, and who knows what the future might hold?

Plot twist: The potion the best friend slipped our MC was a long-acting one, and has steadily been influencing her to act in increasingly gay ways over time, setting the events of the plot into motion. As the old proverb goes, "Give a girl a pinch of love potion, and she'll be gay for a day. Teach her how to use love potions, and she'll be gay for life."

Yuri Djinn: Local lesbian, what is your wish?
Rena: I want a sex kitten.
(Three months later)
Rena: Goddamn it.

To borrow the popular romcom metric of Progress, Yuru Yuri is the equivalent of someone frantically spot-jogging in their apartment during a pandemic. Ridiculous amounts of effort are expended, vast amounts of time invested, big gains obtained (in terms of sales, spinoffs and two anime seasons), many litres of sweat and tears shed, much thirst accumulated, every possible permutation of ships and pairings tried out on a playlist, and all of it without moving one singular inch. Namori's picked out a cozy spot, and she ain't gonna be moving on. This is the woman who collaborated with the staff on Endro, a show where one girl deadass proposes to another, complete with dresses and a party and then everyone pretends like nothing happened next episode. It'll take more than time and logic for her to bend to the petty demands of yuri fans.

(Incidentally, Machikado Mazoku fans are people who expected to see light trotting and are now screaming as we reach the Olympics, AdaShima fans are people looking at a girl trying and failing to give herself a pep-talk in a dressing room twelve hours before the race even begins, YagaKimi fans are people who watched a girl go, "Why am I even running? Hell if I know, but since I'm here, I might as well set a world record."; Bright and Cherry Amnesia fans are people looking at lesbian Usain Bolt trying to remember how to run again, Tadakoro-san fans are people who alternate between cheering for the main ship as it moves like the Flash and weeping when it collapses from anaemia, Euphonium fans are still coming to terms with the fact that there was no race at all, Citrus fans are debating the ethics of doping as long as it gets you first place, Yamada and Kase fans are applauding politely as the lead couple trots along an idyllic park, and Nettaigyo fans are high on opium and have locked themselves in a dark room to fiercely debate the meaning of running, locomotion and life itself.)

Dissing a monogatari adaptation ? Tsk tsk tsk you must be tired of living son.

...... I will admit even for all my love of the monogatari series Hana really was the only one where I got a bit bored, they did Kaoru so dirty after it was finally her time to shine the script just didn't have it's usual shine.

And there wasn't any gay shit in it ..... With Kaoru as the main lead!!! Sacrilege all around.

That's an interesting take. Hanamonogatari was my favourite story, since they dispensed with the ecchi shit and token meta humor to give us an uncompromising, comprehensive glimpse into Kanbaru's mind. It felt dark and intense and focused and relentless in a way that Araragi's segments (Kizu aside) rarely did. The lack of yuri content is a legitimate argument against it, though I loved Kanbaru and Rouka's dynamic, and I think that Kanbaru's stories have always been about letting go before she charges in to find someone new. Monogatari repeatedly inverts your traditional episodic-arc structure by showing how one simple speech doesn't really cure people's depression or complexes, and many of the later arcs are excellent depictions of relapses or the effects of trying to speedrun trauma recovery. As someone who loves more cerebral, philosophical takes on romance as opposed to just basic horniness or girl-meets-girl stories, Kanbaru coming to terms with the fact that wishes sometimes never come true feels like the perfect reinforcement of her first arc, and if Kanbaru represents a girl who became her own monkey's paw, then Rouka represents someone who never even learned to wish until she ran out of imagination. Seeing them grapple with the ghosts of each other's pasts and futures felt much more interesting than any standard romcom shennanigans ever would, and though the ending was definitely a gut-punch, it felt a lot more natural to Kanbaru's theme of 'moving on' and 'accepting reality' then the appearance of a magical new girlfriend. I feel like yuri fans are desperate for fluff and cute, funny romances, but some of history's greatest love stories have been tragedies. I'm not endorsing the bury your gays trope here, but I do believe that it's unfair to dismiss any lesbian love story as illegitimate or flawed just because it doesn't have kisses or a happy ending, especially if it's trying to deliver a message.

In my experience, Hanamonogatari is a pretty love-it-or-hate-it section of the Monogatari series- the fans that liked the humor, quirky direction and surprise-based plots weren't fans of it, and those that appreciated the philosophical monologues, psychological aspects and emotional storytelling absolutely loved it. You could make equal arguments for it being verbose, pretentious tripe or the most heart-wrenching, intelligent story that the series has to offer, and though I firmly subscribe to the latter segment, I could see why the former has a point.

Sorry for the very long (and probably off-topic) post. I think Monogatari's amazing and was glad for a chance to gush about it, especially since Kanbaru's my favourite character and one of the reasons I got into yuri in the first place.

I love stories that take an old myth or a philosophical concept and spin interactions around them. Touhou, being so steeped in metaphors and folklore, lends itself particularly well to intelligent reflections upon life and love.

That last editor was a huge asshole, and his moms a hoe.

I'm pretty sure anyone would grow up with issues if one of their parents was a farming implement.

Wow the comment section sounds... crazy and confusing... for a light series like this..

We've done it, we finally found the phrase that sums up this forum as a whole.

^ Nope, true fact. Read up on J.K. Rowling's gradual descent into insanity, if you haven't already. It's some top-tier drama (unless you had any attachment to the books as a kid, in which case it'd just be kinda depressing). Afaik, she specified that wizards only started using toilets recently, which is why you see 'em in the series, but went with the open-defecation-into-a-black-hole route for most of wizarding history.

I guess Quiet-chan made her friend's metal gear become solid.