Just wanted to lament how I barely have any motivation to read JP yuri nowadays. I started reading CN webnovels a few months back and the sheer quality of them compared to every JP plot I've seen makes all of the JP yuri I've read fall flat in comparison. On one hand, novels tend to be deeper in the first place unless the mangaka makes 100% use of the art medium to tell their story like in Bloom Into You. On the other hand, it feels like yuri manga still has a sizeable amount of S class yuri or yuri that panders to men while CN yuri, at least the stuff I read from jjwxc, pander to queer women.
I tried reading JP webnovels too, but they also fall flat compared to the CN novels I've read. I Favor the Villainess is one I read that I sorta liked but not really cause I felt the politics talked about in the novel ended up being very immature and the romance felt forced in the end. I don't have a CN novel that I can directly compare to it, mostly cause all of the "villainess" novels tend to be quick transmigration novels and can't really be compared to regular isekai novels...
What I can compare though, is how well-written the CN novels are. I read most CN novels using Google translate cause there aren't many translators for yuri novels and I can still see how good they are. A few examples being Female General, Eldest Princess (fully translated), My Feelings Can Wait (first 9 chapters translated), and Three Hundred and Sixty Five Kinds of Difficult Living Methods (no translations).
Female General, Eldest Princess is a story about a woman crossdressing as her twin brother to enter the military to avenge her village that was slaughtered by the Huns set in ancient China. She eventually becomes a general while the other main character is the eldest princess of the current dynasty whose mother just died, sending her and her brother's positions into peril. Her goal is to successfully survive and seal her brother as the crown prince. The romance between her and the other MC is very very slow burn and the biggest focus of the story is on the political plot of the imperial court and the revenge plot in the military that end up mixed cause the eldest princess is a very ruthless and smart woman. This story is almost 200 chapters long so I tried very hard to condense it into a paragraph, but by God did the author do a phenomenal job of making this story extremely good in all aspects.
My Feelings Can Wait is entirely different. It's a rebirth story set in the entertainment circle or think Hollywood where both the main characters are actresses. It's an extremely angsty story of a broken relationship, loss of life, and second chances. The two MCs gradually reenter into each others lives, figure out what made them not work before, and actually resolved their mistakes before finally getting back together. I cried multiple times reading this and sympathized with both the MCs through all their hardships from the past life to where they are now. I have yet to read a single yuri manga that tugged at my heartstrings the way this one did.
The last one is Three Hundred and Sixty Five Kinds of Difficult Living Methods and honestly? This novel was everything I never knew I wanted. It's a suspenseful murder mystery, but with YURI. The murder mystery itself was also very well-written and engaging. The whole dynamic is detective x criminal except things aren't as they seem and the relationships and strings tying things together are a big surprise when you finally get to the reveal. The romance is also a lot more prevalent than I expected from a plot like this, but tbh it really added to the overall drama since it involved criminal psychology and the like. Another thing I want to point out is how well the author treated mental illness in this work. Mentally ill characters were treated respectfully and weren't villainized for their illnesses.
Anyways, just those 3 stories out of the dozens I've read already have way more interesting and engaging stories than any yuri manga I've ever read. It's made every yuri one shot or manga I've read since then (with certain exceptions) feel bland and tasteless.
