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victuuri-victory · 7 years

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Top 10 Yuri Manga Without A School Setting

edit: removed the “keep reading” line, because it cuts off the post when people reblog it, at least when on mobile

There’s a certain formula for producing bad yuri manga- default highschool setting (+1 if it’s all-girls and all-girls somehow equals all-gay), a unhealthy relationship dynamic, unrealistic-but-stock characters (the shy protagonist and the perfect student council president), strict gender roles of butch x femme, males are never present, you get the idea. There’s lots of great yuri out there that takes place in highschool, but I’ll admit that the saturation of bad stuff has tainted my view of the setting.

That said, regardless of your views on yuri’s default setting, here’s the Top 10 Yuri Manga with a fresh change of scenery!

10. Gouhou Yuri Fuufu Hon

On some days, we just don’t have it in us for serious, literary stuff. I want this list to include cute and relaxing sugary stuff too, and Gouhou Yuuri Fuufu Hon fits right in.

I might have a soft spot for moe art, but Hachishiro makes the sickest covers, I’m not even kidding.

Set in a sort-of-fantasy world where same-sex marriage is accepted and animals ears are a thing, Haru is a shy, younger girl who is married off to Sensei, a novelist oblivious to Haru’s uncertainties on how to be Sensei’s wife. Yes the dynamic is a little stock. You might realize the part on arranged marriage is kinda problematic, but this is a not-serious moe manga that doesn’t go there. It’s nothing mindblowing, and it’s not got much of a plot, but it’s a fluffy and enjoyable slice-of-life piece on marriage and domestic stuff.

The art is cute af, and works very well to convey changes in their emotions.

9. Sweet Guilty Love Bites

Sweet Guilty Love Bites is about four cabaret hostesses who work at Club Rose. It’s separated into “Sweet Guilty” and “Guilty Love”. In “Sweet Guilty”, Kirie returns from a bad night of hostessing, to discover Myata, a young woman sleeping in the streets near her house. In “Guilty Love”, Niina, a hostess and a single mother, has a one-night stand with Mayu, only to discover the next day that Mayu is the preschool teacher of her daughter.

Despite the seriousness of what I just summarized, this is a light and fluffy manga with funny moments, and everything ends happily for our dear characters.Though sometimes, the manga struggles to shift from this lighthearted tone when addressing serious life issues that its characters face.

The art is nothing stunning, but it’s decent and carries the plot just fine.

8. Rock it, GiRL!!

Rock it, GiRL!! is about a street guitarist and vocalist, Kaname, who is approached by a talent agency to be part of a band. But Kaname is not an ambitous person and thinks little of her talents. Nevertheless, she decides to give a band a shot. She discovers, however, that a) the talent agency love her as a guitarist, but thinks lowly of her vocal ability, and b) the girl who will sing the songs in her place, is an arrogant tsundere, much in contrast to Kaname’s mopey, sappy self. Animosity develops between them, but they must rise above this personal drama as the show must go on.

I have to say, the characters aren’t exactly sympathetic, but they’ve got real issues, they are offbeat, and are basically a fresh breath of air, away from the standard “sweet, nice, moe girls in a girl band” cliche. Plus the plot is wild, given the seemingly predictable premise.

The art itself is simple, but in a weirdly cute and silly way.

7. Murcielago

I would like to defend Murcielago’s presence on this list by saying that yes it is trash, HOWEVER, it is the kind of trash that nobody expects from the yuri genre.

Specifically, Murcielago is guilty-pleasure gore trash. It’s what we’ve seen played out again and again with a certain Western genre, but always with a male character depicted: violent movies centered on a loose-cannon anti-villain protagonist, who is tasked with being a criminal detective but who really does kill more people than the police are comfortable with. In the backdrop, some sort of vast conspiracy is brewing, where all the crimes that the detective solves, are actually linked together, and this whole conspiracy is somehow, quite self-aggrandizingly, all about this detective protagonist (we just don’t know how yet).

Yes, that was weirdly specific, but we all know that’s an entire genre.

In that sense, Murcielago is predictable, but it’s also very fun action-packed reading. Plus the gender and lesbian of its protagonist, is something quite unexpected, considering the “cute nice fluffiness” that characterizes most manga lesbians, and the male protags who dominate violent action comics for both manga and Western comics.

You know she’s gonna be able to solve the crime, you know the Villain of the Week is gonna die, but there’s still a perverse excitement in finding out how she does it, and what ridiculous over-the-top crime features in the latest issue.

Read beneath that surface, and Murcielago can be a little deeper than that. Our dear psycho-lesbian detective does spare people, and she justifies it by outwardly saying she spares “cute girls”, but that shallow explanation doesn’t hold water. She’s perfectly ok with mutilating and killing incompetent and immoral “cute girls”, which she has made no comment about. She’s specifically sparing a) completely moral “cute girls”, and hiring b) dangerously competent, morally shadier “cute girls” as her proteges. In fact, when she meets a bomb prodigy, she has no qualms morally corrupting her from a) to b), because she really needs a demolitions expert. She’s secretly building a ruthless army, and we don’t yet know why.

6. Lonely Wolf, Lonely Sheep

Lonely Wolf, Lonely Sheep involves the coincidential meeting of two girls who are coincidentially both named Imari, when their names are called in the hospital waiting room. Even more coincidentially, they are both there for left hand injuries. They declare their meeting one of Fate and the stars.

The dynamic is a little stock- we have the tall tomboyish landscaper “Big Imari”, contrasted with the petite girly artist “Little Imari”. But this short comic serves up more than just a plotless dose of sugary cute, the arc does turn serious. “Little Imari”’s injuries hide a dark secret, and the past is coming to claim her.

5. Octave

Miyashita Yukino is a burnt-out pop idol- the industry is not what she thought it was, and she has no idea where to go with life from thereon. The people of her hometown do not welcome her, and believe she must have had to be a slut to get ahead as an idol. What really cuts deep in this manga, is the portrayal and young age of Yukino- the reality of the pop industry and the sacrifices she had make for her dream, such as dropping out of school, has aged her beyond her years.

She then tries to make a living as a talent manager in Tokyo, but her life still seems devoid of purpose, she is drifting and still yearns for fame. During a regular trip to the nearby laundromat, she meets Setsuko, who is the sister of the laundromat’s owner. She finds some comfort in Setsuko’s company, but her problems do not disappear, and in fact the landromat is facing financial difficulties.

My main problems with Octave is that the characterization can be unsympathetic. Yukino is jaded, and certainly mature in some ways, but she is also emotionally childish- she can be exceedingly mopey, sometimes blames her problems on others, seeks external validation to an unhealthy extent, and generally creates unnecessary drama and conflict with Setsuko, who is emotionally flawed as well. Don’t get me wrong, characters should have flaws, but too much of it, and it rubs me up the wrong way and I kinda want to slap them. The plot also starts to slow rather than speed up as the manga progresses, which is just not to my taste.

However, I would simply chalk those flaws up to the inconsistent quality of Octave, where the quality is high, the manga is amazing, the emotions, the issues and ennui from the characters and the atmosphere, can be quite intensely felt.

4. Gunjo

If you asked me what the manga embodiment of misery is, I might just point you to Gunjo. Gunjo tears your heart out, and then puts it back in for a split second, just so it can tear it out again.

“It begins in the moments after a horrible crime has been committed. A woman has asked someone to kill her husband for her. She has asked someone she knows she can use – another woman, a lesbian, who has been in love with her since high school. The woman who requested the death is abusive, derisive. The woman who committed the crime is passive, almost apathetic. She flinches in the face of the other’s harsh words, but doesn’t fight back.” -(Okazu)

They then go on the run, but how far can they go before they’re caught? Does it make a difference that the cunning, abusive woman who has plotted the murder of her husband, was she herself horrifically abused by this man? Can something resembling love ever develop between two people so violent and broken?

Gunjo is amazing in its fan disservice. The murder succeeds because the killer seduces the man, and kills him while naked. But even in this scene, the violence and her disgust completely detracts from any sexual appeal of her nudity. Even in a kiss between the two main characters, their pain permeates.

My problem with Gunjo however, is specifically that the darkness never lets up. Perhaps it is my own sensitivity, but I found it very hard to complete it.

3. Pulse

It’s a full-color! I love full colors. Anyway, moving on,

Pulse tells the story of Mei, a renowned heart surgeon who is also a cold-hearted playgirl. Lynn is a college student who needs a heart transplant, but she refuses to get one (the risks are high). When they meet, Mei feels a strange kind of pull towards Lynn, almost like she’s truly attracted for once in her life. As they grow closer, Lynn strikes a deal- if she can make Mei fall in love with her, she will get the surgery, but Mei has to be the one to do the surgery. Lynn trusts her.

The premise can create all sorts of problems, but that is surprisingly averted. Mei doesn’t pressure Lynn into sex, nor does she fake romantic attraction. Lynn doesn’t sacrifice for Mei. Basically, Mei is no asshole, she’s just uninterested in people, and Lynn is no pushover. Also, the art is mighty fine.

2. Philosophia

Philosophia is about a college romance wherein the two anti-social, apathetic main characters, Ai and Tomo, bond over smokes and coffee. But these little things are not enough to exorcise their inner demons. As Ai starts to feel for Tomo, she becomes torn up over these emotions- her existing familial relationships are far from ideal, and that has fostered her inability to really understand love. Tomo is strange and disinterested, and it doesn’t seem likely that she will return Ai’s feelings. Furthermore, Tomo wants to leave the country, and the means by which she gets the money she needs, is best kept a secret.

Philosophia has both realistic yet unique characters (they do not fall too far into “always mopey” or “always sweet and excitable”, a common problem even in this list), and also incorporates a series of sobering twists and turns.

1. Collectors

Nito Shinobu and Kanzaki Takako both love shopping. Shinobu collects books and Takako collects clothes. But as they move together, let’s just say there are spaaaaaace constraints.

Collector is nothing grand or wild- this is the Happily Ever After, but Collector is important specifically for showing how life goes on, that it is comedic and fun and relatable.

Yuri tends to face the opposite problem to Western LGBT material of the past. Older Western material is melodramatic and tragic, the gay identity of the couple is frequently mentioned and becomes a source of tragedy as they face persecution, which ultimately results in their suicide or murder. In yuri, the world is often isolated down to the couple- they have feelings for each other, but other characters rarely exist and if they do, these characters do not acknowledge the romance. “Lesbian” is never said, and talks of marriage are only meant as comedy.

There has been a lot of praise for Yuri On Ice (which actually involves a male homosexual couple despite the title) for how the other characters are fleshed out too, for how they recognize and acknowledge the relationship between Viktor and Yuuri. There is a similar kind of realism going on in Collectors. There is a feeling of the world actually existing.

Collectors gives attention to the tender moments, the little things, that make a relationship, instead of it all being grand kisses in front of everyone or a emotionally charged graduation speech. There is no feeling of such performance. Even the fights in Collectors are realistic, not the kind formed from wacky misunderstandings, and in fact the kind with a proper resolution and not where they leave, and then kiss and make up but the problem still exists.

#yuri #lgbt #yuri manga #collectors manga #philosophia #pulse manga #gunjo #octave #murcielago #lonely wolf lonely sheep #rock it girl!!#sweet guilty love bites #gouhou yuri fuufu hon

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