Our Teachers are Dating Volume 4 (manga review)

    Somewhat unexpectedly, Our Teachers are Dating Volume 4 (Seven Seas) came shrink wrapped. I just assumed it was some weird Amazon warehouse thing. Well, for what is mostly a sweet, simple comedy/romance, it turns out the final chapter of this final volume was about as steamy as it gets. I was surprised there wasn't an explicit content warning on it actually, but the shrink wrap now makes sense. More on that to come.

    Our Teachers are Dating is a very light rom-com about two women teachers at a school who fall in love, date, and in this final volume, get married. It's a simple story. There is really no drama, no character growth, it's just meant as a feel-good story, I guess. I would honestly say that it's below average. Nice but nothing special.

    This final volume had the two women telling their families that they were planning on marrying which at least provided some interesting dynamics, especially when one family does not take it well to start. But honestly, there isn't much to say about this volume or series. Do you want to read a simple rom-com about two lesbians teachers falling in love? Do you not want to have to think while you read it because there is no depth? Then you're in luck.

Eclair Bleue, Eclair Rouge, and Eclair Orange (manga reviews)

    During the period where I took a hiatus from blogging, I also had to decrease my manga purchases, and so as a result after reading the first two volumes of the Eclair series (Elcair and Eclair Blanc) I didn't purchase the final three (Rouge, Bleue, and Orange) [published by Yen Press]. I'm finally beginning to chip away at my backlog and given the nature of these volumes, it made sense to just talk about all three at once. And frankly, there isn't much to say.

    Do you like middling, repetitious, and tropy yuri stories that are way too brief, relatively simplistic, and often have an unresolved tone to the ending? Well then you're in luck, cause that's about all you get with these three. And BTW, if it wasn't clear, I'm not a super huge fan of this series.

    Let's start with the format. Each story is very short, shorter than your average chapter of a serialized manga. It's interesting to me, because while I don't enjoy reading short stories (literary fiction short stories), I have found that I do enjoy writing them. So with that growing understanding of what I like about my own writing of short stories, it has made me even more suspect of the one-off stories in manga. And frankly, these don't have much to say. A great short-story provides amazing depth on the characters, time, and setting without ever spending any time on it. The writing hints, implies, or at least provides fertilizer for the mind to imagine all that came before and all that will follow. You'll find very little writing on that level here. Further, a great short story manages to either really give meaningful insight into a character, situation, or event or actually transform (even if minutely) the character in the space of the short story. Again, you'll find very little of that in these stories.

Perfect World volume 1 strikes a great balance between characters and exploring the reality of living with a physical disability (Manga Review)

Perfect World vol. 1 - 7.5/10 (*see scoring rubric below)

Perfect World vol. 1 (Kodansha Comics) by Rie Aruga is a josei manga about a paraplegic man and a young woman who knew each other in high school and reconnect as adults. First, I am so glad to have another josei series released in English. As much as I love my high-school romances, I really do like reading about adults and want a lot more josei to be translated. But, perhaps most importantly, Perfect World seems to do a tremendous job balancing depicting the hard realities of significant physical disability with the romantic genre.

Tsugumi is working to become an interior designer after art school. At a company get together, she is reunited with a former crush from high school, Itsuki, who is now a junior architect at a good firm. They have fun catching up and enjoy their time at the party, but when Itsuki leaves, she notes that he can't get up and that's when he asks the waiter to bring his wheelchair over.

The Conditions of Paradise was actually decent (Manga Review)

The Conditions of Paradise - 6/10 (*see full scoring rubric below)

I know I sound a bit surprised in the headline, and honestly I was. The Conditions of Paradise (Seven Seas) is a stand-alone collection of yuri stories, many originally published in Comic Yuri Hime. I wasn't expecting much, I don't tend to like one-shots or brief series, and the nudity on the cover had me highly skeptical about the authenticity of the volume. I'm also not a fan of Akiko Morishima's work Yurikuma Arashi. But while far from perfect, it was better than I expected and some of it was pretty enjoyable. More than anything, it is a yuri manga about adult women! YAY!

The first three stories focus on long-time friends who finally come together romantically. One is a traveling, free-lance journalist who has loved the other one since high-school. The other has recently broken up with her boyfriend. Through a series of current events and flashbacks, we see them make progress, take the slow first steps together, and then become an intimate and close couple.

Our Dreams at Dusk volume 4 makes me wish it was a longer series (Manga Review)

Our Dreams at Dusk vol. 4 - 8/10

I really, really wished I could give this final volume of Our Dreams at Dusk (Seven Seas) a higher rating. But unfortunately, it ends too quickly. So much is jammed into this volume, so much is left unresolved, and so many things happen so quickly that the emotional impact is somewhat diminished.

That being said, it's still a wonderful volume for an incredible series. Our Dreams at Dusk dared to be open and honest about a range of LGBTQ issues in an incredibly realistic fashion. Volume 4 certainly upholds this important value, but doesn't rise to the heights I wish it had simply due to how much happens so quickly.

Volume 4 picks up with the Triangle House near completion. It is decided that it will be inaugurated with the wedding of Saki and Haru. It is also Christmas time, and we get deep insight into Tchaiko's personal life. We meet his partner (who is dying int he hospital) and learn about his partner's son and the intentional distance Tchaiko keeps from him.

Blank Canvas volume 3 in which Akiko makes her debut (Manga Review)

Blank Canvas: My so-called artist's journey Volume 3 - 7.5/10

In Blank Canvas volume 3 (Seven Seas), our author and auto-biographer, finally bridges the gap between her schooling in painting and drawing and her work as a mangaka. However, the foreboding foreshadowing of the prior volumes (in which I think something bad eventually happens to her high-school drawing instructor) are mostly missing from this volume. Instead, it concentrates on her life after graduation and first steps towards getting published.

After graduation, Akiko is forced to move back with her parents and leave her boyfriend to finish his studies. While with her parents, she gets a job working in her sensei's art studio where she displays a natural talent for pushing the promising students even further along. The two make a formidable teaching pair, but ultimately it won't pay the bills and her family insists she get a "real" job. But somehow she manages to still go to sensei's studio and also finally submits her first manga one-shot.

Still Sick volume 1 is a welcome adult yuri/LGBTQ manga (Manga Review)

Still Sick vol. 1 - 7/10

I'm really split on yuri manga as a genre. On one hand, I love the really great ones where there are deep, complex feelings between girls, where the gazes and blushes are filled with so much sub-text. The best of them speak to me on so many levels.

But on the other hand, some yuri is geared more towards a male gaze and audience (and is often just gross). And somewhere in the middle, is the yuri that just fails to commit itself to same-sex relationships at all, feeling more like queer-baiting than anything else. Add to that, a lot of yuri is focused on school girls and sometimes I just want actual adults in my manga. Overall it can get a bit hard to separate the wheat from the chaff in yuri.

So I'm always on the lookout for yuri involving adult women, and even more so for manga that might actually represent these women as lesbians, true LGBTQ+ representation. While not a perfect first volume by any stretch, Still Sick vol. 1 (Tokyopop), is promising enough in both regards to be well worth a read and with room to grow in authenticity as the story progresses.

Yuri Life - actual gosh darn adults in love! (Manga Review)

Yuri Life - 7/10

I really struggled with giving a rating to Yuri Life. It is a collection of unrelated very short comedy yuri stories about adult women in love. In some ways, it was pure fluff. In other ways it was really affecting to me. In the end, it made me feel lots of warm squishy feels so I think I liked it.

First and foremost, I am always excited to read yuri about adult women. I'm all for high-school girls in love, don't get me wrong. But as an adult, I definitely have a different set of feelings and emotions when I read about adult women in love with each other. So anything that adds to that canon is likely to be a good thing.

The stories in Yuri Life are all comedic in nature, nothing too heavy (with one pretty strange but interesting exception). It almost has the feel of a 4-koma, with each page being a joke with a punchline. Within each story, there is some flow between the pages but each page also stands on its own. Not my normal taste, as I like more narrative stories, but pretty well done none-the-less.

Missed It Monday - Wotakoi: Love is Hard For Otaku (Anime Review)

Missed It Monday is the ongoing series where I review anime and manga I missed when they first came out to see if there are great series out there that I need to add to my life.

Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku - 6.5/10

Wotakoi: Love Is Hard For Otaku does an admirable job filling a much needed gap in my manga/anime habits: series focused on actual, honest to goodness, adults! Let's be honest. I'm 39. I can't only (notice I said "only") read about high-school girls in love with each other. Right? So I'm always on the lookout for great josei manga or adult-focused anime series.

Wotakoi isn't great, but it also isn't very problematic either. It does it's job and was pleasant enough to have been worth watching once, and since all the characters are adults, and those adults are kind to each other, it made it a good enough fit.

Momose is a young woman starting her first day at a new company. She's also a relentless fujoshi otaku and has either ruined every relationship she's been in because of it, or had to hide it in order to appear "normal." On her first day, she bumps into a middle-school friend, Nifuji, who is already working at the company and is also a gaming otaku. Comforted by his presence, they rekindle their friendship.