An Otome-kei Nitpick towards Purity in Yuri
Traditionally yuri manga and anime are made for girls (generally, I guess, teenagers/young adults). Is this how Americans consume yuri manga and anime?
I guess it’s also a bit of a misnomer, being a marketing term nowadays.
This question popped into my head while reading Voiceful, an almost-one-shot manga published by Seven Seas. What struck me as interesting was reading some of the author’s notes at the end which said something about it not being very “yuri” and will focus on writing about stories with relationships only girl can have with another girl. The author is nawoko, and it was originally published in a yuri magazine, Monthly Yuri Hime. Actually you can read about it from massive-yuri-maniac Erica Friedman herself. And Voiceful really isn’t that “yuri,” or whatever that means.
The first possibility as it occurred to me why nawoko would say such a thing was that maybe someone told her so, or maybe compared to the other publications on the scene. Or maybe Voiceful doesn’t lend itself to the more erotic or romantic relationship found in her doujinshi? I don’t know.
As I read through the comic, the story was not focused on the yuri-ness. Quite the opposite, it focused on a relationship between two girls, each who struggled with life in a big way, and each was able to see a reflection of herself in the other and beyond. Actually, that sounds typical of yuri material, right? But this…is not really unique to a girl-girl relationship. In shounen manga this is quite common of a theme between rivals, at least that’s exactly where I’ve seen it repeatedly.
For what it is worth, the way the relationship unfolded was uncommon, may it be yuri or otherwise. It certainly could be something that only happen between two girls. You have a shut-in who lived on an emotional thread hanging by the balance on top of a voice over streaming radio. The other girl is the voice behind the website, but she’s just using that voice as an outlet for her own emotional needs. The best part of the story might be that third girl who took in the lonesome canary and nurtured her. She gave her an occupation to deal with it and released her music on the web. It’s like the story has places to go but it ended just right as the shut-in and the singer begin to develop their relationship beyond what may be socially.
But it sort of bothers me. Why do I read yuri stories and watch anime with those themes? On one hand, I totally avoided shows like Strawberry Panic, but I adore things like Marimite. It’s like I am forced to discern something within this category, this relationship genre, that there is something wholly good and something kind of terrible. I don’t know what it is. It’s like that funny feeling when you finish reading a serious but light-weight relationship manga between two girls, and the ads at the end of the book wants you to check out Kashimashi. To me that’s like putting ads for Eiken (for example) in Comic LO, or something.
Why? Is this one of those “STRAIGHT FROM JAPAN” nonsense? It’s not that Strawberry Panic or Kashimashi are bad titles per se, but they’re like the Queen’s Blades of the Anime RPG Fantasy/fanservice genre, as applied to yuri. I can understand why some people (like Friedman) would love to strut those titles, but I’m uncertain how can anyone recommend them to someone like me. [Then again, I do watch that silly fanservice anime…] Or anyone else indiscriminately.
I just don’t buy it. But why are all yuri titles pushed along alike? Why does it seem these goggle-wearing fans work the agenda indiscriminately? It’s more than what I can take seriously. In other words, I think yuri is fine if it’s the side effect of some great relationship as told through a story about the said relationship. I have no problems with Simoun’s asexual/bisexual/heterosexual/homosexual mixed-up mother goose; in fact I adore it as it fascinates like few other sci-fi/fantasy settings in all of anime. But when it stops being about the relationship and become something on its own, it just is laughably bad.
Maybe I’m just all about the otome-kei moe style and when I deal with non-otome-kei moe-type yuri (is there such a thing?) it pisses me off? I don’t know. It’s more like I have Maria+Holic playing in the background of my brain when I try to take stories like Strawberry Panic seriously. And the sad thing is, I think Maria+Holic is better at it (at least when it comes to the anime).
This post is brought to you by The Good Witch of the West, volume 2. Now that’s good yuri right there.
I would argue with your initial assertion that yuri anime/manga are made for girls - yuri anime/manga are largely aimed at a male audience, as evidenced by the sorts of publications in which they run and certain stylistic approaches such as the moe aesthetic. While yuri did originate in shoujo and josei manga (such as Oniisama e… and Claudine, both of which are Riyoko Ikeda titles), the focus has shifted such that the stories are targeted toward a male audience. Even in titles that don’t seem to be intended for males, the audienceship tends toward more male than female, such as you’ll find with MariMite.
There are manga about lesbians and lesbian relationships that are aimed at women, but these are entirely different from the stuff you’ll find meant for men. Its sort of like how manga featuring homosexual male relationships meant for gay men are completely different from BL.
ADWM: most of the good yuri is aimed at girls, and the male stuff isn’t usually the ‘pure’ yuri - which is exactly this problem.
In the US yuri is mostly read by the fake lesbians (be they male or female) who don’t really care what it is as long as two girls are together. I’ve encountered no shortage of girls IRL who say ‘I love yuri!’ and then tell me how much they loved Strawberry Panic and then I yell at them for liking shitty anime. It’s very ‘fad’ it’s very ‘fake’ and it’s very pissing me off.
>> I would argue with your initial assertion that yuri anime/manga are made for girls - yuri anime/manga are largely aimed at a male audience, as evidenced by the sorts of publications in which they run and certain stylistic approaches such as the moe aesthetic. While yuri did originate in shoujo and josei manga (such as Oniisama e… and Claudine, both of which are Riyoko Ikeda titles), the focus has shifted such that the stories are targeted toward a male audience. Even in titles that don’t seem to be intended for males, the audienceship tends toward more male than female, such as you’ll find with MariMite.
This is an argument I want to avoid by using the word “traditionally.” FWIW, it’s beside my point in this post. As someone who is precisely what you describe–a man who enjoy some yuri with moe aesthetics (not so sure how that translate in prose, but anyways), there are still some yuri that are bothersome precisely because of those aesthetics. This is why I end up talking about moe.
I think it’s mostly about niche vs sub-niche and how branding/ marketing works in the US. There’s not enough of a market to make all these subtle distinctions, so companies throw a wide net and market a lot of different sub-genres under one catch-all genre. At the same time, a good percentage of anime/ manga fans in the US don’t care or know enough to make all these subtle distinctions anyways, so everything kind of works out.
As far as Kashimashi goes, I haven’t watched the anime, but I would easily recommend the manga to anyone interested in so-called ‘yuri’ titles.
“But why are all yuri titles pushed along alike? Why does it seem these goggle-wearing fans work the agenda indiscriminately?”
I think you could possibly say that there’s a dearth of titles that come out that we know about that are yuri-centric compared to other genres out there. But I think that might be a more BS answer as well.
Could it have something do to with perceptions on what yuri is “supposed to be”, and with properties like Strawberry Panic and Kashimashi taking it too far or too little, and corrupting that something in the process? The difference between how Marimite is and what some imagine/want it to be? I think it helps in my case that I don’t necessarily see purity as a necessity for the relationships, but I guess that it helps make the relationships seem more enjoyable/aesthetically pleasing in a way? :P
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with liking Strawberry Panic (though I think that when the Kashimashi manga gets into serious business mode near the end is very good) compared to say, Marimite, or even liking both but it depends on what you’re looking for. Are you looking for lol yuri overload, romance, pieces during a relationship? Regardless, I don’t know, some people just like seeing two girls together in general, no matter what the means.
I feel like I’m not saying this right. :v
I am going to go with STRAIGHT FROM JAPAN mixed with a lack of understanding of the lesbian continuum.
I think lesbian porn (ok, not really porn, but like how anime is cartoon porn) made for guys is not the same as yuri! But the two are mixed up, so. In that sense I’m saying what JP is saying.
Alex’s Kasimasi recommendation is so full of innuendo that made me laugh, btw.
However I think the big disservice with the whole “wide net, niche versus super niche” mentality is that it does mistreat some titles, and turn some people away from the genre. But w/e.
It’s like that funny feeling when you finish reading a serious but light-weight relationship manga between two girls, and the ads at the end of the book wants you to check out Kashimashi.
If Seven Seas had more yuri properties, they could afford to be picky about which manga they advertise at the back of the book. The only one that’s really comparable to Voiceful is The Last Uniform; perhaps First Love Sisters, but that’s stretching it too.
If they owned something like Kiriko Nananan’s Blue or Hiyori Otsu’s Clover, they’d probably be pushing that there instead.
“I think lesbian porn (ok, not really porn, but like how anime is cartoon porn) made for guys is not the same as yuri! But the two are mixed up, so.”
That is a problem. But it is a “but what can you do at the moment?” thing.
Though now that I think about it, I remember how it was adopted that the relationships you tend to follow would be “shoujo-ai”, and the more hardcore stuff (relationship and porn-wise, perhaps) would be “yuri” as a means of differentiation. Though it’s semantics, I guess.
I do like when the latter is a result of the former after the relationship has developed well. I’m not going to lie. :D
I think some of the confusion here is between yuri and shoujo-ai. At least in the west, the latter term isn’t used much and “yuri” is used to refer to them both, even though they’re pretty distinct.
I don’t think it’s fruitful to subdivide yuri into further categories in the context of my rant. Maybe it’s better to recognize the contexts where yuri become an element or a draw for a certain story, versus stories that exists for the sake of these yuri elements? It’s a matter of balance, almost.
In Voiceful, it’s kind of clear that the author did intend a “yuri” story but she ended up writing a story that was yuri only in some abstract sense. I think that context was what made it enjoyable to read, rather than some obvious signs of lesbianism that overpowers the need for context.
I’ve always seen yuri as more of a setting, a premise, rather than something that sets you up for what kind of story to expect. By definition, despite being a vague and probably incorrect definition, “yuri” is about relationships between girls, and that can refer to something like Strawberry Panic or something like Voiceful (which I have yet to read). What I mean is, calling something yuri and expecting it to be pure - or the opposite - is like expecting all visual novels to be nekige Key-esque dramas. Of course, it still bothers me how some of the more…explicit games sold at JList are placed next to titles like Crescendo and Kana Imouto, but I guess that comes back to what Erin said about having a limited pool of examples.
Long story short, I can understand your gripe with the varying portrayal of relationships in yuri stories, but I’d say that’s more to do with the fact that yuri isn’t as much of a genre as it is a premise.
I have some problem making sense of what you’re saying. I guess when you say premise I think “science fiction” or “giant robots” or “nakige” which are more like elements? How does that have anything to do with my gripe though?
My gripe is that some things that are categorized as “yuri” to me is not really yuri but merely girl-on-girl action. These things might be yuri in a technical sense as defined by some, but not really to me.
It’s like saying Simoun is a mecha anime. On a technical level it is, but seriously now…
That is a really cute picture you got there.
Watch Manabi Straight!
yuri’s awesome :3