hello! do you have any yuri manga recommendations? im trying to read more of it but i get overwhelmed with how there are simultaneous so many and so few
Aaaah dude I hear you. I was voracious for a time and went dumpster diving into mangadex’s yuri tag and consumed the entire thing a while back and there are a lot of bad takes. a lot. I’m overwhelmed thinking about the mountain of trash i had to climb to stand here but i would absolutely love to share some works that stuck with me!!
I think Kase-san and Morning Glories is a great place to start, and I consider it to be a hallmark gl series for a lot of reasons. It’s an easy way in-- the stakes are low, the drama is minor, both characters are charming and wholesome but not Class S Chaste. But there’s lots of gl manga that take place at a high school and are about two girls falling in love, so if you’ve already covered Kase-san, check out Hana ni Arashi or Hana to Hoshi. I will always make a case for A Tropical Fish Yearns for Snow, even though it gets flak for not being Yuri Enough or whatever because i think it is nice to look at and sweet to read
Bloom Into You is as fantastic as everyone says, and although I personally think it’s a better character piece than it is a romance, it’s still well worth the read. BiY is concerned with many lesbian experiences and really tries to showcase that. Not exclusively gl, but Shimanami Tasogare is a very nice read that addresses and looks at a number of LGBT experiences and features a lesbian couple as part of the main cast and should definitely be considered part of the queer canon.
Speaking of the queer canon, please consider reading My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness, which is not a manga so much as it is a manifesto. There is no easy way to read My Lesbian Experience, every pass at it is affecting, and it hurts to read about hurt but if you’re reading gl work, i think it’s important to read this one real lesbian’s take alongside it.
if I had a nickel for every gl that was about a girl getting into a relationship with a girl while already being in a relationship, i’d have a couple of nickels. which isn’t much, but it’s weird that it happens so often. please note that these feature cheating pretty prominently. Run Away With Me Girl is a soaring, magical manic middle finger to compulsory heterosexuality and the idea that marriage and children is for men and women only. Even Though We’re Adults plays out much the same way, except it is more about the Guilt of realizing you’re Gay but in a relationship with a Man. (Takako Shimura has a couple of gl works, so if this one doesn’t call out to you, try Sweet Blue Flowers, which is high school slow burn. Her work is often about messy people with messy emotions and can be divisive, but I admire her hauntingly sparse layouts and very human characters.) After Hours is a little different, a little more hip, a little more about girls who meet girls at clubs and then stumble into being DJs and then perform with their new gfs at a club after they break up with their bfs.
Lesbians who fuck up, so much! So Do You Wanna Go Out Or is a masterclass in disaster lesbians but it’s also really smart about how it presents sex-- frank and fun and kind of mortifying. Still Sick is a meta manga about messy lesbians who create doujin and manga.
Some recommendations for gl that aren’t strictly manga: Her Shim Cheong, a historical Korean revenge thriller webcomic about the role class, religion, and tradition take in oppressing women and women who love women. Mage and Demon Queen is good self-aware genre schlock full of lamp-shading and is about what happens to all those little girls who grow up with crushes on Disney villans. Roadqueen: Eternal Roadtrip to Love is giddy manic goodtimes that almost borders on parody, but like, with a pure heart.
As a rule, yuri is a niche genre, so if you find a work you enjoy, try seeing if the author has done more because quite often they have. Morinaga Milk and Akiko Morishima are big names and have quite a few works, so definitely try something by them because odds are there’s something you’re going to like! Also, basically anything Sexy Akiba Detectives scanlates is good shit bc they’re good taste gang
There are more titles I’d recommend, but then it starts getting into the weeds of preference. Stuff like Cheerful Amnesia, My Wish is to Fall in Love Until You Die, Pieta, or Just Let Your Future Burn, which I like well enough but would have difficulty selling. There are dozens and dozens of high school romances as mentioned, so I could rattle off more of those, too, haha.
looking forward, we’ve got Otherside Picnic and Adachi and Shimamura getting anime adaptations soon, so consider checking those out!
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