My Top 5 Yuri Manga: #3 Husky and Medley

Number three--Hasu x Medo! I expect I'm going to get a few reactions of 'wtf what is this' because of how freaking awesomely obscure this one is. I remember when it was just a passing thread and when people were squinting over a video made by an awesome Vocaloid artist in tribute to this...and now it's grown up into a manga! Basically, Husky x Medley is a sweet, absolutely breathtaking manga based on real events. You really gotta know the history to appreciate it. It started off as a thread on 2chan, the Japanese imageboard...

...where this girl (codenamed Medley) had a crush on another girl (codenamed Husky), and wanted to find out if there was any 'weakness' to this too-perfect girl. Her 2chan buddies helped out, giving her advice on what to text, and then crazily, events culminated into them actually confessing and getting together. No joke. And refreshingly, unlike many yuri manga, it goes on after they get together, and there's a bit of super-awesome yuri in the last chapter. There's only seven chapters, and all of them are available here.

Part of the reason why this series resonates so strongly with me is because of some important personal reasons. Important Personal Reasons. So I'm going to guess that for other people with different experiences, it might not be as heart-tugging or meaningful. But for me, when I read it, it was very sweet (maybe almost too sweet!) and brought up a lot of memories. Again, it's just me--subjective experiences here.

The writing style is pretty much exactly taken from dialogue and events that were provided on the 2chan thread. The girl would update her anonymous internet friends via her phone or computer, and kept them up on stuff that happened after a date, or things that they did after hanging out, or things that she worried about. So the dialogue style is very much imageboard-style, and in my opinion, the translators did a seriously good job conveying the feeling into English, haha. All you people out there who diddle with imageboard stuff will know what I mean.

Original 2chan thread, archived! Yes, you can see it all in its full glory if you can read Japanese, and you'll also get all the cultural nuances and all the saccharine cuteness of it that we non-readers cannot glean. :( Seriously, it's so damn adorable. It even ends in a way that would be utterly super-coincidental, were it not for all the archived threads of it and some screenshots that people took. I'm not going to spoil it, for people who are interested in reading it. The series really is short enough to run through in less than an hour. Also, this here is another site that logs all the dialogue that it took from the 2chan thread, showing what was used in the manga-fied version. You can see that Husky and Medley getting together took place in July of 2008. I hear that there's also another manga of it floating around out there that tries to portray stuff more realistically, in a different style, but I haven't found it yet.

Lastly...the tribute video to these two real life girls, now off in college in Japan. Made by the ever awesome Vocaloid artist DixieFlatline (you should also check out his unrelated other work, Just Be Friends).



Man, this work really leaves me with a generally happy and obsessive glow. I think that if you are in a relationship with someone, and you have a lot of passion, and can still remember how you met your SO, then reading this is going to give you loads of fuzzy feeling. And if you're a girl, in a relationship with another girl, then this might hold even more meaning for you. Check it out.

So, in summary. Plotwise, Husky and Medley is definitely romance and slice of life. There's no real plot, but if you really want to dig into it, the plot is Medley trying to get with Husky and going all the way. :3 Artwork wise, it's not the best--understandable, for what is pretty much a volunteer work. A thread made by anonymous people, formed into a dialogue, then a manga drawn by a volunteer, and finally translated by volunteers from good old /u/. :D It's also a kickass testament to what people can get done if they band together behind awesome and inspiring things, so there you have it. The artwork is workable; there's no horribly off proportions or anything ridiculous like that. The drawing style is realistic-ish and concise, without too much detail or giant big eyes or shiny hair or anything at all like that. The writing is a mix of internet slang and simple prose--made even better because it is real. It's amazing how all that simplicity manages to come together into something brilliant.

One last picture, though!

Yes. A screenshot of the actual letter that Medley writes to Husky in chapter 4. Does this not make you get all ...what's the term? I don't know the term! But it makes me get it. If you ever have random amounts of time, and you feel like something saccharine, please take a look at this manga. It might not have stellar artwork, but what it does have is artwork and story based on real events...and I think that's even better than artificial eyecandy.