Dang.

It's been forever since my last post. Stuff's been looking a bit better these days, though other difficulties have popped up. I guess all I can do is just get through it, like everyone else does.

I haven't been reading too much yuri lately, but I'll probably tell a little real life story in my next post.

The Girlfriends manga is finally over (the last omake was scanlated a week or so ago), and Sasameki Koto is being scanlated by some cool /u/ people every few occasions it comes out, since Dynasty Scans likes to wait for the whole volume before releasing.

In other interesting news, someone called SaintBomber let some /u/ denizens beta test a game he made in RPGMaker 2003, and I got to be one of those denizens. Surprisingly, for a game made in RPG Maker, it's good. Most games tend to be fairly distasteful or boring or shallow or poorly written, but this one has its emphasis all on the dialogue and the events, and as far as I've seen, has no combat whatsoever. It's amazing for a game like that. And, naturally, it's a yuri-themed game. Brilliant work, in my opinion.

And that's the tidbit of news for today, if anyone's still reading. I should go check out some blogs now.

Sorry for awayness

Sorry. There's been no posts for a while due to some relationship troubles. I'm currently in a long distance relationship with my girlfriend of four years, and there's a lot of...difficulty sometimes. So yeah. I'll leave some funny or neat gifs here for you guys to stare at, and probably work myself up to visit my usual blogs in a bit, but I also have a lot of midterms this week. Shit's overflowing.

Thanks all for reading and sticking with yuri. I'll be back to normal (or at least a semblance of it) hopefully soon!

Two of these are gifs. Gotta click on them. :D

Girl Friends by Milk Morinaga

After the last post, where I confused a few innocents, and made others recoil defensively in regards to boyish girls (amusingly, 'tomboys,' as they're called in Korea), I've gotten around to writing about a yuri manga I've recently read, called Girl Friends. It stars Mari Kumakura, and Akko Oohashi, two girls at their high school. It begins simply, as do all school life mangas, with Akko approaching Mari one day, and asking if they'd take the train together afterschool.

Androgynous Asian Eyecandy

A girl named Bihyul, apparently.

This isn't yuri, but I'd call it something like eyecandy for both genders. Hope you all enjoy, even if it's not the usual girl-on-girl goodness. Basically, in Korea/Japan/China, there's girls that like to dress as guys, and some of them turn out pretty damn good looking, and extremely androgynous. Makes me get all confused inside.

Non-Yuri Fun of the Week: Touhou Lucky Star

Today, my Yuri toplist is over. I still have a lot of series to write down, and even more reviews and comments and summaries and discussions on series themselves, but I think we all deserve a break from Yuri, especially since ilikeicecream has been so blunt about it.

"I had enough of it," he said, before he turned his back on the shining beacon that was my Yuri. Those five words shattered something within me, and from then on, life was never the same.

My Top 5 Yuri Manga: #1 Sasameki Koto

Cover of Volume 2. Left: Ushio Kazama, Right: Sumika Murasame

Sasameki Koto, meaning Whispered Words, is a manga by Takashi Ikeda that's about a girl named Sumika Murasame. Her closest friend, Ushio Kazama, is a girl who absolutely loves cute girls, and cute girls only. Murasame harbors a secret crush on her friend, but unfortunately, Murasame is tall, good at karate, coordinated and generally not cute at all. Hence she keeps it inside, and Kazama has no clue, and depressingly, whenever Kazama's feelings get smushed by rejection, Murasame's always there to comfort her, knowing that Kazama has no feelings for her whatsoever. Whee.

My Top 5 Yuri Manga: #2 Aoi Hana

Aoi Hana~ Even the name is kind of sweet, although you can immediately tell the style of stuff if it has a 'hana' in it, since hana means flowers. So yes, this manga is a particularly gentle, soft-style, relaxed one. It epitomizes slice of life for me, and the writing is nice, where the characters develop and learn about themselves gradually. It has, as far as I've noticed, very few cliches in it (and before I am corrected, tropes are not always the same as cliches); so if you like clear cut and stereotype-ish things in your manga (I mean stereotype in the best possible connotation), this series will be somewhat difficult to follow. Notice how I also emphasize its slow, gentle nature. 

This manga is very much a slow paced one, so if you're an action fan (like me!), a psychological manga fan (like me!), a horror fan (like me!), or a fantasy-sci-fi-otherworld-magic fan (like me!), it's not necessarily for you. But if you've got the patience inherent to people who read seinen seriess, or the love of something that really unfolds as it goes along, and holds unexpected, but gentle surprises, take a look at this one.

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...