Reviews and Comments

This review is discussing the series as a whole, rather than this specific volume.

This is the best Manga I've ever read. It is one of the best stories I've ever read. It is a stunningly good tale of love, trauma, healing, loss, and forgiveness.

Shizuku is withdrawn, and alone; filled with regret over her past actions, she has given up on life. While suicide is only explicitly mentioned once far into the series, the dark imagery of her inner thoughts early on makes it clear that this is a very real possibility for her.

Kaori stumbles into her path at a critical moment, and forcibly wrenches Shizuku's life down another path. Along the way we learn the source of Shizuku's regret. We see her pulled slowly through her trauma, and see her falling in love with Kaori. Ultimately, we learn the motivation behind Kaori's actions, and why our hearts are about to break.

It's been nine days since I finished this series, and I feel a tightness in my chest thinking about it.

About half-way through the series they let you see how this is going to end. You know it's going to be hard. You know it's going to be sad. You just don't know the fine details. Each new detail cuts into your heart, and yet you just keep reading.

You will be bawling your eyes out when you get to the end, and you will be thankful for having experienced it.

It should be noted that while the series involves two high-school girls, it is not in anyway a typical high-school manga romance story. It isn't about high-school drama, and the story would barely change if the characters were all working adults.

Warning: at the time of writing (Oct 2024) the final volume is not available for purchase in English, you'll have to read a community translated version on a site like Mangadex.

This is, without a question, the most unabashedly stupid manga I've read, and yet I couldn't stop reading.

The premise is pretty simple, Ichihara Chiaki is a well respected and handsome girl who love boobs. Without the "healing energy" of boobs Chiaki quickly becomes uselessly incompetent at everything. Harumi Hana is a big chested girl who inexplicably agrees to Chiaki's request to grope her. Every day they get together after school, and Chiaki lavishes praise on Hanna's boobs while groping them.

Hanna falls in love with Chiaki from the start, but Chiaki only has eyes for Hanna's boobs. Over time, Chiaki starts to realize that it isn't just Hanna's boobs she loves. In between those points are many silly scenes like boob obsessed Chiaki avoiding their daily groping, and Hanna yelling at her to grope them because she knows Chiaki wants to.

The ending is abrupt, as if the author was suddenly informed that the expected next issue wasn't going to happen. Nevertheless it's adorable.

Despite all the boob-play this is very much a comedy and not erotica or porn. It took me a while to figure out why I kept reading this. It was just so stupid. I think Hanna summarizes my thoughts well in one of the panels near the end. "I just didn't want to believe that I was in love with such a boob obsessed moron… "

--

There are two B-plots with other pairs of girls which feel like they get a good start, but are never satisfactorily resolved.

Content warning: One of the b-plot girl pairs are the same age, but one of them is intentionally drawn as if much younger. There are - of course - lots of panels with boobs on display. Anything more than kissing and boob-play happens "off-camera".

⚠️ this review is going to cover touch on very adult content. This series should definitely be considered erotica. ⚠️

Normally I'd avoid manga about going to brothels. It just sounds like a cheap excuse to have lesbian sex scenes, but It had an excellent rating on Mangadex so I hesitantly gave it a try, and just kept reading.

Basic Story

The premise is pretty straightforward. The best friend of our our 20-something protagonist (Asumi) asks her if she's got a girlfriend and she mentions that she probably "peaked" in elementary school when she got a kiss but didn't even realize what was going on, and then the girl who kissed her (Mai) moved away and she's never been able to contact her before.

Her best friend mentions that the friend sounds like someone she encountered working at a lesbian brothel. One thing leads to another and Asumi begins regularly hiring the girls hoping to encounter her friend. Somehow they make this feel plausible; increasingly so as time goes by.

Overall this is just a very sex-positive story about 3 women: Asumi, her best friend Ouka, and later Nanao.

Why it's actually great

First off, all of the sex-workers are written respectfully, and always treated respectfully by Asumi and everyone else. They're never looked down on, or treated as lesser. While Asumi is embarrassed to share the fact that she's using their services it's because of the social stigma not because she feels she's bad for participating in it or that the sex workers are bad people to be avoided.

Secondly, they ignore reality and make it so that all the sex-workers love their job, do it because they enjoy making people feel good, and they all think Asumi is cute and enjoy spending time with her. The result feels like a really healthy friend-with-benefits situation instead of cheap hired sex.

Additionally, with each new sex scene the girls help Asumi to learn more about what she enjoys in the bedroom, and how to be more comfortable with those things. Later in the series, when some light BDSM is introduced, and they make sure there's a safe-word and that there is full consent as they proceed.

The sex scenes are explicit, but it doesn't feel like they're trying to get you off, so much as they're allowing you to be turned on by watching two women pleasure each other. That being said, there was a sex scene in the sixth volume (I think) did nothing to advance the story and did feel like cheap sex.

The reason I kept reading though, was what happens between the sexual encounters. You learn more about her best friend, and Asumi temporarily becomes a live-in housekeeper for another girl who falls for her. You watch their relationship blossom, and overall it's really healthy (mentally). Emotional complications feel believable, and it's not all jealousy and characters making themselves feel like crap because they refuse to tell someone they like them. You want to learn more about these three characters, and what's going to become of them.

Honestly there's so much sex, and the scenes between are so good that there were a few times where I was like, "ok, that's hot, but let's get back to the story."

Content warning / Elephant in the Room

My only real problem with this story is the unnecessarily pervy inciting incident. It is revealed that when Asumi was in Elementary School, and shared a brief kiss with Mai, Mai was in her late teens. The story would be no different if they were roughly the same age when they kissed.

Fortunately the story doesn't dwell on that fact or try and use the age gap as some sort of kink turn-on. It only briefly mentions it in a couple quick moments when Mai remembers it. You can mostly just ignore this, and pretend they were roughly the same age at the time.

Summary

If you can get past the "Elephant" and are interested in some surprisingly sex-positive erotic Yuri I think you should check it out.

A story about a sweet and confused girl who lives with constant hallucinations, true glimpses into people's futures and pasts, and two mischievous demons. She's so confused by the world she walks through, that she doesn't realize she's a hundred year old vampire.

One night she gets run over by a junior priest with a good heart, and a wild series of events unfold.

Along the way she learns she's a vampire, makes friends, falls in love with the goth girl who decided to be her minion, and overcomes a host of violent encounters she would have happily avoided if possible.

This book is wildly unpredictable until the final showdown, and even then it's not clear how the relationship with her new girlfriend will resolve until the last few pages.

I found the initial scene difficult to read, because at that point all you know is that it's a suicidal girl who can't die who sees demons, things the convenience store clerk is invisible, and talks to Slurpie machines. While there are humorous elements to her hallucinations, early on you just feel for how confusing and difficult this girl's life is.

Keep reading though. The discomfort passes and as the story progresses her character growth is into more of a real person taking charge of her life despite the hallucinations.

There are two brief lesbian sex scenes in the book, that are well written and filled with desire.

If you'd told me the plot beforehand I'd never have read it.

Ultimately it's the story of a young lesbian in love with a girlfriend who doesn't give her the time and attention she needs, and what happens when she meets another girl who loves her.

(no spoilers summary) Our protagonist - Yuni - is high school student desperately in love with Nanase. Nanase loves volleyball, isn't sure if she loves Yuni, and is terrified of anyone finding out she's a lesbian. The combination of Nanase spending so much time at club, and refusing to let anyone know they're a couple means that Yuni is lonely and desperate to be shown affection.

Meanwhile Fuuko has found Yuni's "venting account" on social media, and fallen in love with her.

Fuuko is what makes this story complicated. She's manipulative in a way that typically makes me hate a character, but as the story progresses we learn that her manipulations are all because she truly loves Yuni, wants to protect her, and hates how Nanase neglects her and refuses to give her the attention and love she needs. I came to love her character despite being uncomfortable with some of her choices.

Fuuko manipulates Yuni into going on a date and their early relationship is rocky at best. Yuni lashes out, sometimes physically, and says some terrible things, because she doesn't want to admit that she could have feelings for her. A lot of Yuni's reactions feel like those of person who's pretending, sometimes violently, to be straight, and hurting those that care about her. This feels a little weird in that Yuni never shows any indication that she's afraid to be seen as a lesbian in public, its more as if she's pulling on those homophobic expectations to push Fuuko away.

Ultimately this is a story about Fuuko and Yuni's relationship and how it reacts when it bumps up against Nanase.

The following sounds like a spoiler, but it's really not: Some of the special images make you think they're going to end up in a polyamorous relationship. That's not the case, at least not in the first six volumes. I believe that Fuuko really could be happy in one. She's ok with the fact that Yuni loves Nanase. Fuuko just wants to love Yuni, and be loved back.

Yuni's mental state is not healthy, and her treatment of Fuuko is sometimes very unkind, but sometimes it's a direct result of Fuuko's manipulations. These are the kinds of characters I typically hate spending time with, and yet everything about this is extremely well done and I really want to see where these story goes. I love these complicated and sometimes broken characters. I want Yuni and Fuuko to end up together in a healthy relationship. I want Yuni to embrace what her heart really wants.

As far as "adult" content goes, there's only one sex scene in six volumes, but it, and the flashbacks to it, are excellent.

-- Update: I started rereading this last night, taking time to notice more details revealed in the background of the art.

I've come to believe that Fuuko isn't nearly as manipulative as it seems on first reading. Aside from forcing the reveal of their affair every negative and/or manipulative thing she does is a response to being mistreated or outright abused.

Fuuko is a girl in love, who's accepted that she'll never be "Number one" but still needs to be loved in return in whatever form "Number two" takes. She's from an abusive household that doesn't respect or love her, and as a result allows herself to be abused by Yuni and still want her.

This is another great book by Seanan McGuire. I was happily surprised at how it felt like everything just kept building, and building. Then, when the villain was finally revealed, our heroes still weren't able to stop them right away.

The characters are great. Each one feels unique and real. There's also an extremely minor romantic angle that comes in late and refreshingly "just is". The book would be 100% as good if it were edited out, but having it there just adds a nice little bit of character building that continues in the sequel.

My only issue with this book is that it reads like a bunch of serial episodes put together. This is because it was initially created for Kindle Serials. The end result is that you get a little bit of the recap of the setting and that the main character is a "Snow White" again and again. In Seanan's defense, she does a great job of minimizing that.

Bonus points for having a character who is transgender where the fact that they're trans isn't a central plot issue, or a joke, & the other characters are totally supportive and accepting when it's mentioned.

Short Version: The core story and characters are good. The friends-to-lovers storyline and romance was good. The inevitable sex scene was decent. I'm interested in seeing what comes from this author as her skills develop, but it feels very much like a first novel.

Details:

However, there were a lot of new writer things that really broke me out of the story. Mostly it came down a lack of narrative time between mental states. A happy conversation rapidly turns unhappy when a stressful topic is accidentally mentioned, but then it's suddenly all good again.

The protagonist has convinced herself for a long time that expressing her feelings to her love interest (the pack alpha) will have terrible consequences for their relationship and the pack, but then within hours of a conversation about it with a friend - and essentially no time to internalize anything - she's managed to completely overturn those beliefs.

The world is fine, but there are so many things mentioned but not explained. There are werewolves, vampires, mermaids, werebobcats, werebears, humans, and who knows what else all just hang out and live around each other with no more problems than humans in the real world.

It feels wildly implausible to me that such diverse peoples - many of whom have strong ties to animal impulses - would have no more issues living and working side-by-side than humans do. I might be able to buy it if there was some sort of explanation, but there's literally none.

In the end I think I would have preferred it if there were about 100 more pages to fill in all the things in the world, and in people's backstories that are mentioned but not explained in any way. I want more time for characters to go between seemingly opposite ends of the emotional spectrum, and time for new ideas to be internalized and processed by them.

Short version: Like popcorn, it's a simple fun read that manages to rise above its all-too-common trope.

The core trope: Strong female protagonist with special ability / power gets embroiled in something dramatic, encounters hot and angry werewolf man, who helps address the central plot problem.

She's irrationally attracted to him even when he's being an ass-hole and the context is anything but horny-making.

He's irrationally mad at her, but ultimately forced to accept that she's right, and together they stop the bad guy.

I'm happy to report there's no hot vampire competing for her affections, and the protagonist and werewolf don't actually have sex before the book ends. 🤯

I'm happier to report that it rises above the standard crap that's written around this trope in many ways.

Kerri has written some unique characters, and an interesting new world setting where werewolves & witches are a significant part of government, at least as far as Australia is concerned, and wild magic sources are things witches protect for the good of all.

The main character's a low-powered witch with a human familiar who's just trying to run a coffee shop & stay hidden from her family.

Her familiar is a dark skinned "amazonian" hottie who is well written, but the story would be 1000x better if she was the love interest and they were just trying to have a happy life together instead of the tropey stuff about deep angry voices being hot despite all rational thought.

Honestly, the romantic interest subplot with the werewolf is the only real problem with this book.

If you're looking for a fun urban fantasy read, and can overlook that, I actually recommend it.