My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness and the Nature of Autobiographic Manga

Bokura no Hentai was covered based on selection by patrons. If you’d like to influence what I write every month, consider supporting me on Patreon. For only $5 you get a say in which works I cover.

Lately, autobiographic manga has seen an increase in prominence. What was once a fairly unknown genre has exploded in recent years with greater access to the tools of creation. Social media like Twitter and sites like Pixiv have made it much easier to draw manga and have it reach a broader audience, at a much lower cost than in previous decades.

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Bokura no Hentai and Queer Communities

Bokura no Hentai was covered based on selection by patrons. If you’d like to influence what I write every month, consider supporting me on Patreon. For only $5 you get a say in which works I cover.

Bokura no Hentai is one of relatively few well-regarded manga that focuses on trans issues. We all know that trans people haven’t always fared that well in the realm of anime and manga, a subject I’d like to revisit in the future, but this manga, alongside a few other such as Hourou Musuko and Hanayome wa Motodanshi, has gathered quite a bit of acclaim, both within the trans community and in the manga sphere in general.

Yearning for Yuri: Husky and Medley

Husky and Medley is incredibly unique in the field of yuri manga. Like a few other works, such as this year’s fantastic My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness, Husky and Medley is based on a true story. What makes it far more interesting is that it wasn’t written by those in the story, and was instead made using info from a series of 2ch threads. In the mid-2000s there were a number of these 2ch real-life love stories, most notably Densha Otoko, and this is the yuri version of those stories.

Yearning for Yuri: The Other Works of Amano Shuninta

Over the past two weeks I took a look at The Feelings We All Must Endure and Ayame 14. These are two very different works, but both of them are clearly coming from the perspective of a queer woman. They’re works which are at the vanguard of the yuri genre’s current shift, and I think both are somewhat necessary reading in order to participate in the discourse on modern yuri manga. The same is not true for Amano Shuninta’s other manga. Her other works are varied, interesting, and absolutely worth reading, but they aren’t as important or relevant. It’s for that reason that I’ll talk about them all here, rather than giving them their own posts.

Yearning for Yuri: The Feelings We All Must Endure

It’s time to take a look at another openly queer yuri mangaka. Yuri made by men and straight women can be great, but open lesbians and other queer women are obviously worth highlighting in the yuri discourse. This week I’ll be looking at Amano Shuninta’s The Feelings We All Must Endure also known as Watashi no Sekai wo Kouseisuru Chiri no You na Nani ka.

Yearning for Yuri: Prism

This week we’re looking at Prism, a truly fantastic schoolgirl manga that ended far too soon. Prism stands out for a number of reasons, from its nice art to its concise storytelling, though most people know it for being canceled early after allegations of tracing. While that has marred its reputation and left it unfinished, it’s still very much worth reading.

What Value does Yuri Subtext have in Anime?

As I said in my post on the topic, yuri anime is incredibly rare. That’s just an unfortunate fact that any fan of yuri has to put up with. But while yuri anime is barely present, yuri is hardly uncommon in anime. In fact, it’s startlingly common in the form of subtext. I’d be willing to bet that somewhere between four and five shows have clear yuri subtext every season, if not more. Hell, it’s practically a requirement for the CGDCT genre. There’s a diverse set of opinions about how yuri fans should approach the subject of subtext and I plan on covering my ideas on the topic here.

Yearning for Yuri: Hanjuku Joshi

I like to spotlight adult-focused manga in this series, but yuri is a genre dominated by schoolgirl settings. It would be nice if adult-focused stuff began to occupy a bigger part of the market and a shift in that direction is occurring, but it’s going to be a long time until that makes up the majority of the genre. For now, anyone who wants to read yuri has to accept that schoolgirls are a part of the genre that isn’t going to go away. And so today, I present a wonderful high school yuri story by acclaimed mangaka Morishima Akiko: Hanjuku Joshi.

Yearning for Yuri: My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness

This is a series focused on recommending yuri, so it might seem strange that I’m starting with a manga that barely fits the genre. My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness — from here on referred to as SabiRezu — is an auto-biographical manga written by Nagata Kabi. It was originally posted on Pixiv, before being picked up for print after seeing extreme success online. It’s a very popular manga in Japan, where it received the honor as the third best manga of 2016 for women. And it just so happens to be one of the most important yuri manga of the decade.