Low risk yuri for the masses
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Canno
Translation/Adaptation: Jocelyne Allen
What They Say
Two girls, a new school, and the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
In middle school, Ayaka Shiramine was the perfect student: hard-working, with excellent grades and a great personality to match. As Ayaka enters high school she expects to still be on top, but one thing she didn’t account for is her new classmate, the lazy yet genuine genius Yurine Kurosawa. What’s in store for Ayaka and Yurine as they go through high school…together?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
One of the odd things about yuri is the tendency to negate some of the sexuality that shows up in shounen and moe types of anime. Readers will not find girls joking about breast size or trying to feel each other up in the way they might in a more fan service friendly approach to girl and girl naughtiness. In fact, the series reads much like a naturalistic heterosexual romance where the characters are having their first romantic feelings and approaching each other with timid reserve. This volume focuses on two couples each with a masculine and feminine pairing.
The main couple, Ayaka Shiramine and Yurine Kurosawa are elite students. Shiramine was the top of her class in everything until Kurosawa joined her class. Shiramine creates a rivalry in her head and becomes frustrated that she can do nothing to top Kurosawa. Readers get a bit of insight in how her mother created a neurosis in Shiramine’s childhood by expecting her to always be the best. This little insight stands above most of the school drama manga that just depend on stereotypes to present character traits.
Kurosawa, on the other hand, is antisocial. She sleeps in class and avoids socializing with her peers. She is the masculine type. She is blunt, doesn’t show effort when she excels at either academics or sports, and she has very assertive behavior when she takes an interest in Shiramine. Despite her mannerisms, Kurosawa has a desire to be submissive, and that comes out fully when Shiramine gets mad and tells her she is just a normal person. This affects Kurosawa and causes her to kiss Shiramine.
Both characters want to be able to embody gender differences. Kurosawa want to be a person who doesn’t feel like her intellect and athleticism dictate how others see her. Shiramine wants to embrace an assertive personality even though she has carefully developed a feminine identity through her school years. All of this takes place in a context of formality where they think of the other person by their family name.
The second couple offers a similar dichotomy of appearance and gendered identity. Mizuki Senoo runs track. Her hair is short and her appearance is boyish. Inside, Mizuki is an emotional volcano. She has feelings for her manager, Moe Nikaidou. Following her doctor’s orders not to do things that cause physical exertion, Moe becomes the manager of the track team. Her appearance is very feminine with pig tails and bows in her hair. Together, Mizuki and Moe are the prince and princess of the track team.
Moe takes on a masculine performance by looking at outcomes and trying to develop her team to be better. Even as she seems distracted by her goals, she keeps a collection of photographs of Mizuki and seems to have an inner life that borders on obsession. Mizuki runs track to please Moe, and she keeps her hair short because others have complimented how cute they are as a couple.
The art style moves between minimal facial panels to larger scenes that play with perspective. Canno’s style gravitates to creating a scene that acts as a visual metaphor for the characters’ internal feelings. In one scene, Shiramino sits in the foreground embarrassed with a pleased Kurosawa further back with an empty classroom filling most of the middle and background of the scene. The use of perspective makes the character development more meaningful and the scenes worth a lingering gaze.
In Summary:
Kiss & White Lily for My Dearest Girl is not an exploitation manga. The relationships between the characters offer male and LBTGQ readers an outlet to consider everyday concerns about their own desires and emotions by reframing the barriers of heteronormative roles. This works because the stories are generic school life types where characters are confronting desire without the sexual overtones present in other genres written for a male demographic. The artwork offers engaging scenes and the story has enough polish to give the characters depth from the start.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: Teen
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: March 21st, 2017
MSRP: $13.00
