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Kindred Spirits on the Roof Review and Discussion


Decay

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As a huge yuri fan, I definitely appreciate this more realistic approach to lesbian romance. Like @Decay said, mot yuri is indeed crafted for a male audience, focusing on all the cutesy stuff and not really going very deep into what an actual relationship is like. But then again, don't most moege/charage do the same exact thing with hetero relationships? It's just one whole idealistic world either way, at least from my experience.

It's not so true that most yuri is done BY men, though ( in the visual novel world it might be I guess, but the amount of yuri here is already tiny). There's a lot of female authors that do all of the things you pointed out as stereotypical of male targeted yuri, so the key factor really is the audience it's aimed at. You can clearly see this line when you read yuri manga magazines that cater to different audiences.

There is not a whole lot of non-male targeted yuri by the way. In visual novels, yurirei is probably the only one you'll find. The most luck you'll have is probably within manga, where female writers that write for other audiences are much more common and, frankly, way more interesting.

Yurirei sems like a really great experience anyone can enjoy and I'm very happy to see it getting such positive reactions. I still love all the cutesy yuri stuff, but it's refreshing to know there's alternatives being created as well.

There is one upcoming game that plans to be th first yuri game specifically targeted at women. I'm really looking forward to trying that out. (Need to find a link, will update the post when I do)

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May as well continue my comment here. For the last 2 couple, no comment other than I didn't had any problem with student teacher pairing and once again Miyu was too careful while Matsuri was to carefree (Although it's explained that Miyu family was strict and Matsuri family was open minded though). Oh for student teacher pairing, it was explained that the teacher also had same feeling after she couldn't answer her friend confession (Because the teacher was sick), and after the teacher was healed her friend only said that it was misunderstanding (The teacher (Tsukuyo) friend was probably heart broken though).

As for the seiyuu, we have Oukawa Mio like I mentioned before, Kusayanagi Junko (Mina from Sharin franchise) who voice Tsukuyo and Megumi, Nozuki Mahiru (Satsuki from Kara no Shoujo 2) who voiced Miyu and Nena, Kaneda Mahiru (Sharty from Kamidori, Madoka from Soukoku no Arterial) who voiced both Umi and Hina (For Umi she was in usual range, and for Hina her range was slightly different from her usual), and Rita who doubled as the singer and Kouba's seiyuu (By the way, Rita always sing the OP and ED for all Liar-soft game iirc). But the most famous seiyuu here would be Kawashima Rino, who in here voiced our MC, Toomi Yuna. Listing her role would be long, but she also played character in translated Liar-soft games (Kia in Inganock, Mary in Sharnoth (Also MC in there), and Emilie in Gahktun). And for her voice, I think she use her usual range.

By the way I'd read the doujin, and I must said that I agree with the pairing, especially AnoNena pairing. It was quite interesting read.

@Decay If you want to know Yuri fan reaction, maybe these review could satisfy you, although I didn't know much about Yuri fandom blog other than those 2 anyway (And if I didn't know Sono Hanabira or hate it from very start, I probably will never find these blog anyway)

I stated back at January that this game was lack of review and VNDB score will be around 7. And as of now I research the review, so far they like it in other than those 2 review above, also the score in VNDB right now is at 7.5 which mean this game was good and therefore acceptable. So my conclusion is I agree with you Decay

I think that's all I could comment for now.

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10 hours ago, Rooke said:

I don’t know about VNs, but I sorta doubt it. I mean, in the anime/manga/LN field, two of the best yuri are still Maria-sama and Revolutionary Utena, and firstly some say they’re not technically yuri and secondly … they’re really old xD

Good yuri seems pretty rare.

Lol. I want to read this VN more and more.

Landmark day: someone else on Fuwa actually mentioned Maria-sama ga Miteru! MariMite is an odd one compared to modern yuri - there's almost no romance at all (I want to say there's one brief kiss across the entire four seasons?), and there's even very little implication of it. In a very large cast there are two or perhaps four characters who seem to have any kind of romantic relationship. What little there is of that is extremely well-handled - there's definitely no pandering to a male audience. It is, I believe, firmly directed at a female audience.

So far, MariMite is the only thing classified as yuri which I've ever enjoyed (and I love it - quite possibly my favorite anime, because drama). I did try Utena because it's such a classic, but that one proved to be just too old for me to handle - even the first season of MariMite is still totally watchable today; apparently it came out about 7 years after the first season of Utena.

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5 hours ago, Fred the Barber said:

even the first season of MariMite is still totally watchable today; apparently it came out about 7 years after the first season of Utena.

And unlike most LN adaptions, the anime is probably the best version to consume. Because whatever translations of the LN are available fail (spectacularly) to capture the flowery prose of the LN, but the atmosphere in the anime does capture it. The manga is pretty substandard also IIRC (it's been a while since I read it.)

I remember the manga 'Girlfriends' was also said by some to be "yuri aimed at women", but they were fibbing about that ... 

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13 minutes ago, Rooke said:

 

I remember the manga 'Girlfriends' was also said by some to be "yuri aimed at women", but they were fibbing about that ... 

I feel like Girlfriends was kinda gender neutral to be honest. It had a very moe vibe to it some times and other times it took itself really seriously. It's a series I think anyone can enjoy, regardless of gender.

The author, who is a woman as well, is known for writing these cutesy stories with a very shoujo-like vibe to them. I think what you can say is that they're aimed at a younger audience.
Her newest manga, Hana to Hina wa Houkago, is even more flowery and cutesy than Girlfriends with the two main girls blushing constantly (mostly Hana), so I think the author just enjoys having these light hearted stories. She also has a weird fascination for women in bob cut hairs.

An author that writes more "yuri aimed at women" would probably be Takemiya Jin, her stories, despite having a heavy focus on relationships, really never push the moe factor too much and I love the drama in them.

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I have to join Nosebleed on the fact that a lot of yuri is produced by females, and for females. In fact, yuri produced by men for men is, as far as I know, a fairly recent thing. While yuri 4koma like Sakura Trick and """yuri subtext""" series are def yuri by men for men, historically yuri is a women thing.

Yuri started out in shoujo magazines and were written by women (and still exist there, think about stuff like Aoi Hana). In the 70s and 80s it was part of the exploration of forbidden romantic relationships (along with BL, incest etc) by mostly female mangaka, which was part of a larger movement of feminism and sexual emancipation in Japan. It is one of the most interesting periods in the history of manga, and a lot of renowned mangaka were part of that culture. Manga at that period in time was a place allowing for expression for those women mangaka. Yuri is not a very huge sub-category of the culture of that historical period but that's pretty much its origin still.
Later in the 90s, it was a josei magazine, Misuto, that started publishing pornographic yuri (contrary to BL, yuri in the 70s/80s wasn't very explicit).
And one of the (many) reasons why Utena is one of the best anime that has ever been made is that it directly draws influences from all that 70s/80s shoujo manga culture and interrogates it, its social role, etc.

The reason why yuri manga emerged that way is that if you go back further in history, you find its foundation in S-kei literature. And that answers @Fred the Barber's interrogations about MariMite: MariMite is a pure homage to S-kei literature and depicts what kind of novels those were. Much the same way, S-kei literature was done by women for women, and had ties with feminist and sexual emancipation movements: the most famous S-kei author, Nobuko Yoshiya, was a lesbian and a feminist.

 

I don't know where yurirei belongs in all of this, because 'modern' (post-2000 I guess) manga tends to blur influences and historical considerations while dividing audiences into niches of niches of niches that make things much more complicated to understand - in a typical post-modern fashion, if I am to believe what little I know of post-modernism.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Just browsing yuri site randomly and suddenly found this. So apparently one people started a petition to started Yurirei anime back at March 29th, and now they need 413 more signature to reach 1000. Oh, according to Yuri Nation , Liar-soft was hearing fan wish. For some people who still want more Yurirei, go to petition page and sign that. Hopefully if the petition success and the anime was in production, it'll be good enough (And personally I think it will since Yurirei arc was like normal high school anime, only the producer needed to think how they should changing the H-Scene to more relevant scene since the portion of H-Scene for Yurirei was quite small imo).

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  • 3 weeks later...

Maybe this is not VN, but it's still connected to Yurirei, so I'll post the link here. In case you didn't click the link yet, it was in regard of the Drama CG was now ready for preorder. So, apparently Mangagamer was choose to release it undubbed with the subbed video. Good strategy to save the cost, although I should see it from the very beginning though because I'd predict that Mangagamer will release it with translated script only, but here Mangagamer will release it with subbed video.

As for release date, it will be available on April 26th on Steam. For the story, I think any fan of AnoNena will be overjoyed from reading the synopsis there, and it made them sort of canon. Oh, the story was in regard of Ano who had too much fan following her. In order to help Ano, Yuna suggesting fake couple strategy (Any genre savvy in regard of romance story should knew where fake couple strategy will be headed). From the synopsis, I think this drama CD once again will help to resolve one loose end from Yurirei, and Yurirei fan should definitely happy with this release. Oh, by the way Yurirei had 4 drama CD, and this is 1st volume for Yurirei Drama CD. Almost forget, the Drama CD name was 'Playing Girlfriend'.

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