Yurara Vol 3-5
You know, there’s a reason I try to wait until shoujo series have several volumes out before I get into them most of the time. In general, I am keeping an eye out for the following:
1) Endless “one wants sex but the other doesn’t” back and forth.
2) Series starts focusing primarily on the guy’s angst while the girl worries about him and is supportive.
3) Series starts being an endless love triangle and focusing more about the guys fighting over her and her being “torn” between them than anything else.
4) Friends/siblings fall for the same girl and start angsting about hurting their buddy, and then bond over how they won’t let their feelings for her come between their friendship and how they’ll be friends no matter what happens, or they try to bury their feelings and step aside for their friend.
Though there are exceptions, these things usually throw me out of a series fast, and often, I drop a series as soon as I see it coming, no matter how much I’m enjoying it otherwise. I’d rather preserve my kind feelings than have them tarnished by overall annoyance. #1 just annoys me and makes me wants to tell them to shut up, do it or don’t do it, and move on to more interesting things. #2-4 effectively reduced the girl to a prize and/or object of contention in order to emphasize how wonderful the guy and relationships between guys are. I’m sorry, but fiction and fandom have been telling me for years all about how guys and relationships between guys are better and more interesting than girls and relationships between girls. I don’t need something supposedly for and about girls doing the same.
From the basic setup, Yurara had the makings to make me go “nothank you.” Let’s see…girl who sees ghosts has a guardian spirit, meets two boys who can exorcise ghosts. Makings of Love Triangle With Friends written in huge block letters. And I’m not a fan of love triangles in general. Normally, I probably wouldn’t even have picked it up. It was, however, by Chika Shiomi, who had already given me 2 manga centered around strong (by almost any limited definition you to apply to the word) heroines with stories almost completely centered around them, and both were most definitely Heroines, not Main Characters. I could already tell in the first volume that I wouldn’t like it as much as the other two…essentially your normal shoujo with a wallflower girl who gets the attention of the two cute guys when she goes to school, only with magic. But at least Yurara herself had the markings of a spine from the start, and her guardian spirit was more in line with the kind of heroine I expected from Shiomi. Unfortunately, it did still give the guys most of the action, did do the love triangle route, and did have most of the last three volumes revolve around the guys and their angst and Yurara being torn.
I do give it props for having Mei and Yato each like a separate version of Yurara (helped by the fact that guardian!Yurara is the ghost of an ancestress who decided to take care of yurara when she saw she’d have spiritual poweers that she wouldn’t be able to handle on her own until she was older) and Yurara’s being torn resolving around guardian!Yurara’s feelings influencing her, as opposed to confusion about her own feelings. Shiomi also gave her a good bit of personal growth, and towards the end, she included a lot of the folklore and myths that were part of why I loved Night of the Beasts so much.
On the whole, Yurara is a step up from a lot of the series like it. It’s just that it still goes the routes I hate, and is from a mangaka I know can do a lot better.
Now, someone license more Chika Shiomi manga. Preferably of the “girls who kick butt” variety, not the “high school love triangle” one.
1) Endless “one wants sex but the other doesn’t” back and forth.
2) Series starts focusing primarily on the guy’s angst while the girl worries about him and is supportive.
3) Series starts being an endless love triangle and focusing more about the guys fighting over her and her being “torn” between them than anything else.
4) Friends/siblings fall for the same girl and start angsting about hurting their buddy, and then bond over how they won’t let their feelings for her come between their friendship and how they’ll be friends no matter what happens, or they try to bury their feelings and step aside for their friend.
Though there are exceptions, these things usually throw me out of a series fast, and often, I drop a series as soon as I see it coming, no matter how much I’m enjoying it otherwise. I’d rather preserve my kind feelings than have them tarnished by overall annoyance. #1 just annoys me and makes me wants to tell them to shut up, do it or don’t do it, and move on to more interesting things. #2-4 effectively reduced the girl to a prize and/or object of contention in order to emphasize how wonderful the guy and relationships between guys are. I’m sorry, but fiction and fandom have been telling me for years all about how guys and relationships between guys are better and more interesting than girls and relationships between girls. I don’t need something supposedly for and about girls doing the same.
From the basic setup, Yurara had the makings to make me go “nothank you.” Let’s see…girl who sees ghosts has a guardian spirit, meets two boys who can exorcise ghosts. Makings of Love Triangle With Friends written in huge block letters. And I’m not a fan of love triangles in general. Normally, I probably wouldn’t even have picked it up. It was, however, by Chika Shiomi, who had already given me 2 manga centered around strong (by almost any limited definition you to apply to the word) heroines with stories almost completely centered around them, and both were most definitely Heroines, not Main Characters. I could already tell in the first volume that I wouldn’t like it as much as the other two…essentially your normal shoujo with a wallflower girl who gets the attention of the two cute guys when she goes to school, only with magic. But at least Yurara herself had the markings of a spine from the start, and her guardian spirit was more in line with the kind of heroine I expected from Shiomi. Unfortunately, it did still give the guys most of the action, did do the love triangle route, and did have most of the last three volumes revolve around the guys and their angst and Yurara being torn.
I do give it props for having Mei and Yato each like a separate version of Yurara (helped by the fact that guardian!Yurara is the ghost of an ancestress who decided to take care of yurara when she saw she’d have spiritual poweers that she wouldn’t be able to handle on her own until she was older) and Yurara’s being torn resolving around guardian!Yurara’s feelings influencing her, as opposed to confusion about her own feelings. Shiomi also gave her a good bit of personal growth, and towards the end, she included a lot of the folklore and myths that were part of why I loved Night of the Beasts so much.
On the whole, Yurara is a step up from a lot of the series like it. It’s just that it still goes the routes I hate, and is from a mangaka I know can do a lot better.
Now, someone license more Chika Shiomi manga. Preferably of the “girls who kick butt” variety, not the “high school love triangle” one.