待ち遠しいな
As noted earlier, I have tried a number of new series because of my lack of material. I have made the quarterly order a standard since I made the mistake of waiting too long last summer and having Comic YuriHime VOL.5 sold out. (Fortunately, I was able to find it on jpqueen, which is where I originally found the first two volumes of Yuri Shimai, back before I was confident enough to order from amazon.) So, I have a １・４・７・１０ schedule, which also includes the new HAYATE CROSS BLADE volumes on １・７ (see Subject entry above). But I got an extra gift card from amazon that expired in December, so, just to show how much a slave I am to advertising, I added another order that quarter.
Of course, I always want to have my lucky 13 items, so since all of the series I've been reading are on reasonably long serialization (monthly or longer), I resorted to two means of introducing myself to new materials. First [A], I reviewed series from the days of Yuri Shimai that I hadn't bothered to get because they didn't sound yurilicious enough or I wasn't too thrilled with the illustration style. Second [B], I had also found a few new things from the recommendations at amazon (where the media are broad enough that I get connections from specific genres rather than just whatever the newest "Anime" are). Both of these have been tempered by my observations of what titles Lililicious and daily_yuri have been posting. I don't read many scanslations these days, but knowing what projects they take on is a good pointer to series that have yuri content.
There's quite a lot (as you'd expect with 39 new volumes in the last six months), so, for starters, here's a bit about my October order and other contemporary purchases. Since I've already talked about continuations, the title links will be to the first volumes of the new ones I've tried (although in some cases I've later continued the series). Author/illustrator links are to daily_yuri, so you'll have to join the community if you want to see them. (Actually, some people had forgotten to add author tags, so I had to make my own.)
「青い花 Sweet Blue Flowers」/Aoi Hana-Sweet Blue Flowers (Shimura Takako) [B]: Well, in the post where I typed about the continuation of this one, I hadn't realized that the first volume was so recent that I hadn't waffled about it yet. It's a more realistic story than the goofy ones I've been following lately. It also has a significant amount of ♂×♀ stuff (hell, one of the main heroines is even straight!), but ♀×♀ is the focus-enough that it was the first contemporary series to be outed in the regular Miura Shion column in Comic YuriHime.
「苺ましまろ Ichigo mashimaro」 (Barasui) [A]: I didn't check this one out before because I didn't find the illustrations all that compelling, and because I don't like children. (One of the main characters is a high school student, but she looks about the same as the 11- and 12-year-olds other than being taller. I hear she was upgraded to college for the animated series, no doubt due to the bad example she sets by smoking and drinking so much.) There isn't even any of the glomping that Comic YuriHime featured in the article on the TV show. In fact, the best points are a throwaway line on page 3 (which only warranted one-third of the word bubble) and the splash page for Chapter 2. And the fact that they play MARIO KART, of course. Like AZUMANGA DAIOH, it's full of young ladies who use masculine speech patterns most of the time.
「かしまし ～ガール・ミーツ・ガール」/ka・si・ma・si (Akahori Satoru/Katsura Yukimaru) [?]: I'd heard a lot about this one, but I was ambivalent about it because of the fact that the main character started out as a man. Nonetheless, the illustrations are really pretty, so I ended up continuing this one. It's not nearly as silly as the other Akahori creation I've seen (Akahori Gedō Hour LoveGe), but there are still two unpleasant male characters. At least we get to see them get smacked down when they're acting up.
「極上生徒会」/Gokujō Seitokai (Mattaku Mōsuke) [B] I watched more than half of the animated version of this Konami series back when it was airing, but there really isn't that much to see here. I guess I just think the relationships are too low-key. Of course, it's better than the game, which is a ren'ai sim where you play a male TA.
「女子高生」/Joshikōsei (Oshima Towa) [A]: Again, too straight for me. The YuriHime article actually focused on characters who don't appear until later, but I'm not gonna buy the whole series just for supporting characters. The author has also done a real yuri miniseries, but I have a policy (only intentionally broken once) of not buying primarily erotic media.
「貧乏姉妹物語」/Bimbō Shimai Monogatari (Kazuto Izumi) [A]: Another not-particularly-goofy one, but that means that the relationships are kinda subdued (compared to my tastes), even for sisterly love. Also, the heroines are a bit young.
「BLUE DROP」 (Yoshitomi Akihito) [B]: This one is actually post-apocalyptic SF, so it's very different from the others. I didn't find anything useful on the amazon item page, but I later heard from lililicious that all but one chapter have yuri elements, so I gave it a shot. Well, it turns out that the ruling alien race is almost identical to human females and reproduces sexually, so it's unsurprising. Unfortunately, they don't have much in the way of happy endings. Incidentally, I haven't seen anything else of this Yoshitomi guy's other than EAT-MAN '98.