Souls Rhapsody’s Weblog

After finding out about the Shoujo Sect OVA, I decided to go on a hunt for some yuri manga. There aren’t too many yuri anime out there… I’ve seen Simoun, Marimite, Strawberry Panic, Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito… if anyone knows of anything else, please let me know.

Anyway, I went hunting for yuri manga, and came across a scanlation group that only does yuri (*screaming with joy at this point*). They conveniently labelled all of their releases with “mature” and “adult”, which made it easier for people to avoid (or in some cases *cough* encourage) downloading these releases. Not knowing what to expect, I just picked a few series that looked nice (art-wise). I stumbled across something quite nice.

It’s a one-shot story called Needles and Oranges. It’s not really completely yuri… since the main character had both a boyfriend and a girlfriend. Here’s a quick summary of the plot:

The main character, Eriko, wakes to find Shuan, her female lover, in her bed. Shuan is Chinese, and the two of them can’t communicate (since neither of them speak the other language). However, Eriko completely believes that the two of them are capable of understanding each other without using words. They communicate through hand gestures, through body language, and (according to Eriko) the heart. Eriko knows she is completely in love, because being around Shuan makes her happy in ways that no one else in the world can ever imitate.

However, Shuu (Eriko’s male lover) believes that Eriko is delusional, and that the “love” Shuan and Eriko share isn’t real. He then proceeds to tie Eriko up for some S&M smex (this release was not classified as either mature or adult, so naturally, nothing was shown). Eriko states that Shuu has been acting weird lately, that he’s been having sex with her in abnormal ways. Shuu replies simply that this is his real self.

Eriko goes on explaining how she feels that she understands Shuan’s thoughts and feelings without talking. When Shuan asks about a wound that Eriko received during sex with Shuu, Eriko comforts her, and states that Shuan should worry about herself. Apparently, Shuan lets herself out every night, and dresses up in very expensive clothing. Eriko believes that Shuan is selling her body in this foreign land in order to make a living.

One day, Eriko suddenly finds a letter written in Chinese. It is from Shuan, who bids Eriko farewell in the letter. Confused by Shuan’s sudden departure, Eriko realizes that she never really knew the person she claims she loves. She runs to Shuu for comfort. Shuu then tells her that Eriko was actually using their language barrier to avoid all of Shuan’s pains. In order to be truly in love, one must share both the happy and sad moments in life with their significant other. Shuu uses their own relationship as an example: he knows that he has an abnormal fetish, but because he loves Eriko so much, he wants to show her every single aspect of himself (even his sadistic nature). So, putting the relationship at risk, he decided to initiate her into his whole S&M thing. Eriko then understands that she should’ve tried to actually understand and learn about Shuan, instead of just trying to thrive on only the mutual attraction that the two girls had for each other.

In the end, Eriko gets someone to translate the letter, and Shuan turned out to be someone completely different from the Shuan she had fabricated in her mind. Shuan is the daughter of a rich businessman who was on a trip to Japan for work. Every night, she had left to report to her father, to let him know that she was alright. In the letter, Shuan also left her address in China, almost as if she wanted Eriko to come find her. So Eriko gathers up her courage, goes and tried to learn Chinese. The manga ends with a few very very cute lines (I modified them a bit since the scanlation didn’t make too much sense to me).

“This summer, I’m going to the city named in the letter, even though I don’t even know where it is… because a stranger, yet someone I hold dear, awaits me there.” (major run-on sentence…)

One last thing, something I whipped up because the art is so ugly. My sad attempt to “beautify” one of the cute scenes in the story:

My pathetic attempt to colour... not bad considering the fact I did it at 8:30 AM in the morning and finished before 9.

To be honest, the art was pretty bad. Yet I got used to the style relatively quickly, because the story was so cute (and the things Eriko would say were so cheesy, yet absolutely touching). Why I liked this one-shot? There are various reasons.
#1: it showed how language barriers are not a problem when it comes to love.
#2: it also showed how sometimes love doesn’t make sense… it could be with anyone, anywhere.
#3: it’s possible to fall in love with a stranger.
#4 love is strong enough to motivate people to overcome certain obstacles (like stupid Eriko trying to learn Chinese)
#5 the girl lover kicked the boy lover’s ass XD XD XD

There’s actually a lot more to the story than the obvious points I’ve stated above… but it’s hard for me to put into words. Just read the chapter for yourself… grab the download from Lililicious. It’s a beautiful story.

LOL, so that’s what you were colouring this morning? XD
Well, the art doesn’t look THAT bad, but I haven’t gotten a chance to actually read the scanlations yet. Unlike you, I do not have a door to close.

I used to have Lililicious bookmarked during my manga scanlation phase, around the time of AN when you oh so passionately taunted me with the IchiMaro and ARIA manga. XP

Comment by staappy July 26, 2008 @ 6:24 pm

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