sometimes i see people on here saying “yuri is for the male gaze.” this has always been a massive oversimplification, many examples i see cited are shoujo, but i’d like to present my favorite example of yuri that is antithetical to the very idea of male gaze yuri, and a good example of how many, if not all blanket complaints about manga and anime as an artforms go away when you start to stray into josei territory (seriously, read and watch josei! check out showa genroku rakugo shinju if you haven’t!)
she loves to cook and she loves to eat is an ongoing manga that’s been running since 2021. it’s about 2 neighbors who wind up with a mutual relationship. nomoto loves to cook, but can never finish her meals and would like to be able to cook larger and more complex dishes. her neighbor kasuga is a big eater, but doesn’t cook very much and is more than happy to join nomoto for dinner. they grow closer, you can probably see the tragectory
now, what makes this so good? first of all, it’s about adults. with jobs. it’s one of the most grounded manga i’ve ever read. the 2 main characters are constantly receiving little microaggressions, but never in a way that feels preachy. it’s just something they have to go through as queer women in the world. when nomoto’s mom is pestering her about how she needs to get a boyfriend and belittling her relationship with kasuga (even before she falls in love, at a point when it was a platonic relationship!) it isn’t a massive thing, it’s just a shitty thing that makes her feel bad until she can start dinner with kasuga. when men flirt with them or just generally make shitty misogynistic comments it’s treated with gravity but it never overwhelms the story
and it manages to avoid making it depressing! there are a few especially serious chapters but they have content warnings before them and it always ends with them eating a meal together and feeling better. when nomoto realizes she’s a lesbian she has a fever dream that mixes together all the casual homophobia she experienced, but there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel
it acknowledges the complexity of identities (nomoto isn’t sure if she’s asexual or not, and one of her close friends is openly asexual, which is really nice to see when asexual people are very underrepresented in art) and kasuga is definitely not neurotypical and is definitely overweight without the manga making a big deal of it while acknowledging the difficulties this can cause. this isn’t limited to the manga itself, as the mangaka uses the volume extras to support the campaign for marriage equality in japan. her twitter is very good as well, where she mostly talks about trans rights and marriage equality and retweets things about the genocide in gaza (and has a trans flag on her display name!)
i don’t mean to make it sound like the politics/representation is the only thing there, though it is there and it’s very well handled. they have a very good relationship, and it’s a very well done romance about adults with jobs and responsibilities that i would absolutely recommend to anyone. the way they talk about cooking and eating is imo very good as well, with a focus on what’s good for each individual person. kasuga isn’t judged for eating so much, nomoto’s friend yako isn’t judged for being a bad cook, the pair’s other neighbor isn’t judged for their eating disorder. it’s a little bit of a feeder thing but not enough to be offputting to anyone who isn’t absurdly sensitive. it’s ongoing, with 3 volumes translated into english currently, and volume 3 was easily the best. i’m very excited to continue reading it! i’m also planning on checking out the live action drama that’s currently airing, but the manga will forever be #1
tl;dr it’s very good and you should read it. also just read josei. that’s where all the good stuff really is
spoilering some bits i really liked both for mild spoiler reasons and for space reasons
- the way their complex relationships with their parents play out
- yako and nomoto watching movies about lesbians together and sobbing. they’re just like me fr
- kasuga understanding exactly what nagumo means when the topic of abusive parents come up, and nomoto doing her best to be supportive while still returning the favor
- in general kasuga’s reaction to every time she sees or deals with some casual shittyness is really good, it feels very true to life when she ends up seeing a conservative politician talking about “traditional families” on tv
- i love them both but kasuga’s speech to her dad in volume 3 cemented her place as my favorite. “but if i were to move back… i couldn’t be me anymore.” she’s my hero
saying “yuri is for the male gaze” is only possible if you have never read yuri… at all like, there are works that are meant for a male(?) audience but they are just a small minority in a genre that is clearly written from women for women (can’t remember a single one that is not hentai tho, but pretty sure they are somewhere there)
what i would agree is that there is many “yuri bait” in anime that never resolves and is probably meant for fetishization but even then some of that can be simplified as “author didn’t made it explicit to avoid backlash on something and the fandom can’t accept anything that is not explicitly said”
RANT OFF
and yes. Josei is really a category full of gems. there are so many good stories there but usually requires some work to discover and to get
saying “yuri is for the male gaze” is only possible if you have never read yuri… at all like, there are works that are meant for a male(?) audience but they are just a small minority in a genre that is clearly written from women for women
Sounds like the yuri equivalent of “unlike other mecha anime, this one is about the characters, not the robots” or whatever they say when someone’s only seen Madoka Magica lol. Just dorks speaking broadly about a genre that they haven’t delved into.
pretty much, yeah! often it feels worse than that because at least ‘unlike other mecha this is about the characters’ comes from a place of love for one thing and unfamiliarity with the broader genre conventions. this is sometimes from people who have never touched a yuri manga in their lives, and also sometimes can get real racist. lotta people love implying that japan can’t comprehend queer people from a non-fetishistic angle
absolutely! like, there’s a fair amount of yuri published in shonen or seinen magazines, which are technically aimed at a male audience, but in recent decades shonen and seinen have been trying to branch out and appeal to women as well, so not even that’s enough to know for sure. like, bloom into you was shonen but anyone who tries to argue that it’s aimed at the male gaze is unbelievably full of shit
now, that’s not to say i’ve never seen yuri that was pretty clearly a male gaze thing. i’ve read sakura trick, that shit is very clearly for dudes. but it’s so much rarer than people make it out to be
society if josei manga was treated with the reverence and adaptation budget and promotion shonen was
Thanks for the overview on this! This has been on my reading list for awhile, along with My Brother’s Husband. I had no idea the mangaka behind this is so cool (but it makes sense of course). I read The Bride was a Boy awhile back (I highly recommend this, it’s a relatively short read) and it also had periodic explanations/criticisms of LGBTQ rights in Japan and especially the marriage laws, which I found interesting.
Sort of related, I think it would be neat to have a dedicated LGBTQ manga/anime thread at some point to share more content like this.
i liked the bride was a boy, but iirc the mangaka has made some shitty comments about self id and bathrooms. though this is half remembered from someone who also didn’t speak japanese telling me about it so take it with a grain of salt
the problem with dedicated threads is that they very quickly stop being used. though if we made the thread and just pinned it or put it in the sidebar that could work
it’s about adults. with jobs.
Sold. I didn’t even need to read the rest of the post. (Though I did, and it double-sold it for me.)
i have a bunch of yuri that’s adults with jobs, if that alone is enough to sell you check some of these out!
spoiler
- still sick (very good stuff)
- black and white (some real sicko shit, this is about office workers having violent hate sex and trying to ruin each others careers. it rules)
- doughnuts under a crescent moon (this one’s also got some asexuality in it!)
- ayaka is in love with hiroko (has good discussion of generational differences in attitudes towards queerness within the community)
- shwd (the job is monster hunting in this one, but it’s treated as a legit job. nice body diversity)
- our teachers are dating (this one’s just cute)
Thanks! Honestly I’d be down for any genre, not just yuri. Just looking for stories about adults in a reasonably grounded world.
Of course “grounded” is a relative term. I consider the world of The Voynich Hotel a grounded world, which some others quite reasonably might not.
yeah that’s more than fair
hmm. check out showa genroku rakugo shinju. good anime!
also the otherside picnic light novels, which are not in the most grounded world and are about college students (barely adults) but are incredible. inspired by roadside picnic and stalker, but imagining the zone is full of creepypasta monsters that can only be survived through the power of the bond between the stupidest lesbian you’ve ever seen and her girlfriend.
also satoshi kon’s stuff, especially millennium actress. and patlabor if you can stomach stories about cops, and mecha handled in a grounded way doesn’t stretch things too much.
I LOVE she loves to cook, she loves to eat! I didn’t realize it’s still coming out! I binged it hard, thought it was cancelled and moved on but that’s amazing news.
yeah no one is translating it unofficially, so if you want to read it you need to just wait for the official release (though once it’s out it’s available online if you know where to look). in japan they’re on volume 5, and the live action drama adaptation (which IS being fan translated) has outstripped the manga by now. volume 4 translation can’t come quick enough!
I really enjoyed the manga! Highly recommended.
and a good example of how many, if not all blanket complaints about manga and anime as an artforms go away when you start to stray into josei territory
Facts. I started reading josei a while ago, after reinvigorating my shoujo era, and have not looked back.
yeah! what are some of your favorites? i’m just really getting into josei now, so i don’t have a lot of experience in the space
Yes! I read a lot of yuri and also some pretty spicy stuff so I’ll give a spice meter where X is a little amount and XXX is almost every chapter but still tasteful. I’ll also give some content warnings as I remember them, for some it’s been a while:
- Kakeochi girl: a yuri story on old friends who run into each other after a long time. (CW: abuse) X
- Honnou Switch: the childhood friend turned lovers troupe done right and they’re adults who know how to communicate XXX
- How do we relationship: two college lesbians figure they should just date each other out of convince and no, it’s not a good idea XX
- Helter Skelter: a take on the beauty industry and the outcome of plastic surgery (CW: body horror, ED)
- Eventhough we’re adults: a teacher spends a night out at a bar, gets hit on by another woman and goes home with her. But, the teacher didn’t mention she’s married. A very introspective series.
- Ladies on Top: a couple realizes that they don’t need to fit in gendered roles to have a good time together XX
ooooh, thank you! i’ve read the first volume or so of even though we’re adults, but couldn’t find the rest online. i think they stopped doing fan translation after the official release started and no one is uploading it anymore. everything else is new to me, though i’ve heard a lot of good things about how do we relationship. i’ll be sure to check them out!
oh wait, i’ve read kakeochi girl, i just remembered it as “run away with me girl”. i liked that one a lot!
Yeah fan translations stopped for even though were adults. I ended up buying the digital copies
ahhh. i’ll probably do that once it’s done. or more likely check them out from the local library
Aw shit we gonna talk manga? Yay! You’re absolutely right, there are so many cool manga when you branch out to josei.
I love this romance called ‘that’s my atypical girl’ or ‘asper kanojo’ an ongoing comic written by someone who’s neurodivergent. There are a bunch more but you got me so excited about ace representation (and cooking) that I’m not going to hang around and talk about it, im gone go read your recommendation this instant!
ooooooh, i’ll check that out! lmk how you like it, it’s excellent
thanks for sharing
This is right down my alley. Big fan of the premise of this one. I love cooking. One of my favorite things to do in a daily basis. Once I finish some series I’m currently reading, I’m going to have to look into this.
also I’ve seen a ton of people use the related idea “yaoi is for perverted white women” to invalidate gay trans men.
my understanding is that this has slightly more basis in reality, but only slightly. i’m not an expert but i think it also has to do with the fact that yaoi vs bl is a real distinction, as opposed to yuri vs gl which was made up by western fans who thought it must be the same. but even so there’s still plenty of yaoi that’s made for and enjoyed by men
Well I’ve heard whispers of people using accusations of being “fujoshi” to invalidate the gender of trans men
oh yeah, that’s definitely true. i see that sometimes, it sucks
Just binged the three officially translated volumes and absolutely loved it!! Inject this shit straight into my veins.
Will be taking a look at your other recs as well because you clearly have exquisite taste
i should do more big recommendation posts.
top 3 recs rn are otherside picnic, revolutionary girl utena, and unjust depths. all contain different flavors of lesbians that are all MUCH more fucked up than the ones in she loves to cook and she loves to eat. if you want something more grounded and sweet hello melancholic is very good (and about a trans woman), as is ayaka is in love with hiroko
otherside picnic is about a couple of college students exploring another dimension where creepypastas are real and dealing with the horrors. but the REAL draw is seeing how stupid the pov character can get. “maybe she’s holding my hand because her hand is lonely when it isn’t holding a gun” is only the start.
utena is the #1 best anime of all time. it’s about abuse, it’s about fairy tales, it’s about structural misogyny, it’s all sorts of things
unjust depths is a marxist-leninist post-apocalyptic underwater mecha web novel about a ship from a soviet state infiltrating an empire to arm internal dissident groups. notable for having the highest concentration of transgender lesbians of any work of fiction i’ve ever seen. i assume characters are trans until proven otherwise, and that’s right more often than not
Sorry, I wrote a response like hours after you replied but didn’t post because anxiety, and then as the days passed by I was like, “Well shit, now I have to have something really good to say if I’m gonna comment!”. Anxiety brain, not even once.
…anyway! I’ve already read Hello, Melancholic! and loved it (I see that you’ve posted about it before and that’s probably how I found out about it). I went ahead and binged Ayaka is in Love with Hiroko and really enjoyed it! Ngl, my patience was wearing thin with the repetitive neutron star density antics in the first ~1/3, but once it got past that part into the meat of it I was totally hooked. I’ll also be sure to give Utena another shot–I watched the first few episodes and really vibed with it but for some reason I didn’t continue (think it was just a timing thing with stuff going on in my life). I’ll also check out Otherside Picnic; tbh, I’m not usually one for fantasy manga but I read the first few chapters and it seems pretty neat.
I basically don’t read novels of any kind these days even though I used to devour them in my youth (I remember going on a family vacation with an entire suitcase full of books and running out halfway through, to give you an idea), but that premise seems too good to pass up.
edit: also I just saw that you’ve also posted about Ore ga Watashi ni Naru made and I feel very seen. It’s one of those works that I would feel like a complete asshole for liking if I just told someone the basic premise, but the way it’s executed makes it very compelling. Which reminds me, I need to get back to reading it! The high quality scanlations gave way to speedscans when I was reading it so I switched over to the raws because I felt it deserved the effort to get as much of the subtext as possible. My Japanese is decent enough to get through it generally speaking, but since my kanji knowledge is lacking it’s pretty effortful so I think I just lost the will to soldier on. Looks like Skye/Kurisu and her team are back on board (she is the absolute GOAT) and have published like twenty-odd chapters since I last checked so I’ll definitely get back into it.
you’re totally good, i do that all the time!
you should definitely watch utena, as mentioned it is my favorite show of all time. i can’t say enough good things about it. it does have some pretty triggering content, so if there’s anything you might need a warning for just ask and i’ll let you know
i should have mentioned i read the otherside picnic light novels. the manga for otherside picnic hasn’t reached most of my favorite bits that show up in the novels, but is still very good. i totally relate to not reading much anymore, i used to read so much and now i’m lucky to read a few books a year. but otherside picnic just went so smoothly for me, as did unjust depths. i can’t explain why, they just really hit for me
i love until i become me so much. i’ve just been reading the speedscans and missing skyekurisu a lot, her work is always appreciated as one of the few people focused on this sphere of manga, especially because she’s not going to be inserting transphobia like some translators did when i was reading genderbend and crossdressing stuff in the bad old days
IM FUCKIN IN GIMME SOME
also Yuri is fantastic most of it is for women very obviously. I think hexbear just has a problem with anime/manga in general
I have a problem with anime/manga in general where i now read so much manga it ruins anime (because i already read what happens)
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and yeah it’s such a bummer what happened to tachiyomi. i think if you download the manga from somewhere else you can just use it as a reader for it, but at that point there are so many better ways to read it
lol, I’m 6 chapters in already. It’s very sweet. Thanks for the heads up!
always happy to recommend good yuri!
Necroing to say thanks for turning me on to this, i love it! My toes were curlin’ so hard they popped. I’ll happily take more rec’s
hell yeah, here’s some more yuri i think is good
- otherside picnic: the light novels specifically. 2 college lesbians exploring an eldritch dimension where creepypastas are real and end up getting closer. sorawo is one of the best pov characters of all time, she’s sooooooo funny
- bloom into you: modern classic, really heavy on understanding your own sexuality as you grow up, how romantic connections work, etc
- hello melancholic: idk if the author knows or not, but the mc is a transgender woman. like, i don’t think there’s any other way to read her. outside that just a pretty good, cute yuri
love me for who i am isn’t yuri, but it’s also really fun about queer stuff. the author was going to do an otokonoko series but then realized “hey, trans people exist. what if i actually tried to interface with that reality instead of just playing into all the tropes?” and it’s very sweet
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