Nine series and one movie with yuri elements is enough to make anybody’s head spin. Right, Major?
To be honest, nine out of sixtynine (nice) new series this season is not even fifteen percent yuri this season and not all series listed here will have actual yuri romance, but after years and years of maybe getting one or two Manga Time Kirara a year, I take what I can get. Series listed below are in under of their start date.
Heroine? Seijo? Iie, All Works Maid desu (Hokori)!
A genius girl reincarnates into the world of an otome game and instead of trying to be the hero or saintess, decides she’d rather skip all that and be a maid, like she dreamed of in her previous life. The opening and ending give away the likely heterosexual end game, but that doesn’t erase the romantic tension between her and her mistress.
Grow Up Show: Himawari no Circus-dan
Mizuka is the daughter of the world’s greatest trapeze artist. Unfortunately she hates both the circus and her father, especially after he ‘sells’ her to the Sunflower Circus, a dilapidated all-girls troupe. Nevertheless, years of dedicated training having giving her trapeze skills that make Ouka, the circus’ existing trapeze artist, immediately obsessed with her. So far this feels like an ensemble cast show focusing on the circus and its performers more than any possible romance between Mizuka and Ouka. But we can hope.
BanG Dream! Yume∞Mita
After MyGo and Ave Mujica you might’ve thought Bang Dream would’ve run out of blorpos to torture, but nope, here’s a brand new batch and now they’re vtubers, thrown together to become a band. The main protagonist, Arale, has a Dark Past that left her traumatised and a childhood friend in a rival band who shared that past. Worse, that childhood friends shares the band with the main cause of Arale’s trauma, the very evil indeed for
Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha EXCEEDS: Gun Blaze Vengeance
With the possible exception of Hibki & Miku, Nonoha and Fate are the reigning yuri couple of mahou shoujo series, having gone so far as to adopt a daughter together in a previous one. This may be set before that happened, but also opens with a loving pair of “sisters” living together before Nanoha even enters the picture.
Sayonara Lara
Episode one was a straight (no pun intended) retelling of the story of the Little Mermaid but ended with a meet cute between the two protagonists as Laura the mermaid fell out of the sky onto Mari the boixer, who immediately punched her lights out. And then she took Laura home to meet her family. Given that Laura was sent into the human world to search for true love by her evil (?) withc aunt to save her family from her own curse, odds are high that Mari might be just that.
In a recent interview the director said he didn’t want to make it “a ‘typical’ yuri anime” and that he wanted to “portray their relationship with strength and complexity. Depending on your cynicism this is either a good or a bad sign. Does not wanting to be a “typical” yuri anime mean that ti’ll be all about female friendship rather than proper romance, as more pessimistic fans think? Or will director Koide Takushi surprised us and deliver a strong, complex romance?
Honoo no Toukyuujo: Dodge Danko
A bunch of dumbass girls start a dodgeball club together. Based on the sequel to a nineties dodgeball manga, whose protagonist is this series’ protagonist’s dead father. The focus here is on dodgeball and the various antics the club members get up to, with any yuri being on the fanservice side of things. It’s all very much too what you might suspect from a modern sequel to a nineties series, not very subtle in its humour or fanservice.
The Ghost in the Shell
Such a faithful adaptation of Shirow Masamune;s original manga that it reinstituted the lesbian threesome scene in its fsecond episode that was removed with Shirow’s blessing from the manga reprints ever since the first publication. The Major was always portrayed as bisexual but it never actually mattered in previous Ghost in the Shell projects. Don’t expect much more lesbianism in future episodes either, to be honest. But at least she has proper emotions in this series!
Kimi ga Shinu made Koi wo Shitai
Sheena is the weakest pupil at the school for magical assassins the government put her in when she became orphaned. The night after her roommate died in battle, she couldn’t sleep and went for a walk only to meet a blood soaked girl she’d never seen before. Because she feeds the girl onigir, Mimi becomes obsessed with her to the point of becoming her new roommate and joining her class. Will this be the start of a truly toxic romance? The title, I Want to Love You Till Your Dying Day certainly promises as much. Encouraging is that while there are boys at the school, they have been non-entities and there’s actually at least one other yuri couple there. Also, by kissing somebody who is on the same wavelength as you, you can restore their health. Uh-huh.
Tai-Ari deshita. Ojousama wa Kakutou Game nante Shinai
Ojo-samas flirt by playing Street Fighter at each other. Aya used to play fighting games as a child until all her friends grew out of it. Despite her talents, she decided to quit to and join Kuromi Girls Academy to become a proper lady. Mio, also known as Shirayuki, “the white lily” already is that, the idol of all the other girls at school. And then Ayo catches Mio playing Street Fighter online in an unused classroom, something highly forbidden at Kuromi Academy… By the end of the first episode they’ve not only fought each other so hard their lips are bleeding from biting them, but they crashed through a plate glass window to escape when a custodian threatend to discover them…
I have high hopes.
Shibou Yuugi de Meshi wo Kuu. 44: Cloudy Beach
Young girls being made to fight their environment and each other in sadistic death games broadcast to an audience of perverts unable to stand the sight of blood, so it’s all transmuted into cotton, as if they’re just dolls being broken. The participants, desperate and badly adjusted to the real world, finding some sense of comfort in each other, even forming emotional ties with their female handlers responsible for sending them into these situations in the first place. Is there a more perfect platonic form of toxic yuri possible? This is a movie sequel to last season’s original series, promising more of the same twisted thrills.
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