Yuri manga often is overlooked in the fandom despite its century-long history as a publishing form. Many people are familiar with yaoi/Boys Love (BL) manga, which center on men involved in same-sex relationships. However, less well-known is yuri, a genre focusing on the love between two women. To the unacquainted, yuri might seem like BL manga with the genders flipped, but yuri manga developed on a different trajectory over the last hundred years. Yuri contains unique tropes rarely seen outside the genre, as well as inspired some of the most important anime and manga around.
If one is about to start with yuri, this primer can serve as an introduction to the genre, allowing you to understand what titles you ought to seek out as well as what concepts and tropes are commonplace in yuri.
The Mainstream Jump in Yuri Fiction
While Yuri has existed for decades in Japan, it's recently become more readily available in the West. Seven Seas Entertainment has published 41 different yuri manga, on top of multiple other other featuring heavy LGBTQA themes. These include such popular titles as Bloom into You, Citrus, Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid and The Conditions of Paradise. Citrus became a New York Times Best Seller in 2015.
Many of these titles have become popular thanks to a surge of demand for LGBTQA-friendly fiction. Manga about the LGBTQA experience, such as My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness, have found a large audience that can intimately relate to these stories. The wider-spread acceptance of LGBTQA themes has opened the floodgates for such manga in the West.
Even in Japan, however, yuri manga has become more mainstream in recent years. The anthology magazine Comic Yuri Hime has allowed a massive amount of yuri manga to become serialized in Japan, including the aforementioned Citrus. Many of the biggest anime titles of all time have been yuri titles or yuri-inspired titles. Sailor Moon, Revolutionary Girl Utena and Cutie Honey all feature heavy yuri themes.
The Origins of Yuri
The origins of yuri date back to a century ago. Yaneura no Nishojo by Nobuko Yoshiya is not a manga, but rather a highly influential novel. Yaneura no Nishojo tells the story of Ryuumoto Akiko, who lives in an attic room at her Catholic boarding school. She becomes friends with her roommate Akitsu, who is engaged to another man. The two women form a relationship and decide to live together, embarking on a life with one another.
In her novel, Yoshiya established several tropes that would become common place in yuri. Catholic schools, two girls living together, emotional connections, flower petals and piano duet scenes? All these popular yuri tropes date back to this novel. Yoshiya would go on to write novels in the Class S genre -- an early designation for queer fiction focused on women. Many of her works would later feature tragic endings.
Class S works became highly popular works of feminist and queer fiction, which led into the blossoming manga genre. Osamu Tezuka's Princess Knight, while not yuri in and of itself, proved to the world that girls wanted to read manga. The intersection between the Class S genre and Princess Knight's general aesthetic would be felt throughout the '70s. Two manga in this decade would prove especially influential on the yuri genre: Shiroi Heya no Futari and The Rose of Versailles.
Shiroi Heya no Futari by Ryoko Yamagishi features many tropes already seen in Yoshiya's work and other Class S fiction. It features a boarding school setting, with one softer, delicate girl falling head over heals for a more assertive one. They both share a room, help each other grow and build bonds in friendship that blossom into romance. It also ends in tragedy. On the other hand, The Rose of Versailles by Riyoko Ikeda is a historical fiction story featuring Oscar, a girl raised by her father to be the male captain of the guards, becoming a dashing hero who women fawn for and adore.
Yuri manga would divide into two core trajectories. Yamagishi was clearly inspired by Yoshiya and Class S fiction, and just carried over the tropes present there into manga. On the other hand, Rose of Versailles drew heavily from the Girl Prince aesthetic of Princess Knight, simply adding more explicit queer elements. Oscar would most overtly influence Sailor Moon's Haruka and Revolutionary Girl Utena's Utena.
The Problematic Tropes
Many early Class S and yuri titles established tropes that would influence later works. Most overtly, there's the dynamic between a soft, gentle school girl becoming attracted to a mature, more assertive one. Titles like Maria Watches Over Us by Oyuki Konno took all these tropes and arguably mastered them, creating a gentle story about a Catholic school and the girls who live there forming relationships with one another. Strangely absent for many years, however, were stories focused on adult women in relationships.
This is in part because the Class S genre focused on school girls forming bonds only to, later on, regard their interest in women as a phase. This mindset became highly prevalent in Japan throughout the 20th century, though the country is moving past this. Titles like Yuri Life by Kurukuruhime and the anthology title Whenever Our Eyes Meet… combat this by focusing on women forming relationships with other women in the often hostile, sexist work force.
Where to Start
It's not necessary to start with the very first yuri -- especially considering most of Nobuko Yoshiya's work remains untranslated. However, there are a few titles that any new yuri fan needs to read. The Rose of Versailles, Sailor Moon and Revolutionary Girl Utena remain among the most influential and highly-regarded anime and manga of all time.
For more grounded and realistic manga, however, Maria Watches Over Us, Bloom into You and Citrus are great reads. My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness, Yuri Life and even Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid are perfect titles for adults looking for stories about adults -- that often shed light on more personal experiences.
After that, feel free to explore. There's a hundred years of yuri for you to enjoy.
