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#2: What Was I Just Thinking? by Kuwabara Tamotsu

[Content warning: violence, blood]

toxic yuri am i right ahaha If you've heard of Kuwabara Tamotsu, its likely from his manga Destroy It All and Love Me in Hell!, an ongoing series popular among some of my edgiest lesbian friends. It's a great manga, and I'll probably end up writing about that manga at some point or another, but that's not what this post is about. Instead, I'm writing about Kuwabara's 2020 oneshot What Was I Just Thinking?, a manga that covers similar themes of love, sex, and violence, but with a different perspective and tone. In it, Makabe, the protagonist, struggles with her violent intrusive thoughts directed towards her friend Hoshizaki. After the latter reveals that she's actually a masochist, the two go back to her apartment and get sadomasochistic. It's a little cute, actually, even if the way it goes down is pretty fucked up on Makabe's part.

Kuwabara Tamotsu seems to really love taking these stressed-out, high-strung characters and giving them super unhealthy - usually violent - release valves. Obviously, there's a little more complexity to this specific situation than just that but it's essentially the core of Makabe's arc. The way we see her thought processes play out over the course of the manga paints this really fascinating picture of a woman who's so terrified of her own desires that when she finally lets them out she has no idea where - or even how - to stop. Classic yuri stuff, really. There are a few different ways you can interpret the dynamics at play outside of that, though. One of the things that for me really adds a layer of nuance to the relationship for me is how intentional Hoshizaki is about drawing certain reactions out of Makabe. There is obviously a huge difference between fucking with someone just to see what they're like when they're upset - which is just obnoxious friend behavior - and smacking the shit out of someone out of nowhere - which is assault - but the underlying motivations of both characters share some similarities, Hoshizaki is just a tad more subtle about it. And then there's that moment near the end, where Hoshizaki starts playing with Makabe's bruised hand in order to see what she looks like when she's in pain. There's a disparity in how much respect for boundaries each character has, and that's an important part of their dynamic, but I really like the way Hoshizaki isn't just a receptacle for Makabe's weird hangups. One might even say she "matches her freak".

There's also the fact that Makabe is a wimp. I think this is an important part of her character - she seems to have a bit of a complex about it, as we can see when she gets all defensive about having played ping pong in school, compared to the more athletic Hoshizaki. The fact that Hoshizaki seems more concerned about her hair being messed up than the bruising all over her face while Makabe's hands hurt so bad she can't even hold a cigarette is still kind of cute, and it makes her desires and motivations feel a lot more real.

Another fact of the matter is that these two women really are in love with each other. There are enough longing glances and flushed cheeks throughout the manga that we can be sure of that, and it's really not, like, normal friend stuff to want to hurt your bestie in order to understand her better. One really would hope that these two don't go on to build a relationship based off what they've established here, but come on. Look at them.

So what I find really interesting about this manga is that it's definitely toxic yuri, but it's presented in such a complex and sympathetic way that it almost makes you want to forget that fact? Like, obviously there's this big overarching layer of straight-up violence on the surface. And once you get to the core of the story it's about two characters nurturing a really unhealthy dynamic that's not going to take them anywhere good. But in between those two levels, there's this real sense of passion and romance and emotion that undercuts what would otherwise just be a total downer of a manga and turns it into something that's actually really cute, even while it maintains this sense of tension and fear and desperation that keeps you from getting too comfortable. It's also just really hot. If that all sounds good to you, you should read this comic (which I'll link below). You should also read Destroy It All and Love Me in Hell!, but more on that eventually. Probably. I'm still kind of figuring out what I want this blog to be, so no promises on anything, but you'll probably be seeing more of me throughout the week. Hope you all have a lovely Tuesday :)

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#1: I Say A Little Prayer by Minami Q-ta

Minami Q-ta is one of my favorite manga artists. I love the way they write relationships: they're never the easy, innocent affairs you find in a lot of yuri (not to knock those kinds of stories, mind you - they just don't scratch the same itch). Instead, they're messy and uncomfortable, often driving their participants towards self-destruction. Pair that with an expressive (described by my friend Wren as "wobbly") art style and an impressively consistent ability to stick the landing, and one starts to wonder why Minami Q-ta has gotten so little attention, at least on the English-speaking internet. I Say A Little Prayer, a oneshot published in 1996, perfectly encapsulates all my favorite elements of Minami Q-ta's work. To summarize as briefly as I can: Kiyoko, 25, is head-over-heels in love with Ayumi, 23. The two, who have been seeing each other for some time now, are enjoying a picnic by the river before a storm forces them to return to Ayumi's apartment. While they are showering together, Ayumi tells Kiyoko that she wants her to meet her boyfriend, and hopes that they can be friends forever. Kiyoko does not take this well, and runs off into the rain. After briefly breaking down in tears on the street, Kiyoko returns to Ayumi's apartment and declares:

(not sure who Midori-chan is, by the way. Minami Q-ta's Goodbye Midori - another one of my favorites, but not yuri enough for me to talk about here - was published the same year, so it could have to do with that?) We've all been in, or been around, enough similar situations to be able to recognize that this is not a relationship that's going to last, of course. Even so, this feels like a happy ending, at least for Kiyoko. I relate to her a lot, as someone who's also gotten caught up in the excitement of a new relationship before calling it quits the moment things start getting uncomfortable (more times than I'd like to admit). We see her at the beginning of the story reeling from another such experience before she meets Ayumi, and it's implied that this is a not uncommon occurrence for her. What's more, the calm and usually passive Ayumi is a perfect receptacle for Kiyoko's pushiness, which allows the latter to really believe that, since Ayumi isn't outright rejecting her, the two must be in love. This makes the rejection of finding out that Ayumi was just sort of going along with it sting even worse.

So for her to get right back up again is a sign of newfound resilience. It's an ending that feels very real: nothing tangible has changed, and Kiyoko's situation is still just as fraught as it was a few pages before, but growth has been achieved. It's a testament to Minami Q-ta's ability to create a satisfying and emotionally resonant story arc in such a short form while still maintaining a sense of realness and complexity. Something that I particularly love about the writing in this manga is the dialogue. That's attributable to both the original author, of course, as well as the translators (from the prolific scanlator group Lililicious), who did an excellent job at subtly introducing a sense of ambiguity into Ayumi's relationship with Kiyoko - for example, when she tells Kiyoko, "You're so cool, you make my heart race", she might be paying her close friend a compliment, or flirting with her lover, or - my personal favorite option - perhaps even hinting at her own uncertainty regarding her feelings towards their relationship. After all, we never see the same level of interiority with Ayumi as with Kiyoko, so whether or not she really does just want to be "friends forever" is up to the reader to decide.

As you can probably tell from the images I've posted so far, there are a lot of really striking panels in this manga - the way the art shifts from awkward cuteness to these sudden moments of really intense beauty and emotion is a big part of what draws me in about Minami Q-ta's work.

There are other things about this manga I'd love to talk about - I think the way that Ayumi's feelings are hinted at is super interesting, for example, and I love the use of background characters as symbols of the social reality within which Ayumi and Kiyoko exist. But for now, I'll leave you all with a link for where you can check this out and a request that you check out Minami Q-ta's other work if you like this one. They're still active today, by the way, although I haven't been able to find any translations of their newer work. Thanks for reading, everyone :)