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
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