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
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