Murayama Kei's A Centaur's Life is the newest thing with yuri content from Seven Seas. It is running in the seinen magazine Comic Ryu and has three tankoubon out in Japan.
This series is a slice-of-life about a shy, polite girl named Himeno and her best friends Nozomi and Kyoko. What makes this series different from your usual high school slice-of-life is that the characters live in a world in which everyone is some kind of fantasy creature.
Himeno is a centaur, Kyoko is pretty much a satyr ("goatfolk" here), Nozomi is a "draconid" (a human-dragon hybrid), and there are angelfolk (like the student council president Manami), catfolk, mermaids (which haven't appeared in this volume), and the completely non-humanoid-looking "Arctic people" ("snake people" being the offensive term for them), who have only appeared in media (a magazine and an old movie) so far.
This volume covers Himeno responding to a boy asking her out, a school play in which Himeno plays the princess to Nozomi's prince, a school marathon in which Kyoko has trouble keeping up, Himeno getting a temporary part-time job as a model because her mom's magazine editor friend needs a centaur, and a chapter focusing on Himeno's family, especially her mom. Then there's an afterword in which Himeno, Nozomi, and Kyoko chat with Murayama Kei (drawn as a goat) about this series' development, and a history of the fictional town the characters live in.
I want to kill the first chapter of this series with fire. It resolves a body issue of Himeno's in an über-servicey way. It made me half-joke to a friend that I wondered if this series' author knows what vaginas look like outside porn. The virginity fetishizing doesn't help.
Take away the first chapter, and it's a decent series- a typical slice-of-life, just with the world we know adapted to fantasy creatures inhabiting it. The worldbuilding is well thought out, and I had fun discussing it with the friend who read my copy of this volume. For example, centaurs used to be samurai in Japan, but were enslaved for riding elsewhere, so it's legally considered a hate crime to ride them everywhere including Japan. Cue discussion of whether this world has actual horses since they have cows, but maybe the animals whose fantasy-influenced characteristics the humanoid characters have don't exist here. And "How do the cold-blooded Antarcticans survive in Antarctica?" Mundane details (like clothes, shoes, and how certain house designs might be less convenient for centaurs; I'm curious about what mermaids do) are covered also, and there's an amusing Obama reference.
Apparently there's a lesbian couple in Himeno's class- I'm not sure if they appear in volume 2 or volume 3, though. In this volume, the yuri is Himeno kissing Nozomi because a classmate altered her script for the play. Nozomi is flustered, but seems like she kind of liked it. After Himeno saves Nozomi from a stage injury, Nozomi kisses Himeno on the cheek in a "My hero!" kind of way. I liked that the girls in their class were like "Kyaa!" over Himeno kissing Nozomi.
As expected, the translation is good and honorifics left intact. The first page is a glossy color page featuring Himeno, Nozomi and Kyouko walking next to a café on one side and the full cover image (their walking to school with some classmates) on the other side. The back has a preview of another Seven Seas series, Monster Musume (Seven Seas has been especially interested in "monster girl" titles lately), which looks like every awful magical girlfriend series, just with a snake girl.
Story: F for chapter 1, C+ for the rest. More noteworthy for its setting than its story or characters, which are pleasant but not standout for me.
Art: B
Overall: C
To be honest it never crossed my mind that the first chapter could be considered fanservicey. I had friends who didn't want to have oral done to them because they considered their vaginas gross. So, I kinda saw this as a thing out of real-life puberty. I don't think we're exposed to anything explicitly, although I'm not sure how true can them playing around be. Playing doctor isn't far from reality, but it can be rare at their age, if that's what you complain about.
ReplyDeleteIn general, it's a clever series, with a well-built world and I hope it will fair well. I'm a bit worried that Seven Seas might drop it since the 'typical harem with a serpent girl' appears to be way more profitable than this one and it's a long ongoing series :/ I cross my fingers nothing bad will happen and we'll get our Centaur's Life regurarly on plan.
@Foxy Lady Ayane- I know some women consider their vaginas gross and talk about them with each other, but the scene felt creepily voyeuristic to me- less a "Girls talking frankly about their bodies and sexuality" kind of scene than, "Here, men this is aimed at, be vicariously titillated by these girls describing each other's junk."
ReplyDeleteI didn't know its sales were than much less than the serpent girl series, though.
well, 'monster girl harem' is in NYT top ten for some weeks now... on the contrast I haven't heard a thing about A Centaur's Life :/
ReplyDelete@Foxy Lady Ayame- Ahh, got it. That is a kind of surprising disparity
ReplyDeleteThis is not related to your post, but I caught your review on the "Kurogane Pukapuka Tai" yuri manga within your archives, and was wondering if you are planning on doing a review on the 2nd volume, which has been scantalated, and up on dynasty scans, a few months ago. :)
ReplyDelete@Rikku- This response is way late because I did not catch the notification for this comment before now, but in case you ever do check back- I am not going to buy and review volume 2 of Kurogane Pukapuka Tai. Volume 1 was fun, but volume 2 took so long to get published that I lost interest in the series. Sorry : \
ReplyDelete