>Murciélago is the same magazine with ani and gets tons of Explicit yuri sex scenes. Kuzu no honkai ends with het couple but there are yuri sex scenes as well. Bloom into you is from dengeki daio, Kase-san is from Wings, Still sick is from Mag Garden.
First two titles arent really good examples. Murcielago is a modern homage to 70s action dykesploitation d class cinema, and Kuzu no honkai is a coming of age melodrama. Neither of them orients itself around 'gay identity' or 'gay romance' (nor their pacing is 'slice of life' for that matter) - those elements are either entirely nonexistent, lurk in peripheries, or are relegated to being story arcs. It wouldve changed very little if the queer factor wasnt present.
As for the other mentioned comics I dont know: it may be that she applied to their respective places of publication and got rejected, pay was much better at yg, or that she wasnt planning to turn this into lesbian romance in the first place. I dont know, but neither do you.
>Ani is sold almost 500,000 copies and tagged shojo-ai now so i believe kuzu can write what she wants.
What I do know however is that no matter how popular shes now, that certainly wasnt the case five years ago when this publication started.
(on a sidenote, taggings based on a subjective singular impression and in iself has no bearing on authors categorization of their work ; unless youve meant to tell me that its being 'officially' recognized as gl in japan now.)
>Its just ani is quite different from other yuri mangas, from sisterhood to lovers, from first love to second love, from awkward, graytone case to acceptable case, it needs alot of time and work to be slow-burn romance relationship.
But thats my issue. It didnt start as one: it sold itself on false premise to the publisher and readers who initially helped with raising it to its current popularity.
Personally I dont care much for icky Morishima Akiko - like plots ; if I did know it will turn into one I wouldnt had started reading it in the first place.
...
All that said its entirely possible Im in the wrong here and the story would had progressed in the exact same way, with center relationship interactions reaching identically self-unaware level of awkwardness somewhere else. It may really come down to something as simple as Kuzushiro preference for subverting readers expectations and showing them her middle finger (which in polite society is euphemistically referred to as 'teasing' or 'baiting'). Given how aggressive shes with same-sex chemistry throughout her portfolio, and how bland in comparison everything male-oriented comes off as, I dont think thats the case here. She fucked up entrepreneurially (or creatively) at starting point, and as a result shes stuck in constant loop of self-mediation between what she currently wants to write, and what she initially promised to deliver. Its not easy if not downright impossible to change the focus of your work midway through, especially when third party and money are involved.