Boku wa, Yuri na Onee-chan wo Ouen Shiteimasu - Vol. 1 Ch. 6.5 - I'll Cheer On Onee-chan! Part 2

[Salfaro]

Well heck, usually I can think "well I can see how it was wearing out it's welcome" when something gets the axe, but this at six chapters seems super early. Oh well.

 

[realcaze]

Meh

 

[ShiroWinter]

Really meh ending, but it could be worst

 

[Kaarme]

@Lilliwyt I feel like you would benefit from reading/watching Bakuman if you believe this length was necessarily designed from the beginning. The publishing scheme in Japan is cruel and short-sighted, especially for original stories. Other than that, the only reason I started to read this series in the first place was because the kid was there in the mix. I read very little yuri on its own, so when I started to read this, I expected the younger brother to be somehow in the mix in a cute way. Not in a threesome way, he's just an elementary schooler, but sort of like being pampered by both the girls. The tag selection as well suggested as much in my opinion. Instead the story ended with nothing good happening to him personally.

@mirewitch While I admit I'm biased (although not super biased since while I don't read shounen ai at all, I also don't read much yuri), it would be a bit much to make everybody in this story (conveniently) gay to that extent. More importantly, though, I'm not sure the reader demographics work like that.

 

[akole]

Odd end but ok

 

[AngryFerret]

Man, so sad that it was axed. This ending is just too rushed with little development of the third wheel girl. Also it's kinda sad that we didn't have at least some chapters focusing more on the brother and how he develops some independence.

Still nice story that would be better without rushed ending.

 

[Lilliwyt]

@Kaarme

if you believe this length was necessarily designed from the beginning.

I know that much but in the case of that manga, i see @GoggledAnon said that YuriHime/Pixiv stuff usually don't have more than 1 or 2 volumes so it was probably the case here.

 

[Kaarme]

@Lilliwyt Perhaps you are right. I can't say I'd know anything about this series specifically. It's just a pity the ending wasn't more wholesome. Two volumes instead of one would have solved everything. I'm also not a fan of stretching stories beyond reason just because they sell, ultimately ruining them, but there are also minimums if there are maximums. I will always remember one literature critic who said a good story knows when it's the time to end.

 

[mirewitch]

@Kaarme Regarding narrative convenience, I don't see it as any less convenient than when another lesbian romantic love interest appeared, or the frequent "secondary yuri couples" that other yuri manga have. Granted its unlikely in real life, but in real life most gay people aren't usually meeting other gay people through random interactions the way it works in manga. It definitely happens, but its way more common for people to meet via things like dating apps, gay bars, and LGBT events. Most people aren't gay, so bumping into your soul mate at the grocery store or at your job or whatever is just far less likely if you're gay. My point is that yuri manga always stretch the truth on this sort of thing if it leads to a good story. I think this is a good thing to do, as it leads to a wider variety of stories, though admittedly a lot of yuri manga just use it as an excuse for yet another high school yuri manga.

Regarding demographics of yuri - ultimately my comment about a shounen ai relationship was because I think it would have been an interesting reversal of the original premise - instead of "brother helps his sister start a gay relationship," its "sister helps her brother start a gay relationship." I definitely don't think it should have been the focus, but I think you could have had them as a mild secondary couple to mix in with the primary story about the two yuri leads. So more an choice to help pace the plot and flesh out a character than a business-focused demographic one. That being said, I'm not sure I agree regarding the notion that the demographics of a yuri manga would reject such a decision.

If we examine Verena Maser's 2011 study on yuri demographics, we find the breakdown is something like this: 30% were non-heterosexual women, 15.2% were heterosexual women, 4.7% were non-heterosexual men, 39.5% were heterosexual men and 1.2% identified as "other". I think the missing 10% there is people who didn't respond on that question. Note non-heterosexual mostly means a combination of homosexual and bisexual, with a bit of asexuality also. Obviously different manga are going to bias more towards one demographic or another, but I think that gives a good baseline for how yuri demographics work. In contrast to something like lesbian porn, yuri manga is not overwhelmingly consumed by straight men. Instead readers are a mix of many different genders and sexualities, with the overall gender ratio being near 50/50 but biasing a bit toward women.

So given those are the demographics, how can we gauge the reaction to a mild shounen ai relationship? Well, I think its fair to say straight women and non-straight men would generally support a shounen ai side couple. Straight men I think its fair to say would range from neutral to hostile. I think the reaction would be far more neutral than angry for a mild substory without sexualization, and I doubt most of them would drop the manga over this, but I concede that they wouldn't be in favor. The tricky part is in figuring out how non-straight women might respond. Most gay women I've known would be supportive of a shounen ai subplot as long as it wasn't heavily sexualized, and wasn't the focus. This is because while lesbians aren't interested in such a relationship on a sexual level, there is a lot of overlap in the issues gay/lesbian relationships deal with, and thus they can still relate in a general LGBT sense. This is also why I like reading a wide variety of LGBT manga, including shounen ai, as a non-straight woman. I realize this is very anecdotal so your mileage may vary on how much you buy this particular argument, but I think its fair to say non-straight women would at least be neutral, and probably trending to positive when you consider bisexual women, who would probably be on average more supportive than lesbians.

If we sum all of this up, we get a spread of neutral to positive on the female side, and a spread of neutral to negative on the male side. And we've established the gender dynamics of yuri in general are near 50/50. As such I think the overall demographic impact would be neutral, and thus the audience response would be mostly based on execution. If the plotline was clunkily written or overwhelmed the story, I think people would react very poorly. If the plotline was done subtly and didn't take up too many pages, I think it could work as a good way to break up the drama of the main plot with the lesbian love triangle.

tl;dr I think the demographics question is more a mixed bag than a straight up negative, and the success of such a subplot would be based on the execution. But pretty much all stories live or die on their execution far more than the particular tropes they use, so I don't think this is a reason to avoid the troupe entirely. Sorry I went full statistics nerd here, and I don't blame you if you just see a wall of text and say "nope, not reading," but I find it really interesting how the demographics of LGBT manga shape the way the stories are told.

 

[Kaarme]

@mirewitch I had no idea of those demographic studies and I hadn't even checked what kind of publication this series came from. In other words I spoke too soon, without knowing what I was talking about. Based on my years of reading manga and watching anime, I had got a wrong impression there are a lot of men reading yuri stuff. Whenever you see a potential yuri couple in some random work, there always seem to be no end of men shipping it, as well. However, that doesn't really mean much, in the end, and only served to give me a false impression.

Nonetheless, though I was wrong about the other thing, I do still think it would be too convenient for there to be exactly two families out of three introduced in this series, the children being a big sister and a little brother, with the sisters being lesbians and the brothers being gay, all with matching ages to the counterparts and being classmates. (The third family would have a single lesbian daughter, but it's not relevant here.) I just don't like such contrived settings, and it has got nothing to do with sexuality characteristics either. Still, Sui actually might be gay, based on his behavior, but beyond being a siscon, Mio's a mystery. Though that's fine for an elementary schooler.

Though I did read your post quickly, it's still too long. You are doing yourself a disservice by writing a huge post as it means less people will read it, wasting your effort. 20 years ago I already created a three paragraphs max rule for myself. I break it extremely rarely.

 

[mirewitch]

@Kaarme Yeah I knew it was too long when I wrote it, that's why I said in the tl;dr that I didn't blame anyone if they didn't want to read it. But I wanted to explain my thought process, and with so many competing demographics in yuri I didn't know a way to boil it down to a few sentences that didn't feel like stereotyping. So meh, if people wanna read it they can, if not its not a big deal.

I respect your perspective that it would be contrived; likely my views have been biased due to reading stuff like Kindred Spirits on the Roof, where there are like 6 different yuri couples and a character literally wants to create a "yuritopia". After reading stuff like that, 2 gay couples doesn't seem so far fetched lol

 

[zdarkbrz_816]

what...? fin...?

?!??

 

[jimkage]

Saki was garbage through and through.

 

[Anoncommenter9]

jimkage no u

 

[morbid_star]

Mio is so adorable 😭

 

[LilithRaven]

ah yes the garbage troupe that makes sure the idea of sexual orientation doesn’t exist in japan!

you ask what I’m talking about?
i many Yuri stories the idea of I “love you for you Saki-chan even if you were a guy!”
that there it is used to not talk about the idea of an Girl/Women being ONLY sexually attracted to girls/women!!! by making seemn that just love is enough to date a girl! and if a guy comes in she will go for the guy too!!!! CUZ GOD FORBIDDEN WOMEN DON’T WANNA RIDE A DICK

This is in part to Japan lack of knowledge about sexual orientation, cuz that concept exist only if you acknowledge that women/men can be sexually attracted to their own sex, and if you think japan acknowledge bisexual people with that statement you are mistaken

 

[IamaTire]

Page 8 she is us.

 

[FLuffyMofu]

no more :'( ?