Garan no Hime - Ch. 2 - Beyond the sea of trees

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Kinda funny because this is from a yuri magazine. Of course it's horny.

It's definitely gazey, and most straight men will certainly enjoy the sight, but I'm not sure the gaze of males is what was in mind when it was designed. The target audience of a yuri magazines is generally somewhere between neutral and slightly female leaning.

It's also the magazine that has "Justice for girls" as a slogan on it's covers. If you're picking these up as single chapters on Mangadex, you're not necessarily receiving them in the full context of the types of other material that they're packaged with. There's not much any of us can do about that, but it's worth being aware.



I think you're reading more into this than is actually there. It sounds like the world is being rough for you at the moment. That sucks and it shouldn't be happening. But I'm not sure this is another example of society throwing out an over-sexualised pin-up girl because it sells to dudes.

The author's gender is unclear. I had a quick browse through their pixiv and twitter, but couldn't find anything one way or the other. So I wouldn't necessarily assume that this is some dude drawing a hot girl because that's what dudes wanna see. Personally, I'm assuming it's a woman until I find evidence to the contrary. Female mangaka are common.

There's also a difference between being sexualised and being sexy. Being sexy is fine. The human body is attractive. Looking at attractive people is enjoyable. Some women find a lot of comfort and power in being attractive on their own terms, or in seeing others do the same.

The problem in media often comes about when being an attractive set of body parts is the ONLY reason a character exists or is relevant, or they're made sexy despite there being good story reasons against it. That's not the case so far with Hime, although she's playing uncomfortably close to the Born Again Yesterday trope with her amnesia. We'll have to wait to see how that one turns out.


But she's not a prop, she's central to the story and the mystery that is being set up. Her thoughts and actions matter. Hime has by far the most physical power of any character, but is reliant on Isana for her knowledge of the world. The relationship between them so far seems to be mutually supportive rather than setting up the type of power dynamic that one might expect with the more troubling types of sexualised characters.

Men have not featured meaningfully in the story so far, nor has there been any real exploration of the fact that Hime is traditionally sexually attractive. I expect that both of these things will come up eventually - a literal mechanical woman who happens to be very sexy but is also an extremely powerful intelligent entity with her own thoughts and feelings is an incredible tool for commentary on society and culture if the author wanted to do that.

But you might want to keep in mind the source before you assume that Hime is an example of negative sexualisation. We're only two chapters in and I don't think the author has done anything so far that would suggest that they shouldn't be given the benefit of the doubt. Would it be fair to judge Yoko Taro and D.K.'s choices for the expression of Kaine's sexuality after playing for 20 minutes? Probably not.

Let's see if the author does something with Hime that's actually a problem before we start saying this isn't the time and place for a character like this.

The works serialized in the magazine Yuri Hime are not inherently horny in their presentation. If you're familiar with the currently ongoing series, you will find that no more than half feature superficially "sexy" visuals. And still, Yuri Hime is just one magazine, so the average "level of horny" in its series is not representative of the whole yuri scene.

I also don't see anything here that most female fighters wouldn't be subject to in similar SFF action manga. I mean... the typical Shounen Jump action vehicle will put any female character that does any fighting through a ritual of humiliation (costumes and camera angles, sometimes even sexual assault). So it doesn't make sense to frame yuri as a prerequisite or predictor of male gaze or horny visuals.
 
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I will say this though: many of Comic Yuri-hime series is like that. That’s just the nature of romance series like these, every so often you’ll find sexualization being done.

And it’s not just yuri bring over-sexualized either. Yaoi is like that, too. Whether you continue to read this or not is up to you, but the first thing that I thought of when we picked this series up was, “Oh my god this really has the Nier vibe to it”, not “Oh my god, the toaste- I mean Hime is just so hot”. We just love the storyline, that’s all.
Yeah I don't think anyone was trying to imply it's unique in its sexualization or that we're at fault for enjoying it (it's fucking so awesome) it's just kinda a shame that the general manga landscape is like this and this is definitely one of the more egregious examples

Yaoi definitely has it 100x worse than Yuri though 🫡🫡🫡 they are gods strongest soldiers over there
 

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