Cruel Angel Theses

and it wasn’t a comfortable thought. Let me clear possible misconceptions and state hard facts first: It wasn’t a h-doujin, just like all my Touhou doujins are. It was Reimu x Marisa, which obviously wasn’t yaoi. The author was Aki Eda — one of my favourites and a damn good artist — and it was the recently translated 5th volume, from the Pestermom archive over at TouhouWiki, called “Yellow Flower that Blooms in Chest”, which I’ll assume is a euphemism for yuri.

Ever had one of those moments hit you and you get a sense of perfect empathy? Your senses are heightened, your feelings are in sync to an extent where you’re now like the proverbial mech pilot with a harmonising rate of over 90%. You are the mech, the mech is you, there is no mech. Well, yesterday’s realization was nothing like that. I kid. But damn, was it close. Too close, in fact.

An integral part of the Touhou experience is, in my opinion, the humble doujin. I can’t cite the source, but I’ve definitely read of (if you know what I’m talking about, link to it in the comments) ZUN adopting doujins as canon. This has greater implications than is obvious due to how it encourages better doujins as a whole — the average manga-ka, has, I presume, a lot more incentive to write something in character in hopes that ZUN will approve of it.

Aki Eda isn’t anything like that. Part of why I enjoy reading his works so much is how he likes to portray his characters with out of character mannerisms but canon settings — it’s a strange combination on paper, but it works. So you’ll have Alice bursting into tears in Marisa’s arms asking why she isn’t good enough for her, which is obviously OOC, but it takes place in an canon setting (i.e. Alice’s house) because they happen to be the Magic Team and it only makes sense for them to spend time together.

not Aki Eda, but a GOOD END nonetheless.

Then we’ve got Marisa battling Komachi in the second-last level of PoFV, which is again yet another canon setting, until you’ve got the OOC part kick in and Reimu barges in to save Marisa from losing, at which point since they’re both tsundere for each other, Marisa goes all emo and cries since she’s knows she’s never going to be able to surpass Reimu’s powers, before Reimu reciprocates by telling her what she wants to her, everyone blushes, and Aya, who happens to be lurking nearby with a camera (surprisingly, this is in character since she’s the paparazzi of Gensokyo after all) nearby gets a nosebleed.

After all that you’d expect the manga-ka to stick to what he does best. I mean, we’ve pretty much got a decent formula going which, coupled with artwork of high quality, should make for good results, right? I had just downloaded a batch of the latest releases, which had not one, but two Aki Eda works translated this time.

The first one was yet another Marisa x Alice story. Before You Become Memories, like all of Aki Eda’s works so far, took place in a canon setting. Like all the MariAli stories I’ve read before, it was yet another doujin along the lines of unrequited love, probably due to how the canon conversations they’ve had have always depicted them as being at odds with each other. It was regarding Alice’s immortality, and Marisa’s lack of — this isn’t a new subject, but its delivery here was so powerful I was left with a lump in my throat at the end.

Having read that, I went on to Yellow Flower that Blooms in Chest. I should have taken it as a warning when the first page began with Reimu kissing Marisa before proceeding to make out in the next two pages, but then the story took a turn into a series of 4-koma about the both of them flying around Gensokyo at night to see how the other girls got it on with each other, since they had no clue on how to do it themselves.

It was rather amusing, but what bothered me more was how I didn’t seem to mind all that making out at the beginning of the doujin — in fact, I found it pretty hot. Then it struck me — was this what went through the minds of boy love/yaoi fangirls everywhere when they drool over their favourite pairing? Was I turning into something like that?

No way in hell.

I personally prefer MariAli as a couple, mind you, but the repercussions stuck with me for a bit. Was I becoming the male counterpart of the FYG here, like a SYG (Slim Yuri Guy) or something? I mean, the fact that I was all “?” over the kissing didn’t make it any easier for me to accept the fact that while it was a perfectly normal heterosexual reaction, it reeked of something I didn’t really want to touch.

Yeah, I sound like I’m in denial, I know, but in all honesty I prefer my pairings straight. I mean, what strikes me as my perceived stigma about the SYG’s due to how I think yaoi and yuri fails as a premise: the fetishization of what essentially is homosexual pairings (as if they didn’t have a hard time being accepted in real life, you’ve also obsessed over a fictional account of what they supposedly do in bed! excellent!). Yaoi is, as everyone already knows, not representative of gays in terms of behaviour, and while I’m not sure about yuri bearing similarities to lesbians (I’m guessing the answer’s no) it’s just simply something I want to steer clear of.

I know one such yaoi fangirl in real life, and her behaviour’s rather unnerving to me. She’s in her late 20s, and I only see her at church once a week so it’s a burden I don’t have to bear that often, but when I do see her I find myself wishing I was deaf. How she goes on and on to anyone that’ll listen — okay, not everyone listens, but she speaks loud enough to those that do — about the latest male actors she’s drooling over, the shounen-ai anime she watches (this is South-East Asia after all, and I’m in an Evangelical church so it’d be a faux pas for her to talk about yaoi openly), even went on and on about Brokeback Mountain this one time. The horror.

Part of how yaoi and yuri stems as a fetish and something to be idolized, I think, is due to how homosexuality isn’t a norm just yet in societies around the world — and those who’re devoting their efforts towards something like this aren’t helping the situation by putting the focus on what the person does in bed, essentially reducing gays and lesbians into sexual objects. What are your thoughts on yuri? Do you see things the same way, or is it just yet another bit of titillating fun for you guys?

even tsundere swordgirls can’t resist the yuri appeal of Yuyu-sama