Eve and Eve by Nagashiro Rouge is a collection of stories that ran in several publications, including shorts from Comic Yuri Hime. By the time I had read the Japanese edition, the license announcement had already been made, so I decided to skip reviewing the JP volume altogether. So here we are today.
The stories that make up this volume are largely science fiction. These touch on end of humanity, robot x human relationships, artificial and human intelligence, among other themes. Several of these also express a greater interest in pregnancy that I personally have. A number of the stories ran in a publication listed as Yuri Pregnancies, so there’s no doubt what the point of those are. They are also some of the first adult content we’ve seen in English-language Yuri manga since ALC Publishing published the Yuri Monogatari series.
Which brings me to the sex. Apparently, there are some people who believe that Seven Seas has censored or altered the sex scenes. This is patently untrue. Seven Seas has reproduced the Japanese collection exactly as it was printed. As I noted in a Twitter thread this morning, my guess is that some readers assume this to be true because of their misunderstanding of the 18+ label.
What gets an 18+ label in the United States and what gets an 18+ label in Japan are not the same. Regardless, most 18+ content in Japan is not explicit when it comes to genitalia or penetration. And, everything published without an 18+ label in Japan will definitely not be explicit. The Japanese volume of this manga is exactly as you see here. Vulvas are not drawn or even implied, there is simply blank space.
In the west, manga with even a hint of sexual contact is labeled as 18+, especially if the participants are likely to be perceived as young. And, as Lara pointed out in the middle of the Twitter discussion, any LGBTQ content was, until recently, considered 18+ in manga. This is not because manga companies suck but because sucky people exist and no manga company wants their manga to be cause for litigation. All of ALC’s Yuri Monogatari had to be labeled 18+, which meant I could never get bookstore space. Because every volume had at least one story with a physical relationship, no one would carry the book without the 18+, either.
So, there is sex in this book. It is consensual and as explicit as it can be – and as it was for the Japanese edition of the collected volume. Any changes to the content was made for the Japanese volume. It is drawn in a way that requires you to imagine a woman’s body parts. For those who complain about the lack of explicit drawings, all I’m hearing is that they have a significant paucity of imagination. Sucks for them.
The two stories that piqued my interest when they ran in Comic Yuri Hime were a completely non-scifi exploration of the roles of uke and seme – here translated appropriately as top and bottom – set in a school, that I just liked as a cute little standalone comedy, and the final story about two women’s desire to express their love in a cosmic sense. This story becomes rather epic, but ends on a very human note.
Ratings:
Everything is variable, as this is a collection of short arcs or one-shots over time from multiple publications
Overall – 8
I didn’t love the collection because I do not have any interest in (and feel some antipathy towards) pregnancy, but I did appreciate the science fiction and the “Top or Bottom: Showdown.”
Translation by Stephen Christenson, adaptation by Asha Bardon and lettering by Raymond Rex are all excellent, especial in regards to the final, decidedly sci-fi story.
I’d also very, very much like to thanks Seven Seas for adding the original story publishing credits! I may well be the only person in the world that reads them, but I do and they are super helpful to me, so thank you for doing that! It’s such a help.
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