Syrup: A Yuri Anthology Vol. 2

Syrup: A Yuri Anthology #2

by Kawanami Izumi, Canno, Goumoto

FORBIDDEN FRUIT

Secret love is sweeter! The second volume of this popular yuri anthology goes dark, with stories about love between women that’s hidden, unrequited, fantasy-based, or even taboo. Explore the forbidden side of love with new and returning artists in Volume 2 of Syrup.

Genres: Manga, Yuri, Romance, LGBT, Graphic Novels, Queer, Lesbian

180 pages, Paperback

Published December 22, 2020

Reviews

[The Artisan Geek]

17/12/20
wow. All but one stories contained either pedophilia or people cheating/committing adultery. Not my cup of tea.

Bruh. It contained a story about a fantasy anthropomorphised bunny creature that became a war sex slave to the person who murdered her parents. I-



Why does the cover look so innocent though??? I'm so confused!

17/12/20
Thank you Seven Seas for a copy of this manga! I haven't read much yuri, do I'm exited to dip my toes into it some more with any anthology :0

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[Rebecca · Rating 1 out of 5]

Perhaps I'm being naive, but last I checked "forbidden love" didn't have to equate to "morally questionable" love. I find it a bit hard to believe that none of the creators involved in this unfortunately themed anthology had never read or heard of Romeo and Juliet, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, The Spring Of Butterflies And Other Folktales Of China's Minority Peoples, The Dream of the Red Chamber, or any number of other world-wide classics involving the trope. The art is uniformly beautiful, but the plots are so uncomfortable - especially one that manages to combine Stockholm Syndrome with pedophilia - that I ended reading with the urge to scrub my eyes clean.

[Mark · Rating 1 out of 5]

The first Syrup anthology was a bit of a fail, featuring a bunch of stories - some of which weren’t too bad - that didn’t so much end as just stop dead in their tracks. Well that problem is not present here in the second volume, but that doesn’t really make a big difference...

The theme of this anthology was ‘forbidden love’ and I don’t know if I can think of a worst topic to set a bunch of mangaka loose on. They nail the forbidden part, but love is in very short supply as this largely concerns women/girls treating each other like trash.

Got a squick? It’s probably here somewhere. From people preying on one another to incest to Lolita fetishes to stalking to teacher-student romance. In a way it’s really progressive to see that same-sex stories can handle these just as badly as the more mainstream versions.

I won’t list every story, but I will single out a couple. The one by Canno is absolutely gorgeous but has a black heart at its centre. This one is pretty mentally unhealthy, but if it wasn’t surrounded by such dour companions it would be a decent, if bleak, piece.

(That said, it’s a lollipop dipped in frosting compared to that story about the record company executive - talk about abusive on every conceivable level.)

The absolute nadir for this volume is written by Hachi and it’s the only one with a fantastical bent, which then gets used to overlay some intentionally Nazi-adjacent imagery and if THAT wasn’t enough, it just gets worse and worse. Unpalatable doesn’t even come close.

I will give the book this much - it saves the best for last. I haven’t loved short story work by yuri stalwart Milk Morinaga (of Girl Friends fame) that much, but she kills it here with a story of two women who come together over a case of infidelity. Her art’s solid as always and it’s a story about forbidden love that doesn’t leave you feeling like crap. Sadly, it is far too little come far too late.

1 star. This is clearly not a topic to base a full anthology around because nearly every single story is a total bummer and full of problematic story beats and it’s relentless and numbing after a while. Just a really depressing way to spend your reading time - forbidden doesn’t have to mean this wretched, but hardly anyone got that memo, it seems.

[Rod Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second volume of this women-loving-women anthology takes a step up in quality for its second outing even as the theme of taboo relationships brings in a few yucky tales with pedophiles and stalkers. There's a bit too much infidelity for my taste, but enough of the stories were twisty or humorous enough to earn the collection a thumbs up.

The stand-out story is "Swallowtail Takes Flight," a fantasy piece about a wasp and a caterpillar. "That's What She Wants" and "A Passion for Your Work" were well done tales about affairs and manipulation.

FOR REFERENCE:

Contents: Call of the Mayflies / Izumi Kawanami -- Photography Addiction / Goumoto -- That Girl in the Library / Megumi Tsuji -- That's What She Wants / Canno -- A Passion for Your Work / Shuninta Amano -- The Left Leg Shackle / Hachi Ito -- My Little Sister's Ice Cream / Mako Takahashi -- The Fourth Woman / Natsumi Matsuzaki -- Swallowtail Takes Flight / Yu Yoshidamaru -- Slit / Takashi Ikeda -- At What Point? / Milk Morinaga

[Szasza · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pedophilia and grooming definitely not my cup of tea

[Chelsea 🏳️‍🌈 · Rating 1 out of 5]

there weren’t any stories in this volume that grabbed me, unfortunately. There were 2 that were pedophilic, so that made it hard for me to want to keep reading. There was one incestuous story and quite a few about cheating. Not a recommend from me.

[Ximena Ruiz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mmmmmmmmm okay?

[Paige Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

This starts w/ Yume meeting her dad’s mistress, who she’s also crushing on. Stranger than this is how this Sari feels the same about her and comes to casually hang in her parents’ house as they fight. She bestows her first kiss but then leaves out of guilt. She and her parents return to “normal” after this but even after she marries a man and becomes a successful actress, she still has lesbian flings. The tone isn’t tortured, just wistful.

Here, I see this is an anthology. So that story didn’t feel like it went into more than a couple pages about her adult life so felt super rushed and incomplete, almost pointless because we didn’t develop any attachment to her or her new GF. The second story has a librarian dyke looking sensei who speaks of wanting to marry a man she just met because she’s 40-something. Her cuter but brash pupil insists this is stupid and kisses her. And that’s about it. These seem more like ads for first chs in other books. The next story has the cutest girls but they look too similar when there doesn’t have to be so many characters. Simultaneously too much and too little exposition. Another story is about a singer sleeping w/ her female boss and the boss’s wife behind their backs. They’re all blissed out and the end is a good twist but the art style, though varied, is often unattractive.

The story in the middle is about a very young cat girl so too yuck for my blood. There’s a WWII-ish war going on between her kind and humans. A hot, Hugo Boss-dressed woman with a face tattoo(?) shackles her inside the house once her parents disappear. Weird loli meets horror at the end. The following piece is about a girl
mad at her sister for kissing a girl—that was her ex, now dating a man despite wanting to get close to her again. Not sure what the end implies, it’s so abrupt. “The Fourth Woman” by Matsuzaki Natsumi makes me want to check out more of her lashy style. Each panel is unique and dramatic like true art. The women’s height difference and opposite features make it memorable, as well as the idol contest mention. Next, there are goofy bug girls. How the main one gets her arm eaten by a spider and is indifferent to the death of her friend cracks me up. Too many drawers can’t write or portray logical emotions; they should hire some help.

In “Slit,” there’s a Velma-esque MC who people bully for being pudgey. She hides out under the gym stage to take secret pix of the girls’ school “Prince” who’s a basketball star. It seemed good until the narrator basically said, “So, anyway, she broke her arm and that made her get with a guy and get arrested.” LMAO, what? Those things aren’t connected and how are you gonna skip the entirety of that, the juiciest stuff? Why did people randomly start calling her a slut? I guess the last pg where she has naked pictures of her as well as ones she wouldn’t have of her family are just metaphors for her fantasizing? So strange, especially the author dumping trauma on this character one after the next with no foreshadowing. Like she was punishing her for the non sexual joke of wondering how she could put her fans off. So, not being on the team and not being a lesbian are the answers? Clumsily done.

The final story by the title author, Morinaga Milk, has a striking style with glimmering, mantis eyes and shiny hair. The exaggerated expression is actually cute and emoji-ish unlike most manga. The girl who’s supposed to be ten years older looks youngest though so that’s confounding. The eldest’s husband is seemingly cheating on her and they never prove it yet assume it to justify their budding relationship. The PI aspect is fun though wrong/still cheating like almost all these stories. It’s not that I’m against reading such; it’s that it’s repetitive.

[April Gray · Rating 2 out of 5]

Soooooo.... that was disappointing. For the most part, the stories were bland, and seemed just sad; not in a "alas, I am broken-hearted" sort of way, but in a "love sucks, deal with it" way. I get that the theme was supposed to be forbidden love, but I don't know, this was just so dispiriting. And WTAF with the pedo-foxkin-war-sex-slave story? How do I unsee that? That was NOT forbidden yuri love, that was horrifying. The only story I actually liked was Swallowtail Takes Flight by Yoshidamaru Yu, that puts a yuri twist on the relationship between a swallowtail caterpillar and a parasitic wasp- it added an interesting take on nature, and gave me something to ponder. The rest of the stories (not including the wtf story) were just sort of there; I didn't care about the characters, they weren't memorable, their stories didn't touch me. The 2 stars I'm giving this is for Swallowtail Takes Flight, and because the art throughout was all lovely. I don't like giving negative reviews, but this just isn't a book I'd recommend overall.

[Mari · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first volume of the series I've read (I found it at a secondhand bookshop, incidentally). Seeing Itou Hachi's work in a printed book is a really excellent experience. Her art style is soooo cute. I like that this book decided to explore darker themes. As much as I love vanilla stories, I can't survive on fluff alone. Can't wait to check out the rest of the series!

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, when I read Syrup vol 1, I mentioned that the stories felt more like teasers for lengthier works rather than complete on their own. Some of the stories in vol 2 are much the same. And since the theme here is forbidden love, there are some darker undertones to a few stories and lots of morally questionable behavior. It will probably make a lot of readers uncomfortable.

Don't get me wrong - there are some good ideas here, if the creators felt they wanted to take expand into a romantic horror series or something. There's a particular story featuring an enslaved anthropomorphic animal and her human captor that could easily be a one or two volume story of playing the long game for revenge - though hopefully, the younger character would be aged up first!

The art is excellent, which is to be expected. I just wish more of the stories had given me warm fuzzies, as opposed to a feeling of ick. But they were all compelling.

[Sasa · Rating 1 out of 5]

The first volume was bad and it somehow got worse. I don’t know what went wrong with this volume and who keeps handing mangaka like Canno a job in yuri but they need to stop with the csa pedo shit. It’s not cute, it’s misleading, and I genuinely don’t understand how this company isn’t under investigation for allowing cp into the country???? Like is it not illegal in NA??? For all the good that they do for yuri manga and sapphic representation, they do so much more harm by translating and profiting off of nasty shit like this. Eclair is a better yuri anthology—but not by much. It still has really problematic shit but Nio Nakatani always displays her work in that series and I’m honestly just here for her. I recommend her Bloom Into You series if this is your first foray into the yuri genre.

[Mia Ferraioli · Rating 1 out of 5]

They say don't judge a book by its cover, but I did because the cover looked so cute. I thought there'd be cute stories: I was severely disappointed. It pretty much was filled with pedophilia and cheating/affairs. Only one of the cheating stories, "That's What She Wants," written by Canno, was done well and showed the manipulation well. The best story for me was Swallowtail Takes Flight, written by Yoshidamaru Yu. It had me in the first half, then had a twist at the end I liked. Overall, I was severely disappointed and struggling to even want to read the third volume. I don't want to, but I want to see if it gets better (and not finishing a volume series makes me anxious, so we'll see)

[Harriet Clifford-Varley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like the blurb says, this volume doesn’t shy away from taboo relationships. I really liked seeing more adult and dark themes shown as it’s not always explored in yuri, but I found the one involving a child and adult together quite difficult to read. The art is a bit hit or miss, as are some of the plots, but a few really stood out from the rest. “Swallowtail Takes Flight” was the one I enjoyed the most. Overall it’s a very interesting collection of darker stories, but I would find it hard to recommend for most people because of some of the content.

[Alexis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Warning for nudity
Much like the first volume the stories are very short but unlike the 1st these stories are a bit darker. When I started these books I didn’t realize that they each had their own theme but it makes them a bit more interesting. While most had their own little dark twist some of them I feel didn’t end badly. The series is definitely interesting for people looking for a quick read.

[Lexyloowoo · Rating 3 out of 5]

The nice thing about the small guys that you do not have to read the first one to understand what’s going on in the second one. I love that story is very short. That being said, expect for them to have unexpected turns. If you do not like the cheating throat I would not suggest reading volume 2, because it is in there a couple of times that being said, the artwork and storytelling is so different with each one that I’m intrigued. And I’m curious to read volumes one and three now.

[Alejandra Rodríguez · Rating 1 out of 5]

Este volumen de Syrup toca temas "tabú" del wlw pero en realidad yo no las veo como tabú, sino como simplemente inapropiadas, como la pederastía, que aunque sea entre mujeres no le quita lo incorrecto, se toca este tema en 3-4 historias, la que más recuerdo es sobre una niña coneja que una humana le mata a los padres, luego la humana abusa de la niña coneja. También toca mucho la infidelidad, no son de mi gusto estos temas.

[Aly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Taboo is fine, what’s not fine is literally every character feeling like shit. This was a fucking mess. Not even a hot mess. Inserts the “did I buy you to make me sad” gif. Like what did I just read?

The two stars go to “The Fourth Woman” by Matsuzaki Natsumi, which I really liked and was very cute. 🥰

[James · Rating 1 out of 5]

There's perhaps one or maybe two good stories in this second anthology of yuri shorts - the best one by far is the final one about a happy ending to an affair by Milk Morinaga. Otherwise, there's just a lot of hit-and-miss stories with far too much unpleasantness featuring incest, paedophillia, Nazi imagery, and Stockholm Syndrome. Good artwork can't make up for such poor stories. Forbidden love could work but not according to the defintion these artists were given.

[Victoria Araiza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ohh! Loved that this one's theme was Forbidden Love! It was full of all kinds of taboos! My favorite stories were Photography Addiction, A Passion for Your Work, The Left Leg Shackle, Swallowtail Takes Flight, and Slit. Some of these do have a rather intense dark side! I really loved the art in this one too, it really made it so you could imagine more of the short story after it ended.

[Bentgaidin · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Syrup, vol 2' is another collection of short yuri stories, this time about darker sides of relationships - jealousy, possessiveness, and cheating, so much cheating, and often out of a sort of malicious love. It's not for me - I tend to like more upbeat stories - but they're all evocative and well-sketched out in just a few pages, and so I know people who'll just eat all this up. :)

[Lizz Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection is forbidden love and I did enjoy 5 out of the 11 stories
The ones I enjoyed are;
That’s What She Wants by Canno
The forth Woman by Matsuzaki Natsumi
Swallowtail Takes Flight by Yoshidamaru Yu
Slit by Ikeda Takashi
And of course
At What Point? By Morinaga Milk

[Netsen7Bookdragon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of these stories are well written and drawn. However I thought it would go a bit deeper in some cases. And the whole fox-in-a-chain story was on the edge for me. Everything about it seemed to be doted towards pedo .

[Maggie Daugherty · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s hard enough finding decent yuri. I really want to like this series, but the constant depiction of WLW as devious and manipulative is disgusting and problematic. If you were hoping for good sapphic rep, skip this one.

[Andrew · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are a few really questionable stories in this anthology, but I liked some of them and the art is nice. The bug one really surprised me and had a big impact as a complete short story-- many of these don't feel very concrete or well laid out.

[moonseemslost · Rating 1 out of 5]

Lost time...the first one was better and gave me hope. But this one has way too many problematic topics, I didn't enjoy reading it at all. I am quite disappointed. Felt so uncomfortable reading through...

[M2I · Rating 1 out of 5]

Normaliza temas como el incesto, la pedofilia, el adulterio y la manipulación. Inmoral y horrible. Por dios, que avisen al menos en la portada o algo y que no la hagan tan bonita porque a cada historia iba empeorando.

[Linda]

This anthology series of one shots can definitely be read out of order, and these are all gl love. Specifically the reason why I write about this book, is because this is a controversial volume in this specific series, but don't take that one story to turn you off of this series.

[Rylee · Rating 3 out of 5]

For me i guess the concept of reading it is strange since theres different stories all the time just confuses me we never really get back story we dont seem to see

[Kate Elizabeth · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hate this series but this one was just slightly more bearable ?????