Indulge in more sweetness! Volume 4 of Syrup serves up a second helping of stories about love between women that focus on that first magical night.
A beautiful yuri manga anthology series about women in love by some of the hottest names in the industry!
This series features short manga stories by a star-studded line-up, including Milk Morinaga (Girl Friends), Kiyoko Iwami (Transparent Light Blue), Canno (Kiss and White Lily for My Dearest Girl), Pikachi Ohi (Our Teachers are Dating!), and Hachi Ito (Kindred Spirits on the Roof).
毒田ペパ子 Dr. Pepperco is a versatile Japanese manga artist who's worked across a number of genres, best known for Goodbye, My Rose Garden and the art of the Please Teacher!/Twins! manga spin-off Waiting in the Summer
The series has gone full-on erotica with repetitive stories that just have characters nervously and/or excitedly heading toward their first sexual encounter with their various girlfriends. With the exception of a twisted and humorous story about a dentist with a very particular fetish, everything just blandly ran together . . . even the nudity after a while.
Disappointing.
FOR REFERENCE:
Contents: Pretty Little Sexy Girl / Dr. Pepperco -- Teach Me, Sensei / Taki Kitao -- Candy Cigarette Feelings / Ichie Ichigo -- Smoothie / Akiko Morishima -- The Honored Princess / Hachi Ito -- The Beginning of Love / Hurka Kiriyama -- Kick in the Teeth / Yuhta Nishio -- Idol Just for Me / Saku Takano -- Town by the Sea/elopement / Tachi -- Promise / Kiyoko Iwami
Disappointing. Very repetitive, with many of the contributions boiling down to this:
"I'm nervous about our first time." "Me too." *They bang.*
The pieces are more like vignettes than stories. Some are enjoyable, focusing more on the characters than their body parts. But overall it verges into pornography, and not very good pornography at that.
Syrup is back with another pile of stories, once more focused on the first night between two lovers. From the young to the “old” to the woefully inappropriate, love blossoms everywhere, whether that’s a great idea or not.
Syrup has always existed in the shadow of Eclair, the stronger yuri anthology I reference every time I review a new one of these and it hasn’t even been a fair fight. But the latter series has run its course, leaving the former as the only game in town with a regular release schedule.
To top that off, rather than a new theme, this is just a continuation of last volume’s ‘first time’ story prompt, which paid rather diminishing returns. So it’s kind of a welcome shock when this turns out to be the strongest volume of Syrup yet.
It helps that it’s bookended by two fabulous stories - the first one is a really playful one by Dr. Pepperco of Goodbye, My Rose Garden fame and it’s a nice and simple instance of ‘Netflix and chill’ where assumptions on experience are challenged and it all ends on as cute a note as possible. It’s downright wholesome.
That last story turns out to be by Iwami Kiyoko, the mangaka behind Transparent Light Blue, most notably, a book I did not particularly care for, but they totally nail the short story format. If there was a one-shot that could go to series, this one might get the nod.
This story is a rather nostalgic look back at childhood for two women and features some absolutely killer art. Some of the perspective and framing shots in this are just to die for and the story itself is really satisfying if a little hokey at the very end.
There’s another really good story about two college girls who are science wonks that I was pleasantly surprised by and, I have to admit, another one that’s as good a take on the student-teacher relationship as you’ll ever likely read (largely because they kept it chaste until the younger one got to university at least).
The real dud is a bit of a shocker because it’s by the author of Mizuno and Chayama, which was great, but this story is about a predatory dentist with a fetish for bad teeth who mixes work with pleasure way too much. It’s super kink-shaming at the start.
Now, this does turn into a decent story eventually, but it goes way creepy up front and struggles to recover the whole time afterward. The only other meh story is probably the one about a seaside elopement that just doesn’t feel like much of anything. It’s fine, but not much else.
Still, the mix of stories here is strong and there are as many that hint at intimacy and fade to some very charged black as there are ones that go full tilt into the sex side of things. Out of ten stories, I’d say eight of them are okay to great and two are meh to whatever. That’s a very strong ratio and easily the best Syrup has ever managed.
4 stars - super strong output from an anthology that has never been super or strong. There are some cracking stories in here and, if you’ve shied away from Syrup due to its spotty quality (I’ll never let them live that second volume down), you can rest assured that this one is a cut above.
The first time theme was continued from the 3rd volume. The art was always great, though writing quality certainly varied from story to story. These books hit like cotton candy - fluffy but not long lasting. .
'Syrup' vol 4 is another collection of yuri stories about women's first times together; there's a good range here - high schoolers, long-time friends, office ladies, honeymooners, and more, and it's all really sweet and good.
18+ NSFW otherwise, another excellent offering in the series.
I've enjoyed Fly doing all the covers, but I'd really like to see a story from them in the next installment. As for content, just warning parents. Its pretty softcore. Think Cinemax at 2 AM on a Tuesday back in the 90's. So many of these stories, I'd like to see a complete volume of the couples, and some I'd love to see a multi-volume series. Japanese publishers, if you read this, we here in America want more Yuri! Lots more. Even vanilla stories like school life and slice of life.