Küsse und weiße Lilien für meine Liebste 01

あの娘にキスと白百合を [Ano Ko ni Kiss to Shirayuri wo] #1

by Canno

Ayaka ist die Vorzeigeschülerin der renommierten Seiran-Akademie: Sie hat hervorragende Noten, ist freundlich und überaus beliebt. Doch mit dem Eintritt in den Highschool-Zweig der Akademie bekommt sie unerwartet Konkurrenz von Yurine. Im Gegensatz zu Ayaka hat diese zwar überhaupt keinen Spaß am Lernen, jagt ihr aber trotzdem ohne Probleme den Rang als Schulbeste ab. Das ärgert Ayaka so sehr, dass sie ihrer Rivalin den Kampf ansagt. Yurine lässt sich darauf jedoch überhaupt nicht ein, denn sie interessiert sich viel mehr für Ayaka selbst als für irgendwelche Noten …

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

204 pages, Paperback

Published February 1, 2021

About the author

Name (in native language): 缶乃
Associated Name:
Kanno

Blood Type: O

Zodiac: Sagittarius

Reviews

[Bethany (Beautifully Bookish Bethany) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a little scattered but cute! It follows three interconnected sapphic romances in high school. The primary relationship features academic rivals who are clearly very into each other. Very adorable, I just might have preferred more focus.

[Josephine (biblioseph) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm a little on the fence with this one, while I did pre-order the sequel, I am not a huge fan of this anthology style that moves from one couple to the next instead of developing one couple for a longer period of time. Even though the couples stick around (in the background) a little more prominently than in Kindred Spirits. But, like that book, why is there no mention on the blurb that this deals with more than one couple?

At least there was kissing--but get this, there's a trope used here where a non-consensual kiss turns out to have been 'wanted' in the first place. I'm familiar with that from Yaoi manga (the hot-n-sweaty/exploitive gay romance subgenre) where, the sex is filled with a lot of someone saying 'no' because it's 'wrong' or whatever, and ultimately turned me off from reading many a well-drawn story... So to see a kiss here turn the same corner, one girl says 'no' and then later on act like she's glad that the barrier was broken.... I don't know, it smacks of something overdone and not really romantic. I've seen it in hollywood and fictional romance as well, usually the guy kisses first and then apologizes. I don't know, maybe I need to give up on finding romance that ticks all my boxes and is nice to read as well.

Honestly, the art is nice, and I thought there were some sweet moments, but the non-consensual kiss in the first part of this book hung over the rest of it like a cloud.

Here's the review from Okazu if you want to get a more experienced opinion on this yuri manga.

[Jhosy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I usually don't like slice of life with high school girls, but the design of this manga is so cute!
I get a soft spot with pretty girls blushing.
The story has several girls, but the main couple in the story is Kurosawa and Shiramine.
Kurosawa is a genius and doesn't need to make any effort to get good grades, so she sleeps in class and doesn't care about anything.
Shiramine is the opposite. She spends long hours studying to be the best. She craves perfection, something instigated by her mother while she was still a child.
Unfortunately, when she reaches high school and ends up in the same class as Kurosawa, she is automatically put in second place. What irritates her even more is realizing that Kurosawa doesn't spend 1/3 of the time she spends studying.
Tired of this she ends up fighting with Kurosawa and then Kurosawa takes an insatiable interest in her.
Suddenly Shiramine sees herself being kissed and constantly sought by Kurosawa, she says she hates her, but continues to be pulled into her orbit.

[Curious Madra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well thanks a lot Secret Santa from Animeplanet for giving me this final manga to end the gift giving and lemme tell ya, it is pretty much a super adorable GL manga. I really liked our main couple like I thought Yurine and Ayaka were pretty hilarious with how they kept bickering and bantering with each other. Now I will say for this GL, there are plenty of characters that you just couldn't keep up with every single character because the author just went full ham in adding more characters without context tbh. I do wish they concentrated on just three couples and leave it at that but from reading this manga, I felt like they added like 10 couples to say the least lol!


Now it's not the best GL out there but if you like to get your heart strings pulled by cute gay content, this is definitely one for y'all to check out!

[Jaylee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about the main couple in this. I can't really understand what their deal is? They're not particularly interesting characters, and have an odd sort of hatemance. But all the other couples in this are precious and adorable, including the little side characters that get their own short (like the 30-year-olds who see the two girls hugging on the sidewalk and are holding hands talking about what to make for dinner).

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a bit too on-the-nose with the manga romance tropes - it read like the aggressor could have been swapped out for your standard shoujo bad boy lead and nothing would have changed. While there doesn't need to be a "special flavor" to yuri, any romance should be a bit more creative (and consensual) than this.

Full review eventually appearing on ANN.

[Alexis U · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow I was expecting to enjoy this a lot more but I just didn't. Shiramine is your typical tsundere which wasn't immediately apparent, but by the end of this volume it was so impossible to ignore. Kurosawa was... kind of awful. I wouldn't call their "relationship" a romance at all. Kurosawa is extremely turned on by the idea of someone besting her and taunts Shiramine to keep trying to be better for her own pleasure essentially. And for the majority of this volume there is no indication that Shiramine gets any enjoyment from being around Kurosawa. In fact, after their first kiss, Shiramine starts CRYING and is visibly upset that Kurosawa assaulted her. Even though this was a yuri manga, if Kurosawa was a teenage boy it would read exactly like your fairly mysogynist, emotionally abusive, typical hetero YA "romance." "He teases you because he loves you" and "boys will be boys" and all that.

I was surprised at the lack of fan service. However, having just read Kase-San and Morning Glories, which did have some obvious (not "fanservice" but) depictions of sexual/physical attraction between the two girls, I was surprisingly unimpressed by the lack of t&a. It just emphasized that their relationship, though sexual in nature at times, wasn't romantic or based on physical attraction at all. I'm going to say I'm fairly neutral on this. If I hadn't read KS&MG immediately prior, I wouldn't have even noticed.

The one saving grace was Moe and Mizuki. I would much rather read about their love story, and there was a good chunk of it here. They're such a sweet pair and they truly admire each other (and see each other as equals even though they excel at different things, unlike Shiramine and Kurosawa.) if I do pick up the next volume, it'll just be for these two. I am just really disappointed that the rest of this was so mediocre.

[g · Rating 3 out of 5]

very cute lil baby lesbians in gay panic mode

[Lu · Rating 3 out of 5]

因為BW的廣告看了幾話而入坑，每次看到萬年第2名爭1的作品類型就會想到《男女翹翹板》，但當然兩邊角色個性差很多就是
覺得比較不能接受的是有好感的速度＋發展速度感覺有點太快，這方面還是比較喜歡《終將成為你》的那種步調

[Shae · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not for me friends, sorry. Thoughts here: https://youtu.be/ndpyLbt8cIk?si=FOVka...

[Stacy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I waffled between giving this two or three stars. The story is cute and there are certainly moments where I caught myself grinning because of how sweet the characters profess their feelings. I also respect this as a girl-love story that doesn't take the route of sexualizing it. Yet more enjoyment was hindered by two things.

1. I often could not keep up with the scenes. I read a lot of manga and either there is a translation problem, or a pacing problem because a few times I had to stop to re-read a page a few times and even then, I couldn't parse what the heck the characters were discussing. While I could skip those and move on without missing much of the plot, doing that more than once is not great.

2. After an entire read-through, I don't feel that the protagonists have any qualities inherently their own. It felt as if the author would just take whatever personality they needed to progress the plot and interchange them between people. Our hero right now is being kind and bigger than their selfish desires. Now, they're completely focused how they're not getting what they want. And now they're confused. No they aren't. Here they're motivated. Now they are dejected.

By the end of a story, I should know (or be able to predict) how a person will react in a given situation. When two main heroes are still anything-goes-grab bag of tropes!--, that's a problem. You can't mask that with "oh, she's the character that sleeps a lot" and "she the character who wears a ribbon in her hair" as defining characteristics.

[juliette]

i didn’t personally enjoy this story because i didn’t understand it. i had trouble telling the characters apart, i was confused about the overall story, i was confused about the characters’ relationships to one another, i was confused about their motivations and goals etc.... i was just confused. so i won’t keep reading this series.

[Cal · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this, but the pacing was off and I kept getting distracted while reading. I don't mind works that focus on multiple pairings but something about this felt abrupt and too slow at the same time.

[Mehsi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I heard a lot about this one, and while the art was gorgeous, the story and the characters were boring and annoying.

[Rebecca Turk · Rating 3 out of 5]

very cute!

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ahhh, it's so cute! I feel like there's a lot of depth to the characters. Shiramine is struggling with a need to be perfect all the time, while Kurosawa just wants to not feel like she's some genius all the time. The little Kiss Theater sides are adorable and add nice little touches about some of the minor characters. Moe and Mizuki are precious and I love their dynamic.

[Amy! · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was cute! It didn't focus on the main two girls as much as I expected; about half of it was about the relationship between two other girls. Both relationships were cute, though, so I didn't mind.

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

REAL GODDAMN CUTE, GUYS

[Mina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, this was not what I expected. I admit, I grew careless.. I was so spoiled by Yagakimi (Bloom Into You for English audiences) that when I saw this being recommended as a similar book, I didn’t actually read reviews or even a proper summary and just went into the manga blind. I expected a similar wholesome shoujo-ai/yuri romance, and well this is was not exactly on the same wavelenght.

Kiss and A White Lily starts out simple, Shiramine a model student is introduced to us. She strives for perfection in everything she does, she is nice to everyone in her all-girls school so other students look up to her. She always appears and acts prim and proper - except on the rare occasions she is around family. And she is a top student, she used to being the first, that is until she entered high school and her classmate Kurosawa keeps snagging the first place. Just to confuse the readers, the one with Shira in her name is the black haired one (shiro means white) and the one with Kuro (black) is actually the white haired girl.

While Kurosawa seems to be the smartest person in their class, she lacks Shiramine’s social skills. She is aloof and uninterested in most social interactions. She is the archetype of the cold, bored top student who lacks the motivation to do anything other than sleeping and studying. One day Shiramine tries to coax Kurosawa into socializing with their classmates more, in a vain attempt to distract her from studying so she can finally get the first place on the exams. This plan quickly backfires as Kurosawa’s attention focuses on Shiramine from this point. As if waking from a coma, suddenly she finds one thing that interests her other than studying, which is to spend as much time with Shiramine as possible, even if it is against for the other girl’s wishes. This is where the somewhat harmful dynamic comes into play and which is why I am on the fence about this series. Kurosawa on not one occasion kisses Shiramine without consent. Shiramine, playing into the tsundere role, keeps seeking out the other girl, all the while she keeps saying she hates her guts. While blushing.

I understand that both characters have issues relating to this dynamic. Shiramine’s pedantic need to appear perfect, Kurosawa’s loneliness that is hidden by her cold demeanor. Based on her reactions she is also very likely to be depressed. However, in this volume I didn’t really see any scenes with these two that I wouldn’t chalk up to being problematic, so it is really hard to try to romanticise these two.

I know that these are well-played out tropes in manga, especially in yuri and yaoi titles, which is exactly why we should be critical of these problematic tropes. I might read a few more chapters in hopes of better character development and their dynamic turning more healthy, but I don’t have very high expectations as of now.

[TC · Rating 3 out of 5]

I needed to go back and re-read this book when I started Vol. 2, because, I'd forgotten everything I'd read just a few months earlier. But having read it a second time, plus begun the next part, I now better understand that this is less a linear story about one particular couple, and more a window onto a group of people and their ordinary lives. Sure, they all happen to be schoolgirl all in love with each other, but that's what makes this yuri. Instead the relationships and how they progress all unwind languidly, with jaunts focusing on other side charachters, until eventually you realize there really aren't side characters--what we think are the two main characters just happened to get a lot of screen time in the beginning of the story, but they are just part of the ensemble.

Now that I've realized that, I rather like this book. It's not super-sweet like a Morinaga outing, nor silly like Citrus, but has its own pacing and theme.

The only real problem I still have is it seems to take me an extraordinary amount of work to keep the large cast of characters straight. The author makes this harder by not religiously following the typical manga convention of giving each girl a unique and unchanging hairstyle. Fortunately she does provide detailed character sketches at the beginning of each chapter, so I finally work my way through it by flipping back to those, just to make sure I remember who's who. It definitely adds work to the reading though!

[Annie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't really enjoy this at all. I just feel like there's a lot going on in this manga and I don't really understand most of it. The two main characters have a weird love/hate relationship because of grades. Yup, that's right, grades. It's just really hard to get through because all of their interactions are really strained and forced. There's also no development between the main two characters at all. It's literally a whole book of the two hating each other, and then one of them randomly deciding to get the other flowers for their birthday, but then ruined that panel by making it perfectly clear that she still hates her even though she got her flowers. Ugg, Just save yourself the headache and time, read something else. There are way better yuri and romances to spend your money and time on. This is not one of them.

[derdeedas ☾ · Rating 4 out of 5]

that made me love women even more

anyway, I like the idea that the side characters relationship also get attention but sometimes, for me, it kinda feels like that they get too many attention and the MAIN couple gets too little attention (I hope that makes sense).

I also have a problem that Kurosawa kisses Shiramine and at first she didn’t want it but later she was happy about it. I personally think that is a problem in general especially in Mangas and Anime since in real life, it‘s disgusting when people kiss people without consent.

But all in all, if we ignore the kiss without consent, I love the stories and the different ideas. We get many different lesbian couples (i love girls i‘m sorry)!

[Jojo Frost · Rating 2 out of 5]

Love the art, is so pretty. I like how the managaka drew some of the girls in cat ears or chibi form, so adorable. However, the story is bland, so boring. It was hard for me to read through this volume. I have to force myself to finish the last two chapters, so I can give a honest rating. The first two characters were kind of annoying. The second couple were a little better, but the story was random or some parts didn't fit well into the story. Some parts were cute between the second couple, but it was still boring. It's not as interesting as I thought it would be.

[Arthuria · Rating 2 out of 5]

I felt like the romance between the two main characters was more convenient. I have no problem with gay romance stories (when their done right) but I feel like the concept of the all girls school more facilitated the romance plot than if they actually formed a bond through mutual interests. I also wasn't a fan of how kurosawa went from having no hobbies or being a part of school activities to wanting to get involved in order to make an impression on shiramine. Overall I felt like it was too cliche.

[Lily Ackerman · Rating 3 out of 5]

La historia comienza de forma lenta y un tanto estresante a mi parecer, ya que el que el que Kurosawa sea un personaje Mary Sue me parece demasiado cansado, aunque el que tenga una personalidad graciosa y divertida lo logra equilibrar aunque sea un poco.

Por otra parte, me sentí un tanto identificada con la situación de Ayaka, aunque su reacción me pareció demasiado infantil, pero se entiende un poco al tratarse de una adolescente.

Creo que es un poco tedioso para ser el primer tomo de la serie, así que espero los demás sean más interesantes.

[Veronica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very cute and prototypical yuri manga about two girls at boarding school. The premise reminds me a bit of Kate Kano before it got so all over the place -- the protagonist is a star student who puts on a smiling front but is secretly obsessed with being the best in the school and is deeply displeased by the arrival of a new student who seems to beat her effortlessly. The side characters are fun as well. All in all, a very charming story with lovely art!

[typewriterdeluxe · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found myself cheering for the side characters more than the main characters, so if I continue reading it would be for them. I'm not really drawn to tsundere/rival love/hatemance stories so this series probably isn't for me. (If you are a fan, though, you might also enjoy Killing Me!, Vol. 1.)

[Alessandra S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

"No trates de ganarme tan despreocupadamente. Quiero decir... debo odiarte, Kurosawa-san. Aun así pensaba en ella tanto que dolía."

Los dos primeros capítulos son encantadores, pero a partir de ellos la trama se transforma en algo bastante confuso. La relación secundaria no es que estuviera mal, pero me desconcentraba, y aunque la historia me pareciera inicialmente prometedora, ya no me apetece continuar con el siguiente volumen.

[Robert Pierson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The art works pretty good and it’s a cute yuri manga I like the fact that it doesn’t go too fast yeah I can get kinda tropine. No I do like the characters do you have insecurities and I like the fact that not every character was instantly overwhelmed by their feelings and have to somewhat work some things out it’s something I’ll definitely read more of the series if you’re looking for a yuri manga this is not a bad place to start

[Rod Brown · Rating 1 out of 5]

A high-achieving high school girl is left feeling vaguely confused when the girl who is her academic rival expresses romantic interest in her. Nothing else really happens. To be continued...for those who like stories told in a disjointed and dull manner (i.e., lacking humor, romance, drama, worthwhile characters, any sort of sense, etc.). Not for me.