1 review for By Your Side: The First 100 Years of Yuri Anime and Manga

1. 

   Rated 4 out of 5

   Kilicool64 – October 5, 2024

   As someone who only recently got into Yuri, I bought this in the hope of getting a better understanding of its history and to learn about a large selection of titles that may be worth reading. With some reservations, it delivered in the former department, but not so much in the latter.

   You can tell that Friedman has very thorough understanding of the history behind Yuri. This is probably the most detailed English language documentation of it. For that reason alone, this book is worth reading for anyone who wants to understand where the genre came from. Although it does show that significant parts of the book are a collection of old writeups that were never meant to go together, so some facts are repeated. A bit more editing could have improved the pacing there. Still, the quality of the historic documentation is admirable.

   But the weakest parts of this book are some of the writeups dedicated to specific works. In some of these, Friedman went into far too much detail. For instance, I don’t need to read a whole bunch of paragraphs describing the history of every single couple in Maria-sama ga Miteru. An earlier part summarizing the series as a whole was enough for me to understand what kind of work it is and what impact it had on the genre. It doesn’t sound like the kind of Yuri that’d appeal to me, so I don’t need to know further details about how its various individual relationships play out. And even if I was interested in it, I’d consider this level of detail to be within spoiler territory. And if I had already experienced the series, this writeup would tell me nothing I don’t already know. So really, who even is the target audience for parts like this? If I ever read this book again, I’ll probably skip these sections.

   I also didn’t really get much out of the list of recommended works near the end of the book, but that’s because I turned out to not quite be its target audience. It seems to be aimed specifically at people who want to gain a general understanding of every aspect of the history of Yuri (who hopefully also speak Japanese because by the book’s own admission, several important works still haven’t been translated), so it includes titles either for their influence on the genre or because they were deemed to be good representations of specific flavors of it. Personally, I have an interest in the history of Yuri, but not to the point where I’d go through works specifically to expand my knowledge on it. I just want to experience works that offer the things personally I look for in Yuri. And for that purpose, the selection is too generalized and small to offer me much. I’d have liked to see more here. Something along the lines of “If you’re looking for this kind of experience, here are three of my favorites along with summaries of what they have to offer.” I’m aware of course that Friedman has a very large selection of reviews on her blog, but they’re not all that well-organized, with no easy way to find the works she recommends the most.

   Lastly, I have to mention the very odd decision to omit the back cover from the E-book version I read. The book specifically discusses the process of creating both the front and back covers and how they’re meant to fit together. So when one of those isn’t even present in my version, it makes it feel incomplete. I don’t understand how this happened.

   As usual with my reviews, I ended up focusing far more on the things I don’t like, but the truth is that this is a pretty good read for anyone who wants to know the history of the genre. It just makes a number of questionable decisions and isn’t really a great resource for learning about worthwhile examples of the genre beyond ones with historic importance.