That Yuri Manga with the Eyeball Licking
Video
Hey kids, this is your last warning: this video is about an erotic yuri manga anthology. Back out before your parents find you and shed their mortal forms out of boob anger.
Living in a society sucks. It sucks even worse if you're the kind of person who repels people while attracting negative attention simply for the act of existing. It's a common struggle, and for an entertainer it's an easy setup for a story that everyone in your audience can relate to. But that's lazy. It's been done a million times, and when the plight of the outsider is bottled up and marketed to everyone this side of saturn it's no longer the plight of the outsider.
There's a million ways to be outcasted, and if you try to appeal equally to the bully ousted from his clique and the girl followed by whispers you aren't saying anything! Stories about outcasts should be honest, specific, and most importantly at least a little offputting for greatest effect. And today's topic is nothing if not strange and a little bit offputting.
I'm talking about that yuri manga with the eyeball licking, Tousaku Shoujo Shoukougun. Also known as Perverse Girl Syndrome, if deepl and my amateur japanese skills are to be trusted.
Tousaku Shoujo Shoukougun is a manga anthology consisting of 5 short stories. The shorts are unconnected outside of the girls names, which are always Ako and Bko for the main pair then Cko and on like that for side characters. And while they are unrelated narratively, atmospherically they lead well into each other. Starting with the happiest endings for our characters and progressing into bad and badder ends, TouKougun tells a variety of stories about dysfunctional girls finding love and a place in society. However poorly it may turn out.
My Eyeballs Told me to Dedicate Everything I have to You
Believe it or not, the one with the eyeball licking is actually a fairly normal romance all things considered! Bko has heterochromia, with one eye being a bright red color. She has a lot of insecurities about that eye, and hates how much it makes her stick out.
Ako is a chaser.
Ako thinks her eye is beautiful, even delicious looking. But despite her supposedly selfless desire for Bko to appreciate her own beauty, Ako's number one focus is getting a taste of that eyeball. Bko's desires are secondary to Ako's need for pleasure. If it doesn't help Ako to her goal, she doesn't care. And for Bko this is fine, because her desires are already secondary to herself, what's another person who doesn't care?
CHOMP
Not a sound effect you wanna hear while a girl has her mouth on your eyeball.
When you let someone's desires for you overcome your own you will be eaten, for Bko this is quite literal. But what else could Bko do? Turn down her only font of approval? When you're lost in a desert, even a rancid stagnant puddle looks like a veritable mountain spring. Like a dolphin doesn't know a horse from a zebra, if you've never had genuine love you can't know which is true and which is selfish.
But what makes Ako different from your stereotypical chaser and makes this a fairly standard romance deep down, is that Ako actually feels shame over her actions. After eating her eyeball, Ako starts avoiding Bko because she doesn't want to be hated. But that's also selfish of her, because Bko is still emotionally invested and if it weren't for her new ability to see through Ako's shiny new eye she'd be devestated. But while Bko still isn't as affronted as she should be, she has gained the confidence of realizing that the girl she's been desperately clinging to is also a pathetic loser.
Just one with a lot more audacity. And to beat a girl with audacity, you have to be a girl with audacity! So Bko drugs and binds Ako to force her to actually talk it out! And it works! Ako finally admits her selfishness and offers to make it right as best she can, and Bko just wants to finally use this opportunity to do some of her own eyeball licking. And eye for an eye, Ako gives Bko her eyeball to eat. Ako finally apologizes to Bko to her face, and Bko is finally able to assert her wants and needs.
Is it ideal? Hell no, but relationships, especially when you're some flavor of weirdo, rarely are. How is it a standard romance? Well, a lot of romance stories rest on these same basic building blocks. A couple meet, get together for shallow reasons, find their relationship is unstable, and through a romantic gesture and/or honest conversation strengthen their relationship into something more sustainable. Really, it's just like bloom into you but Ako chases heterochromia instead of girls on the ace spectrum!
And just like most fictional romances, it's not a great set up for relationships in reality. But through introspection and a lot of luck it always works out for the protagonists.
Rendezvous
I was gonna do this chronologically, but the last story is only a few pages and also the evil twin of eyeball so it's meant for this spot! While it works well as a bookend to bring it all around for the full anthology, for this analysis i want eyeball fresh in your mind. Because rendezvous is the bad end version of the setup eyeball gave us.
Eyeball gets the good ending it does because that Ako can introspect. Rendezvous Ako has all the selfishness and none of the self reflection which is a dangerous combination. Where eyeball Ako stops after seeing the harm she caused, rendezvous Ako just keeps going. Eyeball Bko got space to realize what she really needs out of this relationship. Rendezvous Bko simply follows Ako all the way to their end point. And that endpoint is the afterlife.
In pursuing her own desires and ignoring Bko's, Ako killed Bko and plans to see her again in heaven. She may not realize how shitty she's been to Bko, but Ako can still tell she's missing something. Ako is shitty and takes advantage of Bko's mental issues, but Ako's far from stable herself. But in rendezvous, neither girl realizes their issues so they just compound and make it worse for everyone. And of course, once Ako kills herself she can't stay in heaven.
But Bko doesn't care about what's good for her, she needs the love of Ako. So Bko goes to hell to get back together with Ako With eyeball as one of the healthiest romances here and rendezvous as the bad end version, it's a good book end. But that's only 2 of 5 of the stories.
Showcase Girl
For weirdos, it's already hard enough to find love and community once. But with the structure of modern capitalist society, you don't just do it once. Seating gets rearranged, classes change yearly, not everyone in your middle school will also go to the same high school, college, office. Japan may be more walkable than america, but how much does that even help keeping in touch with the people you like when you're doing 30 hours of overtime every week? All in all, it's a constant struggle of meeting people, making friends, getting torn apart, and doing it over and over and over again. That's just not a sustainable option when you struggle finding people even the once.
Showcase girl literalizes this cycle with a cat girl in a pet shop who has trouble getting adopted, Bko. She is strictly not allowed to go outside, but she doesn't mind much. She gets food, entertainment, love from Ako and any other animal girls Ako lets her play with. It's fine, and she's never been outside anyway so why risk it? She's happy here.
While not going outside means she won't know what she's missing, it also means she can continue to live her happy life. No risk of losing the niche she's already found. Her friend Cko is of a different opinion, one i think is considered much more normal. Cko feels like their life is stuck in a writer's block until they go outside. But Cko is cute. She's obedient and cheerful and everything a pet owner could want. While Bko is shy and doesn't care about much more than Ako. She's not a particularly cute cat girl, and there's no guarantee her life will be as nice with a new person nor is she equipped to handle it if it's worse. Cko gets adopted and goes outside, but not even Ako can guarantee that she got a good owner.
In life we're expected to jump face first into dark pit after dark pit, and even if the pit turns out to be full of spikes we're supposed get up and go to the next one as if we know it's cotton candy in it this time. And so many of these trust falls are near irreversible. It takes money to switch schools or jobs or cities. Money a lot of people don't have. There's so much risk involved but it's a moral failing if you don't just take it! Japanese people may not have quite as much of a thing about moving out of your parent's house (as far as I can tell), but there's certainly not qualms about pushing for better academics, better extracurriculars. Get into a better school, better office, better life! But "better" only goes so far as a descriptor when you realize that there's something about you that makes you different.
It's only better if people like you. It's only better if you can keep up with all the demands. It's only better if despite everything you can still relax with people who love you for who you are. Only better if you know that there will always be someone who could understand you, no matter where you go. For people like Cko, it's unthinkable to prefer your safe, well trodden road. But if you're like Bko, that well tread road is life saving. When your path is surrounded only by eyes in a dark forest, walking off the path is just reckless.
No matter how much she begs though, Bko needs to go outside some day. So she chooses to beg Ako to take her, because Ako is her only sure path. In the end, Ako takes her in and she is far from the first sad animal girl Ako has done this for. Either way, Bko finally gets to see the outside world without having to leave behind everything that made life worth living.
Because as much as it gets discouraged, it's not a failure to stick with what you know makes you happy even though change is inevitable. The Akos of the world may only have so many litterboxes for their animal girl polycule, but it's not a sin for you to join in while you can and enjoy a life without taking such huge risks. The power dynamic is a little strange, but so it goes for an extrovert's pet introverts.
Sisters
But living life safely as is does have it's drawbacks. Are you really happy? Or do you just not know what a happy life is like? It's not a moral failing on your part if you can't just leave everything you've known, but that inability to leave leaves you at the mercy of your current environment. In showcase girl, Bko is lucky that Ako genuinely cares for all of the animal girls in her store. But if she didn't? If Ako was a neglectful or abusive person? Bko would still be unable to find herself a good new home. She would still be stuck at the store with Ako, her ordinary life would be worse but she still wouldn't know if it was all that much worse than if she left.
That scenario is Sisters. In sisters, Bko is a shy, timid girl. Not even able to speak up when the teacher asks her to read a passage. But her sister, Ako, cares for her anyway. Ako walks her home, asks her about her day, encourages her to try harder at making friends. She's the kind of sister Bko wishes she could become.
And she also rapes her. And steals the little control Bko had over her voice. But it's not a big deal, really. Bko needs her sister, so why sweat the small stuff? It's not like anybody can tell her the position she's in, or replace the love her sister is giving her. Even when Ako completely steals her voice from her, she can't be too mad. It's not like she was using it anyway, was she?
If anything, she "loves" Ako even more when she's completely helpless because it's not like she has anyone to miss her company. She doesn't have her own wants or desires, she just exists to receive the love her sister has for her. So when her sister forces her to moan louder, to hear her own voice, that's what breaks her. Her status quo was silence, but being forced to hear her voice when she's just been trying to disappear from her own perception is complete misery. It hurts Bko so much it makes her flip the script on Ako, raping her back and stealing her voice.
But she doesn't see it as revenge, even after feeling so hurt she doesn't rethink how bad their relationship is. She only rethinks the structure of it. Ako's love is all she's known, so when she realizes her sister's dependence on her she just sees it as an opportunity to become the kind of sister Ako was. All the dependability, and also all of the control. And even with the opportunity to make friends outside of Ako she doesn't. Because her sister's love is the best she's known, and she's enjoying herself well enough. Why bother?
Their relationship has the potential to go on like this well into adulthood. Probably with the roles reversing a few more times. They're stuck in a perpetual motion machine of unprocessed trauma that will only stop when one of them finds an important relationship outside of each other. But why bother when this is the happiest they've been?
Division Girl
Now for my personal favorite of the collection. Division girl contrasts every other story in one way: there's no one connected to her. Every other main girl has been lucky (or unlucky) enough to have someone approach them or already be connected to them. But Bko the division girl doesn't have that. No siblings, no lustful admirers, no owners or selfish girlfriends. Just Bko and her vaguely distant girlfriend Ako.
And her doubles. Because Bko has kodoku syndrome, which causes doubles to form whenever she desires something she can't make herself get. When they appear, they want that thing and will kill the original in order to take their place and get it. So she's handed a weapon and wished good luck at staying alive.
No support groups, no therapy abt stabilizing her desires, just weapons to kill all her second selves and an empty house full of her own corpses. No wonder she's alone. As with nearly every mental or physical issue more complex than putting a band aid on it, sufferers of kodoku syndrome are expected to just kill doubles and move on with their day.
They get very skilled, both from all the combat experience and needing to prove themselves as the best one. But no matter how good you get, mutants are always possible. Doubles who could steal your place and no one would know. How do you live knowing you could be a worse version of yourself than one born yesterday? How can you make friends when you're always covered in gore and they wouldn't even know if your original self was dead? There are no resources for kodoku patients. Just be a better self than all who come after. Keep your wants under control. Be a person who would be missed but also stay true to yourself even when you're trying to make friends while splattered in the blood of your unsightly desires. If the kids at preschool don't like YOU, maybe they'd like a girl who is just like you but normaler. Better.
So you have to be better than the double. Even if your double doesn't replace you, is it really still you anymore when you replace every part of yourself to be better than them? But Bko is stubborn. She gets lots of doubles, but she won't let them change her. But is that always for the best? Maybe sometimes there are things she's better off learning. But how do you judge which to listen to and which to write off completely when you have to kill them immediately?
It doesn't matter. Just don't think of things you can't do. But even when you try to avoid changing, killing your various selves over and over again will change you in ways you don't realize.
And surprise, Ako also has kodoku syndrome. For whatever reason, Ako was a shut in and could barely even leave her room. She wanted to go outside, but she needed someone to just reach a hand out and help her. Instead of getting that, she splits with a more acceptable double and her family pretends her original self doesn't exist. But Bko loves Ako! So she finds the original and gives her the hand she needed!
Actually, Bko can't reach out because of all her self doubt and social scripts. Only a double could be so free, and doubles need to be killed without a second thought. And only a double could appreciate such recklessness. And with the corpses of a double and an original at her feet, she realizes the magnitude of her mistake.
She tried to avoid forgetting the feeling of killing, but when you kill so much it gets easy to act in a split second. By killing all her doubles she kept her original safe, but is there even a point when doing so left you as a shell of a person who can't even accept the true form of the one you love? She shouldn't have to fight for her life any time she has doubts, but sometimes the script you've been reading has just been wrong. But there's no way to tell when there's no dictionary to go to or adult to ask. She could keep dating Ako's double, but she's already proven she can't handle deviations from her script.
It's not her fault, but no one will tell her that. And having your strongest desire be death does solve the issue of kodoku syndrome. Temporarily. Because there is always a mutation, and maybe she'll be better at living happily within constraints than you were. Not like anyone would notice. It's a recipe for self destruction, and once you're 3 layers of artificial new selves away from yourself you can never get your old self 100% back. But i try, because what else is there to do?
Final Words
That was a lot, but I'm planning to do some lower effort stuff next. Well, a lot for me but you're all probably mentally ill and gay too so you get what i mean. But I plan to keep talking about yuri I've loved through the years, and i think my next high effort (by my standards) project will be a comparative analysis i haven't seen anyone else talk about. See you then!