"Between The Sheets" (Manga)

[pkristen]

1 Volume Manga. Review written September 4, 2003.

Summary
Bittersweet story of a young woman Minako who falls hopelessly in love with her wild and carefree best friend Saki, who’s very heterosexual.

Review/Lesbian Commentary
I completely stumbled across this one, picking it up out of curiosity because of the title and the fact that it’s a Tokyopop manga. When the back-cover summary stated a very lesbian storyline, it was a slamdunk purchase.

So what is my impression of it? To say that I was unimpressed is an understatement.

True, Minako is in love with her best friend. And since her friend won’t directly respond, she “satisfies” herself vicariously by having sex with her friend’s boyfriends (current and former.) Which means she’s a lesbian character who expresses it through heterosexual activity. Yeah, right.

Now to be fair, the essence of the storyline has far more real life probability than a lot of hentai I’ve seen of two women having sex. However, I’m not desperate for marginal quality “lesbian” storylines with major dysfunction in the characters.

The bottom line is that I ended feeling that almost everyone in the story just needed an immense amount of therapy. They would be the type of people that if they were real, I wouldn’t waste my time on their self-created drama. So of course, I didn’t appreciate having to read about a fictional version of such angst.