Ano Ko ni Kiss to Shirayuri wo
Kiss and White Lily for My Dearest Girl

Edit

What would you like to edit?

SynopsisBackgroundAlternative TitlesPictureChapters/VolumesPublishing DatesRelationsTypeExternal Links  

Criminally low rated on MAL, this is one of the smoothest Shoujo Ai around and is a fun ride from start to finish. The characters are likeable and interesting, the plot is involving and drives forward throughout the character's 3 years of highschool and covers how they develop as teens entering adulthood and the struggles that come with losing friends as they grow apart.

There's no love triangle drama to speak of, just a pure romance between girls confused about what they want to do in life and who they want to be.

One of the greatest Shoujo Ai romances around, extremely recommended.

This manga was... quite the ride, to say the least.

Ano Ko ni Kiss to Shirayuri wo is a story about discovering self identities, straying away from escapism, and maturing. However, that description doesn't fit all of the couples within this series.

This series has around 6+ other perspectives that get just as much attention as the lead's over the course of 50 chapters. Each and every couple has their own circumstances, and their own battles to deal with. Trying to portray the lives of all these couples whilst having main leads as well is no easy feat, which is why I respect the mangaka who ... attempted this.

The series generally isn't bad however, execution is an issue. Once again, trying to approach the Yuri scene with a work like this proves to be INCREDIBLY difficult. It's something that would require the perfect amount of screen time for each couple, the perfect amount of development for each couple, etc.

And for what it's worth, I think that the mangaka did a decent enough job to keep the reader engaged for the first 20+ chapters. After that, it does get quite tedious trying to remember all these characters and how they're different from the last.

As a result of having way more developed side characters than usual, the world genuinely feels lively and I love that. You'll often see characters we were just observing a chapter or two ago engaging in the background, or in hallways, and it makes the school and the world feel much more expansive even when we're following completely different characters.

Due to the sheer amount of side characters, this series also caters to a much wider demographic than usual: 6+ couples, all with different circumstances, personalities, ideologies, there's surely something in here that the average Yuri fan will enjoy to some extent.

Although the couples certainly are the highlight of this manga, without a doubt it can be tedious switching between couples back and forth. Imagine you're watching an anime, and halfway through you're hit with a filler arc right before things got good. That's how it feels shifting between all these different perspectives, and for me, that took some of the enjoyment out. Having to read another 5 or so chapters just to get back to the couple you enjoy, just to see them for 2 chapters, then repeat, it's not the greatest experience.

The perspectives are a double - edged sword, and a type of Yuri series like this will have to be polished perfectly if it wants to ground it's place as a readable series.

7/10, it's good and it's a new take on the Yuri scene. What more could you ask for?
This is something that I personally would adore seeing more in the Yuri scene. With some optimization and fixes to this and that, this type of Yuri series could really go far and show us something that'll blow us away. After reading this, I have high respects to the mangaka who crafted this. Since we rarely get series of this stature, there's not much material or reference to work with to improve the series. A lot of this was most likely innovative, and the fact that it holds well despite being one of the first to make a series like this is incredible.

Some of you will love this style and some of you won't. I think you'll all mutually appreciate the creativity of this series, though.

It is impressive that a manga with such an interesting artstyle and such a high score on this site can end up feeling incredibly boring, inconsequential, superficial, and melodramatic. This manga encompasses many of the worst tropes that we usually see in romance Shoujo manga.

So, to summarize, this story goes around the life of several students at this upper-class academy and their romantic lives among them. It maintains a consistent light-hearted tone throughout each arc, usually consisting of a repeating formula: two characters meet each other, one falls in love while the other is hesitant, there is some petty conflict involved, they resolve the conflict, ... and then they kiss and are happy forever. It is pretty much the formula for generic happy romance stories; the kind someone would write when they don't have anything relevant to say.

Because of the fact that the author sticks to the same trope, most character interactions feel hollow; just streams of moeness aimed at the sensibilities of lonely otakus who don't get tired of drawn girls blushing for 50 chapters. The love chemistry is not fleshed out beyond a character blushing or having a excrutiatingly long backstory with her partner (say, being a childhood friend or an aunt); as a result, the personalities feel empty. But the even worse part might be the conflicts, which due to their pettiness can hardly come off as anything but ridiculous. A girl is mad because her crush didn't remember her from 10 YEARS AGO. Another one is mad because her crush (which is also her aunt, yikes) quit playing piano due to work WHEN DUH, THAT'S SOMETHING ADULTS DO.

Not a single one of the conflicts touches the personal; the gritty, the essential in a relationship. They are all like cheap fables; like children stories you tell to 11 year old kids who want to hear the "and they were happy ever after" part repeated over and over again ad nauseam. That, combined with the pretentious storytelling that tries to convey the complex romantic implications of, uh, realizing being good at everything doesn't give you a right to be an asshole —nothing is more annoying than a Mary Sue that is also self-centered like Kurosawa— with the most sappy and cheesy prose, makes this story a collection of boredom and mediocrity.