Yuri to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito

A Shoujo ai centred Weblog

A Yuri Storyline Classification system – Introduction

Posted on | July 16, 2009 | 5 Comments |

Yes, I know my posts are late, I apologise – I’ve been working on a particularly hard commission (not hard to translate, but hard to edit), so have been a bit behind on posting, even though I’ve had a fair amount of free time (generally away from my computer). But thank God for laptops, eh? Though I really really want one of those new Sony P-series tiny little notebooks for postwriting (but £800? You must be kidding!)

Anyway, I know that I have written many posts trying to classify various things about hentai and anime, these include my mammoth Fanservice classification, My hentai scene classification and my Yuri relationship classification. However, there is still one big project left that I want to complete. This might take a few weeks of research though!

If you look up “Fairy Tales” on Wikipedia, you’ll see that someone helpful by the name of “” decided to read all the fairytales in the world and come up with a definitive classification system to which all of them can be compared. Not only does this show that all cultures seem to end up with the same kinds of fairytales (but with different characters), but also it allows us to look clever at dinner parties when discussing these by saying – “Ah, Snow White, that’s a Class IIIb storyline, isn’t it” or whatever (I didn’t actually look it up…).

So I thought – why not someone like me who has a vast collection of yuri manga and anime (and fanfiction) compile a yuri storyline classification so that yuri fans can look equally clever or geeky at dinner parties. Why not indeed. This proved to be a fairly heavy task, since there was a lot of manga to look through (and blow me if I hadn’t forgotten most of it), but as I thought, there are many storylines that pop up time and again – even within the same author’s work.

I have divided the system into three major storyline types:

  1. Chase/Getting together storylines
  2. Relationship storylines
  3. Break-up storylines

As you can expect, there is a lot more focus on Class I storylines since as everyone who’s watched a soap can attest to, the chase is the most interesting part of a relationship – and it’s all downhill from there. In the following posts, I’ll be outlining the major storyline types within each class (hopefully with examples, if I can remember where I put the damn things) and some discussion over variations that may occur within one storyline type.

Category: Comment

Comments

5 Responses to “A Yuri Storyline Classification system – Introduction”

  1. Javi
    July 16th, 2009 @ 10:56 am

    This classification thing sounds very similar to what Lililicious has done but only with their releases. See: http://www.lililicious.net/doc.php?id=guide and check the lists.

  2. Jaden/Blue Saint
    July 16th, 2009 @ 7:03 pm

    Not to sound like a critic but those are rather broad categories, they seem like they could fit the romantic genre in general. I am curious to see how you break them up. I mean is a one sided admiration or obsession really a Class I since basically the relationship is already set so it is technically a Class II.

    @Javi: The Lililicious list is more of a breakdown by tone and not structure.

  3. Asuka
    July 17th, 2009 @ 4:33 am

    intriguing. Looking forward to it as much as I look forward for Aoi Hana ep4.
    :)

  4. Alexeon
    July 17th, 2009 @ 7:13 am

    I can look geeky and perverted at the same time now! Awesome!

    Me (at fancy restaurant with friends): “Well, as you can see, this yuri hentai clearly falls into a Class IIc-1 type.”

    Friends: “Alex, we dont want to hear about hentai during dinner.”

  5. Snickel
    July 17th, 2009 @ 8:47 pm

    sweet looking forward to your future posts on this subject

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