[Februaryuri 2024 rerun] Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon

02 Dec, 2024

(base post on Februaryuri here!)

(note that all that follows, unless mentioned explicitly or in the rerun section, was written in February 2024)

Doughnuts Under a Crescent Moon (Kaketa Tsuki to Doughnuts), by Shio Usui

Publication

Ended (4 volumes)
Published in English (Seven Seas Entertainment), 4 volumes
Not published in French

Summary

Uno-san is an office lady who tries her very best to play the part of a normal woman. She tries very hard to be conventionally attractive. She tries very hard to join her colleagues' conversations about falling in love with men. Heck, she tries very hard to fall in love with men, too. That'll probably work, right?
Except... Except she just can't. Saying yes to some random man interested in her may be the easy choice, yet she can't bring herself to do it. And she hates herself for that. And for hurting genuinely nice people who would probably love her. How could they, though? She's subpar in every way. She's fake.

And so one day on the way back from work, Uno-san just breaks down and cries.

And so Satou-san, one of her colleagues, finds her in tears on the side of the road.

Satou-san is... different. She doesn't eat with the rest of the group. She doesn't talk much. She doesn't seem interested in love-related topics. She isn't really expressive overall, which might make her a bit unapproachable. And yet, on that evening, she offers Uno-san one of the extra donuts she bought to treat herself after work, helps her back up, and the two of them end up eating donuts in a nearby park while gazing at the moon. There, Satou-san tells her how much she admires her: how Uno-san is always stylish, and surrounded with people; how her work is impeccable; and she concludes that it's actually a bit of a relief to see perfect people like her cry too - and that she has every right to take some time for herself at times.

And maybe... You know. Maybe this starts something in Uno-san's heart.

Comment

This manga has a lot of things that are classic stuff of Office Lady yuri, a subgenre about 20- to 30- women working in some unspecified company: small talk between colleagues, invitations to mixers, awkwardness at work... And yet Doughnuts' narrative truly shines in the way it explores the normative, social pressure that this environment has on Uno-san, the protagonist. It obviously takes a bit of time to actively challenge all that, because the story follows her difficult path toward self-acceptance and starts low - but there's true elation in the way she advocates for herself and the way she is in late chapters.

This change, of course, doesn't happen in a vacuum. With a small and sweet cast of characters, Doughnuts showcases a variety of very earnest conversations about needs, wants and feelings in an effortless way; and this is very naturally where Uno-san's growth comes from. There's some extremely honest and caring communication here, and in a genre where miscommunication is often the narrative driving force, it's such a relief to see this instead! A very good example that stays with me is the way the story introduces at some point a classic trope of "That One Old Friend of the deuteragonist that is also a love rival to the protagonist": after a bit of tension, the two of them actually have a very chill conversation along the lines of "yeah we're in love with the same person, yeah I definitely understand, let's be friends! and also good luck to us haha". I can't tell you enough how refreshing this is.

There are also several discussions on what love means, what it's like to be in love, how different it can feel to different people, and how that's ok; and they're just as well handled¹. There is a case to make about some of the women here being on the aromantic spectrum, I think, and/or to talk about queerplatonic relationships, maybe. In any case, as far as canon representation goes, it's established extremely clearly in the end that both the protagonist and the deuteragonist are asexual²(!!) and also explicitly not into kissing(!!), which is extremely important when a kiss is still often the benchmark for the measure of explicit representation in media. Honestly, this - along with the way it's done, once again in a big moment of vulnerability and joy about accepting oneself and being accepted - is enough to put this yuri on my list³.

The fact that Satou-san, the deuteragonist, reads as autistic-coded to me, and also that her little sister is one of the most lucid characters I've seen in a while, is the donut glaze on top of all this.

In the end, this manga shows the slow, heartwarming growth of a protagonist who learns to be happy outside of norms and to stand up for herself and her choices. And honestly? We need more of that.

Extra

Another series by Shio Usui ended recently (edit: and is now getting published in English, and I'm still not caught up on the few remaining chapters...), Trying Out Marriage With My Female Friend. I have yet to read its end, so I can't exactly pronounce an informed verdict, but I stopped rather close to the ending, and it's been discussing similar ideas about what love feels like, how falling in love can change a relationship's dynamic, etc, and slowly moving toward some kind of romantic/romantic-ish love between its protagonists. I don't feel like it's as tightly done as Doughnuts does it, but still: if you're looking for something which is sweet in a similar way and ponders on the same questions, this is a good read too.
I'll confess, though, that I've been slightly disappointed by the fact that it didn't stick to its premise: two characters who are very close friends, decide to marry and live together, and it's platonic, and who cares, that's actually more important than any love life.

Rerun section

I recently read most of Usui Shio's yuri works (or at least, all the ones I could find), and that was interesting! I was notably wondering whether similar questions on love and relationships could be found in the rest of her works, considering the two above. Here, I mainly tried the following three, none of them officially released outside of Japan yet.

First was the collection of oneshots The World Exists for You (Kimi no Tame ni Sekai wa Aru). There is no particular questioning on romantic relationships here, but these were good oneshots, even if none of them really stood out as specifically noteworthy.

Second was a much more striking currently serialized series, Our "Love" is Disgusting (Bokura no Ai wa Kimochi Warui) (NSFW). I had a big "Usui Shio is that you?!" moment starting it, admittingly, considering how open it is in exploring fetishes and forms of sexual attraction and horniness outside of the norm, and characters bonding over that, all this with bits of trauma blended in. It does so in ways that feel earnest (if often rather unhealthy here), and I am really interested and fascinated in seeing that depicted so matter-of-factly. And yet... well, I can't entirely overlook how the arrangement between the two leads is becoming increasingly iffy, as one of them is still a minor.
Your level of uncomfortability may vary. On my end, this feels like too much of a rarity as a yuri setup to pass up - the base idea is rather wild, and unique, and good, and the execution is interesting so far - but it does put me a bit on edge at times.
In any case it's mindblowing to read this and think it's the same author as Doughnuts. Now that's some breadth of writing.
(a-few-days-after edit: This title now has 5 chapters under its belt, and it's becoming clear that it handles harsh topics of trauma and othering in decidedly fascinating ways. It may be to your taste if you want interesting characters that really need therapy and have extremely unhealthy coping mechanisms that realistically bleed into their sexuality. I, for sure, am hooked - and worried about them.)

Third was the other current serialization of Usui, Becoming Her Lover For the Sake of Love (Koi ni Koi suru Koibito Kankei). It feels understandably tame and a bit run-of-the-mill, notably compared to the one above; but it does have a protagonist questioning what love is, and who feels rather neurodivergent and bent on scripts and planning and rules. The differences in expectations between her and her rather confident and flirty fake date partner are slowly colliding and that should be interesting to witness.
(Girlfriend Limited to 7 Days (7-Kakan Gentei Kanojo) is another currently serialized series with similar plot beats (two students, one of them very prim-and-proper, decide to fake date to understand love better), but that feels so far more grounded in its exploration of lesbian attraction, though I'm not sure where it'll go. In any case, I'll be interested in contrasting these two series with each other as they go.)

#cohost #februaryuri 2024 #yuri