A great example is self-harm, which I never really understood before reading this.

The art isn’t complex either, but it really helps accentuate how she feels and what she means in each panel, making her thoughts and ideas easy to understand even if you can’t relate. Her narration and descriptions are simple, but they do a great job of making it clear how she feels and why she feels that way, easily spinning a narrative out of her life. Part of what makes this manga so great is its strong use of text and visuals to communicate the mangaka’s experiences. She’s in a much worse place than many readers, including myself, but there are still many aspects of her story which will be relatable to anyone, making it a work with broad appeal.Īnd if you can’t relate to large parts of it, that’s fine. Many of the mangaka’s experiences with depression, self-harm, anxiety, and sexuality will reflect those of the reader. SabiRezu is an incredibly relatable work in many ways.

While there’s no romance to conclude in a perfect, happily-ever-after way, the manga avoids the pitfalls of being pointlessly depressing, and the mangaka makes significant progress over the course of this work. The mangaka’s sexuality is a fairly large part of the book, and you can easily see how it influenced the other parts of her life that she talks about. Despite this, it still works very well as a story for people interested in yuri because of its focus on sexuality. Almost none of yuri’s common tropes show up here, and when they do, it’s almost always part of the mangaka’s imagination. Unlike a lot of yuri, this manga is very explicitly about a queer person. As an auto-biographical work, it’s deeply personal, and this works to its benefit, making the story feel realistic without feeling boring. The entire manga is building up to an encounter she has with an escort in an attempt to move forward. While not the main focus of the manga, her sexuality is a key element, especially the ways in which it interacts with her feelings of alienation. SabiRezu focuses on the author’s persistent depression and her struggle with finding a place in life. And it just so happens to be one of the most important yuri manga of the decade.

It’s a very popular manga in Japan, where it received the honor as the third best manga of 2016 for women. It was originally posted on Pixiv, before being picked up for print after seeing extreme success online. My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness - from here on referred to as SabiRezu - is an auto-biographical manga written by Nagata Kabi. This is a series focused on recommending yuri, so it might seem strange that I’m starting with a manga that barely fits the genre.

My lesbian experiences with loneliness