I notice not much gets posted here anymore...so I'm starting a discussion!

I was reading online and I stumbled across a post where someone was looking for some good yuri. They defined "good" yuri as something exremely similar to most yaoi, a cute love story that includes sexual encounters. She complained that all yuri was either shojo-ai, or just gross hentai, and was angry there was no in between.

So then she began praising yaoi for being able to find the middle ground, there is more sex in yaoi than yuri, but in most cases they do a better job making it fit into the story and making it just as romantic rather than smut.

I imagine comments in response to her post were things like "anything with sex is smut", "girls fall in love for love, not sex", and something about whatever gender has written either the yuri or the yaoi is doing it to please their own views.

All the above statements seem pretty ignorant to me, but the point is. Why do you like yuri? Do you agree there should be a more mature version of yuri that is on the same level as yaoi? How to you like yaoi in comparison to yuri? What's your view on stories incorperating sex as a part of love be it in a yuri or a yaoi? And where is the line between a romantic sex scene and smut?

(BTW Rin has been working on a Yuri manga....will be uploading pages today...)

I'll answer my own thread here. I like Yuri for the sheer innocence. The fact that there is no sex but the love seems even stronger than some regular shojo manga romances. I was envious, I mean..in yuri, its like, the girls understand the romantic love that girls want, where boys seem to have a different idea that occasionally clashes. Most romantic situations us girls drool over are found lame by males (at least in my experience) but I like yuri because it seems like it's okay, they understand each other and it seems like the love between two girls in more pure than a love between a boy and girl could ever be. Because there's no sex and because they are similar. In real life its a different story...but yuri is just like.."the perfect love story".

I don't like yaoi in comparison, too much rape, or random sex, and not enough story, or if there is story thats pretty good, it seems once they get to sex, thats all there is for the rest of the manga. x.x And the love just doesn't seem as "real" as in yuri.

Overall, i wouldnt say sex ruins a yuri/yaoi, and if it's done right it could make it really sweet, but i really think it's better without it.

I agree, but I still like Yaoi

I used to hate yaoi. But there are two manga that I love that are yaoi, so even though I don't have faith in the genre or the fanbase, I have a little bit of hope that there are some good stories like those: Only the Ring Finger Knows and La Esperanca (I may have spelled the second one wrong). The romances in both of those make me giddy.

I think there are good and bad things in every genre. I love the innocence of a lot of yuri, but I think there are also some that are...less innocent, so a lot of people focus on that. Then again, I feel like there's more of that kind of stuff not necessarily in yaoi, but in the fanbase. No offense to yaoi fans, but some of you guys scare me. I have a friend who used to trick me into reading the more in depth fanfics that she found. >.<

Oh yeah, much less innocent. I've only found one, one yuri in all my searching that included a mature sexual scene without being to smutty, the only problem was there wasnt enough backstory to make you care about the characters, as the scene happens in episode one. the relationship between the girls is defined as they know and love eath other, and its not random rape or what have you. But most yuri that invloves a sexual encounter is random and disgusting with no love betweent he girls.--Which is what I often see in yaoi, but they do add more romance.

Anyway yeah, most non innocent yuri jsut isnt that good.

That is true, but I think that the stuff that I find that's all sweet and cute and romantic is...well...sweet and cute and romantic. If the yuri is cute, I generally like it so much more than yaoi. Maybe it's just me being traumatized by friends who are really into the...non-innocent type of yaoi that makes me try to avoid the genre for the most part.

So to sum up, you like yuri more than yaoi, not that your condemming yaoi at all, and when it comes to innocent versus otherwise, innocent is usually much much better for either yaoi or yuri.

XD I agree! But yaoi thats too shonen ai, suhc as Loveless, left me feeling like there was no real direction. -That is not to say that the non innocent ones are anuy better However I can say for the yuri side, Amane and Hikari had a defined direction that led to intimacy without being smutty and was still unbelieveable cute. ^^ So there is a fine line as to where it fits without getting traumatizing. xD

To be honest, I perfer Yaya x Hikari and Tamao x Nagisa.

I found that Yaya and Tamao were both....how to put it..they seemed "dirty" and slightly dishonest with their feelings whereas the girls they ended up with never really violated them or their trust. For example, Yaya pretty much molested Hikari and then apologized and they were friends, and Tamao seemed to almost force Nagisa's hand and control her-then again Tamao reminds me of someone I knew in real life who I really don't like, so maybe my opinion of her character is influenced by my opinion of the person I used to know.

However the point of this thread wasn't about which pairs we liked, I was just using an example that that pairing I did like, I liked because they weren't dirty or slutty about the sexual encounter near the end of the series between Hikari and Amane. That may also be why I dislike Yaya, because the way she touched poor Hikari was unwanted and inappropriate and far too forceful. Granted Yaya just "loved her so much she couldn't control herself" characters like Yaya are used in much trashier Yuri stories and allowed to go unpunished. Thats where yuri's centered only on sex and rape come from.

Thankfully, Strawberry Panic is not a smut, and Yaya is given a few redeeming qualities such as sorrow and guilt over what she did to Hikari, and they get to be friends with Yaya accepting her place as a friend and nothing more. Thats why I like Strawberry Panic and it's stories and characters overall more than I like hentai based Yuri. Because even though there was some sex in SP, it was done in a brief, cute, tasteful, romantic, and non graphic/disgusting way.

i prefer Yuri because as Rin said, its quite pure and honestly more interesting, each girl is a epic different world, and sometimes we dont understand ourselves,thats why i think its quite a challenge to be a girl and fall for another :3 AND having a happy ending in Yuri is, again as Rin said, the perfect love story :3

I prefer the subleties in shounen-ai and shoujo-ai anime and the anime's comic counterparts. It gives you all possibilities and makes you use your imagination to make up headcannons for the characters. My favorite of these kind of anime is Madoka. xDDD That show wasn't innocent but it was at the same time.

I prefer yuri over yaoi anyday, any week, and any month. I prefer the fans of yuri than yaoi, too.

I like the not so innocent animations, comics and literature, too, but I'm very picky as they need to have a developed plotline.

I've never really understood all the rage over yaoi, but that's just me. Personally I don't find the idea of two guys together cute or sexy at all, unlike yuri which I find soooo adorable and sexy at the same time.

Why I like yuri? Well I like the innocence, but I'm not too choosy about smut, as long as I t isn't smut just for the sake of smut. Which, like you guys said, seems to be pretty common in yaoi.
Once I went into a manga store with a friend of mine, and she is really into yaoi, so of course she headed straight for that section. I followed her, thinking I should at least give it a try. And lo and behold, the first page of the manga I randomly picked up was smut. So yeah, I put it down and headed back to the "normal" section XD Sadly, they didn't have a yuri section.

Also, I wonder why yaoi is so much more popular in general?
From what I've found, boys who like yaoi are shunned, and in general the same goes for girls who like yuri. At least that's how it is in Denmark as well as the part of the U.S. I exchanged to - I can't speak for other countries.

Well.. girls liking yuri and guys liking yaoi is almost as if they themselves are out and saying that they are 'gay' or 'lesbian'. Many people out there are still pretty much old fashioned. Hence the shunning~ But thats just my opinion o.o

Yaoi being more popular than yuri..
I personally think its all due to the varieties of manga out there. I mean, guys have a wider range of manga that may catch their attention. Versus girls who mainly go gaga for yaoi. Guys find a girls sense of romance different to their own sense of romance. So a guy picking up a yuri manga in hopes that he would see some major girl on girl action is in for quite the suprise xD

Personally, I am a huge fan of yuri and I am okay with 'some' yaoi.

Yuri or yaoi? Yuri wins my heart<33