Yuri Recommendation - Ouji-sama Nante Iranai

So I’ve been recently staying up till 3AM reading this manga, it’s called Ouji-sama Nante Iranai, and I finished it last night, so I wanted to talk about it. I don’t do recommendations as much as I should, so here, here’s one

Ouji-sama Nante Iranai is the story of two highschool students, Yukino and Nobara. They are 1st year students at this fancy school that has a weird gimmick. It has two divisions. See, it’s a school for both super fancy rich girls, and also hard working scholarship girls. These are the Botan and the Shakuyaku, respectively. Many years ago, this division was basically because the Shakuyaku were the Botan’s lackeys and personal servants, but at some point a Shakuyaku was elected to be student president, and managed to give the Shakuyaku more freedoms and rights in the school. But this ALSO means that the relationship between the two divisions is… bad. Lots of infighting, lots of catty bullshit.

But there’s two students here. Yukino, and Nobara. Yukino is Shakuyaku, Nobara is Botan. Yukino comes from an “ordinary” family, Nobara’s parents are wealthy musicians. Makes sense. In a normal setting, these two would never meet or come together, and even in this setting, they wouldn’t neccesarily get along, considering the bad vibes. But on the first day, Yukino meets Nobara in the greenhouse, and is entranced by how beautiful she is. But like, in a straight way, you know.

Not only that, but due to a mixup, Yukino has to room with Nobara in the Botan dorms. Luckily, Yukino is a sweet young girl who just wnats to make people happy, and Nobara is a kind of emotionless doll who doesn’t really mind. They find each other fascinating, and what grows from their new friendship is something quite beautiful.

This story is, at its heart, the story of these two girls as they grow closer. Y’know, yuri. And it’s not like that “oh pure friendship between girls” kinda yuri, though the comic does address that at places, no, it’s pretty explicit. But not just that, but it’s about the political movings of this small school, the many students that inhabit it, and all of their personal relations. A school filled with students that hate each other slowly starts to come together, and it starts with Nobara and Yukino’s blossoming friendship.

This story has a lot of characters. Like, a loooot. And each of them has in depth backstories and character and motivations. Very minor characters who you wouldn’t expect get serious moments about who they love and who they want to be with. Like, for example, Yukino has a best friend from her old school. That best friend has a roomate, the ace of the school’s drama club. Okay, so she’s a minor character, but she gets a lot of indepth story is what you’re saying? Yes. But it’s more than that. We see this girl meet another girl and fall in love, but also at the same time, we get minor characters through THEIR connections. Later on there’s a school dance and they’re put into pairs, and the drama prince gets assigned a Botan who we’ve seen a few times as a background character. And she starts getting a crush, and suddenly it grows out from THERE. There’s a major love triangle between three minor characters. There’s a lot of things like this. You get like, 4 chapters for every minor character, showing their struggles and problems, with Nobara or Yukino (or both) helping them through it, as the school comes closer together.

At the center of it, though, there’s Yukino and Nobara. And it’s a cute sweet story. I like their characters. Yukino is a sweetheart who has MAJOR self worth problems, because she kind of tends to base her self worth on helping others and how much others like her. And Nobara is still suffering from the death of her parents a few years ago, which she blames herself for, and has walled herself off from the world. We watch them help each other through their problems and grow as people, it’s really heartwarming.

This is a rather long manga. 200 chapters. It’s in a long strip format, so it’s a LOT of reading. It took me several nights to finish, but I’m glad I did, it was really enjoyable, and I highly recommend it. If you like school drama, character drama, and of course social gap drama, you’ll like this one.