This beautifully illustrated, full-color collection of comics features one hundred different yuri scenes! Packed full of high school, adult, and age-gap couples in cute, funny, and spicy scenarios, this book contains plenty of unique pairings to enjoy. Watch as romance blossoms in classrooms and bedrooms alike!

Lilies Blooming in 100 Days has a story and art by Muromaki. English translation is done by Jenny McKeon, and lettering by Alexis Eckerman. Published by Yen Press (January 6, 2025). Rated 16+.

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

Part artbook, part collection of flash fiction, Muromaki's Lilies Blooming in 100 Days is all charming. Originally posted on Twitter over the course of one hundred days and now compiled into a book – with two manga shorts to open and close the collection – this takes a look at various relationships between girls and women as they start or flourish, but never as they end. There are only happily ever afters here.

The volume is divided into chapters, with each centered around a theme. These range from “one-sided” to “mutual love,” with in-betweens covering topics like “kisses” or “connection.” In each chapter, Muromaki explores various angles of these themes, which makes for a somewhat eclectic collection. We get goofy treats like a leg kabedon (I don't know why I loved this page so much, but here we are) and a girl trying to make her girlfriend jealous by pretending a guy said he liked her alongside more serious snippets, like a besotted girlfriend expressing her fears that her relationship will one day fizzle out like a sparkler at the beach. While I would hesitate to call any of the storiettes poignant, there's still a heartwarming quality to most of them that's good for giving readers the warm-and-fuzzies, which seems to be more what Muromaki's goal was with this book.

For the most part, each piece covers a different couple, though there are some notable exceptions. The pair that gets the most pages is the cousin duo of Haru and Akina as they grow up and navigate both their age gap and their familial relationship. Two other couples also get three-to-four updates: the “fashionable gal and honor student” duo and two girls who can't seem to kiss without someone walking in on them – even when they're grown-up office ladies working at the same company. I enjoyed these recurring characters, especially since their appearances weren't back-to-back; it felt like checking in on old friends.

Muromaki's art is full-color and has a delicacy of line that's a little ethereal. Most of the girls seem to wear the same blue plaid skirt, which is an interesting detail, and there isn't a vast array of character designs, although it's rarely difficult to tell when we're back to familiar characters. It's just a very nice collection covering relationships between women that range from teasing to sweet, and if you're a yuri fan, I'd definitely recommend picking it up.

Erica Friedman
Rating:

Lilies Blooming in 100 Days is not a story. It is a collection of unconnected stereotypical Yuri scenarios. In 1-4 panels, Muromaki is delving into yuri relationships, broken up into broad categories—Secret Relationships, Mutual Love, Kiss, Everyday Life, and other categories. Each scenario would be recognizable to anyone used to romance manga, not just yuri. But they are mostly cute, and the kind of thing that any yuri fan will find themselves nodding and smiling along to. Muromaki's humor is very relatable, which is important as many of the vignettes are meant to be amusing.

Muromaki's art can be lovely and is often goofy, but because these were initially online sketches, they often are not polished. That said, the art is full-color, which is a pleasure to read, as is common with comics that came to life online, versus in print. While there is nothing 18+ in the book, a few of the scenarios are decidedly Older Teen or older, and there are a few teacher and student scenarios, a number of embarrassment scenarios, some lovely everyday life, adult life, and a whole lot of school vignettes.

These 100 scenes of “lilies” blooming might be slightly confusing to someone new to online culture, or Yuri in general, but might work as a primer for the latter. I think it would be more appreciated by someone who is mostly familiar with yuri as a genre, and just wanted to enjoy bits and bytes of these online twiddles by a manga artist who is deeply embedded in the larger online Yuri culture.

This book was so successful that Muromaki-sensei did a second collection starting in summer 2024, 101 Days of Yuri Falling in Love, which, if this book sells well for Yen, we might expect to see in English as well. This is a perfect book for a quick read—one or two scenarios a night before bed, so you're guaranteed to have lovely yuri dreams.