After two years of competing against each other, Ayaka and Yurine are about to start their final year of high school together. It’s been a rough journey for Ayaka, learning how to untangle herself from her mother’s expectations and to open up to people, and the driving force each step of the way has been Yurine. Except, what is Yurine to her? Ayaya still isn’t sure what kind of relationship they have, so she starts to ask the many people in her life about their most important people and what they mean to them.
Volume 10 of Kiss and White Lily for My Dearest Girl feels like a quiet ending to the series in some ways; if I was going to be picky I would say that we probably didn’t need an entire volume to wrap things up since most things were already wrapped up but Canno makes good use of the page count, as none of Ayaka’s interactions felt like filler and it was nice to see many of the characters one last time before saying goodbye. Most of the other couples we’ve met throughout the series have already figured out where they stand with each other — several of them openly use the word “girlfriend” when Ayaka asks them about their relationships — and even the student council tsunderes feel like they’ve gotten to a balancing point.
All except for Ayaka and Yurine however; even thought the two of them have been trending closer and closer together as the series has gone on (just compare the covers for this volume and the first), Ayaka still finds herself a little lost because of how thoroughly Yurine has changed her worldview. She’s learned to do things for herself, not for her mother or to maintain a perfect image, but it still takes her a little push to realize that the word for what Yurine is to her now isn’t “rival” or even “friend” but “girlfriend.”
In that sense it is a “quiet” ending as the series returns to its roots and focuses more on this couple than any other, unlike previous volumes of the series that branched out to look at some of the other girls at school. But it’s also the perfect place to end the story; Ayaka and Yurine have truly become each other’s “dearest girl” and Canno celebrates that moment with multiple, two-page spreads. The series itself has also come a way from its early volumes where I wondered if we would have non-censored kisses on the page, and Kiss and White Lily does not leave Ayaka and Yurine’s relationship, or the relationships for most of the other couples, vague in that regard!
Kiss and White Lily remains a solid, PG yuri title with a variety of relationships, fun characters, and genuine declarations of love but with nothing more mature than kisses. In the three years since Yen Press began publishing this title, one of their first yuri titles, there are more options than ever for yuri readers and I still think that this is a series that all yuri fans, new fans and old ones, should check out.