Golden Week, Dark Clouds!?
As April turned to May, it was once again time for Japan to celebrate Golden Week, with people taking vacations, spending time with friends and family, and generally enjoy the time off work. For some, it also represents a chance to catch up on media that they may have missed, taking the time to binge on shows or comics, and discuss them with communities online or in real life.
This year was no different, but for fans of yuri, who may be enjoying the anime adaptation of Botan Kamiina Fully Blossoms When Drunk, usually truncated to Kamiina Botan, may have found themselves choosing sides on a sudden development of creator-related drama. But what happened? What started a Twitter spat during this time of rest? Settle in with a drink, and we’ll tell you.
What Is The Yuri Manga Kamiina Botan?
As we mentioned in our preview some months ago, Kamiina Botan revoles around the titular heroine, a university student, who lives in a dorm with other girls, trying different types of alcohol while trying to get closer to her dorm leader, Ibuki Tonami. Along the way, they sample various tipples, and meet other liquor likers (and potential rivals, partners… and maybe both?) as they get closer.
Based on a manga, it began airing in Japan in April 2026, and has been a hit on Netflix (and on Crunchyroll abroad). A lot of fans are enjoying the slice-of-life tipsy-flirty-yearning, as well as the occasional… experimental changes in animation style. However, this joy was interrupted on many people’s feeds by sudden revelations that shook many people’s views of the author — and for some, the anime by relation.
The Source of the Yuri Drama
As with many manga and anime works, fans produce their own content based on existing properties, known as doujinshi — and naturally, a fair amount of that can be sexual in nature. Of course, that’s just life: give talented, horny people a pen and paper, and they’ll create sexy art. Naturally, the same is true for Kamiina Botan, and some people have taken it upon themselves to draw Botan, Ibuki, and other characters from the series in sexual relations with men… including some that are non-consensual.
Tasteless as this is, it can be ignored. However, some people noticed that on the Japanese art website Pixiv that Hey, the creator of Kamiina Botan, had not only seen some of these works, but had given them “likes.” Once word got out, it resembled something of a miniature pro-shippers vs. anti-shippers moment: some of the fan base felt betrayed, while others thought it was a little bit of a storm in a sake cup.
Reaction Among Yuri fans Online
Among those who were aggrieved that Hey had lent their approval to such works, many felt that it demonstrated that they were not an ally in any real sense, but are instead fetishizing WLW relationships and characters, as @YuriOnlyAcc said:
“The author of Kamiina Botan likes anti-yuri stuff. So yuri in Kamiina Botan for him is nothing more than a fetish. Liking a work that is basically an insult to what they’re supposedly going for means they certainly don’t respect this genre either. Yuri is so fucked.”
Others were more reserved, but their distaste for the situation was palpable, as @NINtendo_maya expressed:
“Wait the kamiina botan author was liking lesbian correction art of the series? Ummmmm”
Arguably one of the most eloquent voices of disapproval came from @PaddySta_1999, who wrote:
“Dropped Botan Kamiina Fully Blossoms When Drunk
“Its a shame honestly, its a great and fun series. ”But I can not support a person who is aokay with their character or other lesbian characters getting ,,corrected, by men. It doesnt help that many Yuri Fans dont want males in their […] “space, and these actions really hurt the reputation of not only the himedanshis, its also hurting every male Yuri creator.
“I am okay if you continue this series and I wont judge you for liking it, its a great series with fun characters.”
For their part, Hey has stated that, regardless of what likes or bookmarks he has made on Pixiv, “I consider the original work of “Kamiina Botan” to be in the GL genre. Kamiina will continue to be classified as GL.” While some fans consider this to be an act of ‘doubling down,’ others see it as evidence that no harm was intended, and that perhaps critics are a little too emotionally close to the situation.
“i think caring this much about one artwork that the author clicked ‘like’ on on their pixiv account is a sign of excessive parasociality frankly,” said @cogito_yuri.
Others, such as @EmaSgiro, are more concerned with the art than the artist, writing:
“Honestly I don’t care what the author likes and doesn’t like. I like to meet the art where they at and where it’s at Kamiina Botan has shown to be very tender and endearing wlw media so…”
Others still have pointed out that Hey’s motives for liking such fan art is not necessarily enthusiastic approval of its content:
“What the author said is very simple, he said it’s absolutely fine to create all kinds of fanart about Kamiina Botan. It’s far from the active support of the ‘content’ that’s been presented.
“In short, he is just supporting the freedom of creating fanart,” says @yuribest09.
What do you think? Where do you stand on the issue? Let us know in our brand new comments section, below!
