Line #10 Manga/Semelparous


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/semelparous_vol_1.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:[[{{Tagline}} Yuri Love Is a Battlefield]]]]
3	->''"Will you descend into Hell with me?''"
4	-->-- '''Kaminoi Youko''' to Aratsugu Yorino
5
6	''Semelparous'' (''セメルパルス'') is a DarkFantasy YuriGenre manga series by Creator/JunOgino (creator of ''Manga/{{Gamma}}''). The series is an [[AdaptationExpansion expanded rework]] of Ogino's 2016 one-shot "Manga/TagaiNoGuardian" ("Each Other's Guardians") and began serialization in ''[[Magazine/YuriHime Comic Yuri Hime]]'' on 18 November 2019. An English localization by Creator/SevenSeasEntertainment was published beginning 14 December 2021.
7
8	Unbeknownst to the people of present-day Japan, Earth is under threat of invasion by humanoid {{kaiju}} from a ParallelUniverse, and so for hundreds of years, an order of warriors called Bulwarks have [[SecretWar secretly fought]] in the VoidBetweenTheWorlds to keep them from breaking through into our world. Aratsugu Yorino and her childhood friend Haruka have trained all their lives to join the Bulwarks, but then Haruka is tragically killed when a kaiju appears during a training exercise.
9
10	Left alone, Yorino continues her training and graduates at the top of her class and is assigned to Unit 3 Captain Kaminoi Youko for field training. As they slay the kaiju together, Yorino must face up to both the horror of the ForeverWar and her burgeoning feelings for her mentor.
11	----
12	!!Tropes:
13	* AdaptationExpansion: ''Semelparous'' is loosely based on an earlier oneshot by the same mangaka, "Tagai no Guardian".
14	* {{Ecchi}}: The series is quite frank and undeniably {{fanservice}}y about female sexuality, with a number of {{Shower Scene}}s, a couple of softcore masturbation scenes involving Kitamura, and eventually softcore girl-on-girl sex scenes. Somewhat oddly given the extent of the sexual content, Seven Seas rated it "Older Teen (17+)", rather than grouping it as "Mature" and printing it under their Ghost Ship imprint.
15	* ForeignLanguageTitle: The Japanese title of the series is just the word "semelparous" in katakana. It's a biological term describing species that only reproduce once in their lives (salmon for example).
16	* {{Foreshadowing}}: In early chapters, the local news reports on people dying of sudden heart attacks. [[spoiler:The {{kaiju}} are bioengineered war machines that [[PoweredByAForsakenChild have humans from the alternate universe in their heads controlling them]], and when the human inside is killed, so is their {{Doppelganger}} on this side. Yorino realizes this after one of her friends dies suddenly, while Youko killed her own sister's double.]]
17	* GoodThingYouCanHeal: Pureblood mures are able to heal from grievous wounds by drawing energy from the walls.
18	* GravityScrew: In the VoidBetweenTheWorlds, the "walls" actually behave like floors: each has its own gravity effect. Pureblood mures, and kaiju (which contain mure cells), are able to cross the midpoint where they cancel out and are attracted to the opposite wall, but Bulwarks cannot: they always fall back to the wall they came from.
19	* HomosexualReproduction: Mures are able to conceive with human-mure UnevenHybrid Bulwarks by taking the Bulwark's Aegis into themselves. In the case of Yorino's parents, both partners were female. After learning this, Yorino mentions the possibility that she might get pregnant with her girlfriend Youko while having sex with her.
20	* HumanAliens: The mures, a race that once lived in the VoidBetweenTheWorlds until a CivilWar led to them conquering the other world, with their dissidents fleeing to ours and creating the Bulwarks to keep the others out. Mures are externally indistinguishable from humans but can pass through the walls between the worlds.
21	* MasturbationMeansSexualFrustration: Kitamura has a serious crush on Yorino and is shown masturbating to a fantasy of her in a couple of chapters. She has approximately zero chance of being able to consummate her crush given the TeacherStudentRomance between Yorino and Youko.
22	* MoreExperiencedChasesTheInnocent: Kaminoi Youko is in her twenties and certainly more sure of herself than the virginal Aratsugu Yorino. After they're partnered up, they quickly engage in a TeacherStudentRomance. The story doesn't directly state that Youko has had prior lovers, but the first time they have sex in volume 3, it's stated that Yorino has never even had an orgasm by herself before whereas Youko, who's the one who initiated and is leading their lovemaking, [[ImpliedTrope clearly knows what she's doing]].
23	* MutualKill: [[spoiler:The mures kill Youko in chapter 14 by creating a human-type kaiju out of her own {{Doppelganger}}--meaning it could kill her simply by committing suicide. They end up [[ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice running each other through]].]]
24	* NeverTheSelvesShallMeet: The AlternateUniverse has all the same people as the prime universe, but normally the walls between the worlds keep the death of one from affecting the other. However, if they die in the VoidBetweenTheWorlds, so does their counterpart: it takes ''two'' walls to fully isolate the counterparts from each other--and the {{kaiju}} are made from humans, meaning every time the Bulwarks kill a kaiju, somebody in our world dies. [[spoiler:The mures of the other world [[ExploitedTrope weaponize this]], making kaiju out of the doubles of friends and family of the Bulwarks to psychologically torture them, and, when possible, the Bulwarks themselves, to ensure a kill.]]
25	* NotQuiteDead: [[spoiler:As revealed in Chapters 17 and 18, Youko ends up surviving the MutualKill scenario with her doppleganger by accidentally bodyjacking her double. She's brought back to the mures' world where she's recruited into LaResistance in order to try and stop the BigBad.]]
26	* RecycledWithAGimmick: If you were looking for a yuri version of ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'', you're probably in the right place: the two series have a lot of thematic and conceptual similarities.
27	* SexuallyTransmittedSuperpowers: {{Inverted}}. Yorino's birth mother Mikoto, a pureblood [[HumanAliens mure]], conceived her by taking her lover Maya's Aegis into herself. This caused Maya's powers as a Bulwark to weaken and eventually disappear by the time Yorino turned four.
28	* SoleSurvivor: The Bulwarks are descended from humans and a faction of mures that, in roughly the mid-19th century, lost a war against another faction that turned MultiversalConqueror and fled from the VoidBetweenTheWorlds into our universe. Unbeknownst even to herself at the start of the series, Yorino is the last pureblooded mure on "our" side after her birth mother was killed in action when she was four.
29	* TeacherStudentRomance: As a rookie Bulwark, Yorino is partnered to Unit 3 captain Youko for seasoning. The two women fall hard for each other and become a terrifyingly effective BattleCouple.
30	* UnevenHybrid: The Bulwarks are humans with partial mure ancestry, which allows them to cross the wall from our world to the void--though it takes a pure mure to get all the way across to the AlternateUniverse.

Context Manga / Semelparous