Do proper young ladies do medium kick hit confirms? What about complex command grabs? Can they chain an infinite throw loop on wake-up with frame-perfect precision? NO!!! They absolutely can’t!! Fighting games are a barbaric pastime as far as you can possibly get from the propriety of a young lady!! I chose to leave that all behind… so I could be a well-mannered young lady. So, sorry, but I’m not playing your game.
— Aya Mitsuki, right before playing Shirayuri's game
Mitsuki Aya wants nothing more in life than to be an elegant young lady, and after being lucky enough to earn a scholarship to the prestigious Kuromi Girl’s Academy, she’s closer to her dream than ever before. Kuromi Girl’s Academy is full of prim, proper young ladies that Aya wants to emulate, but none so much as “Shirayuri-sama,” the ethereal and mysterious idol of the academy. So that’s why it’s such a shock when one day Aya discovers Shirayuri alone in an abandoned classroom one day… holding an arcade-style game controller. As it turns out, the beautiful, elegant Shirayuri is actually a trash-talking fighting game nut… and she’s looking for a Player Two.
Young Ladies Don't Play Fighting Games (Tai Ari Deshita. ~Ojо̄-sama wa Kakutо̄ Gēmu Nante Shinai~, lit. "Thanks For the Match: Young Ladies Don't Play Fighting Games") is a comedy-drama manga with yuri undertones by Eri Ejima. The manga started running in the Seinen magazine Monthly Comic Flapper in January 2020, and has been collected in three volumes since. Seven Seas Entertainment started publishing the manga in English in 2021.
On January 20, 2021, it was announced that an anime adaption was in development.
Young Ladies Don't Play Fighting Games provides examples of:
- Beautiful Tears: Shirayuri's tendency to start crying when frustrated is a bit of a Running Gag— her crying face is even the cover images of the first two volumes. But it's actually plot relevant: when Shirayuri asks Aya to play Iron Senpai 4 with her, Aya goes into a long explanation about why she doesn't play fighting games anymore, explaining how her world used to "shine like diamonds" because she had a passion for gaming, but it eventually disappeared and left her feeling adrift and aimless. Shirayuri then tells her that she doesn't give a crap about any of that and just keeps insisting that Aya fight her. What finally gets Aya to crack is when she shows her passion by eventually bursting into shiny, sparkly tears...Aya: Like diamonds...
- Blood from the Mouth: When Shirayuri confronts Aya about her being familiar with Iron Senpai 4 she gets so worked up she bites her tongue and starts bleeding. The thing is, she doesn't stop talking, spraying flecks of blood all over Aya's face as she she gets more and more frenzied, basically killing the pure image of "Shirayuri" Aya had in her head.
- Cat Girl: Secretary Nekomi, Aya's favored character in Iron Senpai 4, is a woman with cat ears that attacks with sharp claws.
- Fictional Video Game: Iron Senpai 4, as well as the entire Iron Senpai series, is the school-themed fighting game that Aya and Shirayuri play.
- Gamer Chick: In Aya's past she was the only girl among her group of gaming friends.
- In Volume 2, Yuu reveals that she got into video games due to the fact that she has a bunch of little brothers who were always trying to get her to play.
- Humanizing Tears: The thing that causes Aya to rescind her refusal to play fighting games is witnessing Shirayuki bursting into frustrated tears. After no longer seeing a world that "shone like diamonds" after her love for fighting games fizzled out, seeing Shiraruki's passion and emotions over fighting games shows Aya she's more than just a weird fanatic, and might be able to reignite the passion she herself once felt.
- Nobody Calls Me "Chicken"!: When Aya and Mio are busted by the dormitory affairs girls, Mio challenges Tamaki to a game in a last ditch attempt to save their skins. After having been revealed to be a gamer herself, Tamaki refuses— until Mio accuses her of trying to run.
- One-Gender School: Kuromi Girl's Academy is, unsurprisingly, an all-girls academy.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Shirayuri is only known as Shirayuri for the first volume. Volume 2 opens with her bemoaning the idealized nickname and persona she's been stuck with against her will. Her real name is Mio Yorue.
- Parody Sue: Shirayuri is introduced as the typical popular girl in an all-girl's academy: a mysterious, elegant beauty who causes her schoolmates to squeal and sigh over actions as mundane as handing a handkerchief back to someone. In reality, "Shirayuri" is an immature crybaby without a drop of social tact in her body. She frequently starts bawling when things don't go her way, detests studying, and doesn't care about anything besides fighting games— the only reason people think she's cool and graceful is likely because she usually doesn't talk. What's more, she actually finds all her fans annoying and absolutely hates the nickname Shirayuri, because it's an embodiment of the idealized image others impose on her:Mio: They're free to swoon over their lily-tinted worldview if they want... but I do wish they wouldn't drag me into their little fantasy world by slapping me with a creepy nickname.
- Scholarship Student: Aya is able to get into Kuromi on a scholarship, and often feels out of place among all the other prim, proper students there.
- School Idol: Shirayuri became the idol of Kuromi Girl's Academy for her beauty, the novelty of her coming from outside the bubble of Kuromi, and her perceived elegant bearing. It turns out that Shirayuri's actual personality couldn't be any further from this idealized image.
- Shotoclone: The title character of Iron Senpai (who Shirayuri prefers to play as) is, of course, an archetypal shoto, complete with bargain-brand versions of the Hadouken fireball and Shoryuken rising punch. As an experienced gamer, Shirayuri uses a lot of tactics familiar to advanced Ryu and Ken players like crouching feints to make her enemies think she's about to fire off a projectile.
- Soft Glass: Played with. While Aya and Shirayuri do manage to crack open and jump out of a window of their abandoned classroom meeting place, Aya casually plucks a shard of glass off of her head and can be seen with a stream of blood running down her face as she bids Shirayuri good night.
- Tournament Arc: Beginning in volume 3 and throuhghout volume 4, the group participates in an Evo-like fighting game tournament.
