Oh look, is a Nico

An entire chapter about girls randomly fawning over some mediocre otaku dude? Was anyone even asking for this?

You're new to the concept of projection, aren't you?

Christ, one chapter about Makoto and suddenly everybody is acting like petulant children. Your pure yuri experience is calling, it left this manga on the first fucking page.

Two people is "everyone"? As opposed to the two people who thought it was fine? Who are you even talking about? Is there some other comment thread where whole crowds of people are making a fuss about this? Did you mean to leave a comment there, but got mixed up and left it here by mistake?

Things that were much funnier than this chapter number 1: you blowing two people up into "everyone" and getting pissy about it, but saying they're the ones acting like petulant children
Number 2: you doing that in the same comment in which you made a crack about projection

V. good. 10/10, would be petulantly childish again

An entire chapter about girls randomly fawning over some mediocre otaku dude? Was anyone even asking for this?

Just wondering.... is it stil "rape" if you ask for permission and get an ok? cO

The word "yes" on its own doesn't mean much when it's a result of coercion. I'm not reading this manga, so I can't talk at all about the specific situation, but yeah, it could still be rape even if they made a show of asking for permission. To begin with, forcing someone to say "yes" when you aren't giving them a real choice to begin with is just a meaningless display of the power you have over that person. Consent isn't a purely legalistic Faustian bargain where face-value word choice functions as a strictly binding contract enforced by powers beyond your control. I don't know how that applies to the manga specifically, but it's a more complicated question than whether or not someone said "yes" or "no".

Haha, Donut getting worried about how her mother would react, when she had been way ahead of her for years. That was amazing. Cool parents are the best.

It seems kind of weird that we're already heading towards the drama-filled ending, though? I feel like I missed the part where they actually spent any time together as a couple. Am I forgetting something? They flirted, got together, Ploy showed up, interfered for a bit, and now Mew's leaving the country.

Rather than a couple who is now having to be separated, they seem more like two people who wanted to get together but couldn't because of circumstances. I'm not sure how effective a long-distance relationship or a "I'll wait for you!" sort of ending can be when they don't really have anything to start with.

last edited at May 2, 2016 3:57PM

Okay then. I guess knowing how reality works is meaningless because the story might turn out to be a surreal fantasy universe for rape apologists? I'm not sure how deflecting your bizarre hypothetical scenario about magically hypercompetent manipulator children onto the author is supposed to mean anything, but yes, it is possible that, in the confines of the story, the other girl is some kind of shadowy mastermind, and the tutor is just her unwitting patsy. Given that I started talking about this by questioning what ideas the author intends to convey by telling this particular story in this particular manner, did you think I'd go "Oh well, authorial intention is god, can't question it or criticise it, it just is what it is"? Hell no. Even if the end result of this story is that the adult teacher is portrayed as totally innocent and relatable, I'm still going to be pointing out how contrived and rapey that narrative is. Author's can "intend" whatever the hell they want, that doesn't insulate their ideas from examination and deconstruction.

last edited at May 2, 2016 4:55AM

Mm. I mean, to be entirely clear, the teacher is definitely worse than Ema, no doubt about that. He's actively grooming multiple girls for abuse, using his position as tutor to gain access and authority over them, and manipulating them into looking at each other as rivals instead of looking at him as the sleazy pile of garbage that he is.

Did I miss a chapter where all of this is explained. Oo

For all we know, it's both girls who went after the teacher and he's just content with the situation. We don't know the exact circumstances and who's at fault with the teacher situation. But we do know how things goes with Ema.

??? It doesn't need to be stated outright by an omniscient narrator for it to clearly be what's happening. If it was just a matter of a couple girls having a crush on their tutor, he wouldn't be casually making out with them, dumping his emotional problems on them, and getting all gropey with them. He wouldn't be using his "relationship" with one girl to normalise his abusive behaviour towards another, or making them think that it can't be helped because he's having a hard time. There's no question of "fault" here. Even if it was the girls who confessed to him in the beginning, it was his responsibility to turn them down, not to go "Oh well, in for a penny" and stick his tongue down their throats. If you're suggesting there's some kind of shared responsibility between the underage girls with a crush and the adult who's taking advantage of them, that's really fucked up.

Oh come on! Skinship does not involve sticking your face into someone's crotch and kissing it! It's nothing more than physical interaction such as hugging that usually gets raunched up in anime and manga for the comedy or ecchi. The teacher is having sexual relations with one of his students and that's not much different to what Ema is doing with Anna... and will probably continue to do more intimately considering it's Asagi Ryuu. It doesn't matter what her reasons are, she's no better. You're excusing the same thing you're condemning because it involves a character you like. And I'm surprised no one criticising the teacher has realised this.

Mm. I mean, to be entirely clear, the teacher is definitely worse than Ema, no doubt about that. He's actively grooming multiple girls for abuse, using his position as tutor to gain access and authority over them, and manipulating them into looking at each other as rivals instead of looking at him as the sleazy pile of garbage that he is.

Ema isn't remotely equivalent to that. But she's still operating on the same spectrum. The fact is, she's doing all this weird, flirty, sexual stuff to a reluctant teenage girl who was entrusted into her care. She's supposed to be acting as her guardian, which is a way more influential and delicate power imbalance than "cram school tutor", but she's flopping around the house, making a big show about how hard her life is, and talking about how much it relaxes and re-energises her when she sticks her face in Anna's crotch, as if that was a reasonable thing to do. After all that, when Anna starts complying and offering to let her do it more, it doesn't seem out-of-character - it just reminded me of Miku talking about how the tutor acting pathetic and helpless just excited her "maternal instincts" and compelled her to do more for him, and how clearly manipulative that sounded then.

Abusive relationships are often like that, with the abuser manipulating their partner's emotional attachments and desire to help, in order to trap them in a toxic spiral of dependence. It's a horrible place to be stuck in, whether it's a deliberate strategy employed by a repeat predator, or just the natural behaviour of an irresponsible adult who is taking advantage of a young teenager at home as an unhealthy outlet for her own stress and her own problems. One is more dangerous than the other, certainly, but neither of them should be anywhere near kids.

Also: it's just a manga, what do I expect, this is just what Asagi Ryuu writes about, stop taking it so seriously, etc. Maybe, but I'm not talking about anything the manga itself didn't already make an issue of. These are the themes of the story. Toxic relationships, abuse of minors, undeveloped pubescent sexuality, all that shit. It's already here. It's what the story is about. If it was just basic ecchi fluff about a cute teen getting together with her older not-quite-cousin, I wouldn't even blink, but that's not what this is, so here we are.

Phil

That's one cram school you probably wouldn't want to send your daughter to. How creepy.

I very much agree with you. I originally had the following TN on page 120 before removing it as being redundant and distracting to the reader. And this TN is the paired down softened version.

*T/N I held it in before but, speaking mildly, this scumbag should die. Clearly he’s teaching cram school just so he can get at young girls.

I feel like this is the weird thing about this manga, though? Like, that cram school teacher is trash for sure, but Ema's not a whole lot better and she's a main character. If the manga was trying to draw some kind of parallel between all these predatory adults, I could maybe see where it was going, but it doesn't seem to be doing much with it?

Wait, what? I only just properly looked at the cover page for chapter seven, and I don't... Why is it the waitress (I think?) in a negligee holding a bottle of milk? Like... Huh? Why milk?

I mean, I don't know how much of spoiler it is, considering the entire cover is Tsubasa almost strangling Honoka with a ribbon? That pretty much says it all right there. It doesn't feel like a big twist, as much as a weird atmosphere leading up to confirmed suspicions. I guess if you're not paying attention super hard, you might be taken by surprise, but it's kinda there all along.

Oh, hey, one last appearance for Ploy's stalker. I certainly appreciate that his actions are being taken seriously. It makes the whole "wacky stalker hijinks" thing a little bit weirder, but I was already pretty unconvinced by that, so settling on the side of "ahaha, but no, for real, you're spending the night in the clink, and we're setting up a restraining order ASAP" is something I approve of for sure. Even if he ended up being mostly non-threatening, that shit wasn't okay, so I appreciate the hell out of the author making sure to show some actual consequences for him, and also looking out for Ploy's safety in the future, as well. Like I said before, the tone of this arc is a little all over the place, but this was a pretty solid way to end it, so, y'know. It's fine. Now we can get back to the central theme of this story: two dorks who are too insecure to just be happy and fuck already. I'm excited!

Read this so many times, still one of my favourites.

Although, there's something a little funny about how such a cute and fluffy story is just completely covered in pictures of mostly-naked middle school girls holding and touching each other. Like, the front cover, the back cover, the inside cover, in between chapters, everywhere a space can be found, it's filled with middle school girls sans clothing. Really gives you the wrong idea, doesn't it?

Edit: Or maybe it doesn't?! I seriously forgot how soon they start having sex! It's not really focused on that much, but they really can't keep their hands off each other once they get together. Well then.

last edited at Mar 27, 2016 7:39PM

being overweight is wrong, but I don't think it should be encouraged it's really unhealthy.

Hurr durr no fatties plz.

It's kind of amazing how hard people can latch on to this idea that weight always equals health 1000% of the time. Like, my mother is fat, has been ever since her first pregnancy. My father (perpetually rail-thin) was with her for a solid 30 years, so he could easily see how much and how often she ate - in other words, a completely normal amount for an adult woman, and never as much as him. There were even periods where she would skip meals because of poverty (can't remember how many times I heard "don't worry, honey, I'll eat later" or "it's fine, I'm not hungry" when growing up) and, wouldn't you know it, she was still a fat woman. And yet, knowing all that, my father will still make disparaging comments when there's a news report about the "obesity crisis" or the ubiquity of fast food or whatever. Even having spent decades with the love of his life as living proof that hey, maybe it's more complicated than that, he still doesn't think to question the concept of fatness as a sign of moral failure and dereliction of personal responsibility. Amazing, really.

Eh, this works out for the best, I think. It makes Ploy's oblivious behaviour earlier on more understandable, if she knew he was this much of an awkward doofus, and not actually an abusive stalker like he seemed. That's a relief for me, because I generally prefer my romance stories when they don't involve domestic violence, y'know? So I prefer this over the alternative.

With that said, this whole saga with Ploy just seems like it's been working at cross-purposes. She must have felt at least somewhat unsafe - would she have left her home, even reluctantly agreeing to stay at her relative's place on the coast, if she just thought her ex was a harmless nuisance? But then, she mustn't have been that worried about him, or she would probably have been more wary about going out for food or wandering around alone. But in the end, she was right to be concerned, since he did mistakenly kidnap and confine someone he believed to be Ploy after following her to the beach. He was understanding enough when he realised his mistake, but would he have acted the same way if it had been Ploy after all? He demonstrably felt some level of obsession and entitlement specifically over her, so the fact that he treated Donut okay doesn't tell me a whole lot about how he would have treated Ploy in the same situation. But then he's just supposed to be a helpless goofball who fully repents after a minor telling-off by a stranger, end of story? Ehh...

I guess my point is, the "love comedy" angle kinda misses the mark when you keep adding legitimate red flags and spend multiple chapters building up an actual sense of danger and tension. Even with such a lighthearted and harmless outcome, I can't look back at the previous arc as anything other than a tonally awkward story revolving around the serious threat of domestic violence and stalking. Because that's kinda what it was, even with the punchline at the end.

Comedy is hard, I guess.

If it's just something on the level of "everyone has cat ears in this world and also same-sex marriage with children is totally normal" then I don't really mind Itou Hachi not making a big deal out of it and focusing on the fuzzies. This seems a bit different, though? More than anything else, the plot point that's been most prominent and central to everything else is Sayuri's low self-esteem. That's fine, I'm totally on board with an Itou Hachi manga with a little more meat to it, but if this is supposed to be an actual story, then I kinda need characters to react to estranged family members suddenly turning up as literal angels, with wings and a halo and everything.

This is apparently not a regular everyday occurence in this setting, so why are all the characters acting as if it is? How do you live with someone for several months without ever asking, "So hey, what's up with the whole angel thing, anyway?" Oda, I can give it a pass, she might think that the angel stuff is just really committed cosplay, or something. But this is Sayuri's sister, and she's so utterly incurious about it that it's distracting. At least have a scene where she starts to ask about it, and then it gets so awkward and hard to talk about that she changes the subject and is scared to bring it up again. At that point, it doesn't matter what you do with it later - whether it really is super serious and tragic, or difficult to talk about, or if it's played completely for laughs and the dark atmosphere was a red herring. Anything works, as long as you actually show the characters thinking about it more than "Jeeeeez Mikoto your magical angel wings are too warm at night, having your supernatural non-human appendages wrapping around me is exactly similar to having an extra mundane everyday blanket and nothing stranger or more interesting than that".

last edited at Mar 23, 2016 1:11PM

This doujin kind of felt like a series of deleted scenes, more than anything more coherent by itself? It's an interesting idea, but rather than adding in extra context or revealing some hidden side to anything, it just felt like "Oh, right, these scenes were cut for time because they were mostly unnecessary, that was Good Editing".

Also, I tried looking up flower meanings to see why blue and white anemones would be significant, but what I got was that one means death or misfortune and the other means anticipation of/protection from evil? I'm not sure that's quite what they were going for, but at the same time, it kind of fits? Flower meanings are weird.

What is with people obsession with realism? Like, in what moment the series even implied it would be a manual to BDSM?

So, there's a difference between a story being a step-by-step practical guide to safe and ethical bondage, and a story using BDSM themes effectively to be kinky and exciting. The latter type can skip a few steps that the former can't, in terms of safety measures, informed consent, aftercare etc, for the sake of maintaining the fantasy and general narrative convenience. It's a little risky, since you can really easily fall into the trap of writing what is basically a violently abusive relationship without realising it, because you skipped all the parts that make it healthy. And, y'know, abusive relationships in fiction - especially erotic BDSM fiction - can be a huge turnoff for people, unless they're specifically looking for it at that particular moment.

That's all totally beside the point, though, because this isn't either of those things. The biggest problems with realism in this story have nothing to do with the BDSM stuff, it's the part where any of these characters are supposed to be relatable or comprehensible as humans. And that's the biggest turn-off of them all. For that matter, when was the last time anything BDSM-related actually happened? The sex scene in chapter 1? Since then, there was some aggressively rapey behaviour and some cutting, but those scenes were BDSM adjacent, at best. So yeah, not really sure who you're talking to with "it's not a BDSM manual", there's barely been any BDSM for us to criticise, yet.

last edited at Mar 3, 2016 2:28PM

Yeah, this somehow became more tolerable when it introduced formal cutting/scarification classes and magical aphrodisiacs that can apparently cause long-term chemical addiction. Like, where was that flashback supposed to take place, exactly? They were speaking english, but like hell you could hold a seminar or lecture anywhere in the UK or America where you told students to use knives on each other right at their seats. Shit ain't sanitary, if nothing else. Is this actually a story about lesbian sliders from the BDSM dimension? Is that why Gunj is such a fucking weirdo?

Also, ahaha, no, Gunj isn't making a smooth, circular cut like that with a knife. That's a shape you draw with a pen. Maybe if she had, like, a really fine scalpel, she could make a series of small incisions to form that sort of gradual curve, but doing it in one smooth motion is flatly impossible with human wrists. And even then, with a knife that size, you can't even draw blood if you're doing it "gently". The blade is literally too big to be sharp enough.

So my point is that the knifeplay segment is exactly as realistic as the rest of the story, I guess.

last edited at Mar 3, 2016 9:34AM

Re: Gender dysphoria as a psychological thing versus a biological thing. As was mentioned, there are biological markers of gender dysphoria. It's not especially well understood, yet - it's only relatively recently that medical science even began to acknowledge transgender identity as a legitimate state of being, let alone actively studying it - but there are studies that point towards aspects of brain activity and neurochemistry that are consistent between cis and trans people of the same gender, even if their reproductive organs are different.

Some stuff about me, since we're on the subject: I'm not one of the people who just always knew, in some way, that they were transgender. Even when I could tell my interests didn't quite match up with the gender I was given, as a child, I didn't see anything strange or inherently wrong with my body. It just was. So when puberty started, and I suddenly started getting intense stress migraines, prolonged bouts of depression, and chronic exhaustion, it was pretty baffling. Dysphoria is a hard thing to describe. For me, it felt like my body had stopped being mine, that I had stopped being me; my consciousness was a ghost, inhabiting the walking corpse of some poor kid whom I started to pity and resent in equal measure. I wasn't sure "I" even existed, or if I was just the delusion of this bizarre alien creature I was tethered to, and I would one day just dissipate into the ether, replaced by some other imaginary entity dreamed up by whoever it was this body actually belonged to. That was an odd few years.

Point is, what changed all that was hormone therapy. It wasn't an identity thing - I wasn't even sure I had an identity, at that point - but as soon as I started blocking the hormones my body was naturally producing, that's when I started feeling human again. That's when I realised how fucking insane I had gotten. It seems like such a small thing, to be able to look at your own hand and recognise it as yours, but even now, I can't help but marvel at the feeling.

My own gender is more or less a work in progress. I still don't feel all that strongly about it, so whatever, I figure I'll just make however many little changes I feel like making, and see where I end up. Maybe I'll even settle back into the gender I was raised as! Who knows! It's a mystery. My biological sex, though? Total mess. It was exactly, precisely, exquisitely wrong. As a dry, clinical, scientific matter, seperate from issues of culture and psychology and identity, my own body biologically fucked itself in the head, and required medical correction as a basic matter of survival.

So like, I might not have a terribly scientific basis for it, but from my (unreliable, unstable) sample size of 1, there is very much a biological component to gender dysphoria. It's also part of why I really dislike the practise of describing people as "biologically male" or "biologically female", because even from a medical perspective, the human body can be a total clusterfuck when it comes to sex and gender.

...More than anything, I feel like a zipper that goes all around the hood would be a hair trap nightmare. Like, forget ever closing it, I can already imagine my hair constantly catching and tugging even with the hood down.

I was actually really surprised upon rereading that it was this way. I think I got used to the tsundere being the relationship roadblock, instead of a genius airhead who is giving the wrong impression.

Can anyone else go back and reread to see if it was the same for you?

To be honest, so much emphasis was put on Kurosawa's excitement about being challenged that I still struggle to see anything deeper happening between them, at least so far. I got the same feeling that you did, that Shiramine has been acting tsundere because she's scared to take Kurosawa's flirting seriously, and I even kind of agree with her on that. From her perspective, I wouldn't have any confidence at all that Kurosawa would stay interested if they weren't rivals. And the only reason I know as an outsider that Kurosawa is uniquely attracted to Shiramine is because it's a yuri manga and they've been paired up. Without that meta-knowledge, I don't really see anything special between them.

Or, like, what if someone else as talented as Kurosawa came along, who could actually give her a run for her money? Someone who Kurosawa would actually have to work to compete with, on an equal level? Would she still care about Shiramine and their utterly one-sided rivalry? Would Shiramine? Even if she did keep at it, would the process be so discouraging and hopeless that any romantic interest or affection would be completely swallowed up by a sense of desperate perseverance? What is Shiramine's role, exactly? How is Shiramine herself supposed to understand it? What confidence is she supposed to have in Kurosawa's feelings, at this point? What confidence is Kurosawa supposed to have in Kurosawa's feelings, for that matter?

I dunno. I feel like they're both kind of the problem. Shiramine stiffens up whenever she thinks about competing with Kurosawa, but it's Kurosawa who keeps contextualising their relationship as a competition, even when it doesn't need to be. And any progress they could be making towards fixing that and actually becoming closer keeps being hampered by the author getting distracted by other characters, who get more meaningful progression in more interesting relationships in much shorter timeframes.

last edited at Feb 13, 2016 3:55PM

What are you talking about? There are 2 main couples: Yurine x Ayaka and Mizu x Moe. They're both on the covers of volume 1.

Yurine...? Oh! You mean that girl who was Mizu's rival for a bit! I remember her. She was interesting. Didn't really get what she was about, though. Some kind of slacker prodigy? Maybe the author will write about her at some point. Would first have to expand her character a bunch, though. She's too obviously a side character, just being unmotivated and good at stuff like that, she'd need more depth to her if she was going to carry a chapter or two.

Weird that she was on the V1 cover alone, though. Putting a side character front and centre like that is strange enough, but when it's just her standing next to some bland empty space, the whole image just looks unfinished. Especially when we already have such vibrant and interesting protagonists like Mizu and Moe.

I kind of like that it wasn't some contrived misunderstanding, that drove them apart. Like, instead of having some limp reveal where it turns out Tachibana was calling the other girls pathetic, not Ebi, and she said they weren't friends because she just thought it would make Ebi uncomfortable to be put on the spot like that after two years of not talking. It would have been easy to idealise the real Tachibana, to make her return more simple and sparkly, but presenting her as a flawed and weak person made her more interesting, and more complicated than you'd expect a character who's absent for all but two chapters to be.

That said, it's still kind of weird how the "main story" takes place entirely within the first and last couple of chapters. The rest of the manga feels like another thing entirely. As if Hakameda Mera interrupted a sombre oneshot about estranged friends and death and aliens with a sixteen chapter spin-off about their time in design school, and they don't really connect to each other. Getting distracted by the B plot and rushing the A plot is something of a habit for this author, it seems.

(Thanks Shompu for explanation)

Seconded! Good to know!

Also, proactive Donut is nice, but I have a bad feeling she's going to push a little too hard and Mew'll see it as Ploy's influence, and in trying to say "Calm down, we can go at our own pace" Donut will take it as a rejection and then we have to deal with insecurity drama and Ploy's lack of self-preservation instinct drama at the same time, and neither of those are fun.

Jesus fucking Christ, Ploy.

Like, good job Mew, trying to do the good thing while maintaining your boundaries, but Ploy is being so unimaginably shitty that it makes Mew's entirely reasonable response seem inadequate. Mew doesn't have a terribly high opinion of her, but she probably didn't think Ploy was so far gone that she'd start sexually harassing Donut within seconds of being alone with her.