"I don't want to draw bookshelves anymore." -Author

I'm still laughing.

violent

Not violent, wrathful. There's a distinct difference.

Oh okay! I wonder if that sort of means that she wanted to take it out on Ruki for having being cheated on by her ex-boyfriend.

Lil bit. Wiktionary defines it as 'extreme anger' and I always think of it as lashing out in all directions, wanting to inflict pain on others because you can, out of some real or imagined slight. Ruki is just an unfortunate sod who got caught up in it.

Not like it particularly matters. The seven sins gimmick is absurdly flimsy, and applied so inconsistently as to be meaningless. The designated "lust" character is sexually active, but no more so than the other two in their little threesome, and substantially less so than Remi, who is neither envious nor enviable. Beyond eating sweets somewhat frequently, "gluttony" only really manifests as an eating disorder, which, wow that's missing the point, and "sloth" gets vaguely conflated with bits of depression, asexuality, and probably MS all at once. Ruki's "pride" is just having her completely normal sense of self-esteem get torn to shreds until she can't even get mad when people hurt her, and Sachi at her most harmful is so lukewarm and apathetic it feels like a stretch to call her spiteful, let alone wrathful. Maasa doesn't even have a story, she's just rich and busy, and is consistently willing to share her resources, connections, and her home, if someone could use it. She's not some kind of philanthropist, but there's nothing about her to call greedy.

It's a nice idea as a theme, but to describe it as badly implemented would vastly overstate how much it even exists within the story. It's just irrelevant. The half-baked possible interpretations people were coming up with earlier in the thread were sturdier than this.

So, I already vented all my anger about Sachi's side of things back when the last chapter was released, and I'm pretty glad I did. I got really worked up about it, but I was able to deal with that stuff sort of on its own. If I'd tried to process that at the same time as Ruki's reactions to it, I think I would've been kind of crushed. She's just given up, at this point. She doesn't ask for an apology because she's just so completely lost and hopeless and drowning in guilt that even the illusion of relief looks like a gift from god. Sachi patently doesn't give a shit ("do you want to go to a hotel", fucking christ) but Ruki's so messed up at this point that even this mild expression of warmth or affection is overwhelming to her. Like, even if Ruki and Sachi got together sometime after this, Ruki is absolutely not ready for a relationship right now. She needs to go home, get some sleep, and try to salvage some sense of independent self-worth, before starting anything with a girl who says shit like "I thought you were cute when you were crying in hopeless desperation over me and what I've done, maybe we could work something out after all if this is what you're like now".

Awesome happy ending, you guys. This was a super sharp and realistic depiction of how shitty and destructive relationships can lead to more shitty and destructive relationships, and all you need to get one started is to figure out which partner is better at using people and which partner is better at being used! So romantic, not aggressively tone-deaf or emotionally hollow at all.

last edited at Feb 22, 2015 3:02PM

25 years of active unrequited love? Girl, for your sake and ours, move on. You don't have to cut ties with your friend, but why are you still even... Does Amano just really enjoy miserable characters? Is that what this is? I feel like that's what this is.

I can see this and I agree, but I really, really didn't like how he was forgiven so easily. It kind of came across as "look at me being a pushy douchebag, but I am also the voice of reason!" And so he also ended up being the "hero." I can accept him as a flawed character, but not when he's also seen as the savior who doesn't reflect on his douchey behavior.

Oh, hell yeah, for sure. I still think it's straight-up bizarre how much screentime he's getting for a character who is really about as important as Botan's (ex)boss/lover. I think it's been mentioned a lot, in the comments, that for a story that gets it so uncommonly right when it comes to transgender experiences, the reflexive acceptance of normative gender bullshit is pretty jarring. This total side character is getting protagonist-level passes for shit that should (if only) relegate a boy to B-tier distraction at best, but it's fine for him because it's just so SWEET and ROMANTIC when guys are aggressively insensitive and continually hurt and disrespect the women in their lives because they're just so GOSH DARN in love!

I guess I'm just kind of inured to it, now I know what he was trying to do. Like, he's a garbage person and doesn't deserve nearly as much patience as he gets, but now I know what sort of character he's supposed to be, I don't have to try and figure out why he's so terrible and what purpose he even serves. He's just an interchangeable cipher for whatever terrible shojo drama Sakura's gotten herself involved in, so instead of trying to understand and dissect the implications and nuances of how other characters interact with him, I can just mentally replace him with a blob of plot convenience and ignore how shitty he actually is.

Christ. Well. Not sure where to even start with this. Um... Uozumi's bullshit finally makes some sense. He's still dumb and I don't like him as a person, but he's fine as a clumsy idiot who sincerely makes terrible decisions and really needs some impulse control. I can accept him as a character.

Botan... I think I get where she was coming from? She didn't care about being in a good relationship or being a good person or having a good future. More specifically, I don't think she even felt like any of that was truly attainable, with the kind of life she had. She sacrificed a lot for her family, and felt like she would have to keep on making those sacrifices indefinitely. Her affair with her boss wasn't great, but it was the only thing she had in her life where she didn't have to be all grown up and responsible for someone else. She could just relax and let herself be spoiled for a little while, in secret, disconnected from all the pressure outside. When Kashiwa and the others intervened (or, more frankly, when her twisted little sanctuary was inevitably crushed under the weight of reality) I don't think she felt heartbroken, exactly, or even particularly betrayed. I really got a sense of "Oh, so I can't even have this much? I've given up all my hopes and desires to support my family, but I'm not even allowed this dirty little fragment of relief for myself? What's the point of this, exactly? Of any of it?"

I get why she wanted to leave. When it just seems normal for life to be that heavy, it's really easy to start looking at things in an all-or-nothing sort of way. I hope she can reach some sort of reconciliation, with her sisters and with herself. They took her for granted, definitely, but I feel like a lot of the pressure came from her own desperate effort to take on all of the sacrifices herself, so the others wouldn't feel any of the burden left by their parents. Really noble, but just too much for a single person to endure unscathed, least of all someone so young.

Kashiwa, well. Kashiwa hits too close to home for me to say anything about what she's going through. Just... Yeah. Yeah...

last edited at Feb 12, 2015 6:35PM

People defending Remi seem to focus on her aggressive sexuality, and completely ignore how much of an asshole she is. Like, yeah, it was Sachi's choice to fuck around for an entire goddamn month and ignore Ruki completely, but Remi went after her explicitly because she wanted to dirty up their innocent little romance. Like, she literally says that. She thought it was adorable that they were trying to make something work, so she aggressively went after Sachi because she REALLY liked the idea of taking this cute girl with a bad history and a burgeoning love and wrecking that shit, moulding her in her own image, while the girl who's actually in love toils away in ignorance. And then, she doesn't simply tell Ruki about it, she goes on a fucking parade with it. Specifically so she can watch Ruki's face as she's crushed. This isn't a sexually uninhibited hedonist in it for fun, this is someone who actively tries to hurt people for her own twisted pleasure. And happens to be the fucking hero of the manga.

I appreciate the spoilers. It kind of confirms for me the most disturbing thing about Remi and her role in the story: she's really supposed to be right. After all the shit she pulls, she doesn't just escape any kind of personal consequence or repercussions, the shit she leaves behind doesn't even stink. She completely alienates Meru over the porn video at a point when she needed support from her friends, but it's okay because she rapes the girl who probably started some rumours, so everything is magically fixed. She gouges a fucking hole in Ruki and Sachi's relationship, but what do you know, turned out it was incredibly valuable and necessary for Sachi's development as a person, and now their relationship is totally great and even better than it was before.

Nothing she does is allowed to go wrong, nobody she hurts is allowed to dislike her, she fucks anyone she feels like fucking without fail, and the author refuses to ruffle a single hair on her head. The real problem with Remi isn't that she's promiscuous, or even that she's a horrible, horrible person. The problem with Remi is that the whole fucking world twists itself into impossible shapes to fit her whims, ensuring that everything she does is awesome, that nobody ever meaningfully questions what she's doing or why she's doing it. She's literally at Edward Cullen or Christian Grey-levels of fucking awful person treated as untouchably perfect by author fiat, and she makes everyone around her more disgusting and more hateful just from their unwillingness to go against her. It's trashy writing from an author I really, really liked, and I feel like it's poisoning my opinion of the stuff she's written that I used to enjoy. Ugh.

Edit: Apparently I don't understand how spoiler tags work. Should be fine now. Christ, I'm so worked up about this, what am I even doing with my life.

last edited at Feb 5, 2015 3:51PM

The thing that gets me is that Sachi doesn't even seem to care. Like, it doesn't even seem to register that she's hurting Ruki, or that Remi is a toxic pile of garbage who gets off on hurting people and justifies it by saying that everyone else sucks too. She just blithely says that she can't really judge her ex anymore, like she's completely forgotten how fucking awful she felt when she was with him.

Also, fuck Remi, on every level. If she was just a shitty, malicious person who actively enjoys ruining her friends lives and tries to drag everyone else down into the poisonous swamp of apathetic hedonism she lives in, I wouldn't really like her, but I'd be fine with her as a character in a larger cast. The thing that really disgusts me most, is that she's basically the main character. Even if she's not personally, directly involved in every single event, she's the one character with the most agency, the most influence, and acts as the trigger for basically every major point of character development. She hurts whoever she wants to hurt, fucks whoever she wants to fuck, and faces NO CONSEQUENCES. At all! She doesn't make enemies, she doesn't lose friends - christ, people don't even ARGUE with her. She always wins. Everyone is lonely and empty and heartbroken except her, who happily sits in the middle of it all, loving every minute, completely untouched by the slightest trace of trouble or unhappiness.

So fuck Remi. And fuck the author for making a cheap NTR porn fantasy and dressing it up like an angsty emotional drama. God, I'm so fucking butthurt over this, it's not even worth it.

I feel like the ending was definitely ambiguous, but it's kind of like... The atmosphere of the manga has this sense of fatalistic sincerity about it, and I feel like it would be out of character to start playing tricks with the audience's perception in the last few pages. It's not that coy, so to speak. If it was going to give Kaguya an eternity of suffering comforted only by her delusions, I feel like it would be happy enough to just do that. I think we can trust the ending to be honestly presented, if only because it would have no interest in lying.

Also, framing convention. The last shot being focused on one character's expression as the final events of the story happen offscreen is recognisably classic Japanese cinematography, and it seems to be played pretty straight here. We don't actually see her ourselves, but that's more for ~subtlety~ and a sense of ~This moment belongs to them alone~ than anything to do with us.

Y'know, for something that looks like a silly lighthearted comedy, it sure didn't waste any time shifting to super high-tension open conflict. The tone is just really weird.

Yeah, this reads way more like it's set up for a sequel, than as a oneshot with a vague ending. Older sister's running away to Tokyo, but hasn't said anything to younger sister about why she's going or how she feels, making things infinitely more ruinous the next time they inevitably meet. Younger sister is left with a mother who's never home, suddenly having to fend for herself just as she's drowning in guilt for driving away her sister and probably blames herself for ruining older sister's relationship with girlfriend. Girlfriend finally gets the breakup she'd been fearing all along, but was never given a chance to understand the older sister's feelings or actions, even in the vaguest of terms. And even though older sister's run away, younger sister and girlfriend still go to the same school, and they've still seen each other's faces, so it'd be incredibly easy for them to find each other and start talking, especially if girlfriend notices younger sister being way more distraught than someone who's merely been separated from a sibling would usually be.

If it was a painful, distant sort of ending where nobody's happy and everyone has to move on with their miserable lives alone, then that'd be one thing, and I'd be able to critique it as a single complete story. When it's like this, when literally nothing is resolved, all the story threads are still active, and the situation is even more volatile than at any other point in the story? I can't even say anything positive or negative about it as a whole, it just doesn't register in my brain as complete.

I also have to agree with what Maus said about the sex scenes feeling unfocused. They were intense in terms of presentation, but they felt kind of disconnected from everything else in the story? Like, if we're supposed to see the older sister as trying to distract herself from younger sister and vent her sexual tension through her relationship with girlfriend, that's not particularly well illustrated by girlfriend being the one who's super excited about having sex outside at lunchtime while older sister goes "no~ we'll be late to class~" or whatever. Likewise, even if she says her head went blank when she heard younger sister's sexy voice, older sister still has a very conscious and emotional reaction when she realises it's younger sister's first time. She's not lost in the moment, she's aware of what they're doing and all the more excited because of it. They're good scenes, it just feels like they've been awkwardly stitched in from a lighter, pornier manga.

last edited at Jan 3, 2015 6:23AM

Oh no, not a tag. Anything but a tag. How terrifying. That looming spectre of political correctness gone too far, the dreaded tag. Truly, we must stop talking about this immediately, lest we draw the ire of the our harsh and unforgiving tag overlords. Thank goodness we had such brave and insightful protectors to warn us away from a dark, dystopian future where tags run rampant in the street, and the choking miasma of mild criticism irrevocably stains us to our very bones.

To be frank, I don't see nothing particularly "rapey" on this doujin.

It's not like anyone's saying that the characters tried to ambush each other with stunguns, though. The characterisation might be completely consistent and their motivations might be easily understandable and sympathetic, but none of that is mutually exclusive from the characters' actions being a bit rapey. If anything, the fact that "I'm insecure about your feelings" can lead so naturally into "Then I won't stop even if you ask", instead of, like, "Okay, I'll initiate more often", just goes to show that our sense of normal romantic behaviour tends to have some slightly rapey elements to it. It's not about the sincerity of their emotions, it's about what they're actively choosing to do as a result.

Edit: Also, Rin, geez. Right out in the corridor? Against the window? Wow. Even if it's unlikely that anyone will pass by, at least find an open room to make out in. Doing stuff totally out in the open like that would make anyone a bit nervous. Not that right beside a stairwell is much better...

last edited at Dec 27, 2014 4:02AM

It's kind of fun when the fact that Eri has a penis isn't even introduced. She just does. Like, what, you think Eri wouldn't have a penis? What's with that? You're so weird.

I think the most pointed thing that could be said about Chihiro is that, for all her possessiveness, she isn't actually in love with Aoi. It seems like she just enjoys Aoi as a "cute thing" to play around with, and not even a particularly important one at that; if you aren't sure about someone's feelings, watching their reaction while you get closer with someone else is an understandably dumb thing to do, but if you're this confident about it, why would you actively distance yourself from them?

Even if she wanted to bait Aoi into a tearful confession because it'd be cute, I can think of a million different ways she could be making Aoi get all flustered and blushy in the meantime just by subtly flirting with her a little, while still waiting for her to confess first. But she doesn't seem to care all that much about actually being close to Aoi, or provoking cute reactions from her, and apparently she has little sense of jealousy when someone else gets close to Aoi. More than that, it seems like watching that third party strike out with Aoi is part of the fun.

In a lot of ways, rather than liking Aoi, or being fond of cute things, Chihiro's actions seem more in line with someone who gets off on twisting other people's feelings around her. She wants to see Aoi get super worked up about confessing, she's happy to play with Shino's enthusiastic affection, she's trying to push Nao towards fruitlessly pursuing Aoi, believing that Nao will self-destruct because of Aoi's unwavering one-sided love, and all the heartbreak and tension and fallout will all have Chihiro at its root. Put another way, she wants to be Helen of Troy, and revel in her own little Trojan War.

I went and read the rest over on danbooru, oh my god, I completely wasn't expecting it to be this sweet. It's not like the previous "Do Your Best, Kogasa-chan!" stories at ALL, wow. It also turns out to be a really nice take on Kogasa, Flan, and Remi? So wonderfully surprising.

Happy to see this on the front page again, but wasn't chapter 3 already on here? Did it get cleaned up for a re-release, or something?

Edit: Oh, duh, it's already been explained. Different group, replacement, etc. Gotcha.

last edited at Dec 18, 2014 1:58AM

I think some people take this manga way too seriously. I mean, we saw things way worse than some cute girl joking around in a torture club that is, so far more like a bdsm club. The only actual torture so far was kind of glossed over and followed by yet another joke.

There are mangas about actual murderer, canibals, graphic violence and torture, some crazy shit out there, I'm kind of surprise this one seems to actually make people uncomfortable when it's not treated in all seriousness and in a comedic way.

I'd have been uncomfortable if the torture scenes were more gritty or something and depicted more seriously or "realistically".

Honestly, I think the way it's treated lightheartedly and not at all serious makes me more uncomfortable, not less. If it was a gruesome psychological horror about a popular and openly-recognised high school torture club that kidnaps a freshman girl and uses a mixture of violence and sex appeal to indoctrinate her into becoming a regular member? I might still be disturbed by the setting and the premise, but that would be tonally consistent with the intended genre. It would be horrifying, but the fact that it's presented as horrifying means that me, the author, and the story are all playing by the same rules.

When something horrifying happens in a lighthearted ero-comedy, I'm not just disturbed by what happens in the story itself, I'm also having to deal with it as an created object that exists in the real world. I start thinking about how I react and relate to the issue in reality, at which point I'm not just thinking about imaginary play-torture, but actual torture as well, and the way it's discussed among real people. If it's not something you've ever thought about, it's understandably easy to treat it lightly, but I think recent events have made a lot more personal for many people, as they come to grips with the idea that these horrible things were done (and may still be done right now) in our name and ostensibly for our sake.

When something objectively awful happens within the story, but the real-life book treats it as if I'm supposed to enjoy watching it, a sense of dissonance and alienation is created between me, the story, the author, even the rest of the audience. This can be amazingly useful for all sorts of storytelling purposes - Dowman Saiman in particular makes excellent use of this effect, leveraging the readers' uncertainty and discomfort to make a punchline more explosive, or to sharpen a moment of personal sentimentality. The problem this manga has is that it's too weak and low-key to effectively handle the sheer weight of its subject matter.

Looking at it, it fits the exact same formula as the dozens of stories about racy crossdressing clubs and the unconvincing tsukkomi of boys who don't want to admit how much they're into it. But it's not the same. It can't be. The stakes are completely different, the history isn't comparable at all - it's like following a cookie recipe word-for-word, but instead of chocolate chips, you swap in an equivalent amount of lego blocks. You haven't made an unconventional flavour of cookie. They don't even count as cookies anymore. You've made something that's largely inedible and stinks of melted plastic. You could have made cookies, or you could have built something with the lego, but by trying to mash the two together without meaningfully considering how the two are different, you end up with neither.

There's a really good manga to be written about a high school torture club comprised of SM lesbians that constantly skirts the line between kinky excitement and inhumane horror while maintaining a lighthearted and mildly sexy atmosphere. This isn't it.

And yes, if anyone might be wondering, I do feel appropriately embarrassed about spending this much time being weirdly serious about a dumb manga. I do not make good decisions. Thank you.

After reading parts of the CIA torture report, this kinda makes me sick.

To be honest, if this was like a BDSM club (even more like one, that is) dressed up like torture, or if it was a vestigial club for eccentric hobbyist torturers instead of proto-military training, I'd probably be okay with it, but having them seriously talk about and practise real torture techniques and act like it's justifiable or even remotely effective, it's kinda... Hard to stomach, I guess.

If the MC had actually chosen to be in the club, or was allowed to freely decide whether or not to participate, it'd be easier, but since she's literally been subjected to torture against her will as some sort of demented hazing ritual, it might have crossed a line for me. Even if they talk about her "natural aptitude", or whatever, it's still uncomfortable that they tried to force her into it from the start, instead of just putting it in front of her so she awakens to it on her own. Starting her off with something that could easily kill her through water poisoning or suffocation is kind of awful as well, especially when she has no way to indicate if she's seriously in trouble.

I don't know. I get that it's just a silly nonsensical gag manga, and people can make humour out of anything, or whatever. But creating a really good ero-comedy out of a harsh subject like torture is always going to need a careful touch and some incredibly sharp awareness of atmosphere, and I feel like this manga has been just too clumsy to pull it off. It's not absurd enough to be detached from the horror of what they're doing, but it's not serious enough to effectively leverage that horror for any comedic or dramatic purpose. It's just this ugly muddle of uncomfortable tones. It's a bit disappointing. I was a little excited about reading this.

Oh, this is actually pretty interesting. I'd previously skipped this because I didn't want to read just three chapters of a manga with no signs of being continued, but if people are releasing new chapters after all, then why not?

Have to say though, reeaally glad I passed on this before, and almost wish I'd waited another chapter or so before starting. Feels really rough how everyone seems to be making a concerted effort to absolutely crush guitar girl's ego, when she's not even that confident in the first place. If there was anything to balance it out, it wouldn't feel like such a doom spiral, but literally the only good moment so far was singer girl getting drunk. It really feels like everything's just piling on right now. With the last frame of her walking off alone, I'm hoping the next chapter will actually give her a positive reason to stay, because at the moment I'm reeeeaaaally not seeing why she would. Singer girl, now would be a GREAT time for you to lighten up on your tsundere thing.

But yeah, that also why I kind of wish I hadn't started yet. I really don't like cutting off a story right at the tip of a bitterness crescendo, especially when I don't know when or if the next chapter will come. I'm so pointlessly fragile about this stuff.

last edited at Dec 13, 2014 6:23PM

Naoya: Somehow I really like how girls from an all-girls school act...

Y-yuri fanboy identified?! If we're talking about developments we'd love to see happen but obviously won't because it's not conventional...

last edited at Dec 13, 2014 4:05PM

non conforming gender MC?

Ahaha, I had the same thought. Well, there are a number of fish that are kinda like that too, so she'd probably fit in no problem.

Hopefully the rest gets picked up. This is super cute, and I really want that yuri tag to mean something...!

Y'know, I actually like this series, and even I think this chapter was incredibly stupid. February? They literally slept in the same bed for over a month and at no point did they even accidentally talk to each other? And we breezed over that entire time with an abrupt and incoherent montage? Fucking hell.

If you're that desperate to push them back to enough of a strained and uncertain distance for another rival arc to even make sense, what the hell is the point of letting them get closer to each other in the first place? I'm pretty sure they spent a grand total of twenty seconds actually coming into contact with each other before they flew straight back to square one again.

Why even bother? Why not just end the Mikan story with them feeling awkward and uncomfortable around each other, and then just carry THAT into February? At least that way this chapter might not have made whatever tension or chemistry they'd managed to develop up to this point feel utterly meaningless.

I mean, it'd still be super irritating to tease actual progression with existing characters and conflicts, only to spin off into a mess of new characters and suspiciously familiar plot points on literally the next page, but it wouldn't retroactively remove tension from previous chapters. Utterly futile.

Am I the only one who thought the biting was hot? I am? I'll just go over here now...

It's kinda weird; I feel like I'm into with it insofar as it's covered by their presumed vampire healing. I'm already a little strange when it comes to blood, but even in fiction, it's usually too much when it's something that won't always fix itself properly, like the tongue. I'm okay with having a few scars left behind, but long term nerve damage crosses a big line. Solve that particular problem with magic or whatever, and it becomes... kind of mesmerising to think about...

Okay, the idea of actually having a story about ageless beings having outlived everyone else and continuing to exist in a ruined world, rather than just using immortality to rack up extra drama between regular humans without actually addressing the concept in the long term? Very cool, you've got my attention. Cast of lesbian vampires who survive through bloodplay makeout sessions even though that basically makes them perpetual motion machines? FUCK OFF, SCIENCE, I'M ALL IN.

last edited at Nov 24, 2014 7:09PM