All in all, this manga feels like it's written by someone in an emotional state similar to the protagonists- entirely unsure of what they want to do or achieve, contemplating potential routes without taking more than a step in any direction, dithering and introspecting over the smallest things and running off on random tangents. It reminds me of shows or movies I've seen that were made by people who were explicitly grappling with anxiety or depression whilst working on their projects, and poured those feelings into their work, creating stories that weren't coherent or neat in any sense, but felt raw and genuine regardless. Ultimately, you can't stick labels on Nettaigyo, because it's about a pair of girls who're terrified of labeling anything, written by an author who seemingly dislikes confining themselves to categorisations and genre tags like 'Yuri'. It'd be much more at home in a bookstore with nothing to speak for it but the title and cover art, as opposed to manga websites that compulsively tag everything to give readers some semblance of order amidst a sea of titles. Whether you think this a failing on Nettaigyo's part to compete with better titles, or whether you simply think it's a victim of an industry obsessed with demographics and classification is, like everything else about the series, a matter of deeply subjective opinion.

I really think your post here encapsulates what a lot of us- at least I - love so much about this manga. Before anything else, this is a story about two teenage girls, putting that priority above all else makes sure that nothing is ever forced.The fact that you mentioned that this is a story about a pair of girls who are terrified to label anything just serves as proof for that. I mean, even they don't know what the heck they're doing, the author just isn't going to simplify a story, where its entire premise is on how complicated emotions are.

They're not gay until they intertwine those fingers, which they will in twenty more chapters as a callback.

This.

I don't have an issue with people feeling like some of the content in the manga feels like bait, that line from Koyuki is probably the most blatant example. It's just that I've seen some people on mangadex complaining about the series not being yuri because they were led to believe so by the tags, as even before this change, I think it had the shoujo ai tag. That's being misled and it in turn leads to not giving the manga a fair chance because you go into it expecting something else.

Yeah, now the comments are going to be filled with how they were baited instead of commentary on the plot after next weeks chapter... unless the taggers know something we don’t.

The “moon is beautiful” thing really hurt a bit, though since she was imitating Konatsu’s dad, maybe she said it in a way that made it obviously a joke? Kinda like she says “Suprise!” In English in 28.2, a callback to Konatsu’s dad in 27.1 (I only found this out by looking at the raws)

OK, so unprotected hand-to-hand contact means nothing?

Pfft, kids these days, what with their "Netflix and chill," and their "friends with benefits," and whatnot . . .

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/nettaigyo_wa_yuki_ni_kogareru_ch28_5#16

Yeah... I can't really explain that one lol. Maybe they just don't realize that they're madly in love with one another yet? Still waiting for the inevitable conversations about potential boyfriends to come up.

last edited at Oct 26, 2020 3:34AM

I don't have an issue with people feeling like some of the content in the manga feels like bait, that line from Koyuki is probably the most blatant example. It's just that I've seen some people on mangadex complaining about the series not being yuri because they were led to believe so by the tags, as even before this change, I think it had the shoujo ai tag. That's being misled and it in turn leads to not giving the manga a fair chance because you go into it expecting something else.

Yeah, now the comments are going to be filled with how they were baited instead of commentary on the plot after next weeks chapter... unless the taggers know something we don’t.

The “moon is beautiful” thing really hurt a bit, though since she was imitating Konatsu’s dad, maybe she said it in a way that made it obviously a joke? Kinda like she says “Suprise!” In English in 28.2, a callback to Konatsu’s dad in 27.1 (I only found this out by looking at the raws)

So that yet more people will get the wrong impression and be disappointed, I guess.

I literally had to check to see if they consolidated the yuri and shoujo-ai tags... this really does seem like it was changed for no reason

https://mangadex.org/title/22955/nettaigyo-wa-yuki-ni-kogareru

Yuri tag on mangadex?? For what reason?

Me lowkey wishing Ayaka and Sora were caught in the act and Ayaka out of her wits trying to explain herself.

This.

---

"the ending is pretty much fine in a vacuum"

I'll even accept Reichii living nearby, as I've said. And yeah, "Uta and Kaoru in love", "Uta grinding on Kaoru in a sexually one-sided relationships", "Uta still living in frustration", would all have been doable destinations. But we skipped most of the journey, to... whatever destination it was.

I pretty much agree with this, with any serialized story, it’s the journey that is the most important. Because it was pretty bad and didn’t feel complete, it made the ending THAT much worse.

Here is the thing. The ending as it is can actually pretty easily be read as them being together (I am talking about just that scene in a vacuum; then again, that scene literally is in a vacuum since we have no idea how it came about). I suspect this was the outcome most readers wanted (personally, I was in the "hope it stays unrequited" camp, but I suspect I was in the minority). And yet, the overwhelming number of comments have been negative. When you literally give your audience the outcome most of them wanted, and they hate it, I think it is safe to assume you failed pretty hard at basic storytelling.

Honestly the ending wasn't even the problem, it was the fact that it didn't match the story that we had been reading since past chapter nine or ten. I think you're right, those weird time skips aside, and the fact that the three of them live in the same apartment building, the ending is pretty much fine in a vacuum. It becomes disappointing when the ending completely disregards the rest of the story, which, as you said, is failing at basic storytelling, and being able to properly conclude that storytelling in general.

circamoore posted:

A little goal oriented aren't we?

No clue where you got that from.

tmnr has managed to tell a gripping emotional story, and while it is a bit rough in places and the ending wasn't great, the nett experience is positive so I'm reluctant to call it bad.

You won't convince me that author that makes main character confess her love at the end of last chapter of the volume and then only in second chapter of next volume tells us how MC's unrequited crush reacted with just half page of flashbacks and narration is writing a good gripping emotional story. Leaving readers hanging and grasping for resolution for anything was a hallmark of this series. This author has no clue how to explore anything. Author of Hanigare do.

Everyone complaining here held on though 37 chapters, there must have been something there.

Honestly, the ending was what we were waiting for, at least I was. I wanted to see everything get resolved, and the chapters 36 and 37 threw that out the park. Now that we are looking at it as a complete work, it fails in so many aspects, most of which could have been fixed if there were more chapters, although arguably it probably wouldn’t have made the past chapters any better.

Edit: not to say that it wasn’t entertaining, it was just disappointing to see it end that way when it could have been so much better. As I said, if this is the ending we were going to get, this manga needed only to be 10 chapters.

last edited at Oct 21, 2020 11:04PM

But judged by the standards of yuri mangaka who get to ply their craft over this many chapters of professional publication, I would call this a botched job by an inattentive author, one with a definite, albeit limited, flair for character conception and some scene construction, but with at best very erratic control over the pacing of chapters, consistency of plot and character detail, and structural proportion (as in lingering for pages over side issues and plot mechanics—getting a character from point A to point B, for example—then rushing through or abruptly ending crucially important scenes).

I completely agree. If the manga was ACTUALLY about Uta’s and only Uta’s love, it could have been 10 chapters max. Instead, it meandered all over the place and only managed to get itself back together by dropping all of the other subplots towards the end.

I absolutely agree. I also love [CRITICAL SPOILERS]

You have to use two of == to black out the text, if that was your intention.

Wew. Yeah, I can't even imagine an ending that would be comparable here.

I think I might have one:

Koyuki gets with Kaede and Konatsu gets together with aquarium boy. Hot and thoughtful dads get together at the end And then two timeskips later Koyuki and Konatsu talk and they both go “you weren’t even my BEST friend, I just spoke to you to get closer to my crush” That would be pretty comparable imo lol.

Quick rundown? In spoiler tags I guess.

MC spends the whole manga in love with her sister in law, sister in law doesn’t return feelings, sister in law has 20 chapters on her development, making the MC irrelevant, Sister in law divorces husband, manga ends with MC living with sister in law with ex-husband in the same apartment building, where the nature of their relationship remains ambiguous. Ig it would also be good to mention that there were THREE timeskips in the last chapter and the pacing was straight trash.

Here’s a rundown of the whole manga. Tbh I tried to defend it by talking about character development at one point, but side characters, and even the MC get dropped off the face of the Earth like they never even existed in the first place and were just plot devices the whole time .-.

$20 says that this long, boring, drawn out melodrama will get a very similar ending to My Unrequited Love.

It takes actual talent to make an ending like MUL’s lol.

This is MUL but sexier and more toxic lol.

I hope it’ll have a better ending .-.

Is she a sadistic masochist or a masochistic sadist?

The former, I think. She seems to really enjoy the “attention” she gets from Ai, and more recently started thinking that Airi being weak is cute. Maybe she’s a Sadist in bloom?

It feels like when the author was told to axe it, they just condensed 2 or 3 arcs into one chapter rather than attempt to craft a satisfying ending out of what space they had left. Like this was just an outline built to get as many of those ideas on paper as possible without considering the resolution

Yeah, I got the same feeling with it, especially with that plot line of someone liking Uta in college, that probably could have been an arc by itself. Honestly can’t believe that all that buildup was completely demolished with this ending, but it suits the manga, I guess.

Guys could you imagine Hina tweeting what happened to her in this chapter? “Omg, so I got my ass beat last night <333 so things are getting pretty serious” lol that’s really how I envisioned it.

omg this was WAY funnier than it should have been.

last edited at Oct 18, 2020 8:48PM

the main event of volumes 2 and 3 specifically was the summer festival where they watched the fireworks and Konatsu felt hurt for the first time by being unable to fully understand and communicate with Koyuki.

I re-read those two volumes and this was basically the biggest thing I noticed. The majority was the two of them getting closer, but essentially not close enough:

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/nettaigyo_wa_yuki_ni_kogareru_ch11#23
https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/nettaigyo_wa_yuki_ni_kogareru_ch11#24

(she's referring to the fireworks festival)

There's also Konatsu going on about how much she likes Honami, but in the same chapter, she realizes that they still are emotionally distant with one another

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/nettaigyo_wa_yuki_ni_kogareru_ch11#13

Here's Konatsu fangirling for a few panels.

This could be attributed to the fact that Koyuki is the first person that she's allowed herself to get close too, so she most likely isn't used to how close a friendship is; to her, Just talking to Honami on the beach was enough for her to call her a friend in Ch 1, but at the same time, she acknowledges that there's so much more in a friendship than talking and being comfortable around another person. Konatsu seems to have a surface level understanding of friendship, and maybe next chapter we will see some more growth there (although the past 5 chapters have been all growth)

On Honami's end, she's almost the complete opposite. Although she was in the same situation of loneliness and isolation as Konatsu, while Konatsu's loneliness (regarding friendships) came from her own actions (Her constantly concerned with "fitting in" and not telling her classmates that she was leaving, not being on a first name basis with anyone at her old school) Koyuki's loneliness comes from how others treat her (She wants to be herself, but feels like she can't in contrast to choosing not to). In volumes 2 and 3 Honami exerts possessiveness and jealousy in her interactions with Konatsu (literally the plot of chapter 7 was Honami feeling depressed over Konatsu allegedly choosing Kaede over her to go to the festival with). In chapter 10, what used to be her daily routine seems unbearable without Konatsu. In Honami's case, she seems to just want more and more of Konatsu (something that never really goes away).

Maybe in the next chapter will see the fireworks festival addressed, along with them discussing the actual nature of their relationship,, something highly probable as they can compare their closeness with the closeness of their mutual friend/shipper, Kaede.

Man, I usually save these long analysis for after a chapter comes out, but I just couldn't help myself.

Good news, everyone!

48-page chapter this month: https://twitter.com/haginomakoto/status/1317683057688629249

And since Hagino posted a drawing of the frog and salamander plushies in the tweet, it appears the speculation about the drawer was correct so tififs, you can give yourself a pat on your back.

She also recommended re-reading volumes two and 3, so I wonder if this means we’re returning to the era of gay panic aquarium animals. All in all, super hyped for whatever’s next.

last edited at Oct 18, 2020 6:05PM

"(...) manga will reach its climax in the magazine's next issue on October 17."
Climax means last chapter/end of the manga..

In storytelling, climaxes are usually followed with a falling action and resolution.

I don't think publishers are in the habit of making public announcements for the various stages of narrative arcs--the term "climax" seems to be industry jargon for "last chapter."

https://www.travelerstoday.com/articles/25290/20161104/shimabukuros-toriko-approaching-climax-chapter.htm

"In the recent announcement, a word written in phonetic katakana alphabet which meant "climax" was seen, indicating that the manga was about to be finished."

Oh ok. Man that sucks, since there are still a couple things to be resolved, though.

"(...) manga will reach its climax in the magazine's next issue on October 17."
Climax means last chapter/end of the manga..

In storytelling, climaxes are usually followed with a falling action and resolution. I honestly would have assumed at least a few more chapters, so the manga would end with 8 volumes at a decent pace, but then again I wouldn’t be surprised if we went straight to the epilogue next chapter. I’m hoping that’s not the case, since the characters are finally all on the same page with one another, and there hasn’t been any resolution for the side couples either.

I'd like to see this be some good ace rep. I just don't expect it to.

¯\ _ (ツ)_/¯

I feel like this is going more a Bloom into You route. To me, it seems like Hinako is scared about what it means to love someone, based off of her past experiences (or trauma). Though we could still have ace representation with Asahi, who seems to never have even been interested in a sexual relationship. We don't really know much about how she feels, whether she's had attractions to others and kept them to herself (highly unlikely imo), or she really doesn't understand how it feels to love someone romantically ( she could be a-romantic for all we know). I honestly think that this romance is just going to take all the time it needs to develop properly, though an ace relationship is something that I would for sure like to see somewhere.

@Palmfire: By the way, since I noticed you posted this both here and on mangadex, chapter 24 doesn't have scenes at Koyuki's house. I'm pretty sure the first time her room is drawn extensively enough to show the desk is in chapter 12, and the drawer is already there: https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/nettaigyo_wa_yuki_ni_kogareru_ch12#49 Then in chapter 18 it's shown to be right under where she put the frog: https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/nettaigyo_wa_yuki_ni_kogareru_ch18#16 If it happened to be missing a few chapters ago, the author just forgot to draw it, but it's not a new addition just for whatever Koyuki wanted to hide now.

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/nettaigyo_wa_yuki_ni_kogareru_ch25#4

Ahhh I mean ch 25. To me it looked like her desk doesn’t have a drawer to me, but I didn’t actually go back and look at the previous chapters (lol I usually go through the whole manga to find things for this reason） I think I might have been confusing it with the table from ch 18 too. Thanks for pointing that out.

Also, upon review, the frog is just chilling in the post that you sent me, so it really does make sense that she placed it in the drawer. Man there goes my in depth analysis out the window AGAIN

last edited at Sep 28, 2020 12:24PM