it's because she had an acquaintance that died. (I'd hesitate to say they were even friends).

Kyou was the most important person in her life prior to met Aki.

Maybe that's what the author was going for, but in my opinion it was executed extremely poorly. If we exclude chapter focusing specifically on Kyou from the manga, nothing really changes, it's mostly not implied before that explanation, and has no bearing on anything since (I guess until now, pulled like rabbit from a hat). If it affected Shiho so much you'd think we saw more signs of it. (Although to be fair it might be my poor memory, this story is exceptionally good at making me forget important details, these are simply my feelings as I was following it).

So the fact that Kyou is in the story at all feels to me just like a half-assed attempt to make Shiho more symphatetic. It's like the author would do anything, even kill off a random character that didn't exist before, instead of actually make Shiho display any positive traits.

last edited at Jul 23, 2023 10:44AM

I caught up with the comments, they certainly didn't disappoint, but I think this one sums up my thoughts perfectly:

Shiho didn't do anything wrong - if she did it was justified - if it isn't justifiable it wasn't that bad - if it was that bad it's because she a teenager

... and if it's not because she is a teenager, it's because she had an acquaintance that died. (I'd hesitate to say they were even friends).

We can argue all day about what it means for the character to be "well-written", but I'm still low-key shocked there's people that straight up like Shiho. I don't think she has a single redeeming quality to her (and as people helpfully pointed out, even in this big reconcillation chapter she still didn't really say anything positive to anyone, she basically barely accepted someone else pouring her heart out). Even if you argue she faced lots of difficulties, setbacks, breakups or whatever, she's still very unlikeable because of the way she reacted to it (which is being a bitch in almost every appearance). If this chapter was meant to portray any sort of change, I think it mostly failed at that (and no, dead girl doesn't help, I still see it mostly as a cheap gotcha).

last edited at Jul 23, 2023 9:49AM

Shit, I'm late and I have pages of comments to read through... anyway, I will write my opinion first without reading them:

... in short, it's basically as bad as I expected, and even though I fully knew it was coming, I still felt second hand embarassment for all the people in the crowd that had to listen to this sappy bullshit that didn't even make sense (and I bet the pages of comments I skipped over sum up perfectly why :P) But THANK FUCK, FESTIVAL IS FINALLY OVER, maybe now we can get literally anything else (hopefully not involving Shiho in the process, but I'm afraid the author will probably want to elaborate on this relationship post-reconcillation... but again, that would be good writing which this author rarely displays so I'm still hopeful).

In short, don't cry because it happened, smile because it's over :P

last edited at Jul 23, 2023 8:48AM

that's cute and all but they conveniently forgot about the kiss promise from the last chapter :P

last edited at Jul 18, 2023 3:38AM

Well that was something of a departure from previous chapters, I guess I don't mind but not much happened :P except some fuel for the Hatomori x Ruri ship

last edited at Jul 14, 2023 2:30PM

... so what is this intel they gathered that was so important they need to immediately report it, I don't get it

I guess the veil was pretty stylish, even if it was translucent only for the readers convenience (or was it? not sure :P)

In the next chapter Ruriko is going to use the baseball bat to get the point across better

Not gonna lie I'm really tired by now that we get close to zero information about Yuzu's perspective in all this :P A few chapters ago I thought we'll start getting more of that but it very quickly reverted to usual joke about how Minami is obsessed and Yuzu is oblivious, and I'm getting slowly and surely disappointed in how this is developing.

last edited at Jul 4, 2023 6:18PM

Ruruka just lost her best friend position

Not like that was hard, since she only had it by virtue of being the only friend :P

Please don't end like Crescent Moon and Doughnuts. Even just one kiss is all I ask.

ahahahahahaha

That might have been the most coherent chapter so far

I'm really surprised that this story doesn't have hundreds of pages of comments here!

I'm not, because while it's a great story, it's only regularly uploaded to Mangadex, and only seems to land here in batches of like 10-20 chapters lately (and earlier it wasn't uploaded at all), so not many people comment under every chapter here.

last edited at Jun 24, 2023 1:05PM

I guess this subplot does go for a while yeah, but I actually like it that it didn't immediately jump to "oh well I guess she doesn't love me, let's go for that other side character that is conveniently in love with me".

"so Mochi, which direction you want this manga to go in?"
"yes"

The Risa thing doesn't feel rushed to me at all, I'm not sure what could be gained from expanding on that a bit :P It's been clear so far that Risa is just a secondary character (which let's be honest, we know very little about apart from the fact she likes Ayaka) ... and not gonna lie, the idea of trying to wear someone down until that someone loves you back doesn't sit right with me at all, and I thought it makes sense to show in one chapter that it doesn't end well either.

...also, that montage on this page reminded me of this very old XKCD comic (it doesn't really work as a parallel for obvious reasons, you don't have to tell me that :P I just thought it's kinda funny).

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/ayaka_is_in_love_with_hiroko_ch14#6

last edited at Jun 18, 2023 5:15AM

I randomly skipped over this but 28 pages of comments kinda made wanna check it out and... it's okay I guess :P

Anyway, since Risa is apparently a hot topic :P I can't help but think there's some weird discrepancy here - in Risa's flashback, they're both presented as kind of outsiders in their group at work and they basically bond over that... but in Ayaka/Hiroko flashback, Risa appears pretty well integrated in the team already and it's just Ayaka who's the odd one out with Hiroko helping her. ...so I dunno, either I misread these, or the author did something weird.

Right. Hit her head. I must say I gotta hand it to the author for just head-on having the kid basically not remember.

I was about to write something to that effect. I like it, it's straightforward enough, she just forgot and it's funny :P

last edited at Jun 9, 2023 6:09AM

Someone remind me what the little star plant light thing represents, its been a minute T_T

It's from the start of the chapter 123:
https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/my_food_seems_to_be_very_cute_ch123#3

So it's just a present from Maria, and I think all we got is that it runs on moonlight magic or whatever. And it reminds Maria of Xiaolan so I guess you might say it simply symbolizes her, but not sure if anything else.

Okay I'm convinced this was the funniest outcome possible and the author is a genius for seeing that possibility

last edited at Jun 1, 2023 6:04PM

Honestly I stopped reading at volume 7 because this is boring as shit, but the Shiho hate train keeps me coming back to the comments lol

I'm kinda more looking forward to the comments too. See you all next month, because whatever the next chapter is, I will probably not like it :P

last edited at Jun 1, 2023 3:15AM

Doggo didn't catch my meme radar (wasn't aware this is even considered a "meme"), but you had "malding" in the same comic, and no way that cat was actually called Maldini in the original :P

Anyway, really weird and really nice story, not much more to add.

last edited at May 31, 2023 9:47AM

Yeah that didn't feel like the second-to-last chapter. I'll be missing this story, it was delightfully unpredictable and a little bit weird, but in a good way.

... also kinda weird that something that looks like it was abruptly axed gets published in the West? :P

last edited at May 29, 2023 4:37PM

I'd also say that if you are a student of storytelling, rather than reading to find faults, you could learn a lot more from understanding why these stories are actually successful at satisfying its audience

The art is very very good, I honestly think this is like 60% of the reason behind this series continued success at this point (the other 40% being the original story of the actual main characters). Certainly it is the case for me, I would probably drop it a long time ago if the art was average. I'm obviously in the camp "Shiho is shit and nothing about her is well written" but that discussion is boring that this point :P I just want literally anything else than battle of the bands.

last edited at May 28, 2023 1:47PM

Personally I can't believe the the author has managed to drag this on for one more chapter. This wasn't a very efficient use of almost 30 pages, and we're still not done with that damned battle of the bands.

... and Shiho haven't learned a single goddamned thing in 42 chapters, if some stupid song or speech will suddenly make her learn, it's not going to be very believable for me.

last edited at May 27, 2023 6:55AM