Seeing people overanalyze and apply psychology to the characters and plot of a manga like Citrus to this level is really shocking and a bit scary.

You should have seen (as you probably did) what people did with What Does the Fox Say? (Just in terms of impassioned analysis, that is.)

I think lavish interpretation is pretty much par for the course with “love it or love to hate it” series, since the things that people hate are often the things that fans love to dissect. If there were legitimate, text-supported alternative ships in Citrus instead of an OTP, the post- and walls-o’-text counts would probably be even higher.

Seeing people overanalyze and apply psychology to the characters and plot of a manga like Citrus to this level is really shocking and a bit scary.

You should have seen (as you probably did) what people did with What Does the Fox Say? (Just in terms of impassioned analysis, that is.)

I think lavish interpretation is pretty much par for the course with “love it or love to hate it” series, since the things that people hate are often the things that fans love to dissect. If there were legitimate, text-supported alternative ships in Citrus instead of an OTP, the post- and walls-o’-text counts would probably be even higher.

At least the WDTFS analysis made some sense...

At least the WDTFS analysis made some sense...

Well, now you’re just getting greedy. . .

I'm a sw engineer and encounter this in my daily life; people actually think that e.g. the social media apps they use are easy to make, or that they are not meticulously designed, from the colours to the button positioning, to trigger a desired effect which has also been designed in advance. The fact that Citrus, in comparison to other yuri manga etc gained all this attention is not at all accidental.

Citrus is the most popular in the West (along with Girl Friends) but popularity doesn't equal quality. I still don't think it's that bad as some people say, like they say it's some irredeemable trash and stuff. In Japan, Citrus is not that popular compared to other yuri titles/subtext, so it seems this is a case of different culture = different interests.

Clearly you didn't notice, but I actually did not say Citrus gained attention (in the West at least) because it's "high-quality" (whatever that means). What I was trying to say is that manga, like any product, is to higher or lesser degrees (and in the case of Citrus it's to a very high degree) carefully crafted to gain attention of specific types of audiences. And that's both in terms of what the story, the drawings etc tells us and what they don't. So in the case of Mei, for example, the details of her personality and other details of the story are omitted on purpose most likely to keep readers speculating. In that sense ironically Citrus is not that different from Eva xD

last edited at Apr 29, 2018 6:40PM

I have no idea what you guys are talking about. If it's the anime, I think that they added some things in that shouldn't have been in there and took some stuff out that I thought should have made it to the final cut. But overall I thought that it was a good first season and I would love to see a second one. Also I'm assuming that everyone here read the latest addition to the series. My heart was not ready for something like this; it's affecting the same place in my heart when Oberyn died in Game of thrones. But what about you guys? Did anyone not like it? Also does anyone know why Saburota never really publish on the regular? If the author needs a go fund me page then I am all for it.

last edited at May 4, 2018 6:41AM

ample, visible, giant cleavage collision scattered throughout

The TL;DR of Netsuzou Trap forever more.

Anywhoo, nearing the end of Utena (translation: almost done being brainwashed with apocalyptic, duelist, musical rituals)!

Looking forward to your giant analysis about it, but probably off-topic for this forum lol

Anywhoo, nearing the end of Utena (translation: almost done being
Looking forward to your giant analysis about it, but probably off-topic for this forum lol

Ya think?

Granted, I’m a comics person, and can take or leave most anime adaptations of manga series that I like, but at least the walls-o’-text about the Citrus anime have to do with the title at the top of this forum.

Wow, this was such a long post lol. You sure write a lot. I will try to be as brief as possible in my response.

The reason I compared Mei and Anthy is simply because they are both characters suffering emotional abuse (well also sexual abuse in Anthy's case) and taking it. They are both people who have accepted to be paws to others, to be means to others' goals, and mostly acting in passive-aggressive ways towards life.

In the case of Utena, the story in my view is not supposed to be taken literally (otherwise it doesn't even make much sense) but rather interpreted in the same way that a myth is interpreted. Utena is essentially a story that depicts the "growing up" myth of women, and a discussion of what it means to be a woman in this world, just like the vast majority of myths are representations of the growing up process of men and the role of men in the world. It is the only story that I know which does that to such an extent. Anyway, point being, the characters are not meant to be real people, they are just archetypes.

Which is what I meant by Mei being a "low key" Anthy. Citrus is just a romantic story, and the characters are meant to seem like real people to a certain degree, but Mei is like an instance of the "Anthy archetype". In that she has basically so far resigned to give her life away as sacrifice for the sake of other people (her grandfather/family) due to not valuing herself and conditioned really by the old-fashioned ideas of what it means to be a woman. She needs to produce a heir, she needs to marry a man who can help her manage the academy etc in other words, she was not raised to be an independent human being with her own goals, thoughts, feelings. While apparently accepting all this and even justifying it, just like Anthy she shows a distinct bitterness towards the whole thing, that manifests in the end as a kind of self-destructive cruelty and selfishness towards others and herself. And a kind of obsession with her polar opposite that represents everything she deep down wishes to be but does not have the courage yet to be (so Yuzu here is an instance of the "Utena" archetype). The "backstab" which in Utena is literal (again because Utena is a mythical story), in Citrus is of course Mei's "Dear Yuzu" letter.

The reason such characters attract so much hate is because they are of course showing to the audience the dark and "weak" aspects of what it means to be human. In the particular context of abusive relationships, be it romantic, with family or even in a relationship with society, the majority of times those being abused actually accept the abuse and even try to justify it, a lot of the times turning against those trying to free them from the abuse. And people don't like to think of themselves as someone who would be so weak and make such terrible decisions, even though we all know deep down we might not fare that much better.

last edited at May 15, 2018 12:40PM

I read the raws, Yuzu has a threesome with the twins!

...Or if that happened it would have been more fun. Actually this is turning out boring af, after reading fast-paced manhwas there is indeed no turning back. If next chapter is as boring I'm gonna drop it.

Nothing happens, Yuzu continues to cry over the same shit as last chapter. Yuzus mom holds title as second worse parent in the series. At least it was a full chapter this time.

last edited at May 17, 2018 1:28PM

In fact, we learn Yuzu’s side and why she stayed far away from Mei. Translation will show that. We learn where is Mei and Sara explains to Yuzu what happened during the date with Mei (we know that they didn’t kiss and also Mei’s state of mind).
And final page, Yuzu asks Ume if she can talk about something important with her. A build up chapter. Indeed, 37 and 38 should have been one chapter cleaned with unecessary pages. But i won’t say the chapter is uninteresting.
All is in the characters’ speeches.

Does anyone besides Matsuri_wins actually read that dude's posts?

Does anyone besides Matsuri_wins actually read that dude's posts?

Couldn’t tell you.

Does anyone besides Matsuri_wins actually read that dude's posts?

A few people gave them opinions on their posts before, so I assume yes but just a few people? Their posts are pretty interesting in content if you ignore the verbosity x)

Aaaaaand after the light-speed jump of the Mei-Yuzu breakup we’re back to our usual narrative pace of taking most of a chapter to get guests from the train station into the front door of Yuzu’s house. At least it’s familiar—I thought we were going to be stuck at that @#$% festival for the rest of eternity.

The chapter was yawn-inducing. The only thing I liked was the "revelation" that Mei is not allowed to have free will. But we already knew that, and if Yuzu didn't, she is a moron.

Not really. Yuzu believed Mei’s resolve to inherit the school superior to her love for her. She always puts Mei on a pedestal and saw her as a strong individual focused on her goal. The reader knows Mei is weak but the reader saw what Yuzu didn’t (Mei crying in chapter 35, Mei distraught in chapter 32, Mei hesitation in volume 4 with Sara). And Yuzu always believed that her love for Mei was stronger than Mei’s one. She almost said that her time with Mei was counted in volume 5 cause of Mei’s brillant future awaiting her. She had to treasure it.

At this point the reader knows much more about Mei than Yuzu, same with Yuzu since it’s her PoV, but it is not always the case. So it is easy to blame the characters when they have less informations than the reader and does mistakes or misinterpret things cause well they don’t have the big picture when we have a larger one thanks to the external focus the author uses.

last edited at May 20, 2018 10:38PM

Citrus chapter 38 will be posted here by tonight

@AozTkM

I don't have a great knowledge, probably less than some posters here. But, I am surprised how some readers here misread Yuzu's character since she has a very serious way to name her love for Mei. When she said I love you to Mei, she used "Suki Da yo" in chapters 16 and 33. The romantic way to express love between two lovers.

In chapter 36, the Japanese title has 愛してる, Ai shiteru. Here, it's serious business, you never say that except when you're very seriously involved and picture yourself in a kind of love that is forever.

So, Yuzu's Japanese way to express her love increases in seriousness, it's not a teenage crush in the wording.

Mei never uses suki, she's abstract in her letter, she uses omoi ("my feeling for you" but Mei always uses a deflected way to express things, she's not direct), the noun to talk about the feeling but never explicitly talk about the feeling of love directed toward Yuzu. "I was allowed to honestly love you" she just uses a word about honest feelings, feeling honestly (without restraint).

Interesting, she mentions the way she thought she was allowed ... the same word than in chapter 38 when Sara talks about it ("i am not allowed to ask anything", so what can be seen as a redundant conversation points toward something in Mei's mind). The sentence " I fell for you to a point in no return" has でいっぱい. Here again, the love word isn't here, it's more "to be full of someone".

In fact, the author is very subtle and the wording she uses for each character is very enlightening and show a real degree of mastery. Much more than people here give her account. She has a bigger picture in her writing than we can think. She also uses many echoes, some words resonate from one chapter to another one separated sometimes by a volume. And indeed, characters' complexity is lost in translation.

Talking about context, you are right. In fact, there is a great number of speeches, in the manga, that can have different interpretations.

Last but not least, let's take the grandfather's words in volume 1.

Japanese: それから芽衣お前もしばらくの間は自分の意思で行動しなさい
(You can do as you please/forget about me for a short while, for some time)
English translation by Yuri Project: You should do what you want to do and not worry about me"
Official one: it's time for you and you alone to decide how to live your life

But しばらくの間 means for a short while. That's why the author left a note saying reading in retrospect the manga allowed to see new things. I don't think it was just an awkward way to explain things people missed because Japanese perfectly understood the "for a short time" implication of the grandfather's words.

And here, many readers just thought the grandfather forgot about his promise when he never said to Mei she could do what she wanted forever. And Mei knew about that ... so it can shade a new light on some previous volumes. How a simple word ("for a short time"), forgotten cause it seemed, some years ago, a detail, is important with what happened in volume 9.

To conclude, I think the manga is subtler than we can say without of course making it a masterpiece in the writing and the plot department, there are flaws.

But, it's clear, as good as translations are, this subtlety is lost because, as you said, there are so many different ways to express something in Japanese for which English has only one or two words.

It's always interesting to try to have the original meaning in mind and dig a little to see beyond appearance.

@sadhomu82 : in the chapter, the team translated Sara's sentence about a "citrus event". She uses ゅずぽっちのイべントに当たって so it's related to Yuzubocchi's event. (ゅずぽっち). I guess the correction was made.

last edited at May 21, 2018 9:06AM

Anyone else get more and more pissed off at the father each chapter for dropping all the responsibility in Mei's lap?

@sadhomu82 : in the chapter, the team translated Sara's sentence about a "citrus event". She uses ゅずぽっちのイべントに当たって so it's related to Yuzubocchi's event. (ゅずぽっち). I guess the correction was made.

the chapter is posted and the change has been made ;)

@sadhomu82 : in the chapter, the team translated Sara's sentence about a "citrus event". She uses ゅずぽっちのイべントに当たって so it's related to Yuzubocchi's event. (ゅずぽっち). I guess the correction was made.

the chapter is posted and the change has been made ;)

I saw that. Thank you for your hard work as always. ;)

It's cool to see real and supported compliment towards Citrus writings and story in general, in opposition to the constant nagging and "omg this is so stupid Imma drop it".

A transitional chapter it would seem, but as usual there's more to learn from it if you know how to look into it. I'd still love to see how Yuzu reacted directly after learning the news but I don't know... I'm glad to see that they're should be at least one more volume if the end game is after that. Crossing my fingers for two more!

And thank you Chaosteam <3

edit Oh dear, forgot to mention that the mother is entering the game and that's fucking wonderful! We'll get to see more of her and she might be a big help.

last edited at May 21, 2018 10:54AM

It seems like Yuzu is making her move now.
I didn't expect so much drama from this manga but I think it's fine, but mostly because I don't see this story possibly ending badly.

Anyone else get more and more pissed off at the father each chapter for dropping all the responsibility in Mei's lap?

No, since she chose to take the responsibility entirely on her own despite the attempted retcon.