I suppose teenagers (well, not exclusively but anyway) are petty creatures wherever you go. Hard to say what level our two MCs were with their respective groups, but a true friend is probably worth the trade-off.

majere posted:

Like yeah there were different groups of friends but it wasn't like I'm always seeing in American highschool media where it's like "and those are the goths and the jocks and the cheerleaders (I've never even seen a cheerleader irl)" and there weren't like social ramifications for being friends with people in other groups.

American media isn't even totally accurate for all American schools either. Though my high school was a bit of an odd one in that we're in the middle of the city yet it had only around 330 people. There was a lot of overlap between groups and even the geek group that I was part of got on well with groups like the jocks. (Though my that specific case it may have had something to do with several of us being rather athletic and giving the jocks a run for their money so they could respect that about us.)

(...) I don't want to read a scene where she yells words of hate at Nanaki: "You ruined my life! It's all your fault! Get away from me!" and more similar stuff... no, no, please, no...

Though probably inevitable I also hope that this won't be the case....

Welp, color me surprised.

It did happen, against our hopes... I guess it was indeed inevitable...

But Nanaki took it in stride with impressive coolness and composure. She didn't react with pathos, sobbing and running away, as most manga girls tend to react when in this kind of situation. She calmly explained the facts to Kurokawa and made her realize she was blaming the wrong person. And finished with what amounts to a declaration of love: "It doesn't matter how others look at us, or how different we are. I don't care about any of that. I want to be with you!" Wow!

I wouldn't have thought Nanaki had it in her, honestly. It's amazing how she has changed since chapter 1! Being dumped by that piece of shit of a guy really did her a world of good.

This kurokawa was so annoying in this chapter e.e

i dont get it, they all equally hot

Gyaru girl is the best

Everybody is useless in this manga, not only Nanaki

Seems like the maturity level has flipped between the two. Nanaki is a lot more tolerable now than kurokawa

This manga is great. Tapping into probably the most shallow and selfish part of being a teenager: judging your friends by who they hang out with.

Kids DO THAT.

Now kiss.

So glad there was a handkerchief between they're hands, or else my mom would've caught me looking at a direct hand holding panel. Wipes sweat from forehead that could've been disastrous.

last edited at Aug 29, 2018 8:59PM

So glad there was a handkerchief between they're hands, or else my mom would've caught me looking at a direct hand holding panel. Wipes sweat from forehead that could've been disastrous.

nanaki was like miss me with that gay shit nigga

Yeah the friends are shit for ditching MC, but tbf the MC just started hanging around with the class bully out of nowhere, so colour me unsurprised

Also the touching scene of gyaru girl being on her own for like what 1 period of class really was her being strong, it's not like she knew her friends would ditch the MC and MC would come crawling back to her oh wait

This manga is great. Tapping into probably the most shallow and selfish part of being a teenager: judging your friends by who they hang out with.

Kids DO THAT.

Yeeeeup. A big part of the reason I hated high school was because of that clique shit. Ugh.

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/useless_princesses_ch05#15
Praise the herds.

Orangey posted:

Yeah the friends are shit for ditching MC, but tbf the MC just started hanging around with the class bully out of nowhere, so colour me unsurprised

Maybe it's just me but personally I'd be more concerned that my friend got wrapped up in something awful rather than immediately jumping to resenting them.

Fujishiro knew they were going to kick Kurokawa out of her group sooner or later, huh? This is starting to sound premeditated!

She was aware the effect there public time together would have but did back off when asked(though too late by then) and offers an apology with yet another promise to take a hike if that's what's wanted? Interesting.

I often wonder about friendships like Fujishiro's one with her former friends. How close were they as friends anyway?

Without the yuri tag I would think this was just a story of SUPER friendship though. Which is always a good story to tell but yuri is still the bus I came on yo.

Seeing as how the Kurokawa sees herself as similar to her former friends I wonder if she would have done the same thing if one of her former friends were in her current position.

The premise started off well, but I’m out off by several factors;

1. I’m supposed to believe that moe-blob 1 is hideous while moe-blob 2 is magazine cover pretty when I’m seeing two moe-blobs.
2. Fujishiro seems not merely capricious, but unstable. Kurokawa is not a real foil for her.
3. The story feels oppressive with these two as characters, and no other people (except as plot devices).

Wlfking posted:

Seeing as how the Kurokawa sees herself as similar to her former friends I wonder if she would have done the same thing if one of her former friends were in her current position.

I doubt it. I see her friends more as the person Fujishiro describes in ch01

Make a laughing stock out of ... the bitch who makes fun of me

Hmm it's becoming more readily apparent as to which girls are actually useless princesses.

I don't get the sentiments that readers are supposed to see one group or any character as ugly. To me, those are just prejudices and insecurities voiced by the various characters. We're not meant to believe them but maybe just to believe that Kurokawa and others have assimilated those views.

I have zero tolerance for bullying, so I'd like to see the redemption theme pushed further with Fujishiro; however, I agree with others that its already more believable and respectable than what we usually see in manga of this genre. No one's perfect. Kudos to the author for not having her magically lose her brash ways.

I personally prefer to be around people who speak their minds, even if what they say isn't always "nice" by societal norms. But there's a difference between being frank and bullying. (I like Fujishiro's character until I revisit the first chapter.)

On a different note, Kurokawa's character was extra pathetic this chap. Hopefully the next update does something for her while also giving some sign of plot development. Sheesh. At least the panels still look good.

This presentation of cliques is so heavy-handed as to be ridiculous. It's actually kind of hard to read, that's how bad this chapter was.

When Nanaki's group kicked her out, it felt more reasonable. Her friends had been introduced beforehand. They had existing relationships. They were mostly a monolithic block, and barely had cliches for personalities, but this was the bare minimum necessary to make the audience care about the conflict. When she gets in a fight with her friends and they start ignoring her, it does feel like it matters.

When the same thing happens to Kurokawa, her friends barely even have their own faces or names. We don't know anything about them. There are no scenes of Kurokawa in conversation with her friends. They don't have individual personalities. There's zero sense that a relationship exists. So when her functionally imaginary friends decide to stop talking to her due to some bullshit excuse, how am I supposed to care about it?

last edited at Sep 3, 2018 10:34AM

Homer needs only one brief sentence to tell us all we need to know about Protesilaus, what kind of man he was and the circumstances of his death.

Honestly, I think any more info about those girls in Kurokawa's clique would have been TMI. They are three otaku chicks who decide to cut ties with Kurokawa when they see she's becoming a riajuu. That's all we have to know. I don't want or need any more data, and I'm grateful to the author for not wasting too much page space on their sorry asses.

I completely disagree. The author spends a whole chapter showing how upset Kurokawa is when her friends leave, and them leaving is a driving event in Kurokawa and Fujishiro's relationship. But as a reader, it just feels empty and stupid, because I was never once shown that Kurokawa cared at all about her friends until they left her alone.

Giving us some indication of how Kurokawa relates to her friends is absolutely necessary to getting the reader to care when they leave.

because I was never once shown that Kurokawa cared at all about her friends until they left her alone

Isn't it possible that this is not a problem with the storytelling but actually showing Kurokawa's priorities?
Often the bullied student is just someone for the reader to sympathize with, but in this case she is shown to have some bad sides / hang-ups herself. Kurokawa never thinks or says "I want to spend time with friend A" or "I like my friend B", it's always just "I don't want to be left out". Maybe Kurokawa thinks she is an otaku and therefore should spend time with the otaku group in her class if she doesn't want to be alone.

If we assume the author did this on purpose and didn't just forget to introduce them properly, then Kurokawa does not "suddenly care" about her friends, she only cared about being part of the group (/a group) from the start. At least that is the way I read it, since she had strong opinions on fitting into a role since the beginning, maybe as a way of explaining to herself why "princesses" got special treatment and had confidence.

Edit: TLDR Her "friends" not being introduced might just show that Kurokawa's relationship with them was shallow and she just cared about not being alone, which is also the only thing she explicitly states.

last edited at Sep 8, 2018 9:07AM