If this were a romance manga, it'd be the perfect opportunity for angry make-up sex ...

Damn Blastaar, I love yuri more than your average yuri fan, but it is rarely, if ever, an example of great manga.

The word “great” is conflating two related but rather separate categories of evaluation (or, in the alternative, reading experience) here. Much of what you say applies to any popular genre within an established art form—compared to James Joyce, Tolkien isn’t that great of a writer. But I still find the charge of the Rohirrim at Minas Tirith to be pretty thrilling anyway.

I’m mostly a fan here, interested in watching mangaka build and operate their various little trope machines, and in seeing how one uses the same or similar building blocks to run different variations than the others or how one echoes the other.

Or, as in this one, finding that I enjoy watching the characters interact as people and discovering that I’m emotionally invested in their (fictional) futures to a considerably greater degree than I usually am in this type of story, and as a result being willing to think about why it has that effect on me and inclined to read the tea leaves to anticipate where the story might be going.

Ahhhhhhh just kiss!!! Q.Q

what better to follow 50 chapters of cute with than 50 chapters of Aaaaaangst

I just started reading through this, and I'm only on chapter 16 so far so maybe things will change, but right now I'm definitely getting huge gay vibes from the main girl. Like I don't really think it's intended to ever actually turn into a romance - unlike some other authors Kuzushiro seems to understand that there are other healthy relationships besides just romance. But it does read like Shino has a bit of a crush/attraction to Nozomi, like she gets way more embarrassed and flustered by touching and intimacy around Nozomi than she's ever shown around any of her dude friends. And a lot of times that embarrassment is tied directly to panels pointing out Nozomi's physical assets, and Shino's reaction to the sexyness. Also the chapter where it introduced the basketball kouhai was written a lot like it was introducing a romantic interest, it totally seemed like Shino was checking her out.

Anyway since this is a well written series it's not like every moment of awkwardness is about sexual tension, they're both well rounded characters with different aspects to their personality. But that's how I'm reading it so far, not meant to be a romance per se, but also still pretty gay.

last edited at Oct 21, 2018 9:48AM

I just started reading through this, and I'm only on chapter 16 so far so maybe things will change, but right now I'm definitely getting huge gay vibes from the main girl. Like I don't really think it's intended to ever actually turn into a romance - unlike some other authors Kuzushiro seems to understand that there are other healthy relationships besides just romance. But it does read like Shino has a bit of a crush/attraction to Nozomi, like she gets way more embarrassed and flustered by touching and intimacy around Nozomi than she's ever shown around any of her dude friends. And a lot of times that embarrassment is tied directly to panels pointing out Nozomi's physical assets, and Shino's reaction to the sexyness. Also the chapter where it introduced the basketball kouhai was written a lot like it was introducing a romantic interest, it totally seemed like Shino was checking her out.

Anyway since this is a well written series it's not like every moment of awkwardness is about sexual tension, they're both well rounded characters with different aspects to their personality. But that's how I'm reading it so far, not meant to be a romance per se, but also still pretty gay.

All true, and as you get further in the story I think you’ll be interested to see how that yuri-ific stuff never quite goes away but never quite (so far) takes a definite direction, either.

Or rather the story keeps being about how these two are exceptionally attentive to one another and how they really want to be together to a remarkable degree (because other people keep remarking on it), but it strongly implies that they want to be together because otherwise they each would lose their connection to the beloved brother/husband rather than because they want to, you know, “be together.”

Showing that grown women end up sleeping together holding hands for a variety of different emotional reasons.

EDIT: And as Pyroro has pointed out upstream, the covers hit the yuri theme hard; if you went by some of those images (which you can’t) this would definitely be yuri all the way.

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/living_with_my_brothers_wife_ch41#2

Even putting the bedroom-eyes expressions aside, and granting for the sake of argument that close family members might exchange different bites of each others’ delicious food (on the “that looks great—gimme a bite” principle), the only reason for each to feed the other one a strawberry is to, not to put too fine a point on it, finish up by licking the juice off the other person’s fingers.

Which suggests an exceptional closeness indeed.

Also: https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/living_with_my_brothers_wife_ch11#3

last edited at Oct 21, 2018 5:09PM

I was really hoping Mama-one-arm was making an opportunity to talk to her stubborn daughter by sending Shino on an errand, but it looks like she left her alone after that..

She might well do that. I'm actually hoping this 'everyone in one house' arc with have them trying to resolve their issues a bit.

As I read more chapters I'm still reading Shino as very much gay. I still don't think it's really a romance, and honestly the two of them having a romance would probably be pretty unhealthy, they more need to be a family. But Shino still reads as such a baby gay. It's never something that's up to the level of like full-on coded subtext, but it's also a pretty consistent theme with her.

• Her playing that gal-game from her male otaku friend
• Also just how easy she gets along with her male friends and the total lack of any sexual tension with them
• That rather Freudian, "Ahh, I want a wife!" line, which Nozomi corrected to "You mean a husband."
• How she totally seemed like she was checking out the basketball kouhai, and was uncomfortable at her sexiness.
• Her whole, "lol fuck no I don't want to wear a yukata" attitude, where she only gives in because Nozomi is looking all sexy begging her to
• More awkwardness when Nozomi is like, "We should go on a date!!" and then later Shiho's massive awkward embarrassment that she fell asleep with Nozomi holding hands.
• Shino knows about that cute female idol that her brother liked, whereas Nozomi's only heard of her.
• Her feelings of jealousy when Nozomi's with a guy at the festival, which is definitely partly about her brother, but also not 100% because of that.
• And then, like, that whole bathing together thing, come on.

Like Nozomi doesn't come across as very gay to me, except maybe a degree of romantic friendship. Her flirty lines feel much more like just kind of standard flirty Asian female friendship stuff. But Shino has all these moments where like, at the very least if you read her as gay they certainly never do anything to challenge that reading. Way more than trying to find any textual support of her being straight.

Basically I'm happy with them just being family, but I'm definitely hoping that basketball kouhai shows up again.

edit: chapter 31 and hello basketball kouhai!

last edited at Oct 22, 2018 10:50PM

As I read more chapters I'm still reading Shiho as very much gay. I still don't think it's really a romance, and honestly the two of them having a romance would probably be pretty unhealthy, they more need to be a family.

Again, all the signals you list are absolutely true, and there’s more besides.

But the most interesting thing to me is that no matter how thick and fast those yuri signals come, it still never feels like the story is going yuri.

Maybe it will—and if that basketball kouhai you mention isn’t a tsundere lesbian, it’s not for lack of trying—but if this story goes in any romance direction at all, at this point I don’t have the slightest idea which way it would be.

Except for the main pair, who have interpersonal chemistry to burn and have been in a good half-dozen situations where any other two characters I’ve ever seen with that level of chemistry would be going at it like bunny rabbits.

But it still never feels sexual or even really romantic.

OK, all caught up. Things I think, which are mostly what I thought from the beginning:

• There's all these interactions where Nozomi is like, "Haha, this would be sort of romantic if we weren't both girls!" Like Nozomi seems just cluelessly straight, she never entertains the idea of f/f romance even being a real possibility.d
• Whenever Nozomi busts out one of those heteronormative assumptions Shino gets awkward as fuuuck. Like Shino never actually thinks of herself as gay (she never thinks about herself in a romantic context period), but the way she gets flustered at stuff that doesn't even ping for Nozomi is tellingly consistent.
• There's probably no real chance of romance between the two of them, and honestly with how codependent the two of them already are it would be super unhealthy if they did. They're really better off as family.
• Basketball kouhai has a pretty obvious crush on Shino, and Shino was definitely checking her out in their first meeting. There's a ton of room in the story for their relationship to develop. OTOH they've only talked in like, 3 chapters out of almost 50 soooo that may be a bit slow to develop...
• But yeah, basketball girl seems like the ideal endgame. A lot of Shino's attraction to Nozomi feels less like she's specifically in love with her, and more that, well, she's still a horny teenager living in an apartment with a big tittie 24 year old. Give Shino a healthier outlet for her romantic feelings and she'd be better off.

I think the big challenge to this is that, well A) damn this manga is a super slow burn and doesn't feel like it has any intention to move towards solid resolutions, and B) there's an unhealthy element to the girls' relationship, where they just stew together in their grief day after day. It's comforting to them, but it also makes it hard to move out of the grief stage, and they're kind of mutually enforcing a feeling of guilt if they think about moving on in their lives. Until they start dealing with that, neither of them is gonna be dating anyone.

last edited at Oct 22, 2018 10:51PM

^
All good and valid points, SadDoctor.

The remarkable thing about this series for me is that it undeniably displays a long list of qualities--protagonists who are clueless about their own feelings, the slowest of slow burns in terms of plot and character development, no real indication of where the plot is ultimately heading--that ordinarily I would see as negatives, but in this one they not only don't bother me, they tend to make me even more interested.

Maybe I'll feel differently 50 more chapters down the line, but although I hope the story does get somewhere eventually, at this point I'm fine with whatever the author wants to do with it.

Or, to phrase it differently, damn if Kuzushiro doesn't have some mad storytelling skeelz? :P

In a lot of ways I think the manga this reminds me the most of is March Comes in Like a Lion.

Or, to phrase it differently, damn if Kuzushiro doesn't have some mad storytelling skeelz? :P

Yeah, but although I've liked the author's other stuff on Dynasty, most of those series are pretty outre in conception/format compared to this one.

I first learned of this series when somebody brought it up in reference to My Unrequited Love, with which it has many parallels in setup and in execution, but there those same qualities of character and development that I listed only drive me nuts. I keep wanting to like that series more than I do; I was well into this one before I even realized how much I liked it.

EDIT: @SadDoctor, 3-gatsu is in my top 5 series these days, but Rei's shogi career gives that one an ongoing structure of development, and it also varies its tone and focus considerably more than this one does. I feel a similar level of investment in the main characters, though.

last edited at Oct 22, 2018 2:30PM

Structurally the series aren't really similar, but they deal with some similar themes. Teenagers who've grown up too fast because of loss, feelings of grief and survivors guilt, trying to deal with depression with the help of their replacement family, certain uh, semi-incestual feelings which are treated with realistic psychology instead of just some anime fetish thing.

As I'm flipping through and rereading a few chapters, I also need to add to my list how literally all of Shino's friends make references to like, her acting like a worried boyfriend, her acting like she has a first girlfriend, how she wouldn't be a proper wife, on and on. They never reference the idea of her having a boyfriend, they always refer to her being in a relationship with a girl.

It's not, like, a BIG thing, and the lines always make sense in context... But it also keeps happening

While it's very much a slice of life, I've always felt that it was just a slow moving drama series, and finally, I think we have the friction we need for both characters to grow. It's interesting that Shino still refers to her brother with other people as if he's still very much alive, albeit far away, while Nozomi has completely avoided that part of her life. I hope they both get some closure, although I think the ending will most likely involve them moving away from each other for growth. They both need to learn how to be independent again.

Finalmente caught up after like a week. Thaís series is really nice.

There's a new chapter out now, not up on dynasty yet.

Won't spoil, but boy the subtext is realllllly coming front and center this time

I NEED MOARRR

The chapter 52 was translated half month ago btw! is not here yet but in mangadex.

I Saw the upcoming raws and all I'm going to say is THIS DAMN AUTHOR WANTS TO KILL US ALL!

As I read more chapters I'm still reading Shino as very much gay. I still don't think it's really a romance, and honestly the two of them having a romance would probably be pretty unhealthy, they more need to be a family. But Shino still reads as such a baby gay. It's never something that's up to the level of like full-on coded subtext, but it's also a pretty consistent theme with her.

• Her playing that gal-game from her male otaku friend
• Also just how easy she gets along with her male friends and the total lack of any sexual tension with them
• That rather Freudian, "Ahh, I want a wife!" line, which Nozomi corrected to "You mean a husband."
• How she totally seemed like she was checking out the basketball kouhai, and was uncomfortable at her sexiness.
• Her whole, "lol fuck no I don't want to wear a yukata" attitude, where she only gives in because Nozomi is looking all sexy begging her to
• More awkwardness when Nozomi is like, "We should go on a date!!" and then later Shiho's massive awkward embarrassment that she fell asleep with Nozomi holding hands.
• Shino knows about that cute female idol that her brother liked, whereas Nozomi's only heard of her.
• Her feelings of jealousy when Nozomi's with a guy at the festival, which is definitely partly about her brother, but also not 100% because of that.
• And then, like, that whole bathing together thing, come on.

Like Nozomi doesn't come across as very gay to me, except maybe a degree of romantic friendship. Her flirty lines feel much more like just kind of standard flirty Asian female friendship stuff. But Shino has all these moments where like, at the very least if you read her as gay they certainly never do anything to challenge that reading. Way more than trying to find any textual support of her being straight.

Basically I'm happy with them just being family, but I'm definitely hoping that basketball kouhai shows up again.

edit: chapter 31 and hello basketball kouhai!

I've had a very similar read on their situation. Shino appears to at least be bisexual, more likely fully lesbian. She has very consistently shown small signs that she has a more than strictly platonic interest in girls, particularly Nozomi, and has given few if any hints that she has this same sort of interest in guys. Nozomi on the other hand gives off much more complex and mixed signals.

I think Nozomi probably isn't a lesbian but rather has ended up using Shino as an emotional and psuedo romantic stand in for her dead husband. There are certainly signs that she sometimes sees Shino in a demi-romantic light as a result of this, but she does not give off any signals that she is outright sexually attracted to Shino or other women.

last edited at Nov 27, 2018 11:51PM

The chapter 52 was translated half month ago btw! is not here yet but in mangadex.

I Saw the upcoming raws and all I'm going to say is THIS DAMN AUTHOR WANTS TO KILL US ALL!

Thwre are two kinds of kill tho. Lol i must find this out.

DAMN DAMN,DAMN HELL YEAH