I sort of expected darkness, I did not expect violence.

Yikes.

Me halfway through the chapter*
Looks at the tags...
Scanning...
Scanning...
Moe up the butt, Violence, yuri-
????????
VIOLENCE???? REEEEEEEEEE
Reads the rest of the chapter all tensed up
finishes chapter

...
Where's the next chapter...

Aw yeah, let master think about what she did wrong. Today's chapter was great

lol what? The only one doing something wrong is marie crossing the line whats going on between mei and her master should be between them not for her to try and play third wheel

indeed stella and marie are being kind of an assholes

From their perspective, Master caused Mel to run away. If Marie is closer to Mel than Mel's Master, then I could see Marie wanting to protect someone she cared for.

Not saying it's right or wrong, but I don't think it's pure spite/asshole-ishness

Next chapter will hopefully be out by the weekend, translation is done and it's send for typesetting. The chapter after that is the last of the volume of the series........wish there was more

Aw yeah, let master think about what she did wrong. Today's chapter was great

lol what? The only one doing something wrong is marie crossing the line whats going on between mei and her master should be between them not for her to try and play third wheel

indeed stella and marie are being kind of an assholes

Aug, kids here are so naive. Put yourself in the adult's position here. If a kid ran away from home in a situation like this, was clearly traumatized about something, and her friend said "don't send her back there." Would you send that kid back there with an adult who could be abusing her? Use your noggins a bit here.

last edited at Nov 11, 2018 10:53PM

On the flip-side having no idea what happened and closing the door on the one you’re claiming to be friends with isn’t exactly helping, Marie also knows the reason Mel ran away and knows it’s not abuse, so she has either not told her master everything or lied about something, because Mel’s master simply wants to talk it out and Marie is the one preventing that because she thinks it’s better this way. Assuming that Mels master has hurt her, without really taking into consideration what it actually means if Mel truly loves her.

It’s not a dick move but she’s also basically told her master to keep Mel’s away without explaining it which is hurting both Mel and her master really; logically, if Marie’s master knew the reason (That Marie actually knows) why Mel ran away, she wouldn’t close the door like that. At least I don’t feel she would, it would be silly. Marie getting hurt over it just makes it even more worse because you can’t really blame Mels master for that, but Marie probably does/

It’s what makes this sudden shift feel so forced.

Edit: I should add I understand fully why Marie is doing it, but she has made the situation worse.

last edited at Nov 11, 2018 11:26PM

Aw yeah, let master think about what she did wrong. Today's chapter was great

lol what? The only one doing something wrong is marie crossing the line whats going on between mei and her master should be between them not for her to try and play third wheel

indeed stella and marie are being kind of an assholes

Aug, kids here are so naive. Put yourself in the adult's position here. If a kid ran away from home in a situation like this, was clearly traumatized about something, and her friend said "don't send her back there." Would you send that kid back there with an adult who could be abusing her? Use your noggins a bit here.

Ok lets take your hypothetical view of this world an add in the reality of this world. They are friends so theres that. The last time they met before hand there was no sign of it. The master showed that she was in quite a high level of distress. There is no evidence of physical abuse and the only word you can go off on is a kid and kids are not trust worthy as a source alone. If all the for sure signs point to no with the only exception being the untrustworthy one saying yes then thats kinda stupid. Its childish to forget that in a hypothetical case where master is a mom and mel is the child that this could be tried in court as a kiddnapping with master holding a distinct leagal advantage with all the aforementioned evidence. A childs testomony can not be taken as fact think back to when you were a kid and mad at your parrents would you trust your slef to give acutate representation of treatment HELL NO.

As a reader who does have all the facts you are still wrong as this kind of problem needs communication to sort out.

the disappearance of hatsune melku

Aug, kids here are so naive. Put yourself in the adult's position here. If a kid ran away from home in a situation like this, was clearly traumatized about something, and her friend said "don't send her back there." Would you send that kid back there with an adult who could be abusing her? Use your noggins a bit here.

that´d be correct and actually is correct for stella since she knows pretty much nothing about the situation but marie is another story because she knows that the reason mel run away wasn´t abuse but mel´s master rejecting mel´s feelings
marie knows that the relationships between humans and beastkins are forbidden and have serious consequences

whatever was the reason for master to reject mel doesn´t really matter since master is actually doing the right thing
because if someone were to catch master and mel the goverment would take mel away from her and arrest master and again marie fucking knows it

master is actually taking an pretty adult aproach to the situation she is putting her feelings aside to keep mel with her marie is fully aware of everything she should be aware that master doesn´t rejected mel to hurt her but protect her master actually take the right decision for both mel and her and yet marie is being a little bitch and making everything worse

and you know fuck stella too if master and stella were strangers i´d be understadable for stella to doubt her but they were best friends how can she dubt her without even knowing the details did she think that low of master to the point of thinking that she did something bad to mel without doubting and then say to master " i don´t know jack shit about what is happening but fuck you you´re not seeing mel today and maybe never.....bitch " instead of asking marie what the fuck is happening and then talking with master
stella nominated for best friend of the year

last edited at Nov 12, 2018 3:11AM

Ah, listening to authority is always right, even when it clearly harms people. Nice. No, Mel's master is avoiding the entire thing; the 'right' thing if she really is uninterested and wants to protect Mel is to talk to her and give her the choice to get a new master, (well, the right thing is to talk and fuck the law because holy shit this is getting uncomfortably slave-like). What master was doing is just selfish, "well, I'll create some distance and ignore your feelings, but I still want you here" basically. And Stella doubting master is fine, they were best friends... as children... people change, and when you have a clearly distressed little girl and another one asking you not to send her back, hey maybe you need to figure some shit out. Putting people on a pedestal because you know them is terrible, and is why some many actual abusers get away with that shit. Sure, we know master isn't guilty of anything truly awful, but Stella is being pretty reasonable here I think, so kudos to her.

I don't even know if we can speak of "slavery" in this context. They seem to be considered both pets and children, or something in between.

We see Marie ordering around the maids here and even her master, and it looks normal to them, but then, they don't seem to be seen as autonomous people. We see the police asking where the master is, as is normal in Japan when they see a wandering kid (but they ask for their guardian, not their "master").

On the other hand, the lack of adult beastkins is puzzling. It almost looks like beastkins are grown in vats and appear out of thin air. Because if they have parents, or there are adults of their race that can take care of them, this society is cruel. Parents are never mentioned. Young beastkins are just conditioned in their institution to wait for their future master.

I'm really under the impression that Itou Hachi is fleshing out her setting as it goes, and while ultimately she will try to make it coherent, its foundations are shaky and full of holes.

last edited at Nov 12, 2018 6:09AM

Aw yeah, let master think about what she did wrong. Today's chapter was great

lol what? The only one doing something wrong is marie crossing the line whats going on between mei and her master should be between them not for her to try and play third wheel

indeed stella and marie are being kind of an assholes

Aug, kids here are so naive. Put yourself in the adult's position here. If a kid ran away from home in a situation like this, was clearly traumatized about something, and her friend said "don't send her back there." Would you send that kid back there with an adult who could be abusing her? Use your noggins a bit here.

Your whole view point falls apart when when there is no signs of abuse and they had met the master before hand one of them being a friend of her's and can clearly tell her character marie is playing third wheel and is holding information on why the events transpired in the first place.

but yes we are clearly not using our head and naive

and you know fuck stella too if master and stella were strangers i´d be understadable for stella to doubt her but they were best friends how can she dubt her without even knowing the details did she think that low of master to the point of thinking that she did something bad to mel without doubting and then say to master " i don´t know jack shit about what is happening but fuck you you´re not seeing mel today and maybe never.....bitch " instead of asking marie what the fuck is happening and then talking with master
stella nominated for best friend of the year

No. Just no. Even if the reason for the escape this time is rather frivolous, I have seen enough cases of children getting raped and/or killed by family members, friends, or other people they once considered trustworthy to know you have to at least understand the situation first.
Not to mention that, technically, Marie telling all the truth is all the more reason to keep Master and Mel apart from now.

Also, it would greatly help you get your point across if you used punctuation marks to establish where an action or line of thought ends, and another begins.

last edited at Nov 12, 2018 9:19AM

I don't even know if we can speak of "slavery" in this context. They seem to be considered both pets and children, or something in between.

We see Marie ordering around the maids here and even her master, and it looks normal to them, but then, they don't seem to be seen as autonomous people. We see the police asking where the master is, as is normal in Japan when they see a wandering kid (but they ask for their guardian, not their "master").

On the other hand, the lack of adult beastkins is puzzling. It almost looks like beastkins are grown in vats and appear out of thin air. Because if they have parents, or there are adults of their race that can take care of them, this society is cruel. Parents are never mentioned. Young beastkins are just conditioned in their institution to wait for their future master.

I'm really under the impression that Itou Hachi is fleshing out her setting as it goes, and while ultimately she will try to make it coherent, its foundations are shaky and full of holes.

"When the first beastkin grew up, their makers realized that after reaching maturity, the beastkin began to develop human-like ambitions and goals. They strived to be free of their human owners, slowly understanding that their existence was ultimately nothing but a life in slavery. This posed the danger of rebellion and perhaps even civil war. So the engineers built in a safety mechanism.

"What was the safety mechanism?"

"14 year life-span."

I guess it's obvious where I took that from. Sorry for ruining everybody's day... >_<

To briefly take the topic away from the whole kidnapping thing, on page 13 we see a woman walking with a beastkin in the background, I bet they're also gay for one another.

Whether Stella's doing the right thing depends on what her plans are from here. If what she means is "I don't think you should see her today, but I'm letting you know she's fine, and come back tomorrow so we can discuss things properly" or "I won't let you see her right now, but once I talk to Mel and get her side of the story, then you can come see her" then that's probably the right thing to do.

If she means "I'm never letting you see Mel again" based on this flimsy evidence of something Marie said, then that's probably not the right thing to do.

However, Marie is basically lying at this point by withholding the whole story from Stella. She's clearly in the wrong, since she's messing around with Mel's relationship with Master out of her own selfish desires. But that kind of makes sense, she's basically a child so it might be too much to expect her to act like a responsible adult.

We see Marie ordering around the maids here and even her master, and it looks normal to them, but then, they don't seem to be seen as autonomous people. We see the police asking where the master is, as is normal in Japan when they see a wandering kid (but they ask for their guardian, not their "master").

On the other hand, the lack of adult beastkins is puzzling. It almost looks like beastkins are grown in vats and appear out of thin air. Because if they have parents, or there are adults of their race that can take care of them, this society is cruel. Parents are never mentioned. Young beastkins are just conditioned in their institution to wait for their future master.

I am going out on a limb here, but one possibility is that we're not on Earth (or some fantasy world analog) but on some alien world where the Beastkin (a human name btw) were the dominant intelligent species. And then human colonists appeared in orbit, armed with superior weaponry and proceeded to wipe out the native sapients. A few hundred years later the surviving indigenous population languish in forced labor camps, but remain unbroken in their resistane.

Enter the Institute (full name the Mengele Institute for Beastkin Betterment. Official motto: Work Will Set You Free) and its pilot program of indoctrinating orphaned or separated Beastkin children in their subordinate status within human culture. These children receive enough education to navigate human society, but nothing beyond the fourth or fifth grade level. The most obedient children are then parceled out by the government to loyalists among the ruling elite to work as domestic servants that are dependent upon their human masters for survival. The goal is that these children accept their position as beasts of burden, so that eventually they'll be used in a captive breeding program, and their children will adopt their mothers submissive attitudes. Selective breeding will be used to identify and promote individuals with desirable traits of submissiveness and obedience, to be passed on to their offspring. (Itou Hachi could have been inspired by the Russian Fox Experiment for this dystopian nightmare. This is the dark flipside of Moe.)

Incidentally Sophia and Mel's master are more progressive in their treatment of their wards. But that's about it

I’m still thinking that Itou Hachi is primarily an artist committed to drawing cute furry-eared little girls who has backed into a vague simulacrum of world-building almost by accident.

That doesn’t mean that any of the sinister readings are wrong, of course, but if I were a betting person my money would still be on nothing more dystopian than “Mel & Master cuddling in the sack” as an endgame.

(Which is not completely devoid of dystopian elements, to be sure.)

Wow people here take things too seriously and try to find explanations about a a fantasy world that was created by a mangaka just to serve her story. Slavery, pedophilia, child abuse. Damn , calm down everyone. I don't think Itou intended for us to think about all these with this manga. It's like I'm watching Pokemon and complain about animal abuse. I mean they do have these cute animals fight each other! Someone put an end to to this!!! Just enjoy the cute fluffy fantasy and keep your dark twisted thoughts for the real world.

I can enjoy the cute love story, but at the same time I'm very aware of the unfortunate implications. Whatever Itou Hachi intended, she created a world that's pretty fucked up.

And all of it's right there in the text. You don't have to read between the lines to see that the beastkin's position in society is subordinate to humans. The author chose to bring the racial inequality to the forefront by how she constructed the plot. This didn't have to be a story about a love forbidden by the laws of their society. There didn't have to be a subplot about kidnappers stealing beastkin and selling them. The author didn't have to tell us that beastkin cannot travel or use public accommodations unaccompanied. She didn't have to have a character who constantly calls Master a lolicon, or otherwise implies that she's a pedophile.

None of that was necessary for this story to work, but it's in there. You kind of have to deliberately ignore it or pretend like it's not there.

last edited at Nov 12, 2018 10:09PM

Ima bouta bust a cap in Stella. Who wanna join.

I can enjoy the cute love story, but at the same time I'm very aware of the unfortunate implications. Whatever Itou Hachi intended, she created a world that's pretty fucked up.

And all of it's right there in the text. You don't have to read between the lines to see that the beastkin's position in society is subordinate to humans. The author chose to bring the racial inequality to the forefront by how she constructed the plot. This didn't have to be a story about a love forbidden by the laws of their society. There didn't have to be a subplot about kidnappers stealing beastkin and selling them. The author didn't have to tell us that beastkin cannot travel or use public accommodations unaccompanied. She didn't have to have a character who constantly calls Master a lolicon, or otherwise implies that she's a pedophile.

None of that was necessary for this story to work, but it's in there. You kind of have to deliberately ignore it or pretend like it's not there.

Yup.

I think Itou Hachi wanted to draw loli maid animal girls, but started thinking about the implications, and ended up in a dark spot. Then ran with it. As you say, the story world didn't have to be this way. Itou Hachi also tends to put some dark plot points into longer works (like the doctor with anxiety issues, a damaged eye, and badly scarred face, whose father died in the fire that destroyed her eye). This one is just darker than we expected from the cover art, because we're a bunch of people who are suckers for cute loli animal girl maids.

This isn't really that much of a surprise in context of the other works by the author, and we're just following Chekhov's gun down off the mantle for this story. We have kids raised by an institution and farmed out as maids once you take away the animal ears. Already that's not a sweetness and light story. Adding animal ears doesn't turn it into one suddenly, instead it brings up more questions that have to be answered by the story.

Itou Hachi seems pretty committed to answering those questions at this point.

This isn't really that much of a surprise in context of the other works by the author, and we're just following Chekhov's gun down off the mantle for this story. We have kids raised by an institution and farmed out as maids once you take away the animal ears. Already that's not a sweetness and light story. Adding animal ears doesn't turn it into one suddenly, instead it brings up more questions that have to be answered by the story.

Itou Hachi seems pretty committed to answering those questions at this point.

I had a longish post sometime back expressing my surprise that the author suddenly seemed interested in raising such questions that had lain dormant in the basic storyworld premises, but without necessarily answering them.

Although it certainly may turn out otherwise, I have yet to be convinced that recent developments are more than just ad hoc efforts (perhaps editorially inspired) to inject some drama into the storyline.

The darker aspects of the Senri-Chiru series were built into the overt themes of the story from the beginning. Around the time of the introduction of the Mist character this one seems to have taken a sudden swerve toward “issues” where it had previously been almost entirely about Mel looking adorable in her PJs.

It was nice to see the newly introduced enhanced beastkin sense of smell come into play once again.

last edited at Nov 13, 2018 7:39AM

I propose the creation of the BLF (Beastkins Liberation Front).