When did Sakurako start working as a teacher? I thought that was a flash-forward for most of the chapter.

Just now. She mentioned earlier same chapter that her mom found her that job.

When did Sakurako start working as a teacher? I thought that was a flash-forward for most of the chapter.

She said in the first part if the chapter she found a job as assistant teacher thanks to her mother's friend

...I must have somehow forgotten that after it went to the "make out" joke.

last edited at Apr 16, 2019 4:34PM

So did it finally go somewhere or it's still subtext?

We are all waiting for the marriage chapter to be sure

Come on! I made a list of all the times they held hands with interlocking fingers (without the interlocked fingers thing being disputable) 2 or 3 pages back. What other proof is needed?

please don't wooosh me guys, I understand these are jokes, and this comment is also, just let me be me, guys

last edited at Apr 16, 2019 5:10PM

"This is a generic 4-koma school life comedy that is considered Yuri only by the kinds of people who cannot imagine two women sharing a room who are not in love."

"Overall Ratings:
Yuri – Not there
Interest – Not really worth reading"

So the admins tagged it as subtext only, not yuri, and loads of readers believed it. That's why there used to be so many posts debating the 'hints of dating' between them, and whether we as could assume them to be a couple. In time the admins realized their mistake and corrected the tagging, and that was how the silly debate came to an end. And the admins learned a lesson: never trust Erica Friedman, never.

Oh God, Erica Friedman, she tried claiming that YagaKimi was about a coercive non consensual relationship, which Is weird because YagaKimi emphasizes consent more than any yuri manga I've ever read. She also tried claiming that Yuu wasn't in love with Touko all the way upto volume 5. She makes me wonder if she even reads the manga she reviews.

As I said on the Yagakimi thread, it was that review that brought me to the Dynasty forum, hoping to find an alternative take, because that one seemed so very wrong-headed. (There arguably are some disturbing aspects to the story’s setup, but “consent” isn’t the issue—that kissing scene in the student council room could be used in a university information pamphlet explaining “incremental consent.”)

As a superficial reading of the very early parts of that series, however, before the tone and overall direction became clearer, her review of YagaKimi possibly could be defended as just a wrong and superficial reading.

But the bullshit of that summary sentence on this series is something else entirely—the contempt and even malice in that blatantly obvious misreading is quite appalling. (“Not what I call yuri”?—sure, whatever. But that “the kind of people who” business is just a gratuitous insult, on top of being profoundly wrong.)

When did Sakurako start working as a teacher? I thought that was a flash-forward for most of the chapter.

She said in the first part if the chapter she found a job as assistant teacher thanks to her mother's friend

...I must have somehow forgotten that after it went to the "make out" joke.

I can't blame you, that was a great joke, as was the joke about Sakurako switching majors to "develop something like that" which Kasumi misinterprets as talking about developing pasta. A very Kasumi-like mistake.
edit: also I just want to say that Sakurako's advice to her student vis-a-vis teacher-student romance was refreshingly not-super-mega-awful. (I like a good ol' forbidden-romance story as much as the next person, but that particular set-up is... not something I'm a huge fan of most of the time. Sometimes romance is forbidden for a very good reason. Obviously exceptions exist, etc. etc., nothing is black-and-white.)

last edited at Apr 16, 2019 5:22PM

Oh I forgot.
Ehem.

General: Colonel,what do the scans say about her lesbian levels?
Colonel: It's no good General! Her lesbian levels are so high they crashed and fried the system!

last edited at Apr 16, 2019 10:30PM

Few people outside of Japan have done as much for yuri manga as Erica Friedman, her reviews are often insightful and an interview she did on gay marriage a few years back was extremely good. All that said, she's become like a cliche trope of the anti-yuri goggles. I think she got stuck in a groove at some point and never got out of it. By the time I'd read her tenth review that took a yuri story with a happy romantic ending and praised it's "ambiguity" and "ambiguous" ending I pretty much stopped reading her. There is more yuri bait out there in the world than actual yuri by most definitions, but somehow she became too cynical. I can't see saying Fufu (Wife and Wife) is that much more yuri than Futaribeya (A Room for Two). The former is less one-sided. I do remember that the first chapters weren't as romantic as the art we'd seen in advance. Where she'd be most useful is evaluating something like Stretch.

When I first started buying tankobon through Honto I was mostly inspired by Okazu, I think.

On Edit: When someone brought up the volumes past #2 Erica basically said she wasnt going to read or review it but invited them to do a guest review, which I think didn't happen?

last edited at Apr 16, 2019 5:34PM

Wait her issue with making out is that they were in public!?

Sakurako once again defining more her views on her relationship with Kasumi. Sometimes I think there is the risk of Kasumi having enough of Sakurako being over the top but then you see stuff where she comes and picks her up from work. The emintaly lazy don't want to go out and move around got up and went out at night just to pick her up. Stuff like that then shows the relationship is at no risk and is solid even if not verbally defined between them.

Knowing Sakurako I wouldn't put it past her actually being able to develop a way for two women to conceive a child together if she put her mind to it..

Somehow it feels odd to watch a series and see the characters go from first year highschool student to 20 year old college kids drinking alcohol and getting drunk.

last edited at Apr 16, 2019 6:36PM

@Marion Diabolito

I almost included (as I have done previously) a qualifier about how Okazu has been important for the promotion of English-language yuri. Having known her work in that context is the reason I was so shocked at the degree and nature of these two particular misreadings (a term I do not use lightly—textual interpretation has a very large subjective element, but contrary to popular belief, it is possible to be just flat wrong).

As the course of the conversation in this forum indicates, depending on how a reader defines “yuri,” there’s plenty of room for debate about this series (to a much greater degree in the early stages, of course). There is (or was) a legitimate argument that the series is yuri bait (“legitimate” in the sense that I’d still strongly disagree but the premise is not entirely out of bounds).

But to assert that there is zero yuri content in the first two volumes is to raise the bar for “yuri” to the point of ignoring the specifics of the text itself, and that’s just, at best, very bad critical practice.

(And if the “zero” is supposed to be seen as an off-the-cuff overstatement, well, that’s not good criticism either.)

"This is a generic 4-koma school life comedy that is considered Yuri only by the kinds of people who cannot imagine two women sharing a room who are not in love."

"Overall Ratings:
Yuri – Not there
Interest – Not really worth reading"

So the admins tagged it as subtext only, not yuri, and loads of readers believed it. That's why there used to be so many posts debating the 'hints of dating' between them, and whether we as could assume them to be a couple. In time the admins realized their mistake and corrected the tagging, and that was how the silly debate came to an end. And the admins learned a lesson: never trust Erica Friedman, never.

Oh God, Erica Friedman, she tried claiming that YagaKimi was about a coercive non consensual relationship, which Is weird because YagaKimi emphasizes consent more than any yuri manga I've ever read. She also tried claiming that Yuu wasn't in love with Touko all the way upto volume 5. She makes me wonder if she even reads the manga she reviews.

As I said on the Yagakimi thread, it was that review that brought me to the Dynasty forum, hoping to find an alternative take, because that one seemed so very wrong-headed. (There arguably are some disturbing aspects to the story’s setup, but “consent” isn’t the issue—that kissing scene in the student council room could be used in a university information pamphlet explaining “incremental consent.”)

As a superficial reading of the very early parts of that series, however, before the tone and overall direction became clearer, her review of YagaKimi possibly could be defended as just a wrong and superficial reading.

But the bullshit of that summary sentence on this series is something else entirely—the contempt and even malice in that blatantly obvious misreading is quite appalling. (“Not what I call yuri”?—sure, whatever. But that “the kind of people who” business is just a gratuitous insult, on top of being profoundly wrong.)

Ya she did A write up on Maria Watches Over Us 20th anniversary begging of last year and had stuff directly wrong in it including who is a student in which grade in relation to their connection with the main cast. She also talks about it being based in a fantasy world because cell phones don't exist. Except they do exist in it and play a significant role in part of the later volumes. Also the author directly states in the author notes at the end of one volume that they are banned at the school so most girls don't have them because of the lack of use they would have for them.

Ya she did A write up on Maria Watches Over Us 20th anniversary begging of last year and had stuff directly wrong in it

Right—criticism you disagree with can be great criticism. It makes you go back to the text and reexamine your own ideas, which is good even if you end up still disagreeing.

But criticism that’s wrong because the critic didn’t read the text carefully enough, and where the critic even bases the evaluation on those mistakes—that's just not OK.

But Erica Friedman brought me here, where I’ve had loads of fun, so I’m grateful for that.

And I've never heard of this Erica Friedman, but she sounds crazy beyond reason.

She used to be a name, at a time when her website was one of the very few places in the English-speaking internet dedicated to Japanese yuri.

As yuri waxed bigger and bigger, her influence waned, and she didn't take it well: her reviews became more and more unhinged.

Now she is just the guru of a small coterie of devotees, and she writes mostly to lambast any yuri manga who doesn't seem to agree with her personal brand of radical lesbo-feminism.

(In numbers, that would be... oh, 99,9% of the yuri series out there.)

Wait her issue with making out is that they were in public!?

Heh. Reminds me of a bit of dialogue in Sailor Moon between Haruka and Michiru, one of the iconic yuri couples of the 90s.

They were in a public place and Michiru got angry about something and pinched Haruka. Haruka complained that she wasn't into pain, and only liked it when Michiru touched her gently and lovingly. Michiru replied: "Not here, silly! Wait till we are home for that!"

No doubt Sakurako and Kasumi, once back home, will make out as much as they want. Kasumi has already given her okay!

Sakurako once again defining more her views on her relationship with Kasumi. Sometimes I think there is the risk of Kasumi having enough of Sakurako being over the top but then you see stuff where she comes and picks her up from work. The emintaly lazy don't want to go out and move around got up and went out at night just to pick her up. Stuff like that then shows the relationship is at no risk and is solid even if not verbally defined between them.

Well, when asked about their relationship, Kasumi says things like "I can't even imagine life without Sakurako..." and "To me, Sakurako is like the air I breathe; I can't live without her." I'd say that's pretty solid.

Knowing Sakurako I wouldn't put it past her actually being able to develop a way for two women to conceive a child together if she put her mind to it..

I might be wrong, but -- isn't there already a way? I seem to remember that there was a lab technique to take marrow cells from a woman and make them turn into something like spermatozoids -- which then could be used to fertilize an egg from another woman. The child born from this would be: 1) the biological offspring of both women, and 2) always a girl.

Hello people.

Sorry for interrupting your agenda pushing against this Erica girl, but you only need to look no further than the very first 8 pages of this forum thread to learn that the tag was changed as a result of Dynasty forumer's internal bitching.

To quote Shimapanda in this regard

Also, in the interests of stopping the constant complaining about the yuri tag I've changed it to 'subtext'. I hope you enjoy reading the manga whether or not it goes romantic enough for your tastes!

there you have it. End of the conspiracy.

To be fair, though the series was indeed put on ice for a looong time, right before the most of the best chapters happened, so I could somewhat see why people would be angry at being "baited" into a "non-yuri" manga, specially if they didn't look the prior ilustrations by Yukiko.

last edited at Apr 16, 2019 7:17PM

Hello people.

Sorry for interrupting your agenda pushing against this Erica girl, but you only need too look the very first 8 pages of this very forum thread to learn that the tag was changed as a result of Dynasty forumer's internal bitching.

To quote Shimapanda in this regard

Also, in the interests of stopping the constant complaining about the yuri tag I've changed it to 'subtext'. I hope you enjoy reading the manga whether or not it goes romantic enough for your tastes!

there you have it. End of the conspiracy.

Um, that was dropped several posts ago, only the one person seemed to even believe that. We are just kind of discussing her now, also she ain't a girl, she's been around quite a while.

If someone already pointed that out then it's my mistake. Sorry.

last edited at Apr 16, 2019 7:24PM

Erica Friedman is an academic specializing in manga, the only one I know of focused on yuri manga specifically. Her website, okazu.yuricon.com, is the main online clearinghouse for information about and reviews of English-language yuri manga and anime. She’s a legitimate expert, in academia the yuri expert, not a random blogger.

Her review of Futaribeya, quoted in a post above, was the matter under discussion. It’s just hard for me to understand how any reviewer, let alone a trained and credentialed professional, could get so many factual things wrong in a negative review.

(Critics can sometimes tend to get little details wrong when they’re gushing praise about something; it’s more unusual for professionals to toss off a hatchet job based on disprovable factual statements like “they only cuddle on the covers.”)

Somehow it feels odd to watch a series and see the characters go from first year highschool student to 20 year old college kids drinking alcohol and getting drunk.

When I first started reading this series, I was a senior in highschool, and now I'm well into post-secondary education, so it's kind of fitting for me. It's almost as if the characters have been growing up alongside me :)

Knowing Sakurako I wouldn't put it past her actually being able to develop a way for two women to conceive a child together if she put her mind to it..

Honestly, I feel like it wouldn't be that far out there if that's what this series is building up to as an ending. Sakurako becomes the genius reseacher that develops same sex pregnancy and Kasumi becomes a stay at home mom with her education in nutrition (Sakurako could also help teach her to cook and do housework)... Ok, it's a little crazy, but it doesn't sound completely impossible.

Knowing Sakurako I wouldn't put it past her actually being able to develop a way for two women to conceive a child together if she put her mind to it..

I might be wrong, but -- isn't there already a way?

There might have been successful cases with rats/mice (I think I remember reading about it?), but I'm pretty sure it's still impossible in humans. If/When someone finally finds a way to do it, I'm sure you're going to be hearing a lot of talk about it.

If I remember right, isn't it Actually possible to create a female kid from two eggs??

Sudden time skip is sudden

Sudden time skip is sudden

It's not a time skip. I was confused by it too, but Sakurako is just working as a student teacher. See the left side of this page: https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/a_room_for_two_ch56#4

Somehow it feels odd to watch a series and see the characters go from first year highschool student to 20 year old college kids drinking alcohol and getting drunk.

When I first started reading this series, I was a senior in highschool, and now I'm well into post-secondary education, so it's kind of fitting for me. It's almost as if the characters have been growing up alongside me :)

Knowing Sakurako I wouldn't put it past her actually being able to develop a way for two women to conceive a child together if she put her mind to it..

Honestly, I feel like it wouldn't be that far out there if that's what this series is building up to as an ending. Sakurako becomes the genius reseacher that develops same sex pregnancy and Kasumi becomes a stay at home mom with her education in nutrition (Sakurako could also help teach her to cook and do housework)... Ok, it's a little crazy, but it doesn't sound completely impossible.

Ya there is noway Kasumi would be willing to go through the hassle of being pregnant and all that comes along with it. More likely Sakurako develops it uses herself as test subject zero with Kasumi genes then becomes a stay at home mom and living off royalties from developing it (plus possibly book deals.) while Kasumi becomes the working women. They already basically have their roles set out if they were the stereotypical hetro couple. Sakurako the wife and Kasumi the husband.

@Marion Diabolito

I almost included (as I have done previously) a qualifier about how Okazu has been important for the promotion of English-language yuri. Having known her work in that context is the reason I was so shocked at the degree and nature of these two particular misreadings (a term I do not use lightly—textual interpretation has a very large subjective element, but contrary to popular belief, it is possible to be just flat wrong).

As the course of the conversation in this forum indicates, depending on how a reader defines “yuri,” there’s plenty of room for debate about this series (to a much greater degree in the early stages, of course). There is (or was) a legitimate argument that the series is yuri bait (“legitimate” in the sense that I’d still strongly disagree but the premise is not entirely out of bounds).

But to assert that there is zero yuri content in the first two volumes is to raise the bar for “yuri” to the point of ignoring the specifics of the text itself, and that’s just, at best, very bad critical practice.

(And if the “zero” is supposed to be seen as an off-the-cuff overstatement, well, that’s not good criticism either.)

Although admittedly it's a bit more ambiguous in the early volumes it's quite apparent from the very start of the story that Sakurako must be either lesbian or bisexual and that she has a huge crush on Kasumi. I found the entire tone of Okazu's review rather negative and narrow minded which is a bit unusual since a lot of her reviews are much more balanced.

Erica Friedman is an academic specializing in manga, the only one I know of focused on yuri manga specifically. Her website, okazu.yuricon.com, is the main online clearinghouse for information about and reviews of English-language yuri manga and anime. She’s a legitimate expert, in academia the yuri expert, not a random blogger.

Ever heard of Mark McLelland? Wim Lunsing? Rachel Thorn?
Admittedly, none of them works with an exclusive focus on yuri manga. They have a broader field of study, which includes BL, GL and queer manga. But any of them knows more about yuri than Ms. Friedman ever will. Also, you said "an academic specializing in manga" and "a legitimate expert, in academia the yuri expert." What academia are we talking about? She has a degree in Library Science and a bachelor in Comparative Literature, and that's about the extent of her training. She never had a faculty rank in any academic institution, or worked for any research project in an academic environment. She has been a guest at conventions and festivals as an internet personality, not as an academic expert. She has visited a few campuses and written articles for magazines by the same token. The rest is her blog. Now, compare with Rachel Thorn. She studied both in American and Japanese universities. She's a doctor in cultural anthropology and a master in East Asian Studies specialized in Japanese manga, and the list of distinctions conferred on her by various institutions is huge. Her academic work in America was so respected in Japan that she was chosen as a permanent associate professor in Kyoto Seika University (Department of Manga Studies) and has lived in Japan since then. Mind you, she still writes English papers, like a recent one about Takako Shimura's Wandering Son and Sweet Blue Flowers. I believe she has even given permission to Ms. Friedman to post some of her works in the Essays section of her blog. Thinking about it, the Essays section is probably the best part of that blog. I myself have given permission to Ms. Friedman to post a couple of my essays there. If you visit that section and check the names of the authors, I do think you'll find many who are way more competent than Ms. Friedman on the subject of yuri.

I agree that Ms. Friedman is not a random blogger. She's an influential blogger. Her website is huge, and, twenty years ago, was a preeminent source of information about yuri in the English-speaking world. But today? There are loads of places in the internet where you can find such information, many of them presenting data that is much more accurate, complete and comprehensive. Remember what Nezchan said before?

I am reasonably confident that zero of the staff here chose the tags thanks to Erica Friedman's comments.

I am quite confident that Nezchan is right, and with good reason: tagging is a form of cataloguing, and I know of nobody with a literary job to do and who takes it seriously who would use Ms. Friedman's viewpoints and opinions as a ground basis for their work. And that's because she has zero qualifications to talk about yuri manga with authority. Her opinion is worth as much as yours, or mine, or that of any other person. Actually, to be fair, her opinion is probably worth less, because you or me can back up our opinions with rational thought while she is incapable of doing it. She hates the vast majority of the yuri out there, but, when she writes a review lambasting some well-loved yuri series, she can't offer one good reason for her dislike -- only the political dogma of her radical lesbo-feminist agenda.

I have to say I'm really surprised to find you, of all people, defending her so vehemently. You are the one who was poking fun at people who (I quote) seem to be devoted to what amounts to a contemporary version of medieval canon law—only the overt depiction of mutually administered orgasms can qualify as consummation of a relationship, [...] a modern version of a traditional “bedding ritual” that is required before these de facto spouses can be truly said to be “going out.” Ms. Friedman is the foremost champion of this people, the supreme internet paladin of these twisted notions. In fact, the reason she hates 99,9% of the yuri out there is that the stories are focused on love, not sex -- and by her agenda that's anti-gay crapola and lesbian discrimination. I have trouble grasping what it is that you like so much in her, when her every idea and sentiment is set against us... and, as a matter of fact, she considers us, the readers who enjoy manga like A Room For Two, deluded fools or homophobic creeps.

last edited at Apr 18, 2019 10:20PM

I am reasonably confident that zero of the staff here chose the tags thanks to Erica Friedman's comments.

Is that so? I'm sorry. I could have sworn some guy said something like that before, that Erica's review had to do with the tag problem. Memory must have played a trick on me, because it's clear I misrecalled.

Looking back, I shouldn't have talked about that or quoted Erica's idiotic comments at all. Look at the mess it sparked.