Nev, it’s obvious they don’t understand the concept of focus (or just don’t care about it) and are never going to stop making excuses for this one and projecting stupid suppositions onto those who don’t.

You know, you can complain about something you don't like without being an ass to others, right?
Everyone can be a "professional critic" and a writer. Your opinion is not science, so miss that condescending tone, because you're talking fancy words but actually not saying much.

LOL

Nev, it’s obvious they don’t understand the concept of focus (or just don’t care about it) and are never going to stop making excuses for this one and projecting stupid suppositions onto those who don’t.

What concept? yours? that of not admitting that people don't read the same way you do? that you judge an author's work according to your preferences?
Your opinions are anything but neutral in any case!
He loves nettaigyo wa yuki who suffers from the same problems so I am septic about the logic of criticism.
It is better to say that we don't like manga instead of yes, find all kinds of excuses that we can find to belittle it.

Nev, it’s obvious they don’t understand the concept of focus (or just don’t care about it) and are never going to stop making excuses for this one and projecting stupid suppositions onto those who don’t.

What concept? yours? that of not admitting that people don't read the same way you do? that you judge an author's work according to your preferences?

This is incoherent--what does "reading according to preferences" have to do with the concept of narrative focus?

He loves nettaigyo wa yuki who suffers from the same problems so I am septic about the logic of criticism.
It is better to say that we don't like manga instead of yes, find all kinds of excuses that we can find to belittle it.

This argument conflates several different things: "can be read as displaying some of the same elements" is not at all the same as "suffers from the same problems," and equating "criticism" in the context of reading texts with "belittlement" is an elementary misconception.

I think we've each made our positions clear on this, or at least restated them enough times, so, at least until there is more textual evidence to work with, further conversation is likely to be (even more) unproductive. Enjoy.

All that's really significant from the next chapter (from the top of my memory btw, so it might not be perfectly accurate, LOL)...

Flashback chapter. Kaoru's friends all know she likes Reiichi and nobody knows why. Her attempts to confess always seem to fail as well. Risako meets Reiichi in the library alone one day, and Reiichi mentions something about how it's surprising that she and Kaoru get along so well, since Kaoru is clumsy and always causes trouble for people. Risako confesses that she actually admires Kaoru's bright sides, but tells Reiichi to keep it a secret between them. Reiichi visibly admires Risako's beauty here (and develops a crush on her). IIRC, on graduation day, Kaoru laments over having her feelings gone unnoticed this entire time, and decides to go confess to Reiichi.

When she finds Reiichi, he's alone in a classroom with Risako, so she decides to eavesdrop. Reiichi confesses to Risako, which catches her a little bit off guard. Before she gives him an answer, she asks Reiichi what he thinks of Kaoru. Reiichi mentions that they were raised together, so they have a familial relationship, but he isn't sure if they're exactly considered super close. Risako somewhat insists that lately, him and Kaoru have been getting closer (to his doubt), and then mentions that it would be too complicated for them if Reiichi and Kaoru were too close. Reiichi hesitates for a second, but says he'll increase the distance if Risako agrees to date him, to which she accepts.

Reiichi is incredibly overjoyed at this and the two leave the classroom... only to find out that Kaoru has been listening this whole time. Risako sends Reiichi home first so she can talk to Kaoru alone, and her expression implies that she was expecting Kaoru to be there all along. When Reiichi leaves, Kaoru asks why Risako and Reiichi are going out. Risako says it's because he confessed to her first and that those two had the chance to speak in the library. Kaoru asks if Risako secretly had a crush on Reiichi this whole time, but she denies it, and tells Kaoru that she only agreed to date Reiichi because there wasn't any reason to turn him down. Kaoru is upset by this, and says that she would've preferred it if Risako's reason for going out with him was because she actually liked him, even if she had to lie to her.

last edited at Nov 23, 2019 12:27PM

All that's really significant from the next chapter (from the top of my memory btw, so it might not be perfectly accurate, LOL)...

Flashback chapter. Kaoru's friends all know she likes Reiichi and nobody knows why. Her attempts to confess always seem to fail as well. Risako meets Reiichi in the library alone one day, and Reiichi mentions something about how it's surprising that she and Kaoru get along so well, since Kaoru is clumsy and always causes trouble for people. Risako confesses that she actually admires Kaoru's bright sides, but tells Reiichi to keep it a secret between them. Reiichi visibly admires Risako's beauty here (and develops a crush on her). IIRC, on graduation day, Kaoru laments over having her feelings gone unnoticed this entire time, and decides to go confess to Reiichi.

When she finds Reiichi, he's alone in a classroom with Risako, so she decides to eavesdrop. Reiichi confesses to Risako, which catches her a little bit off guard. Before she gives him an answer, she asks Reiichi what he thinks of Kaoru. Reiichi mentions that they were raised together, so they have a familial relationship, but he isn't sure if they're exactly considered super close. Risako somewhat insists that lately, him and Kaoru have been getting closer (to his doubt), and then mentions that it would be too complicated for them if Reiichi and Kaoru were too close. Reiichi hesitates for a second, but says he'll increase the distance if Risako agrees to date him, to which she accepts.

Reiichi is incredibly overjoyed at this and the two leave the classroom... only to find out that Kaoru has been listening this whole time. Risako sends Reiichi home first so she can talk to Kaoru alone, and her expression implies that she was expecting Kaoru to be there all along. When Reiichi leaves, Kaoru asks why Risako and Reiichi are going out. Risako says it's because he confessed to her first and that those two had the chance to speak in the library. Kaoru asks if Risako secretly had a crush on Reiichi this whole time, but she denies it, and tells Kaoru that she only agreed to date Reiichi because there wasn't any reason to turn him down. Kaoru is upset by this, and says that she would've preferred it if Risako's reason for going out with him was because she actually liked him, even if she had to lie to her.

I don't even know what to think anymore.

This spoiler further reinforces my suspicion that Risako is actually gay or had a crush on Kaoru
But of course I could be wrong.

Indirectly relevant to the spoilered recap:

So in chapter 4, in the conversation with Kaoru's friends (before Risako arrives) Ayaka (the one with short, dark hair) calls Reiichi, "your childhood friend who dumped you so many times" and says, "And every Valentine's Day during the 7 years of high school and university became an event to encourage you when you broke up."

That must mean "rejected your confession" rather than that the two of them were officially dating and broke up, right?

It seems implausible that people (the friends, Uta's mom) would be so surprised that the two got married if they had actually been a long-time on-again/off-again couple rather than Kaoru wanting to get with Reiichi and being turned down.

last edited at Nov 23, 2019 12:55PM

Me trying to understand the whole thing.

Totally agree. But some people just habitually make up things and project them onto other readers.

Not actually a reply to you, but it ties in nicely. A few pages back, I said how the story lost its focus and is in all probability just aimlessly drifting. Cue people saying how most of such criticism is brought by the lack of a yuri payoff. Which I find hilarious, since I was dearly hoping Uta and Kaoru would not end up together. Kaoru falling for Uta would be just bleh, honestly. For once, I wanted an actual serialisation that does not go for the happily-ever-after ending, and the unrequited feelings stay unrequited.

This series obviously has a faithful audience that genuinely likes it. That is fine, liking the story is not the issue here. The issue is that some conflate liking it with quality of storytelling and character development that is just not there. This has been nothing but a back-and-forth discussion where one side continuously tries to excuse the glaring flaws of the work (and hilariously, just as Blastaar noted, the nature of the excuses has also evolved over time, just proving that that is what people are doing, excusing the flaws; otherwise they would have stuck to their original guns this whole time).

Stannis posted:

Well no, this manga also hides a lot of mysteries if we follow your reasoning, how come konatsu and koyuki are like that? what are their past?

Either you didn't read my wall of text or you didn't understand any of it. The issue isn't that there's something we don't know. The issue is that entire story revolves around those events. In Hanigare we don't really need to understand characters past in order to follow their current actions. In MUL we do, because it's constantly referred to and all characters base their current decisions on those past events.

Stannis posted:

He loves nettaigyo wa yuki

She. You really shouldn't refer to everyone as "he" by default.

I already saw from your past posts your reading comprehension is low and you'll excuse and find explanations for everything for author, so talking to you is really pointless. And you proved it just now. So that's my last reply in this thread. Even if somehow karp decides to reply to my post, I doubt they'll convince me to anything.

Indirectly relevant to the spoilered recap:

So in chapter 4, in the conversation with Kaoru's friends (before Risako arrives) Ayaka (the one with short, dark hair) calls Reiichi, "your childhood friend who dumped you so many times" and says, "And every Valentine's Day during the 7 years of high school and university became an event to encourage you when you broke up."

That must mean "rejected your confession" rather than that the two of them were officially dating and broke up, right?

It seems implausible that people (the friends, Uta's mom) would be so surprised that the two got married if they had actually been a long-time on-again/off-again couple rather than Kaoru wanting to get with Reiichi and being turned down.

In that chapter, the raws say "フラれた" (furareta), which can absolutely mean "break up" or "dumped", but is also context dependent. It can also mean "to be rejected", so that is almost definitely what happened to Kaoru.

Indirectly relevant to the spoilered recap:

So in chapter 4, in the conversation with Kaoru's friends (before Risako arrives) Ayaka (the one with short, dark hair) calls Reiichi, "your childhood friend who dumped you so many times" and says, "And every Valentine's Day during the 7 years of high school and university became an event to encourage you when you broke up."

That must mean "rejected your confession" rather than that the two of them were officially dating and broke up, right?

It seems implausible that people (the friends, Uta's mom) would be so surprised that the two got married if they had actually been a long-time on-again/off-again couple rather than Kaoru wanting to get with Reiichi and being turned down.

In that chapter, the raws say "フラれた" (furareta), which can absolutely mean "break up" or "dumped", but is also context dependent. It can also mean "to be rejected", so that is almost definitely what happened to Kaoru.

Thanks. It's a subtle but significant difference for understanding the characters, depending on what actually happened. Kaoru continually confessing and getting turned down is vaguely stalker-ish, but hey, childhood friends, so no harm, no foul.

The two of them getting together as a couple only to break up regularly seems a lot more toxic (and more narratively and thematically unlikely).

Indirectly relevant to the spoilered recap:

So in chapter 4, in the conversation with Kaoru's friends (before Risako arrives) Ayaka (the one with short, dark hair) calls Reiichi, "your childhood friend who dumped you so many times" and says, "And every Valentine's Day during the 7 years of high school and university became an event to encourage you when you broke up."

That must mean "rejected your confession" rather than that the two of them were officially dating and broke up, right?

It seems implausible that people (the friends, Uta's mom) would be so surprised that the two got married if they had actually been a long-time on-again/off-again couple rather than Kaoru wanting to get with Reiichi and being turned down.

In that chapter, the raws say "フラれた" (furareta), which can absolutely mean "break up" or "dumped", but is also context dependent. It can also mean "to be rejected", so that is almost definitely what happened to Kaoru.

Thanks. It's a subtle but significant difference for understanding the characters, depending on what actually happened. Kaoru continually confessing and getting turned down is vaguely stalker-ish, but hey, childhood friends, so no harm, no foul.

The two of them getting together as a couple only to break up regularly seems a lot more toxic (and more narratively and thematically unlikely).

Based on the upcoming chapter, I think it's more probable that Kaoru also wasn't rejected all the time either, since one such example of her failed confession attempts is her texting Reiichi her feelings, but it turns out that Reiichi's cellphone broke so he never saw the text. But then again, we haven't seen their university life at all, so this is just a guess from me.

This is incoherent--what does "reading according to preferences" have to do with the concept of narrative focus?

Inconsistencies I can find in all the mangas, necessarily when you target a particular story it no longer becomes relevant especially for a family and love fiction with characters all very typical and different.
Moreover, the author masters his art and his history very well, there are defects but no more than similar mangas or characters are immersed in melodrama.
I like the fact that it evolves slowly, that characters that we thought were frozen and incurable change little by little and that thanks to that the story evolves. After this bow on kaoru I can't wait to see the same thing with uta.
That the manga drags on in length pleases me, it is completely different from a haru and Midori for example much denser but both have their charms.

For spoilers this may mean that risako wanted to demonstrate to kaoru that his loving obstinacy towards reii was not shared and that he had no meaning. That kaoru takes years to confess his feelings to him and can't do it, while risako can do it in a few meetings without any problem.
It would be a beautiful revelation on the cheating side between reii and her but also on the obstinacy of kaoru who ignores the defects of reii and still wants to go out with him. Which is a good match for an adult kaoru

Nevri : I confirm that we will never agree and I'm sorry for the "he".

spoiler alert kaoru has always been a stupid bitch

This spoiler further reinforces my suspicion that Risako is actually gay or had a crush on Kaoru
But of course I could be wrong.

That was the first thing i thought of when I saw the hand close up panel- I share your suspicion.

why was this licensed at the worst time

God damn it why did this have to be licensed, especially with recent chapters-

God damn it why did this have to be licensed, especially with recent chapters-

According to Amazon, the first volume was released on September 17, but Chapters 26 and 27 were scanlated since then. It seems as though being licensed doesn't necessarily stop all scanlations; the entirety of Bloom Into You was scanlated despite having been licensed for a while (which is a good thing, since while I plan on buying the last two volumes, I'm glad I don't have to wait until August to see the rest of the story). As for this series, if the scanlators are stopping now, it's a bit unfortunate; they could continue while encouraging readers to buy the volumes when available.

Then again, it isn't quite as bad as Yuri is My Job, which has only two scanlated chapters, whereas the localized manga is up to Volume 5 (and things start getting interesting at the end of Volume 1).

Indirectly relevant to the spoilered recap:

So in chapter 4, in the conversation with Kaoru's friends (before Risako arrives) Ayaka (the one with short, dark hair) calls Reiichi, "your childhood friend who dumped you so many times" and says, "And every Valentine's Day during the 7 years of high school and university became an event to encourage you when you broke up."

That must mean "rejected your confession" rather than that the two of them were officially dating and broke up, right?

It seems implausible that people (the friends, Uta's mom) would be so surprised that the two got married if they had actually been a long-time on-again/off-again couple rather than Kaoru wanting to get with Reiichi and being turned down.

In that chapter, the raws say "フラれた" (furareta), which can absolutely mean "break up" or "dumped", but is also context dependent. It can also mean "to be rejected", so that is almost definitely what happened to Kaoru.

Thanks. It's a subtle but significant difference for understanding the characters, depending on what actually happened. Kaoru continually confessing and getting turned down is vaguely stalker-ish, but hey, childhood friends, so no harm, no foul.

The two of them getting together as a couple only to break up regularly seems a lot more toxic (and more narratively and thematically unlikely).

Based on the upcoming chapter, I think it's more probable that Kaoru also wasn't rejected all the time either, since one such example of her failed confession attempts is her texting Reiichi her feelings, but it turns out that Reiichi's cellphone broke so he never saw the text. But then again, we haven't seen their university life at all, so this is just a guess from me.

I recently took a look at the localized manga, and recall that they said that Kaoru was "brushed off" in Chapter 4, not only implying that it wasn't an on again off again relationship, but Reiichi may not have actively or unambiguously rejected her. Considering the spoiled segment, this version of what happened seems most likely.

I rather think that at the death of kaoru's mother reicchi had pity and risako who is ultra pragmatic pushed reiichi to become kaoru's boyfriend…
Kaoru being in total depression couldn't refuse because the fear of being alone was very strong. Because I'm sure she was aware that reiichi changed her mind while he was with risako... but her mother's death was the key moment that made kaoru start living in denial.
Reicchi is just a pawn that risako uses.

Chapter 28
Nice, so Risako and Reiichi having an affair was a red herring. Risako doesn't give two shits about him, she's just using him for some reason (getting closer to Kaoru? Is the trying to break them apart?). Also Kaoru never actually confessed, since Reiichi prevented it every time. We still need to know what led Reiichi to marry Kaoru, I guess Kaoru's mother is involved somehow (and Reiichi's and Uta's mother too).

last edited at Jan 3, 2020 2:51PM

Well this is not gonna be updated anymore so i can leave this message to the generations to come:

MIYABI IS A MIRACLE OF THE UNIVERSE AND ALSO THE BEST GIRL

Being licensed doesn't stop Dynasty, but if the scanlation stops that's a problem.
I haven't looked into this thread for a while, but after seeing those walltexts on the last few pages... I'm kinda glad I didn't.

If what I saw of chapter 28 is true, then it seems my doubts were justified after all. This makes things more complicated though honestly.