I hope this will get officially translated and licensed. I really really hope so. I love this one.

This manga is the gold standard for the "adult life" tag. A true masterpiece. Nothing comes close to this.

Now, when it comes to yuri manga I've read, I divide them by how much I liked them into top, mid and low tiers. Octave very safely ended up in the top tier, though, not on the top spot.

Yay, finally got around to this one, completely forgot it existed. I'm on Chapter 9 right now, and, uh...is this "masterpiece" supposed to have this rough of a start? I'm sort of remembering now why I stopped for a while and completely forgot about it. It's a weird feeling having a story trying to give off the vibe of being mature while simultaneously having my suspension of disbelief slowly breaking as I go along; and this is before I inch ever closer to those Het tagged chapters. Oh boy, I can see this coming a mile away even without reading any of the comments based solely on how our protagonist has acted so far.

Edit: Also nine chapters in and it already made me realize that my age is inversely proportional to how "mature" I want any form of media nowadays. I can handle and preferred stuff like this years ago but now I need to take a break every few chapters with all these insecurities weighing down on me too much. Can our protag, like, chill and be happy, for at least half a chapter without finding something problematic? :(

This story is a very realistic one. I am guessing you’re used to stories with fluffy beginnings? But yes, the two main characters are both in the entertainment industry. The industry really is dark in a sense where women in higher up positions sexually harrass male entertainers, and where men in higher positions do the same to young female entertainers. I am also in the music industry business, and so are many of my peers. We do know that dark things happen behind all the glamour and happiness that is shown on TV. And I love that this manga does not lie about it. The main character (or both, in a way) have been somewhat mentally traumatized or twisted from the experience.

If you’re talking about the main character, however, she is only 18 and is just discovering her purpose in life and sexuality. We all made mistakes when we were teens

last edited at Mar 16, 2019 7:53PM

about grown up women who like grown up women

Wat. Yukino isn't grown up, emotionally she is a whiny immature girl who runs away from her problems, be it physically, shifting blame on others, seeking affection from others or wallowing in self-pity. Her slowly growing up into an adult is the whole point of Octave.

She’s 18 so yeah she is deff immature lol. I know people who have graduated college who are still immature and entitled pricks.

last edited at Apr 22, 2019 10:35AM

TBQH, Setsuko comes off as the worse person here. She seduces and manipulates an insecure younger woman, telling her that if she hesitates to move in with her she must not be serious. WTF? Living together is a big, life changing decision, not something to be made on the spot. If I were Yukino I'd dump Setsuko right there. I still love this manga but I feel bad for Yukino every time, she deserves better.

TBQH, Setsuko comes off as the worse person here. She seduces and manipulates an insecure younger woman, telling her that if she hesitates to move in with her she must not be serious. WTF? Living together is a big, life changing decision, not something to be made on the spot. If I were Yukino I'd dump Setsuko right there. I still love this manga but I feel bad for Yukino every time, she deserves better.

I think you're being very unfair. When Setsuko "seduced" Yukino, all she did was hit on a woman she found attractive, invite her over, and then have sex with her. They're both adults, there's nothing wrong with that.

The way she acted when it came to inviting Yukino to live with her was pretty messed up. But if we're going to compare them, it was nowhere near as fucked up as what Yukino had done to her. The whole point of that section was to show that Setsuko isn't perfect. She's a flawed human being and she also feels desperate and insecure. But at least she was honest about her goals, instead of fucking someone behind her back and then trying to lie about it. Personally, I'd have a much easier time forgiving Setsuko than Yumiko.

You could see the way Setsuko acts throughout the second half of the story as something of a reaction to Yumiko cheating on her. She realizes how terrible she'd feel if she lost Yumiko and at the same time feels unable to trust her, and so she becomes more controlling. This isn't really fair to Yumiko (if someone's wronged you and you decide to forgive them, it's just cruel to continue to hold it against them) but it is completely understandable. Normal people often react this way to being hurt.

schuyguy posted:

instead of fucking someone behind her back and then trying to lie about it.

To be fair Yukino only did it, because she thought that's what Setsuko told her to do, when in fact, she totally misunderstood it, because Setsuko was being vague and assumed Yukino will figure out what she really meant, but since Yukino was totally lost, because all of it was completely new to her, she took her words at face value. So the whole thing was kinda Setsuko's fault.

I don't buy that for a second, and I don't think Yukino did either. If she actually believed Setsuko would be fine with her fucking someone else, she wouldn't have felt so guilty or tried to lie about it. She knew very well that she'd betrayed her, that's why she obsessed over the thought of Setsuko leaving her afterwards.

Yukino clearly felt very insecure in their relationships, and a large part of that was the way she fixated on the idea of Setsuko sleeping with a man. That insecurity seems to be the main thing that drove her to do what she did. But she didn't seriously believe that something Setsuko had said right when they first got together was long-standing permission for her to sleep with someone else. If she had believed that, then she would've reacted to the whole situation very differently.

The reason Setsuko become more controlling, might be because she realized she fucked up by not being clear, so she tried to fix that by making sure she'll never again say or do something Yukino can misunderstood.

That might be part of it, but for me the main reason is that she realized how much she cared about Yukino and how much she feared losing her. That's the whole point of Chapter 13, and especially this page in particular. This is the first time we get to see things from Setsuko's POV, and we realize that she's not the cool, self-confident person Yukino believes her to be.

last edited at Apr 23, 2019 2:17AM

Nah, you're probably right. I'm much more bothered by the idea of emotional manipulation than by cheating, so how Setsuko acted set me off. I saw her ultimatum as a red flag and warning of future abuse, instead of the reaction of a hurt person which is probably what the mangaka intended.

And Yukino does get more assertive towards the end and stops feeling like she's being led around by Setsuko. I don't think Setsuko was wrong to hit on Yukino or have sex with her, I just found the dynamic between them totally imbalanced for most of the story. Which makes it more interesting to read about but also frustrating.

I could bet that I had written something here before but can't seeing it? lol, wtf, I don't understand.

TBQH, Setsuko comes off as the worse person here. She seduces and manipulates an insecure younger woman, telling her that if she hesitates to move in with her she must not be serious. WTF? Living together is a big, life changing decision, not something to be made on the spot. If I were Yukino I'd dump Setsuko right there. I still love this manga but I feel bad for Yukino every time, she deserves better.

The point of the manga is to show that real human beings make bad mistakes sometimes. So yeah, sometimes these people will come off as being rude or inconsiderate. But they eventually come into terms with what they have done and forgive and understand one another. Both Yukino and Setsuko are young in age, so they are not really mature enough to make the wisest decisions all the time.

I could bet that I had written something here before but can't seeing it? lol, wtf, I don't understand.

Maybe you used an alt account. The mods never remove anything unless it’s explicit or rude.

last edited at May 27, 2019 8:04PM

Nah, you're probably right. I'm much more bothered by the idea of emotional manipulation than by cheating, so how Setsuko acted set me off. I saw her ultimatum as a red flag and warning of future abuse, instead of the reaction of a hurt person which is probably what the mangaka intended.

And Yukino does get more assertive towards the end and stops feeling like she's being led around by Setsuko. I don't think Setsuko was wrong to hit on Yukino or have sex with her, I just found the dynamic between them totally imbalanced for most of the story. Which makes it more interesting to read about but also frustrating.

Yes, Yukino's relationship with Setsuko is definitely unbalanced for most of the story. I think the best part of the whole cheating arc is that it forces Yukino to realize how completely dependent on Setsuko she is. She sees that she doesn't have a single friend in the world, she has a job that makes her miserable, she avoids contact with her family, and she lives in a shitty one-room apartment. Basically the only source of happiness in her life is Setsuko. I often think that if you feel like you cannot be happy without someone, then in truth you cannot be happy with them either. The key to a successful relationship is that each party must be someone capable of being happy on their own. If you depend on someone else for your happiness, the relationship will fail.

And when Yukino realizes this she starts trying to change herself. So when it gets to the point in the story where Setsuko is the one who's obviously completely out of line, Yukino feels able to stand up for herself. Ultimately, that's what allows them to create a more healthy dynamic. If Yukino had stayed the same frightened, self-centered, oblivious character as she is in the beginning, then their relationship would have been doomed.

I could bet that I had written something here before but can't seeing it? lol, wtf, I don't understand.

Maybe you used an alt account. The mods never remove anything unless it’s explicit or rude.

I just said that I love this manga and that I re-read it how one time a year or was something like that and having like another comment from me but months ago like 5 users up saying something like that x'D maybe I did that in other manga, but I could swear I did that with this one. Well, it doesn't matter, it was just surprising because I had remembered other thing.

Well, good news for some here Octave get publish in France. I was browsing throught Shoujo-ai published in France and was surprised to see Octave in it. With further inspection it seem we got a french publication of Octave with Vol.1 coming for the end of September, at least it's what Amazon said. Also to no one surprise it's edited by Taifu.

I’m sorry to see that this author’s other works haven’t been translated, although from the little that I can tell about them, they look to be much more light-hearted than this one, which really does seem to be in a fairly small category of excellent adult-life-themed stories that are serious and realistic without being Depressing as fuck.

Like, I really love Nananan Kiriko’s work, but I don’t really seek it out at times when the world already feels like shit—like most of this decade.

I didn't even know this author had other works.

Well, looks like one of them's about Rakugo, so that's a no. But maybe I'll check out Suzume Suzunari.

Like, I really love Nananan Kiriko’s work, but I don’t really seek it out at times when the world already feels like shit—like most of this decade.

Whatever do you mean?

https://me.me/i/all-of-america-right-now-were-fine-this-is-fine-3812980

Yukino goes from being a baby who crys and pisses all over the place to bein assertive and strong and stuff pretty chill manga

Ahhhhhhhhhhh I'm having emotion roller coaster

Pathetic

This manga is soo greeeat I reread whenever I rememeber or I accidently click a chapter. This manga is always has a really speical place for me and lol when I first read it I blamed Yukino adn saw Yukino as a bad person and the bad one in the relationship but after rereading I suddenly realized it was Setsuko's fault of course not entirely but she really has a big part in it. One of the amazing things about this manga is that you see a different part of the story everytime you read and you have another undersanting of the characters every time.

No it's not my thing
I do not complain about the writing and I can sympathize with much of the feelings of the protagonist but the way everything was handled was so toxic ... we went from stupid insecurities for past lovers to being unfaithful and ruining the relationship completely by converting it in one that is twice as insecure, that scene where the blonde hits Yuki and she explains to her crying that it was a coincidence that they met, she had me afraid, I understand that the blonde is insecure because she already cheated on her but ... hitting her without letting her give explanations? And after that, although by accident, a woman kissed Yukino to which she does not tell the blonde at any time, gosh,a lil of plot hole there(that plotwist of the friend resulting being "bad" all this time was also ridiculous)
I also have to add how incredibly annoying that arc is where Yukino "discovers her sexuality" not only the cheating annoyed me, but ALL THAT was to not reach any conclusion in the end, she only knows that she likes Setsuko and she turns out to be one a woman (typical yuri cliche).Yukino said she didn't like having sex with a man but when they ask her if she likes women she says she doesn't know ... it's so contradictory, and let's not even talk about Setsuko, she says she doesn't like penises (of the men at least) and it is implied that when she had sex with a woman for the first time "she understood" but later she tells Yukino that she really loved Kei at that time and later rejects him and says "nothing it's going to be possible between the two of us", because she is dating with Yukino? because she doesn't like dudes?idk i'm not against "not labelling urself" but they make it all so confuse
I can understand most from the time they were in but it left a bad taste in my mouth, I generally have no problem with this kind of story but this was just annoying.

I also have to add how incredibly annoying that arc is where Yukino "discovers her sexuality" not only the cheating annoyed me, but ALL THAT was to not reach any conclusion in the end, she only knows that she likes Setsuko and she turns out to be one a woman (typical yuri cliche).Yukino said she didn't like having sex with a man but when they ask her if she likes women she says she doesn't know ... it's so contradictory, and let's not even talk about Setsuko, she says she doesn't like penises (of the men at least) and it is implied that when she had sex with a woman for the first time "she understood" but later she tells Yukino that she really loved Kei at that time and later rejects him and says "nothing it's going to be possible between the two of us", because she is dating with Yukino? because she doesn't like dudes?idk i'm not against "not labelling urself" but they make it all so confuse

The reason you're confused is because the characters are confused. They don't know what's going on either, that's what the story is about, figuring those things out. It's messy and confusing because that's what it's like.

speaking as someone who's lived through this kind of thing, i think all the confusion around labels is the most realistic part of this manga. there's a lot of pressure from heteronormative society to accept an all-or-nothing label so you're easier to understand, but people aren't so simple.