"The entire purpose of writing is to communicate with the audience"

I suppose true for a sufficiently broad notion of 'communication'. But writing can be aiming to convey facts, give commands, tell a story, persuade, or create an abstract or emotional mood. Paradoxes and nonsense stretch the notion of 'communication' but can still serve a purpose. You don't even need real words!

Olo molo janga kolo

Kek mork zidikiz ak pakt

you could have a whole poem in one of those styles and it wouldn't mean anything concrete but might induce a mood.

Anyway, I realize I may have gone pedantic. Certainly I'd say the ending of this thing was not successful, unless the author wanted to induce a feeling of confusion and frustration.

Which is a pity because the earlier part of the story was emotionally gripping. I cared about the characters and their situation and how it might resolve. I was upset when Uta moved out, though I see how it made sense (though the mother seemed to show up just to provide her a place to go).

But looking back, lots of flaws too: convenient mother ex machina. Unexplained de-licensing. Uta's friends who vanished once not needed.

"the ending is pretty much fine in a vacuum"

I'll even accept Reichii living nearby, as I've said. And yeah, "Uta and Kaoru in love", "Uta grinding on Kaoru in a sexually one-sided relationships", "Uta still living in frustration", would all have been doable destinations. But we skipped most of the journey, to... whatever destination it was.

---

"the ending is pretty much fine in a vacuum"

I'll even accept Reichii living nearby, as I've said. And yeah, "Uta and Kaoru in love", "Uta grinding on Kaoru in a sexually one-sided relationships", "Uta still living in frustration", would all have been doable destinations. But we skipped most of the journey, to... whatever destination it was.

I pretty much agree with this, with any serialized story, it’s the journey that is the most important. Because it was pretty bad and didn’t feel complete, it made the ending THAT much worse.

Blastaar posted:

And “good” or “successful” isn’t an either/or binary

There's plenty of series that are incredibly well-written and good, but only appeal to very small minority of people, hence are not really popular. They could even get axed because of that reason. Meanwhile you have plenty of average and bad stories that people get invested in and they're dragged into oblivion and consider major monetary success. Most readers are really simple to please. Just look at anime scene in general. We keep complaining most anime is poorly made trash, yet they keep churning them out every season, because people watch them regardless.

I do get tired of my analysis of narrative construction and characterization getting dismissed as mere disappointed shipping and a desire for fanservice.

I honestly find it insulting that asking for author to actually address the main conflict that was presented from chapter 1 is somehow considered fanservice and demanding.

last edited at Oct 22, 2020 3:02PM

This manga deserved to be axed 30 chapters ago.

Maybe all of them are asexual

Some people feel safe to love someone who won't reciprocate their feelings

Finding Jessica Lambert posted:

Some people feel safe to love someone who won't reciprocate their feelings

Except Uta wanted her feelings to be reciprocated, that's why she was agonizing over them.

last edited at Oct 22, 2020 3:52PM

Finding Jessica Lambert posted:

Some people feel safe to love someone who won't reciprocate their feelings

Except Uta wanted her feelings to be reciprocated, that's why she was agonizing over them.

It's called a wishful thinking

....

Anyway, my impression- this is actually the beginning of healthy love between Uta and Kaoru. The end of toxic times, cleaning and clearing the road for healthy start.
I was seeing Kaour like spinless parasite, thank God she took her life in her hands...

And, there is one detail, Uta is blushing at the door. Could they possibly be lovers already, at that time?
Ending depends on reader, I think.

last edited at Feb 23, 2023 12:28AM

Ending depends on reader, I think.

As with so much in this series—the readers couldn’t depend on the author, that’s for sure.

Finding Jessica Lambert posted:

Finding Jessica Lambert posted:

Some people feel safe to love someone who won't reciprocate their feelings

Except Uta wanted her feelings to be reciprocated, that's why she was agonizing over them.

It's called a wishful thinking :)

Rotfl. If Uta was ok with just loving Kaoru, because she knew she won't reciprocate her feelings then she wouldn't be suffering living in the same house as her, interacting with her knowing she's married, eventually confessing to her and after being rejected moving out, despite later saying she wants to live together with her, but she can't while her relationship with Kaoru is the way it is. Entire story would literally not happen and Uta would just keep living with Kaoru and Reiichi, completely content with her life.

And, there is one detail, Uta is blushing at the door. Could they possibly be lovers already, at that time?
Ending depends on reader, I think.

No shit. That's exactly the reason everyone is pissed. Because author left it up to readers.

Wow what a complete waste of time I spent reading this for the past 4 years.

Yes, yes, I agree with you, Nevri, your arguments are right.
I just did not mention Uta, saying "Some people feel safe to love someone who won't reciprocate their feelings"

It was just one thought inspired by manga, in general...

About the open ending, I would like to read part 2, a plot focused on Kuro
I really wish the open ending was the way for a side story, not leaving it up to readers

Ending depends on reader, I think.

As with so much in this series—the readers couldn’t depend on the author, that’s for sure.

Yeah, I really like to think it was just an escape into part 2

Wow what a complete waste of time I spent reading this for the past 4 years.

The fact that the last page says "Thank you all for reading these past four years!!" simultaneously angers me and makes me want to laugh. The absolute audacity of acknowledging how long the author's kept us on tenterhooks, when this is that final resolution, I feels like tMnR just stole my lunch money.

I feels like tMnR just stole my lunch money.

This is a great line—and I feel your pain.

(I only bought the first volume.)

I’m glad it ended like this; I love it so much. In all honesty, I never felt like Uta and Kaoru getting together was possible in the first place, because it sounds “convenient” and out-of-place when Kaoru, who’s had deep troubles with her husband, latch onto Uta as a romantic candidate. As told by the title, “Unrequited Love” is the final ending to me. Simply because I don’t see the two working out in the end. If anything, I’m concerned about how Kaoru manages herself.

The fact that the author is vague about the ending means that it’s not important. The central theme is about their development in those years where Uta was a child who was in love with Kaoru. How it’s going to end is just a small detail to me. If anything, I’m just glad that it seems like they both are doing well, judging from the somewhat down-to-earth, light hearted tone of the last pages. Reading this manga, I went from wanting a romance to just plainly hoping for the characters to be okay in the end. And I got that.

The only one thing is that I wish I could have seen a bit more of Kuro.. I really liked her!

Everyone: Man, I sure am tired of time skip endings in yuri manga.
Author: Two time skips in the final chapter, coming right up!

In all seriousness, I'm not sure how to feel about this ending. I certainly didn't expect it to come so soon, which is probably why I'm unsure. I didn't think there was a clear ending in sight yet, so it just kind of feels like, "Oh, I guess it's over now. Okay." And not like it was brought to a natural and meaningful conclusion. I am glad that everyone seems to be happy now, so that's something. It's not a horrible ending, but it caught me off guard, leaving me a bit unsatisfied. I guess it felt like the manga was about to do more things, interesting things, and didn't.

The fact also remains that the central dramatic question of the manga titled "My Unrequited Love" has always been Will Uta's love ever be requited?, a question that is never really answered. I guess the answer might be supposed to be "No", and I'm not really sure what my feelings on that are if that's the case, but the lack of clarity on top of that makes it feel disappointing and confusing. There's some good stuff in this manga, but I can't help but feel that it missed the mark a bit with what it was trying to do.

last edited at Oct 22, 2020 10:57PM

What kind of ending was that wtf, so rushed. Kinda disappointed but at the same time I'm not, I more or less expected this kind of thing.

If the purpose of writing is communication, the author did a piss-poor job of delivering that communication, because no one knows exactly what happened at the end of this "story." It doesn't matter how many people purchase a bucket of shit for $9.99, it's still a bucket of shit.

But it is probably good shit, if you are growing roses it might be just what you want. If you put it in your sandwich, then complain about it being shit, then that says more about you.

last edited at Oct 23, 2020 1:40AM

circamoore posted:

If the purpose of writing is communication, the author did a piss-poor job of delivering that communication, because no one knows exactly what happened at the end of this "story." It doesn't matter how many people purchase a bucket of shit for $9.99, it's still a bucket of shit.

But it is probably good shit, if you are growing roses it might be just what you want. If you put it in your sandwich, then complain about it being shit, then that says more about you.

I love how you give up on addressing all the arguments that completely invalidate yours and choose to reply to easiest to refute.

If the purpose of writing is communication, the author did a piss-poor job of delivering that communication, because no one knows exactly what happened at the end of this "story." It doesn't matter how many people purchase a bucket of shit for $9.99, it's still a bucket of shit.

But it is probably good shit, if you are growing roses it might be just what you want. If you put it in your sandwich, then complain about it being shit, then that says more about you.

Then what does it speak of when that bucket-o-turd is being sold for putting onto bread (and people still, ahem, eat it up)...?

last edited at Oct 23, 2020 3:32AM

Wow. Just wow. That was the ending? So glad we all wasted 4 years following this series to get that kind of ending.../s

The author should feel ashamed to conclude the story like that. What a load of bullshit.

circamoore posted:

If the purpose of writing is communication, the author did a piss-poor job of delivering that communication, because no one knows exactly what happened at the end of this "story." It doesn't matter how many people purchase a bucket of shit for $9.99, it's still a bucket of shit.

But it is probably good shit, if you are growing roses it might be just what you want. If you put it in your sandwich, then complain about it being shit, then that says more about you.

I love how you give up on addressing all the arguments that completely invalidate yours and choose to reply to easiest to refute.

Because people have been doing exactly that to any post where I put more than one paragraph, I was restricting my responses.

I have challenged people repeatedly to explain how (other than reader projection) the question of a real concrete relationship (or not) between Kaoru and Uta could be a central theme, when the possibility only entered the text in chapter 36, and I have been met with a resounding silence (once we exclude people deciding to pick on a context sentence for an easy win).

Not to mention the related point, also repeatedly raised - Uta and Kaoru started the story being tortured by their feelings, and ended the story having come to terms with their own feelings and eachothers - how is that not a resolution?

The writing has not been perfect. My central theme over and over again is that it is more useful to see the quality of the work as a nuanced multidimensional whole - an aggregate of strengths and weaknesses, successes and failures of storytelling, rather than to write off a flawed work as "bad writing". For many of us the strengths in this work outweigh the weaknesses - it is positive for us, "good", even if not perfectly so. Perhaps for you it isn't. That doesn't mean one person's taste is better than another, it means they are different.

Good, bad, strong, weak, succeed, fail - they can all only be judged in context, with a purpose, and everybody's context is different; some things work broadly, some things fail broadly but nothing is universal. People weight different points differently, have differing assessments of a particular point, and don't even use the same set of set of points.

Popularity/success of a work is a strong indication that it has "worked" for many people, that in their contexts it did something right.

The experience of different people reading the same work is connected, but also unique - that's fandom in all its ugly splendor.

I'm going to risk an analogy, even though they always seem to bite me in the ass. Let's talk about fun.

I expect there are a lot of neurodiverse people here (it is a forum for a web manga site after all; if you aren't, you know someone who is).
As a neurodiverse person Imagine some kind happy party-going extrovert butting in on whatever you are enjoying doing and telling you that you need to get out and have some fun. Imagine that well-intentioned but clueless bastard thinking they have the universal and exclusive definition of what "real" fun is.

Now imagine they are confidently asserting that the thing you enjoy is "bad" because it doesn't meet their expectations of it.

By all means talk about what does and doesn't work for you, but don't presume that people who perceive things differently are wrong or blind.

If the purpose of writing is communication, the author did a piss-poor job of delivering that communication, because no one knows exactly what happened at the end of this "story." It doesn't matter how many people purchase a bucket of shit for $9.99, it's still a bucket of shit.

But it is probably good shit, if you are growing roses it might be just what you want. If you put it in your sandwich, then complain about it being shit, then that says more about you.

Then what does it speak of when that bucket-o-turd is being sold for putting onto bread (and people still, ahem, eat it up)...?

Or did you just assume that it was, because it was billed as nutritious - when consumed by organisms with needs different from your own.

last edited at Oct 23, 2020 5:29AM

My take on the ending? Uta may have met someone but didn't work out; Kaoru sorted herself, and then at some point they meet again at Uta's graduation and from then on started spending time again together and finally realized they're now on the same page. Its kinda awkward though when Uta and Kaoru lives so close to Reichi's because well.. That was your husband and now you're dating his sister? XD I wonder what is everyone else's take on the final chapter. Like if you were the author, how would you have ended things?