Well, I liked the art style and the story itself, looks interesting

last edited at Dec 22, 2020 11:41AM

I LOVE the typesetting in this, in particular, the handwritten SFX and song lyrics.

This is an interesting one, to be sure. Secret romances are nothing new, but it's interesting how both characters are from privileged positions in society, and yet deal with their statuses in entirely different ways. I like the minimalist approach to dialogue and the dark, cramped posturing- it's intimate as heck, but also suffocating.

I wonder if the water and tea allusions have a deeper meaning- Mizuno, much like water, seems to go along with the flow on the surface, but also doesn't relent when there's something she wants achieved. We don't learn all that much about Chayama, though- maybe she was the one who originally caught Mizuno's eye and blended into her, lending her a flavour and identity beyond 'local politician's well-mannered daughter'? We'll have to see in future chapters, which I shall look forward to, because you can't go wrong with lesbians, angst and aquatic metaphors.

Fucking loving the vibes from this already

I was wondering when this was going to make it's way here. I'm going to guess that this story will only become increasingly depressing. Also the toilet flush was due to them having sex and climaxing in the stall correct?

Woah this art style is so beautiful (⁄ ⁄•⁄ω⁄•⁄ ⁄)

last edited at Dec 22, 2020 11:09AM

Such incredible art. Great work on the translation, too. The immediate groundedness felt unusual, and then I noticed the author. Of course it's not just Yuri, but also a larger character piece in a larger world. Bullied girl's design is also impeccable. Really looking forward to this one.

Character design is on point. I love it. Interesting way of throwing the readers the hook. I'm staying for more. Looks angsty.

Also the toilet flush was due to them having sex and climaxing in the stall correct?

Seems like it. I thought the long-haired girl was helping the other one take a dump. Then: okay that makes sense with those dangling pair of legs and the third one hitting the flush.

Seems like it. I thought the long-haired girl was helping the other one take a dump.

I don't know why but that hit me just the right wrong way and I have been laughing for the last few minutes lol

The only thing I kept thinking was I hope she washed her hands before that hug man >.>

Small details like this always make me squirm lol

Good art, but that was confusing nevertheless.

I LOVE the typesetting in this, in particular, the handwritten SFX and song lyrics.

Thank you very much for the compliment!!! I worked really hard on this!

nice art

Artwork is fantastic! Looking out for more of this. Keep up the good work!

I don't want to sound like a broken record but the art in this one is really good.
I'm curious about seeing how this story will develop too.

Next yuri anime right here idk why but i feel it

Ooo this looks like something that has been well thought out and I agree with everyone else that the art is lovely

Interested to see where it goes

I do think the art is really nice, and the translation and typesetting is really impressive. And I liked After Hours, so I'm definitely in for this...and I also like Kirin's analysis. But I have to say I got almost none of that from the chapter? I had a hard time parsing action and time sequence in this story, and I couldn't figure out what the bullies had done to Chayama. Had they sealed the toilet stall she was in with electrical tape? Why is she dizzy? I guess that's her coughing, but then there's the girl with the mask on, and I wasn't sure? Is it...have they somehow cut off oxygen to the stall?

As an elementary and middle school student, I was subjected to a lot of bullying, but I have to say that the technique on display here was new to me. I never encountered a bathroom stall like the one in the manga––which seems to be potentially airtight?––so I imagine if it were a familiar construction, that would make this a little clearer. So perhaps it's a cultural thing I wouldn't bat an eye at if I lived in Japan. But even though the art is awesome, there is this thing I noticed in After Hours frequently as well, where the artist moves from strong composition to strong composition, but what's happening between compositions, while often important to the plot, is really unclear. I especially recall a character in conversation with other characters, and then in the next panel he has run back in the parking lot and locked himself in their van. The jump in space is hardly visually delineated; he's in one place, and then in the next panel he's in the other. It makes it a little too hard to follow the action sometimes. After Hours had a really easy-to-follow narrative, which made up for that, and even made the swift transitions seem like compelling style. Because this story is so far about clandestine meetups between people, their secret relationships, and a strong narrative direction doesn't immediately emerge from this first chapter, I wish the action was clearer––specifically surrounding the bullying scene and the...I guess it was a love scene afterwards? I mean, I get that's what it's supposed to be now that I've read everyone's comments, and reread the scene, but...I had absolutely no read on the panel of the toilet flushing with the feet before reading about it here. I have the sense of every so often wanting a panel between the ones we're given, where the movement from one pose to another, from one place to another, becomes easier to track. It would have been nice if Chayama's coughing had continued after the bullies left, and even up through when Mizuno opens up the stall and reveals her––just so we knew for sure it was her doing it, and not, you know, the bully with the face mask, or whatever. Maybe this is a common bullying technique in Japanese schools, and I just don't know the custom.

Perhaps I'm more sensitive to this because I just saw that movie, Tenet, which was maddeningly opaque, on purpose, so I have less patience than usual for stylized obscurity, and I want clearer action in my narratives. I still really like the story and I'm looking forward to the next chapter, but, gosh, this one was demanding for the reader in an acutely frustrating way.

last edited at Dec 23, 2020 5:49AM

Everyone: OMG I love the story!
Me: ... I'm confused, didn't understand a single thing. Does this have something to do with Japanese customs?

Next yuri anime right here idk why but i feel it

Nope. Manga's completed already.

Very spicy and very well written/drawn/scanlated.

But I have to say that suffocating someone with an aerosol is much more grave than the tone seems to recognize. Like...shy girl could have literally died

Am I the only one who read the sideways text at the bottom left of the title page as "Young Tender Hearts for Breakfast"? Yeah... probably...

Everyone: OMG I love the story!
Me: ... I'm confused, didn't understand a single thing. Does this have something to do with Japanese customs?

Assuming this reply was directed at me, maybe I can make my point a little finer. I do think there is something in the layout of Nishio Yuhta's art that makes the details of the plot unclear on first read. This boils down to choices Nishio makes about the size and shape of panels, where Nishio chooses to place the "camera"––i.e., our perspective on the individual panels––and how Nishio uses flats, hatching and tone.

A lot of those choices and their sometimes negative effects can be seen in the spread on pages 20-21. The lion's share of the spread is taken up with the one panel, where Mizuno enters the restroom. We see the chief bully and her two accomplices, but not the subject of the bullying. I get that Nishio is saving Chayama's reveal for later, and that makes sense, but the parts of this composition that immediately draw your eye––because they get the most real estate and contract on the page––are the face of the chief bully and the body of the bully who's kicking the restroom stall. On first glance, it gives the impression that the bully kicking the stall is the one doing the bullying in the scene. The aerosol can that is the direct source of the bullying is actually obscured behind the bully with the mask's leg––her whole arm is hidden from our vantage point, so when Nishio cuts to a close-up in the next panel, the aerosol can, along with the hand holding it, aren't clearly assigned to any character in the previous panel. The girl with the mask is also blocking the hole they're using to spray the aerosol with her shoe. When I zoom in close I see sound effects trying to compensate for this––the girl with the mask is shaking the can, presumably. And then the smaller close-up panel on the left side of the spread is much less readable. It's hard to know what to focus on in that panel. The foot kicking the door seems to be the through-line from the previous panel; the aerosol can and the hand holding are things we didn't see previously. To be really clear what I'm suggesting here, I think if Nishio had shown the girl with the mask visibly shaking the aerosol can in the larger first panel, the action in the second panel would have been much clearer. Even so, there is the scream, "Cut it out," which is unattributed on the page. Looking at the next page, I can sort of assume Mizuno has shouted this, but even with the context of the second page, it isn't very clear she's done so.

Also, because Nishio chooses to use hatching and tone primarily as a realistic lighting effect, that texture usually doesn't help to read the story action on the page. On the pg. 20-21 spread, for instance, the aerosol can could have been surrounded by tone, haloing it and calling it out as the focus of the panel composition. As it is, the more dynamic foot banging on the stall grabs attention, with it's pose, effects, and action lines. The speech bubble in the center takes up a lot of space as well, and competes for narrative attention, since we don't know who's speaking yet. The ultimate effect is that the impact of the actual bullying is dulled considerably by other visual elements competing for our attention. The girl making all the noise isn't the primary bully of the scene, and understanding her actions won't make the bullying more visually clear. But she grabs a lot of visual attention on first read, and the masked girl with the aerosol can attracts less visual attention.

This is indicative of a common lack of follow-up on characters' actions and their changing moods from panel to panel, which makes Nishio's work hard to entirely get on the first read-through. There are similar issues of framing and choreography on pages 33, 34, and 36, where it's hard to tell what the characters are actually doing, or why they're doing...whatever it is they're doing. Certainly, I've been able to make more sense of it reading it through a second and third time, but the way I look at it is that the choreography and the angle of some of these compositions could be altered slightly, sharpened, and the whole scene would be more visually focused on the elements of the story the reader needs to get right away.

As far as the construction of the toilet stall being a peculiarly Japanese thing, what I meant was that I don't know of any such toilet stalls––even taller ones like you see in some schools in South Korea, for instance––that don't ventilate at the top. In order for this bullying trick to work––attempted murder, really, as macfluffers points out––the stall has to be sealable from floor to ceiling, and I've just not seen any toilet stalls where the door is built to ceiling height. Maybe that's common in Japanese school bathrooms? I've never been to Japan and so I don't know. I've never to my knowledge seen such a bathroom stall depicted in a Japanese film or manga. If the intent of that last comment ("Does this have something to do with Japanese customs?") was that I was being culturally insensitive, all I'm doing here is trying to foreground my own ignorance as one of the possible reasons I have a hard time interpreting this bullying scene. But again, Nishio never draws the entire stall, floor to ceiling, so I simply have to imagine the door extents all the way to the ceiling, and––culturally insensitive or not, though I prefer to think of it as culturally unaware––I would never assume that to be the case.

As for the common consensus on it being good, I don't object. I did enjoy this chapter, even though I had a lot of trouble visually unpacking the story. I liked the mood a lot, and the interesting feeling between the two girls. And I do like the art a lot––individual panels look great, the style of drawing characters is very rich and rewarding––when you see their faces in full, their expressions speak volumes. But I do think there is room to improve on Nishio's approach to choreographing his comics––arranging the the mis en scene, so to speak––for more immediate clarity. It's something less ambitious artists pull off more capably on a lot of other yuri manga. It's a pain to have to go back and re-read a chapter to understand what's going on, and it could be avoided if Nishio could visually edit his work to read more clearly at crucial junctures.

This is an interesting one, to be sure. Secret romances are nothing new, but it's interesting how both characters are from privileged positions in society, and yet deal with their statuses in entirely different ways. I like the minimalist approach to dialogue and the dark, cramped posturing- it's intimate as heck, but also suffocating.

What makes you say they're both coming from privileged positions? Chayama seems anything but privileged, to the point where people, allegedly, avoid a bathroom just to make sure no one thinks they associate with her.

This is an interesting one, to be sure. Secret romances are nothing new, but it's interesting how both characters are from privileged positions in society, and yet deal with their statuses in entirely different ways. I like the minimalist approach to dialogue and the dark, cramped posturing- it's intimate as heck, but also suffocating.

What makes you say they're both coming from privileged positions? Chayama seems anything but privileged, to the point where people, allegedly, avoid a bathroom just to make sure no one thinks they associate with her.

The summary (only on MD, for some reason) mentions that Chayama's the sole daughter of a tea plantation owner, which is why she's bullied, since the local politicians believe that the plantation's bad for the environment. So while her current popularity is definitely low, I'm assuming she was born into some decent money, since big plantations don't come cheap. Heck, that might actually be one of the reasons for the bullying- I don't think random bitchy teenagers give three shits about the environment. They probably just saw a shy, gloomy rich girl and felt envious of everything she had.

last edited at Dec 24, 2020 3:24AM