When you so gay that you keep a job you're not fond of and absolutely clueless about because of a pretty girl

^^^^

Wow this is an astonishing amount of red flags. If all they do is play it off for jokes I’ll probably not get into this series tbh. I feel like I don’t have a great grasp on what this story actually is right now. Is it supposed to be an office comedy? A romance between her an the sex worker? An edutainment piece on the sex work industry in Japan? I have no clue where this is going.

Is someone gonna teach her how to photoshop or is she supposed to learn on the job while having to amend 280+ pics on a 10-ten deadline? I'm like feeling so bad for this girl... she seems like a pushover.
I'd rather be unemployed or working a part-time job while trying to find something thats not so sketch if this was the work environment I was getting into. God this is reminding me too much of my first job, especially the enormous first assignment with no proper guidance/training while my manager downplays the workload.

Why can't they choose the best photos first, then do the touch ups? Wouldn't that be way less work? What, does the client not know how to use thier imagination or something? Or do they just like to make their office drones do unnecessary busy work?

OK, just no. Those last 2 rules are breaking so many workers laws & ethics violations that I question how they're still in business. For starters only paying in cash allows them to easily commit fraud & tax violations, if I'd have heard this alone I'd jump ship & report it.

Then these idiots are audacious enough to CHARGE their EMPLOYEES for being late. That's ridiculous on so many levels and if this practice is actually common in Japan then it's no wonder their economy is in the toilet.

Its clearly supposed to be shady af

I wonder if the salary is at least good. Being paid in cash is not all that uncommon in Japan though, when I worked there (at a completely normal hotel) I was always paid in cash only. Mainly because opening a Japanese bank account is a pain though :D

Paying a ~50$ fine for being late to work... wut??

After this second chapter, it confirms my fears. The Yuri was added at the last second. The story is going to focus on the prostitution industry, or rather "in-store health". It's not a bad thing, but it doesn't interest me. I don't care about straight men's prostitution works.
At worst, they should have talk about the problems in prostitution in Japon. At best, they could have talk about why there is no real lesbian prostitution in Japan. Most of the so-called lesbian prostitution are run by guys for guys.
The only thing that brought me to read this manga is the Yuri tag. And I think that the relationship between the MC and the top girl will not be romantic, but only admiration. The MC "She is beautiful", the top girl "She is cute".

Wow this is an astonishing amount of red flags. If all they do is play it off for jokes I’ll probably not get into this series tbh. I feel like I don’t have a great grasp on what this story actually is right now. Is it supposed to be an office comedy? A romance between her an the sex worker? An edutainment piece on the sex work industry in Japan? I have no clue where this is going.

That sums it up well. The premise is different for sure, but they haven't given us any direction on where the story itself is going. I'm probably done reading this one.

Is someone gonna teach her how to photoshop or is she supposed to learn on the job while having to amend 280+ pics on a 10-ten deadline? I'm like feeling so bad for this girl... she seems like a pushover.
I'd rather be unemployed or working a part-time job while trying to find something thats not so sketch if this was the work environment I was getting into. God this is reminding me too much of my first job, especially the enormous first assignment with no proper guidance/training while my manager downplays the workload.

She almost certainly knows how to use photoshop, but you do have a point that she likely does not know the specifics of the touch-ups and alterations that are desired in the adult entertainment business.

Also, this is beyond being a black company. This is a straight-up yakuza-owned sweatshop where you get horrendous fines for being late and are paid in cash while listed as an employee of some shell company that acts as a front for this shady mess. Altering and touching up 283 high-res photos from a multi-model shoot in 10 days would be ridiculous even if she was a veteran at it. Assuming an 8-hour workday, that's like 16 minutes a photo and that's presuming she has absolutely no other duties and dedicates every moment she is there to this task. Working on photos of humans, particularly faces, is even more exacting and time-consuming since people tend to be very good at picking up on even minute nonconformities when it comes to examining the human form. Thus the work has to be done to a higher standard than most other subjects and there are a lot of corners she can't cut.

last edited at Aug 7, 2021 11:24AM

Such a good manga, so much knee-jerk hating. Siiiigh.

I'll just make in passing a couple of remarks. First, we don't know her salary yet. If it's high enough, I bet she doesn't give a fig about the shady side of the business. Second, there's only so much gilding you can do before losing your customers. It's clear that most of those photos won't need redrawing; just some airbrushing and they go.

Oh, and one more remark (that's three, too bad): best thing in the manga? SAYU X TOMOE, BITCHES.

Oh, so that's why the title is "Panel x Magic"! Lol. I'm sticking around to see if this might turn to another "Ah and Mm are All She Says" manga which I like since it showed the importance of editors, even in the porn comic industry. Panel x Magic has the potential of showing the inner workings of OLs/office workers managing a "fashion health" service, instead of focusing on the prostitutes themselves. We barely have those stories at all. Given that prostitution is illegal in Japan, so it's def going to be shady! Idk why some complain, I mean it's a given already (plus the tags are there), lol. I wonder when the yuri will happen tho. It's just two chapters so I'll manage my expectations.

Altering and touching up 283 high-res photos from a multi-model shoot in 10 days would be ridiculous even if she was a veteran at it. Assuming an 8-hour workday, that's like 16 minutes a photo and that's presuming she has absolutely no other duties and dedicates every moment she is there to this task. Working on photos of humans, particularly faces, is even more exacting and time-consuming since people tend to be very good at picking up on even minute nonconformities when it comes to examining the human form. Thus the work has to be done to a higher standard than most other subjects and there are a lot of corners she can't cut.

Indeed. If you add in time for lunch and without working on weekends, this is cut down to ~11.9 mins per photo. I’m pretty sure that’s nearly humanly impossible. Even if you work extra hours (say until 9/10pm) and on weekends, subtracting lunch and dinner time, you only get at most ~23.3 mins per photo. Although a bit less than double the time, that sounds still kind of hard...

last edited at Aug 8, 2021 1:58AM

I guess it all depends on the quality of work required. Some of the touch up can be done real quick with some tools, like erasing a bit of areola, or "whiting" an area (assuming by that, they do ask to simply put a white circle/square on the ko part), but yeah, toning down nipples or slimming down a model might require more work (though it also depends on several factors).

Having worked as a graphist myself in printing industry, this gives me flashback of one of my worst job where I was required to make adjustements for cards and expected to do nearly 250 a day. Thankfully, a good chunck of that was very minor stuff and in the end, only a bit over half actually require some "real" work, but yeah, you have do dedicate your whole day to that and learn to streamline with tools as much as you can, so you can do a job in just a few minutes. But yeah, sometimes, a work is so botched up to begin with you simply can't do it fast, or it'll come back to you later with a revenge.

The number of work and the deadline is still heavy, especially for a newcomer who they probably don't really know the level of skill, but at this point, it's obvious it's intended to be an absurdly demanding job.

how is this yuri lmao? guess we'll wait and see

I guess it all depends on the quality of work required. Some of the touch up can be done real quick with some tools, like erasing a bit of areola, or "whiting" an area (assuming by that, they do ask to simply put a white circle/square on the ko part), but yeah, toning down nipples or slimming down a model might require more work (though it also depends on several factors).

Having worked as a graphist myself in printing industry, this gives me flashback of one of my worst job where I was required to make adjustements for cards and expected to do nearly 250 a day. Thankfully, a good chunck of that was very minor stuff and in the end, only a bit over half actually require some "real" work, but yeah, you have do dedicate your whole day to that and learn to streamline with tools as much as you can, so you can do a job in just a few minutes. But yeah, sometimes, a work is so botched up to begin with you simply can't do it fast, or it'll come back to you later with a revenge.

The number of work and the deadline is still heavy, especially for a newcomer who they probably don't really know the level of skill, but at this point, it's obvious it's intended to be an absurdly demanding job.

Wow... I see. Thanks for the insight ^o^

Chapter 2 is a steaming data dump. I can tell by the talking heads that this manga will be painfully short on plot, character development, and yuri-ness. I’d say this manga will be shorter than ten chapters, and that’s due to the editor pulling the plug on this one.

Explaining the industry doesn’t seem to concern the MC, since she’s just touching up photos. Now, if this turns into some sort of crime noir manga, O.K. the conditions are set up on the chess board, now let’s see how this plays out.

I believe the “Yuri”-tag was used to get uploaded to this website. The “Yuri”-tag should be eliminated as I don’t see any chemistry happening except from the flirty co-worker in chapter one.

Kabukicho (the pink district in Tokyo’s Shinjuku ward) is so infamously affiliated with organized crime that there’s an entire long-running series of video games about (I keep acquiring Yakuza games for free during PS+ promotions at a somewhat alarming pace). I’m sure there are soaplands and “health” businesses that aren’t associated with the yakuza, but I’m equally certain there are. It’s not lighthearted fun and games (trafficking, extortion, protection rackets, violence against sex workers), but it’s also pretty much ignored by the legal authorities below a certain threshold. Jake Adelstein’s Tokyo Vice is largely about his work as a reporter trying to get the Japanese authorities to take trafficking of girls and women from other Asian countries (and Russia & Ukraine) seriously.

Combine that with an economy that is still not very hospitable to new entrants to the workforce, and this seems at worst mildly implausible, and pretty reasonable for something played for laughs. The phrase “black company” exists in Japan for a reason.

Also, it could be a covert commentary on the anime and manga industries themselves. Having done some piecework production art for a reputable manga publisher in the past, I can tell you that that schedule and level of expectation doesn’t actually seem very out of the ordinary. It’s all extremely shady (and is meant to be perceived that way) but it’s not too far out there. I find the idea of a story about a bunch of more or less normal office workers trying to cope with the exigencies of working for the mob, and the possibility of flirting between the MC and some of the girls she’s touching up, to be pretty entertaining.

Well it seems like we're going down the route of office comedy with potential romance with the top girl. The weird thing about it is that it still feels framed like it's trying to be an edutainment manga despite not really having anything remotely educational

Ah yes,judge the yuri comic about a girl admiring the female body by saying it's not yuri.

Insight comics are always welcomed,this will probably get two volumes if the balance is kept good.

Ah yes,judge the yuri comic

Except this isn't a yuri comic. It runs in Comic Flapper, which isn't a yuri magazine. And while non-yuri magazines do publish yuri manga sometimes, those manga are generally stated as being yuri. This one is not.

I'd say the tag should be changed to "yuri crush" for now. If later on we get some actual yuri, the tag can be changed again.

last edited at Aug 11, 2021 11:10PM

I’m sorry, but this manga seems fascinating to me. The haters seem really petty. There’s an extremely obvious path to romance here and this chapter sets it up. I for one am glad it’s not another one of the umpteen billionth lesbian prostitute mangas we’ve had recently and is about the support staff instead, you know the people who never get talked about in the other stories. I guess the average Dynasty commentator has such a short attention span than if the girls don’t shove their tongues down each other’s throat and crash their crotches together in the first chapter it’s too slow.

That fatty at the store is a great wingman! Now Tomoe and Sayu can have an office date. <3

I’m going to follow this story until tag Yuri comes up. I hope this doesn’t bored me in the middle and there’s no girl love forming.

I can feel it, guys. The yuri is coming.