thats a nasty scar youve got there

Love how this chapter explores in detail one of the series' central themes and motifs- traces, specifically through the images of scars, rotting, bodies and remnants. A scar is an incredibly complex symbol, because it both fuels and undercuts the otherness that necessarily drives horror. On the one hand, a scar is inalienably tied to bodies, to life, to a corpus upon which it may be engraved, an ideal, unmarred form that it both suggests and smears, and yet scars also serve as inscriptions of death, of pain, of the vulnerability of the body, and of its biological, fleshy nature, refusing to let one cling to notions of a nonmaterial human essence. This churning, abject dichotomy instills in many people a sense of discomfort, leading them to stigmatize, essentialize, obscure or otherwise reduce the scarred subject to some manner of essence- the victim, the veteran, the monster, the survivor and so forth, symbolically replicating that very process of scarring, of a reduction and subtraction from the ideal form, which retroactively reinforces that very narrative, creating a vicious cycle that inscribes itself into the mind of the one who was scarred- that they've been left lesser for it, that they've become abject, dirty and soiled, that they'll never recover what was gone and, more importantly, never grow anything that might replace, surpass or otherwise improve their state. It is a mindset that Hinako has obviously imbibed, defining herself not only with reference to her scars, as a perennial leftover, a trace, a corpse-to-be, but as a scar in and of herself, because that is what her environment has reduced her to by constantly framing and viewing her as a victim, as someone who has suffered either That Which Must Not Be Spoken Of or That Which Must Always and Only Be Spoken of, either a silent sufferer walking by or an eternally medicalized diagnosis. Hinako in this sense may be read almost as a monster in and of herself, where monster suggests not necessarily a predatory entity, but an affect produced in the sociocultural imagination, a figure both alien and familiar, for it suggests in its plight what we shall one day face, or might have faced, a potential tragedy that must be cordoned off, explained away or profoundly personalized lest it become too universal- in short, an abjection, just like the pale hands reaching up from the beach, neither dead nor alive, but somehow all the more unsettling for it. Shiori calls them halfway between humans and monsters, but if humanity is an island and monsters are the ocean, then they may as well be halfway to infinity- a calculation that defies distance, logic, and tugs the seams of the coddled, untroubled mind apart, forcing us to see the telltale fingers and toes sticking out from underneath the stark white robe spread over our worldviews, suggesting that the world may well be a morgue. If we are to differentiate ourselves at all from these corpses, then they must be covered up or labelled, and that is what happens to Hinako- small wonder, then, that she already considers herself dead, and only awaits the second death, the inner death to accompany the outer, the death of sensation, of the child staring into the cracked mirror at the other to finally close her eyes and sink into a place beyond language, beyond the tyranny of signs that has designated her an anathema.

Miko, absent though she may be from this chapter, understands this extremely well, being a Scarred One herself- literally, in the tails she's torn off herself, becoming freakish both to humans and monsters, and in her more general narrative as a defeated monster who's now become a failed goddess, never quite fitting into any category. If Miko was judged solely on the basis of any of these archetypes, held beside an ideal type- the Apex Predator or the Mother Goddess- she would certainly be deemed a tragic failure, a leftover and a contradiction, because there shall always be a part of her that doesn't fit in, a reduction, a trace of that fleshy, material thisness, of who she is, of a complexity that cannot fit into a binary and is thus unsettling to most. And yet, in her own way, she feels the most human among the trio precisely because of this, solely due to her overflows, compromises, concessions and scars. Miko, in order to live with herself, to hold onto any sense of worth after her dual failures as beast and deity, had to have accepted the complexity of individuality, the inconsistency of uniqueness, the value of life in-and-of-itself, without being reduced to a narrative or a trope or a type. This is exactly why she can comfort Hinako, why she's the sole spot of light in Hinako's life- to Miko, Hinako's pain doesn't need to be discussed Right Now or shoved into some dark corner, but may be dealt with gently and spontaneously as and when it ebbs and flows. She doesn't essentialize Hinako, doesn't swell her into a Portrait of Our Times or reduce her into a Poor Traumatized Tragedy, but simply... lets her be, gives her space to breathe. Sadly, this isn't enough, because Hinako didn't recognize that her kindness came from a place of empathy until her self-worth was nearly too low to be salvaged, and indeed views Miko as too good for her, doing to Miko precisely what's been done to her, repeating the cycle of reductions by viewing her as this sunny angel who deserves to live for better things than managing some irrelevant accident survivor's trauma. The erasure of Hinako's complexity has in turn erased her ability to process complexity, and left her yearning indeed for simplicity on the other end of a life-death binary, a simplicity she sees in Shiori's open, unabashed monstrousness, viewing her as a perfect darkness in contrast to Miko's perfect light, and choosing the former, the Other Half of 'Halfway Between Human and Monster' that is in fact anything but equal, the dual lessness and excess of death.

But this chapter throws a wrench in that, because it hints that Shiori, too, is not free from that complexity, not capable of delivering Hinako oblivion, because just as Miko is not an absolute addition, Shiori is not an absolute subtraction- they're both neither parts and nor wholes, but variables, being at every given point more-than-themselves, just as Hinako is, regardless of how hard she tries to ignore that life is not a series of moments, but a tissue of potentialities. Shiori repeatedly undercuts the tension, stigma and abject otherness of Hinako's trauma in a way that's both similar yet different to Miko- while Miko gives Hinako distractions, new ways to perceive and define herself, and space, Shiori employs directness and humor to offset the terror of the hidden, as demonstrated by that delicious joke about how she'll yank Hinako's folks out of the waves and introduce herself. She's so incredibly blunt, unconcerned and different that Hinako's problems seem irrelevant before her, and so Hinako views her as an entity outside the moral cobwebs of signification, responsibility and meaning her environment has trapped her in, seeing her as an escape. But if Shiori wants, as she (increasingly unconvincingly) claims, to consume Hinako, she must necessarily give Hinako value, to want her As Herself- a want that Hinako is comfortable with insofar as it constitutes her as a product, as meat, because it's the same reduction she's faced all her life, only now with the promise of following itself through, of not reducing her with intent to reproduce the reduction, to keep pushing her away or crying for her pain, but to reduce Her, completely, to nothing, to silence. But if that floating future, that reference to a goal was revealed to be a lie, then Hinako would be desired solely for herself, valued because She Matters, not because of her scars, but despite them, beyond all questions of beauty or hideousness, beyond a binary of Life as Happiness and Death as Nothingness, but because she is, currently and indisputably, for all her pain, alive, full stop. And if Hinako realized this and enjoyed this, if she could bring herself to say, like Faust in Goethe, "I wish this moment would last forever", knowing full well it'd drag her to hell, then she would certainly instead be borne up to heaven, given human salvation because she recognizes herself as a human deserving, a human who loves life, which would make Shiori a willing Mephistopheles, a kind devil, a Monster Who Wants Me. But is there any place in heaven for a monster? What does it say about Hinako's society that the only reason she might ever want to keep living in it is because she was convinced to do so by its demons, its abjections, its Others? The attainment of true joy for Hinako would not be an ending, but a beginning, and yet we still don't know what that changing of phases, that transition shall demand, and if it shall leave a trace, a scar of its own, converting Hinako from not-quite-unfamiliar to not-quite-familiar, and leaving upon the earth the crust of a cocoon, the hidden, disembodied scar that even glorious chrysalis, marvel of nature, must necessarily generate. As always, I cannot wait to find out.

Hold your horses bro lmao

In fact it kinda reminds me about demons from manga I was reading recently, Sousou no Frieren. Because they're man-eating monsters the only reason they learn how to speak human language is to be able to deceive humans and ultimately eat them. They learn to say stuff like "My mother died." or "Humans killed my father too." to appeal to human's empathy, when they don't even know what mother or father means and have no concept of family. They're pretty much pretending to be just like humans in order to gain upper hand. Ignoring straight telling Hinako that she wants to eat her, it feels like Shiori is doing similar thing with trying to act as if she cares about Hinoko and make her bond with her and open up to her, but it's all just a act.

Basically a form of aggressive mimicry adapted for social, intelligent prey.

Love how this chapter explores in detail one of the series' central themes and motifs- traces, specifically through the images of scars, rotting, bodies and remnants. A scar is an incredibly complex symbol, because it both fuels and undercuts the otherness that necessarily drives horror. On the one hand, a scar is inalienably tied to bodies, to life, to a corpus upon which it may be engraved, an ideal, unmarred form that it both suggests and smears, and yet scars also serve as inscriptions of death, of pain, of the vulnerability of the body, and of its biological, fleshy nature, refusing to let one cling to notions of a nonmaterial human essence. This churning, abject dichotomy instills in many people a sense of discomfort, leading them to stigmatize, essentialize, obscure or otherwise reduce the scarred subject to some manner of essence- the victim, the veteran, the monster, the survivor and so forth, symbolically replicating that very process of scarring, of a reduction and subtraction from the ideal form, which retroactively reinforces that very narrative, creating a vicious cycle that inscribes itself into the mind of the one who was scarred- that they've been left lesser for it, that they've become abject, dirty and soiled, that they'll never recover what was gone and, more importantly, never grow anything that might replace, surpass or otherwise improve their state. It is a mindset that Hinako has obviously imbibed, defining herself not only with reference to her scars, as a perennial leftover, a trace, a corpse-to-be, but as a scar in and of herself, because that is what her environment has reduced her to by constantly framing and viewing her as a victim, as someone who has suffered either That Which Must Not Be Spoken Of or That Which Must Always and Only Be Spoken of, either a silent sufferer walking by or an eternally medicalized diagnosis. Hinako in this sense may be read almost as a monster in and of herself, where monster suggests not necessarily a predatory entity, but an affect produced in the sociocultural imagination, a figure both alien and familiar, for it suggests in its plight what we shall one day face, or might have faced, a potential tragedy that must be cordoned off, explained away or profoundly personalized lest it become too universal- in short, an abjection, just like the pale hands reaching up from the beach, neither dead nor alive, but somehow all the more unsettling for it. Shiori calls them halfway between humans and monsters, but if humanity is an island and monsters are the ocean, then they may as well be halfway to infinity- a calculation that defies distance, logic, and tugs the seams of the coddled, untroubled mind apart, forcing us to see the telltale fingers and toes sticking out from underneath the stark white robe spread over our worldviews, suggesting that the world may well be a morgue. If we are to differentiate ourselves at all from these corpses, then they must be covered up or labelled, and that is what happens to Hinako- small wonder, then, that she already considers herself dead, and only awaits the second death, the inner death to accompany the outer, the death of sensation, of the child staring into the cracked mirror at the other to finally close her eyes and sink into a place beyond language, beyond the tyranny of signs that has designated her an anathema.

Miko, absent though she may be from this chapter, understands this extremely well, being a Scarred One herself- literally, in the tails she's torn off herself, becoming freakish both to humans and monsters, and in her more general narrative as a defeated monster who's now become a failed goddess, never quite fitting into any category. If Miko was judged solely on the basis of any of these archetypes, held beside an ideal type- the Apex Predator or the Mother Goddess- she would certainly be deemed a tragic failure, a leftover and a contradiction, because there shall always be a part of her that doesn't fit in, a reduction, a trace of that fleshy, material thisness, of who she is, of a complexity that cannot fit into a binary and is thus unsettling to most. And yet, in her own way, she feels the most human among the trio precisely because of this, solely due to her overflows, compromises, concessions and scars. Miko, in order to live with herself, to hold onto any sense of worth after her dual failures as beast and deity, had to have accepted the complexity of individuality, the inconsistency of uniqueness, the value of life in-and-of-itself, without being reduced to a narrative or a trope or a type. This is exactly why she can comfort Hinako, why she's the sole spot of light in Hinako's life- to Miko, Hinako's pain doesn't need to be discussed Right Now or shoved into some dark corner, but may be dealt with gently and spontaneously as and when it ebbs and flows. She doesn't essentialize Hinako, doesn't swell her into a Portrait of Our Times or reduce her into a Poor Traumatized Tragedy, but simply... lets her be, gives her space to breathe. Sadly, this isn't enough, because Hinako didn't recognize that her kindness came from a place of empathy until her self-worth was nearly too low to be salvaged, and indeed views Miko as too good for her, doing to Miko precisely what's been done to her, repeating the cycle of reductions by viewing her as this sunny angel who deserves to live for better things than managing some irrelevant accident survivor's trauma. The erasure of Hinako's complexity has in turn erased her ability to process complexity, and left her yearning indeed for simplicity on the other end of a life-death binary, a simplicity she sees in Shiori's open, unabashed monstrousness, viewing her as a perfect darkness in contrast to Miko's perfect light, and choosing the former, the Other Half of 'Halfway Between Human and Monster' that is in fact anything but equal, the dual lessness and excess of death.

But this chapter throws a wrench in that, because it hints that Shiori, too, is not free from that complexity, not capable of delivering Hinako oblivion, because just as Miko is not an absolute addition, Shiori is not an absolute subtraction- they're both neither parts and nor wholes, but variables, being at every given point more-than-themselves, just as Hinako is, regardless of how hard she tries to ignore that life is not a series of moments, but a tissue of potentialities. Shiori repeatedly undercuts the tension, stigma and abject otherness of Hinako's trauma in a way that's both similar yet different to Miko- while Miko gives Hinako distractions, new ways to perceive and define herself, and space, Shiori employs directness and humor to offset the terror of the hidden, as demonstrated by that delicious joke about how she'll yank Hinako's folks out of the waves and introduce herself. She's so incredibly blunt, unconcerned and different that Hinako's problems seem irrelevant before her, and so Hinako views her as an entity outside the moral cobwebs of signification, responsibility and meaning her environment has trapped her in, seeing her as an escape. But if Shiori wants, as she (increasingly unconvincingly) claims, to consume Hinako, she must necessarily give Hinako value, to want her As Herself- a want that Hinako is comfortable with insofar as it constitutes her as a product, as meat, because it's the same reduction she's faced all her life, only now with the promise of following itself through, of not reducing her with intent to reproduce the reduction, to keep pushing her away or crying for her pain, but to reduce Her, completely, to nothing, to silence. But if that floating future, that reference to a goal was revealed to be a lie, then Hinako would be desired solely for herself, valued because She Matters, not because of her scars, but despite them, beyond all questions of beauty or hideousness, beyond a binary of Life as Happiness and Death as Nothingness, but because she is, currently and indisputably, for all her pain, alive, full stop. And if Hinako realized this and enjoyed this, if she could bring herself to say, like Faust in Goethe, "I wish this moment would last forever", knowing full well it'd drag her to hell, then she would certainly instead be borne up to heaven, given human salvation because she recognizes herself as a human deserving, a human who loves life, which would make Shiori a willing Mephistopheles, a kind devil, a Monster Who Wants Me. But is there any place in heaven for a monster? What does it say about Hinako's society that the only reason she might ever want to keep living in it is because she was convinced to do so by its demons, its abjections, its Others? The attainment of true joy for Hinako would not be an ending, but a beginning, and yet we still don't know what that changing of phases, that transition shall demand, and if it shall leave a trace, a scar of its own, converting Hinako from not-quite-unfamiliar to not-quite-familiar, and leaving upon the earth the crust of a cocoon, the hidden, disembodied scar that even glorious chrysalis, marvel of nature, must necessarily generate. As always, I cannot wait to find out.

dude made a whole ass essay

last edited at May 21, 2022 2:50PM

Can't wait until the "eat" part is just them doing a Chapter 44.

I think Shiori might not actually want to eat Hinako, and is actually in love with her. It's all just a ruse to get close to her and try and help her.

"I want to kill you" usually is a poor ruse for getting close to people...

The art in this manga is seriously so good. I really appreciate how the monsters actually look creepy and a bit off-putting, really accentuates the eerieness of the setting. Can't wait to see Shiori's full form if it'll ever show.

last edited at May 21, 2022 3:39PM

Can't wait until the "eat" part is just them doing a Chapter 44.

That is the most unique euphemism I've ever seen, and this being Dynasty, I even immediately understood the reference. (Well, it helps that I also have them as my avatar...) :D

Can't wait until the "eat" part is just them doing a Chapter 44.

That is the most unique euphemism I've ever seen, and this being Dynasty, I even immediately understood the reference. (Well, it helps that I also have them as my avatar...) :D

Ohhhh thank god you pointed the pfp part out cos im on mobile version lol

That block of text is looking fairly appetizing.

"ever since that day..."

I think Shiori might not actually want to eat Hinako, and is actually in love with her. It's all just a ruse to get close to her and try and help her.

This might be wishful thinking. But I'm starting to lean towards that now. The author might also be intentionally playing that angle so that we get hope.

She tried to separate her from her only friend and was willing to kill said friend

diversity win! the monster girl who wants to eat you is body positive <3

I think Shiori might not actually want to eat Hinako, and is actually in love with her. It's all just a ruse to get close to her and try and help her.

"I want to kill you" usually is a poor ruse for getting close to people...

Not if the person in question WANTS to die.

I think Shiori might not actually want to eat Hinako, and is actually in love with her. It's all just a ruse to get close to her and try and help her.

"I want to kill you" usually is a poor ruse for getting close to people...

To be fair, when the person in question is full on "I have a suicidal death wish" it might not be the worst idea to be "I'm going to be the one that kills you, but not yet, only when I've decided you're worth killing." Gives them a reason to let you stick around.

my depressive yuri vore can't possible be this cute

I think Shiori might not actually want to eat Hinako, and is actually in love with her. It's all just a ruse to get close to her and try and help her.

"I want to kill you" usually is a poor ruse for getting close to people...

To be fair, when the person in question is full on "I have a suicidal death wish" it might not be the worst idea to be "I'm going to be the one that kills you, but not yet, only when I've decided you're worth killing." Gives them a reason to let you stick around.

This. Here's my thoughts:

Shiori doesn't actually want to kill and eat Hinako. Maybe she saw the tragedy, wants to help, fell in love with the sad nearly dead girl, I dunno who knows. What matters if she wants to keep Hinako alive. And since Hinako wants to DIE, and she's a monster, she played up to her monster strengths and abilities. Hinako is less likely to just kill herself since she learned this is going to happen. This gives Shiori time to try and make her happy, with the excuse "that will make me want to eat you". Once she's happier, mission complete.

As for the argument "but she tried to kill her best friend", Shiori has been killing every monster that gets near Hinako, and she thought that Miko was going to kill her. WE thought Miko was going to kill her. There was a bunch of freaking people in this comments section that went "oh shit is Miko actually a bad guy and she's going to do a murder?" And I think Shiori is a bit less trusting than we would be, so of course she wouldn't trust Miko.

Like I know the general energy of this thread is "Miko is best girl and should get together with Hinako", cause people like the childhood friend angle, but try not to like, crucify me for offering another angle. Like I said it's almost certainly wishful thinking, but it could go this way. It COULD.

It prolly won't. But it COULD!

The high-tier monsters are super territorial and tolerate their like very poorly which is... pretty realistic behaviour for what are essentially solitary apex predators. Why let competition hang around? Miko and Shiori basically only reluctantly put up with each other's presence out of a temporary alliance of convenience and because Hinako, whom both for their own reasons prefer to keep happy, asked them to.

I still can’t decide if she actually wants to eat her or not.

My current guess is she wants to help her, genuinely, but like miko, her instincts as a monster make her crave her flesh, even if she’s consciously against eating her.

last edited at May 22, 2022 4:39PM

I still can’t decide if she actually wants to eat her or not.

I don't think you're supposed to be able to, at this point of the storyline.

awwww she wants bae to eat her at the beach, that’s so romantic

Can't wait until the "eat" part is just them doing a Chapter 44.

yeah dude citrus chapter 44 was hella lewd

last edited at May 22, 2022 10:43PM

It's actually not bad theory, but how do you explain grin at the end of last chapter? Unless it was just her being happy about making progress with Hinako, but author wants to keep misleading us, hence her partially showing her true form and looking scary?

Yeah, this author LOVES keeping us on our toes about everyone's intentions. She's pretty... creepy, just intentionally, so if she WAS happy, and they just showed us her true form for a second to throw us off the trail, that'd fit very well.

diversity win! the monster girl who wants to eat you is body positive <3

More like she's not a weirdo. As far as burn scars go that shoulder is nothing to be repulsed by

Shiori: GET IN MY BELLY!!