Waiting for Godot, yuri version

Kinda does feel like it was cut short,but in a way that leaves the future wide open.

Considering how old this actually is,this is probably all we'll have to go with.

Plot holes a plenty,and only we can fill them in.

Time to see what Baka Updates has to say...

2008,complete three volumes,the author has been making stuff from 1995 to 2017,all just as potent.

Another addition to the very good collection.

So where is Asami? I don’t understand the ending .

No one knows. The ending is that the manga got axed, so Asami gets to stay missing.

2008,complete three volumes,the author has been making stuff from 1995 to 2017,all just as potent.

I hadn’t realized until you said this that it’s by the same author as (among others) Honeymoon Salad, a very offbeat (but to me rather interesting) seinen about a domestic triad. The author’s other works also display a sensibility very distant from most yuri manga.

Some of the tropes from this one also appear in short stories like “Only One,” which features het MCs with a very Honda/Asami-like vibe. In general this author’s stories feature lots of, um, unusual, and often unfortunate, choices about sexual behavior—sort of treading the boundary between “intriguing drama” and “weird sex.” The tension between the semi-cartoony art and the dark themes also adds a disquieting element to their stories.

“Potent” is a good word for this author’s works, but more than likely not the sort of thing that many Dynasty readers are looking for.

Fly me to the moon
Let me play among the stars
Let me see what springtime is like
On Jupiter and Mars
In other words hold my hand
In other words
(choking up a bit)
Darling kiss me.

Which voice? Asuka, Rei or Misato?

I agree with the person quoted at the top of this page 5. Life is ambiguous mundane and full of pining/being pined for.

But the suggestion of the last chapter makes me wanna cry and die if I let myself think about it. Oh God "Kimi to Tsuzuru Utakata" is going to fucking wreck me.

last edited at May 23, 2022 10:15PM

Fly me to the moon
Let me play among the stars
Let me see what springtime is like
On Jupiter and Mars
In other words hold my hand
In other words
(choking up a bit)
Darling kiss me.

Which voice? Asuka, Rei or Misato?

Actually mine. I was singing it all the way the chapter, as I a choked back a few tears. I don't like to brag, but I've been told I got the perfect voice for internet message boards, and comment sections. :)

Seriously though, Frank Sinatra's voice naturally. I liked that song long before I ever saw Neon Genesis Evangelion.

last edited at May 24, 2022 1:07AM

Uwaahhh... sequel doujin when

To be honest a completely forgettable manga, messy, which has only the name of yuri.
It's a big mess with the situations of the impotent guy, the other one who sleeps for a yes or a no, they end up in a hotel room for a pseudo rape we don't know how, 5 chapters of lost to tell "where is she? "and that her mother doesn't care, so I'm not surprised that it was cancelled, the readers and thr editor lost patience.
I think that other yuri series much better deserve to be translated than this one.We can give names of real yuri if no idea ...

last edited at May 24, 2022 11:07PM

What is wrong with “wanting to become a bride”?? Times like these, I remind myself this is just fiction

My god this story has been ongoing since 09…

last edited at May 28, 2022 10:31PM

Ahh my gracious and it ends on such a more realistic note!! That’s probably as real as it would get- and that hurts so much more! “Most likely never seeing her again”, and “just thinking about it all over and over”… I’ve been there!
It’s been many years and after swearing to myself “I’ll never forget this person” and crying worrying about that person, it’s sad when I don’t feel much about it anymore. Those events kinda, “happened” then were gone- no lasting relation. Growing up and maturing~ and all.
Good god that was quite a read for me

The ending would've been worse if the author tried to tie everything up in the end. Better it be axed and end with the love lost, but declared, than rushing a happy conclusion where they're reunited. I find a rushed resolution more unsatisfying. Keiko's contemplations, and her final uncertain daydream feel much more in line with the rest of the manga.
Good post Armitage444. I appreciate this manga too

I really liked this a lot. Just the right amount of bitter.

since the ending is up to our imagination now and since I'm a sucker for pain, I got to only imagine the worst end for this story.

last edited at Aug 24, 2022 9:46AM

kill this teacher and give Asami happy end
why they end like this , this is the one of worst end i read and i just want to see her happy end now

last edited at Sep 30, 2022 10:16PM

Honestly, I do understand where everyone who hates this is coming from, but personally, these final chapters only further cemented it as one of my favorite manga of all time.

"It set up an interesting story but unfortunately it really did not deliver a satisfying conclusion and that kind of sucks, haha."

Talk about the story of my life! I've been both of these girls to different people at different times, sometimes the confused pining sap wondering what happened, and other times the sad mysterious beauty who disappears without a trace. Sometimes you find out what happened with that other person, but most of the time you don't. In turns you want desperately to know their life and have an imagination racing with possibilities, and by the other you are the object of intrigue who went through that life and know how mundane all of it was, the good times and the awful ones, and just want to be seen as a person. I mean hell when a co-worker found out where I grew up recently, we had a miniature version of that chapter where she imagined that whole crime story only for her to reply "no we basically just huffed glue lol"

I feel like this was one of very few stories to capture these feelings specifically BY its ambiguity rather than in spite of it, because the story isn't about the specific things that did or didn't happen to her--it's the tension, the wanting, the not knowing, the disappointment, but, most importantly, the genuine love that was shared. Does that love not exist, did it not matter if they didn't end with a kiss? Wouldn't the rest of those feelings be undercut if we were given a definitive answer and a tidy resolution? In other words, yes, it is unsatisfying, but as I get older and face more dissatisfaction, the more I appreciate a story that is specifically about the fact there are things that are unsatisfying, painful even, but are still worthwhile and meaningful to have experienced. Things that hurt, but you wouldn't trade for the world.

That juxtaposition between the heightened imaginary and the mundane reality is why I think the assault scene was included. After all, she spends so much of the story weaving these stories in her head of seedy intrigue with prostitutes and gangsters and being forced into sleeping with bad people, and then all of a sudden she's put into a pretty horrible situation herself. And it IS awful and it IS scary, but it's also stupid and clumsy and she still has to leave the hotel with this fucking guy and deal with the rain and go to school with him and live a normal life. It's an unthinkable thing to do to someone, but he's not a monster lurking in the shadows, he's not trying to control her life, he doesn't seem to have done it for any reason at all or even really think about it. It doesn't make sense, there's no satisfying reason it happened or what it means or how to conclusively react to it to get closure. It is one of the worst things to experience, and yet is completely mundane. That isn't everyone's experience with assault, certainly, but it is mine.

I don't blame anyone for not wanting to read that, for being deeply upset after reading it, but for me, this is one of very few times I have felt understood, and reading something that reflected my own life.

Thank you so much for finishing this, this is one that's going to be sitting with me for many years to come.

Thanks for this post. Just picked this one up and read it all at once today, and FUCK did it hit me hard right from the start. Came to check comments section since this is a bit too powerful for me to be able to handle by myself, and was honestly quite surprised by how negatively this manga was/is viewed, even if I get some of the complaints.

Well, if so many people couldn't understand what was going on w/ the rape scene, it "not being addressed" etc etc, I guess it means the author failed at communicating (thus making it a "bad" manga)? Guess it makes sense, seeing as this did get axed.

Either way, I absolutely love this. Objectively speaking not a masterpiece, but to me a definite 10/10. Thank you very very much to the TLs for picking this back up.

I hate the final song choice so much. So, so much. And by that I mean it's brilliant. Goddammit author why do you do this to me

...no I mean really, I'm sure a lot of us went to look for the full lyrics after finishing the chapter, right? If Keiko remembers the dream, then she would have as well. How would that make her feel?

last edited at Jan 13, 2023 8:16PM

I'm surprised people call this ending ambiguous. It seems that Asami was kidnapped and murdered, simple as that. That the guy was found and she wasn't, never appeared again, and the "ghost" vision at the end make it extremely clear (in fact you couldn't make it any clearer without being explicit about it).

Between that and the last volume being spent on pointless search and giving up, with pretty much no character development or plot thread to follow, I'm convinced that the author got pissed at this manga being axed and decided to punish the readers with an awful ending.

If you think about it, Asami never really lied to Keiko. When she said that she was never "lovers" with the student teacher, she meant that she never loved him, even though they (presumably) were in a physical relationship. (Edit: And when she says she hates Honda and he's a bad person who pretends to be nice, that seems like comedic exaggeration... until it turns out she was completely right about him.) So I choose to believe that dream Asami, too, was telling the truth at the end.

I've had an experience very similar to Keiko's, though it really was a friendship in my case and not romantic (...probably). My ex-friend left my life and cut contact for several reasons, but the major ones -- I'm pretty sure -- were that (a) he thought I'd be better off without him and (b) he thought I'd probably abandon him eventually so he'd rather cut the cord himself. Both of those seem to apply very well to Asami herself too. I think it's completely plausible that the reappearance of someone she thought she had escaped from would encourage her to run away from everything and everyone she knew. In real life, Keiko would never see Asami again and would never know what happened to her, but this is a manga so as readers we can choose a happy ending instead.

This manga isn't a 10/10 for me but it is very unique and speaks to an element of the human experience that fiction rarely recognizes, so I'm very happy I read it.

last edited at Feb 8, 2023 9:34AM

Well that was... something. It's very interesting to see how polarized the opinions on this manga are, which is completely understandable. Idk if I'll ever have the mental fortitude to read through it again, since reading it once brought back some awful memories, but I definitely enjoyed it for the most part. The ending is cruel, messy and heartbreaking, which honestly fits the rest of the story like a glove.

I can kinda see the "Oh the ending is ambiguous because that kind of ambiguity (and the difficulty of wrestling with it) is one of the main themes" angle, but the story still just feels unfinished. It needed at least another volume to resolve things properly imo. Like, Keiko comes to the conclusion that not being nosy like Honda was the wrong decision because of how helpless not knowing makes her feel once the things that she doesn't know about Asami start affecting her own life, but then nothing ever comes of that. And I thought Honda was a really interesting character because he's a well developed male character in a yuri story, which you don't see much for obvious reasons. He feels very much like a real person, and specifically like a man. The way he acts towards Asami in particular feels very real, where he's genuinely concerned for her and has good reason to be, but is also being too forceful and not respecting her wishes, while being driven on by a deep frustration that he can't do anything to actually help her. It's a classically male set of emotions. (Asami's reaction is also interesting, since she openly hates the way that Honda acts, but is still friends with him on some level simply because until Keiko shows up he's the only one of her peers that acts at all on her side.) It's interesting how they create this deliberate parallel and contrast between Honda and Keiko. Keiko doesn't really try to fix Asami's problems or to pry into what she's thinking, which allows her to get Asami to open up to her in a way she never would with Honda, a fact which she throws in his face repeatedly (to help cover up the fact that she feels the exact same frustration he does, arguably worse, since she really does want to know more about Asami and to be able to help her but is stopping herself on purpose).

The attempted rape by Honda kinda comes out of left field, but at the same time it feels emotionally believable. The thing that sets him off is Keiko pointing out how he never properly tried to connect with Asami, instead trying to force her to act differently or to forcefully solve her problems himself (which doesn't work). This sets off both his feelings of deep sexual frustration and his feelings of deep emotional frustration at the situation with Asami (feelings which Keiko shares). I think him not being able to get it up either that time or the time with Asami is meant to show that, while he's not a moral enough person to say no to his own lust and sexual frustration, his feelings of guilt subconsciously prevent him from actually going through with it. This is another place where getting axed hurts the story. Keiko says that there's nothing he can say to make what he did go away, but for the audience it effectively does go away, since the story just ends without ever bringing it up again. It feels weird that there's no real emotional reckoning with the fact that the story's third most important character is an attempted rapist.

I think the best chapter is chapter 11. There are so many layers to Keiko and Asami's conversation. While for the vast majority of the story we see things from Keiko's perspective, in that conversation I found it just as easy to empathize with Asami. The panel at the bottom of page 16 where Keiko looks like she's about to cry is especially good. It really captures the emotion of the scene: looking at someone who you've been coming to care a lot about but are keeping totally in the dark about your problems as her face screws up with helpless concern over you. I imagine Asami feeling like: "Damn, I'm really hurting her by not telling her anything, but telling her everything would probably just hurt both of us more." I love that sort of emotional dilemma. It's excellent.

Ngl this one kinda meh imo 3/10. It doesn't really feel like yuri it feels like if a subtext manga tries becoming yuri at the last second. The only part where it feels somewhat yuri is in the 17th chapter and it's not by a lot

This story is almost impossible for me to write about. I absolutely loathe how it makes me feel. The characters are so abjectly sad, the circumstances are often so ugly, and yet the framing remains grounded and often light-hearted. There are an incredible number of words and thoughts and feelings and meanings packed into it, and I hate them all unreservedly.

I really hope someday we get another story like this in yuri. If not, an artist like Ninomiya Hikaru who’s able to squeeze so much personality and character out of a story that should have so much less.

Postscript: it seems rather obvious to me, given the circumstances in which the story ended, that Asami is intended to be alive. That the author was able to do this for me and give others vastly different opinions is pretty interesting.

last edited at Oct 17, 2024 12:02AM

It truly does feel like one of those cases where the author gets angry about a cancellation, so she decided to have the protagonist get raped and Asami murdered in a ditch somewhere as a form of revenge. I can't explain this ending in any other way.
There was no lead up to anything, there was no real explanation of what Asami's past really was, there was absolutely no reason for Honda to rape Keiko when they were looking for Asami together (literally, why on earth did that rape scene even exist? what was his motive?) and the ending is just "lol she was killed"

Genuinely, the only reason why, upon the manga being clearly cancelled mid development, the author would waste half of the final chapter baiting readers with a bittersweet ending (where Asami had a kid and is only barely in contact with Keiko) only to then say "just kidding" and cut back to reality where she stays missing forever after heavily implying the teacher murdered her, is the typical "axed author's revenge". There is no other sensible explanation because I don't want to think the woman who wrote the first two thirds of this manga is a terrible writer. I know she isn't.

This was nonsensical. What a waste of time.

last edited at Dec 25, 2024 6:50PM