Yurihime try not to axe series that have themes of polyamory challenge (impossible)

But seriously though I agree with everyone else that the story wrapped up as well as it could have given the constraints. People complaining about the messiness of the series or whatever clearly haven’t read octave lol, this is Akiyama Haru’s bread and butter

if this had gotten like 2 or 3 more volumes it couldve been really special. sick of the manga industry stifling good art because it needs to sell to the lowest common denominator to make a profit. sick of capitalism lol.
i want good adult poly stories for christs sake u_u

Really not sure what to think of this, other than that I ddidn't dislike it.

For some reason, I was reminded a little bit of Milan Kundera's "Unbearable Lightness of Being". Decisiveness and self-understanding Kashiwai developed during this story kind of have a similar philosophical message about the world and how you only live once, so you might as well just do what you truly want to do.

They fell in love with each other, but conditions of fulfilling that love were impossible for them to abide by. Just like Kashiwai could not bear to live in her original relationship while being herself or share her lover with other people, neither could Tsuzuki abandon all of her other relationships for Kashiwai and claim she would surely stay dedicated to her only.

last edited at Dec 26, 2022 11:44PM

The truth of the matter is that someone who can't bear seeing their loved one with another person can't possibly get involved in a polyamory relationship. Contrary to what lesser manga want you to believe, those kind of feelings don't change. You can't just switch off your jealousy. Human beings don't work like that. This is why a polyamory relationship was never in the cards for Kashiwai and I'm glad Akiyama respected that.

Anyway, this was a great ending. It was the only possible ending. Anything else would have felt like a cop out.

last edited at Dec 27, 2022 4:08PM

I'm sorry but this is not a vibe

if this had gotten like 2 or 3 more volumes it couldve been really special. sick of the manga industry stifling good art because it needs to sell to the lowest common denominator to make a profit. sick of capitalism lol.
i want good adult poly stories for christs sake u_u

blame capitalism becuase you like an niche story setting…..lool that’s a new one

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/brides_of_iberis_ch11#29
Mac and Charlie Notice Each Other meme

I liked this ending. It was a nice, fairly short story of a closeted lesbian meeting someone who helped her realise her sexuality and get out of marrying someone who she never really wanted to marry and was only with because of comphet, and the two separating amicably and both finding happiness. It's certainly a shame it was cut short, I would have loved to see what happens after they break up and how Kashiwai falls in love with her wife but this is good too.

Yurihime try not to axe series that have themes of polyamory challenge (impossible)

Lol, this to me feels more of a "trainwreck averted" though.

And also hilarious that this is the story of an almost-trainwreck that ends by skipping over an actual successful romance.

11 chapters for THIS?! i'm glad i didn't read the complete thing and avoided some parts. what a waste of time...

last edited at Dec 27, 2022 5:25AM

Ideal ending to me. Kashiwai and Tsuzuki do have fell for each other, and this relationship would be an adorable slice of their memory they can pick up whenever.
Some people just cannot share the whole life with you, but the beautiful moment the one brought up would remain to be a treasure in the last of our life.

Yurihime try not to axe series that have themes of polyamory challenge (impossible)

This was actually run in a seinen magazine. I doubt a series with this combination of tags would be serialized in YuriHime in the first place.

sick of the manga industry stifling good art because it needs to sell to the lowest common denominator to make a profit. sick of capitalism lol.

Art is subjective. This series got a fair chance just like everything else in the same magazine (which mostly consists of niche, low profiles series that most people here never heard of, definitely not lowest common denominator stuff).

i don't like this

and don't dislike this at the same time

WAAAAAAHHHH

Too bad it got axed I love their chemistryyyy T-T. Damn I’m hurting It make me really want to do an adult comic myself

Ideal ending to me. Kashiwai and Tsuzuki do have fell for each other, and this relationship would be an adorable slice of their memory they can pick up whenever.
Some people just cannot share the whole life with you, but the beautiful moment the one brought up would remain to be a treasure in the last of our life.

Agreed. And the symbol with the Iberis flowers really tie everything together.

This ended up being pretty good, as expected from the author of Octave.

Not strictly related, but I really want one of the big brain people in this thread to explain to me the difference between a harem and a poly relationship, considering how people rejected marking Nanami's relationships as a harem.

And no, I do not mean the multiple choice will-the-or-won't-they that usually doesn't even end in a relationship, like how manga artists love filling their self-insert self-pleasuring fics.

sunspawn posted:

Not strictly related, but I really want one of the big brain people in this thread to explain to me the difference between a harem and a poly relationship, considering how people rejected marking Nanami's relationships as a harem.

There are many types of poly relationships, with various possible links between partners.

"Harem" is only one of the possibilities.

I do like that after everything, once Mitsuki and Nanami decided their relationship just wasn't meant to be, that Mitsuki still grew from the relationship. Like it's pretty clear that before she'd never though about the possibility of being in a relationship with another woman before she met Nanami, and now even after she broke up one thing that stayed with her is how it was much more fulfilling than being with Jun (the guy) was.

In a way this story is about a woman figuring out her own sexuality through a passionate yet impossible love, and then afterwards getting in a sustainable loving relationship with someone else. Though I would have loved to see a little more of Mitsuki with her new girlfriend.

I think the problems tackled in this series are probably too ahead of it's time.... (or maybe needed a different marketing strategy)

I do think so. It's really a shame for its edge contents which is trying to draw a novel relationship besides the social dominant.

I'm so sad that this manga are going to be axedT_T

Who says it was axed? I mean, sincerely, was there a twitter post I missed somewhere where the author lamented having to cut the story short, or are people just assuming it was cancelled because they assumed it was intended to be a long story?

There's a trend on here where people assume that because a story isn't long that it must have been cancelled. This was a story about a monogamous person who has fallen in love with a polyamorous person. It's like watching a car drive at a brick wall. Yeah, it's moving smoothly enough now, but you know it can't go for long, and when it hits, it's gonna stop suddenly and violently.

So yeah, this ending is what I have been expecting for several chapters? Edit: Honestly, I don't really see how you could make it longer if you wanted to. Brick wall is brick wall, yo.

last edited at Dec 27, 2022 9:31AM

Heavensrun posted:

I think the problems tackled in this series are probably too ahead of it's time.... (or maybe needed a different marketing strategy)

I do think so. It's really a shame for its edge contents which is trying to draw a novel relationship besides the social dominant.

I'm so sad that this manga are going to be axedT_T

Who says it was axed? I mean, sincerely, was there a twitter post I missed somewhere where the author lamented having to cut the story short, or are people just assuming it was cancelled because they assumed it was intended to be a long story?

Sorry, but the author really announced a while ago on twitter that the story was going to end with the next 3 chapters. If you look back on the comments, there should be a link. I doubt she wanted to end it so soon.

I think it's obvious the author had planned things with Jun, Fukunaga, Hiroki and Awa but all these threads were cut short.

Who says it was axed? I mean, sincerely, was there a twitter post I missed somewhere where the author lamented having to cut the story short, or are people just assuming it was cancelled because they assumed it was intended to be a long story?

Sorry, but the author really announced a while ago on twitter that the story was going to end with the next 3 chapters. If you look back on the comments, there should be a link. I doubt she wanted to end it so soon.

I think it's obvious the author had planned things with Jun, Fukunaga, Hiroki and Awa but all these threads were cut short.

Announcing the story is going to end doesn't mean it was cancelled, it just means it's going to end. Every story gets a "here is when the end is" announcement. That's not evidence of cancellation.

I disagree that it's obvious. There's no hanging plot threads, every character played a particular role in the story and all of those roles were fulfilled. I genuinely see no evidence that the story was cut short.

Not strictly related, but I really want one of the big brain people in this thread to explain to me the difference between a harem and a poly relationship, considering how people rejected marking Nanami's relationships as a harem.

Polyamorous relationships can take on different - as I like to call them - topologies, and do not have to be centered around one person, like Nanami's setup. One person with multiple unrelated partners is one extreme with the other being polyfidelity where everyone is committed to everyone. The first one may resemble a "harem" but I hope you can see how the latter doesn't have much in common with it.

As for why Nanami in particular doesn't have a "harem" : she is romantically committed to all her partners and every partner knows about the others. This is not an open relationship or casual hookups that I would describe what happens in the harem genre as. In harem manga there are multiple suitors all competing for the MC's attention and wanting to have them all to themselves and the MC does not take a stance on the nature of this relationship.

And then there's the origin of the word, where harems were comprised of women having sex with a noble and looking pretty in his estate in exchange for luxury and a high social standing. More prostitution than romance

What an exquisite ending. Some part of me had feared, I must admit, the impending sendoff, which I might have attended in the manner of a great many weddings sat through in childhood, squirming uncomfortably in my seat as I yearned to be elsewhere, holding back bored remarks in deference to the happiness of some relative, tapping my feet impatiently through rituals at once interminable and abrupt, and consoling myself at the end of the whole program with the conclusion that at least they'd given me cake. But Akiyama has prepared for us here a wonderful festival, a celebration of life and love and art, and though the big day came far earlier than I'd expected and ended far before I'd have liked, there are merits still to small ceremonies and humble occasions, the full range of which glimmered on display this blessed day. Murmurs abound, as they always do, about the swiftness of it all, the potential for something more, the sanctity of such a rapid culmination, and the events that may have forced the proceedings to such a sudden terminus. Fair concerns, in some regards, but I for one am mesmerized by the brides, by the intricacy of their gowns that scintillate in the blush of this early hour, by the joy in their eyes that burns a timeless adoration, and the deftness with which they stride down the aisle, short and practical though it may be, endowed in the certainty of their vision with a sureness also of their present and future, a bond everlasting and sublime. At the end of our vigil, this is what remains and recurs- the vision of it all, the numinous sight that shines through the soul of art no matter how constrained its body may be, bestowing upon the ardent observer not epics or sagas embossed in the endorsement of their times, but singular images that vindicate nevertheless of the entirety of our commitment. They are happy, and so am I.

As congratulations endlessly repeat across the course of a happy day, I must laud once more Akiyama's mastery of their art, exhibited here in especial effulgence as they pilot a tale that soared sundry skies and dizzying heights down to a stony strip of ground, and achieve it all with nary a tremble, excepting those well-occasioned by the demands of the hour. The masterful paralleling of the river with the rain, time as stream and season waltzing dreams down misty lives, the bearing of the Iberis in resplendent reversal, and the bookending of our tale with the rush of a train, bearing destinies in the city of life down their curious capillaries- the chaos of the city, its spawl of services and stopgaps, have always served Akiyama well as the backgrounds to a chaotic stage, a pragmatic fallacy for the thorniest of private dramas, twisting if even for a moment the heartless cogs of urbanity out of their routine to let us hear in concert with their judders the cry of an ailing heart, and Iberis' denouement is another virtuoso (dis)arrangement.

Indeed, the series even in its short run manages excellently to manifest and conjure with the spirit of Akiyama's art, their primary and pervasive concerns, treating the issue of the unclassifiable, the liminal, that which slips through cracks and cannot be subsumed into or labelled under prevailing sociocultural notions of productivity, be it success in work, dreams, ventures or even the race towards some remote and joyless middle-class ideal of domestic security, the nuclear family, the monogamous union manufacturing products of a clear genealogy and direction that may be fed once more into the urban maw to make the wheels go round and the chimneys belch up self-swallowing smoke. Beached and wrecked in the alleys of a fleshly ocean, or under the rubble of collapsing relationships, or in the hourglass-deserts of success demanding mindless maintenance, their characters yearn for something more, something not entirely permanent, but enough at the very least to fill the spin of a moment, to pass this howling smog-night sooner.

Relationships in Akiyama's work are often illegitimate, but only insofar as they need to be, not only for the purposes of the drama that inevitably arises when they demand legitimacy, but because legitimacy itself in Akiyama's worlds is the dead god of a mad faith, an altar upon which people sacrifice themselves, a temple hiding eternally the rot of age and apathy. Everyone strays, Akiyama maintains, not for vice, but because no one knows where they're headed, because there were never any directions in the first place that weren't confined on a yellowing map someone shoved into your hands as a child and told you to follow off cliffs and canyons for the rest of your constricted life. And so the only truth, perhaps the only virtue, is pleasure in the moment, the here and now, the closest one gets to self-knowledge in all its inconsistencies and betrayals, a self-acceptance in the sense of an everchanging self you cannot absolutely label, predict, taxonomize or render consistent- a profoundly queer brand of skepticism that makes the abrasion, the sting, the dissatisfaction felt in rigid and hypocritical society the germ of personal growth, even toward private destruction. And yet, as this ending so beautifully proves, there is and must be amidst it all some joy, some blooming of happiness that accompanies the pursuit of one's idiosyncrasies, of giving words and wyrds to wanting. Ephemeral joys, perhaps, transient as they must be to slip between judgment and hegemony, unable in many cases to survive the relentless pressure of the social gaze, and yet possessing nevertheless the capacity to rekindle and spark a billion decentered dalliances and dreams in every blink of that tyrannic eye.

So it goes for Kashiwai and Tsuzuki's little affair, which embodies in its very disembodiment the tenor of queer ephemerality, its hushed joys and practical separations, its stolen gazes and printless departures. Their love does not rot and fester and end in the messy amputations of a break-up, or be splattered in dreary vivisection across the legal labyrinths of divorce, but fades instead like snowflakes on the tongue or reflections in the sun, slight and ghostly enough to make one wonder if it existed at all, but possessing in that very capacity for wondering, for wonder, the spaceless infinitude of imagination, that boundless foreign country of the past, the beneficent guardian-star of nostalgia. Like the countless burnt letters and wordless glances shared between queer people in places where their identities cannot live long in words, or the numerous works of queer art curtailed and truncated by the prejudices and pressures of their publishing industries and demographics, this series and Akiyama's oeuvre in general reflects the melancholy of transience, the sense that what we feel most deeply is often left the least permanent. But even transience is a sort of life, even speculation a sort of inheritance, not passed down in the common way through deeds pinioned in law and blood, but emerging from existence and experience itself, the freedom of the being, the fact that queerness for all its historical breakages and fissures still survives, and those who do not fit into the structures and schematics of their societies may still trace, in history or hearts, the legacies however liminal of those who felt the same way, who went unseen and yet saw themselves in the seams between seconds and stories.

And while we may find in kinder times and spaces some stability, as Tsuzuki and Kashiwai ultimately do, there is value still in recalling those in-betweens, those brushing fingers, those chance encounters, those that might-have-been, the roads-not-forsaken. Accordingly, whether Akiyama reaches new heights and an absolute fullness of expression in their subsequent works, or must be judged only on the merits of what they have already wrought, there shall be value nevertheless in Iberis, a place for its enchanting ephemerality. I am immensely grateful for the experience, and wish these brides a lifetime of joys.

Who says it was axed? I mean, sincerely, was there a twitter post I missed somewhere where the author lamented having to cut the story short, or are people just assuming it was cancelled because they assumed it was intended to be a long story?

Sorry, but the author really announced a while ago on twitter that the story was going to end with the next 3 chapters. If you look back on the comments, there should be a link. I doubt she wanted to end it so soon.

I think it's obvious the author had planned things with Jun, Fukunaga, Hiroki and Awa but all these threads were cut short.

Announcing the story is going to end doesn't mean it was cancelled, it just means it's going to end. Every story gets a "here is when the end is" announcement. That's not evidence of cancellation.

I disagree that it's obvious. There's no hanging plot threads, every character played a particular role in the story and all of those roles were fulfilled. I genuinely see no evidence that the story was cut short.

https://twitter.com/_akiyamaharu/status/1574969638495977472?t=V9iIUt6MVSTRa6tAAL3Fkw&s=19

https://twitter.com/_akiyamaharu/status/1574969640572227586?t=TE5ZPTX9d6jiHbb5CwPX-A&s=19

Based on her announcement on twitter (through machine translate) it reads like she wanted to continue on longer. I don't think she would word it like wanting to focus on writing the end so she won't need to write more and writing it so the readers would have been happy to have read it if it wasnt cut shorter than planned.

Ofc I could be wrong and maybe someone who understands Japanese can give more clarification, but I think it was axed. Looking at some of the Japanese reader's tweets reacting to her announcement, it seems like they believe it was axed as well.

Akiyama Haru loves her slow burn and the first 5 chapters of het would not have been that dragged out if she knew it was ending in only 2 volumes. We only got 1 chapter from Tsuzuki's pov which I'm sure we would have gotten a couple more of if it had continued longer. I think the fact that it doesn't feel axed to you is a testament to Akiyama's writing skill.

last edited at Dec 27, 2022 2:17PM

if this had gotten like 2 or 3 more volumes it couldve been really special. sick of the manga industry stifling good art because it needs to sell to the lowest common denominator to make a profit. sick of capitalism lol.
i want good adult poly stories for christs sake u_u

blame capitalism becuase you like an niche story setting…..lool that’s a new one

The reason stories with niche story settings get axed is because they aren't profitable. If we lived in a post-capitalist society, profitability would not be the thing that determines what art gets made.