Then again, if "just give me more of Himari’s journey to becoming a thirsty little lesbian" is what you want from this series, you should probably read other ones or come back in a couple of months.

Thanks for your condescending advice. If that were the only possible alternative, it would almost be worth listening to.

I mean you are the one who has nothing but negative things to say about the series for a while now, at some point you just have to realize that you probably dont like it.

She's the most important character of the series, whether you like it or not.

She was make the most important for this arc, she wasn't even namedrop until this arc. Man, she is not even part of the premise, she is just a byproduct. And just because she is so called "most important" doesn't mean i want to see a girl bitching about how she can't face her problems because she has too much pride.
And that's considering your headcanon she is the most important. Excuse that people want to see the main characters being lovely dovely and face some hurdle and not being forced into a drama they had nothing to do with.

Takeshima Eku should find someone who knows how to write a story for her manga. Her art is not enough for a longer series.

Shiho was foreshadowed as "former lead singer who had mysterious falling out with the band" prior to her debut. If Eku's stated core idea behind the series is "girls with conflicting ideas of what love is" beyond just the initial misunderstanding between Hima and Yori, then having your overall antagonist personify the selfish, possessive side of love makes sense. We're largely still viewing the overall story through Hima as the core agent of change even if it might feel like the series is a "I told you that story so I could tell you this story" misdirection.

Can't blame anyone for being irked about that though. "I was able to correctly deduce that you were in love with that person so you should have been able to do the same with me" is some pretty jerky levels of self-centeredness. I wouldn't be surprised if Shiho were to become more possessive towards Hima as a result of all this, given that she's the only character to engage in the way she seemingly wants, rather than it work out with Aki.

She was make the most important for this arc, she wasn't even namedrop until this arc..

She was introduced back in Chapter 15, almost 25 chapters ago by now. I think it's time some of you get over her.

Excuse that people want to see the main characters being lovely dovely.

Again with this. As I said before here, this idea that they spend little time together is completely false and I'm getting tired of people repeat it over and over again.

Takeshima Eku should find someone who knows how to write a story for her manga. Her art is not enough for a longer series.

It's the best-selling manga in the magazine.

She was introduced back in Chapter 15, almost 25 chapters ago by now. I think it's time some of you get over her.

She make it difficult to get over her.

... does anyone remember the exact terms of the wager by now? I sure don't, so if Aki's team wins, then Shiho reveals the reason for leaving the band... but she already did. Were there any more strings attached, and what if Aki loses?

You could argue that I just have bad memory but I swear, this is consistently the only long-running series I follow where I routinely forget major details of the story. Maybe it just really drags on for too long.

last edited at Feb 20, 2023 5:48PM

I was scared they were gonna drag out the confession again, but Shiho finally did it! Now the story can finally move forward lol. I don't mind Shiho and enjoyed this arc, but I do think it's been dragged for a bit too long. I also think there were plenty of fluffy chapters with HimaYori to satiate the fans of them, but it probably just doesn't feel like much because of the wait between chapters.

Honestly sometimes I didn't like the HimaYori chapters in between because that only meant the Shiho arc was gonna be dragged out for at least another month longer xD

Is there even a point to the battle of band now that the jig is up and hima being the manager of lorelei is not an issue,
Like aki my girl I love you but what's the point of trying to make up with Mrs Incel here, she clearly doesn't deserve any sympathy from you let alone your love. Like life was so beautiful before shiho returned I don't recall a single dialogue of any of the SS girls being like "oh miss shiho so much" so why are they going to such lengths for some that left on her own

^^^
You're correct, Shiho was meant to tell Aki why she left the SS Girls, which she ended up doing early, in case they won. If Laureley won, the SS Girls promised to never bother her again, plus Himari was meant to keep being their manager but Shiho quickly told her she'll be free to choose and that she'll even grant her a wish of her choosing.

last edited at Feb 20, 2023 6:38PM

Now that she knows the reason Shiho left the band, winning the competition might not be so important to Aki. But if Shiho loses against Yori, she will lose her mind.

Aight now that the cat is finally out of the bag,it's time for the new ship to sailll!!!now aki please blush on the next chapter lol.but seriouslyif they didn't end up on each other imma gonna throw some gay hands!!

Oh freaking finally!now letsss get readdyy to rumble and get back to my main ship and their daily lovely dovely moments.\TvT/

... does anyone remember the exact terms of the wager by now? I sure don't, so if Aki's team wins, then Shiho reveals the reason for leaving the band... but she already did. Were there any more strings attached, and what if Aki loses?

The original wager was that if SS won, Shiho would tell Aki why she left the band. Then, upon learning that Yori and Himari were dating, Shiho threw in the condition that Himari would be Laureley's manager for at least until the festival. Then, after Hajime pointed out that having a manager who'd naturally root for the other team is a bad idea, Shiho added that she'd grant Himari a wish should she help Laureley win.

Idk what yall are talking about, I really like the story. I don't mind all the Shiho drama and angst, It's interesting. And imo it makes the scenes we do get with Yori and Hima even sweeter because we don't see them constantly

It's the best-selling manga in the magazine.

I doubt it. Nothing in Yuri Hime can even match with Yuru Yuri (and Wataten) sales.

I doubt it. Nothing in Yuri Hime can even match with Yuru Yuri (and Wataten) sales.

That's not the case anymore. You can go to http://shosekiranking.blog.fc2.com and do the comparisons yourself.

Idk what yall are talking about, I really like the story. I don't mind all the Shiho drama and angst, It's interesting

It isn't tho, this is basically an Incel throwing a tantrum and lashing out at people that did nothing to wrong her, the sad part is that she's probably gonna get rewarded at the end

And imo it makes the scenes we do get with Yori and Hima even sweeter because we don't see them constantly

I can agree with that, it doesn't make the shiho plot less obnoxious tho

last edited at Feb 21, 2023 1:43PM

Fucking finally!

"I know you are dense but instead of accepting that I will choose to get angrier and angrier" is one of the most insufferable tropes I swear...

I wonder what options really exist for the resolution of this storyline? I'm wracking my brain trying to figure out how I'd even want it to end.

I don't want Mizuguchi to get together with Shiho; Aki has been earnest and noble throughout this whole ordeal. Shiho has been, at the very least, passive-aggressive in a way that is really hard to deal with. If I dig really deep, the only thing I want for Shiho is for there to be an unsecured trapdoor on the performance stage, which she falls through, to her death. Hopefully my lengthy previous post will convince people I don't have it in for Shiho for irrational reasons, but I can't deny that for me, Shiho has been steering this manga towards a cliff for a good two years now, and I just want her gone.

In my previous post, a few pages ago, I talked about the way Shiho isn't balanced with another character in the story. I suggested Yori should be the equivalent character to square off against Shiho: someone who feels...who feels some sort of feeling just as strongly as Shiho feels all these feels. Even if Aki is the one who is meant to be Shiho's opposite, then Shiho still overpowers her and throws off the balance of the series. The problem is that everyone else in this series besides Shiho is reasonable, practical, and generally upbeat––and Shiho probably has a borderline personality. I know some people here have compared Shiho to standard, garden-variety real teenagers, but I think that, in order to understand the source of annoyance and distress for longtime readers in Shiho's takeover of the book, you have to look a little closer at Shiho's deviances from the standard, the tone in which she couches her "acting out"––which is different than it is even for real teens. For instance, a teen might tell another teen they aren't friends anymore...and then a few days later they'll have reconciled, and they'll be relieved to have their friend back, in most cases. That's fairly normal behavior. Cutting an ostensibly friendly, encouraging and unthreatening person out of your life––and doing it with a weird, conceited smile on your face--and then really meaning it, as Shiho does--is a different kettle of fish. Why does Shiho's promise to have nothing to do with Mizuguchi anymore feel like she really means it? She does mean it, and that makes her response much stranger than that of the average person. Most people will cut someone else out of their life entirely only if that person's behavior is really toxic. Shiho has no cause here. Liking someone and not even being rebuffed, but just being friendzoned––and not even on purpose––shouldn't earn that person excommunication. Shiho seems so pleased with herself over this. It's not unthinkable to have a person like this in your story, or in real life. My father is this kind of guy, who would just cut off his friendships for good, at a moment's notice. He's one of the weirdest, and sometimes one of the most frightening people I know. He's like...who's he like, what character that's so familiar to me? Oh, he's like Shiho. They're both creeps.

Not that it should matter to readers whether Shiho is a specimen that can be found in real life, observable in the wild, or not. The problem is that, when you try and envision where this storyline might wrap up, what ending would feel satisfactory? I wouldn't want to condemn Mizuguchi to a relationship with a vengeful, over-the-top meanie like Shiho. What if Yori plays the best sooooong in the woooooorld (or I'll steal your soul!), and Shiho loses the battle of the bands? I don't think Shiho, as she's been presented to us, can take that. Plus, it doesn't solve the romantic subplot between Shiho and Mizuguchi. Yori has been nearly absent from this entire storyline––a huge deficiency in the writing of this story, so far as I'm concerned--as I outlined in my last post. If Yori produces this great song, just what is it supposed to do? Does Yori's idea of love, as expressed in the song, overwhelm Shiho's uncomfortable, proud obstreperousness? Does she apologize to Mizuguchi? And if she does that, does that make up for two years of this painfully decompressed storyline, seeing Shiho humbled, slightly?

And then, what if Shiho wins the battle of the bands, but maybe Yori's song mellows her a little bit, so that she doesn't want to cut every tie with Mizuguchi? Is that a satisfying ending to the arc? I'd much prefer that our heroes emerge with something worth lifting their spirits a little, like maybe they at least feel good about how they played, they're excited for the future, etc. That could temper the annoyance I'd feel if Yori and Mizuguchi lost the battle of the bands to the arrogant, self-centered Shiho.

But here's the thing; Takeshima Eku has not written this story with that level of nuance. Everything we've seen since Shiho has appeared goes to the idea that Mizuguchi's band, SS Girls, is not good enough––that there's a platonic ideal of what these bands should sound like, and that Shiho's hypercompetitive drive to succeed, coupled with her band's dedication (and the motivation they share about this dead friend, super-yuck) has them placed a lot closer to that ideal than Mizuguchi's band. By giving Shiho most of the page time in this arc, and by couching most of the drama in Shiho telling Himari how things are all the time, like she's schooling Himari in the ways of high school rock bands, the author is underlining the primacy of Shiho's view of the case (and giving us little to balance that with––SS Girls don't appear frequently enough in this arc to balance the overwhelming nature of Shiho's point of view, which sloughs all over the storyline). By staging the whole conflict around a battle of the bands that takes more than a year of publication time to get off the ground, the author is underlining for us how important the competition is, and how important the idea of winning it is. There are countless lines of dialogue, all of which go unchallenged, where Shiho or someone else articulates that this competition is decided around a question of skill and competence––and Shiho frequently characterizes Yori as "wrong" for the SS Girls, and not "serious enough" to equal up to Shiho's own crazy ideal for this competition. Almost nothing we've seen so far disabuses us of the idea that the competition is important to resolve––but really, there's nothing important about it. The wager over it––as many people here have pointed out––has been altered and amended, and ended up a moot point in this last chapter, seemingly by accident (it doesn't seem like Eku intended to give away the secret when she first set up this storyline). Shiho claims to be "over" Mizuguchi, so that's allegedly off the table as a conclusion to the battle––and I can't really imagine the two of them mending fences and dating by the time this arc is hopefully over (though perhaps this so far two-year-long arc will never end, giving the two a long runway in which for Mizuguchi to fall in love with the awful girl who left her band in the lurch and who has been negging her for seemingly no reason ever since). Let's say Shiho wasn't really "over" Mizuguchi. Does that relationship have an immediate future? This relationship has been at Defcon 1 for quite a while now. How would the author pivot and make this relationship meaningful or worth pursuing (at least, in Mizuguchi's case) in the next few chapters that follow the battle of the bands? I don't really see it happening––at least, not plausibly so.

So I guess that's where I'm at with this; stuck, unable to envision an ending to this story arc that would satisfy my modest goals. I've liked this series all along––Eku's art is exciting to look at, and early on the story seemed to be pretty in-control of its' tone––though that era has gone the way of the dodo. I still like the characters––the characters we met in the first arc, at least. In theory I like a story arc where the SS Girls do battle with another band; in theory I like an arc where Mizuguchi finds love (instead of just harassment and frustration); In theory I even like a character with some strong, negative motivations, that could contrast with other characters' in the story. But Shiho's motivations are never modulated by other perspectives. Her band members back her up no matter what (despicable), and Himari has so far made very little headway, I'd say, in helping Shiho solve her personal problems––all she's really done is get Shiho to admit she has them. Then Himari helped Shiho set up Mizuguchi for this "I used to love you" surprise maneuver––really uncool of Himari, I think, not to warn Mizuguchi what Shiho was up to. I don't know. Maybe it didn't even occur to Himari what Shiho was planning. Either way, Himari hasn't done much, and her talking with Shiho has only made Shiho more upset with the way things have ended up. Yori never talks to Shiho––here's someone with a 180-degree different perspective, but we don't get them facing off with one another (2 years of reading have passed waiting for it, though). And the battle of the bands is still potentially a chapter or two or even three off. At the moment, I'm clinging to the art, and the characters from the initial arc, as insurance that the book can still go somewhere rewarding. But I want to get something from this arc for the characters I'm actually invested in, like Himari, Yori, and Mizuguchi. If two years of this all culminates in meaningful character growth mostly just for Shiho, it honestly feels like I'm reading a different manga than I started out with––and then I might quite seriously consider not reading any further.

As for Shiho's reveal of her feelings for Mizuguchi? I was dismayed that was the cliffhanger in this last chapter. Didn't she basically already reveal all of this to Himari a couple of chapters ago? It all felt supremely redundant from a reader's perspective. Trouble is, I don't think Eku had a way of getting around showing the admission of love a second time, since Mizuguchi is the one who needs to hear it. So there's another thing: if the climax of this arc boils down to Shiho and Mizuguchi, instead of Shiho and Yori––well, we haven't had much of Yori to balance out Shiho's angst, but really, we haven't had much of Mizuguchi, either! Mostly we've been seeing Shiho and Himari––and that relationship doesn't seem to be going much further than it has. I suppose another question could be, what do we want Himari to get out of all this? What does she learn about meddling in people's old love non-stories? Does she get to play cupid for these two? Does that mean anything for her character?

The biggest problem I can see here is that, as a writer, Takeshima Eku has bitten off a lot more than she can chew. There are so many characters here, and the big problem is that, as one gets developed, the others get abandoned. She doesn't use the characters as natural foils for one another––even though she has the material to do it. Instead, we get this preposterously didactic story, laboriously unpacking Shiho's every motivation, until her angst and her anger overwhelm the previously fairly light-hearted tone of the story, and no other character has anything meaningful to add. It's not that a serious or morbid character couldn't be interjected into this mix; its that their story threatens now to be the main story, and they're going through that story almost alone. Yori and Himari's journey was one where we watched both of them grow into a relationship together. Here I don't see anyone growing or changing at all. Normally we'd expect at least Shiho to have an arc of some kind here. But if no one else has one, then there's not a lot to follow here. No one else matches Shiho's intensity, or brings her level of hysteria down a notch. No one else is finding an equivalent meaning in the events transpiring to contrast with Shiho's nihilism. And I find that when the balancing of characters is off this much, what I'm reading is just really bad writing. How do you walk your character back from the cliff? I don't see any evidence that the author has any idea how to do it.

I think there’s an obvious (and to my mind highly satisfactory) resolution to the Shiho arc: Truck-kun.

(And that way her band gets another grave to motivate them to even greater heights.)

Idk what yall are talking about, I really like the story. I don't mind all the Shiho drama and angst, It's interesting. And imo it makes the scenes we do get with Yori and Hima even sweeter because we don't see them constantly

Agreed. At least this is better than that other story from the same author. "There's no way I can have a lover" or something like that. That one is just garbage in manga form.

I think there’s an obvious (and to my mind highly satisfactory) resolution to the Shiho arc: Truck-kun.

(And that way her band gets another grave to motivate them to even greater heights.)

...

If I dig really deep, the only thing I want for Shiho is for there to be an unsecured trapdoor on the performance stage, which she falls through, to her death.

Instead of such drastic measures, I suggest hiring Tatsubon as a co-writer :P Shiho would get similar treatment to Tadokoro's evil editor, but at least she wouldn't die, maybe (unless they would instead go for the more hard-boiled, Liberta style).

last edited at Feb 23, 2023 12:05PM

Idk what yall are talking about, I really like the story. I don't mind all the Shiho drama and angst, It's interesting. And imo it makes the scenes we do get with Yori and Hima even sweeter because we don't see them constantly

Agreed. At least this is better than that other story from the same author. "There's no way I can have a lover" or something like that. That one is just garbage in manga form.

Admittedly, that one can be blamed on the writer of the original LN it adapts, not much the artist can do about it...

Idk what yall are talking about, I really like the story. I don't mind all the Shiho drama and angst, It's interesting. And imo it makes the scenes we do get with Yori and Hima even sweeter because we don't see them constantly

Agreed. At least this is better than that other story from the same author. "There's no way I can have a lover" or something like that. That one is just garbage in manga form.

Admittedly, that one can be blamed on the writer of the original LN it adapts, not much the artist can do about it...

Takeshima is only the artist for Watanare,not the author.