Following this arc is still suffering but it looks like Kase is committed to moving out no matter what and probably coming out no matter what so I guess progress is progress.

What? How do you get that? She still hasn't called off the race so I wouldn't call that committed to moving out. As for coming out, this chapter was her tripling down on staying in the closet. Not only did she kept lying about her boyfriend. She also needed to qualify every mention of like, whether it's hers or her roommate's to make sure her roomie didn't think for an instant that she might be gay.
This chapter was Kase completely failing to make progress at anything, as is the norm for this arc.

Fukami is just too adorable in her uselessness.

Fukami is just too adorable in her uselessness.

Boy, there’s looking on the bright side.

If it weren’t for the context of this arc, I’d agree with you—Fukami’s cute, and exactly the type to feed into Yamada’s insecurities about not being a good match for Kase.

But this series has always been about how mismatches can make a match: Kase’s defining admiration for Yamada’s diligence and self-motivation (which shows she’s not just an introverted non-entity) is the basic evidence that Kase’s not just an airheaded sporty prince-type.

I blame the writer rather than the character that I just want Fukami to go away as soon as possible.

What? How do you get that? She still hasn't called off the race so I wouldn't call that committed to moving out.

Technically no but she reframed the stakes to where the outcome isn't binary anymore. As I see it she subtly slammed the door on staying.

Kase was way more pensive than she's ever been this chapter, the hamster wheel wouldn't stop. She definitely seems to be taking things seriously with both Yamada and Fukami. The dense harem protagonist routine wasn't a great look though.

I wish this series had ended when Yamada agreed to Tokyo. The endless cycle of jealousy and misunderstandings diluted what was a very endearing story.

Following this arc is still suffering but it looks like Kase is committed to moving out no matter what and probably coming out no matter what so I guess progress is progress.

What? How do you get that? She still hasn't called off the race so I wouldn't call that committed to moving out. As for coming out, this chapter was her tripling down on staying in the closet. Not only did she kept lying about her boyfriend. She also needed to qualify every mention of like, whether it's hers or her roommate's to make sure her roomie didn't think for an instant that she might be gay.
This chapter was Kase completely failing to make progress at anything, as is the norm for this arc.

Now the race is: "I'm moving but if you win you'll get to know why I'm moving." So the track friend can win this race and it will now be an opportunity for Kase to be honest, rather than anything else. She just did things subtly since it seems she doesn't want to hurt her. I believe Kase thinks Fukami will win the race and therefore expects to be honest. She wants Fukami to take a step forward and beat her.

Consider that: "if you beat me, I'll tell you why I'm leaving," contradicts "if you beat me I won't leave." The former is the last bet they agreed on. The terms should have changed. I say "should" because I have to carry a grain a salt with me at this point since this manga has done some weirdly inconsistent stuff. But I think it's pretty clear here.

last edited at May 22, 2023 12:37PM

Look, Kase has been anything but subtle and tactful in this arc and everything else in this chapter was her bungling around so I don't think she managed to change the terms of the bet. I read it as her adding a new bet to the race. Now being very generous you could view this as her way of maybe convincing her roommate to let her move out even if she loses since she'll then explain she is moving in with her "boyfriend". So essentially this second bet could be a last ditch shot in the event she loses. Still I think that is giving way too much credit to Kase.

I just can't have enough of these characters. I love Kase and Yamada so much. And the rest of the cast too, for that matter. Here's hoping they will all remain useless lesbian dorks forever.

Seems like this entire plot would be over pretty quickly if Kase just told Fukami she was moving in with her girlfriend.

Seems like this entire plot would be over pretty quickly if Kase just told Fukami she was moving in with her girlfriend.

Its obvious that she wants to tell her.

Look, Kase has been anything but subtle and tactful in this arc and everything else in this chapter was her bungling around so I don't think she managed to change the terms of the bet.

I get Kase's track record but she's not being impulsive at all this chapter. Maybe I'm giving her too much credit but we'll see in two months.

Look, Kase has been anything but subtle and tactful in this arc and everything else in this chapter was her bungling around so I don't think she managed to change the terms of the bet. I read it as her adding a new bet to the race. Now being very generous you could view this as her way of maybe convincing her roommate to let her move out even if she loses since she'll then explain she is moving in with her "boyfriend". So essentially this second bet could be a last ditch shot in the event she loses. Still I think that is giving way too much credit to Kase.

I agree with the others on this coz she said if Fukami can beat her in a 100m race then she'll tell her the reason she's leaving - meaning she's leaving no matter what. She's only going to give Fukami the reason she's leaving if she loses but won't be staying. No point in having 2 races and the bets would be contradicting if both bets are in play.

Seems like this entire plot would be over pretty quickly if Kase just told Fukami she was moving in with her girlfriend.

Ikr? But what if Fukami will be like "I don't approve of her! Have a race with me and if you lose you two should break up" Lol

Seems like this entire plot would be over pretty quickly if Kase just told Fukami she was moving in with her girlfriend.

Ikr? But what if Fukami will be like "I don't approve of her! Have a race with me and if you lose you two should break up" Lol

Haha. Don't put that in the air.

I really hope Fukami finds her own soulmate somewhere.... (I know some of y'all ship her with that senpai whose name I forgot) I love her character so much and it breaks my heart knowing she ain't never ending up with Kase :(
I kinda wish Fukami was a separate character from a whole different story interacting with a whole different girl, so that I can root for her regardless. If this trope was presented as a main solo plot point instead of it being muddied by all these other different conflicts and drama, I think it would've been less frustrating for readers.

Also this arc is reeeeeally long and drawn out, I wish the finale of Kase moving out is satisfying enough and the conflicts get solved properly. A lot of the arcs before this felt very clunky and unresolved imo. Since this is all of those conflicts coming together I think I'm not unreasonable to expect a banger finale.

Seems like this entire plot would be over pretty quickly if Kase just told Fukami she was moving in with her girlfriend.

Ikr? But what if Fukami will be like "I don't approve of her! Have a race with me and if you lose you two should break up" Lol

I mean, as much as Kase respects the hierarchy like a proper sport student, even if senpai would back Fukami again, this would be the point where she would just tell them all to take a hike. She may have screwed up a few times before, but that doesn't mean Yamada is not the most important to her at the end of the day, and any such demand will see you shut out forever if you don't make a very sincere apology, possibly to Yamada as well.

Fukami needs to hook up with that girl who thinks she's Kase's big rival.

I feel like I'm missing something here: Is being gay still like a big taboo in Japan? Is there a reason Kase is THIS cagey over admitting to having a girlfriend? I was rereading, and they've never been completely open to anyone but Mikawa and Kase's senpai about their relationship (which may be why Kase is so possessive). But still, it never gets directly addressed, so this arc feels more like padding runtime than anything else.

Also I know she's a dope but its kinda nuts to see Kase both misread the confession and immediately begin flirting with Fukami. Is her gaydar that bad?

Is her gaydar that bad?

Well she did get repeatedly shot down by other girls before she asked Yamada to go out with her.

last edited at May 22, 2023 6:03PM

Is her gaydar that bad?

Well she did get repeatedly shot down by other girls before she asked Yamada to go out with her.

When did this happen?

While this latest arc has been one gut punch after another, we do get to see Fukami develop in this chapter.
It's been at the cost of many (many, many) Yamada points, but I have to wonder as neutron star Kase blazes forward on her latest effort, that we get to see Fukami awaken to what she's really feeling.
It's definitely a long walk, but this is the first chapter in all this mess that makes me think this might actually be going somewhere (or something).

Seems like this entire plot would be over pretty quickly if Kase just told Fukami she was moving in with her girlfriend.

People in the states perpetually underestimate the social stigma in Japan over coming out as gay. It is not an easy thing to do there. It's not easy most places, and there are certainly places worse than Japan, but it's still harder there than it is here.

It could cause all kinds of problems for her and Yamada if Fukami turned out to be loose lipped about it.

Is her gaydar that bad?

Well she did get repeatedly shot down by other girls before she asked Yamada to go out with her.

When did this happen?

She did say she's had friends become distant when she thought they were getting close. I get where they're pulling it from, but she never said she was romantically after anybody, or that she confessed or anything.

I feel like I'm missing something here: Is being gay still like a big taboo in Japan? Is there a reason Kase is THIS cagey over admitting to having a girlfriend? I was rereading, and they've never been completely open to anyone but Mikawa and Kase's senpai about their relationship (which may be why Kase is so possessive). But still, it never gets directly addressed, so this arc feels more like padding runtime than anything else.

Japan is a very conformist culture with a lot of weight behind family position and continuity. People are expected to marry, have children, and take care of their parents as they get older. A lot of people have very traditional ideas about gender roles. People who aren't married by a certain age face a lot of pressure from their parents to get married, to the point of setting up "marriage dates" (omiai) to try and herd reluctant people into marriage. A lot of LGBT folk there face significant backlash from their parents if they come out as gay.

Like, it's getting better, from what I understand, but it's still not great. Hell, even here in the states, being out as gay stands a fairly reasonable chance of impacting job opportunities, getting you in conflict with your parents, costing you friendships, and courting harassment, and it's worse there than it is here in many ways.

Also I know she's a dope but its kinda nuts to see Kase both misread the confession and immediately begin flirting with Fukami. Is her gaydar that bad?

Kase isn't exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, but yeah, I'm not sure if she realizes it, but that is definitely flirting at the end there. I'd like to think she's trying to laugh off the confession in a panic, but I don't know if she's perceptive enough.

I do agree with the earlier post, though, that this conversation, while a bit subtle, is definitely Kase staking out the terms of the race. She recognizes that Fukami doesn't want her to leave, but she definitely isn't willing to stay. It is certainly the case that "If you win, I'll tell you why I'm leaving" presupposes that "If you win, I'm still moving out." Kase is hoping to use this race to leave on good terms, but I don't believe for a second that if she loses she'll stay in the dorm. Not only would that ruin her friendship with Fukami ANYWAY, it would basically be a huge wound to her relationship with Yamada.

The art feels a little threadbare in this new chapter. The beach chapters seemed like a major leap forward in how this series looked, but maybe some exhaustion is setting in, leaving us with a chapter that is one single scene, with Kase and Fukami's bedroom backdrop hardly there, and with a very unimaginative treatment of the back-and-forth of the scenario. But Kase does finally start to steer out of this disaster of a plot.

But here the writer gives us this absolutely bizarre twist, and it turns out that Fukami hasn't really known what her feelings for Kase were really about until now. So Fukami has been stomping around like a jealous, possessive creep, throwing temper-tantrums about the roommate she's hardly spoken to "abandoning" her, and she herself believes that this level of vitriol is basically over...friendship? Track-team camaraderie? What is it Fukami thinks is happening here? Why has she been so manipulative and cruel when she doesn't really understand the nature of her attachment to Kase––why go as far as she has? This seems so strange, and if this is what the author planned, then Fukami really comes across as a painfully awkward person. This last chapter does suggest that Fukami has done something like this before, but if Fukami's cold-to-hot relationship with Kase was meant to be a part of the story, then I think the repetitive behavior should have been foregrounded in the story somehow. Or perhaps Fukami's sort of borderline tendencies could have been pre-established. Here it feels like an afterthought, a course correction to backfill Fukami's character development. There was plenty of time over the course of the very gradual introduction of Fukami into the book to give us something more of her character. And if this is some sort of conclusive arc to the series, then one would hope Fukami would arrive with a little more purpose early on. So little is established about her initially; she just makes side-eye at Kase and then at Yamada. In that space, Fukami's "I'm the worst roommate ever" drama had time to play out. We could maybe have seen that her standoffish attitude initially came from being too clingy with another roommate in the past––maybe Fukami is just too dense to realize that her clinginess is in both cases about romantic attraction? Then the character starts to be just a little interesting. Then if we had known that was how Fukami behaved, and that she wasn't really in exceptional control over her actions, she would have been potentially a little more sympathetic, and Kase's reliance on being clueless, hunky and carefree would have been tested by this storyline. Kase would have had to develop some emotional maturity.

In this chapter, Kase's weird stab at emotional maturity seems to come wholecloth, entirely out of nowhere. We see her using her power to "think deeply," but the resultant brainstorm really seems beyond Kase's level of emotional understanding. I guess I'm saying that it doesn't feel at all earned by the story. If this is what the series has been building towards, then Kase's emotional development ought to be more hard-won and gratifying to us than it seems to be so far. Like, reallly, the outcome of this race shouldn't be the climax of this series––or this storyline, if that's all it is. If the climax of the storyline is that Kase sees the need to develop greater maturity, that would be really good. So far, it seems like that's happened virtually between the panels of this chapter (Kase is clueless in the beginning of the chapter, and suddenly wise and supportive by the end, and the shift comes with the immediate pop of a car engine backfiring), and we're still building towards this horrible race. I have personally never cared how fast Kase can run.

One of my favorite storylines of any yuri manga is the one in Milk Morinaga's Girlfriends after Mari has all but confessed to Akko, pinning her down and kissing her, after Akko has told her that if she were a guy, she'd fall for Mari in a second. Suddenly the story––which had been centered upon Mari up until that point––shifts focus to Akko, and we go through a really sure-footed, clear arc of understanding, in which Akko tries to make sense of what Mari was trying to say to her, works it out, tries to gauge whether Mari was serious (hard, because Mari keeps dissembling to her and taking back the gesture any way she can), thinks about how she herself feels about Mari, decides to make a move, tries to make her move, and finally makes it. It's a lot of story, but the increasing melancholy the story had been steering into is leavened and renewed by the shift to Akko's perspective, and the needs of the new protagonist. And the grand purpose of this shift in perspective in the midst of Girlfriends is to transform Akko into the motivated romantic foil Mari wants and needs. A similar shift doesn't happen to Kase, exactly––for some reason, we see the whole encounter in this chapter through interloper Fukami's eyes. And I don't really see the grand purpose of it. I'm not sure what we get by Fukami seeing Kase and Yamada's relationship for what it is; certainly Fukami is not there yet, but that seems to be what this is building up to. But...why? What does Fukami bring to the table?

Yet again, the Fukami we see is underdeveloped for the task of witness she is being expected to perform. Not only does she not understand Kase and Yamada's relationship, she doesn't seem to understand relationships, period. If the purpose of this arc is for someone on the outside––not a friend of Kase and Yamada's, but someone more risky––to discover Kase and Yamada's relationship, I don't know why Fukami would be the best choice. She's not prepared for this; there is no supplemental storyline to Fukami, which would be augmented by witnessing proof of the central couple's love (a la the younger character who works in the cafe in Takemiya Jin's Fragments of Love). Fukami doesn't have another possible love interest for herself. She has nowhere constructive to go with this storyline yet. If Fukami had a girl who was interested in her––maybe a fan of her for her running, or something like that––and the girl's interest in her was something Fukami didn't understand, well then her unanalyzed clinginess to her roommate Kase would carry a little more heft as a storyline. Perhaps then, by understanding what Kase and Yamada have together, she could then recognize the way this other girl feels about her. Perhaps a little cliched, but without some balancing factor, without some richness in Fukami's own life, without another purpose for Fukami being here besides just being an inarticulate spoiler of the main couple's happiness...well, without any of that, Fukami's role in the story is just not very meaningful or satisfying. And that's where we're at; with a character who had no foregrounding of purpose, taking a storyline to a conclusion that is, so far, bound to be unsatisfactory. It's not the best-written storyline in this series, is I guess what I'm saying. And just like in Whispering You a Love Song, it's going on so darn long.

last edited at May 23, 2023 6:20AM

Is her gaydar that bad?

Well she did get repeatedly shot down by other girls before she asked Yamada to go out with her.

When did this happen?

I seem to recall Kase mentioning that she never had a girlfriend before Yamada, and that she'd tried to get close to other girls but it never worked before Yamada.

I thought it had been mentioned in the chapter where Kase and Yamada eat crepes on the roof of the school and talk about Kase's relationship with Inoue-senpai. But apparently not.