Just realized this is the first time we've seen Randa in casual clothes, does she have those threads sewn into her skin?

It seems that way.

We've seen Randa's various body-mods sticking into her actual skin before, they don't seem connected to her magical girl transformation... well, at all. Rather, they seem to be self-mutilation that she just does to herself in general, we just don't see them beneath her clothes because she's placed them strategically to not show them if she doesn't want to.

(Which actually makes perfect sense now that I think about it... why would a presumably "goodness" fueled transformation involve self-mutilation even if it's in-character of the person undergoing it?)

I remember it stood out to me in particular how in the last panel of this page: https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/looking_up_to_magical_girls_ch48#9 we see her partway through transforming and it seems the extensive stichings and piercings littering her body are actually just there under her clothes normally.

Personally, I'm impressed at the author's willingness to portray this particular aspect of a self-loating character in such a visceral and realistic way. Most "edgelord" characters whose whole schtick is how much they don't care about things in general including themselves are typically still never shown to habitually practice any form of self-harm other than outright suicide attempts. Randa, despite being an exaggerated character in an obviously parody-narrative, honestly comes across to me as fairly realistic in essence. Which should speak VOLUMES about the quality of this writing.

...Man, remembering how many people have written this manga off as just fetish-pandering (or worse, BEING cp) is kinda depressing. Literally every time I look into something in this story, there's a red thread to find and a deeper motivation to piece together.

Just realized this is the first time we've seen Randa in casual clothes, does she have those threads sewn into her skin?

Corset piercings. It's a real thing. The threads aren't sewn into the skin; it's just a bunch of piercings you put thread through.

last edited at May 27, 2023 1:18PM

What a nice calm Chapter :)

I’m sad we didn’t get to see Tres Magia though… and that Azul/Utena seems to have fallen off the radar. Which is a shame bc I feel like they have so much chemistry and compatibility, and there’s a ton of potential there. And, frankly, I want to see a sadist and masochist getting closer. We’re so starved for romancy representation QQ

HEY DONT SAY THAT, HAVE FAITH THEY WILL HAVE A COME BACK!!! I'm coping so hard they will

...Man, remembering how many people have written this manga off as just fetish-pandering (or worse, BEING cp) is kinda depressing. Literally every time I look into something in this story, there's a red thread to find and a deeper motivation to piece together.

Imagine if the creator was brave enough to ... not make a sezualised manga about children.
Like, I'm having no problems with it morally because fiction, but you can't complain about this not getting recognition when they have purposely buried their great story in questionable content.

i mostly agree with @Ehhhhhhh, i love this manga but i can't blame anyone who's turned off by the premise

I’m sad we didn’t get to see Tres Magia though… and that Azul/Utena seems to have fallen off the radar. Which is a shame bc I feel like they have so much chemistry and compatibility, and there’s a ton of potential there. And, frankly, I want to see a sadist and masochist getting closer. We’re so starved for romancy representation QQ

HEY DONT SAY THAT, HAVE FAITH THEY WILL HAVE A COME BACK!!! I'm coping so hard they will

I think the problem with Baiser x Azul is that they are too compatible and have largely resolved their relationship arc in the chapter where Azul unlocked her La Verita. The only remaining step they have left to take is to reveal their identities to each other and to get together out-of-costume, and I am assuming the author is saving everyone's mutual unmasking for the grand finale. So, while I also root for Azul, I do have to admit that Kiwi's relationship with Utena-Baiser is much more complicated and thus justifiably receives much more screen time at the moment.

Imagine if the creator was brave enough to ... not make a sezualised manga about children.
Like, I'm having no problems with it morally because fiction, but you can't complain about this not getting recognition when they have purposely buried their great story in questionable content.

i mostly agree with @Ehhhhhhh, i love this manga but i can't blame anyone who's turned off by the premise

Oh I didn't meant to imply I have any issues with the people who simply don't enjoy the premise and can't get into it because of the contents, all that is totally fair and understandable; I'd never fault someone for not liking or reading something that they simply didn't enjoy.

I was referring more to the dickweasels who don't understand that "refusing to analyze, research and explore something" also means you have no right to judge it. Since, you know, you literally don't know what the hell you're talking about. You're literally refusing to read it or even consider the notion that any of it has any substance or narrative purpose, and take offense at the notion that it could have.

People accusing it of being mere fetish-fuel and pedo-pandering are either malicious moral fanatics or plain ignorant of what they're talking about, and the ignorant are always the least qualified people to speak about anything, much less take an aggressive stance on something and throwing around outrageously severe accusations.

I am already certain that the anime is gonna kick up a shitstorm from lots of people who'll simply assume that CP and porn is what this work simply is, and they won't hear anything else. Trying to discuss it with them will just get them screaming that you're a proverbial witch who needs burning.

To reiterate what I said before; The fact that a story this well written and actually quite heartwarming in it's messages evokes such sheer hatred from a lot of people on principle is simply tragic.

Imagine if the creator was brave enough to ... not make a sezualised manga about children.
Like, I'm having no problems with it morally because fiction, but you can't complain about this not getting recognition when they have purposely buried their great story in questionable content.

i mostly agree with @Ehhhhhhh, i love this manga but i can't blame anyone who's turned off by the premise

Oh I didn't meant to imply I have any issues with the people who simply don't enjoy the premise and can't get into it because of the contents, all that is totally fair and understandable; I'd never fault someone for not liking or reading something that they simply didn't enjoy.

But I did understand what you were saying.
People are allowed to judge a story on its one questionable thing when it's done on purpose. The fact of the matter is, the creator chose the ages of these characters. Could have done just as much of an off-the-wall story with women who had been magical girls for a long time and were now adults, maybe dealing with some repression of their feelings due to having to appear "pure" to be a magical girl all those years. But they ... did not.
It's not like there's just one questionable scene in this story, it's the whole basis of the characters. People are allowed to judge it based on that factor alone. And yes, they will never be able to see the genius of the way the story unfolds just because that character basis is something they find distasteful, even in fiction.

If the writer really wanted to have their work shine and be appreciated by many, they would have made the story differently, but they wanted young girls in their story. They deserve every criticism for that choice regardless of how well-written the rest of the story is.

last edited at May 29, 2023 6:11AM

Making the story you personally want is more admirable I think than just aiming for as wide an audience as possible, but that's me.

If the writer really wanted to have their work shine and be appreciated by many, they would have made the story differently, but they wanted young girls in their story. They deserve every criticism for that choice regardless of how well-written the rest of the story is.

It's been pointed out before that this is simply the standard magical girl (and pretty much the general anime/manga protagonist) age, so of course it would have to use this age to properly play with the tropes.

But I did understand what you were saying.
People are allowed to judge a story on its one questionable thing when it's done on purpose. The fact of the matter is, the creator chose the ages of these characters. Could have done just as much of an off-the-wall story with women who had been magical girls for a long time and were now adults, maybe dealing with some repression of their feelings due to having to appear "pure" to be a magical girl all those years. But they ... did not.
It's not like there's just one questionable scene in this story, it's the whole basis of the characters. People are allowed to judge it based on that factor alone. And yes, they will never be able to see the genius of the way the story unfolds just because that character basis is something they find distasteful, even in fiction.

If the writer really wanted to have their work shine and be appreciated by many, they would have made the story differently, but they wanted young girls in their story. They deserve every criticism for that choice regardless of how well-written the rest of the story is.

That's preposterous.
The ages of the characters it not something you could just remove and that would be that, it's so intrinsically relevant to the narrative that aging them up to adults would rip out an entire dimension of the narrative just so some people can read it without feeling uncomfortable.

The characters are young teenagers for multiple valid and important reasons, the main ones being:
A) It's a Magical Girl story and them being a particular age is a genre-staple. It's only appropriate for a parody to feature a cast at that age, and deviating from that expectation is what would require further meta-justifications; not the other way around.
B) It works intentionally (and beautifully) into the story's overarching message/narrative of accepting oneself, one's sexuality and one's flaws no matter what society, other people and even your own notions are trying to shame or threaten you into believing and accepting. The cast are at an age where they would be having their sexual awakenings, when they would be struggling to define themselves and sifting through all sorts of outside factors trying to tell them what is and isn't "right" to be. ESPECIALLY when it comes to sexuality, there is SO much pressure on every single one of us to conform and not be a deviant, with arbitrary and completely nonsensical definitions of "deviant" getting pushed threateningly at us from all angles at all times through life. The age of the cast is the point in time when this pressure is the greatest, it's THE most relevant time of their lives for the story to take place in and for them as characters to learn the important message that they are not "wrong" just because they have certain eccentricities.

(Said "eccentricities" being their kinks and fetishes, because this IS a parody after all, but the principle is just as applicable to any other facet of a person. The fundamental logic is the same for, for example, realizing-exploring-and-accepting one's sexual orientation no matter what one's surrounding family and society may be trying to tell you to conform as. Looking Up To Magical Girls is simply using its exaggerated premise and subject matter for a combination of comedic effect and to emphasize the point of the message with the an outrageous context that stands out.)

It is supremely ironic that this manga is facing issues with people judging it for what they assume it to be without understanding or reading it and for "choosing" to not be something else more palatable to the average person, when the entire moral of the story is to not let anything force you to conform to what it wants you to be rather than accept what you are and living true to it; hardships and hissy-fits from the naysayers be damned.

Anyone judging the story negatively for involving minors exploring their sexualities alone is literally missing the entire point of it, and in the most ironic way possible.

But nah, kids and sexuality? That's gross, author's clearly pedo-pandering, 0/10 shovel-ware manga.

last edited at May 29, 2023 6:28PM

But nah, kids and sexuality? That's gross, author's clearly pedo-pandering, 0/10 shovel-ware manga.

Just this statement here makes your whole argument fall apart.

Is this for kids? Or is it for adults?
Why does there have to be adult media about kids and their sexual awakenings?
It's an important question to ask, but you refuse to ask it. What kind of audience is is manga looking for? What kind of people are going to read it?

Again, I'm okay with that. You can't say things shouldn't exist just because some people are awful. But it should be criticised, along with any other media that deals with questionable content. It doesn't mean there isn't anything to be admired in it, it means that we should question and allow to be criticised everything we consume, regardless of how innocent you find it yourself.

But it should be criticised, along with any other media that deals with questionable content.

Your post contains questionable content and should be criticized. Why? Because I say so and I'm the absolute morale authority.

But nah, kids and sexuality? That's gross, author's clearly pedo-pandering, 0/10 shovel-ware manga.

Just this statement here makes your whole argument fall apart.

Is this for kids? Or is it for adults?
Why does there have to be adult media about kids and their sexual awakenings?
It's an important question to ask, but you refuse to ask it. What kind of audience is is manga looking for? What kind of people are going to read it?

Again, I'm okay with that. You can't say things shouldn't exist just because some people are awful. But it should be criticised, along with any other media that deals with questionable content. It doesn't mean there isn't anything to be admired in it, it means that we should question and allow to be criticised everything we consume, regardless of how innocent you find it yourself.

Those are absolutely absurd questions, and the fact that you're asking them and using them as any kind of basis for why the story is "questionable" betrays the incredibly biased and flawed angle you're coming at the issue from fundamentally. Obviously the story is not for young children. No one was ever arguing that this work could not be criticized, the issue is that a lot of the critique aimed at it is simply pre-judged nonsense, ignorant assumptions about the author's intent or sheer refusal to accept it as "good" in any capacity due to the subject matter.

Why does there "have" to be a story like this? That is a ridiculous question.
No story "has" to exist, and the implication you're making that "creating a story" could be at any point in any way unethical in itself in a vacuum is utterly ridiculous.
Whatever reasons the author has for writing something is utterly irrelevant in regards to the quality of the work itself. NO piece of fiction should EVER be judged or censored purely on the basis of why it was written, it is a complete and total non-factor in the work's actual qualities.

What is relevant is the intentional message it's pushing, what "information" it proports to be true and the sheer objective grammatical and writing quality of the text regardless of contents. And more subjectively, the actual subjective contents such as (for example) "the ways in which the story uses particular concepts to reference- and tie things into the greater theme in a cohesive narrative," but even those things are simply YMMV and cannot be called unethical in themselves. They are techniques of writing.

What you're doing wrong is that you're not actually interested in evaluating this piece of fiction. You've already decided that it makes you uncomfortable and is dubious, and now you're simply looking for reasons to justify that feeling objectively by looking to an aspect of it which is sufficiently ambiguous for you to fill in your own bias into it; in this case "the clearly dubious intentions of the author for making this work at all."

You're in a loop of "This story makes me uncomfortable" --> "Who would write this?" --> "Author must have dubious intent" --> Back to square one.

No one's saying that a piece of fiction can't or shouldn't be criticized, the issue here is that your "criticisms" and questions are irrelevant, biased and illogical to ask; they will always point to the work being ethically dubious because that's the answer they're looking for, and so the questions in themselves are pointless and misguided.

---

And just because I really want to point this out even though it's technically besides the point:
Why write a story about young teens discovering their sexuality?

Because A) the issue of one's circumstances pressuring them into denial about themselves and being people they are not at heart actually is relevant to a lot of people even in adulthood, and in fact a lot of people struggling with it will likely emphasize with the characters struggling with it through their youths. If anything, it's cathartic to read a story about characters learning to be who they are in spite of society's pressures while young rather than when they're older.

B) Because like I mentioned earlier, both the genre and the themes of the story work naturally into taking place at the age in life when people really would go through these phases of their lives. Early teens really is when most people begin discovering and exploring their identity and sexuality, and face the problems of feeling ashamed of what they find and consequently trying to hide or bury it out of fear of being judged by others. There is no age more appropriate for this story to take place during than this, and the notion that it shouldn't because some people would rather not read about it is utterly ridiculous.

C) Arguably the most important reason of all; Because teenagers discovering and exploring their sexuality is a subject matter that we culturally as a species have developed an almost dogmatic practice of not evaluating or approaching simply because we feel icky about the subject matter and even going so far as to make ill assumptions about any people who try to. "That guy wrote a novel about a teenager going through puberty! What a DEVIANT! What sort of debased freak would even want to write about such things!?"
This despite it being something that literally all of us go through, how extremely formative it is and how much it goes into shaping who we are both as individuals and as a species in total. It's is a HUGELY important part of practically all human life, and yet we pull away from evaluating or discussing it properly because we're ashamed and afraid of any possible implications or associations that may come from it.
Why SHOULDN'T we be willing to read and write about teenagers developing through puberty? Isn't that definitely important enough that we should explore it? How can we ever get to a point as a society where teenagers aren't pressured into being people they're not for as long as we continue to treat the process as disgusting and immoral to even approach or acknowledge?

last edited at May 30, 2023 6:36AM

You are arguing something fundamentally different than I am, and it's very frustrating. You're being obtuse.
This story could. 100%. Be written differently. Your argument that it cannot is nonsensical. You can parody magical girls by making them into BDSM, but woe to you if you parody magical girls by ... making them older?

You're also very angry that anyone would question your thought process, which is infuriating. I already said that it is okay this exists, but you keep approaching me from the angle that I'm saying it's not, and that's very disingenuous of you, which makes it a pointless discussion. I was only making a point that people can question why this exists, and you are not in a position to hypocritically take some kind of opposite moral high ground that no one is allowed to object to this based on the character ages and themes.

That is all. I was trying to say. End of my trying to make a rational discussion about this. If you try to argue a point further that I'm not making (including ridiculous notions that this is indeed the "only way" this story could ever possibly be writen), then I'm not going to engage with you on it any further.

You are arguing something fundamentally different than I am, and it's very frustrating. You're being obtuse.
This story could. 100%. Be written differently. Your argument that it cannot is nonsensical. You can parody magical girls by making them into BDSM, but woe to you if you parody magical girls by ... making them older?

You're also very angry that anyone would question your thought process, which is infuriating. I already said that it is okay this exists, but you keep approaching me from the angle that I'm saying it's not, and that's very disingenuous of you, which makes it a pointless discussion. I was only making a point that people can question why this exists, and you are not in a position to hypocritically take some kind of opposite moral high ground that no one is allowed to object to this based on the character ages and themes.

That is all. I was trying to say. End of my trying to make a rational discussion about this. If you try to argue a point further that I'm not making (including ridiculous notions that this is indeed the "only way" this story could ever possibly be writen), then I'm not going to engage with you on it any further.

The one being needlessly obtuse and besides-the-point here is you, not me. It was I who made and initial statement that you then responded to with arguments that had no actual bearing on it.

I have never said or claimed that people aren't allowed to question why or how this exists, and the fact that you still think that's what you need to defend and argue just means that you still haven't realized as much.

What I did say is that it's supremely ironic that this manga is suffering adverse consequences as a result of people trying to do to it exactly what the moral of the story is that you shouldn't cave to, demonstrating that a chunk of it's readers clearly don't get the point it's making and the behaviour they're engaging in.

It's like reading a book about how book burnings don't work, only to then have a bunch of people who read it try to arrange a book burning of it. It's absolutely comical.

I then also accused you of engaging in that behaviour, but it was technically besides the point and I just got too carried away to notice. I still stand by my assessment that that's very much what you're doing, but arguing about it really is besides the point unless you would like to continue discussing it.

last edited at May 30, 2023 2:24PM

^It's especially telling that Ehhhhhhh entirely ignored your point C) there, since acknowledging its existence would have entirely killed their argument.

^It's especially telling that Ehhhhhhh entirely ignored your point C) there, since acknowledging its existence would have entirely killed their argument.

Of course they're gonna ignore it, everyone can understand that the story will be completely different and wouldn't work as well if the ages were changed, they're engaging in bad faith argument. They also completely missed the point of the original argument that was "it's ok to not like it or just pass on something it if the content makes your uncomfortable but making broad and difamatory claims about it is not, especially if you haven't read it".
Maybe I'm wrong but Ehhhh seems to believe that if a piece of media makes you uncomfortable you can throw shade at it even if you haven't actually read it and also gives you the right to question it's excitence, wich Is fucked up cuz IT IS a circular way of thinking than more often than not will lead to the conclusion that it shouldn't or that it has to be drastically changed to fit their criteria on what's acceptable

Edit it's also hilarious that Ehhhh ignores almost every argument then claims that OP is being obtuse then refuses to elaborate and leaves

last edited at May 30, 2023 6:31PM

"Shut up dad, the close-ups of bare-assed 13-year-olds are artistically necessary!"

isn't it too late to have this conversaton nearly 50 chapter in ?

"Shut up dad, the close-ups of bare-assed 13-year-olds are artistically necessary!"

Nice strawman, jackass. This is why cultural evolution is so slow, because people like you take issue with anything that they don't immediately agree with and try to strawman-ridicule it for shits and giggles rather than engage it seriously, because you're just that confident in your obviously "correct" bullshit and ignorant of the fact that you are literally stagnating the human condition.

In other words; you're the reason the dark ages lasted for so long, and why we can't have nice things.

"Shut up dad, the close-ups of bare-assed 13-year-olds are artistically necessary!"

Nice strawman, jackass. This is why cultural evolution is so slow, because people like you take issue with anything that they don't immediately agree with and try to strawman-ridicule it for shits and giggles rather than engage it seriously, because you're just that confident in your obviously "correct" bullshit and ignorant of the fact that you are literally stagnating the human condition.

In other words; you're the reason the dark ages lasted for so long, and why we can't have nice things.

I mean I fully agree with you but you didn'thave to be that rude my dude

wow some people are taking this manga really seriously aren't they.

all the following can be true:

1. this is a great manga

2. upping the characters' ages or removing the lewd scenes would fundamentally change it

3. making a "one step below full-on hentai" manga about 14-year-old magical girls doing BDSM on each other is absolutely fetish pandering, and any claim that that's not part of the appeal to a large portion of the audience and this is actually a super serious work of literature about teenage sexual awakening is absurd

4. insulting other posters is not cool