People seriously arguing whether there's anything romantic going on when Aya once again calls Mitsuki her crush.

BeanBeanKingdom posted:

People seriously arguing whether there's anything romantic going on when Aya once again calls Mitsuki her crush.

Actually...

First, the author says it's not Yuri then the uploader says it's not romance.

It looks like the series is tagged as both yuri and romance on Comic-Walker (Kadokawa's web manga platform). I personally find the romance tag to be unwarranted at this point, but it is funny that the author apparently disagrees with the publisher's designation.

I didn't mind early on, but I have grown tired of the 4-page structure. Every episode needing to complete a narrative arc in four pages is a severe limitation on how the story can be paced, and results in a formulaic feeling. (This would not be a problem in a pure gag comic, but there's an actual plot being attempted here.) And that amplifies my feeling that the story itself is also running in circles...

last edited at Oct 15, 2023 6:12PM

People seriously arguing whether there's anything romantic going on when Aya once again calls Mitsuki her crush.

Well, we're reading in translation, so 'crush' may be the translator's choice...

Is "crush" meant to be that "stan" usage the series has done before?
This chapter was kind of confusing to read.

Is "crush" meant to be that "stan" usage the series has done before?
This chapter was kind of confusing to read.

I don't have access to the raws, but you may be thinking of oshi, which is slang meaning either (1) someone who is a fan of a specific person, or (2) someone's favorite person, "bias" (e.g. an idol), but it is sometimes translated as "crush".

It's not uncommon in yuri for oshi to be just a step before the eventual crush. it's even put in titles sometimes, like in WataOshi and OshiBudo. In the case of WataOshi, the scanlators translated it as "I favor", while the official localizer as "I'm in love with". With OshiBudo it became "my favorite pop idol".

last edited at Oct 15, 2023 6:46PM

People seriously arguing whether there's anything romantic going on when Aya once again calls Mitsuki her crush.

Well, we're reading in translation, so 'crush' may be the translator's choice...

This came up earlier in the series since she also views herself as a fan. They also put crush in quotes, here. I'm assuming she used "oshi" and the quotes are the translators' way of communicating that she didn't necessarily use romantic language there. But maybe someone will correct me.

As Doctor_Hoot said, even if she's using oshi that doesn't say much about where the series will go. Translating "oshi" as crush can sometimes be complicated but its normally not a big deal. What I was concerned about for this series is that it can make people think she's using crush in the romantic sense when she may not think she's doing that yet (and leading to Bean's comment that started this train). That could be an issue but I really like the quote-approach that they took (if it was indeed oshi).

last edited at Oct 15, 2023 10:25PM

I don't think we have to do all that much deliberating on the nuance of Japanese to infer how Aya views Koga considering her other reactions in this chapter. She doesn't view Koga as a "celebrity" or something, but clearly seemed to put her on some kind of pedestal, viewed from some kind of distance. Right before her brothers bust in the room she thinks "aah, it feels like she's just a normal friend..." and she's expressing both excitement and anxiety about Koga coming over her house. I'd imagine her feelings are too complicated for her to put into words even if she was going to try to spell it out for you lol. She's attracted to her but also not yet really comfortable enough with her to conceptualize her as a potential girlfriend, I would imagine. This chapter was a step forward in that regard, bringing her image of Koga another notch closer to Koga's reality instead of Aya's assumptions.

last edited at Oct 16, 2023 6:12AM

Critical hits all around. :D

A 95 for English.
Another death flag.

Lol are the friends crushing on her too now? XD

Back in the fight Koga-san! You'll have Aya-chan in your corner ... and her friends.

Mitsuki could have an entire harem of girls if she ever managed to harness her accidental rizz powers.

Mitsuki is now the owner of a gyaru harem.

Mitsuki literally hit out of her clothes by a metaphorical guitar to the face.

How can you suck so much at history, just watch netflix and cheat the dates girl

Girl needs to cut her nails

I liked having a funny chapter! Some of the expressions in this were killer lollll.

Mitsuki could have an entire harem of girls if she ever managed to harness her accidental rizz powers.

Pretty sure she's practically there now.

The autistic failgirl becomes the doted-upon favorite based on gap moe is a real thing that happens. I can guarantee it.

That said, the fact that her grades compare poorly to the gyaru group is kinda sad LOL
Like, even outside of Aya who's a bit nerdy in some ways... even the slackers?? One of those subjects isn't even STEM??? Like if her English is so good how is her world history so bad?

Edit: for those confused about pacing and progress - this was never supposed to be a story proper. It's basically the author drawing their funny little blorbo OCs, and publications often change courses between oneshot/web and serialization (How Do We Relationship is an example).

Also WataOshi was because people refer to their faves as their oshis and Revolution was an otome game and have you seen how people refer to their favorite TWST boys? Like, the title is meant to play on expectations. A Korean manhwa might go "My Conquer Target is the Villainess" or "Not Male Lead, but Villainess" or something. LMAO. OshiBudo meanwhile was LITERALLY about her idol oshi.

"I Favor the Villainess" is therefore a... tolerable (your mileage may vary) translation, but "favor" and "she's my fave" are two really different things. "The Villainess is My Fave" would still come off wrong for anyone not invested in otome games, so idk. The LN version meanwhile moved beyond the initial premise of "I'm gonna write a narou-kei otome but make it yuri lol" so there's no need to emphasize the "oshi" part and I'm in Love With the Villainess is a fine translation.

Aya referring to Mitsuki as her oshi could either be her beinga dumb teen and being unable to quantify exactly why she's down bad (not being able to identify that parasocial crushes are very different for a specific reason) or it could just be she's rooting for Mitsuki to be her true, authentic self. If it's the latter, it still has high potential to segue into a romance. I don't think the author has decided whether they want to take it there.

last edited at Oct 22, 2023 7:45PM

Dear Mitsuki, I don’t know whether you are a procrastinator or not but you have the same results as me.

That 95 on English and others being impressed, and that 18 on Math with the others shocked. That’s literally gonna be me when the half semester results are out. Again. In my country, 40 is the passing grade and anything above 80 is considered extraordinary.

Dear Mitsuki, I don’t know whether you are a procrastinator or not but you have the same results as me.

That 95 on English and others being impressed, and that 18 on Math with the others shocked. That’s literally gonna be me when the half semester results are out. Again. In my country, 40 is the passing grade and anything above 80 is considered extraordinary.

In my country, 50-51%, depending on the jurisdiction, is passing. My final mark in Grade 12 English was 50%. In colleges and universities, passing mark is 60%.

Honestly, I think it's absurd to call this manga "subtext." The beginning is an obvious romance setup, the girls frequently blush around each other, they care deeply about each other, other characters observe they act like a couple, etc. That some people might theoretically interpret them as "just friends" is immaterial; some people interpret Suletta and Miorine as "just friends" and they're literally married at the end of the show. People frequently dismiss F/F relationships as "just friends" due to homo- and lesbophobia, but yuri fans shouldn't add to that phenomenon. If Mitsuki were male, literally not a single person on Earth would think their relationship is "subtext" and they're "just friends."

It looks like I'm locked out of recommending tag removal for this series (edit: nevermind I was dumb), but fwiw, I heavily encourage swapping back from "subtext" to "yuri." People have been really weird about this series from almost the very beginning, presumably because it's popular, but Arai Sumiko has repeatedly shown in her previous work that she doesn't hesitate to depict lesbian relationships and I see no good reason to expect that to change in this manga.

last edited at Oct 24, 2023 7:23PM

Honestly, I think it's absurd to call this manga "subtext." The beginning is an obvious romance setup, the girls frequently blush around each other, they care deeply about each other, other characters observe they act like a couple, etc. That some people might theoretically interpret them as "just friends" is immaterial; some people interpret Suletta and Miorine as "just friends" and they're literally married at the end of the show. People frequently dismiss F/F relationships as "just friends" due to homo- and lesbophobia, but yuri fans shouldn't add to that phenomenon. If Mitsuki were male, literally not a single person on Earth would think their relationship is "subtext" and they're "just friends."

It looks like I'm locked out of recommending tag removal for this series, but fwiw, I heavily encourage swapping back from "subtext" to "yuri." People have been really weird about this series from almost the very beginning, presumably because it's popular, but Arai Sumiko has repeatedly shown in her previous work that she doesn't hesitate to depict lesbian relationships and I see no good reason to expect that to change in this manga.

It's actually a subject of much debate due to several ambiguous statements the author has made over whether this series should be considered yuri. It also hinges on where people daw the line between yuri and sexually confusing friendship

It's actually a subject of much debate due to several ambiguous statements the author has made over whether this series should be considered yuri. It also hinges on where people daw the line between yuri and sexually confusing friendship

I don't want to redo an argument I already had in this thread dozens of pages ago, but in that interview Arai basically said the Japanese equivalent of "I don't write yuri, I write wlw." This was then taken out of context by people who hyper-focused on the one word without knowing the history and implications the term 'yuri' has in Japanese that it doesn't in English. Regardless, Arai's Twitter profile literally says "I like love between women," and everything that she has ever written without exception contains explicitly sapphic protagonists. I don't think it's hard to guess where this comic will end up.

Also, I don't understand what you mean by "sexually confusing friendship." Like, if a man and a woman have a "sexually confusing friendship," we just call that "sexual tension." I don't see the utility in yuri fans holding a F/F relationship to such a higher standard than a het relationship before we accept it as legitimate.