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.

I think this manga's progression is suffering from its success.

She had to add the "angst about the future" arc to prolong the story, because since she has a hit on her hands, she wants to keep it going as long as she can, which is understandable.

When you have nearly a million followers on twitter for just ONE series, you don't want to conclude it just yet, because there's no guarantee the next series will have the same success and she'll fall back in anonymity.

This is her blessing, but also her curse.

I find it funny that people read chapters like this and complain "it's too short, this isn't a gag manga."
It ... basically is.
People seem to want the manga to spell everything out to them, but that's not the vibe of this story, it's more of a feeling and some kind of (emotional or funny) punchline.

That's maybe where people are getting so hung up on the romance of it all, too. This is not some linear progression of a relationship, it's basically a series of snapshots of their lives.

It's interesting me to me that there are debates with the relationship of the two main characters, when a few side images very well near the start fairly strongly suggested that it's a given they got together.

I get it, for those that want to see some serious development with the relationship, but there's more to an actual relationship than leaping from point A to point Z. Plus, plenty of other stories have a lot of these moments too. It's just that these are more seemingly accentuated due to the smaller uploads.

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.

Have you ever looked up a trope called "stupid sexy Flanders"? Basically, it's a thing, usually in comedy, where a character feels inexplicably attracted to someone outside of their normal orientation. These relationships don't usually end up going anywhere, even when played serious. The name comes from a scene in the Simpsons where Homer Simpson is bothered by his strange sexual attraction to Ned Flanders

While I don't, personally, think Aya and Mitsuki are straight, I was mostly pointing out why it is not unreasonable for people to feel like this story wasn't going down the yuri route if they don't know the author's previous career. Stories have done the "straight the whole time" thing before

Predictive lamenting is a hell of a drug.

Have you ever looked up a trope called "stupid sexy Flanders"? Basically, it's a thing, usually in comedy, where a character feels inexplicably attracted to someone outside of their normal orientation. These relationships don't usually end up going anywhere, even when played serious. The name comes from a scene in the Simpsons where Homer Simpson is bothered by his strange sexual attraction to Ned Flanders

While I don't, personally, think Aya and Mitsuki are straight, I was mostly pointing out why it is not unreasonable for people to feel like this story wasn't going down the yuri route if they don't know the author's previous career. Stories have done the "straight the whole time" thing before

Except we have zero indication that either Mitsuki or Aya is straight, unlike say Homer who is married to a woman. The sole male character (aside from Mitsuki's uncle) is never presented as a romantic option and in fact supports the yuri ship. Furthermore, them being attracted to each other is not a one-off joke like the "Stupid Sexy Flanders" scene but is a consistent theme running through the whole manga.

I understand that a lot of yuri fans feel a certain paranoia; there's often this constant fear that the characters will be revealed as "just friends" and "actually straight all along" unless there's some sort of extremely obviously explicit indication otherwise. We even saw this with G-Witch, another show people often accused of being "subtext" and "bait" despite Suletta and Miorine getting literally, non-metaphorically engaged to be married in episode 1. While I don't think this fear is grounded in reality -- the last time this happened was, what, Amanchu over 6 years ago? -- and often causes people to dismiss slow burns and ambiguous feelings as valid ways to depict sapphic relationships at all, I recognize that it's coming from a place of real pain. But that doesn't excuse this website from using the subtext tag when they should very well know Arai Sumiko's history.

Like if her English is so good how is her world history so bad?

I would assume her English is so good because of all the music she listens to, which has little to do with learning history.

No Yuri tag anymore huh? .....
That's.... Insane if anyone reads this to think is not..........

I think the Subtext tag over Yuri is much more appropriate, because putting aside guessing and wishful thinking, there's no evidence that says it is. In fact, there's more that prove otherwise.

Nothing says that Aya like girls. She had a crush on Mitsuki long before she learned that Mitsuki was a girl, so Aya clearly is attracted to the male form. When she found out, she felt betrayed, even though she didn't knew the reason of the deception. That's because she was interested in a romantic relationship, yet, the fact alone that Mitsuki was a girl was a deal breaker. Whenever someone thinks that Mitsuki is her boyfriend, she dismisses simply by saying that its a girl, because that alone is enough.

"Oh, but the blushing!". The fact that Aya knows that Mitsuki is a girl, doesn't change that she still looks like a hot guy. Her brain knows that she is a girl, but her eyes see a hot guy. It's like watching a horror movie. We know its fake, but our eyes see otherwise, so we feel afraid anyway.

About Mitsuki... we have no idea what she's into. No posters nor magazines or anything that indicates what she is attracted to. The times that she looks hot are completely unintentional, she's not trying to seduce anyone.

Romance ended the moment Aya found out that Mitsuki is a girl. Now its a story about two girls bonding over music.

The amount of explicit sapphic pining and implicit queerness seems to qualify what’s going on between them as “text” more than anything. If you’re going to call what has been shown to be Aya’s conscious attraction to Mitsuki’s butch masculinity “straight” or “confused”, I genuinely don’t know what to tell you.

last edited at Oct 24, 2023 12:21AM

I think this manga's progression is suffering from its success.

She had to add the "angst about the future" arc to prolong the story, because since she has a hit on her hands, she wants to keep it going as long as she can, which is understandable.

When you have nearly a million followers on twitter for just ONE series, you don't want to conclude it just yet, because there's no guarantee the next series will have the same success and she'll fall back in anonymity.

This is her blessing, but also her curse.

I get that it's pretty normal to speculate about the motivation of the author in various circumstances, but sometimes I feel like people are way too keen to jump to "This work takes a creative decision I wouldn't have taken, therefore it must be the case that the author was motivated by some external pressure, because clearly someone who made a thing that I started to like wouldn't go on to make a thing that I like less, unless there were some such pressure."

A series can't just have a disappointing ending, it was "rushed" because it was "axed". An author can't just be lingering on a storyline because it's interesting to them or because it's the story they want to tell, they're "prolonging the story" because "they're afraid of falling into anonymity" Like, maybe the author just has different taste than you do? It's one thing if there's some kind of indication that they're unsatisfied with the work, but with something like this, you're basically just writing fanfiction about the author's motivations.

last edited at Oct 24, 2023 12:06AM

"Oh, but the blushing!". The fact that Aya knows that Mitsuki is a girl, doesn't change that she still looks like a hot guy. Her brain knows that she is a girl, but her eyes see a hot guy. It's like watching a horror movie. We know its fake, but our eyes see otherwise, so we feel afraid anyway.

Once you start pulling out the "being attracted to a girl doesn't make you not straight as long as that girl is kinda androgynous" take, I think that's a sign that it isn't subtext after all. Everything else you describe is standard romantic tropes (a misunderstanding leads to a feeling of betrayal and estrangement before a dramatic gesture reconciles the leads; the tsundere character insists that the other lead is "not by boy/girlfriend").

About Mitsuki... we have no idea what she's into. No posters nor magazines or anything that indicates what she is attracted to. The times that she looks hot are completely unintentional, she's not trying to seduce anyone.

Mitsuki deliberately flirts with Aya in chapter three.

I just realize that without the glasses she is a chick magnet.

This is her blessing, but also her curse.

I heard this as the quote from the gloriously crappy adventures of cuthbert and dante.