I hope this does turn into netorare tho

“from the master of NTR Yuri” what a title to own haha

You cannot blame Kodama Naoko for not owning her brand. :-)

I'm looking forward to it.

I actually love how sometimes she's totally wholesome, and sometimes has the most awful people ever. lol

For a moment I thought this was a serialization of her one shot "Domestic Adultery", as the characters are drawn very similarly. Anyway, this is a good start, but I do wish Domestic Adultery will be serialized.

Oh yeah baby, inject that Naoko angst straight into my veins.

“from the master of NTR Yuri” what a title to own haha

You cannot blame Kodama Naoko for not owning her brand. :-)

I'm looking forward to it.

I actually love how sometimes she's totally wholesome, and sometimes has the most awful people ever. lol

Keep 'em guessing.

The one-trick pony author is back...

This is such a baffling opinion. I have no idea how someone could look at NTR and Days of Love at Seagull Villa and go "yeah these are the same thing". There's a shared theme or two, but every author has those if they put any of themselves into their art lol.

The one-trick pony author is back...

This is such a baffling opinion. I have no idea how someone could look at NTR and Days of Love at Seagull Villa and go "yeah these are the same thing". There's a shared theme or two, but every author has those if they put any of themselves into their art lol.

Oh, please... These 3 stories are resumed by the same 3 core things: Cheating, a passive MC who is pushed around by a bitchier female character and bissexuality. It gets repetitive after the third or fourth time.

last edited at Nov 15, 2023 8:56PM

The one-trick pony author is back...

This is such a baffling opinion. I have no idea how someone could look at NTR and Days of Love at Seagull Villa and go "yeah these are the same thing". There's a shared theme or two, but every author has those if they put any of themselves into their art lol.

While I wouldn't say "one-trick pony", Kodama has very clear lines of interest on issues that motivate her to make manga.

Lack of official recognition of same-sex relationships, both socially as well as legally.
Dealing with toxic people, especially women that like to gaslight and manipulate.
Bisexuality, and how that can be a difficult and confusing thing to navigate in society where bi people are generally treated as invisible and unimportant.

Throw in bit of sweet and lewd, and you generally have what KN is all about.

She's one of the writers that have a clear brand, if you will. Kind of like Marlboro. :)

last edited at Nov 16, 2023 2:42AM

The one-trick pony author is back...

This is such a baffling opinion. I have no idea how someone could look at NTR and Days of Love at Seagull Villa and go "yeah these are the same thing". There's a shared theme or two, but every author has those if they put any of themselves into their art lol.

Oh, please... These 3 stories are resumed by the same 3 core things: Cheating, a passive MC who is pushed around by a bitchier female character and bissexuality. It gets repetitive after the third or fourth time.

...did you actually read Seagull Villa? Because none of those elements are actually "core" to that story, they're the inciting incident of MC moving to the island, but the actual plot of the manga is about accepting yourself and others as queer, and embracing and supporting your fellow queers. She isn't even bisexual, there's a scene where she thinks "This is the first time I've ever fallen in love with a woman... wait, have I ever even fallen in love with a man?" and realizes she was only with her ex-bf out of social expectations. Seagull Villa basically lacks any male characters in any sort of major role, you only see the ex in one singe scene and he's faceless and forgotten. "I Married My Best Friend to Shut My Parents Up" similarly has no bisexuality nor male characters, and is similarly about the MC realizing and embracing she's gay in defiance of heteronormative society. "Cheating" has really only been a significant element for Kodama in NTR and a couple one-shots like "Domestic Adultery" (which I don't recommend anyone read, not because the manga itself is bad but jesus christ that cockney british translation on mangadex is a war crime in scanlation form)

The main throughline of Kodama's writing imo is not "cheating" or anything like that, but "women discovering their relationship to heteronormativity is alienating and toxic, and seeking alternatives to it".

last edited at Nov 16, 2023 8:44AM

^ Personally I'd take Cockney over Americæn any day.

Who let her cook again? I'm not even complaining her stories rock!

classic

^ Personally I'd take Cockney over Americæn any day.

This is like if an American scanlator wrote every line of dialog from every character like a rootin tootin cowboy lmao

last edited at Nov 16, 2023 11:15AM

Seagull Villa also had the incest sisters side plot. I dunno if that's a recurrent theme.

^ Personally I'd take Cockney over Americæn any day.

This is like if an American scanlator wrote every line of dialog from every character like a rootin tootin cowboy lmao

"Beautiful" is the word you're looking for

Yet again we witness Kodama Naoko exorcising her demons

Ay my girl is back! *cries in withdrawal. Please don't get canceled or licensed

Why would you not want it to get licensed?

Ay my girl is back! *cries in withdrawal. Please don't get canceled or licensed

Why would you not want it to get licensed?

Indeed. It's wacky that someone who clearly likes artists products also doesn't want them to make money and be more motivated to create more stuff. Most mangaka aren't exactly swimming in cash, and yuri is hardly the most profitable genre to begin with.

These days you don't even need to fill your house with manga volumes. Just buy a digital copy now and then, or donate directly if it's possible.

I would say the one element that continually recurs throughout almost all of Kodama Naoko's work, both oneshots and serialization, is -- to use her own words -- "beautiful women with terrible personalities." Now, just how terrible they are varies widely from work to work, from "mostly just mischievous" like in I Faked my Marriage to a full-on emotional abuser like in A World Without Freedom (Hotaru from NTR Trap is somewhere in the middle); note that in Seagull Villa Days this role is taken up by one of the girls in the sidecouple. What I think renders her work so controversial is that she never sugarcoats or downplays the actions of these girls, but nevertheless still writes them as sympathetic and, frankly, desirable. It's a character archetype that you commonly see in male leads in romance stories but you rarely see for female characters, and I think that throws a lot of people for a loop. It's not that her manga are particularly "dark" (her darkest is World Without Freedom and I've read much darker yuri) or "realistic" (Kodama's manga are largely soap operas), but that they invite the reader to root for and be invested in manipulative women who deliberately use their beauty, feminine charms, and interpersonal skills to their own advantage, and that is a personality type most people have been socialized to despise on sight.

Ay my girl is back! *cries in withdrawal. Please don't get canceled or licensed

Why would you not want it to get licensed?

Indeed. It's wacky that someone who clearly likes artists products also doesn't want them to make money and be more motivated to create more stuff. Most mangaka aren't exactly swimming in cash, and yuri is hardly the most profitable genre to begin with.

These days you don't even need to fill your house with manga volumes. Just buy a digital copy now and then, or donate directly if it's possible.

There are cases where a licensing is bad, there's sketchy companies that treat the manga poorly with translation or publishing and at least give off a vibe like they barely pay the original artists. Somehow most Jump manga ends up this way lately, the official translation of Golden Kamuy for example is absolutely dogshit compared to the fan scanlation on mangadex, and I seriously doubt it makes the author much of anything since it's hosted on a shitty app with a $2/mo subscription.
Thankfully Kodama's a big enough name to easily attract a good publisher like Seven Seas or Yen Press.

It's not that her manga are particularly "dark" (her darkest is World Without Freedom and I've read much darker yuri) or "realistic" (Kodama's manga are largely soap operas), but that they invite the reader to root for and be invested in manipulative women who deliberately use their beauty, feminine charms, and interpersonal skills to their own advantage, and that is a personality type most people have been socialized to despise on sight.

In fact, in the afterword to “I Married My Best Friend” Kodama draws herself as two avatars, “light Kodama” and “dark Kodama,” (the familiar “good angel/bad angel” images), with “Gentle Romance,” “Silly Humor” and “Boobs” listed for the light version and “Soap Opera,” “Jealousy,” and “Heavy” for the dark, with a footnote saying “Dark Kodama draws boobs, too.”

I’m not sure that completely tracks with Kodama’s body of work (except for the boobs), but that’s how they present it, anyway.

I’m feeling sad for the MC already. She’s gonna get used so hard. She’s aware of it at least.

Kodama Naoko is finally back.

It's not that her manga are particularly "dark" (her darkest is World Without Freedom and I've read much darker yuri) or "realistic" (Kodama's manga are largely soap operas), but that they invite the reader to root for and be invested in manipulative women who deliberately use their beauty, feminine charms, and interpersonal skills to their own advantage, and that is a personality type most people have been socialized to despise on sight.

In fact, in the afterword to “I Married My Best Friend” Kodama draws herself as two avatars, “light Kodama” and “dark Kodama,” (the familiar “good angel/bad angel” images), with “Gentle Romance,” “Silly Humor” and “Boobs” listed for the light version and “Soap Opera,” “Jealousy,” and “Heavy” for the dark, with a footnote saying “Dark Kodama draws boobs, too.”

I’m not sure that completely tracks with Kodama’s body of work (except for the boobs), but that’s how they present it, anyway.

It kinda tracks, though I'd say it's more a spectrum than a strict binary. But even in her "light Kodama" works the love interest tends to be of the "manipulative beauty" archetype, just in an extremely toned-down form. The only notable exception is Seagull Villa Days, and that's only because she made Ashima from the sidecouple that archetype instead. There are a couple oneshots where this isn't the case, but those are definitely the exception. Personally this is what I like the best about her oeuvre because it's so rare to find this type of female character treated sympathetically, but I do think it's also the major reason why so many yuri fans don't like her.

Seagull: Ashima, the dark-hair sister? She wasn't that bad, considering circumstances. "Terrible personality" is the MC's 'friend', the one the MC was getting away from. Tall glass of utter toxicity there.

Seagull: Ashima, the dark-hair sister? She wasn't that bad, considering circumstances. "Terrible personality" is the MC's 'friend', the one the MC was getting away from. Tall glass of utter toxicity there.

Well, like I said, there's levels to it. Ashima's personality is totally understandable given her circumstances, but she does have a tendency to intersocial manipulation; same with Hana from Married My Junior, though Hana truly doesn't do anything wrong. My point though is that you can classify them as "tame" versions of a character archetype that also includes Meiko from World Without Freedom and Hotaru from NTR Trap. The MC's "friend" from Seagull, on the other hand was not depicted as remotely sympathetic so she doesn't belong to this character archetype of Kodama's, she's just a villain.

Honestly i missed Naoko Kodama, so it's a pleasure to see her again for better or worst.