And how did the other girl turn 180° to face Stelle, given the way Stelle grabbed her?

Stella actually turned around and is pulling her over her shoulder.

Wait, why are there three people in the image and only two in the tag. They all seem to be part of it.

I love how her shoulder angel and devil were both on the exact same page, the angel just wanted her to give a heads up before taking a peak.

Also, I wonder what Sumie's plans were before the power went out. "Here are some clothes. No, don't bother going to the bathroom. We can just stand back to back and change in my bedroom, while we're alone in the apartment." seems a bit too forward to be completely innocent.

Sal Jiang's art style is top tier, but so is their composition. This entire chapter is basically just three people talking to each other, in an empty room, while a fourth person watches from outside, they're constantly varying their panel layout and the way characters are positioned "on the screen" so it feels really dynamic.

What I'm saying is, I love everything about this.

Also, a few observations and thoughts from this chapter:

First, there's an interesting contrast going on between the two antagonist witches. The white one is really expressive and often smug, while the black one seems to mostly just be nonplussed and a little bit unhappy. I wonder if she has a different perspective on what's going on and she's mostly just following her friend's lead, for now.

Hanako saw Sadako float through her closed window last chapter. She even managed to grab Sadako's shoe before before bonking her head into the glass, so she already had proof that A) Sadako was actually there, B) the window was definitely closed, and C) Sadako was no longer on the same side of the window. Why did it take the new witch healing from a headbutt for her to realize that these people, who keep calling themselves witches, are actually witches and magic is real? You'd think phasing through solid matter, several stories up, would be a lot more convincing than shrugging off a blow that she herself would have been fine with.

From the start, it seemed like Sadako was abandoned in the mountains a REALLY long time ago and simply told to avoid human society. She doesn't seem to really understand much about humans or how her abilities interact with them, to the point where people where keeling over as soon as they met her and she neither neither understood that they were dying nor that it wasn't normal and that she was probably the cause of it. Conversely, the two new witches seem to have been living in human society for a while and have a good grasp on how things work. More importantly, they also seem to be aware of, and a part of, a larger magical society. This raises the questions about why Sadako seems to have no clue about other witches and if there's some fundamental difference between them. They said "we've been in hiding for hundreds of years", but a part of me is wondering if the "we" in question is "witches in general", and not them specifically, making Sadako significantly older, and potentially more powerful, than anyone they've dealt with on a regular basis.

On page 7 Sadako can't hear the conversation, but starting on page 11 her reactions make it seem like she can hear Hanako's monologue. I wonder if that's the case, and she's making connections between their parallel forms of loneliness, or if it's an intentional misdirection on the author's part and she's just reacting to body language and the sudden violence.

Finally, while it's not strictly about this chapter, I just realized that Hanako must hate Halloween. Going by anime, witches seem to be a perennial favorite costume and if she perceives any mention of witches as a direct and personal insult ... well. A lot of cute girls dressing up as witches probably doesn't help.

Sal Jiang's art style is top tier, but so is their composition. This entire chapter is basically just three people talking to each other, in an empty room, while a fourth person watches from outside, they're constantly varying their panel layout and the way characters are positioned "on the screen" so it feels really dynamic.

What I'm saying is, I love everything about this.

Also, a few observations and thoughts from this chapter:

First, there's an interesting contrast going on between the two antagonist witches. The white one is really expressive and often smug, while the black one seems to mostly just be nonplussed and a little bit unhappy. I wonder if she has a different perspective on what's going on and she's mostly just following her friend's lead, for now.

Hanako saw Sadako float through her closed window last chapter. She even managed to grab Sadako's shoe before before bonking her head into the glass, so she already had proof that A) Sadako was actually there, B) the window was definitely closed, and C) Sadako was no longer on the same side of the window. Why did it take the new witch healing from a headbutt for her to realize that these people, who keep calling themselves witches, are actually witches and magic is real? You'd think phasing through solid matter, several stories up, would be a lot more convincing than shrugging off a blow that she herself would have been fine with.

From the start, it seemed like Sadako was abandoned in the mountains a REALLY long time ago and simply told to avoid human society. She doesn't seem to really understand much about humans or how her abilities interact with them, to the point where people where keeling over as soon as they met her and she neither neither understood that they were dying nor that it wasn't normal and that she was probably the cause of it. Conversely, the two new witches seem to have been living in human society for a while and have a good grasp on how things work. More importantly, they also seem to be aware of, and a part of, a larger magical society. This raises the questions about why Sadako seems to have no clue about other witches and if there's some fundamental difference between them. They said "we've been in hiding for hundreds of years", but a part of me is wondering if the "we" in question is "witches in general", and not them specifically, making Sadako significantly older, and potentially more powerful, than anyone they've dealt with on a regular basis.

On page 7 Sadako can't hear the conversation, but starting on page 11 her reactions make it seem like she can hear Hanako's monologue. I wonder if that's the case, and she's making connections between their parallel forms of loneliness, or if it's an intentional misdirection on the author's part and she's just reacting to body language and the sudden violence.

Finally, while it's not strictly about this chapter, I just realized that Hanako must hate Halloween. Going by anime, witches seem to be a perennial favorite costume and if she perceives any mention of witches as a direct and personal insult ... well. A lot of cute girls dressing up as witches probably doesn't help.

Izuocha still better idc idc

I think Toga's response would be "Why not both? I want both. Give me both!" Likely followed by some stabbing.

Izuocha still better idc idc

I think Toga's response would be "Why not both? I want both. Give me both!" Likely followed by some stabbing.

C6H12O6 posted:

Hope Kurata can learn how to balance her love life and her study in the future. It’s always not too late to join the date game after she finishes her academic goals in high school after all. Not being able to attend your dream uni/college and make it in life just because you were so immersed in dating stuff honestly sounds like a nightmare.

I think there's a bit of nuance that's important here. Kurata isn't running into issues because she's too immersed in dating; she's not going on dates or hanging out with her girlfriend instead of studying. Her issue is that she's too consumed by thoughts of the person she's fallen for to focus on anything else. So, she's spending the appropriate amount of time studying, but it amounts to nothing, because she can't properly process the information.

Given the amount of distress her distraction is causing her, and how pervasive it is, this reads more like some sort of executive function disorder and not something that can be easily put off until after college. I'm honestly a bit surprised that no one in her life, including her teachers, has shown any meaningful concern at her academics doing a sudden and sustained 180. That feels like it should be something of a read flag that something is going on.

This looks like it could be interesting, but—and I know this is silly—I just can't get over the fact that two of her subordinates thought it would be a good idea to invite their female boss to a girl cafe, especially without already knowing if she's interested in other women. There is no part of that that doesn't feel incredibly awkward.

The_AntQueen posted:

Its an interesting spin that I haven't seen before, curios to see where it goes. Motives of the identity switching girl are a mystery as of now, my guess is she really wanted to be with our protagonist and cooked up the hair-brained scheme to approach her in multiple guises to find out what her 'type' is.

That seems off, given both how random their first two meetings were and how much effort she's putting into maintaining the three identities.

Originally, I was going to guess that the blonde persona is how she likes to present herself, the black haired persona is just a convenient look for her job at the bar, and the male persona is her old identity and she still has to use it from time to time. With that setup, their first and second meetings would have been entirely genuine, with her taking the opportunity to reach out at the bar. The third meeting, in the male persona, could have also been genuine or partially engineered (that is, she wasn't expecting to run into Tatsuki, but when she saw her she contrived the thing with the wallet to get a chance to speak with her). This would have been more spur of the moment, in case she wasn't interested in women or found the meeting at the bar off putting). Finally, their last meeting is obviously intentional, but mostly just as an extension of the third meeting, in case Tatsuki does like women, but didn't like the girl at the bar, for some reason.

So, less "hair-brained scheme" and more "person with multiple personas haphazardly taking advantage of unexpected opportunities."

With that said, at a minimum, I think my original idea for how the personas relate to each other is wrong, largely due to the phones. I could see her having separate male and female phones, if she wants to keep those parts of her life separate, or separate work and personal phones, either for the same reason or due to company requirements. Separate phones for male, female, and work, however starts to stretch things, especially if the only main difference between her blonde and black haired personas is the hair color and if that's primarily driven by the atmosphere the bar wants to create. However, in that last scene, she has somewhere between four and 6 phones (one or two of the rectangles on the desk might just be folios), which points to something else going on. Also, just in general, it seems like an inordinate ammount of her living space and life is dedicated to maintaining these personas, since the entire apartment seems to be filled with nothing but the various costumes and props that she needs and the layout is dedicated to presenting and storing them, rather than anything she might do in for herself.

Overall, I still think the first and second meetings were likely genuine, but I'm much less sure about the third and I think there's a lot more going on with her persona switching than just being trans.

Finally, one last note, it could just be the framing, but it seems like her actual hair is shoulder length and blonde, since you can see a wig with long black hair and another one with short blonde hair, which would also account for the only empty manikin head we see. If that's correct, then it also indicates a meaningful personal preference on her part, since I would expect her natural hair to be short if it was purely down to practicality and she frequently wears wigs.

Donkey Kong posted:

I’m kinda hurt that it seems like I’m the only one who was genuinely caught off guard…

I was fr like

“WHAAAAAAAAAAT??? No wayyyyyyy”

And y’all are like

“Hm, interesting.”

Like, my mind was low-key blown and y’all’s calm reactions are like a slap to the face or smthn haha

If it makes you feel any better, the tags had me thinking there two of the three personas were the same, though I went back and fourth on what the pairs were as each one was introduced, so I was already primed to accept the reveal at the end. With that said, there was a moment where I thought they were all different people after all three of them gave her their contact info, so I was at least a little caught off guard by the ending.

last edited at Nov 30, 2024 7:23PM

Is she wearing any sort of top? Because a rear naked choke doesn't actually require you to be naked.

So ... Anyone want to bet that the assignments are just intended to get the girls to make a friend in a new and unfamiliar place, but delivered in the most chunibyo way possible.

Reilaire continues to be a fantastic addition. If I recall correctly, they weren't really a continuing presence in the LN, right?

Aren't fox spirits supposed to gain tails with age and power? How did she already have 9 when she was a little kid?

Also, remind me what a "second sister" is supposed to be?

luinthoron posted:

Could someone please explain what she's talking about on page 26?

Editor here… had a rough time with that one lmao. We concluded it’s not supposed to make sense.

It makes little sense when talking about hair, of course, but it does use an actual Japanese expression

So maybe saying something like "I wish I had hair like yours," but in a slightly weird way?

Could someone please explain what she's talking about on page 26?

Pyoro posted:

As a German, I've never felt so insulted in my life as while reading this chapter, and there's a lot I get to hear about my home country. Finally I understand why people waste time on stuff like "sensitivity reading" ...

The idea that a German baker would be impressed be the flavorless sawdust pressed into vague bread shapes over freshly baked(!) real bread defies any reasonable belief. It's like suggestion to an Italian that frozen pizza is just as good, or to a French that processed cheese is perfectly acceptable, or to an American that ... well, forget Americans, they are hopeless, but otherwise!

(also how on earth is she slicing bread? Well, I'll not pretend I'm infinitely knowledgeable about how people do it; but I've never seen anyone cut a bread horizontally into some sort of pizza-shaped thing ^^; )

(also southern Germany - at least in parts - had notoriously bad soil. At the very least it's not particularly rich soil. That's why you get these sorta frugal-simple meals/lifestyles ^^)

I mostly agree that pitting actual artisanal bread against store bought confections was ... an interesting choice, I could also see someone from the past being temporarily mistaken about the quality. A lot of things we take for granted, some of which aren't even good, would have been viewed very differently back then.

The manga specifically mentions the texture, which makes sense, because achieving a relatively consistent and fluffy texture would have been difficult if you're dealing with poorly refined flower, questionable yeast, and inconsistent tools. The other big thing would be the sugar content, especially with the sort of desert breads she was offering. I'm pretty sure that much sugar would have been very expensive for a lot of history and people often like sweet things, so it could be a quick and dirty way of making something appear better than it is, even if we'd recognize it as a sign of low quality now.

doughnatsu posted:

They're BOTH foxes?? Oh I'm very in now! I think it's super cool both of them are mythical creatures. Now I want to know if this is gonna be a story of constant misinformation, or of trickery one-upsmanship, or something else completely. Now that the dynamic isn't human/monster, I don't know where we're going, but I'm excited!

Are they? From the way she was talking, I got the impression that she wasn't a fox, so maybe a wolf?

The squirrel jumping up at the end, to grab some stray flowers, is the cherry on top.

Ticcy hitting it out of the park with Sailor Moon yuri, yet again.

"G.S.H"?

It seems like this was part of a Promare AU.

The first two chapters seem to be out of order.

Other than that, this seems like it could be interesting and I wasn't expecting Frost to have an full on henshin sequence. With that said, she's a bit—extremely—incompetent.

I know Christmas isn't as big of a thing in Japan, but inviting her over to, presumably, talk to her dad about music on that day still seems like a bit much. Even without the prom that was just announced, isn't it still something of an event where you'd expect people to be making plans with their families, friends, or loved ones?

Although, with that said, the prom seems to start at 6:00pm, and a lot of romantic activity tends to happen in the evening, or later. It seems unlikely her dad would want to talk business that late, so unless Aya had plans to spend the whole day with Koga, it realistically shouldn't cause that much of a scheduling conflict.

Still awful timing and a bit rude.

I kind of love how she went from "I've never been excited by girls either" to "isn't one week too short" over the course of less than a day.

I've been meaning to ask this for a while, but was the entire start of this show an extended lesbian joke, complete with a not!Uhaul?