"Hino-san never asked to sleep with Koguma again."

NOOOO!! Ship Wreck!!

I have a tag suggestion that's still pending, but the tag has since been added to the manga. Is there a way to cancel a tag suggestion?

Weird. I just noticed that Drunk Skit is the only chapter that links to the general Non and Su discussion thread. All the other chapters have their own separate discussions.

I do still enjoy the way the story is told, but I kinda wish it actually led somewhere.

"Maternity Tag"? Is that like a "Baby on Board" sticker for in utero?

Man, I feel like I'm missing half of the nuance in ch40; at least, it seems that some of the connections between words have to do with the kanji. But KUDOS to the translation team for conveying that sense of poetry to the chapter. Guessing that was not an easy task.

"Completed"? How?!? That felt like: Prologue --> The End.
Didn't realize something so cheerful could make me so sad.

I'm wondering if "6ish chapters" counts ch3 as 1 or 2 of the 6.

Also, does ch3 deserve a Yandere tag?

nio_neka said:
oh how I missed Nikaido's delusions of being together with Kageko. it's so blissfully hopeless at times.

Hopeless you say? Considering Kageko-san's mother, I'd half-expect her to cook up an excuse to leave those two on their own.

I love seeing all the thoughtful analysis on here.

Mami has trouble relating to the other girls in ways that remind me of me, tbh. Her friends are having all these conversations, and it just doesn't feel like she has anything to contribute, probably because their topics seem without purpose. (Maybe I'm projecting?) Yes, she lied (as did nearly everyone at some point in this story), but she doesn't strike me as devious so much as needy. It wouldn't at all surprise me if the stories started out true and got embellished as she realized that they garnered attention, which makes it all the more difficult to tell where the truth ends and the lies begin. Taka giving her attention at the end is powerful precisely because she realizes that she doesn't need to tell a story or drop her books; she just needs to be herself.

One question though: am I missing a footnote or something to the star in the fourth panel?

If I reach 9,999 posts in the forums, will I evolve into a nine-tailed snow fox? Cause I want to look cool like that!

Shlick, shlick, shlick
Splat, splat, splat
Glop, glop, gloop
Splick, splick, splick

LOL, I can't even. . . . The SFX just get progressively weirder. Came to the page by accident, stayed for the laughs.

Aaaaaangst, my old frenemy, we meet again.

It's kind of ridiculous, the lengths to which the whole situation is about keeping up appearances.

Went to a friend's house when I was 12 (pre-internet), and he had a stash of porn magazines that his dad, the local sheriff, had supplied him with. Only rule was that he couldn't let his mom or sister know about them. His best friend's parents ran a video store with an adult section, and they were allowed to borrow anything they wanted. At the time, what bothered me most was the objectification; looking back on it, I also see how the boys were treated so differently in this regard from the girls.

I'm a little surprised that this aspect hasn't appeared in the story yet: does the artist being an underage girl make it a touchier situation than if the artist were a boy? Like, an attitude of "That's just what boys do," vs, "The girl must be protected at all costs." (Not from the publisher, mind, but from prudish, head-in-the-sand politicos.)

Brief history of terminology (as it was explained to me during an LGBT in Japan workshop): Unlike M/M stories that got split into Bara and Yaoi early on, Yuri was the general term in Japan for all F/F relationship stories, from platonic to hentai. When they eventually decided that they needed to somehow distinguish the "softer" works from more graphic stuff, they used the term "Girls' Love" or GL; that is, they used the English term because shoujo ai was already in use to identify het pedo hentai (yuck). Problem is, English speakers back-translated girls' love as "shoujo ai" -- so now it has a completely different meaning to English-speakers than it does to the Japanese. This confusion is, afaik, why the term shoujo ai is avoided on Dynasty.

I'm not sure how "Girls' Love" is used in other countries, but in Japan it is definitively a subset of Yuri. (I don't recall where in the timeline the term BL was introduced. Not my area of interest, I guess.)

last edited at Aug 6, 2021 12:39PM

If anyone is interested, I came across a cool video explaining where the term "name" comes from in manga development:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZEU-sHRIRs

I'm a little confused by the way Toba seems to refer to her work in progress as a "name" in Chapter 3. I don't know any Japanese, so is there some kind of idiom that's being lost in translation here?

'Name' is the rough draft of a manga. If the editor is OK with the name, then the artist can go ahead and draw a finished version based on it. Basically storyboards.

Also, "name" is the Japanese word, so think "nah'meh" rather than "neym".

It is actually pronounced neh-mu (ネーム). Apparently it's derived from the "specify" definiton of the English word "name" and is a term from the olden days when typesetting had to be done prior to the artwork being finished.

I stand misinformed. But it gave me a chance to find this gem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZEU-sHRIRs

So as not to derail discussion from the manga itself, I posted to the Café in case anyone wants to respond further.

last edited at Jul 15, 2021 9:52PM

Dry Humping? They don't look dry to me.

Geez, how did them parents react to all that yelling?

Not sure, but I know how I'm reacting to it. If this were a LN, I'd be asking the author if they forgot to turn caps lock off. It's gotten a bit much.

last edited at Jul 10, 2021 9:59PM

Problem with the movie, IMO, is that they basically skip all of the side characters from the story. Thing is, all of the growth in the two main characters feels like it comes from their involvement with those side characters. Without them, there's no real impetus for them to develop or grow, and then any progress feels contrived.

I'll give them credit for putting effort into getting a lot of cosmetic details to match the manga, like the cuts on Otaka/Rei, but superficial stuff like that can't replace substance. It just doesn't work for me without all of those connections that they form along their journey.

Also, did anyone else look at that awkward kiss scene with the drunk girlfriend in the bath and think, "She really does not want to kiss her." She was so tight-lipped it looked almost painful.

last edited at Jun 22, 2021 2:53PM

This might be an odd thought, and I'm not sure how well I can express it, but...

So many times, romantic stories basically end after the confession. It's like, once the tension is gone, there's just nothing left to tell? But in this case, the confession happened off-page, before the story even began. Instead that sense of tension comes from their friends not knowing (which, personally, I think is starting to reach the level of cruelty, both toward their friends and for Nanoha). The "confession" in this case could be the point where they tell their friends.

So, on the one hand, I'm looking forward to the day their friends find out, but on the other hand, I have the feeling that will be more or less the end of their tale. Futaribeya certainly shows that kind of tension is not necessary to carry a series, but it's pretty uncommon to go without, and I think the character of Hana ni Arashi would change a lot if that happened.

Is there any yuri manga that includes characters with a mental disorder? I mean officially and not speculation. I've already read that one shot on here about the girl with Aspergers.

I assume "that one shot" refers to Sazanka? There's also Water Depth which makes it clear that the person has a mental disorder without ever putting a name to it. Can't think of any others; mental disabilities are kind of an uncommon subject. (Now that you make me think of it, even though my kid has Asperger's, most of their comics have been about gender identity; I don't think they've even done anything to do with their trials on this topic.)

last edited at Jun 17, 2021 1:22PM

Wako's inability to read the mood reminds me of Kyori-chan.

Any yuri manga featuring blindness? I want to see how love blossoms in a world of darkness

Present

Wani-san!