There's actually a somewhat major bit of foreshadowing in this chapter which is so unnoticeable that I didn't even know it existed until I came back to translate it.

Care to elaborate in a spoiler tag?

Not beyond saying that Christina's sister and the company she works for become extremely important in a really major plot point later.

As does, in a much more minor capacity, the particular personality quirk of hers that is alluded to.

There's actually a somewhat major bit of foreshadowing in this chapter which is so unnoticeable that I didn't even know it existed until I came back to translate it.

It would be difficult for the cat to have appeared earlier, considering the cat was an anime-original character, and this is exactly how far along the manga was when the anime was airing.

This chapter was originally published while season 1 was airing.

So it was actually introduced in the manga very shortly after appearing in the anime.

I dont think conflict of interest rules over dating within a company are anywhere near as standard in Japan as they are in the West.

Historically, people were heavily recommended to only date within the company, for fear that they would go out with someone from a competing company and accidentally leak company secrets to a competitor.

That hasn't really been a thing since the 80s, though.

The chapter also gives no indication of how many potential recruits there were. Everyone WE saw going in for an interview got the job.

Maybe there were more who sent in resumes but didn't get called in for interviews, but again, they're looking at someone they have more in-depth knowledge of their skills, potential, and personality versus someone whom they're trying to judge based off a single piece of paper.

Though resumes in Japan have to have a photo attached, so that single piece of paper might be just plenty for Hazuki to decide.

Yo, frostburn, bro, why do you do this lol
This is like at least the second time
Can you like, not refer to stuff you know is gonna happen? Indirect spoilers like what you posted about Rin/Kou's relationship and picking out future chapters still suck for some ppl tbh
Can you spoiler tag please?
Thanks

I try to be pretty careful what I say about future chapters, so it does kind of bother me when someone comes in and outright spoils things.

And, to me at least, tends to come off looking pretty smug about knowing future events.

(Though I'll be the first to admit that I've made a few blunders on that front myself, despite my intent to be careful about it)

last edited at Aug 2, 2017 12:45AM

To be fair, there were also two other hires that had absolutely no contact within the company to get them in.

And this is Umiko, so if anything she'd be more harsh in judging Nene. But Umiko has seen Nene's growth and potential, as well as how well she fits in with the team. So the final test was in the interview, testing her work ethic. So it's not like Nene got in solely based off knowing Umiko. It kind of makes sense to pick someone you have more direct knowledge of how fit they are for the job versus someone you can only judge based on a resume/portfolio/20 minute conversation.

I've been waiting to see if anyone would notice them.

ps, a minor mistake came to my attention and has been fixed. It's been made more clear that they aren't advertising Kou as the main visual designer of Peco, but rather advertising that the main visual designer from the popular Fairies series is one of the main staff.

Updated page: https://kobato.hologfx.com/reader/read/new_game/en/4/49/page/6

Oh, right.

5
If they did actually go the external illustrator route, they would have changed their marketing strategy. They obviously wouldn't try to advertise that said illustrator was involved in development of the game. And it's entirely possible that promotional artwork is the only 2D art the game will have, so it's not like people would buy the game and suddenly see completely different illustrations within the game itself. At worst the 3D models may look a bit different, but that happens even when the character design and illustrations are done by the same person.

last edited at Jul 21, 2017 10:44AM

I've seen a lot of people in various places misunderstand what is actually going on here, so let me set a few things straight.

1. They aren't stealing credit from Aoba. They outright say that she is still getting credit for main character design. They mainly want to be able to advertise that it's from the same team (and specifically same design pair) that did Fairies.

2. They aren't lying to the customers by doing this. While she isn't the one designing the characters, she HAS become art director and thus is directly responsible for all of the game's artwork.

3. Yes, who does the designs is actually really important, especially in Japan. It's pretty common for them to get famous illustrators to design the characters and promotional art and other 2D portions but have no involvement in the actual game design or 3D modelling. Because in Japan, character designs are king.

4. None of them (not even Christina) seem to actually like the decision, but they have to act professional about it. With how much money the publisher is putting in, they don't really have any choice but to abide by it. Or abandon the game altogether, which would be a huge income loss for their own company and severely damage its relation with publishers. It could be a fatal move. Plenty of game development studios have gone bankrupt from a single cancelled or failed project.

I feel like there was something else. Oh well.

last edited at Jul 21, 2017 8:04AM

I haven't noticed any timeline inconsistencies in the manga timeline.

Aoba joining out of high school is an oddity. Kou is the only other we know for a fact did so. Though Rin being the same age and also having been at the company the same length would imply that she did, too, though it's never been explicitly brought up. Despite being a major point for both Aoba and Kou...

Yun and Hajime probably went to college (or, more likely, a vocational school) before joining the company. So they would have been around 20 when they first joined.

I can understand them wanting to start with the "one year later" thing, because that is a good starting point (and it also is actually one year later from the start of season 1). The problem is that it kind of screws up other things in the timeline.

The first season ended in late fall, early winter, with the ski trip being around that same time (as in the manga timeline they go back to work for a while between the ski trip and Christmas episodes).

Meaning they've skipped ahead in time more than four months. And the explanation given is that they're doing commission work for other teams. Which is fine, but for that long? With no hint of a new project? And with Eagle Jump being a small company, with as far as we know only one other production team. And they're only just now starting to think of using the break in work to play around.

I don't really have a problem with them changing the order of things, but it bothers me when the timeline doesn't make sense. Especially given that the manga has always had a pretty strict timeline.

There were a few places in season 1 where this happened, too.

I am really waiting for the moment Aki finds out about the transience of monster lives compared to adventurers and how she reacts.

Especially now that she has befriended a monster.

It's a secret to everyone

Everybody, mou!

Well anyway, there sure were a lot of references in that one. Goblin continues to be strong. And no one even died!

To be fair, the Japanese was also slightly off from the original quote.

Maybe that was a typo, though. We'll see when the volume comes out.

At first I was kind of worried about what Yandere Succubus was going to do but then it occurred to me: "What IS Yandere Succubus going to do?" Aki has almost unlimited lives and Wasabi is on her side every other day. Unless Mimit plans to lock Aki in an underground BDSM dungeon or something, there's not a whole lot she can do.

She's also as weak as goblin is strong, so if anything she herself would be the one in danger.

Which would give Aki a chance to learn about the monster permadeath and suddenly her offhand wondering if there was another way to solve things that was casually alluded to in this chapter suddenly gets a lot more serious...

I mean I don't want to spoil the end of volume 6 but I really want to spoil the end of volume 6.

It's something he said like 6 months ago, so I had to go searching to find the exact wording he used.

https://twitter.com/tokutaro/status/798731110641319937

It seems I was partly misremembering and partly misinterpreting. The post itself isn't entirely clear, but he clarified a bit in the replies. Looks like he actually meant that while he loves yuri, he doesn't like when it is the main topic of the plot. Basically, he is just not a fan of romance as a genre.

I was just misremembering it as him not liking when they get in actual relationships.

I can tell you that the author has specifically stated that he doesn't personally like when yuri series go overtly lesbian.

He does start toeing the line at points, but he'll probably never go beyond it.

Maybe it's not that she can't handle the alcohol. Maybe she just doesn't like the taste.

Highball drinks have pretty strong tastes.

Not sure about KissManga in particular but the bashing I've seen grew out of a mix of targeted and repeated trolling plus LGBT stuff sometimes being seen as 'SJW' by people having stupid twitter fights.

Accusing a japanese work of being "sjw" is kind of asinine, seeing as that dynamic doesn't really even exist in Japan.

That's not gay, that's just being a cat lover.

We thought the same thing, so we replaced the guy in charge with someone who actually gets stuff done.

AKA the one who has been doing every other series but this one.

No but honestly I absolutely love this series but I don't know how you're reading even the slightest element of yuri into it.

Unlike the author's previous series, which had some pretty heavy undertones, there's not even a hint of anything even remotely romantic here.

Now if you want a more full-on yuri manga about a landlord at a youkai house, you should read Hiyama-san.