This is the kind of subtext I like. =v=

At the very least I think it's already earned a yuri crush tag.

last edited at Oct 30, 2019 1:58AM

That's the point though, Konatsu is being selfish. She's not acting the way she is out of a need for Koyuki's companionship caused by her own loneliness, she has Kaede and other friends to avoid feeling lonely. The issue is that she subconsciously grew fond of being Koyuki's only friend and confidant and once Koyuki managed to start making other friends (spurred on by Konatsu herself at that), Konatsu lost that special placement and is now trying to get her back under her "control" even though she knows she shouldn't.

It's pretty obvious when you consider the Salamander short story and see how the author keeps placing the frog and salamander metaphorically around the two girls. The frog is the character who initially lives freely, ends up entering the salamander's cave and gets trapped there by it because its presence eases the salamander's loneliness, even though the salamander knows that keeping the frog trapped will make it lonely as well. The initial setup of the story likened Konatsu to the frog and Koyuki to the salamander since the former was the one who ended up involved with the latter's aquarium club and stuck around to ease her loneliness. Now the metaphor has been flipped (ever since Konatsu saw Koyuki and Kaede walking around) so that Koyuki is the frog who would normally be free with her new friends and Konatsu is the salamander who wants to keep her trapped against her best interests.

Of course I'm oversimplifying things and it's only a partial analysis based on the current point in the story, but that's the gist of it and I don't think I'm off the mark due to all the visual metaphors.

Bingo.

If you're into women or men, then obviously you'd be a rapist.

lol you people like blowing things out of proportion. My point was that loli eroge doesn't exist in a vacuum. It really doesn't, no matter how much one wants it to.

I'm not saying it automatically makes anyone a pedophile, but to like it a person at the very least has to have a stance on eroticised depictions of children that a lot of people are not okat with.

Believe it or not, my intention here was not to judge, I just hated the inital fifa argument.

No, actually if you are sexually attracted to small children and imagery involving them that is exactly what makes you a pedophile as that is pretty much the definition the word. My point is that just as being heterosexual doesn't remotely equate to being a rapist the same is true of pedophilia. Being heterosexual, gay or a pedophile is not the same thing as being a rapist. All those words indicate is what sort of person an individual is attracted to and it has nothing to do with their actions.

Who in their sane mind leaves a little kid with a woman who owns games about raping and confining little kids?

You know that playing Fifa doesn't make you a footballer neither playing CoD or Battlefield make you a soldier right ?

You know those are two completely different situations right? If someone enjoys something as sick as confining kids and likes to play games like that I don't think anyone would leave them in a room with a child alone

No, the CoD or better yet Grand Theft Auto example is a perfect example. You literally run around mass murdering people in those games. If someone enjoys something as sick and twisted as playing games where they graphically shoot and stab people to death then I don't think anyone should allow another human being to be left alone in a room with them.

As foul and immoral as rape is remember across pretty much all religions and cultures the greatest and most immoral of all sins is murder.

last edited at Oct 26, 2019 4:11AM

@Looking East
I was, but I had to stop. (Mainly due to real life issues, but the "warm reception" I got certainly didn't help my motivation to continue, lol)

I'm sorry to hear you had real life issues. I'm still disgusted with the entitled BS and petty whining I saw on display here even if it was only a small part of the reason you ultimately dropped the series. I hope that somebody out there decides to pick this up as it's one of the few good long running yuri series featuring the adult world. It looks like these recent releases were commissioned. That along with the fact this is not an easy work to translate means they aren't likely to continue for long.

BoobTwinkler posted:

(Please don't take that as critique of the subtext genre, it's just not my cup of tea.)

I don't think such thing as "subtext fan" exist.

There are a ton of people out there who are into CGDCT shows with subtext. This forum isn't the place you are likely to find many of them, but I think as a whole there are probably more fans of CGDCT with light yuri overtones than actual full blown yuri. Remember a lot of the subtext type series aren't romances, but rather slice of life comedies where serious relationships and the drama that comes with them don't really have a place. Those kinds of shows tend to be a lot more popular than full blown yuri. There is a reason we see so many of them made.

Who in their sane mind leaves a little kid with a woman who owns games about raping and confining little kids?

You know that playing Fifa doesn't make you a footballer neither playing CoD or Battlefield make you a soldier right ?

Well if you like Fifa you're probably into soccer or sports, if you like CoD you're probably into guns, war history or action movies. If you like loli eroge, you're into...........

If you're into women or men, then obviously you'd be a rapist.

last edited at Oct 23, 2019 8:35PM

Even after what happen with the old woman ? Bazu really is strange, she call out Mashiro to be too much softhearted after the cat case and said she doesn't like that kind of behavior but if Mashiro will had act the opposite she would have call out for being like everyone else. Dunno just pick a side girl, you can't hate humans for being heartless creatures then blame Mashiro for acting the opposite and prove you all humans are not bad.

Angry people acting irrational. Who'd have thought that that's a thing; never seen before ... ^^

Irrational seem a fancy word to said stupid here.

Really, you are going to set yourself up like that and just leave it?

I'll bite my tongue this time.

Risako never gave Uta her name and is a complete stranger to her. Why would Risako have a strong reason to believe that Uta not only figured out who she was, but then also informed Kaoru of her identity and presence at the accident?

This makes no sense—there’s no reason Uta would have play detective to “figure out who she was.” Risako explicitly says that she knows Reiichi. If Risako had been interested in hiding her identity, she could have simply given the phone to Reiichi and have him say that he picked it up.

It makes perfect sense.

Risako was not aware that Kaoru had suffered memory loss of the incident at the point where she handed over the phone. Of course she wouldn't have tried to hide her tracks at the time if she believed Kaoru strait up saw her.

She only bothered to try to lie about it after finding out she could because Kaoru didn't remember anything about what happened and the girl she gave the phone to has never met her before and has no idea who she is other than the fact she is one of any number of females acquaintances Kaoru has made.

There is nothing even remotely unrealistic about her course of action. She didn't try to hide it at first because she presumed she couldn't given that Kaoru saw her before falling.

The author even went out of her way to drive the point home at the time that Uta never got her name and didn't know who she was by having Uta outright state it in her conversation with Kaoru afterwards.

last edited at Oct 4, 2019 11:41PM

I think Nevri is right, this is just a result of too much actual yuri bait torture. People can't enjoy nuanced romance in yuri anymore.

I think this is the result of certain people being unable to accept the fact that some readers call something “yuri” when they don’t.

And vice versa.

Hello everyone. I'd like to take a moment of your time to introduce this new, young and talented artist to the team. And as a way to further show how little I care for the work you have loyally performed for this company over the years, I'm going to yave her design the face of the game. Thank's for your time, and fuck you all.

This. I mean Kou giving Aoba a chance to design "Sophie" an NPC seemed realistic but Hotaru just joined the company- has no experience in game character design but yeah fuck all the others, Hotaru you draw our big theme. Makes total sense. And Catherine is a businesswoman, she is only looking out for her company that dialogue made total sense after the Hotaru fiasco.

I think the big difference between Aoba and Hotaru is we've had it hammered into our heads since the very first mention of her that Hotaru is some sort of artistic savant where as Aoba had no where near that level of raw talent. I think Hotaru's arc will likely revolve around how little actual work experience she has and her struggle to adapt her artistic talents to an actual commercial project. There are a lot of genius artists out there with tremendous talent that don't make very good commercial illustrators because they are unable to reconcile their passion and sense of aesthetics with those of the client's. Imagine trying to get Monet or Salvador Dali to design the logo and box art for a new brand of kids cereal.

My ex girl friend is a very gifted artist to the point she had a relatively famous band approach her to do the cover art for their next album because they loved her work so much, but the stress of working for someone else was just to much for her so she turned down the project. Being a very talented artist doesn't always equate to being successful as a commercial designer but if you can find a truly gifted artist that is able to adapt their talents to a commercial setting they will become a tremendous asset. Raw talent cannot be taught. Catherine is certainly taking a gamble that her new diamond in the rough can be polished into an amazing asset for her company, but it doesn't make what she is doing stupid.

In the most recent chapter, Risako tells Kaoru that she has not seen Reiichi since their wedding.

But after Kaoru's fall down the steps, Risako returns Kaoru's cellphone to Uta while explaining that she was at the scene of the accident. As Risako must have known would happen, Uta immediately told Kaoru that Risako had returned the phone and Kaoru (at that point still suffering from short-term memory loss) realizes that Reiichi and Risako were together.

So did the author simply forget that Kaoru would have every reason to know that Risako and Reiichi were together when she had her accident?

If not, what possible reason would Risako have for lying now about something that, at the time she assumed everybody already knew? (She says to Uta, "Didn't you hear from Reiichi? I was there when Kaoru injured herself.")

Even if Reiichi told Risako that Kaoru didn't remember anything about the accident itself (and therefore hoped to avoid explaining what they were doing together that day), she already had told Uta directly that she was there.

That's just the most obvious example of why I think this author is not carefully controlling the flow of information to readers to achieve an overall effect, but is just winging it, and not very smoothly, either.

Risako never gave Uta her name and is a complete stranger to her. Why would Risako have a strong reason to believe that Uta not only figured out who she was, but then also informed Kaoru of her identity and presence at the accident?

It is pretty much a given that Reiichi and Risako would have talked to each other about getting their stories strait after finding out Kaoru had short term memory loss from her concussion. I really don't see why Risako wouldn't have a pretty good reason to simply lie about seeing Reiichi given the situation.

This really was a great manga. As much as I enjoy the yuri genre it's not often we get a series I would feel comfortable describing as a work of art, but this was one of those rare gems. I'm a little sad Nakatani has stated she won't be doing another yuru series in the future but I look forward to what ever her next project is. I think perhaps she will have enough of a name now to basically work on whatever she wants. It would be neat to see her tackle something a bit more abstract and off beat next time.

Although I love Uta's weird pigtail friend, her whole thing is baffling and has no clear thematic relationship with anything else. Is she ace? Is she just emotionally closed off? Like... legit a sociopath? I thought maybe the idea was that nontraditional, weird, idiosyncratic relationships are okay, so she and whatshername can make it work despite her inability to be in romantic love, but now I'm not sure.

Kuro isn't even remotely incapable of romantic love, just unwilling (by this point it's mellowed more to "merely reluctant" tho) due to acute disillusionement with the whole concept on account of her father; this was pretty clearly spelled out in the narrative. The last we saw those two Kuro was trying to adjust her comfort zone to accommodate Miyabi's desire for affectionate gestures and generally be more considerate of her while the latter was trying to adjust her relationship expectations to not push Kuro's limits too much (also turning into a blushing mess at the mention of -shock horror- kiss on the lips...).
Basically they're trying to reach a middle ground both are comfortable on.

I think the problem here then is that it's not really very believable. Plenty of people have messed up relationships with their fathers and then go on to have intimacy issues, but they don't act like Kuro. They don't have weird one-sided, platonic friendships that they let the other person call "a relationship." It'd just take a lot more to explain what on earth is going on.

And then again, thematically, what's this have to do with Uta and Kaoru?

(also shouldn't Kuro and Uta address how weird it is two lesbians became best friends just by coincidence?)

Kuro acts more like an asexual than just a person with intimacy issues although I suppose it could be argued either way. Have you ever seen a real world asexual relationship? Often, but not always one partner is asexual and the other is not and it looks a lot like what those two have going on except Kuro seems to have some non-sexual intimacy problems on top of that.

I'm not sure two lesbians becoming friends coincidentally is particularly weird, maybe a bit uncommon. In my high school group of friends all but one of my close female friends ended up being bi just by coincidence. That was 3 out of 4 and the one that "wasn't" admitted to finding some other girls attractive but never actually got together with anyone beyond a drunk kiss, I mean the odds on that have to be pretty rare but it wasn't really something we talked about at the time.

Homeboy just got his hand called. I think he is pretty much out of room to bluff much further.

It's rare to see a manga that's a real work of art and self expression rather than a commercial attempt to pander to some audience or another. This is one of those rare manga. I wish people supported works like these more often. It's sad how often I see something noteworthy or even award winning which never receives even marginal success when it comes to sales.

@runrin There are two more volumes left. I'm currently working on Ch.16's translation. So expect more updates in the coming weeks.

Note: Updates most likely won't be regular weekly releases because of our work/school schedule. But I will try to release as much as possible every month so people aren't left hanging.

Thanks for Scanlating this manga, It's one of the one's I really wanted to see the end of properly.

Wait what

Also I've yet to read/watch Shoujo Shumatsu Ryoukou

Fix that. Seriously.

GhoOOooOost fish!

"Fish with names," she was very insistent on that.

last edited at Sep 27, 2019 10:25PM

This manga has now moved into my top five of all time.

Ouchy

So this brings up an interesting question, why do we have aaaaangst, depressing as fuck and tragedy tags? It's a bit like having joyous, happy and felicitous tags. I mean aren't these all saying pretty much the exact same thing?

last edited at Sep 18, 2019 3:36PM

Some people misuse the term "trap". Is a total moratorium on the term a proportionate response to this misuse?

When it causes harm to real living people, yes.

Then we need to ban the use of the word "the" and every other word in the dictionary that has ever been used as part of a sentence that upset somebody.

Majoccoid's artwork really is amazing. I said it before, but I wouldn't mind if all of Mochi's stories were done by this artist. A dream team if I ever saw one. Though this decidedly doesn't feel like a Mochi kind of plot. Mostly because Mochi wouldn't stay so contend with keeping it simple.

Now as for the plot... I think you have to be basically mentally challenged to think Kanda looks like a boy, but what can you do, it's manga logic.
If you really, really commit to this stupid plot you can probably squeeze out an entire series somehow(hundreds of cross-dressing/pretender manga confirm this), but the sooner the truth gets out the better imo. It's a fun set-up for how a straight girl slides into a gay relationship and comes to the conclusion that she doesn't care about the gender anymore. Kanda herself seems relatively fine with it too. If she hated it so much she would probably already have come clean to her.

If Ooguma's strait then this whole romance was doomed from the start, but the foreshadowing suggests otherwise. What strait girl makes it all the way to college without ever finding a guy attractive and then has the first person she ever finds attractive turn out to be a woman?

This looks like it will be fun and cute.

last edited at Sep 15, 2019 6:57AM

Also I don't really see them both being fujoshi to be that big of a deal, unless you really hate yaoi for some reason. The series will probably(hopefully) acknowledge himejoshi later on anyways.

The thing with fujoshi is that they can be rather extreme. (There is a reason the term means rotten).
Please don't mind if I have my doubts. I haven't seen himejoshi addressed properly in any manga before. At best there are avid yuri fans, but that is always disconnected from otaku culture or the term isn't even acknowledged.

I really don't understand why so many yuri fans are against yaoi

LIke I said in my previous post, most yuri fans in Japan are into both.
But if you are specifically in a yuri community you will have more hardliners who enjoy only one genre. I still see a lot of people on Dynasty who are totally fine with yaoi and even endorse it being released here.

Yaoi has a lot of downsides (like predatory dynamics, "yaoi hands", tiny head, ridiculous fetishization, complete misrepresentation of homosexual men in general and so on). But there is no genre without such flaws I would say. I won't make a difference between a yuri or yaoi rape doujin... they are both the worst.

But the stark truth is that fujoshis are the majority of female otaku. Another painful truth is that most Japanese girls who like yuri are straight girls and they tend to also like BL.

These are stereotypes, not truths, especially the latter claim! The little information that's available on the demographics of the yuri subculture (both in the "West" and in Japan) suggests that heterosexual women are outnumbered by non-heterosexual women. (Ex.) Unless the "most female yuri fans are straight fujoshi" argument has any supporting evidence, I don't think it's fair to take it as truth by default.

I think we got something mixed up there. In general the main audience for both yuri and yaoi are straight girls. It's aimed at them, because they are the biggest customer base and for Japanese girls yuri is not too extreme to read most of the time. I just straight up don't believe that non-hetero women outnumber straight girls in this case, because that's not what the magazines aim for.

Actually, there is also a large portion of yuri that is written for and read by a male audiences. That was basically what Yuri Hime S was all about. You can often tell which audience was being targeted by looking at the sort of works being published. Stories like Still Sick, or Bloom into You which are very character and story centric romances are geared more towards women where manga that are less concerned about the actual relationships and more geared towards fan service or cgdct are more likely to be aimed at males. Admittedly there is a ton of overlap but it's disingenuous to suggest there aren't yuri stories out there written for and read by what are basically gender inverted fujoshis.

last edited at Sep 12, 2019 5:05AM

I wouldn't say Kaoru is similar or dissimilar to other people, it's more.....
It's more like Kaoru lacks substance
Mask-sempai, we understand, we know what makes her tick, but Kaoru, as a character, isn't she, like, an empty shell? There's almost nothing to her except her vamp ways and a tendency to break down (and become obsessive) when she's rejected

Not really true. Over the chapters we've caught quite a few glimpses of her actual character under that somewhat affected aloof seductress persona she likes to keep up in public - not coincidentially mostly when she allows it to slip, which mainly happens around family but also classmates/presumably-close-ish-friends like Nononon. Short list without links 'cause I can't be arsed to hunt down all the references:
- likes cats, terribad puns and her little sister
- probably also children if the way she acted with Midoriri and the Mahimahi is to go by
- sense of humor seems to veer towards both childishly trollish (just ask Honoka) and surprisingly self-depreciatingly sardonic (see: infirmary scene after short-circuiting in face of Bou-chan)
- in her own weird way often tries to cheer up people feeling down, both implied friends (Nononon) and complete strangers (Hibiki, who incidentally seems to have turned pretty badass as a lasting side effect)
- seems to be fascinated by (other) unusual people eg. the Manga Club nerds

Kaoru and Mask-sempai actually have quite a bit in common. Both have built psychological walls around themselves and both hide behind their respective masks. Oddly enough despite her manipulative and at times almost psychopathic behavior Kaoru doesn't appear to be evil underneath. In this last chapter, for instance, we saw her trying to prevent Shizuka from carelessly self destructing her relationship with the younger girl she's been dating.

last edited at Sep 7, 2019 1:13AM