I don't want Erika to date Koto, I think all three should just be friends and find somebody new without the childhood baggage to pursue romantically.

Is this worth reading? I'm not a fan of NSFW most times so I don't know if it is worth it.

This is a story about dramatic negative emotions and friendship and young adults growing up, the NSFW is not the central focus here (although it's not exactly rare in the story). I personally really liked it, I really like all of this author's work, but I know she's not for some readers. You'll just have to try it and see if you like it or hate it.

I'm having a weird and terrible feeling reading this, like the author is ready to bait us and hit us with Nagi actually being straight all along and just being gay because everyone assumed she is gay, like a reverse comphet

Has there ever been even one single yuri manga that did this without it literally being set in an isekai where everyone is gay lmfao. I can think of one manga where a straight girl gets sent to a gay isekai, but even then she bends like wet spaghetti in the end. And her not being into girls at the start was, y'know, from the start and not dropped on the audience as a twist.

Because the external perception of women labeled with BPD, it's a really tall order to want actually good media using those traits. The same is true of most personality disorders, the whole category is a major problem conceptually, but especially BPD. I don't think I've seen a single good portrayal of it in any medium, let alone one as alienated from the prescriptions of the DSM as manga lol. Not to say it's impossible, I never would have expected such a fantastic and relatable portrayal of CPTSD before reading Sorawo in Otherside Picnic for example, but that's an empowering label compared to the practically damning label of BPD most of the time. I've personally never seen it done and the only way possible I can imagine is a memoir type manga instead of a narrative type. Something like "My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness" where the author is telling you about herself.

Not just Aya, I think the same could be applied to Koto too, Erika's love toward Koto is kind of weird. The idea of Aya coming back to give Koto false hope, then leave her again is incredibly cruel to Koto. Yet why would Erika want that to happen? Because to her, Koto's - the girl she supposed to love - well being is not as important as herself having her damn chance. I feel like to Erika, it's not about Koto, but herself and her chance to win Koto over.

I get that being selfish is very human or reality etc, but it's still bad and Erika feeling guilty about it is not undeserved at all.

Erika was completely wrong about how Koto would react to Aya. She thought seeing Aya again would help to undo the trauma of her sudden disappearance, and then they could resolve their relationship and Koto could at long last get better and move on. Erika doesn't just want to date Koto, she wants to be happy with her, that's why she turned down Koto asking her out in the past.
It's true that Erika doesn't spend a lot of her internal monologue empathizing with others, probably because she's too distracted with beating herself up. She's alienated from people she views as better than herself, because she can't help but to focus on contrasting herself to them. This is why she so badly failed in her prediction of how Aya x Koto would go, despite her best efforts and best intentions. And that failure does seem to be inspiring some change in her, like noticing Aya'a emotions more than before.

Honestly I'd assumed Kanna and Joe had already gotten back together with how much time they spend together with a comfortable and casual vibe. It seems unlikely that they haven't actually talked about their feelings one way or another, their breakup wasn't caused by a miscommunication either, it was openly a matter of conflicting priorities. Kanna wants to be with Joe and also a musician in America. Joe wants to be with Kanna and also take care of Mitsuki and not force her to drop everything, uproot, and move across the globe. He's also probably pretty damn attached to his store and community but that hasn't been explicitly mentioned iirc lol.
One of the major puzzle pieces we still need to drop into place is Mitsuki even being aware she's making a choice, let alone her openly communicating with Aya about what choices they make.

Love a good gay jumpscare lol. Honestly kinda surprised Suuna didn't scream or anything, she was so overwhelmed by what she saw that even being startled couldn't quickly change her tracks.

Stories like this just make it all the more funny to know what kind of person Miwa dated next lmao.

Good for Yuri, expressing her autonomy, getting away with both choking a guy and acting explicitly against Atsuko's opinion for what they should do. Atsuko responding positively to this instead of getting mad at her is probably very good for their relationship too :)

So you're telling me Americans are never ambiguous, Japanese people always are, and it's impossible for translators to make a Japanese person make sense to an American when translating their dialog huh. What else can I say but lol.

(I had a close personal friend in college who came to America from Japan specifically to study sociology and we had a lot of great conversations on cultural differences and similarities, I learned a ton from her, but I don't really think I need to go citing anything rn lol)

Well, that's because you don't know anything about Japan and their culture. The author and the characters in this manga are not Americans lol.

https://note.com/yuzuuudayo/n/n31522799dc47
This is the site which have analyzed this manga, and also have said about my example ①&② ( l believe she can't talk about ③ simply because chapter 16 hasn't come out yet when she had a analysis). You can see how a Japanese read Erika's action.
And this is the definition of manipulation from Cambridge Dictionary：controlling someone or something to your own advantage, often unfairly or dishonestly.
I think we can call Erika's behalf manipulative according to the definition, fairly.

Fascinating double header of appealing to authority here: first you find a Japanese reader who interpreted the character similar to you and act like it's some inherently Japanese thing that's completely alien to the mind of a westerner going on.... And then you cite the Cambridge Dictionary to define manipulation?? You know Cambridge isn't in Japan right?

Personally, I've yet to find an argument that "oh Japanese emotions and social relations are just completely different from us normal peop- uh I mean Americans" to be compelling. I've been reading manga for fifteen years now and have never seen an emotion or social dynamic that I haven't also seen in Western fiction. Mostly it just seems kind of implicitly racist to claim they're fundamentally different tbh. Japan was colonized by America and still has American military bases. They learn English in schools, watch and read translated American media, have a ton of loanwords from foreign languages, etc. I feel pretty confident in asserting there's a lot more cultural difference between you and I than the difference between us on average and modern Japanese culture.

She's suck but it doesn't mean she never tried lol.

Gonna need examples of Erika trying to be manipulative.

①Chapter 1：
→"Well, anyway, we're going to be busy with the club. There's no need for us to be in love yet, right？"

Erika's trying to let the other two think it's a bad idea if they choose to date right now. But it was mainly said towards Koto. You can see Koto was feeling the pressure (next picture) because she knew Aya loved acting and always be the lead role of their drama club. Erika implied "you might disturb Aya if you ask her to go out" here.

However, it turned out Koto still can't help but confess. Erika is suck at manipulating people all due to her not knowing that person who she wants to manipulate pretty well (and never notice that fact). Koto has the most selfish character out of the trio. Normally, people who had been refused will be hesitant to confess again for fearing he/she might feel bothered, but Koto couldn't care less.

Compared to Aya, who successfully pushed Koto to do the script things while jokingly playing Koto around at the same time. Yes, Erika literally has no talent in this area.

②Chapter 3：
→"So, if your feelings died down and you move on…You have to make it clear to her, don't you think？"

Even that's the case, you don't have to say in this way. As their friends, "You have to figure out how you feels about her now" is far more appropriate in this situation. But of course l can get it, Erika loves Koto and wants to lead her to think she has no feelings towards Aya now. It's understandable.

③Chapter 16：
→"She's fine. It's even surprising."

That's the reply when Koto ask "How is Aya-chan？" Erika knows Aya is not really fine but still chose to say that. She wants Koto to move on so badly to the degree that she is disgusting me here. Erika thought Koto would be miraculously moving forward if she acknowledges Aya doesn't even feel any sorrow about their breakup (while it's not the truth lol). So we can see why she gets mad next page that Koto is still all about Aya as usual.

I have said it before and l am going to say it again. Holding an unrequited love that long is never a good thing. Ultimately, you will be hurting the people you love because you can't control yourself, to think you already cost too much on it.

Accepting someone might never loves you back is a maturity which should be marked with a red line.

None of that is manipulative lmao. You're accusing her of thought crimes for having and expressing feelings. That first example in particular is just hilarious to me to call it manipulation, because it's just Erika expressing her anxiety and hoping her friends will validate her. Saying something to someone in hopes they'll reassure you or make you feel better is hardly "manipulation".
And both the other examples are Erika literally just being a good friend to Aya. The first was her expressing some wishful thinking, that Koto having seen Aya as a child would realize "oh she's a child and I'm an adult I guess this ain't really a thing I should pursue, huh?" because Erika frequently overestimates Koto lol. The second is, as Blastaar said, Erika telling Koto what Aya would want told to Koto: reassuring her that she's safe and okay. Because Koto's extremely anxious about Aya and would not handle it well if she was given more reason to worry about her.

To be clear: Erika HAS problems. I'm hardly calling her an "angel" as you've accused me before, lmao. Her problems just don't include being a bad friend to either Koto or Erika: Instead her flaws are about self-neglect, self-hatred, and overestimating Koto and Aya (mostly Koto). Erika's bad for herself, not her friends.

last edited at Nov 8, 2024 3:34PM

With Yakou sticking that leg all the way in her mouth like that, her "love" is starting to look a bit less like she's into dolls, and a bit more like she's into vore lol

Edit: also the way she stuck out her tongue reminded me of the funniest chapter of Futari Monologue:
https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/futari_monologue_ch32

last edited at Nov 8, 2024 5:55AM

All the subverted expectations in this chapter were good, it's a running joke that happens every couple of pages so they really stack up lol

Not just that, she's an unreliable narrator for narrating any feeling. A lot of the time she seems trustworthy but then even for basic stuff like fear, her ability to describe the degree of feelings or any sort of nuance is very shaky. For example, she describes the beach at the end of the world in a way that sounds relatively "standard" for Otherside encounters, but they ended up so traumatized that they stayed in Okinawa until they stopped having very literal PTSD attacks. She explicitly claims to have no real problem with shooting threats that look and act completely like real humans, and then goes on to have nightmares about them for a week.

My favorite subtle thing about this story is the Otherside appearing whenever Sorawo starts to get intense feelings. There's the Otherside appearing the moment Toriko drops the bombshell in this chapter, but there's stuff like wandering into the interstitial space when Toriko leaves, or attacked by a Self-blinding monster right after wondering whether she told Toriko about her history, or having the ghosts of her dad and grandma appear right after she has an emotional moment about her future with Toriko. The Otherside seems very much related to Sorawo's terror at encountering normal parts of life she doesn't have a script for. It's almost like she's generally un-selfaware, with anti-cult mode being a comforting state where she's purely acting in self-preservation, and Otherside mode being slammed with too much information about herself at once. Cringe is also a form of continuous attachment.

The mannequins here are a nice symbolic thing. What better to complement the feeling of your body being objectified than a tool to sell clothes. What better way to highlight being kinda okay with Toriko being the one to ogle her than contrasting her against a faceless crowd doing the same?

The mannequins also highlight the distance Sorawo feels towards most people who aren't Toriko. :) especially for young neurodivergent people with other shit going on like queerness and trauma, meeting another person who is on the same level as you can feel like finally meeting someone who's the same species compared to the alienation of every other "normal" human. Same with moments like representatives of humans in the "interstitial" space talking unintelligible nonsense compared to Sorawo and Toriko being able to communicate and understand each other.
The timing of the mannequins appearing here lines up not just with Sorawo feeling intense feelings, but also Sorawo and Toriko getting close to being on the same wavelength wrt being gay for each other, unlike all the heteros around them. I think it's worth noting they never see a mannequin Kozakura here :P

last edited at Nov 8, 2024 5:12AM

Yup, she gives the whole game away with that line, but doesn't stop to realize she did, and presumably forgot about that thought. One of the many ways the author tells us not to take Sorawo's perspective and opinions at face value :)

Yeah, when it comes to her romantic (and even sexual feelings) she's consistently shown to be a massive unreliable narrator.

Not just that, she's an unreliable narrator for narrating any feeling. A lot of the time she seems trustworthy but then even for basic stuff like fear, her ability to describe the degree of feelings or any sort of nuance is very shaky. For example, she describes the beach at the end of the world in a way that sounds relatively "standard" for Otherside encounters, but they ended up so traumatized that they stayed in Okinawa until they stopped having very literal PTSD attacks. She explicitly claims to have no real problem with shooting threats that look and act completely like real humans, and then goes on to have nightmares about them for a week.

last edited at Nov 7, 2024 8:06PM

Yup, she gives the whole game away with that line, but doesn't stop to realize she did, and presumably forgot about that thought. One of the many ways the author tells us not to take Sorawo's perspective and opinions at face value :)

The fact that Erika later made a Tanabata wish that Aya would return and then Aya returned suggests that Erika does have some connection to the “spirited away” phenomenon, but exactly what that relation is and how much Erika is aware of or in control of it is a completely open question.

Honestly it would be pretty bad writing at this point to reveal that Erika knew her wish would make Aya return, since we got that scene from her perspective, with plenty of internal monologue. She's written pretty unambiguously as shocked and confused with Aya's sudden appearance.

last edited at Nov 7, 2024 3:43PM

The only scenario I can imagine where 14yo Erika played an active role in Aya's disappearance is if Aya asked Erika for help with running away.

Hang on, this country has a freaking gulag?!

Pfft I didn't see a single one of those exiled villagers desperately eating a fossil, no way it's a gulag (this reference is way too specific nobody's gonna get it but fuck it lmao)

Also, I'm not really sure if Erika is trying to break the triangle "without hurting either Koto or Aya." She knows very well that the breakup she always wished for hurt both Koto and Aya a great deal. Of course, from an objective perspective, the breakup was necessary regardless. But Erika still knew her plan would result in this pain, and she went through with it anyway.

I’m not following this last part at all—what “plan” of Erika’s did she “go through with”? That phrasing implies that Erika has played an active role in causing Koto and Aya to break up.

She's given them valid, reasonable advice. It's also advice that she intentionally framed in a way to encourage them to break up.

I disagree: Erika did nothing to encourage the breakup, because that relationship was obviously doomed. Instead she have Aya advice that resulted in her feeling more confident in her choice, and led to a confrontation with Koto that was more directed than just "stop being so controlling please" "no". She was trying to shape what came after the breakup, but had zero role in the breakup happening in the first place. And her expectations for what that post-breakup state would look like turned out entirely wrong, because she overestimated Koto. Erika really isn't all that much of a schemer or manipulator, because she simply doesn't have the skills for it lol.

last edited at Nov 5, 2024 5:39PM

Some of you guys are blaming Koto for being immature and this and that even after years... Poor girl "lost" her first and only love at 14 (emotionally immature), it's not suprising that she couldn't cope with the fact that Aya dissapeared. She sadly got stuck in that state of mind as you said it before but it's shows how much she loved her and it also wasn't a typical farewell, like breaking up or smth and the emotions between them at that time was really intense, so... Big big trauma she has, kinda understandable, imo. Koto didn't do anything remarkable in her life.. I think she just wanted to survive those seven years after Aya went missing. Also, she always wanted to replace or find Aya but it never worked out. These are the facts.. so, yeah, she needs a good therapy for sure. I feel like, soon there'll be a lot of drama !!!

It's not blaming, at least for the most part, just describing. I personally have zero interest in assigning guilt or blame or moral culpability when discussing characters in fiction, just their the details of their characterization and role and relationships instead.

Does she actually, seriously think she can just date Koto now and everything will be okay?

My guess is that she knows that “now” is still currently off the table. But Erika has always been playing a very long game in regard to her feelings for Koto—she turned her down when Koto brought up the possibility of the two of them dating after Aya had gone missing, because she knew Koto needed to somehow resolve her feelings about Aya first.

From Erika’s point of view, Koto trying and apparently failing with Aya is a necessary precondition for the two of them getting together, however long it might take for that to happen.

(I think that Koto is actually too deeply damaged for a relationship with Erika to ever be feasible, but that’s my read of Erika’s thinking.)

I would've agreed with you before chapter 15. But after her whole "I'm not an understudy anymore, I have my own words I want to say" spiel there, and her very deliberate word choice of "You need to shed your dependence or you won't be able to face anyone" statement in this chapter, I get the impression she's actually preparing to confess her feelings fairly soon. As you say, she had this grand plan of Koto and Aya dating and then breaking up, but I think from Erika's point of view, that plan has succeeded and now she's in the last step.

And it's not just that Koto is still in love with Aya but that her thoughts are still dominated by the trauma of Aya's disappearance, even after her return. Erika was hoping that the reversal of the trauma trigger would reverse the trauma and Koto would come to her senses finally, realize she isn't actually interested in dating a child, and be open to Erika at long last. Koto instead has regressed, or seemingly maybe WANTS to regress? And is farther from both Aya and Erika than ever :( Even having Aya in her life now didn't overcome the pain of the seven years of absence that Koto wants to erase. Aya returning has, if anything, reopened old wounds and made Koto worse, at least so far.

That's a good insight that Koto wants to regress, and I think this chapter may give us some clues as to why: Koto despises the person she's been the last 7 years, ever since Aya's disappearance. To Koto, those years aren't just completely worthless, they're also evidence of her own intrinsically bad character. It's not just that the last time she was happy was when she was 14, it's that (in her view) the last time she was a good person was when she was 14. (This is a contrast to Erika, who even at 14 hated herself lol.)

Erika points out in this chapter that, even though Aya is back and shows no signs of disappearing again, Koto is still consumed by fear and anxiety. That's because what she wants, ultimately, isn't to date Aya. It's to be 14 years old again. Aya growing up means her final connection to that time is going away, and that's what she's unable to accept.

Talking about Koto hating herself, it's interesting how both Koto and Erika hate the distorted version of themselves in their self perception and how their actions reflect that. Koto hates the version of herself without Aya, including the version of herself who's spent half her conscious life separated from her, and thus obsesses over Aya and endlessly loops an impossible wish for her past to change. Tragically, the events that traumatized her, due to their supernatural nature, will surely only encourage her indulging in fruitless magical thinking.
Erika meanwhile views herself as a selfish bitch and thus prioritizes everyone else and neglects herself, with the most prominent hints of that neglect when Aya first sees Erika's apartment, which she's left as a pigsty since the only person who would benefit from her cleaning it is herself. Once Aya has moved in, there's zero sign of Erika being messy, and now that Aya's moved out I fully expect that apartment to go to hell again.
You could also add Aya to this for true parallelism amongst our main characters, as she clearly hates the version of herself who is a powerless dependent child reliant on the choices of others to dictate the course of her life, and so desperately struggles to be an island, to the point of doing things like spending money renting a dorm room and even feeling insecure about her "dependence" on her boss at work. Hopefully Aya doesn't fall for any get rich quick scams like crypto investment now that's she's alone. She missed a lot of development of the Internet era and is thus vulnerable to scams. If she got contacted by a Nigerian prince she'd believe him.

last edited at Nov 5, 2024 4:01AM

Sorawo isn't so much "lacking self awareness" as she is "actively disassociating from her feelings". She's not just dense, she's mentally ill. Otherside Picnic is one of the only times I've actually seen a story acknowledge that particular kind of "denseness" is a common symptom of PTSD rather than just a quirky character trait that helps stretch out a plot. She's not a useless lesbian, she's a lesbian bearing cripplingly severe psychic wounds. This makes her imo a far more realistic and interesting character than a more common one who's merely "tee hee I don't notice when I'm gay and people are gay for me because I don't know how to be introspective! :P"

Does she actually, seriously think she can just date Koto now and everything will be okay?

My guess is that she knows that “now” is still currently off the table. But Erika has always been playing a very long game in regard to her feelings for Koto—she turned her down when Koto brought up the possibility of the two of them dating after Aya had gone missing, because she knew Koto needed to somehow resolve her feelings about Aya first.

From Erika’s point of view, Koto trying and apparently failing with Aya is a necessary precondition for the two of them getting together, however long it might take for that to happen.

(I think that Koto is actually too deeply damaged for a relationship with Erika to ever be feasible, but that’s my read of Erika’s thinking.)

And it's not just that Koto is still in love with Aya but that her thoughts are still dominated by the trauma of Aya's disappearance, even after her return. Erika was hoping that the reversal of the trauma trigger would reverse the trauma and Koto would come to her senses finally, realize she isn't actually interested in dating a child, and be open to Erika at long last. Koto instead has regressed, or seemingly maybe WANTS to regress? And is farther from both Aya and Erika than ever :( Even having Aya in her life now didn't overcome the pain of the seven years of absence that Koto wants to erase. Aya returning has, if anything, reopened old wounds and made Koto worse, at least so far.

last edited at Nov 4, 2024 9:57PM