It’s clear there are two schools of thought on this series—one sees it as executing a sophisticated narrative long game, the other sees it as meandering, erratically focused, and ad hoc in its plot developments.

Readers have done a fine job talking inconsistencies into complexities; after a lifetime of studying experimental storytelling in literature and especially in comics, I see little convincing evidence of that complexity on the pages of the text itself.

There is a major hole in your classification tree - that the author is trying a complex approach but isn't succeeding (from your perspective, anyway).

Pretty sure that falls under Blas's second category in practical terms.

In contrast we can look at traditional western comics, where objective plot developments are obligatory, they end up in a complete clusterfuck of retcons, reboots and AUs because that "skillful" directed development simply isn't sustainable for a long running story.

...I'm pretty sure you're talking about superhero comics here, which are hardly the end-all be-all of Western comics and a quite different kettle of fish - namely, they're franchises worked on by a more or less frequently rotating creative staff. Also essentially open-ended in a very "the journey is the destination" fashion ("journey" here naturally including Selling Copies...).

Though what you describe is not limited to that particular field; it's the natural evolution of any narrative franchise sharing those traits, particularly the changing creators who naturally have differing ideas - eg. certain long-lived Franco-Belgian BD franchises display similar symptoms (if less pronouncedly due to altogether slower publication paces) for much the same reasons, Spirou & Fantasio being one prominent example I'm personally familiar with. It conversely tends to be rather absent in series firmly in the hand of a singular creator (or specific team) and their particular artistic vision.

Nice story but it really asks you to suspend some heroic doses of disbelief over all the blatant Contrived Coincidences...

It strikes me that Reiichi cheating or not cheating is almost a detail at this point. Even if he was doing it for work, sometimes you gotta draw the line, especially if your wife wants you around more.

We're talking Japan here. The perpetually-absent sarariman father is such a recurring cliché for a reason in their entertainement...

^what, would you have preferred say the Seventies? :U

lmao these two, in every single chapter

Also,
"tact? wut dat?" - Wanko, demonstrably

last edited at Apr 11, 2020 12:49PM

^if your water looks like that you seriously have bigger things to worry about D:

To rephrase the question, besides biological issues (which dont matter if you just dont have kids), whats intrinsically wrong about consensual incest ?

In this case, we'd be talking about an adult-minor relationship involving an authority figure(with an intrinsic status as such, rather than the more transient authorities of teachers, etc). Like I said, dragging this into the real world isn't a good idea if you want it to remain cute.

Except that i specified "intrinsically wrong with consensual incest" rather then talking about this specific example, which if the age gap makes it ilegal, it isnt really consensual.

That sounds like some rather selective invocation of legality, just sayin'.

I was on the fantasy-side of the fence, but her back complaints seem out of place if nothing actually happened ... but ... can't say I'm certain either way.

This story's remarkably big on ambiguity in general if you look at it more closely, besides the possibility the sex was all in Sakura's head with or without (given the "mental intrusion" abilities implicit in the original lore) Noriko's psychic participation - mindfuck sensu stricto? :P

Eg. it seems to be implied Noriko's succubus nature is something of a secret or at least something she prefers not display openly, yet Sakura offhandedly dismisses it as "not mattering"; is this because such beings are no stranger a sight than foreign tourists in this setting, because she doesn't know who to tell without being laughed out as a lunatic ("who ya gonna call?") and Noriko doesn't seem to be up to anything actually objectionable anyway, or because she's had some kind of mental block implanted by way of demonic mindfuckery sensu lato to uphold the Masquerade?

Similarly much of the relationship between the two girls is left vague, beyond Sakura's obvious giant tsundere crush on Noriko and the latter's amused awareness thereof. There's hints that they're fairly regular fuckbuddies, and apparently Noriko views Sakura as her (current?) "favourite human" - but then this is contingent on how real exactly you assume the sex scene to be (and if it's entirely in Sakura's head then her raging homo lust is Brobdingnagian indeed...). And should it be taken to be real - physically or psychically - rather than, effectively, mental masturbation there's the question just how much you can take a literal demon whose whole gig is manipulating people sexually at her word...

Hell. If you really want to shake those Epileptic Trees you might even postulate there's nothing supernatural whatsoever going on and these two are just engaging in some kind of strange, sustained and rather chuuni form of roleplay... :P

(not that I'm entirely sure what a back that feels sluggish means. Is she talking about her head actually?)

Same. It is at the very least some quite peculiar wording.

I'm so tired of the ''social expectation'' excuse, It's just a cheep way to create bullshit drama.

"I'm so tired of authors using an actual real-world issue that causes actual real-world drama and distress to create the same in their fiction."

Uh-huh.

Did they actually do anything or was that just fantasizing?

I think it was fantasizing seeing the last part where they talk about "reading minds"

That can just as well be Sakura still rather... distracted... by earlier tho. Then again depending on how close Saku cleaves to the original lore here there might not be much meaningful difference between actual and fantasized sex as far as the mind-reading literal sex demon Noriko is concerned...

The original succubus/incubus didn't have horns or a tail, but they were futanari with prodigious telepathic abilities, that would seduce members of both sexes by mentally projecting an image of a loved one, and could impregnate or be impregnated.

More like sequentially hermaphromorphic dream-demons that first took semen from sleeping men in female form (succubi) and then used it to impregnate sleeping women in male form (incubi), or at least that's how the story had evolved by the time Thomas Aquinas got to it. As that article notes the trope of demonic/spirit parentage already occurs all the way back in the Sumerian king list (specifically, Gilgamesh's father is pegged as a lilû)...

The original succubus is Lilith, better known as the Second Angel of Evangelion. According to the Jewish Kabbalah, Adam and Lilith were originally a non binary couple formed by God at the same time, but Lilith was expelled from Eden for defying His will: basically God wanted her to be Adam's bottom while Lilith was an incorrigible top (I am not making this up). She later became associated with three other Succubi as seducer/He-Satan/sacred prostitutes, and with the archangel Samael. (Samael was God's butt boy. He planted the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden, "rode the serpent" thar enticed Eve into consuming the forbidden fruit, and is the reputed father of Cain by Eve.)

Well no the real OG would be the poorly-defined ancient Mesopotamian lilītu which nigh certainly inspired the later Jewish myth - unsurprising, given how large the legacy of that floodplain loomed in the cultural history of the whole Middle East (the other high culture around, Egypt, being obsessively introverted) and the whole business with the Israelite elites being forcibly relocated to Babylon for a few generations. Lilith herself only gets very scattered mentions in Jewish sources before Medieval Europe which is when the story really got its Expanded Universe treatment (eg. the whole business with Samael, who was basically God's legbreaker, and the "first woman" angle) in the writings of assorted mystics.

That's because it's not a tail. It's a visual metaphor for something else.

No, really? shocked_pikachu_face.jpg

The pulsating veins that start appearing when it gets ready for penetration are a dead giveaway, no?

She can apparently also alter it on the fly; sadly we are given no detail just what she did with it but Sakura seemed to find it quite... stimulating. Ribbed for her pleasure or something along those lines I guess. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Hey, if you have both mindreading and shapeshifting might as well put them to gainful use!

last edited at Apr 10, 2020 3:56PM

Considering all the trouble Uta coming home caused, I think the fact that her parents still openly ignore her angers me more than anything else.

Ignoring instead of pampering. God, they are HORRIBLE people!

Neglect is officially categorized as emotional abuse. Caring about their daughter's feelings is not pampering, it's what a normal humane parent should do.

Also worth noting that this same treatment was more or less what originally led Uta to, essentially, take refuge with Reiichi and Kaoru in the first place and it's strongly implied she was pretty much an emotional wreck at that point. By now she's apparently just... indifferent to her parents and they no longer appear to play any part whatsoever in her emotional needs (which seem to be instead met by Kuroe and staying in touch with R&K).

When a kid gets that profoundly alienated from their parents you know there's some seriously substandard parenting going on.

last edited at Apr 10, 2020 3:44PM

"...but it was me, Doge!"

Considering all the trouble Uta coming home caused, I think the fact that her parents still openly ignore her angers me more than anything else.

I mean it's been something of a consistent refrain whenever they come up that their parents are actual garbage.

That's because it's not a tail. It's a visual metaphor for something else.

No, really? shocked_pikachu_face.jpg

Doesn't stop the industry standard being stolen right off a bad Halloween costume despite often enough being used for the exact same purposes.

Well this one has a nicely multifaceted personality at least. Plus the tail design had rather more effort and imagination put into it than the usual "some noodle with a heart randomly stuck to one end"...

Back to square one.

Leaked footage of the soundtrack planned for the anime adaptation.

As it is, it seems like she went through all that angst and character growth at her brother’s, only to go live with her parents, where she got kinda bored and, without any real precipitating cause or new emotional realization, just said, “Eh, nothing much going on around here—I think I’ll go back to being in love with Kaoru.”

Kuroe is basically you rn in-universe ain't she? :P

Ayanero is seriously angling to outdo Asagi Ryuu (who, come think of it, seems to have gotten more restrained lately; old age I guess) in the Watersports field...

last edited at Apr 10, 2020 8:46AM

Crownslayer x Bully Squad is the real poly OTP tbh

Y'know I always sorta wondered how these isolated secret ninja villages are supposed to keep sufficiently informed about things to actually be any good at their claimed missions, never mind now their members meshing with modern society well enough to carry them out in practice...
There's kind of a reason spooks tend to be recruited from about the polar opposite backgrounds after all.

...then again one look at the history of post-Meiji Japan says these guys were serial failures so, yeah. :v

last edited at Apr 10, 2020 7:04AM

This... minus the part where platonic and romantic cannot be put together as they are oxymorons.

Fair point, was going off some really vague meanings there.

^ I'll take your word on that, I'm no expert on such matters o3o

Cute, too bad the game is trash.

this_is_bait.jpg