On the flip side, using your same argument, if the girl in the picture was Hayama, wouldn’t she have been able to recognize her to some degree as well? But again, this is the first time Tarumizu’s ever seen any of them, so it’s reasonable enough to expect that she wouldn’t be able to recognize any of them right off the bat.

Well, she did recognize Hayama right away though. I don't see any indication that she didn't know how she looked. Seeing how she knew the "Sunset Girl" photo beforehand, it would be weird to ask "Is that you in the photo?" if she already knew what Hayama looked like. If it is Hayama, basically MC has no reason to ask. If it is not Hayama, then she didn't seem to care who it was.

I don't think a elementary school boy counts as a "male" character. Sure he's a boy, but it's not like he's going to be a serious romantic rival for the girls.

Male and female characters are not defined by their availability for romantic interest. That's one twisted view. Male side-characters with literally zero interest or "danger" of becoming rivals are still male characters.

For the record: I like male characters in yuri stories. If there are no boys, in the mix, I get the feeling the girls are just playing love games. That the girls will one day discover guys, and the yuri romance I spent X chapters rooting for will fall apart.

That is just as reproachable as erasing males. It implies girls cant develope true feelings unless they are challenged by male presence... As if the natural order is for them to fall head over heels for a boy the moment he exists. And then there are bisexuals.

Really John, I know you mean well, but your phrasing always is so unfortunate...

last edited at Apr 23, 2019 3:24PM

Yuri often ignores the existence of males for no good reason. It takes away from the world if it exists in a vacuum. The segregation of the genders due to a fear of competition is problematic in its own way. Some, if not most of the best and most grounded Yuri stories are not afraid to involve male characters.

Anyway, Mio is a good boy and this is quite the nice plot. Isn't Mio a girl's name though? Onee-chan's blushing and overheating can be attributed to extreme shyness, but transfer sutdent girl certainly seems very proactive about pursuing her. That look she had when she saw Onee-chan smile was very enarmored.

To be honest I always played with the idea of writing a similar story myself. A story about a boy trying to be a wingman for two girls who for the life of them can't get together due to circumstances (either because they are both tsunderes or because they are denser than a black hole). Making that character a little brother is actually quite smooth and natural (especially because he is not even aware of the romantic context).

last edited at Apr 23, 2019 2:58PM

Rereading the chapter, I feel like the bed girl might even be Amane, if it’s not Hayama. For one, she kind of looks like the girl in the picture, with about the same length of hair, and secondly, it may explain some of the drama between her and Nene? Seems like Hayama herself isn’t sure when they broke up, but it could’ve even been after the picture was taken.

I can't really deny the possibility. It's not like I'm an artist, so I'm only going by my gut feeling, but the eyes, facial structure and hair just don't seem to be Amane's. If it is Amane, then even MC did not recognize her, because she would certainly have asked her why she was a model for her idol.

Wasn't her award winning photo the self-portrait (aka fancy selfie)?

The chapter doesn't call it a self-portrait though, just that it won a competition. I'm not sure they're the same person, since the one in the photo seems to have lighter, longer and straighter hair than the photographer. It's hard to tell though.

Right, I just read the chapter again, you are correct. For some reason to me it just looked like it was a photo of her. It was even on a bed, so she could have just put the camera down and used a timer.
Camera girl mentioned that this photo was taken 2 years ago, so maybe senpai's hair was longer back then... ah I'm just reaching here.

Now I'm even more curious.

last edited at Apr 23, 2019 11:41AM

This is a great example of one of those "I like this so far but here's what's going to/should happen" series openings, where Dynasty should generate official betting boards for predicting future developments, with, I dunno, Yuri Points or something (gold lilies, maybe?) to the winners. Odds would change on the individual elements as the chapters come out:

• Any love triangle: 5:2
• Exes reunite: 2:1
• Lizard girl + Camera-chan: 3:1
• Any polyamory ending: 25:1
• Sensei & Gecko: 500:1

Etc.

I bet 10 Daylilies on Camera girl x Lizard girl and Exes rekindle the flame.

Not to mention, there's her creative slump where she hasn't been shooting. Is that because of the former couple, or maybe something to do with the model of her award-winning photo?

Also, depending on how good the other two were at hiding their relationship, it might be suspicious that the photographer knew about it.

Wasn't her award winning photo the self-portrait (aka fancy selfie)?

last edited at Apr 23, 2019 11:28AM

I mean I can understand seeing as I too am pretty damn exhausted with this site's arbitrary tagging policies. The subtext thing is irritating enough but it's even worse when mods actively resist tagging emotionally jarring content to "preserve a twist." Like, hey edgelord maybe I didn't want to read a super fucked up story and your desire for shock value is wildly inconsiderate and defeats half the point of tagging shit. This isn't a psychological thriller archive it's a gay romance site.

The comparison is a bit lacking. One is actively upsetting, the other simply doesn't reach the level of interest you would like it to have. Tragedy Angst and Depressing as Fuck tags exist as a warning mechanism, because they have averse effects on some people. I completely agree that the label must be applied to those.
Yuri or Subtext , that's more a matter of interpretation. At the very least the worst that can happen is that it's not as explicit as you would have liked.

last edited at Apr 23, 2019 11:23AM

I'm wondering if the lizard girl has a thing for one of the exes.

Hm, now that you mention it. One wants to be a model, the other wants to be a photographer. That seems like a good set up for some love triangle. Clearly she is not too close to them right now, considering she was unsure about their relationship status. And they weren't club members either. So there must have been some kind of rift between the three of them (maybe the reason for the break-up as well).

That teacher is stupidly hot.

I guess that answers my question.

last edited at Apr 23, 2019 10:29AM

Is it just me, or was that ending really abrupt, even for the end of a chapter? I actually clicked a few times, expecting another page or two.

Same here. It somehow seemed to lack that usual stinger at the end lol

So was camera girl oblivious to the yuriness or was it only the being exes she was surprised at?

The way she was sweating and swallowing during the shoot seemed to imply otherwise. She must at least have felt the sexual tension.

And totes camera girl with sensei.

Why does everyone think that's likely at all? Sensei looks pretty much like a solid side-character.
The one that seems to be set up as the love interest is the lizard girl.

last edited at Apr 23, 2019 10:17AM

a lizard person
(or possible gay)

Why not both? Do I sense Gay Lizard, Gay for Lizards, and Reptilian Crush tags on the horizon?

Now listen here friend...

Photography is too popular for nobody to join that club, especially if it's a successful one. Bet the senpai was found out to be a lizard person (or possible gay) and thus got shunned by everyone.

Maybe at an art school... definitely not at a standard high school. Photography (especially the conventional non-selfie kind) is not popular with teens. Usually its the school supporting that kind of thing for prestige though.

Puberty hits like a slow spreading virus. And then suddenly you became sick with all these feelings you can't cure. Work the symptoms, but the cause is a mystery to the patient.

Puberty for a girl who is into her mother must be torture.

Finally the only tag that matters is back. Welcome home my Lizards~

Okay, this is incredibly stupid, but whenever I see Tarumizu's name I accidentally read it as Tiramisu. Now she can definitely pass as a sweet, so it's not entirely wrong.
Anyway, she sure knows what she's doing.The yuri photographer genre is a prestigious one. You go Kou!

^Indeed, I look forward to season 2. But Kobayashi was actually yuri from the start, so they just stayed faithful. It's more comedy and family vlaues than focused on yuri though, which is probably why they picked it.

^Kumiko gets into a relationship with a guy, yes. The yuri subtext in the novels, if any at all, was not intentional by the author. She just wanted to write dramatic and deep friendships between girls. When she saw the more romantic and more yuri-bait approach taken by the anime she apparently didn't mind it though. I just wanna say that Ayano Takeda isn't really guilty here, that was a joke. While it's easy to interpret many scenes and moments as romantically charged, that is more the reader's bias than anything. KyoAni does as KyoAni do, so we got what we got.

last edited at Apr 22, 2019 4:21PM

@LLENN I'm more of a Playstation fan myself... Can we just accept that there are people who don't know everything?

^^Not in the AU.

I don't get why the position of "stories that only have gay subtext should be tagged as subtext" always gets so much pushback here. Like, what's the point of tags if nobody is going to tag things accurately.

Probably because different people interpret things differently. I think this story was quite overt about their romantic interest, so there can be an argument for why its not just subtext.

Even if it wasn't, certain people express that opinion in overly aggressive ways, so the pushback is probably more related to such outbursts against the author, the readers and the mods. The author wrote a story that is arguably subtext... so what? It's not a personal insult and doesn't devalue the story. But most of the "This isn't yuri!" crowd takes it very personally and lashes out at the world at large.

14 yo is old enough to have sex.

Though given the age of the vampire...

Only if the partner is around the same age and even then that's pretty damn borderline. We aren't in medieval times anymore.

(Ugh) What is it about vampires. They are suppose to be, quite literally, blood thirsty monsters, preying upon humanity. The evil creatures, that lurk in the night. Why does everybody make them into romantic heartthrobs, that make young girls gush their tighty whiteys? Oh well at least this vampire is working for team yuri. and she doesn't sparkle.

One might think after ~300 years of romanticisation of the vampire mythos that people would accept it as the new standard. Whose depiction are you arguing for, Eastern Europeans from the 12th century?
Vampires haven't been mindless monsters since the Victorian era. Drăculea Vlad III. became Dracula and vampires became more humanized.

At best you could argue there are several sub-species of vampire. The ones in romantic fiction tend to be the sophisticated "higher vampire" type. That's all there is to it.

last edited at Apr 22, 2019 6:00AM

@Perlen297 Can't make a google search if I didn't connect the color to the trans situation at first.
I like cat girls a lot. I guess from now on I should pay attention to the artwork involving them to see if that is indeed a trend.

Well all the horrific meta flags aside...

This chapter was pretty messy and all over the place. I know introduction chapters are often a bit rushed or try to establish as many things as possible for the sake of garnering interest, but sheesh. We jumped around way too much and made it really confusing.

The plot of finding whatever the key leads to was instantly abandoned after vampire girl attacked the random dude and then sucked protag's blood for no reason. Maybe the implication is that she worked up a sweat and got thirsty and couldn't resist.... and then they both got really weak and went to sleep. Still messy.

To a vampire there might not be much of a difference between a 14 year old or a 40 year old, but to me that kinda matters. She is a bit young for this, so I hope it doesn't go too far (those comments about the lolicon hentai garbage don't help).

Cautiously curiously continuing to follow this series.

^Implying things can't be complex and actually deliver what they are pretending to set up.

D:

^Why yes, I am. After further contemplation I came to the conclusion that perhaps those colors identify someone as transgender? I have never seen or heard of that before, so cut me some slack.

last edited at Apr 22, 2019 1:37AM

^If it wasn't for Kyoto Animation's yuri-baiting this pairing wouldn't even exist. Blame the author of the novels.