...More than anything, I feel like a zipper that goes all around the hood would be a hair trap nightmare. Like, forget ever closing it, I can already imagine my hair constantly catching and tugging even with the hood down.

I was actually really surprised upon rereading that it was this way. I think I got used to the tsundere being the relationship roadblock, instead of a genius airhead who is giving the wrong impression.

Can anyone else go back and reread to see if it was the same for you?

To be honest, so much emphasis was put on Kurosawa's excitement about being challenged that I still struggle to see anything deeper happening between them, at least so far. I got the same feeling that you did, that Shiramine has been acting tsundere because she's scared to take Kurosawa's flirting seriously, and I even kind of agree with her on that. From her perspective, I wouldn't have any confidence at all that Kurosawa would stay interested if they weren't rivals. And the only reason I know as an outsider that Kurosawa is uniquely attracted to Shiramine is because it's a yuri manga and they've been paired up. Without that meta-knowledge, I don't really see anything special between them.

Or, like, what if someone else as talented as Kurosawa came along, who could actually give her a run for her money? Someone who Kurosawa would actually have to work to compete with, on an equal level? Would she still care about Shiramine and their utterly one-sided rivalry? Would Shiramine? Even if she did keep at it, would the process be so discouraging and hopeless that any romantic interest or affection would be completely swallowed up by a sense of desperate perseverance? What is Shiramine's role, exactly? How is Shiramine herself supposed to understand it? What confidence is she supposed to have in Kurosawa's feelings, at this point? What confidence is Kurosawa supposed to have in Kurosawa's feelings, for that matter?

I dunno. I feel like they're both kind of the problem. Shiramine stiffens up whenever she thinks about competing with Kurosawa, but it's Kurosawa who keeps contextualising their relationship as a competition, even when it doesn't need to be. And any progress they could be making towards fixing that and actually becoming closer keeps being hampered by the author getting distracted by other characters, who get more meaningful progression in more interesting relationships in much shorter timeframes.

last edited at Feb 13, 2016 3:55PM

What are you talking about? There are 2 main couples: Yurine x Ayaka and Mizu x Moe. They're both on the covers of volume 1.

Yurine...? Oh! You mean that girl who was Mizu's rival for a bit! I remember her. She was interesting. Didn't really get what she was about, though. Some kind of slacker prodigy? Maybe the author will write about her at some point. Would first have to expand her character a bunch, though. She's too obviously a side character, just being unmotivated and good at stuff like that, she'd need more depth to her if she was going to carry a chapter or two.

Weird that she was on the V1 cover alone, though. Putting a side character front and centre like that is strange enough, but when it's just her standing next to some bland empty space, the whole image just looks unfinished. Especially when we already have such vibrant and interesting protagonists like Mizu and Moe.

I kind of like that it wasn't some contrived misunderstanding, that drove them apart. Like, instead of having some limp reveal where it turns out Tachibana was calling the other girls pathetic, not Ebi, and she said they weren't friends because she just thought it would make Ebi uncomfortable to be put on the spot like that after two years of not talking. It would have been easy to idealise the real Tachibana, to make her return more simple and sparkly, but presenting her as a flawed and weak person made her more interesting, and more complicated than you'd expect a character who's absent for all but two chapters to be.

That said, it's still kind of weird how the "main story" takes place entirely within the first and last couple of chapters. The rest of the manga feels like another thing entirely. As if Hakameda Mera interrupted a sombre oneshot about estranged friends and death and aliens with a sixteen chapter spin-off about their time in design school, and they don't really connect to each other. Getting distracted by the B plot and rushing the A plot is something of a habit for this author, it seems.

(Thanks Shompu for explanation)

Seconded! Good to know!

Also, proactive Donut is nice, but I have a bad feeling she's going to push a little too hard and Mew'll see it as Ploy's influence, and in trying to say "Calm down, we can go at our own pace" Donut will take it as a rejection and then we have to deal with insecurity drama and Ploy's lack of self-preservation instinct drama at the same time, and neither of those are fun.

Jesus fucking Christ, Ploy.

Like, good job Mew, trying to do the good thing while maintaining your boundaries, but Ploy is being so unimaginably shitty that it makes Mew's entirely reasonable response seem inadequate. Mew doesn't have a terribly high opinion of her, but she probably didn't think Ploy was so far gone that she'd start sexually harassing Donut within seconds of being alone with her.

And she keeps going on "let's talk about us", like there's already something going. In the waitress girl's shoes, I'd have replied "there is no us, here's your jacket, now leave me alone". That she's kinda letting herself roped into such a situation, even after the OL just spouts some nonsense about "girlfriend for hire" without any proper explanation and pulling up some contract, acting like she already agreed to it ? Facepalming again.

My god, yes. "I have some work for you after you've done my dry-cleaning for me" as if she's already an employee to mistreat? This woman doesn't read like someone who feels alienated and distrustful of people, she reads like the spoiled 4-year-old daughter of some rich family who doesn't understand that servants are people (or that not all people are servants) as well as being a bit fuzzy on the difference between imagination and reality. She's already sorted out the hired-girlfriend deal in her head, so it's a foregone conclusion that it's happening, and everyone else just needs to catch up and do what they're told already.

Y'know, people (including me) have been referencing Fifty Shades as a kind of disparaging comparison to this, but to be totally frank, Christian Grey was actually way better at this than Gunj, and it made way more sense why an inexperienced, emotionally vulnerable student would be attracted to him. You see, unlike Gunj, Grey spent a non-zero amount of time pretending he wasn't an asshole. He like, took whatserface out on dates, and bought her inappropriately expensive gifts, generally acted like he would be an sensitive, caring lover, and then brought up the bullshit contract as a mandatory prerequisite to a full relationship. It was actually pretty similar to the techniques real cults use to indocrinate new members, so watching it happen was sort of horrifyingly believable. In comparison, Gunj has... Yeah. No.

This still has a chance to be good, maybe? If chapter five is Petai saying "nah, fuck this, I've been recording this whole conversation, so unless you want me to show your boss my new favourite song, here's how this is gonna work" and then settling into the actual relationship where Petai is a way better and more ethical dom and Gunj discovers that she's actually happier as a sub, she was just horrified by the idea of someone else treating her the same way she's been treating other people, and the whole Fifty Shades of Go Fuck Yourself setup in the first few chapters was a deliberate play on bad SM stereotypes building up to their comprehensive subversion. Then it could be pretty great!

On a side note, does anyone else find it kind of boring when rich, domineering characters turn out to be sadists in bed, too? Like, oh wow, the powerful person who likes being in control and having everything done their way also likes being a powerful in-control person who has things done their way during sex. Shocker. Who could have guessed. How could anyone possibly have imagined that this one trait of their public persona was really a reflection of the exact same trait they have on the inside. Not that all rich or influential characters should be uniformly submissive, or anything, it's just that it feels kind of redundant to act like it's a new and interesting element of their character. It's not very interesting when you can look at a character for one scene and know that how they're acting in that moment is how they act and think and live at all times.

last edited at Jan 3, 2016 9:58PM

It is not 50 Shades of Grey, people miss the obvious. She was never in a real relationship, never even kissed somebody. She wants the contract because it is the only way she knows to engage in a relationship.

...You know that was literally a thing in Fifty Shades, right? Grey was so fucked up and distant that he was never able to love anyone and his weird obsession with rules was because he couldn't trust other people, but he could trust a contract? It's very much the same thing, at this point.

And, really, as much as it makes sense from a character construction point of view, it doesn't make either of them especially sympathetic.

"I don't want to kiss someone I don't love. has sex with people for money I've never really fallen for anybody, I guess. decides to proposition waitress less than four seconds after seeing her Just haven't been with anyone long enough to care for them. cuts ties with woman who appreciates her personality and wants to see more of her It's not like I don't think about it, it's just never felt right, you know? implicitly threatens younger woman both physically and financially People only ever seem to look at me one way, like I'm supposed to be their boss 24/7, and it just gets tiring. orders random underling to get her coffee, fires another for collapsing from exhaustion Oh well. Que sera."

Oh, so it's literally Fifty Shades with lesbians. Faaaaantastic. I mean, it was pretty clear about it's inspirations, before, but yeah. I guess the fact that she's specifically looking for a girlfriend-for-hire, in this case, is sort of an improvement? Like, she's not under the delusion that this is how relationships work, at least. Still not exactly impressed. Was looking for yuri BDSM, rather than yuri abusive relationships + leather.

Yeah, it seems like the boss just gets off on treating her like crap. Before this chapter, I thought it was just a one-sided longing sort of thing, but this is a lot worse. Really though, Ema's looking incredibly pathetic, at this point. Abusive relationships are complicated, and everything, but relieving your accumulated stress by doing ambiguous sex stuff to the fifteen year old girl who has been entrusted to your care is basically the worst way to deal with it. I'm not even sure what she wants to happen, with her boss? Like, does she think Yoshino will just start being nice to her if she acts like a helpless puppy for long enough? Is she just hoping to have sex with her again? It's obviously not a consensual S/M relationship, but I see why people thought Ema must be getting off on it too, because otherwise, what is she even doing?

...Vaguely thinking about KeineKaguya, now. I mean, may as well complete the Hourai set, right? Maybe like, Kaguya going for the psychological warfare angle on Mokou, trying to steal away Keine, but gets the tables turned on her. You can get away with all sorts of things when Keine can just eat the evidence, after all.

we live in a society that isn't willing to accept homosexuality

uh, so is it acceptable that your boyfriend is stalking you and wants to murder you? Not demonizing heterosexuals but I hate Ploys logic. She has no right to talk down to donut.

Naw man, she just means that you gotta be tough to be in a same-sex relationship. You gotta need it, even if it means throwing everything else away. You gotta have the conviction, the determination, the rock-solid grounding in the very core of your being that oh wait she's wandered off and started making out with that random low-level gang member how did she even find one that fast

...Okay, I could maybe deal with manipulative ex interfering with the new couple and whatever, happens all the time in this kind of story, can be done well, etc. But holy shit, girl, you're freeloading at your ex's, who you cheated on, putting them at risk from the dangerous stalker who's driven you out of your home, and there is literally no one else in the entire city who would give enough of a shit about you to grant you refuge. This is a seriously delicate situation. So, naturally, you decide to get so aggressive and gropey that she walks out of her own apartment, openly talk shit about her new girl, and make weird and judgemental demands about their living space and eating habits? What?

Just, like... Is this even a person? At what point do I call bullshit on the writer for inventing this obvious caricature? I know there are real people who would pull shit like this, but she's so pathetically guileless about it that I don't understand how any other character, even the gullible bundle of innocence that is Donut, could take her seriously. Like, you can't get away with being this toxic and manipulative without being WAY better at it than this. Just... P'Mew dated this person? And was serious about her? This girl? Really? Gah.

My biggest question: they wouldn't actually carry a bunch of loose sand in an open truck, right? I mean, if nothing else, that's just a good way to lose a bunch of sand going from A to B, as well as, yeah, choking out pedestrians. Surely they'd use a closed truck, or just pack it into bags, right? Right?! This can't be a thing!

Oh, jeez, I just heard that the reason for the sudden weak ending is because the author's become horribly sick and couldn't continue working on it, and now I'm a huge asshole for assuming that they just got bored. I guess all the sequel hooks seem more promising, now? Like it feels as if the author fully intends to come back to it when they can. Hope it's not a serious illness, in any case.

Ahaha, I can see why folks aren't enjoying this, but I'm all the way in. At least in this first chapter, introducing the protagonist by pitting her style of deranged cruelty against someone else's deranged cruelty was a good move. It's like, oh, she's doing it in self defense, maybe she's not so bad, oh hey corpse bags, whoops, never mind. I dunno! It's interesting. It tickles the part of my brain that likes monsters and nightmares. The atmosphere leans a lot more on being bizarre and broken than maintaining a sense of despair or depression, and I'm a lot more okay with that than if we had a sane or relatable protagonist experiencing these things from a place of fear. I kinda want to see what she does next.

The Walking Dead is objectively shit and has absolutely zero pacing because you don't like depressing stuff.

For the record, I'm not saying this is as good as TWD.

Uh... You sure you wanna reference TWD as a positive example, here? Like, without any qualifiers, or anything? Because there's some great stuff under The Walking Dead's name, but the most depressing thing about TWD as a TV show is how a network can take a strong first season and grind it into the dirt, actively finding sparks of creativity and snuffing them out with punishing budget cuts and bloated episode quotas. Just, like, not the most obvious example for the pojnt you're trying to make, is what I'm saying.

I'm really bad with names anyway, so the difference between getting confused by names in Korean and getting confused by names in English is pretty neglible. But isn't it kind of a problem when a bunch of the characters look this similar? It's not like there's a sprawling list of characters, either, it shouldn't be this hard to make a modest cast visually distinctive. I'm just now realising that Seol-A's brother and her childhood friend are different people, and even knowing that, I'm struggling to remember which scenes were one or the other. I literally can't tell the difference between Hee-Jin and Seol-A, but at least they have totally different personalities and roles, so it's not hard to distinguish them through context. Enigmatic dark-haired guy with a close but non-romantic history with Seol-A #1 and enigmatic dark-haired guy with a close but non-romantic history with Seol-A #2? Help.

Gale are you talking about the translated ones posted here, or the current, up to date chapters? If the latter, please either remove your comment or place everything about chapters past 15 in spoiler tags.

Oh, haha, no spoilers here. Haven't seen any raws, I'm just grouching about the last couple chapters.

Maaaaaan just talk to each other already. Misunderstandings and awkwardness and miscommunication might be something, but when they both suddenly start ignoring each other for no reason, without even thinking that much about what it is that's even bothering them, it's... Gah. Feels pathetic. Like, if they're so unattached and disinterested in each other that even this vague sense of unease is enough to completely freeze their relationship and make them pull away this hard, then what are we even doing here?

The two of them interacting is literally all of this story. Like, the whole thing. If they had anything else to deal with or think about or struggle through, then maybe it would be fine to spend entire chapters of them awkwardly not talking to each other while they did other stuff, and at least then they could have other moments in their lives to make them think differently or learn something or gain new insight so that they're compelled to reconcile and become closer to one another. But they don't have anything else going on, so if they get stuck in a static void of awkwardness like this, it just feels like dead air, with no clear spark or will to change things, just waiting for a random chunk of inert plot debris to drift by and nudge them back into contact.

I was also wondering why they didn't just let Ploy sleep in Mew's place while the other two went to Donut's, but people tend to be scared of being alone after getting assaulted, so y'know. It's fine. It was The Good Thing To Do. Makes it extra weird that she's being all "Hey that girl's cute. Slept with her yet?" though. Not weird in a "insufficiently scared = bad victim" way, more in a "bitch you better step off while I'm here doing you a kindness" sort of way.

I guess her next few words are going to matter a lot. She can still play it off as harmless teasing from a mischievous old friend, and it'd be fine. If she pushes it in pretty much ANY direction, though, then we are getting into promiscuous amoral bisexual territory, and that's never a cool place to be.

It did feel kind of truncated. The big final fight between the two central characters ended up being kind of minor, I thought? Even the match immediately before, with double-jointed pigtails girl, had more action and emotional tension than the one we'd ostensibly been building up to for most of the story. It's as if they were only a third of the way through the big climactic battle when she was choked out. And why even go for that gloriously dumb wedding shot if they weren't going to connect, at any point? I feel like the author had been sitting on that one frame for years, but when they realised they were cutting the fight short to get it over with, they had to jam it in at the first opportunity just to get it out of their system.

I don't know. All in all, I think the author had charted out a lot more for this series, but was starting to lose steam really badly, and just couldn't go on hiatus again. They probably still have a vague sense of properly continuing the story someday, but they can't bring themselves to commit to it right now. So we get a half-hearted ending filled with sequel hooks, making it easy to pick up with a season 2, but if that never works out, then it can just be filed away with all the other thousands of inconclusively concluded battle manga.

last edited at Nov 11, 2015 4:35PM

It's probably a case of "non blood related aunt" because of family issues.

That is likely possible, considering in many asian culture it's normal to call a stranger in relative phase. If it's a close neighbor's daughter then you would instantly become an aunt, non-relatively.

It's pretty clear from the story that Nina is the child of her mom's sister, who married a gaijin in Canada. Not to mention, a lot of the comedy parts rely on them actually being aunt aunt and niece for real.

I do respect the impulse to find a loophole that makes everything work, though. It's the mark of a true yuri fan.

Wait, but if it goes Itsuki > Mother > Mother's sister in Canada > Nina, then it makes them cousins, not aunt and niece. Nina's mother has to be of the same generation as Itsuki, like a sister or a cousin, for Itsuki to be an "aunt".

...I'm pretty sure that you can't get married to your aunt. Even in Canada.

Then again, their relation is a bit confusing. Like, they briefly mention Secchan/Yukiko, but it's unclear exactly who that is. In the first chapter, the mother gets the phone call, and short girl is like, "Oh, Yukiko. Is she doing well?" But then the mother just mentions Yukiko's daughter and suddenly it's like "Nina?! Oh, I haven't seen her in so long! How is she? I bet she's still the cutest!" I feel like there wouldn't be such a pronounced difference in her interest if it was her niece vs. her sister, and it also seems odd that her sister would be her neighbour. So I'm thinking that Yukiko is either her cousin or second-cousin, and "aunt" is used in the generic sense of a female relative who's higher in the family tree, rather than the more specific western sense of your parent's sister.

Basically, in social and cultural terms, it's probably right to call them aunt and niece, whereas in genetic terms, they're probably more like distant cousins. So maybe they could get married after all! Yay?

last edited at Oct 1, 2015 12:35PM

It won't be that easy. I'm pretty sure Fujiwara is going to send Yuma on a guilt trip.

That will keep her from meddling in his business with Hotaru.

Man, I'm almost hoping for that. Just to see someone, anyone, who can successfully get Yuma to think about something for more than thirty seconds. At this point, I'm half-expecting her Absolute Obliviousness Field to just completely overpower him. I mean, it'll still be somewhat exasperating, but I care so little for any of these characters, at this point, that I just want something to happen already.

Oh and does "Danshi" translate to anything?

Boy/Young man, according to my google-fu

Danshi is usually used in context of "male". So Yuri danshi is supposed to mean something like "Male yuri fan" as opposite to Yuri Joshi (Female yuri fan) that doesn't exist ;x (I mean term, not people)

Didn't have time to properly read it yet, just glimpses through pages, but this is so hilarious. I got no idea why so many people complain. All I see is simple parody with over the top yuri fan, that goes too much into it. Well wall of texts are kinda discouraging and even If there isn't any real yuri couples, isn't the point of this series to watch how MC is making fool of yourself by over-analzying girls' relationships? And btw. didn't he hit it with last girl, that did kiss her pinky at the end?

I think, more than anything, people dislike it because it's already five volumes long, when the entire joke is basically complete with these first two chapters. It's a gag manga centred around a protagonist who has no characteristics or personality beyond him being an intense yuri otaku. That's the joke. There are no other jokes. He references a bunch of classic shojo ai, elaborately ships his classmates, steps out too far in treating "real world" girls like fictional characters and gets punched out for it, and it would be basically fine if it just ended there. Stretching it out into this long protracted thing with nothing actually happening and little new material to work with is plainly a bad idea.

Edit: Um, was this post edited by a mod to add the spoiler tags, or did I somehow manage to do it myself without realising? I mean, I'll leave it alone, in case I am being spoilery about something and I'm being too dense to notice it, but I'm a bit confused.

last edited at Sep 30, 2015 12:55PM