Adorable. Good stuff.

That is a very cute smile.

(Although — I'm a bit frustrated by it, I guess. Look, Rina has a legit disability. I get that the joke of this is that she's really smiling and the new Board is just revealing that — but it feels more likely that she's just gotten the photorealistic render of her face to make the expressions she wishes she could make. Maybe I'm over-identifying. But saying "hey, I want you to forego using this technology that makes your life better because you're cuter without it" is just super-ableist.)

Heehee — I'm flashing back to the SIFAS bond story where Yu runs into Setsuna and Riko as they're coming back from a "specialty bookstore" in Ikebukuro. (Setsuna is happy to explain, but Riko keeps panicking.)

I'm just wondering exactly what Nozomi is threatening Eli with.

Well, okay, not just wondering that, since Eli and Kotori seemed pretty snuggly too. We're probably dealing with a whole rarepair cascade. Erena is probably dating Fumiko.

Poor Maki. Poor, poor Maki.

The Nanoha Innocents pinups are a cute bonus.

Nah, You isn't playing SIF, she's playing Cinderella Girls.

(Actually, it's probably more in character for her to be playing KanColle, now I think of it.)

A very cute story. Ruby's psychic flinch was a beautiful touch.

I love that artists are starting to realize how massively multishippable the Niji girls are (I'm kind of headcanoning them evolving into one big polycule), but I'm also a little spoiled by SIFAS giving cute interactions across the generations, so I want to see more of those. Pairings from in-game events like Hanamaru/Rin, or Umi/Rina, or Ai/Dia — or even wilder stuff. Say, Nico/Lanzhu or something.

I actually worry that it's not really Marisa, it's a full-scale Marisa bobblehead.

To explain (this late in the game), the second and fourth stories take place in the Nanoha Innocent universe, in which none of the bad stuff happened, all the villains are good people, and the magic/battle stuff takes place in a VR/card game called "Brave Duel". Among the other changes, Alicia is alive as Fate's big sister, Precia and Lindy are co-parenting them plus Chrono (and co-own a big toy store), and Nanoha gets to show off her ninja skills.

The sequel, Nanoha Innocents , goes on to introduce characters from StrikerS and later.

Really, what I kind of want at the moment of the last frame —

— when they're both red-faced and panting, grinding into each other, eyes locked —

— is for Nana to walk in on them.

Yeah, a lot of the Nijigasaki NPCs are pretty compelling. Add in the twin Student Council Secretaries X Shioriko as one I wanna see.

I like how the clone is Manga!Nico, down to the pet name. Nice touch.

The artist has way too much fun with the monsters. Yamata no orochi, cockatrice, deep ones, Harukasan...

Late edit: It took me far too long to realize that Harukasan works on mogwai/gremlin rules.

last edited at Oct 27, 2022 9:24PM

Were it not a direct reference to real stage costuming — and were Yuu not mentioned as being very much present in Ayumu's earlier comment — I might agree.

I think there could be some transference going on; part of why Setsuna and Ayumu both like the tip-highlight thing so much does seem to be because Yuu does it, and I could easily see this Setsuna wanting that as a way to be closer to what Ayumu wants, or what she thinks she wants.

(I really love the later Setsuna bond episodes in SIFAS, when she's able to, well, come out to her family and be understood by them. This story would presumably be before that, but I can see her really treasuring this sort of hidden reminder of people who really see her.)

(And yes, I'm suspecting the "Nakagawa Nana is a closeted school idol" storyline has an intended sub rosa queer reading, if for nothing else for the fact that one of her post-coming-out stories involves her buying doujinshi with Riko.)

For anyone wondering how her hat stays on, I'd like to remind you of the technology of the "hat pin" — a long pin used to hold a hat on, by pinning through it and your hair. My understanding is that they were developed independently in Europe and China, though I'm having trouble getting dates offhand; they were certainly in production in Japan before the isolation of Gensokyo. (I'd assume, following WaHH #27, that Kogasa makes them.)

BTW Vhuzompha is an actual Lovecraft creation.

Hate to "well, actually" you, but Vhuzompha is a creation of James Ambuehl. Certainly part of the extended Cthulhu Mythos, but not one of Lovecraft's original beasties.

To be clear and/or fair, a number of the beings (or at least their names) even in Lovecraft's stories were not made up by him — for instance, Hastur came from Ambrose Bierce by way of Robert Chambers's The King in Yellow, and Dagon was a Philistine god mentioned in the Bible — and that's part of what makes the Cthulhu Mythos as engaging as it is. Even when Lovecraft was writing, it was an open world with many conflicting and contradictory voices, with a number of other writers playing in the same pool.

...I'm just sort of amazed that Chika is eating her mikans like they're apples.

"The dolemite role"?

I can't really see Sayaka beating out Rudy Ray Moore or Eddie Murphy for that role.

(I'm guessing the translator was going for "dominant role", missed and headed instead towards "dominate role", which then got spell-corrected. Funny thing: where Japanese yuri preferred terms seem to be "Tachi x Neko", there is an old word used in the West for that receptive role in a gay male relationship: a catamite.)

It's all kind of tricky, because Japanese doesn't have gendered third-person pronouns like most European languages (though, oddly enough, it has gendered first-person pronouns). As far as original intent goes, I'm really not sure how to interpret the self-insert nature of the PC and the target audience on the Japanese side, though the fact that there wasn't — to my knowledge — outcry about the English translation firmly using she/her or revealing Yu for the anime leads me to believe that female was at least non-controversial there. (It seems likely that Nijigasaki High is an all-girls school just like Otonokizaka and Uranohoshi, but I'm not sure that's outright stated anywhere.)

At any rate, Ayumu is, in nearly all media, pretty fixated on "her childhood friend"; in the game, this includes elements of jealousy and even mild stalker-like behavior on her part, and can be hard to read as anything but romantic interest, to the point that other characters notice — Mari chides Yu for not keeping Ayumu informed when Mari was dragging her around in her bond episodes, and You's bond eps feature shopping and tourism dates that Ayumu semi-crashes.

(I think the only bit where this focus isn't central to Ayumu is the early 4-koma, which is pretty bizzare on the whole and features an Ayumu who is spiteful and vicious towards Ai and Rina, until she's exorcised by Nozomi — probably; the appearance is obviously her, but she's only described as "a passing shrine maiden". Then everybody goes to Mars.)

Later edit: All the chapters have been great, but I'm actually crying at Rina's. Rina has come to mean a lot to me over the time I've been playing the game and watching/reading the other materials — in terms of disability and mental health representation, as a great proponent of adaptive technology, and as a sweet, lovable character in her own right. It's a far cry from the "gimmick" we thought we were getting.

last edited at May 23, 2021 7:55AM

The annoyance of people just complaining that their favorite ship isn't omnipresent aside, there's nothing cracky about this. People have been shipping the Kurosawa sisters together forever, and Dia/Hanamaru is pretty well established itself. Were Ruby and Hanamaru competing over, say, Mari's affections, I could see being confused by it, but this is practically canon.

(Yes, I'm being hyperbolic there; the closest to canon DiaMaru is the magazine bit which has Hanamaru swooning over having her studies praised by Dia. Well, or maybe when Rabbit!Dia had Tanuki!Maru tied up in the puppet play.)

Lovely little story!

Interestingly (to me, anyway), I've got a good memory for text, but it doesn't often create mental constructs beyond text. No pictures, seldom sounds. On occasion, I've read fanfics where character dialogue is so spot-on that I "hear" the character voices (oddly, usually Japanese actors who — in my head — are suddenly fluent in English), but that takes some priming, like a recent watch of the source material — and it's usually in a pause from reading proper.

I'd wonder if this is related to two recently widely discussed psychological oddities: aphantasia (the inability to produce mental images of imagined objects), and a lack of internal monologue — except I can visualize objects and I most certainly have internal monologue. In my case, it's more likely related to the odd workarounds I constructed to read very quickly despite mild dyslexia.

It's a complex (and dark!) little movie. I really do like it, and the coda does move us back to our normal idols, complete with MVP Kotori punchline.

My reconstruction of the movie plot, if anyone is still confused:

Yukiho and Haruka were friends, but when Haruka was being bullied, Yukiho didn't or wasn't able to stand up for her, and when the bullies forced the issue, Haruka committed suicide. Yukiho transfers schools.

Skipping back a bit, Iori transferred into Makoto's school after a scandal, put together a girl gang including Miki and Hibiki, and bullied their teacher, Azuza (Makoto's mom), into a psychotic break. They then turned on Makoto, until Makoto snapped, put Iori in the hospital, and became a bully "himself" — "his" gang includes Ami and Mami. Iori transfers out again. Miki takes over her gang, and mildly bullies the replacement teacher, the Producer, mostly by coming on to him.

Chihaya caught Makoto's gang's ire by defending an underclassman, and became their regular target.

That's when Yukiho transfers in, apparently staying with Takane (maybe also a teacher?). Her first day, she sees Makoto and the twins beating up Chihaya and befriends Yayoi, then discovers that Makoto was her childhood friend, and about "his" mom's status. Makoto says "he" will protect Yukiho from other bullies.

The teachers, Ritsuko and Producer, complain that they're helpless.

Yukiho contemplates the situation at a bridge, and Chihaya talks with her, which prompts flashbacks to Haruka's death. Someone turns Makoto into the school authorities for beating up Chihaya; Makoto's gang beats up Chihaya again until Yukiho reveals that she turned "him" in and turns "his" own words back on him. Later, Yukiho takes Chihaya to Makoto's house to try to start the healing process.

(Also, I didn't realize until this read that Chihaya was also playing a boy, but she's wearing the male uniform just like Makoto and the twins.)

Aww, Miria is such a sweetie here.

A cute and sweet short.

(I can't help but envision the commercial as a weird hybrid of idol ad and one of the ones in the US in the 1980s/90s — so Anzu would be doing a little dance in a frilly outfit on the beach at sunset, and then elaborating that sometimes even idols get that "not-so-fresh feeling".)

(Also, Kirari's panic that they'll have a scandal and be outed because she apparently gave Anzu an STD is strangely adorable.)

Possibly the most upsetting thing about this is that it's probably canon that Academy City is granting lots of people psionic roofie powers. Misaki could totally do this, for instance.

(Of course, the effect could have been dispelled by having Touma touch Kuroko, but then Konori-senpai doesn't know that.)

Interesting character work, though. Some of Konori's thoughts seem to imply she's been frustrated by Kuroko's pursuit of Misaka, though it's a little ambiguous how to take that. And yeah, the ending is a weird little meditation on the interplay of experience and memory.