If I had a girl, is this what it would be like?
Nop... Just imagine a daughter like that. O_O

What about having a daughter like that?

As for this story, I too got a laugh out of the casual reaction of the son. "My female classmate wants to date you? Cool, why don't you give it a try?"

And if this would end well, I don't know. It all depends on how they both handle this relationship.

And yeah, the metaphors are confusing. I would have thought the title would have been related to a parfait or something, to match the imagery.

I wonder if the flute is not a mistranslation.

nah the flute isn't a mistranslation. think about the flutes used on snakes, to bewitch them so to speak. kind of like what the high schooler did to the mom.
and i rather enjoyed this. the author was very clear on the fact that their relationship was most likely going to be very temporary. and to be honest, especially for a high schooler, most of them are. not all relationships have to be ever lasting true love you know.

Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against Takemiya, but her works are so... unmemorable to me. I read quite a few mangas from her and I don't remember ANY plot details or characters or anything. I feel like I'm reading the same thing over and over again, despite different characters and story. Like right now we have this thing "Steps" and I'm keep wondering if I read it before or not. I feel like she's a good craftsman but not much above that.

You probably feel like you've read Steps 4 again because you've already read the same characters before, using "boob morning" as a running gag. The earlier chapters were part of another anthology which you've probably read already.

Makes me wonder if it's Takemiya who's the problem here, or your own inattentiveness.

yea the story for the characters in steps started in the middle of the fragrance stories. and the characters in both running stories go to the same school and are friends, so they all appear in all the stories. and personally i love interconnected stories like that :)

"i have to pretend to care about things i have no interest in at all." that sure has rung true for me on more than one occasion. pretend to be a certain way just so that you seem normal, or even feel that little bit of normal. and not just about something like...sexual orientation, but something much deeper fundamentally.

hahahahaha don't usually like mira's works, but this one was great. "oh leave her alone, she's quiet when she's next to her" XD

It starts off being gender normative, with Risa dating Yuuko as a replacement to her boyfriend, and Yuuko acting boyish in order to be close to Risa, but it ends with Yuuko wanting to be seen as a girl and Risa accepting Yuuko in any way. Risa doesn't say, "I won't consider you my girlfriend unless you look more girly."

you mean like when she literally says:

"you need to grow out your hair so that you can wear all kinds of girly things" "if you want to look like a girl, you need to care more about your appearance" to be finished with: "If you can do all that...THEN I CAN START SEEING YOU AS A GIRL! AND I CAN SEE YOU AS MY GIRLFRIEND!"

in conclusion, the author was trying to go for what everyone here is taking out of it, but had TERRIBLE execution of it in the end. terrrrrrrrriiiiiibllllllllllleeeeeeee wording in risa's confession. because what i took out of it: you can't be my girlfriend unless you look explicitly like a girl.

and personally, i think yuuko didn't per se want to be "girly." she just wants risa to SEE her as a girl. she put the hairband on to make that point. and now, she thinks to be risa's "girlfriend" she has to dress girly. a bunch of bs if you ask me.

edit: and god damn if there aren't some beautiful women out there who "look like boys"

last edited at Apr 12, 2016 5:47PM

not sure i really care all that much for imoutochan. i like the thought of odaxsayuri a bit more lol

the reaction from oda when sayuri says she doesn't interact with men well was pretty cute. there's nothing more exciting and twitterpating than hearing a person you are interested in and expect to never see it go further than that with, show a possibility of actually being able to get together with them.

last edited at Mar 22, 2016 4:37PM

im not sure how to feel about this

I am VERY amused over the fact that they essentially swapped their own things back to them though. But yeah lol edging more towards creepy than cute

hahaha my own thoughts exactly

hmm yea i feel like this manga can go in any direction. one thing we do know for sure though, is sato was already screwed up mentally, regardless of what turns out to have happened with the previous tenant of their apartment. there was a one picture shot of sato in shorter hair, a bandage on her face. my guess is she was in some kind of prostitution and had a deep taste of the harsher underbelly of life, messing her up mentally. would explain the harsh view of love she had until she met shio. the sharpness and briars she's been associating with love every time she talks/thinks about it really makes it seem that way.

i also find it strange how in shio's flashback of that woman, the woman speaks of a girl coming for her. so makes you wonder who shio really is. was that really her parent? where did she really live until sato took her? the way i see it, she could easily have been the one to kill the previous tenant, and block it out. maybe she was just as messed up as sato, but because she;s younger has just blocked it out for her own sanity. i mean, sato DID say to her friends it was wrong to kill, and we haven't actually see her kill anyone, as close and tempting as it may have seemed to her.

it's definitely not the type of series for your typical anime viewer and no matter how much you love it I know you can't deny that lol.

I deny it, because there is no such thing as a "typical anime viewer". Even if there was, something being accessible to as wide an audience as possible is not a mark of quality - usually the reverse, in fact.

In any case, thank you Divulge for this release.

That is a valid point, "typical anime viewer" probably wasn't the best phrase to use, and I didn't mean to imply that it's an all-powerful marker of quality which is why I didn't argue you when you said you thought it was the greatest because if you say its the greatest then it is even though I personally disagreed. That is the nature of opinion. But the whole point I was trying to make was that for the "age of yuri" to REALLY start we needed a "truly great yuri anime" and in the comment you replied to I defined that as a yuri anime that doesn't just target one or two specific niches but can be thoroughly enjoy by a wider group of people. Something like Onepunch-man which is a series that is almost undeniably great by everyone (of course, that's a generalization but you're gonna struggle to find too many people that dislike it, frankly). A yuri series like this is what could trigger the anime companies to realize "OH! People actually like yuri, go figure," and from that point there'd be a higher chance of us seeing more and more high quality yuri anime rather than just one every year or two like we've been getting. If I just wanted a good or decent yuri anime there are a couple (even though personally, I think most aren't lol), as I have acknowledged, but from the start this is what I meant (even though I failed to define it in my first comment lol) and I honestly don't think that one's been made yet even though there are plenty of applicable source materials available.
I'm happy to acknowledge that more and more yuri animes have been made recently and slowly but surely they seem to be increasing in quality and frequency so maybe that "truly great yuri anime" I want isn't too far away lol.

yea gonna have to go with cryssoberyl on this one. just because you personally do not think there has been any game changing yuri out there does not mean there isn't any at all. it just simply means that the ones that are, are not to your taste.

having personal tastes/opinions and not liking certain genres is fine and all, but it can be pretty limiting.

Chapter One: "How shall I subtly lure my prey into the trap?"

Chapter Two: "Fuck it, I'll stand here with my tits out and make an overtly sexual request when she's pressured not to refuse. Close enough."

I rofl'd pretty hard on this comment. xD

I love this series.

lmao hahahaha i love it. comments are more interesting than the manga lol

You still haven't brought forward an solid argument against cliché = inhenrently negatively impacting. So that point still stands.

well...if cliches are inherently bad, then that makes all stories bad to a point, wouldn't you think? cause if you think about it, lol, everything is a cliche. this story is about a boy. oh man haven't heard that before, /roll eyes. this story is about a girl, jeez tons of those. this story has a character in it, and they fall in love. wowzers, that's like most the stories out there! it's only when you get more and more detailed that it starts derailing the story. this is about a girl, who falls in love, and something traumatic happens, and they react this certain way, so this thing is the result of it. ok, and you can still take that kind of scenario and make it your own. this is about a girl who has a deformed hand, and when she was ten she stayed the night at a friend's house, but her friend's crazy uncle came over with his pet pig. later in the night when she gets up to use the bathroom, she sees the uncle porking the pig, traumatizing her. as a result, she can no longer look her friend in the eye, knowing the man who had done that was her uncle, and they become estranged for years, until later as adults they come clean about everything. however, during that whole time, the two were always aware and conscious of the other when they'd see the other at school or around town, always full of regret, guilt, half formed attraction.

in a nutshell, things that happen in a story like car wrecks, deceased loved ones, while yes, they've been used before, you have to look at all the circumstances. first of all, is the author itself from a place where car wrecks are very common? and story wise, it can still be made into your own. why did it happen? what lead to it? how did the character and those involved deal with it? how did it affect them after? there as sooo many nuances and variations that can be done, that if they try, the author can still make original. and honestly, having something completely off the balls original just for the sake of having it be original, does not always make a story good either.

i think nya-chan was just trying to say the amount of cliche's the author is putting in makes the events in the story unimaginative. not that the story itself isn't good, but just that the author is almost going down a checklist for the story. however, the way the characters deal with it/develop in it are what drives the story and makes her/him like it. the thing about it though, is that there is no avoiding cliches. any story is going to have them. it's taking them and making them your own that makes an author good. which ssamba does by her character interactions and their development. i never once thought about how any of these things were cliche as i read this until it was brought up here, so at least for me, it's a job well done.

and mezmerize, your avatar really had me laughing XD that's just great

i rather liked this lol. more often then not, when you find someone you like, they tend to already be in a relationship. at least from my own experiences lol. so yes, while lack of lovin for the mc is sad, can't we all rejoice the fact that this lesbian girl who was being ostracized at school had some happiness in her life outside of it? none of that oh poor tortured soul getting saved by their nice/curious classmate spiel we see so often?

omg the youtube videos hahahahaha priceless

Always good to see more works like this here.

On a side note I can't be the only one who ships those background school-girls mentioned and shown on Page 1 can I?

Im in that same boat! Side story time! ^_^ hehe

It's funny cuz...
they are the MC's friends in this one-shot, and there you can see the way they act (kinda implied they are a couple or at least have something going on)

So that ship might actually be a REAL ship.

holy shit you're right! lol nice catch!

What the fuck is going on!?
Why the hell is she moving away?
Why is there suddenly drama?
Where the flying fuck is my yuri!?

This. i have no idea what is going on anymore

Yeah, Shou the writer really fell down on the job on that one. The last three chapters has major events happening off camera (the decision to move, the breakup, etc.) with little more than a mention at best, leaving the reader completely confused. It's not that there's mystery, it's that a bunch of this shit makes no sense and we have very little to go on.

you know, i really thought this way at first also. but after thinking about it a while, and rereading, the way he did it imo was beautiful. the way he kept things going mostly as they have been in the atmosphere of the story, and then suddenly we see all this wistfulness and pain from ran now that the end of them living together was finally there. if he had done the break up and the conversation of her having to go away for work on screen, it wouldn't have made the ending of the last chapter so powerful. although, at least a clear cut statement of why she was leaving or something would have been nice, i'll admit.

at first i was like ugh ayane is kinda a bitch lol. prefer to talk to her in person? more like, sana can only hang out with her when AYANE wants to, since she can't contact her. not to mention everything else that followed. very manipulative. but then, going into creative mode, started thinking. these girls are only like what, 15? 16? so basically kids. what if ayane has a reason (parent, home life) to why she can't have a phone, and is just playing it off, trying to be cool? and what if also, she's recently decided she wants to be open about her sexuality, and have an open same sex relationship? given her age, she's bound to be awkward about it if it's her first time doing it. so she runs off frustrated/embarrasses/insecure, then doesn't know how to fix the gap she just made. gets off the bus, and still doesn't know how to approach sana again. but after seeing sana start to cry she gathers her courage and comes out, again trying to play it off and sound cool. honestly, it all just makes me see her as an awkward teenage girl, trying to live out and open and comfortable with her sexuality.

Hmmm I wasn't sure about it being the mom though since they said the disappearance cases started around 3 years ago? I think if it was happening for 20 years, he would have A LOT more boots and umbrellas. His appearance should be younger too from the memory.

well for one, they never actually show what he looks like in the flashback. and two, he says to the 2nd girl that he has "broken" again. so my guess is, while yes he's been looking for her the whole time, it wasn't until he recently broke, whatever that means, 3 years ago and became more aggressive in his search. although, with that many boots/umbrellas (and remember, he doesn't always take both, so the number of girls could potentially be double the sets you see) he could have been killing one here, another there. timed too far apart for any connection be made to the police. and if that is the case, he could easily have been doing it for 20 years.

^ yea, i found that to be pretty obvious too lol.

If that's true then he probably has been killing well over three years. One thing I picked up on is that he keeps either his victims boots or their umbrella and it looked like he had over 100 of those.

and the whole boots and umbrella thing, he keeps what's similar about the original girl, except for the last since he's 100% sure she's the right girl, and doesn't need them anymore. eg. she has a yellow umbrella, but green boots, he just keeps the umbrella. the first girl found had both blue boots and yellow umbrella, which is why she had nothing with her, but second had, what was it, red boots? so they were left.

edit: and that game needs to be a thing. i would totally play that lol.

last edited at Sep 29, 2015 2:40PM

good lord. please tell me i wasn't the only one skipping all his monologues? lol talk about long winded. idk maybe it's cause i'm more of the subject matter than the observer that i didn't like it so much so far

i love seeing that so many people keep rereading this, cause i have been for years XD i love otsu's work, and this is certainly my favorite one. i just love kaede <3

erm, is kashimashi like finally just becoming a thing or something? it's been out for like 7-8 years or so lol. in fact, kashimashi was literally the very first yuri ish thing i'd ever seen, before i even knew yuri WAS a thing :O

for a while you see takatsuki in hourou musuko behaving more like an ace. i think the author was going to really have her be one, but somewhere along the line changed their mind and gave her some stupid teacher crush later on. that was one manga i really ended up disappointed in.

I fucking loooove Chiyo and Kurokos relationship, so many layers to it its adorable af! I also love that Chiyo isn't just looks but kick ass and mother freaking awesome, fuckin love that girl now

^ lol. i knew there was a reason i loved chyo XD

The "pain" was clearly just pent-up sexual frustration.

Also, re: "gross" licking: vaginas are actually super clean, so vaginal lubrication is fine to eat. It's a lot healthier than licking your phone, anyway. As for the folks who think licking your own juices is gross, for the love of god, nobody tell them that oral sex is a thing.

lmaoo welll.....really can't say that about everyone's vag....i knew a guy who was a nympho, and would sleep with girls from craigslist lol. yea first time i've ever heard of the term dingle berry. while that's to do with the butt and not the front, i can only imagine the things that could go very wrong there too lol.

anyways...nice art i guess lol. very bland story though.