At any rate I'm so happy to see these two nerds again.

i dunno about that. I don't think Bloom into You lacked maturity in comparison. There's like a tiny bit of overlap of having leads that hated/disliked themselves, both hit the topic well imo. There were pretty different circumstances in each, which lead to them being/using meta-textual devices to different, but strong effects. What I guess could be perceived as melodrama wrt YagaKimi, I've more interpreted as an intentional meta-textual construction, it's about theatre. No reason to pit 2 queens against one another, anyhoo.

I think by "more mature" they mean the characters are literally older.

Just sayin', cat-scratch disease can kill a bitch

cute story tho

Not...really? It's only really going to cause problems in someone who is immunocompromised, and even then, it's extremely rare for those symptoms to be fatal. Anyway, we don't know if she neglected to wash the wounds, or if she let the cat lick them which is the only way she's going to get an infection. CSD doesn't come from the scratch itself.

Someone print a hundred copies of this picture and paste them all over the school.

It'll be the end of Casanova Kaoru the saucy school vamp.

You are bad. You are right.

I dunno, it might have gap appeal for a lot of people.

They're my favorite.

If she breaks Nanao's heart, we riot.

This series dropped the bar for expectations so low, that we will even accept this bad resolution which took like 3 tries from the author.
In a way it is impressive, I guess.

Noa soda-coffee tastes the same but where are those who shared the memory

Beh, people gripe too much. Tons of series have a "ending" that is lackluster. It helps up sales of the tankoubon if the resolution there is more satisfying.

"There must be something she wants to accomplish at our company..."

Yeah, you dumbass, YOU. She wants to accomplish your brains out.

Ladies and Gentlemen and others....We have communication.

(mission control erupts in cheers.)

It's astonishing how quickly the problem gets resolved when they just feckin' talk about it.

Is there still another chapter? This felt like the end, but volume 8 only has 4 chapters, some others have 5... hmmm...

It says ongoing but this is the last volume. There is a lot of "aftertime" stuff and maybe one or two stories of those out there. I would say one more full chapter and an X.5 chapter and that's a wrap.

Romance stories tend to end when the two leads officially get together.

Yeah, I was hoping for some kind of epilogue. But that one afterlife chapter (with them being together for a while) is already all I wanted... so not sad in any way. I'm glad I could read such a good story.

Yeah, I mean, basically we had the epilogue before we had the end of the series.

Edit: That said, I think we have one more chapter? I have a standing practice of never assuming a series is over until I see the お わり, and this didn't have one. If it's ever steered me wrong I didn't notice it. It's a pretty universal convention, I'm pretty sure given the way manga publishing works if the artist didn't include it the publishers would just put it in themselves. (They write all of the little corner blurbs at the beginning and end of each chapter, after all.)

last edited at Mar 10, 2023 5:00PM

Interesting. So she didn't go to the concert. I was assuming because of the >4 hour time gap between Chizuru showing up and Aya arriving at Koga's that she had stayed for the concert, but thinking about it, that's also because I was assuming that both the shop and the concert were in Tokyo. But if she left right away, and took from 4:10ish to 9:04 to get to Mitsuki's, that implies a rather hefty travel time. I was hoping this was telling us they were in Tokyo, but it seems like they could be almost anywhere from Hiroshima up to Fukushima , depending on whether this was the Osaka or Tokyo show. (It could also just be that the author isn't thinking that deeply about the setting, but given the details they like to include I'd be surprised if they didn't choose a real concert on purpose.)

So depending on where Mitsuki's shop is relative to the train station, that means that Aya sat on AT LEAST a 4 hour train ride to get to the city with the venue, expecting to see her oshi, and then had to sit for another 4 hours on the way back, after that disappointment.

That makes this SO MUCH WORSE, Mitsuki, you absolute DUNCE.

Looks like Chizuru went ahead to the concert anyway, though. Which is unsurprising, because if I sat on a train for four hours to go to a concert, and I don't have an idiot no-show girlfriend to go strangle, I'M GOING TO THE GODDAMN CONCERT.

(Edit: I guess the other possibility is that while she left right away, it actually took awhile and a number of unanswered texts for Aya to work up the nerve to confront Mitsuki directly.)

last edited at Mar 5, 2023 5:45PM

So, this could just be me projecting, but I've long suspected that Kaede comes off like an undiagnosed ADHD kid.

I liked your tit sucking theory more to be honest

Well, that was just me paraphrasing what objectively happened.

Welp, this clears things up: Kaede is just an emotionally immature dumbass who either lets her impulses determine her behavior or runs away from them (which is, really, just another impulse to give in to). Nanami, meanwhile, has finally reached zen and realized that mind-reading is not something she can do, so she asked Kaede a direct question and is waiting for a direct answer, whatever it may be, without letting her emotions get the better of her anymore.

So, this could just be me projecting, but I've long suspected that Kaede comes off like an undiagnosed ADHD kid. She's actually pretty bright and clever, which makes her good at the things she can focus on, and her impulsiveness is both endearing to those around her, because she's clever and funny, but it's also crippling to her financially and socially. She neglects relationships, procrastinates on dealing with issues. Her impulsiveness makes her fun to be around and gives her a great sense of humor, but the lack of a filter also leads to careless comments like the one that set off Koyuki, and eventually people go away because of all these things, and every time that happens, she sees it as a confirmation that it's just not for her. But it CAN be, she just has to be with somebody who understands how she works and is willing to help her manage it.

But its all left her traumatized and afraid of losing somebody that is genuinely indispensable to her, so she's spiraling right now.

“Let me touch you in those places you’d never let anyone else touch”—is that what the kids are calling it these days?

But seriously, that’s some nicely direct indirect phrasing for a scene that usually relies on verbal cliches. Well played.

"I love you."

"Awww....I love you too."

"Yeah, but see I mean like the kind of 'I love you' that goes with 'I want to suck on your tits.'"

"O-Oh."

"See because I feel like you were about to do the thing where you pretend I meant as a friend and we already did that several chapters back and nope, that sucks and I hate it."

"Y-Yeah"

". . . I want to suck on your-"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" (hides in bedroom)

I agree! also the way this story is being published is pretty sporadic from the author's weibo. these pieces that we've seen translated and are reading now are from a little while back already. it's bits and pieces because it's not a serialized work needing to have a strong plot to drive the work, but almost rather a slice of life with just enough information to tease the readers constantly.

i'm sure it'll at some point pick up the pace because the author likely already has milestone/specific story points in mind as she character/world builds, but it's quite cute to just relax and check in on youzi's life with her mom and auntie ren lol

I'm wondering if it'd be worth putting together a chronological page timeline.

Double mood. Shit should be fair game if left alone for two months imo. Readers literally get sick and die sometimes before getting to finish a story because some damn translator sat on it instead of having enough decency to hand over the story to someone else. I have no respect for those types.

So you want what is essentially Piracy?
It's one thing if we can't get the story any other way but when it's for sale in a language we understand then that's the right way to get it

To be completely fair, sometimes a company licenses a manga to put on their pay-to-read manga website and then they never fucking finish translating it and sit on the rights for years because hey why not we've got a contract, and at that point, I feel like the ethics get a whole lot sketchier.

Fuck came back to this and I remember no one and nothing.

oh good i'm not the only one finding it hard to follow

also maybe it's just me, but the slow pacing for this series is a bit annoying. chapters are so short that it doesn't really feel like anything happens. maybe that's just because i find it hard to follow, but it doesn't feel like anything actually happens

I enjoy piecing the story together, it's a bit like a puzzle, with the picture becoming clearer with each piece you fit into place. If it helps:

Each chapter shares a little tidbit about Youzi, (the daughter,) Youji, (the mom/actress/superstar,) and/or Ren, (the singer,) with occasional snippets by the other supporting characters. The short chapters also make it pretty easy to review, but basically, what we know so far is that when Youzi was small, she met Ren because Ren was playing the song her mom sings to her. This led to Ren and Youji reconnecting after years apart, and Youzi picked up on their chemistry and started shipping it. 10 years have passed, and Youzi is now at that age where she's getting more proactive and she's actively trying to set her moms up with each other. She schemes with her friend to hatch plots to get Ren and Youji to interact.

The story pops back and forth between 10 years ago, around when Youzi and Ren first met, and the "present," where Youzi has sussed out that Mom is into women and is actively trying to set them up instead of passively shipping them like she did before. Youzi thinks her mom is into Auntie Chen, partly because of misunderstandings, but Youji x Ren is her OTP. And it seems like there's definitely history there; Youji has kept one of Ren's show tickets from before she was big, as a treasured keepsake. This might be when she met Ren, or first heard her sing, or maybe just her first show or something, it's still a little vague. Youji is taking singing and piano lessons from Ren, partly to create opportunities for the moms to interact. Her friend's mom is apparently Auntie Chen's sister, Director Chen, who is apparently aware of the girl's schemes and seems to have put her thumb on the scale at least once?

Now the tickets are wasted, WASTED

This is happening five hours later. She met with Chizuru at 4 and showed up at Mitsuki's at 9. They clearly went to the concert.

Why she would think that being surrounded by water on all sides is a religious experience is open to interpretation.

She's the swimmer girl who really loves water and swimsuits

Also, isn't the entirety of Japan a collection of islands?

I mean, technically every continent is surrounded by water if you go far enough.

I'm gonna laugh when she shows up at the end of all this with 170k Yen and the owner is like "Oh, I took it to the repair shop. 20k please."

Y'know, I actually think the point of the conversation at the end is that in her half asleep stupor, Miyoshi forgets that she was talking to Ayano, and calls Ai to say "Hey I proposed to your GF we cool?" at which point Ai said "Of course not!" and Miyoshi calls Chie "back" to say they aren't allowed to get married, at which point Miyoshi is like "Wait, what?"

So Ayano is deliriously happy while Miyoshi is, as is her norm, completely oblivious.

I don't think they're together, Miyoshi is just out of it and mostly asleep and going along with whatever Ayano is saying to comfort her. She's not really thinking about what she's saying so it's probably a lot of subconscious thoughts and phrases to help her settle down from her nightmare. I can remember my ex having full on conversations after "waking up" and not remembering a word the next morning.

I got a call once from the secretary of our department at my job, and apparently had a whole conversation where I actually came to after a couple of minutes. To this day I don't actually know what we talked about, but I still have my job, so presumably it wasn't anything too incriminating.

No way to tell - she can dream they were GFs and she broke up with her without them actually being so- as we've seen in that other series! And Miyoshi can comfort her and say she'd never do that in the sense of- 'it we were dating i'd never break up with you!' and say she loves her etc without them being dating..

But it all equally makes sense from the perspective of them being dating. That just doesn't fit with everything else we know about them so far- unless they suddenly jumped to GFs off page.. but that seems unlikely imo..

So I cant see this as firm proof they are..

Friends can also go through break-ups. I know it's more common to use the term for romantic partners (If for no other reason than because friends are less likely to hinge the whole relationship on one single argument or disagreement) but it does happen.

Oh, Koyuki, she knows. That's exactly why she's been behaving like this lately. ;)

I suspect she knows that Nanami knows. This is a shot across the bow.

Kaede totally got what Nanami's confession meant but she feigned ignorance bc she's not ready to face it yet bc unlike Koyuki's confession, Nanami's actually made her kokoro go doki doki and she has to hash all that out before she feels ready to reply to her.
At least that's my take on the whole thing

There are two ways I could see this going, The first is the heartwarming scenario you just described which is the one I am personally rooting for.

The second possibility is that she misunderstood the intention behind Nanami's confession as platonic in nature, but hearing those words out of her mouth still made her heart do a backflip which she hid because she didn't want to make things awkward by getting all visibly flustered over what she believed was intended to be a declaration of deep friendship rather than romantic interest.

I think it's pretty clear from the end there that she understood the intention and played dumb because she wasn't ready to face the implications for whatever reason.

Personally, I hope they keep the pattern going, and introduce a new character who falls in love with Kaede that doesn't have a chance, but who sparks Kaede realizing her feelings for Nanami. It's basically the theme at this point, they might as well lean into it.

(Edit: Conservation of Lesbian Momentum?)

last edited at Jan 31, 2023 12:53PM