In a manga that is non-yuri and only about the special friendship between two girls, these are the kind of shenanigans that make the mainstay of humor. This is how friends comedy is different from romantic comedy.

? Non-yuri? Sure m8

Like, Word of God, y'know.

Citation needed.

The chapter order is all jumbled up on the main page.

Also dammit, Kaede.

I know we're all gonna jump to the pessimistic takes, this was a potentially risky move for Mitsuki: Aya might be disappointed or even angry, she might get in a fight with Chizuru, Chizuru hates the concert, etc etc. There are so many ways this can go wrong, but as an alternative, let me suggest a more optimistic possibility:

Aya goes to the concert with her friend, they actually have a blast, become closer friends, Chizuru learns to appreciate Aya's interest in western music, even if she doesn't really share it. Aya feels seen and validated, and when it comes to Mitsuki, recognizes the gesture for what it was and loves Mitsuki even more, but still sour she got stood up for her concert date she demands a date-date as compensation for the fakeout.

Whelp. I was wrong.

Gay panic, the series.

SOMETHING ACTUALLY ECCHI!!! HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN!?

I'm honestly amazed. Since when do this two finger each other's vaginas so easily and naturally?

She would never do anything so ecchi to her best friend!

Honestly!

She was simply rubbing her clitoris as girls do with their friends.

Jeeze.

Something tells me you are confusing Ecchi with the H word...

E...Ecchi IS the H word. In fact it's almost literally a translation of "H word".

I realize that "ecchi" has also become associated with a particular naughty-but-not-explicit genre of anime, but the usage here is still 100% correct.

There is no heterosexual explanation for this.

it's probably going to be an age thing, but my first thought, and what i really hope it is, is that she's trans. not holding my breath, tho

I'm all for trans representation, but I don't think there's really a version of that that doesn't make Xiaoen problematic as hell?. She looks at the ID, immediately abandons all plans to go see Xingyuan, and apparently has a full on freakout about perversion. There are two possibilities. 1) She was talking about Xingyuan, or 2) she was talking about herself.

If it's 1, that's a super transphobic response. I mean, people fuck up and get better, but it'd definitely hurt my opinion of her. If it's 2, she's excited by it, which is skirting on fetishization, which is its own kind of problem? Either way, it changes the dynamic of the situation a LOT and would make me lose a lot of sympathy for Xiaoen.

Basically, without that, this is a light fluffy misunderstanding to be cleared up with a pinch of drama and maybe some backstory. With it, it's a serious character flaw that a character has to grow past. There are other reasons I don't think it's likely, but this is why I would outright hope against it.

Found this image of Koga floating around the interwebs:

... but I'm disappointed she's not accidentally seductive here too. Would make it nicely confusing for everyone involved, and probably way funnier to read.

Scene may not be done yet. There's still time for charisma nat 20.

I don't think any update has ever picked up directly from the previous one. Next week probably picks up later with Chizuru giving the ticket back to Aya and apologizing.

I could see it being that kind of gap and Xiaoen getting overly flustered by it, without it being presented as truly scandalous. That is, Xiaoen has a tendency to overthink things and there's already a serious power difference between the two, so she might just be overreacting.

Personally, I think that would be a good way to handle this type of plot line, because it lets you get a lot of the same drama, without needing the actual moral issues that an adult dating a minor would entail.

Fair, I just wish Xiaoen was able to confront Xingyuan properly. Seeing Xingyuan self-destruct more because of Xiaoen's cowardice hurts, especially with the "pervert" misunderstanding that feels like the author is forcing the drama (in my opinion).

I think "cowardice" is kind of unfair. Nervousness at the start of a new relationship is pretty normal, and Xiaoen is kind of a space cadet to begin with. It's only been part of a day.

Also if it's as "Heavensrun" is saying and there's no gap but instead it's just Xiaoen's gay panic over the photo, that would make her cowardice and the domino effect from it even worse. Edit: Mostly I'd say worse as in Xiaoen isn't realizing at all how Xingyuan might at the very least be feeling rejected by her. I know Xiaoen has her own emotions to deal with, however I do feel that communication would be best for everyone involved here.

You have to remember that Xiaoen doesn't know about Xingyuan's trauma or her current meltdown. She hasn't seen any of the panic her reaction is causing. She was visibly giddy about the makeout, she's probably assuming it's the same for Xingyuan. But there's always worry and uncertainty at the start of these things. You want to seem interested, but not too obsessed, and it's hard to know where the right balance is, especially if you don't have any experience.

At any rate, it doesn't seem like the misunderstanding is going to persist.

im guessing its kind of an age difference or smth cause she saw the paper and then yelled. anyways, Xingyuan :((((((

I'm pretty sure she just caught herself lusting over the ID photo and had a gay panic. You guys are overthinking it.

(If the author wanted to convey that this was over an age gap, they would have focused on the age or birthdate on the ID.)

last edited at Jan 19, 2023 2:49PM

The best thing is that she basically does the same thing Yuzu did without realizing it.
"Actually, I do love Unohara-san. But it might be a bit different from how you love her..."
Pretty much mirrors how Yuzu didn't mean romantically interested when she mentioned Tatsumi-san.

What else could "is there someone you're interested in right now" be interpreted?

One of the things you have to understand when dealing with media from another culture is that there are implications in certain phrases that are not universal.

When you say "is there someone you're interested in right now?" in English, it is implicit in the statement that you mean romantically interested. But a literal read of the phrase doesn't actually have any words that mean that. Because the phrase has an implicit romantic implication, people avoid saying it if they don't mean it in a romantic way. They might say something more like "Who have you been hanging out with lately?" or maybe "is there anybody you really admire or look up to these days?"

But in a language where "Is there someone you're interested in" doesn't have a romantic implication attached, it might be a pretty ordinary question.

I still have a long way to go in my Japanese studies, so I don't know if this particular interpretation of this turn of phrase is contrived or ordinary, but I know you can't make those kinds of assumptions carelessly. What I AM willing to bet on is that in any event, Yuzu definitely isn't really crushing on Tatsumi. Either it's a lost in translation thing or Yuzu is just being dense.

I like when a manga feints going down a well-worn trope and then completely subverts it instead.

Honestly thought Moka was gonna get a text with the kissy picture, as a little revenge for showing off earlier.

Hm, the ring looks like a reference to the Evanescence logo.

Image? I am managing a list with all the music references

If you do a google search for "Evanescence logo" it's pretty much the only thing that comes up.

It's a stylized lower case e and the ring looks pretty close, though it's flipped left to right and the points in the middle should be straighter and less curved. It could be the logo drawn from rough memory, or it could just be a cool swirly design that happens to resemble it.

Incidentally the Chili Peppers concert they're talking about is a real thing. It's late February at the Tokyo Dome. Or possibly Osaka, depending on where these two live. (I wonder if Arai-sensei is going to do the build up to the concert in real time, giving us a month to watch them get hyped up.)

They're obviously going to meet their future boyfriends at this gig.

What do you mean? Mitsuki is already dating Narita
Would break up with him if that meant dating Flea

Pretty sure Narita wouldn't dare. He ships it as much as any of us do.

last edited at Jan 9, 2023 11:01PM

welp the new loli as mai's mom is kinda obvious from the previous chapter base on the hints and I like were this is going, I'm hoping now that she will kinda trust tae because her first impression of her on their first encounter is probably more on the good side since tae helped her, so let's hope she will find tae as someone trustworthy.

Ehhhh, On the other hand, she approached what she thought was a random middle schooler on the street, took her hand and started leading her away, only backing off when she got called out.

I mean, that's a little sus, especially from the perspective of an overprotective mom with a child that looks way more mature than she actually is.

If I'm remembering right, most of the volume of any atom is empty space.

it kind of depends, because electrons are weird, and become weirder when they're associated with an atom, and whether you can even consider them as having a "size" the way people are accustomed to thinking about the concept is dubious.

Particle physics is a trip and a half.

If it interests anyone, here is the thought process from a physics professor reading this.

The tunneling effect is a quantum mechanical effect whereby the probabilistic wavefunction of a subatomic particle (especially electrons) may pass through an intervening barrier

(nods) Good, good....

Theoretically, since the atoms of a human body are mostly electrons by volume

(blinks) Wait, that's not really-

it should be possible for a person to pass through a solid object.

UM

Based on these facts Yamada Kaoru will now conduct an unprecedented experiment to personally demonstrate the tunneling effect. If successful, Kaoru will slip through Tokino without any harm. If it is not, the two will become fused together.

Oh okay, it's just an excuse to Tuvix somebody.

Does anyone else get irritated at the "a cold is a debilitating disease, life-threatening even, caused by getting wet" trope in manga?

A cold is a mild infection caused by a virus.

A cold is usually a mild infection, but it can be more severe and can lead to complications in the form of other infections. That's why it's important to take care of it properly. Symptoms this severe aren't common, but they're more likely than a 5'6" 10 year old with a d-cup.

I feel like we should pair the Saori/Shizuku tag with the bdsm tag at this point.

The sisters are both problematic doms.

Iori isn't a dom at all. She's a bratty sub. I mean, that was a whole thing in one chapter, she tried to top and Minami just turned it around on her.

Welp, that confirms it. Dumb as a rock.

You are assuming that she meant for this to be a slow burn because Octave was. But like....there are also several one shots on her resume. Not every story from an author is necessarily planned to be the same length. Her other series are 3 and 4 volumes long. Octave is her longest work by a big margin, I think it's easy to argue that it's not necessarily representative.

And again, how would this be longer without fundamentally changing the characters? I'm just not seeing it.

I answered the how it could be longer in this response where I also acknowledged that it probably wouldn't be as long as Octave was even if it continued further.

Ah, sorry, I forgot to respond to that at the time because I got distracted by the giant picture of an axe underneath. ;p

I mean, I'm sure, if I wanted to, I could construct an entire side narrative to pad the series out, about how the coworker is actually secretly in love with someone, and I could dump in several more secondary characters and pretty much make it last forever. But the question here isn't "is that a thing you can do" the question is "was there any reason to think the author was going to?"

I mean, at the very least would you agree that it is plausible that this is the story the author intended to tell?

I think we just have to agree to disagree on whether we believe it was cut short or not. I think it's pretty rare in general for authors to publicly acknowledge their story was axed and most of the time we readers can only rely on how the pacing of the story feels to us. I know there's a lot of series where the the ending is rushed because the author wrote themselves into a corner, or they were just done with it or they had planned on a short story from the start so I understand how you feel when people throw the "axed" comment on everything, but I just don't feel that for this series. The pacing and tone from the chapters before the announcement to after the announcement was just too different and unusual from the pacing I'm familiar with of her other works (aside from Octave).

I'm happy enough to agree to disagree on this. I appreciate the acknowledgement of my perspective. Personally, I think a lot of series that were explicitly cut short still manage to have satisfying endings, and a lot of stories that end on their own terms fall apart at the end. "This series was cut short and that's why the ending is bad" isn't really a valid excuse anyway.

(side eyes "My Unrequited Love")

I just don't think it's weird that the pacing and tone would change, the announcement was basically "we're coming to the end" and that is naturally when many stories go through rapid developments.

I got the impression of axed from her tweets since it kinda read to me like "It's gonna end soon even though I know the story just started so I'm gonna do my best to complete all the plot lines in these last 3 chapters." That's my interpretation of it. You had a different one and that's cool too.

Fair enough, no hard feelings over it.

Heavensrun, I always appreciate your well-reasoned posts, and I especially share your desire for specific textual evidence to support assertions about a story.

But I’m going to go the other way this time and say that it just feels like there was the setup to a longer story here. Probably not primarily in terms of plot/event, but a more nuanced development of the MCs’ feelings and perhaps more reactions from the side characters. There’s no hard evidence for that feeling, it’s true, and failing a declaration by the author about whether or not the series was cut short, there can’t really be such evidence from the story itself.

It’s just that given the overall pacing of the beginning chapters, although the final destination turned out to be the same, the ending really does seem like a local commuter line suddenly turned into a bullet train. :-)

That's fair enough.

I just think there is already a bias people should take into consideration when reading fiction, a tendency people have to think that because they wanted to see a longer story, clearly the author intended it to be longer and was somehow cut short. This isn't the first time I've felt like people were overly presumptive about how a series came to an end. The word "axed" seems to crop up at the end of nearly every series at least once, and sometimes it's clearly accurate, but a lot of times I think it's at least very ambiguous. I usually ignore it or lightly remark, but in this case, it stuck with me because I feel like the ending is pretty logical to the story, heavily foreshadowed, and there just aren't any loose ends.

I'm actually pretty mad at Inoue at this point. She knows the situation, she should be well aware that forcing Kase into a situation where she has to essentially choose between her girlfriend and her friends is deeply unfair.

I mean, I can feel sympathy for Fukami, who has a crush and doesn't know how to process it. She's acting on repressed feelings and that can be pretty confusing. I can feel sympathy for Kase, who is getting peer pressured by literally everybody around her and can't be honest about her motivations because of the potential bigotry she might face if she came out. She was cornered and made a stupid choice, and now she's trying to figure out how to deal with the situation without burning every bridge she has in her personal life.

But man, Inoue has NO excuse. She knows Kase and Yamada are dating. She had a chance to be an ally here and come in on Kase's side, but instead she came in the other direction because...I guess she's a troll? I mean this just paints her in the worst possible light.

Like, it'd be one thing if she knew Kase could blow the doors off of Fukami and was just underestimating Fukami's determination, but no, she specifically points out that they're on the same level and Kase could lose. Like, maybe she just mindlessly believes in Kase's ability to win anyway, but that just makes her a moron. Best case scenario, she's a freaking idiot.

And, I mean, Yamada's worries about not delaying are valid. There is no way both of those properties are going to be available in a month. They're gonna have to do the hunt all over again, and if they lose those places and can't find somewhere else in time, Kase might be stuck in the dorm anyway.

This is all kinds of stupid, seriously.