I'm starting to think Reimu doesn't actually mind the old hag's pranks.

^^ "His name is John." ⁽ᵖʳᵒˣʸ⁾

ah, so neurodivergent people are monsters, I understand now /s

I mean, when the spectrum only includes "Normality" and "Monsters" (please marvel at my title drop), that's basically how they're being seen by society. Remember, 99% of history had only one career perspective: Literal torture under the guise of therapy or exorcism. Don't shoot the messenger, I doubt the author endorses this line of thinking.

Just so people don't get the wrong idea, the monster is saying they are LIKE Slender Man in appearance/size, not that they are.

Pics or it didn't happen. We haven't seen the true form yet, and she's clearly capable of operating indoors. (Imagine Slendy climbing a tight stair case.)

Despite being a comedy manga, page 14 had a deep, thought-provoking moment that got me even more hooked.

I mean it has its "comedic" moments but calling it a comedy manga is a heavy stretch imo

I wouldn't call it too deep as that's basically "We live in a society" with extra steps, but yes, not exactly your usual gag manga.

I despise Pizza in all its forms for the tomatoes, and personally tend to tarte flambée for my topped flatbread of choice.

The scratches on the tentacles (akshually, arms) look painful.

I've never read Trash Flower, so am I right that neither character is tattooed and they just drew on each other with black markers?

The weirdest thing about the censored kiss is ... didn't they already kiss? Like, ch. 15 even had a sex scene, so I guess the censors are as inconsistent as always when it comes to their demand?

...or these two are so hot, yet dense that fusion occured upon contact.

last edited at Oct 1, 2024 5:43PM

I love how the fandom's interpretation of Silvy immediatly settled on absolute chad. Not just the apprentice witches are going to be taught today.

Akane is the most commonly recurring main character of the Psychopass series, as mentioned by Fluffycow. Sybil is definitely NOT a protagonist, it's the antagonist lmao. Dunno how you could get the impression it's anything else.

"Protagonist" is not a judgmental term, but simply describes the person playing "the first part" (both in importance and sequence). Villain protagonists are a thing, y'know. And one could reasonably argue that Akane isn't the Season 1 protagonist, but Shinya (the same way Watson is the viewpoint character, but Holmes is the protagonist). Yet generally I'd go with the label "Ensemble cast" due to the many pieces involved in Sybil's game.

I should say that I'm a huge fan of LycoReco myself, I know some people don't care for it and fair enough if you're not a fan, it's definitely not a perfect series. However I do sincerely enjoy it and love the series, the main duo are one of my favorite ships.

Personally, I like the many cute LycoReco doujins over the anime. The café half was solid and could stand on its own. The clandestine paramilitary half is something I try to ignore exists. However, I'm now wondering ... what is the chance that the near-future Japan of LycoReco is actually the past of the Psycho-Pass one? Sybil canonically had AI predecessor systems, and the whole portrayal of the population as docile, ignorant and best steered through extrajudicial executions resonates in both works. (I guess this is better followed up on in the Cafe thread though.)

Also I think youth in general is popular for humans. Growing old is scary, and you have a lot of classic stories focusing around concepts of youth and chasing after it. [...] Japan has a lot of problems with overwork from my understanding, which even leads to some isekai being started via death from overwork. Which I think extends globally in general, there's a lot of struggles with economy, stressful politics, work. Being young and not having so many worries is definitely appealing to many, and nostalgia is also powerful for many.

For me I'm often able to find a good mix of both maturity and youth with anime and manga. I watch and read a lot of things across many genres, and I've found that even stories focusing on young characters can explore themes of growing up in mature and interesting ways.

Are you sure about the "anime" part? I have the feeling that this decade's anime overwhelmingly has casts that would count towards the Young Adult genre in the west. (The absence of western YA animation is a topic for another day.) Looking through the upcoming anime season for series with main characters/cast past their twenties yields me Uzumaki (Junji Ito horror adaption), 365 Days to the Wedding (actual romance!) as well as Neko ni Tensei shita Ojisan and Hyakushou Kizoku (both Comedy), plus two "old man rediscovers joy in live through daughter-like figure he mentors" stories. That's from over 60 anime airing. (Admittedly, there's hardly and Josei or Seinen amongst them. Not sure if my source is biased or that's the direction the industry goes.)

It's honestly kind of sad, because that means we get no stories of "real adults" (= anyone older than me) having any character growth. Do you lose the right to have dreams when you turn 30? It really says a lot about societal expectations dictating the remainder of your life. Thankfully manga and other literature cover those age spans, although fan work is of course shaped by its source material.

sees Psycho Pass mentioned Weirdly enough I never though of Psycho Pass as either action no female-lead. Does it even have a singular protagonist, besides perhaps the Sybil System?

Hmm, to me the problem Doctor_Hoot blames on "moeblobs" lies less in the art style (Happy Sugar Life and Lobotomy Corporation both have very cutesy and adorbs character designs, yet they're not known for wholesomeness) and more in the way the characters are written. What irked me the most about LycoReco is best told by the tags of this doujin: Guns and explosions Wholesome. It's just massive mood backlash of stories trying to give cute yuri fluff and badass gun-fu action at the same time. Which just does not work out pacing-wise.

(A good example I haven't seen mentioned would be Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka, which cuts between scenes of literal war crimes being committed to fan service-y maid cosplay to a rather realistic depiction of PTSD to a mandatory swimsuit scene. And yes, it's yuri, very in fact.)

I believe "adult/mature" characters for shipping material are generally scarce wherever you look (bar some josei dramas maybe) because manga has just this weird focus on youth everywhere — I can't think of many mature M/M ships either outside of Bara, and my understanding of het waifu (or rarer husbando) chasers is that nobody there wants Catherinettes either. And of course you can have moé mature characters as FluffyCow mentioned, just like how you can have non-moé schoolgirls. I get the feeling Manhwa aren't as fixated on young characters.

Ergo, I wouldn't blame moé for a decline in good action yuri; if anything it's a correlated symptom of a wider industry-level shift towards increasingly self-referential and marketable media. Compare and contrast with the development Mecha as a genre went through, nowadays only dragging on thanks to a few unkillable IPs.

Anyway, back to this series: I don't just appreciate the characters' age, but also how neither of them seems to be written around any of the ubiquitous stereotypes (except "dork", of course).

^ Unless your boss is an ornithologist.

she's not a good fit for the bunny considering the women's age.

Do we even know W's age? She has 11 years of combat experience, but with her bio she certainly started fighting young. That whole Babel thing is also merely 3 years in the past, so I assume she could be suprisingly young.

Anyhow, as I mentioned, I love myself some roister x paragon shipping, angsty or not.

what's the deal with the whole "long strip" format anyway? they're so inconvenient to read.

Those are webmanhua/webmanhwa which are primarily intended to be read on a vertically scrolling smartphone interface. Tech tip: Gecko-based desktop browsers can emulate mobile device interfaces with Ctrl + Shift + M.

Whaaat? They aren't? My whole life was a lie!

Self-identification is always trump so if Kazuki (or you in this case) don't think you're trans then you're not, that's it imo. Definitions change over time too of course, but the whole "transitioning from one gender to the other" thing that usually gets associated with "being transgender" has such a binary flavor of thinking for me that it just doesn't fit (anymore).

I'm sure you'd get several different definitions when asking other trans ppl but as a trans woman myself, that's how I define it for myself (and at least most trans ppl in my own circle seem to share that idea, which is of course only circumstantial evidence xD)

Thank you, it's always informative to see how other people define these terms for themselves.

But basically, we really need some sort of standards document so everybody is finally on the same page (or rather same 300 pages) about terminology. What an easy-going and non-controversial endeavour! Bonus points for avoid mixing greek with latin roots.

Being trans isn't so much about "switching" from one gender to another, but more about not being the one you were assigned at birth. Kazuki was afab but is not actually a woman, thus trans applies as far as definitions go.

Huh, I always had it the other way around: trans (in its stem form) meaning "across" implying that, say, a transfemale identifies as female nomatter if amab, intersex, etc. and vice-versa. Do "trans" and "cis" even apply to non-gender dual identities? Does my GNC behind now really has to start the "might I be trans?" thing again? Gee, thanks.

2021 should be the time W received a playable operator (at least in global)? I believe that boosted her popularity (and thus that of her ships) enormously.

Besides that, I think there has been shipping material since day one. They do have plenty of canon interactions going way back, and who doesn't enjoy some "Paragon of leadership" x "Untameable ball of chaos" Cockroach/Donkey-shipping?

Tbh, I too was irked by the title at first. I wondered why autobiographic queer stories have to be titled like LNs. But now I also kind of get it. If I had to write a blog post or essay, I'd probably title it similar.

Also, a honest question: why do some people here equate non-binary immediatly with transgender? Is it because there is surgery involved? I think Kazuki was pretty clear that they (? guessing pronouns here) don't really feel as a man either.

1. Matsuri is criminally adorable.
2. Present-day scanlation groups would never dare to release 8 pages of manga with 13 pages of "junk" attached afterwards, but I treasure these ephemera. That's a sweet two decades old time capsule.

^ No idea about Kid Icarus lore, but greek mythology gorgons actually have Basilisks for hair - that's where the petrification comes from.

I knew I needed this in my life and now I have finally found it.

I've seen several stories that romanticize continuing to hold a candle for an unrequited crush/someone who rejected them/ex-lover even though it would have been healthier for the character to move on long ago. Oftentimes the character is shown to be incapable of falling in love with someone else, which is depicted as "honorable" or "pure", and the character is eventually rewarded for their loyalty with their long-held love eventually being reciprocated.

Far more rare are stories where a character is shown to move on from this past love to find something new, which seems to be where this story is heading.

But those characters should all have come to terms with they're doing instead of going "gosh, I hope nobody finds out I'm saving myself for marriage with my one true love". Not that being outside of the norm is a priori bad (see Remu), but she clearly understands that something is wrong. Or in other words: her "love" is obsession, and yandere are difficult to portray as mentally healthy. (Whether they are being romanticized as love interests is a different story...)

But it's clear that Usui is treating Azuki's obsession as alarming and off-putting with these types of depictions:
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7 years is a long time when you're transitioning into early adulthood and going through so many life changes. Continuing to obsess over a relationship from high school isn't just creepy, but shows she failed to mature emotionally during such an important period of growth.

I don't know how you could realistically portray her as anything but off-putting and alarming. At this point it's not about what she's into, but the way she decided to engage with it.

Remu, on the other hand, actually seems perfectly normal. Sure, she has an objectophilia fetish and tries to hide it from her public persona (as most people with fetishes do), but the way she blooms up when realizing she is not alone and that there are opportunities to make her fantasies reality is almost wholesome. Or rather:

And the doll fucker is somehow the least deranged

Preach.

Chapter 5 and the 5th time I'm reading all from the start just to remember who is who. Maybe that's just a me-problem, but a quick recap at the beginning of each chapter would've been nice. Guess I'll drop this until I can read everything in one go.

Like a dream. And that's not just a compliment but also the way this lets emotion take over, always at the brink of becoming a nightmare just has a certain ... surreal feeling to it.

This is timeless.