It's nice to see a Yukari-focused dojin that doesn't focus on her obsession with Miho.

I agree. I especially liked the flashback to her childhood that shows why she didn't have any friends before meeting Anglerfish Team. While those girls weren't exactly nice, it's understandable that some people would find her preoccupation with tanks off-putting.

Leaving aside the entire contract between Koduka and her landlady, I'm more than a little frustrated that Koduka didn't actually get the job. That would have been a nice way to shake up the status quo, and possibly help force Koduka and the landlady to decide where their relationship should go from this point onward.

While you’re probably right about the immediate story trajectory, I was mostly pissed at the boss. I hate people in authority who fail to communicate because they want people to think they’re nice—there are humane ways to tell someone bad news.

That's true. Whenever I have a job interview, the hiring manager generally tells me when they'll make a decision, and when they do, they usually say something to the effect of, "Thanks for your interest, but we went with someone else. Feel free to try again when there's another opening." They're generally polite and encouraging, but also honest.

Leaving aside the entire contract between Koduka and her landlady, I'm more than a little frustrated that Koduka didn't actually get the job. That would have been a nice way to shake up the status quo, and possibly help force Koduka and the landlady to decide where their relationship should go from this point onward.

I just don’t see how this supposedly disengaged and hyper-rational Risako squares with the bulk of what we know about the rest of the story.

But who is it that supposed Risako is a hyper-rational disengaged ice queen?

Is this supposed to be some kind of joke, or did you really not read the chapter?

Kaoru: “[Risako] would always make decisions based of some rational thinking.”

Kaoru: “It seemed like her surroundings couldn’t handle this girl with cold eyes behind her glasses.”

Risako: “Unlike Kaoru, I don’t get serious, or even feel emotional about anything. / I think a lot about how much more fun it would be if I could live like [Kaoru].”

So where does your question come from?

I assumed she was seducing Reiichi there. "Oh, if ONLY someone could help me FEEL THINGS!"

While we're throwing out theories, maybe Risako is a sociopath who doesn't feel anything for others, and plays manipulative games with Reiichi and Kaoru for the sheer fun of it; Kaoru mistook her for a mere "ice queen." That being said, while Kaoru isn't the sharpest tool in the shed, she has been shown to be reasonably perceptive when it comes to people, with the possible exception of Reiichi.

Raws for chapter 29 are out here https://m.imgur.com/a/dQC4iit

Having taken a look at the raws, I'm curious about something. What was the call that Kaoru got at the end of the chapter? Was it about her mother's death? It seems like the flashback is around the time Kaoru's mother died, and the end of the chapter would be a good time for a development like that (to get readers excited for the next one).

I'm a bit surprised the uploader decided to pair Tenko with Miu, who's one of the few girls Tenko doesn't like (besides Angie, and that's mainly for getting between Tenko and Himiko).

Reading manga on this site, I've come to accept that if a female character mentions having a boyfriend at the start of the series, their relationship won't last until the end of the first chapter, usually the result of him breaking up with her (e.g. Useless Princesses).

Indirectly relevant to the spoilered recap:

So in chapter 4, in the conversation with Kaoru's friends (before Risako arrives) Ayaka (the one with short, dark hair) calls Reiichi, "your childhood friend who dumped you so many times" and says, "And every Valentine's Day during the 7 years of high school and university became an event to encourage you when you broke up."

That must mean "rejected your confession" rather than that the two of them were officially dating and broke up, right?

It seems implausible that people (the friends, Uta's mom) would be so surprised that the two got married if they had actually been a long-time on-again/off-again couple rather than Kaoru wanting to get with Reiichi and being turned down.

In that chapter, the raws say "フラれた" (furareta), which can absolutely mean "break up" or "dumped", but is also context dependent. It can also mean "to be rejected", so that is almost definitely what happened to Kaoru.

Thanks. It's a subtle but significant difference for understanding the characters, depending on what actually happened. Kaoru continually confessing and getting turned down is vaguely stalker-ish, but hey, childhood friends, so no harm, no foul.

The two of them getting together as a couple only to break up regularly seems a lot more toxic (and more narratively and thematically unlikely).

Based on the upcoming chapter, I think it's more probable that Kaoru also wasn't rejected all the time either, since one such example of her failed confession attempts is her texting Reiichi her feelings, but it turns out that Reiichi's cellphone broke so he never saw the text. But then again, we haven't seen their university life at all, so this is just a guess from me.

I recently took a look at the localized manga, and recall that they said that Kaoru was "brushed off" in Chapter 4, not only implying that it wasn't an on again off again relationship, but Reiichi may not have actively or unambiguously rejected her. Considering the spoiled segment, this version of what happened seems most likely.

I can't help but notice that for all of GuP's popularity, there isn't much of a shipping community. The vast majority of the stories I see on FF.net pair Miho with an OC, which would be taboo in most other fandoms, and even Miho/Yukari doesn't have all that strong of a following. Maybe that's why an incestuous pairing is one of the top pairings in the fandom.

God damn it why did this have to be licensed, especially with recent chapters-

According to Amazon, the first volume was released on September 17, but Chapters 26 and 27 were scanlated since then. It seems as though being licensed doesn't necessarily stop all scanlations; the entirety of Bloom Into You was scanlated despite having been licensed for a while (which is a good thing, since while I plan on buying the last two volumes, I'm glad I don't have to wait until August to see the rest of the story). As for this series, if the scanlators are stopping now, it's a bit unfortunate; they could continue while encouraging readers to buy the volumes when available.

Then again, it isn't quite as bad as Yuri is My Job, which has only two scanlated chapters, whereas the localized manga is up to Volume 5 (and things start getting interesting at the end of Volume 1).

One thing I liked about Izumi in the early chapters was that she was one of the nicer and more reasonable members of the gyaru group, particularly in her attempts to play peacemaker between Fujishiro and Miki. As for the more recent chapters, I'll reserve judgment on her until this arc is over.

Now that the main characters are meeting each other's families, having them solely be referred to their last names is getting a bit awkward. It's fine for Shimamura's younger sister to call her "Sis," but it's more than a little strange for Adachi to have to point out that Shimamura's mother is referring to her elder daughter when she says "she," not to mention how impersonal it is. Besides, Shimamura doesn't even like her family name, so one would think that she'd suggest going by her first name (a bit like Umiko in New Game).

And another chapter passes without Kanda revealing that she's female. I'm starting to wonder if they're going to drag this out as long as possible, and have Ookuma find out about Kanda being a woman (and not necessarily because Kanda told her) in the last few chapters.

That's a fairly impressive timeline of Citrus+ so far.

Usually, when I see months pass without a new chapter for a popular series, I assume that the scanlators, not the people who make the manga, are taking a hiatus, unless there's an official announcement saying otherwise. Sometimes the scanlators don't have the time, people or interest to continue with a project, and considering that people aren't quite as fond of Citrus+, the latter is possibly true here.

Out of curiosity, what's with Yuzu asking Mei to say "I love you," once a day, and previously asking for them to kiss once a day in the original series? I doubt many couples put daily quotas on displays of affection, but I could be mistaken.

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/operation_more_love_love_web_edition_ch02#7

... How the hell is Hana two meters tall???

That doesn't seem very accurate. Even Nonna, who's the tallest girl in the cast, is only 176 cm tall.
https://gup.fandom.com/wiki/Nonna

Hana's actual height is 163 cm.
https://gup.fandom.com/wiki/Hana_Isuzu

Self-deprecation is one hell of a drug, glad to see Yumimi going for the intervention.

As far as I know, this is a Japanese custom, in which you're expected to disagree with all compliments you or certain family members (particularly your children) receive, or else you'll be seen as arrogant. I get why it can be seen as overly negative when it isn't false modesty, though.

Although the abuse part was really painful to read.

The sad thing is that it seems to be pretty common for folks on the spectrum to stay with shitty people, so the shitty boyfriend was sadly accurate too.

True. As someone who's on the autism spectrum myself, I have to wonder if Tatsuki never noticed all the red flags, such as when Keita berates Tatsuki for causing trouble for him as a full-timer before "magnanimously" forgiving her because she's cute, seemingly in order to manipulate her. I suspect that he'd been abusing Tatsuki, even hitting her, for a while, and she never realized that what he was doing was wrong.

Another thing that supports the idea of Keita having always been abusive is the author's notes saying, "Being young, (Keita) figured Tatsuki would be naïve and easy to deal with," which makes me wonder if he thought she'd be easy to control. The fact that he convinces her to quit her job when she breaks up with him, something she easily accepts, lends credence to this idea.

last edited at Nov 15, 2019 10:47AM

I agree with this point. A lot of the characters only came off as romantic rivals or other ways to develop Yuzu and Mei, help facilitate their relationship, and ended up coming off as extras once their introductory arcs were done. By comparison, Bloom Into You had only one "rival"- Sayaka- who came off as an actual three-dimensional character, rather than a plot device.

Some may disagree, but I found Sayaka to be the only 3-dimensional character in Bloom Into You. Everyone else, from Doujima, Maki and even Koyomi were no more "developed" than any of the other less-significant characters in Citrus. But that's the thing. They don't need to be. They're side characters. They stay in the background and do their own thing, occasionally interacting with our main cast and getting some moments to shine. Like side characters are supposed to do.

Also, why is everyone sleeping on mah gurl Himeko? She had some great development over the course of the story! Not to mention her role as a "love rival" lasted less than a chapter and was never really taken seriously by either Mei or Yuzu.

And Matsuri's transition from manipulative and devilish gremlin to the voice of reason who genuinely cares about Yuzu and Mei's relationship... she's unquestionably best girl!

If you ask me, the majority of Citrus' cast (besides the twins, Shirapon and Mitsuko) are far from plot devices.

Regarding the Bloom Into You cast, I personally felt they had lives of their own that, while connected with the leads in some ways, didn't solely exist to push the plot forward. For example, Koyomi has her own dream of becoming an author, which is touched on in Chapter 25, and for her, writing the school play is a way of furthering that dream. Maki also serves well as a foil to Yuu, and while Doujima's mostly comic relief, there are moments when he shows a surprisingly reliable side.

I actually liked Himeko more than most of the rest of Citrus' cast, particularly her friendship with Mei. It was nice to see Matsuri come to care about Yuzu and (to some extent) Mei, but it was also a bit difficult to accept how easily she got off for blackmailing Mei.

Regarding Yuzu and Mei's relationship, I do agree that there's going to be more than a little awkwardness as they try to rebuild their relationship after the events of the end of Volume 9 up until the last chapter of the original series. In that sense, I appreciate that Citrus Plus actually tries to fill in the blanks and bridge the gap between Yuzu talking Mei out of the arranged marriage and actually getting together with her. Of course, I can't help but worry that there will be some sort of contrived drama at the eleventh hour, but since the story's still in its early phases, we'll just have to see how it goes.

last edited at Oct 20, 2019 9:16PM

You're free to have your own opinion and dislike this work, as all of your points are valid. But contrary to what this discussion may have you believe, some people, like myself, still love this story and these characters. Please don't invalidate that.

I didn't invalidate anything. I'm aware that Citrus is really popular, and outside of this forum people don't really criticize it much. Just making an observation that I think this is author's strategy to keep the story going, since most of the side characters haven't really offered anything significant. Most of them except Matsuri and Harumin could be removed from the story without anything changing.
You might say for example, the twins have pushed Yuzu to confess, but this really was unnecessary since Yuzu could have decided to do that on her own without the whole "my fated person" thing from Sarah, and we could see a more introspective Yuzu.
Without the twins there could still be a confession, but with them we got like at least five extra chapters. So furthering the length of this manga.
Then, Harumin's sister. Again, unnecessary drama and she became quickly irrelevant after expanding the story.
So the twins, Nene, Shirapon, Harumin's sister all have taken up a significant length of the story, but are discardable.
Notice how I didn't mention side characters like Yuzu's mom, Mei's dad and grandad, Yuzu's friends from middle school, the manager who Mei was going to get married to. Because these characters have actually contributed important parts to the story.
And frankly, even with this push from everyone, Yuzu and Mei development is still really slow. It feels like we're going in cycles which makes me believe even more that this is a way from the author to just add length to the story.
I don't have a problem with slow development as long as it makes sense. And yeah, some people might say love is not logical, but someone's actions still have to be based on something. People are still not mindless creatures to be acting completely random from one day to the other.

I agree with this point. A lot of the characters only came off as romantic rivals or other ways to develop Yuzu and Mei, help facilitate their relationship, and ended up coming off as extras once their introductory arcs were done. By comparison, Bloom Into You had only one "rival"- Sayaka- who came off as an actual three-dimensional character, rather than a plot device.

In fact, I'd suspect that this is why Citrus' story fell apart in the last two volumes of the original series, if not earlier- the author is decent at setting things up, but can't deliver the payoff. If the author doesn't have any sort of long term vision for all the side characters, then of course she'd struggle with the main couple, especially in the spin-off showing what happened between the resolution of Mei's second arranged marriage and her wedding to Yuzu.

It's true that they don't interact that much, but Makoto's probably the one Haru's closest with. Even apart from the nickname, Haru also is the most worried about Makoto in the sixth palace (without spoiling too much, their personal circumstances are similar in some ways).

Does Catherine remind anyone else of Catherine from Fire Emblem: Three Houses(not just the name, but also the hair and skin tone)?

I'm curious; is Hina related to Sayo in this doujin? Sayo refers to her by her first name, as opposed to her last name with honorifics, but they obviously aren't twins if Hina's one of the kids here.

I really like the art for this pic, which looks a lot like the game.

I paired Byleth with Mercedes on my Golden Deer playthrough, but I hope to see some more Mercedes/Annette art.

last edited at Oct 3, 2019 1:48PM

I liked this chapter, especially Haru getting a turn as the POV character, but I do have to wonder if the story is veering toward romance territory, since Haru's starting to question the nature of her feelings toward Midori.

Now that I think about it, the girl does seem to be Misaki, assuming it's her surname, rather than her first name (Another has a girl with the first name Misaki, and two characters with the surname Misaki).

last edited at Sep 19, 2019 8:56PM

There isn't, but sword classes get Axebreaker, which gives bonuses against axe wielders.

Of course, even in games with the weapon triangle, I've found that if a unit's significantly more powerful than its opponent, it being at a disadvantage when it comes to the weapon triangle isn't as important.