I would say at this point that the harder emphasis we put on any one aspect of Nene’s behavior or her motivations, the more other elements don’t quite fit in.

(Kou and Amane I take more or less at face value; Senpai, Sensei, and Ice Queen Manager remain to be fully seen.)*

There can be hypothetical ways to reconcile the apparent contradictions and tensions in the story up to this point, but insofar as the hypotheses are based in evidence from the text, one guess is nearly as good as another.

*The lizard remains as ever the wild card.

I said some time back that we’d soon need more explicit insight into Nene’s full motivations in order to make sense of the story going forward, and it seems we’ve reached a point where it’s not entirely clear if the author actually intends for things to be quite so ambiguous or not. i.e., the My Unrequited Love Syndrome.

It’s obvious that Nene isn’t being completely forthright about herself and her feelings, but in regard to exactly what and to what degree is very hard to say with the limited information we’ve been given.

So pretty much every interpretation and ethical/moral evaluation of the main characters put forth so far is at best tentative because we lack basic information about the fundamental situation.

Pretty sure senpai just being a shitty person, though.

It's quite the menagerie of messed-up people isn't it? Kodama Naoko would be proud.

Not sure if you missed Blastaar's sarcasm.

Not sure if you missed the sardonic meta.

I assume you were refering to the characters, while Blastaar was refering to the other menagerie... the readers.

I left that part in the quote for a reason.

No squabbling, kids— everybody’s a menagerie of messed-up people.

Or lizards, as the case may be.

That Nene has any number of as-yet unspecified hang-ups about Amane is obvious to anyone who's been paying attention to the narrative.

Assumes readers not in evidence. (Not so damn many, anyway.)

Quite frankly, I’m having trouble coordinating where to deploy the mobs with torches and pitchforks—at first it looked like Amane was the priority target, followed by the Sadistic Senpai, but now Nene has surged into the lead, and even Kou potentially has misdemeanor Not Good Person charges to face.

And that lizard better watch its fucking step too.

Svitac, I have to admire your diverse ways of not making sense.

Can anyone think of any possible explanation as to why it’s so hard for people in a relationship to objectively assess the facts of their situation and, for example, calculate the probabilities of how likely it would be to get back together with someone you loved but who broke up with you without really saying why EVEN THOUGH it’s totally obvious to people outside the relationship, who can just snap their fingers and say what it is the emotionally involved person should do?

This ETERNAL MYSTERY OF THE UNIVERSE as to why people who are emotionally involved think emotionally rather than logically is a mysterious enigmatic mystery that is a constant puzzler.

After all, how many times have heartbroken friends come to you with their troubles and you’ve given them solid advice about how they should feel, and yet they don’t feel that way at all and they just go on feeling their bad old emotions instead of the better way you told them to feel?

What’s up with that, anyway?

last edited at Jun 26, 2019 6:07AM

The tags are accurate enough, but I dunno, they don’t seem to capture a certain piquant je ne sais quoi about this one.

What the fucking depressing fuck? is probably a bit too wordy . . .

at least we haven't crossed into depressing ass fuck territory with this one.

... yet.

But if we find out that’s how the sister died . . .

The tags are accurate enough, but I dunno, they don’t seem to capture a certain piquant je ne sais quoi about this one.

What the fucking depressing fuck? is probably a bit too wordy . . .

Finally a kiss!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was wondering if this work could even be called a yuri, but now my faith has returned

But... but there have been on-screen kisses since like 40 chapters ago...

I keep reminding you—the yuri doesn’t happen in the other dimension those readers live in.

Evidently.

And sadly.

Fauxtaribeya, it’s called.

There seem to be two main ways of making ethical evaluations about characters:

Understanding them in terms of narrative expectations, reading the cues that any given story is sending about how the characters function as part of the story. That understanding can change radically over the course of a story, of course, and sometimes the signals the story sends aren’t very clear, intentionally or otherwise.

(The rubric here is, “The author wants us to think ___ about [character] at this point in the story.”)

OR

Positing the characters as real-life human beings, and making judgements about them by imagining the character’s actions in the context of the reader’s everyday life.

(The rubric here is, “A person who does _______ is [bad/good/psycho, whatever].”)

Many (maybe most) readers can move pretty seamlessly between those positions, but judging by the Dynasty forums quite a few readers think mainly or only in the latter terms.

last edited at Jun 25, 2019 3:18PM

Finally a kiss!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was wondering if this work could even be called a yuri, but now my faith has returned

But... but there have been on-screen kisses since like 40 chapters ago...

I keep reminding you—the yuri doesn’t happen in the other dimension those readers live in.

Evidently.

Ayako does feel guilty about something (that Akira says wasn’t her fault).

Actually it was Ayako who said to Akira that “what happened” wasn’t Akira’s fault.

You’re right—I switched that around in my head. (All these “A” names have always given me a little trouble.)

My guess is that “what happened” is also connected to Akira’s uncharacteristic (for such an aggressive lesbian horndog) statement to Asuka that “not even a lifetime would be enough to earn the right to be in love with Ayako.”

One odd fact is that Ayako can’t seem to finish her thought whenever she thinks about what Atsushi-kun (her husband) was like except to say he was “a slightly strange person.” I have no idea what to make of that, however.

Keeping the whole story straight in my head is complicated by the fact that almost every single chapter either contains or is itself a flashback, sometimes with more than one flashback and to more than one point in the past. Moreover, the story shifts fairly subtly to an interior view of different characters—the A’s, Rui, Jun-kun, etc.

Throw in the several omake/extras which seem to have different canonical statuses (pretty sure the neko-Asuka one didn’t happen, but the Akira-as-babysitter probably did), and it’s a challenge for me to remember exactly what happened in which chapter.

unlike yall im just here for the sexy ladies

I wish I could say the same but I find the art very unappealing.

cmon yall its obv the black hair is a mei type

Please, no. Mei was a problematic bitch because she had actual, concerning and realistic issues that are faced by many Asian children every day (at least in my country). Nene is just a vain high school bitch with first world problems like NPD. And Mei is more attractive anyway.

The art? I think she has a lot of skill. I guess everyone has styles they like and do not like... I personally didn’t like the character designs of Citrus that much (although the art was great) either so I guess it’s a matter of personal taste.

I suppose I must be in-between. I want to like the art—there are a lot of good things about it, and the artist is obviously skilled at rendering. At first I thought it was quite appealing.

But now I find the panels to be just a little too lush, and the character designs vaguely off-putting, like the eyes are too big in the close-ups and the open mouths (especially on Kou) are just a little too bovine.

I don’t hate the art by any means, but find that, in itself, it’s a little disturbing. Maybe that’s effective in creating the feeling that there’s something off about all these relationships.

I’ve just re-read the entire series, twice, and while there certainly are some unanswered questions about Ayako’s earlier life and motivations, the above is, while highly imaginative and inventive, completely ungrounded in anything in the text except the (translated) word “crime.”

Ayako does feel guilty about something (that Akira says wasn’t her fault).

Possibilities that come from the text include: getting involved in the first place with Asuka’s father, who was younger and her tutoring pupil, getting pregnant, for not paying enough attention to Asuka while studying to be a pharmacist, or maybe even something to do with Asuka’s father’s death. (When she refers to her “crimes” we see an image of Asuka’s father from the back, looking very young.)

It’s an incredibly common trope in Asian popular culture for someone to blame themselves or to feel extreme guilt and shame for something that they actually had only the most indirect responsibility for—things that in the West would be considered “an unfortunate circumstance” at worst are treated by the characters as “sins” or “crimes” in manga, Asian dramas, etc.

For instance, as soon as Ayako learns that Asuka is sexually attracted to her, she blames herself for being a bad mom and apologizes.

The business about Ayako abusing drugs and committing sexual abuse is based on absolutely nothing in the text. Zero.

And whatever Ayako’s “crimes” may or may not be, the text tells us they concern her dead husband, not her daughter.

(We’ve just been lectured about not being “disrespectful” in our disagreements, no matter how preposterous or inane the ideas. So I won’t be.)

last edited at Jun 25, 2019 10:34AM

Kou is a Good Girl and cute as a button.

I first read that as, “Kou is a Good Girl and cute as a buffoon.”

Which also works.

last edited at Jun 24, 2019 11:18PM

Well, there are ways to make them look similar, and ways in which they are fundamentally different:

A.
* Cool dark-haired senpai and charming naive kouhai
* Senpai “doesn’t understand love”
* Senpai’s sudden overt confession

B.
* Kouhai is charming, but an idiot
* Senpai’s attitude doesn’t stem from tragic trauma
* Senpai is go-home club, not class prez

Etc.

NTR has kissing, groping, and implied sex scenes.

The main Citrus series had kissing and groping (remember the phone-confiscation scene?) in Chapter fucking 1.

Maybe it’s only OK if it’s non-con/dub-con.

Just two gals coming to terms with how gay they are.

And isn’t that, finally, what life in a yuri world is all about?

Looks to me like Hayama is using a Canon 5D series body. The long lens looks like one of the long zooms, as indicated by the straight barrel and the the depth-of-field gauge mid-barrel, maybe the 70-200mm/f2.8.

Her shorter lens (as seen in Chap. 3) is pretty generic, so I can’t tell. Canon normal lenses tend to be pretty short and/or tapered in at the body, so that could be a 60mm macro.

I also can’t tell much about Kou’s rig. The back dials look like a Canon, but the front reminds me more of Nikon at times. (Faceplates are blank, of course.) I don’t know much about rangefinders, either, so I don’t know what her old camera would be. Looks like a nice one, though.

(That’s obviously one of those Fujifilm Instax Minis in Chapter 4. My money would be on Kou going for a pink one, although the purple or lime green wouldn’t be out of the question.)

On second glance, Kou's rig looks like a Sony A7 something.

Good call—I think you’re right.

You'll never know. Considering Asuka's infatuation with genetics (she was reading Richard Dawkins' "The selfish gene" of all things!) and her possible personal interest in the subject of said lesbian-science-babies she may be the one to discover such technology.

True—at which point the subject would be transformed into being on-topic. :)

Also, since I'm at it ⎯ Alexrain: your post on the frequency of autosomal recessive disease for the children of relatives was solid, conclusive, and closed the discussion on that issue. Kudos to you too.

I’m as much in favor of intelligent, rational discourse as the next person, but the topic of autosomal recessive disease, however superbly handled in its own right, really is (pending the author’s hypothetical sudden insertion of cutting-edge lesbian-science-babies technology into a narrative hitherto lacking such) irrelevant to the story itself so far.

It’s true that direct communication is a rather shocking development in a yuri manga, but ultimately it’s the best thing for everybody involved.

The story, folks--when was the last time one of these posts was about the story?

Hey man, I tried. lol

You worked hard. Lol

Of course I meant “these mega-posts of abstract cultural commentary.”

The story, folks--when was the last time one of these posts was about the story?

"It's cuteness mayhem."

Kino is like a mega-tanker of cuteness--it needs a lot of time and sea-room to change directions.

But is anyone at the wheel?