I think these are all the pairings:

Mahi x Mahi
Ai x Chie
Nononon x Yumimi
Honoka x Elisha
Michiru x Airi
Kanae x Haruka
Mari x Yuu
Miyoshi x Ayano
Onibi x Nao
Shizuka x Mio
Midori x Hibiki
Mask x Kaoru
Mayuyu x Mariri

Btw I listed them in the order I like them, favorites first. ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)

You are definitely an individual of culture.

Yeah, this isn't working for me. It's a gag manga so there won't be any story and it doesn't even really have gags it's just a grocery list of bland ecchi in an art style that doesn't really lend itself to ecchi.

last edited at Sep 27, 2019 4:26PM

She's basically a female pickup artist I'm not sure what I'm supposed to like or respect about that. It really seems like she just straight up does not perceive others as actual people with thoughts and feelings rather than objects that exist to amuse her until she finds a new shiny thing to be amused by.

Am I the only one who facepalmed when Kaoru had her 'epiphany' after kissing the blondie?

I dunno if I'm reading it wrong, but to me it's like Kaoru's thinking: That's right, I'm Yamada Kaoru, the invincible vamp! No babe can resist my yuri charm! Why was I moping? All I have to do is keep pushing and Bou-chan will fall into my web!

If that's it, then I'm totes getting that "oh, this can't end well" feeling....

Yeah that's my reading too and I'm mega not digging it.

If Kaoru is just about to go try to wear her down with more of the same I hope it backfires spectacularly.

There are quite a lot of people on this forum thinking that a 15 y/o should be as wrecked and scornful as themselves.

Well, that's a bit harsh. I can understand people feeling Shizuka's actions were a bridge too far and this confrontation really could have gone either way and still felt reasonable.

Point proven.

Just saying it doesn't make it true, thankfully. Pretty childish I must say.

And insisting on continuing this will most likely just incite the mods, so I will just facepalm and leave it at that.

I love this entire comment.

In a surrealist ironic sense I hope. Unless you are a fan of swiss cheese of course, because of the amount of holes it has.

Go be unbearably smug and condescending at someone else please.

Tevin posted:

I was hoping Mio would break up with her...

Not realistic. She had a huge emotional investment in sempai. You don't write that kind of investment off just because of a single instance of "feeling betrayed".

Or it would mean her feelings were that shallow.

Yes and no. I mean, emotional investment is a double-edged sword. It can strengthen your resolve, but it can also make betrayals that much worse. And giving up on something doesn't have to mean your feelings were shallow, sometimes it just means you can't deal or don't believe things will work. I think this scene could have easily gone either way, realistically, just depending on how the conversation went and who did what.

Yeah, Sunk Cost Fallacy applies to emotional investments too. I think the main deciding factor for Mio here was that they never actually established themselves as a couple which made the betrayal less stark.

Why do you think well written stories always top the charts and are phenomena?

Gentle reminder that Citrus is the best-selling yuri manga of all time last I heard and, on a more general note, I really hope you aren't trying to make an argument that the most popular manga/anime/movie/novel/*anything* in general are so because they are paragons of thoughtful writing. That is almost never the case and one of the most fallacious arguments you could ever make.

Gentle reminder that - and this is something I give profound thanks for nearly everyday now - the Japanese authors of the vast majority of these works do not read this site and are blissfully unaware of Western yuri fans' self-important views on how they should do their job better. You are not giving feedback to the author here, so stop pretending that. You are only wallowing publicly in your own sense of superiority, writing post after essay-like post to no real effect except propping up how much better your tastes in Japanese schoolgirl lesbian fantasy stories are compared to others'. Please gain even a tiny bit of self-awareness about how far you are going (and habitually go) to belabor this point.

I love this entire comment.

I'm good with how this went. They're kids muddling their way through their first relationships fuck-ups are bound to happen and I think this is a good wake-up call for both of them to reassess how they view and treat the other. The pedestal Mio put Shizuka on got well and truly broken and now she's more able to see her as she actually is: kind of a hot mess. Shizuka's realized how her actions hurt Mio and how important Mio ultimately is to her even if she's still hung up on her ex.

Alright so now I'm pretty sure Izumi was intentionally trying to gaslight Fujishiro out of jealousy and not just in deep denial about her own feelings and projecting.

luinthoron posted:

Well, that could've been worse. Senpai clearly went too far, but at least she realized it would go nowhere and stopped. And this did help Asuka properly realize her own feelings.

Yup, I'm glad she stopped... like, if this site had a "Drop it" button my mouse would've been over it the whole chapter ready to click with [ゴゴゴゴ ] effects all over it... I guess this is as far as they go.

Can we go to ch14 now hahaha

Pretty sure we're just gonna do this entire chapter .1 at a time which likely means 3 more chapters of this goddamn flashback. Like 3 volumes dedicated to one flashback sequence.

last edited at Sep 25, 2019 8:46PM

It's pretty obvious this manga was building up to this ending in retrospect and it just had to rush it. The people acting like it came out of nowhere are just too wrapped up in monogamy as the default and had their blinders on to all the obvious buildup.

It was pretty obvious, but the series hadn't gotten to the point where this ending really made sense. Amane wasn't developed enough and Taru (at least to me) felt like she hadn't quite gotten to the point where she was in love with both of them, it felt more like she was in love with their relationship. The polygamy is great, but it didn't have enough build up to it.

I agree there wasn't enough buildup to it. Maybe if we had a few chapters after they reconcile where we get to spend some time with Taru and have her come to some sort of self-realization about her feelings for them this ending would go over a lot smoother. I love poly endings, and they are incredibly rare in love-triangle stories like this, but it feels somewhat unnatural here.

Sure, but any romantic resolution from the point they were at would have felt awkward and rushed due to the apparent chapter constraint. It would have felt just as weird for the exes to get together and then just sweep the chemistry the author had established between the three of them under the rug it just would have been easier to ignore that weirdness because monogamy is the expected ending in romance even if it's abrupt and scantly developed. Of the options available I'd rather this one than any of the alternatives especially considering how much I love that last page.

Fucking hell.

It's pretty obvious this manga was building up to this ending in retrospect and it just had to rush it. The people acting like it came out of nowhere are just too wrapped up in monogamy as the default and had their blinders on to all the obvious buildup.

I saw worse rushed endings, this one was actually okay. And hey, I'll never complain about polyamory, you can share your taxes by 3, is almost a necessity in todays society depending were you live (I am just half joking here)

Polyamory is not legal in the majority of the world though and will give you no tax benefits. :P

You mean polygamy.

I guess there's some hope, since some publishers did start to prefer use of term yuri, even for SFW stuff, like Seven Seas from what I remember.

Completely unrelated but god bless Seven Seas and their crusade to be basically the only publisher localizing yuri works in English.

Sure, we make fun of shoujo ai, but there's way more terms we are completely misusing compare to their actual meaning in Japanese and they pretty much became separate words in English, so for better or worse, it's just easier to stick to it than actually try to except people to start using them correctly. I mean, how much success we had with shoujo ai so far?

But we are still in a transitory phase where all these terms get slowly solidified. If we don't start using them correctly now we really will have this pointless disconnect. If it can be prevented there is absolutely not reason aside from laziness and convenience to solidifying a mistake. Something like hentai in the first place is a word that has no specific context but that what is being discussed is "perverse" in some way, but not necessarily in a sexual way. But it can also be used in a sexual way and is mostly used that way in Japan as well, so there is no problem letting it be generalized like that.

Shoujo Ai on the other hand is plain wrong and has averse effects on the understanding of the cultures. We can't allow it to be continously misused that way. The fight to inform people of what it means should not stop. I personally convinced plenty of people not to use it anymore. It's not a lost battle at all.

I think "shoujo/shounen ai" are in a different boat than benign classification differences like ecchi or hentai because conflating pedophilia with queerness is actually a problem whereas having slightly different classifications of media from the original language is not. I don't think differing from Japanese cultural standards is a problem that needs to be combated it's just a reality of language and culture barriers and the only reason to get bent out of shape over it is pedantry.

Ecchi means literally the letter H, which is short for Hentai, which means "deviant behavior". Nowadays, it just means "sex", as in "ecchi suru" -> having sex. Mostly, it means "naughty".

The "light eroticism" thing is a western usage.

So?

Doesn't really bring anything interesting to the table it's just a series of mediocre sex jokes.

So what's the deal with the first page? You know, Shizuka on her knees in front of Mio, crying and (we can guess) begging for forgiveness? Is it supposed to be a flashforward of things to come?

Because, really, if that's what it is, it kinda spoils the suspense... >_<

Lmao it's the logical conclusion of the current development! XD

Everyone thinks this chapter was so great and the characters acted so realistic, and of course they are right... and there's a reason for it: everything that happens is solid, time-tested tv romcom/dorama fare!

The whole situation is something that's been done like 1000 times in telenovela-like Japanese tv series. Mio plays the loving wife of the MC couple, Shizuka plays the husband who loves his wife but succumbed to temptation and cheated on her once or twice, and Mio's role in this chapter is a perfect display of the angst and suffering and doubts of the wife who discovered her hubbie's cheating!

Especially when she wonders if she should endure the pain, pretend she knows nothing, and in that way protect the pleasant facade of the marriage! That's a classic. But of course in the end she always chooses to confront him (oops in this case that's "her") because otherwise the viewers (in this case readers) wouldn't get the conflict they/we crave.

If this keeps going like this, I mean going the Japanese dorama way, then in next chapter Mio will forgive Shizuka after Shizuka weeps and wails and apologizes on her knees long enough. :)

Most other yuri manga would have dragged out the "Is Mio gonna confront Shizuka?" thing for at least a couple chapters of her trying to pretend things are fine so this is actually pretty novel for the medium. A lot of dramas/romcoms would do the same actually because half their length comes from the characters wilfully refusing to communicate.

This chapter is definitely hard to read but I think it's also really powerful in a way to see Mio hold Shizuka accountable rather than trying to excuse her and try to maintain the pedestal she had her on.

The fact that those children's presence hinged around time travel and weird pocket dimensions really made it hard to buy that same-sex parents can't have children because realism.

At least this time the lecture was actually correct and relatively concise.

what