Kanade was never meant to be with Nanaki.

This is a ridiculous statement—who or what is doing the “meaning” here?

If the author intends for them to be together, they will be together.

This really does -- still -- feel like a cross between Ajichi's usual drama-school lesbians and Morinaga Milk. It has heavy, heavy aspects of Girl Friends, Secret Recipe and Secret of the Princess.

I can see the influences there for sure. Girl Friends was the first Yuri manga I read in full, and only my second after Citrus, which was not yet complete at the time. That said, the two main characters’ personalities are both more extreme in their presentation. Kurokawa’s deep seated inferiority complex, which Mari did have, but not to the extent Kurokawa does; Fujishiro’s superiority complex and meanness, which were traits Akko never possessed (she was popular, but kind!). These two have a lot more changing and accommodating to do than Mari and Akko. This is the first work from Ajichi that I have read, and I’m excited to see where the story goes next.

I see the cute-girl-makeover from Girl Friends, and the “Princess” theme from the obvious (although it was treated entirely differently in SotP), but I don’t quite recall what the connection with Secret Recipe would be.

Too bad Yori doesn’t speak Japanese.

If she did, she wouldn’t have misunderstood the girl, the same way we Westerners did.

Too bad you can't read English.

Like I said, using it about a person made it liable to cause confusion. Yori cottoned on to what Himari meant with just a little more context.

Sorry, I apologize for being excessively snarky.

But Yori spends the whole first part of the chapter thinking “This ‘love’ business has nothing to do with me,” she ponders her “love” for singing, and then there’s the hilarious ball of confusion on the roof with Himari with the two of them talking at cross-purposes about “love at first sight.”

Even without a knowledge of Japanese it’s quite obvious that’s there’s more than just a vocabulary issue going on between the two of them concerning the meaning of “love.”

You lot have got rather a distorted impression of this from reading it in translation. The word 一目惚れ does mean love at first sight but it's not wrong to use it how Himari used it about instantly becoming a fan. It can even be used for just objects - for example, in Long Riders it's the word used for Ami's reaction to the folding bike that gets her into cycling. Himari using it about a person made it liable to cause confusion. It's nothing to do with different ideas about love or Himari not understanding love.

Too bad Yori doesn’t speak Japanese.

If she did, she wouldn’t have misunderstood the girl, the same way we Westerners did.

But well, my guess is that she's gonna confess again if she feels that the feeling is mutual, so that's a lot of love song she gonna have to write to penetrate that dense skull of diamond

We must really be on the same page today—I all but included a crack about senpai needing to rent a jackhammer in my previous post.

Damm this manga started out great

You know, it did. Maki was a character with a lot of room for growth, and Liz had that “mysterious sexy beauty” thing down pat.

It turns out that the “mystery” of Liz was that she was a narcissistic, sadistic brat, and Maki’s experiences allowed her to fulfill her true self as a joyless submissive idiot.

As soon as Maki went to Liz’s apartment (for me) this turned into a pile of crap with the sole redeeming quality of being unintentional self-parody.

Back to the series itself, this is about the most contrived, can-only-exist-in-manga setup I've ever seen. I mean the audacity of running with the concept is a bit appealing, but wow.

So far it strikes strikes me as a quick-moving version of the not uncommon “Idiot #1 and Idiot #2 Can’t Understand Each Other” miscommunication-fest (that is we just get the confession part up front).

But senpai shows signs of being more proactive than that, maybe.

last edited at Jun 12, 2019 5:37PM

The Nazi thing was played out at least three pages ago, so if I see any more of it from here forward I'll just delete it on sight.

I guess this wouldn’t be the moment to jokingly call you a N . . . I’m not, I’m not—I didn’t!

Seriously. Not at all.

That's not how breasts develop, though... Usually the first bras you buy are not lingerie but look more like sports bras
Also it's a bit concerning that this clothing store sells erotic lingerie for kids who are around 10 years old!

Maybe this is set in a world like that of Satsuki-san is an Apartment Wife, where the legal age for consent/marriage has been lowered to "when you definitively hit puberty" (translating to first menstruation for girls), and somehow it actually worked out with little to none of the hiccups that would ensue if this was done IRL.

This was clearly a specialty lingerie shop, and some Japanese women are tiny; I don’t think the erotic gear was specifically aimed at children. Yukari just picked those up because she naively thought that because they were so minimal her classmates wouldn’t notice them under her clothes.

Some lingerie for grown women would fit in a cigarette pack.

Actually, AFAIKT, as the article BugDevil linked to suggests, Japan has never used the “SS” convention for naming ships, or more precisely, the ship prefix.

They tended to use the “-maru” suffix for merchant vessels, and no prefix for naval vessels, although Western writers often attach “IJN” (for “Imperial Japanese Navy).

The point is simple, and has no real bearing on the story’s meaning itself—the Nazi connotation is unlikely, but it’s not crazy to think of it.

last edited at Jun 12, 2019 2:25PM

Two different flavors of idiot, and a support squad of shippers on deck.

I’m totally in.

Tiny Haru is adorable.

Also, they gay.

Nazisploitation may never end... I mean they were really snazzy dressers.

And not so many real-life villains have the self-awareness and candor to adopt the death's-head as their emblem. None of this pretending "we're really the good guys" shit . . .

For God’s sake, BugDevil, no one has been claiming that Nazism was actually the intended reference. Readers just noted their own first reactions (since we were given no context for what “SS” might actually stand for). People were just goofing on it after that.

In the context of the story, that business about ship names is no more, or less, likely than a WW2 Nazi reference.

For the flying spaghetti monster's sake, Blastaar, did that post sound like it was serious? Just how bad is my humor that even that can be taken straight?

Yeah no, I wasn't saying they were actual marine travel afficianados either... just pointing to a certain Divine Jogger's "ignorant" line and saying SS is a common abbreviation.

We need to misunderstand each other fairly regularly, it seems. Sorry.

But as my KPop band link suggests (along with that image that was posted, and Girls und Panzer, etc)., the pop cultures of the Pacific Rim do get up to some weird and sometimes clueless shit in regard to WW2 and fascist imagery.

(I mean, as a word in itself “Gestapo!” would make a pretty cool band name.)

For God’s sake, BugDevil, no one has been claiming that Nazism was actually the intended reference. Readers just noted their own first reactions (since we were given no context for what “SS” might actually stand for). People were just goofing on it after that.

In the context of the story, that business about ship names is no more, or less, likely than a WW2 Nazi reference.

I mean SS is actually a ship prefix too...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_prefix

And damn if there aren't thousands of things abbreviated with SS. It's not "ignorant" to use SS for anything. Unless Nazi themes are actually present, there is nothing wrong with it and it's a bit weird that so many people jumped on that.

Well, yes and no:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Girls

SS Girls (Italian: Casa privata per le SS) is an Italian Nazi exploitation film by director Bruno Mattei. The film is about a brothel where traitors of the Nazi high command are eradicated. To help the brothel out, a Nazi commander, involved in intelligence work, enlists the aid of scientists who train various prostitutes to sexually satisfy the desires of the Nazi high command and root out any traitors.

The Seven Seas volume arrived yesterday, including the “Anaerobic Love” story, maybe because the protagonists looked basically the same as in the main story.

Funny author’s note describing her two selves: “Dark Kodama” (“Soap Opera, Jealousy, Heavy”) and “Light Kodama” (“Gentle Romance, Silly Humor, Boobs”), but noting “Dark Kodama draws boobs, too.”

When I heard that the band's name was SS Girls, I was really surprised.

I kinda expected 'em to look like this:>
(snip picture)
¯⧹_(⁰͡ ͜ʖ⁰͡ )_⧸¯

Yeah, I didn't even register it, because Japan, but as soon as it was mentioned, I was like "Hmnnnn that's problematic."

Given the lack of any Nazi theming, I imagine it's probably just the author being oblivious (as are some people in this thread, it seems...)

Maybe it’s a wider East Asia thing:

https://kotaku.com/k-pop-group-wears-nazi-like-uniforms-controversy-ensue-1658262760

Now you guys are just gnawing at (one of several) altruism paradoxes. Looked at a certain way, there’s really no such thing as “true” selflessness—people do things for others in order to serve their own needs, even if that need is to be (or to be perceived as being) completely self-sacrificing.

Ultimately, the question is whether the Yuu-Touko relationship is mutually beneficial (I don’t see any way to argue that it hasn’t been) AND (here’s the crux of the entire story, the central conflict that has only now been resolved) Touko has just allowed it to become emotionally reciprocal as well. Her new-found ability to do so is in fact the most important benefit Touko has gained from the relationship.

That, and those red-hot Yuu-smooches, of course.

BugDevil
June 10, 2019 4:10AM
Hm. Someone who feels this guilty just from sniffing hair never has the mental fortitude to go further.

As a woman, and ex- (mostly lifelong) Christian, that is not the case. I'll feel guilty feeling good from sniffing someone's hair, and the think fuck it, smells/feels so good and we're on a bed and I'm not Christian and neither are you, so let's go further. It was consensual btw.

Guilt can coincide with going further. Just look at the world we live in; it's not hard to find examples.

Uhh... thanks for the elaborations. My point was rather that Hino's guilt encumbers her boldness.
As a non-ex-non-Christian I can safely say that I have no idea what she will ask for, but she sure won't be sucking those breasts.

Oh ye of little faith. Or non-faith. Or non-ex-non faith.

Eventually Koguma is going to insist on getting her sweet buns sucked, and Hino will be powerless to resist.

This image is a perfect encapsulation of this series as a whole

And it's not like Doormat-chan even seems to get off on it . . .

Hey, if one girl thinks another girl is super cute and helps her buy her first lingerie, and then they buy matching lingerie, and then they have a matching-lingerie sleepover party, and . . . um, wait a minute, I was going somewhere with this . . .

Is there any compelling reason for me to not hope Liz gets run over by a truck?

I mean, I really don’t expect her lyrics to actually change the world, so otherwise I’m not seeing much in her favor.

You see, BugDevil, this is not a fictional story about characters, all of whom have psychological struggles of various kinds, some of the underlying reasons for which readers as yet have little or no solid information.

It’s a Human Resources training exercise depicting a variety of potentially problematic real-life scenarios to help you determine appropriate and inappropriate interpersonal behavior.

Expert counselors are standing by should you have any questions.

There are many more varieties of oranges than that, including hybrids, with highly variable ease of peeling.

Where I'm from, citrus is grown year 'round, but even where citrus is not local, an orange is an incredibly common snack to pack in a school kid's lunch.

EDIT: Seriously, I have an orange tree and a tangerine tree in my backyard.

I just want to pitch in on the discussion about oranges by saying you are so lucky. Where I am from, Spring weather was a mirage until literally 2 weeks ago. I would love to have orange trees on my backyard. I don’t even have a backyard, because condo life ;__;

But it’s ok, because we got JURASSIC PARK! :D
(only Canadians will understand lol)

Or NBA fans . . .