Rest of the story could have been total crap (though it wasn't) and the dedication would still have carried it all the way. l respect when people try to touch on real life topics in a genuine, heartfelt manner.

So that's what her chasing after Reimu means. Yeah unfortunately it didn't come across just through the story. Sort of a sad story knowing that in retrospect.

I'm looking forward to the next event. Cannot do much more of this nonstop event grinding without story to break it up with.

...

Well this was a thing.

There's an adorable side to Ria huh.

She acts over-the-top and full of herself but it seems like a front? Or it's not all she is.

Ria is a weird mix of being completely and utterly self-centered while also being one of the most thoughtful people you will ever meet, my interpretation of her is that she is genuinely believes her own hype but it is in such a way that her believing her own hype doesn't prevent her from being thoughtful.

I also feel is why Ria x Mayu works, Mayu is pretty much the only person besides Ria herself that believes Ria's hype, while also seeing Ria's kindness and that only causing her to reinforce her "Oh yeah, Ria really is awesome" mindset.

It is a strange combination since being thoughtful usually means having a measure of social awareness too, which Ria completely disregards when it comes to others' views of her. This might be stretching things but is it potentially related to her wish? I know her wish had something to do with her appearance but not if there was a specific wording to it.

I'd ship it despite only having seen two instances of interaction between them, from Sayuki's event and this memoria.

Is there a good way of mass adding people to increase the chance of finding somebody who's active + friends back? Currently I've typed random, common usernames like "leaf" or "nyan" (lmao) into the add friend search bar.

Aiko's blatant reverence is admittedly creepy, but I'm sure most people have had at least one person they've secretly idolized in a slightly more subtle version of what's shown here. It's not really clear yet where the story is heading. Of course with Aiko eventually finding out her beloved sensei is Mao, but how that'll be done and what the take home lesson will be I don't know. Is Aiko going to become disillusioned to some extent? Or will it be a case of transferred affection? Will Mao grow from this? All things I'm interested in finding out.

There's an adorable side to Ria huh. This event's made me more curious about her, because before this and the Sayuki event, all I knew about her was that she was an arrogant model who thought highly of her looks. She acts over-the-top and full of herself but it seems like a front? Or it's not all she is.

Also why is everybody unable to remember her name in this event? I don't get where the joke is coming from since in Moemura's side story I believe Madoka recognizes her immediately by name.

Edit: Ah the ending was fantastic. But if the real ending is based on all of the secret endings, that means what canonically happened is that they all messed up their challenges in some way. So instead of the perfect run through we see as the main story, it was imperfect all the way.

Yachiyo eats too fast and gets the book voucher instead of the grand prize. Sana canonically joins Ayaka's comedy troupe for an hour. Tsuruno is so passive/expectant that Iroha will do something Mitama interrupts them. And then Felicia chooses cookie carving, not mushroom hammering. I think that's how that can be interpreted as.

That's sweet. It gives even their "failures" meaning.

last edited at Jun 11, 2020 4:48AM

Ah, the author of Octave. It's interesting how distinct the characters' dialogue felt. They don't talk like how manga characters usually talk.

Would be nice to see why Yoshina likes Shibata. The hints of her liking Shibata are clear; why she likes her is completely unknown though. If anything, I thought Yoshina liking Shibata was sudden. Same issue, not clear why she likes Yoshina.

I really don't like this game's need to shoehorn in battles against random mooks which don't exist storywise purely to have battles. None of the battles in the current event exist storywise and they only put them in to just so the player would have something to do instead of making the event a pure story one with no/minimal battles.

That's been a toss-up for me, whether I enjoy it or not. For something like this which is pretty light and I don't have too much investment in, it feels alright. As Veya said above it can provide a break from all the reading. Although then I might get annoyed they don't allow auto on first try lol so I have to actually focus for random mooks. But yeah, sometimes it's fine with me so there's a break from the reading, sometimes I'm pissed at the obligatory battle because I just want to see what happens next. I don't know if they'd ever change it; the story/battle/story format has never changed in any event or story chapter as far as I know.

And when the event currency is tied to battles, at least getting event currency from story battles makes them feel more rewarding. And slightly better than grinding the same event boss over and over as it is in some other games.

FGO has the habit of stringing extremely long dialogue scenes in 0 AP nodes

For this specifically it seems like that wouldn't be an issue if they just broke up the dialogue scenes more. Dragalia Lost chains multiple story nodes together with no battles in between sometimes. Each story node probably doesn't take more than 10 minutes to go through . To be fair, the story in DL is much less substantial than FGO's. So might be sort of awkward to suddenly pause in the middle of a dramatic conversation or build in moments every few paragraphs so there can be a scene break. (I've never played FGO so I can't actually say if there are valid examples of that scenario.)

I don't even ask for a full L2D model, just give us a Memoria, since we get to see what Himika's siblings actually look like through a Memoria as well.

I didn't know that was a thing, they should do that more often.

The part 2 black bars intrigue me, but I will abstain from looking at them. This is interesting though because I never seriously thought about how only magical girls have animated sprites. It just seemed natural it would be that way? But it would be nice if we could at least see the faces of people like Tsuruno's father.

I did notice though how much they go out of their way to only include magical girls in most stories if they can help it. Like when established magical girl runs into some person she's never met before, is it a new person? Nope it's just another magical girl. It's almost incestuous how little contact they seem to have with other people. It's like they never meet normal people during their daily lives.

Why would they hold Kyouko's soul gem during the race?

It's a temperature endurance test. The competitors are bundled up and under a kotatsu, during summer. Since magical girls' bodies aren't their actual body, etc etc, if they kept her soul gem at room temperature, then Kyouko would also feel she's at room temperature the entire time. But Sayaka being lazy puts her soul gem on a left-under-the-summer-sun metal barrel which leads to Kyouko overheating and losing.

Maya being an angel is likely to reinforce her being "on top" plus her family name means "heaven". Also given her thing with birds and swans, white feather wings also fits her.

Oh that's absolutely where that fanfic's inspiration come from. Love that fanfic by the way.

Wish there had been just one more page where Claudine does something more romantic than calling Maya a vexing girl. Or a page showing Maya's reaction and maybe an eventual happy grin or something to indicate she does know her feelings have gotten through. I quite liked the beginning part though, where Maya is just repeating Claudine's name in different tones and with different expressions, and Claudine understands all of them. It makes for a believable set-up to Maya's sad "why don't my feelings get through to her" panel.

GAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY.

I wonder what timeline this is in though. One where they're all alive, Sayaka has contracted, and Homura has changed her hair style. Sad knowing what Kyouko has been through and cute seeing Sayaka step up to comfort her. This Sayaka seems more mature, so not any of the main timelines for sure.

So the letter was just from Mami, an invitation for a cake + tea party? It's wonderful how this initially light-hearted comedy manages to highlight their respective tragedies. Mami's loneliness and Homura's distance from the one she loves, as well as Madoka's fate.

Aiba, Claudine's voice actress, said there wasn't much difference in personality between anime/stage play Claudine, and Claudine's face on page 420 really shows that. Claudine truly didn't change much, besides getting more depth added to her as with all of the rest of them.

My memory of the second stage play isn't as good, so I can't remember if some of the flashback scenes existed in the original or not, but regardless, Suzu's flashbacks in chapter 5 were sweet.

Ah reading chapter 8 makes me positive that these scenes weren't depicted this way in the original. That's nice, I'm happy to see more context behind their pasts. I feel more sympathy towards Koharu now, since we didn't really see as much of her past in the play. I definitely don't remember this stuff about her standing in the back of the rehearsal room.

I wonder if the anime significantly influenced the direction this play went in? There's references to it during the play of course, but personality-wise. They're less aggressive with each other that's for sure, but that could be a continuation of what they learned during the first play. The character building that happened here is much better than in the first play.

Also Suzu x Mahiru is the only Mahiru OTP that exists.

This is a very faithful adaptation of the stage play. Everything seems to be word for word.

Also the facial expressions here are just as on-point. Their facial expressions are exactly the same as the real actors' during the stage play. Again, very faithful adaptation.

The artwork is superb. It can't be easy drawing all of their uniforms, hairstyles, and the backgrounds in such exquisite detail. Not to mention the weapons and action poses. I quite liked how with the manga setting, it's easier to change the stage, so they could show the classroom and different versions of the Twilight Theatre. The visual depiction of some moments, like on 1025 is also significantly more dramatic. I didn't realize that's the effect they were trying to go for, the stage itself crumpling up in an attempt to defeat them.

Quite liked this. It does its job perfectly which is transfer the stage play to manga form. The only things it's missing would be the live action parts, which of course can't be transferred. A shame since the fighting in this play is lively and dynamic.

last edited at Jul 16, 2020 7:01PM

Now that I've properly watched the source material, this has become a thousand times more hilarious. Especially when it comes to the Kukugumi's involvement.

Tsuruno's first bad ending is probably also the first more legit bad ending so far. Poor Tsuruno doesn't even get to execute her surprise anymore and they just stare awkwardly out the window the rest of the day?. Actually I feel bad for Tsuruno in all of her bad endings. They're all so awkward.

I can't believe Mitama showed up. Was not expecting her at all.

Day 5 was awkward beyond belief but was sweet.

Also have finally learned that the costumes give unique homescreen dialogue lol. I've been missing out on so much. Tsuruno's swimsuit voice lines are funny. And they gave swimsuit Kaede one set of unique voice lines. Just one. About Rena being busty. You must be kidding me. XD

So yea, with memorias it's better to farm currency using 10 ap quest. Also I'm surprised. When I farmed it at first I didn't drop anything, but now I already dropped 3-4 screws by just spending ap today.

Yeah the drop rate is really low. Not a reliable way to farm but an added bonus when it pops up. The RNG gods were in your favor.

Yea, some of them are pretty funny, though recent ones got pretty serious, presumably because they want to retire mirrors and want to explain it in the story,

Is there any reason mirrors is so neglected? I like the concept of the mirror witch a lot, and from where I am in the story, pretty much everything about it still a total mystery that I want to learn more about. Or well I hope they had more planned for the mirror witch besides an in-universe excuse for PVP.

Welp, I actually cleared the entire part 1 shop by just spamming the ever living hell out of 7AP, mostly on natural regen too, I just was consistent to never let my AP hit max...

Ugh I don't think that'd be doable for me lol. It's such a drain having to stop whatever I'm doing every five minutes to start up the quest again. Like it makes it so it's impossible to focus on anything else, so the only other real thing I can do is stare at the battle playing out or read something that doesn't require thinking.

Well, it does literally say T-card in black font on the top right, and the series of 0's on the bottom I'm assuming indicate card numbers. Plus rounded corners like a typical credit, etc. card. So checks out. It is pretty interesting though cause I also did a google search and turned up zilch on the first page at least.

Oh here we go. "T-card japan" did the trick. Two entries.

last edited at Jun 7, 2020 8:02PM

Some of the dialogue was either written or translated confusingly. Even basic stuff here, like they were talking about the jackets, why is Kozue exclaiming "You can't!" for? I think that's actually the most confusing part. It's also easy to miss that Kozue shoved the bracelet into her hand either when they were play-fighting or during the next page's dialogue exchange.

Ugh the panelling is so confusing. I can't even tell if the senpai gives Maki her own bracelet or Maki's bracelet. Both are completely possible but would change the meaning of the line Hirasaki says on page 18.

Well whatever, the simplest explanation is what Nezchan gave above. Maki is a dumbass/isn't ready to actively love and Hirasaki smiles to herself knowing something stronger than the ring can be fastened around them.

Mm. I came upon this author before with Aoishiro stuff, but since I never read the Aoishiro prequels, never checked out the rest of their works either. The 2009 NSFW one is whatever, but this one is much more masterful and thoughtful. You can feel the tension as the story pulls you in the next direction the characters are planning on taking.

The age of this story was immediately obvious even before I looked up what year Yuri Hime 13 was published in, because of the specific arguments being used in the opening. I appreciated it though. The biology/reproduction angle isn't one I've seen so explicitly stated in manga. I mean of course you get all of the "woman has to marry a guy for children" thing, but that's treated as a social norm or family pressure thing. Not as it is specifically presented here, the idea that humans are biologically programmed for heterosexuality because of a need for reproduction. So I really appreciated that subtle detail. It makes me think of all of the different arguments against homosexuality I've heard and all of the counter arguments that I've had to make. That one little detail would have been enough to give this work the touch of realism needed to touch my heart.

But of course the rest of the work was great too. When Asashi and Komachi say their parts, their words feel real. They're not acting just because that's what the story dictates, but because that's what they truly believe. Komachi is afraid of the societal retaliation, while willing to work hard for her own goals, and just wants Asashi to be happy. Asashi refuses to accept her fate and accepts the risks of her actions. As it is shown throughout, she is genuinely strong-willed without being completely naive. Even when she's acting in what would usually be a bratty way (the name-calling, tantrum, hiding), it somehow makes sense. Because we can see how Asashi could be braver.

... Anyway, this story has been favorited. Hmm actually maybe I'll check back in on it in a while.