this is all real, i was the older sister

Hiroko lives in a mid century yuri subtext tragedy, Ayaka lives in a 2010s romcom manga. This is a yuri multiverse thing. Change the fate of the shoujo tragic heroine through gumption and grit.

Literally a chaste kiss on the lips as a goodbye and ending before the protagonist goes off to their literal or metaphorical queer death is such a like, 1950s shoujo novel thing to do, oh my god

Oof ouch owie my peaches

its a race to the bottom in terms of likeability for these two organizations lol. Hopefully our cohort of cool alt-girl secret agents, the regular gay high schooler, and her priest dad, can all work together to idk save the day or some shit

Gina on her way to radically alter church doctrine through the power of love and staggering social capital

Welcome to gay catholicism

"man i really wanna draw a hyper detailed picture of a coin laundromat... but no one cares about washing machines :/"

"Oh! lemme add some yuri to this image, that way people will care"

all my favorite manhuas are having their child arc right now

There seem to be quite a few actually existing groups who are poor and oppressed, who nonetheless manage to emphasize community solidarity, restorative justice and stuff instead of fear and brutal punishment.

FWIW, we've jumped in at the "punishment" end of the pool; it could be that people are doing other things too, but Hibai brought Benika here, not to Refugee School.

But yeah, it'd be harder to build community if the refugees are from lots of different places, with different cultures.

I think the key here that we learned in this chapter is that this security force is essentially an arm of Babylon. The fact that the vigilantes are organized through a secretive top down government organization, who's main solution to problems is overwhelming violence, makes the violent nature of the vigilantes more understandable.

If the refugees themselves were able to organize their own forms of community as opposed to being told whats right by an organization like Babylon then maybe we could have seen something different, but we didn't.

I'm curious to see what the church's influence means in the refugee camp, presumably they have their own organizations which have different methods and goals, although they seem to be walking down the path of militarization and violence as well.

last edited at Jul 18, 2023 6:54PM

Well would you look at that, Benika is having the exact same debates we are, in the actual chapter.

Straight up Hell itself,in post modern Japan no less.

Do we have clear indicators that this country is in fact Japan? I was getting the sense that it was supposed to be some other vague country.

It hasn't been outright stated, but it seems almost certain this is near-future japan. First off benika and her dad having japanese names, and the refugees adopting japanese names too (Rose Madder Shinegawa) or whatever her full alias was. Second are the local/express train lines, the japanese style convenience stores, and some japanese text on background signs and whatnot. Then you have the "refugee sushi" and "chili+fish sauce soup" which are all made from commonly available japanese staple foods which would likely be given either as rations or bought easily at a discount.

To some extent the story being told in this manga is already happening in Japan, albeit on a smaller scale with less flashy stunts. In order to keep the economy running (ie have a supply of workers to perform menial labor with low wages to prop up japanese businesses) the government has already started using work-visa programs to bring in immigrant labor, mostly from other parts of asia, and there are plenty of instances of immigrant employees trapped at their jobs with no way to leave unless they want to be deported.

a bit late to the discussion but I think the scene with the paramilitary police force also has a really important meta role in forcing the reader to critique policing. It's an extremely common trope in manga to have the protagonist catch a criminal while they run away from the scene of the crime, only to hand them off to a clean, sanitized police force and never see or think about them again. Once the police leave both the character and reader are free to forget and stop caring about what happens next.

Here Benika does just that, but instead of the "officers" taking the guy off the page forever, Benika is brought to the area where the criminals are held, and seeing the cages, people sitting with bags over their heads, and the pile of skulls, those cleanly smiling vigalantes are no longer quite so sanitized, especially when she finds out what they actually do to a lot of the people here. The fire she's invited to warm herself by is quite literally a pyre for burning the bodies of criminals.

Regardless of if you think the vigilantes are in the right or not, the way this entire narrative was framed, both for Benika and the readers by extension, does a great job at forcing us to actually confront the realities of policing, and putting task of enforcing rule of law into a handful of armed people.

Crying. Sobbing. Wailing, even.

Me too. I hope that we get a ton of beautiful sulemio stories to add to the disability tag on here, always love seeing well made stories

It's easy to view these characters in a negative or critical light, but I really appreciate that this manga tackles the "ugly" feelings and emotions associated with teenagers figuring themselves out and exploring queer identities too.

too real to imagine a near future where immigrant labor is welcomed into japan on the premise that theyre kept in highly segregated areas oof ouch owie

abstract food yuri

It's not a big thing but I'm really happy to see a woman who has a deep/masculine sounding voice treated so normally in a story like this

The map alone is what makes this worth reading, I like the girl lying dead at the bottom of the kirara jump area

happy manga of the week lets get these comments to 7777

I wish that hot masc ladies would hit on me while im working at my bad retail job too

ah Risa, you really deserved the W but you're not getting it, yeah Ayaka just isn't into you which sucks but. I hope Risa gets a W by the end of this, there's so many other lesbians around Risa and they'll love you I just know it.

at the very least there's a lesbian bar she knows that she can go to for support

hmmmm, that’s AN amount of blood… you ok there director?

Thats not blood thats the iodine that Shen dumped down her shirt lol

Jiang is living out her best romcom life and I'm happy for her

i wish the credit page for ch27 was canon

god same, it fits so well

generic white t shirt with a logo for 8900 wtf

I thought I'd already commented here but since I'm not seeing it I'll say it again:

This is possibly my favorite one-shot of all time, its the perfect mix of good character writing with well paced and interesting developments, with a cute and timeless art style. And the MC looks kinda like me too, so thats a fun bonus.