Wait, she didn't confront them?! Miyuu is more held back than expected?
But at least she clearly shows what she wants, which is a breath of fresh air.

Holy moly indeed

Alternative managed to be far better than it had any right to be.

Blame it on the competent writer. Managed to turn wasted potential into something genuinly good.

I wish every day was cat day... especially when it has this mystical effect on girls.
We can only dream.

Episode 5 was dope. "I didn't know it was that kind of book! I just wanted to buy something while you were at the register, I didn't have any ulterior motives!"
Touko is hilarious~

What would you like to get rewarded with then? :)

Cheesecake I guess.

I am showing you how much I appreciate your efforts, by sending a funny video to make your day :P

Your arguments were great. I just think there are a few points where the actual things shown in the manga are so ambiguous that in the end, it could be seen either way. For example, Yuu is clearly shown to not be completely sincere about stuff (her heart is beating but she even tells herself that it's not her heart which is beating, it's Touko's).

So the extent of her "self-deception", you could interpret it to start happening only after she realized Touko would not like to be loved back, or that it started from the very beginning or somewhere in between. For me I think it was in between; she genuinely did not have interest in Touko, but when she started feeling good with the kisses and Touko's physical proximity plus company, she denied it from both Touko and herself. Until it was too undeniable.

I feel so appreciated.

It's true, but alas, that insincerity is because of the promise as I mentioned.

It seems to go extremely against her character as someone who seeks love to deny it so bluntly and genuinly at that point in time. Also again... only 2 kisses before she realized her feelings in chapter 16, but weeks of interactions and admiring/getting closer to Touko mentally. Which one would have more weight and has been shown to affect her more? It's pretty clear. Keep your physicality obsession if you must, but don't ignore the facts please.

last edited at Nov 2, 2018 11:54AM

BV has snapped, but at least he learned to use the edit button.

Yes! We need the nutshell interpretation of the facts here, just like in Citrus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLrLp6M809o

You see kids, when you try your hardest and actually put in the effort, you get rewarded with an unrelated video.
Gotta love life.

last edited at Nov 2, 2018 10:24AM

@S. Miki In case the term doesn't mean anything to you, basically a Chinese vampire that hops like a rabbit.

last edited at Nov 2, 2018 9:13AM

Where is the definitive proof? Your interpretation doesn't count, I need something better :P This is a manga so it has only pictures and dialogues, most of what's happening is inferred.

Your inferences are based on the "model" of the characters you have in your head. That's based on your internal models of how people work. And your models are largely based on how you work. Which is why people are often reluctant to accept someone else's interpretations about anything and see stuff the way they want to see.

In my way of interpreting the story -- taking a specific scene as example -- when Yuu was kissed by Touko in ep 3 she totally felt the physical attraction pull to do it (the scene in the anime even focuses on her eye changing to one of desire, her pupil dilates), even if she is not in love with Touko yet. And Touko totally catches on to that even before the kiss, that she felt flustered about Touko being so close to her and looking at her like that, which is why she teases Yuu. But Yuu is not going to reply "oh yeah I wanted to do it, this feels nice", because it would be awkward and in a way "losing" to Touko who has been obviously trying to win over her affections. In the story, in my opinion, she is simultaneously curious about falling in love and reluctant to let her feelings flow and actually fall in love.

Oh man... Well, as long as I don't say anything veering from pure objectivity, I may be forgiven for this. Don't kill me mods.

Your interpretation could be seen as legitimate, if the manga didn't clearly show how it really is.

Your interpretation is lacking in way too many aspects. That scene in episode 3 doesn't necessarily have anything to do with desire (pupils dilate from pretty much anything, including surprise/stress, light shifting etc.).
Touko teases Yuu, because she said she has no interest in her and doesn't understand love, but still goes along with something so ridiculous. So she infers (most likely jokingly) that Yuu might be into it after all. What Yuu is flustered about is not the kiss and we know that because when she was kissed the first time she wasn't flustered in the slightest. I don't see how you can retroactively change that in your headcanon. If Yuu really liked the sensation of kissing so much, why did she not feel anything from the first one?

Yuu is pretty direct about how she feels about anything, except when it comes to the promise later on that she won't fall in love, form then onward she doesn't say what she really thinks concerning their relationship. But at this point there is no reason to assume she was fronting. I think I already explained previously that the reason Yuu is evasive and agreed to Touko's request in the first place is that she hopes to feel something from it, not that she actually does. In a way she is using Touko's affection to test herself. Doesn't work though. The chapter title wasn't "A kiss is just a kiss" for no reason.
PS: Yuu was not the least bit flustered after the kiss.

Now let's go to the flipside. Yuu is almost constantly thinking about Touko, in many aspects, even about how she is cute, how she's admirable, how she feels special for being the only one she shows her weakness to etc. I don't really feel like picking out all the pages, because... that would be several every chapter.

The sports festival scene quite clearly shows how just watching Touko do her best and shine brightly makes her heart race and space out. And only after that, the proverbial "Starting shot" to her falling in love, did her heart start to race during kisses. Only then she finally felt something.

So yes, to me it is quite clear what the order of things was. Both work in tandem, but feelings came first, physical excitement later. As it usually goes in romance stories and manga, physical intimacy only reflects the degree of love/closeness. Starting from here they did get more touchy-feely of course (when Touko stayed over for sure).
The only sign of Yuu having a physical interest before she realized she had fallen that I can think of is when she played with Touko's hair before the speech. Maybe that she apparently mentioned to her mom that her senpai is pretty, but that's like, an objective statement almost.

last edited at Nov 1, 2018 9:40PM

@BV Don't forget about that EDIT button. It really helps.

I didn't relent to peer pressure, but I can sense when my need for bantering and discussion makes others uncomfortable and would make them want to stop playing the game so to speak.

Semantics, but so be it. You are so considerate.

You do like to play, don't you? Jeez lol I will just say one thing, which is that it's not stalemate because I had nothing else to say, but because I usually discuss to find out "what's right rather than who is right" :P

But I realized in our discussion it's not possible to find that out, because the crux of the issue is unprovable: did Yuu fall in love with Touko because of talking to her only (pure personality) or also because she was kissed, physically being touched by her, and felt good about it/finds Touko good-looking? There is no way of knowing that without asking the author, and the scenes could be interpreted either way.

In that case, I think the interpretation says more about the reader than anything else. I would never imagine Yuu could fall for Touko just because of personality because I can't even imagine what that would be like. Similarly, I don't see a problem with Sayaka at least getting some hot action from Touko even if she gets rejected, because hey, that's better than getting no action at all. lmao Maybe my gf is right and I do think a lot like a dude, not sure.

Making it hard to quit...

Without reopening the topic, we have definitive proof for one, while the other is mere conjecture on your part. So I'll at the very least say you should accept the thing that is obvious, even if you won't stop interpreting things into it that, well, aren't.

Yeah, we already established that you don't care about how that would affect the characters (and short-sightedly think that it would be better than nothing), let's leave it at that, however annoying it may be.

Well I think you are generalizing dudes pretty badly. What a shocker.

last edited at Nov 1, 2018 8:30PM

I mean, having romantic chemistry or at the very least have the characters get along is a low bar to reach imo.
EDIT: Well sorry about that.

last edited at Nov 1, 2018 8:09PM

^There are much worse versions for sure. But I prefer them not to be bigger than the woman's head, thank you very much. There is a pretty obvious line between sexy and deformed.

^I know what you said... you still have no proof though.
That sexual stuff can just as easily be interpreted as normal predatory behaviour. The reason this ship exists at all is because people twist it into the sexual predator perspective. I find their interactions funny, so I like the ship, but I still know it's a crack ship.

And there it goes lol
Bye bye convo

^No no, I wasn't talking about official, you were the one who used the word canon lol
I am saying Rider's "clear attraction" isn't portrayed as romanitc or sexual. At least not clearly enough to make it as set in stone as you claim. And when a character hates/is afraid of the other and no romantic interest is clearly displayed on either side, even in subtext, I consider a ship a crack ship usually. It's like shipping Illya with Berserker. Sure, those two care about each other and have a deep connection, but it was never shown to be romantic.

last edited at Nov 1, 2018 6:07PM

Wow, looking remarkably like P5's protagonist there Riku. No wonder she's hot~
Now that's a really nice story. The werewolf aspect was kind of irrelevant, more for flavor I guess, but that isn't a problem. I like this "apparent superficiality" vs. "growing into a relationship" topic.

last edited at Nov 1, 2018 2:34PM

Captured

Well first of all, your definition of canon is rather loose it seems. Unless it's been confirmed by Nasu offhand somehwere, the Visual Novel does not actually point it out. It's mostly portrayed as a hunter-prey kind of deal with obvious fanservice/joke connotations.
Secondly, Ayako very clearly opposes the idea intensely and is afraid of Rider. Crack ships are usually ships that cannot, should not or make no sense to happen.

@random

1. Just addressing someone by family/last name is irrelevant to the topic. And I never heard anybody legitimately introduce themselves in reverse order before. That is probably a cultural difference, which is why I said you handle it closer to the Japanese. That's usually a corny line you'd associate with James Bond. Nobody does that.
2. If someone introduced themselves like that with a foreign name, you damn well probably don't know which one's the first or last name, now do you?
3. You are being hysterical. Literally nothing is lost, not a single nuance, by reversing the order. N-o-t-h-i-n-g. You are projecting other localization issues on something that is not like it.
4. I don't understand the US school system either. I have no idea what you expect though, the translation is for the American market where they know what it means. If you want something that makes it equivalent to your education system wait for it to get translated into your language. Or if you live in an English speaking country where it's not treated the same, tough luck. You are the one who says people should be able to adapt to foreign concepts.

last edited at Nov 1, 2018 12:36PM

Formal/official contexts tend to index by family name tho and treat given names as somewhat secondary considerations. And where I live it's plenty common for people to both introduce themselves and be addressed with family name first in colloquial speech...

Uh yeah... so that just means wherever you live handles it the same way as the Japanese do. Kind of irrelvant to the topic at hand, ain't it?

Visible stiff nipples might be too raunchy for that manga.

Then how about invisible ones? Just implying it should do the trick haha

^Medusa x Ayako is my favorite crack ship.

Just started catching up with the last month’s updates on this (a little gift to myself after getting some actual work done), and I was wondering if somebody could help me understand the unique combination of atmospheric conditions and Japanese physiology that results in:

• Anyone who gets even a little wet in the rain will inevitably get a severe cold unless they immediately take a long bath.

• Overwork (particularly studying or desk work) can cause people to pass out with a very high fever.

• Colds and fevers are pretty much indistinguishable, and often resemble comas.

(We’ll just leave that sexual-arousal-nosebleed thing for another time.)

I'm no doctor scientist with a Nihongonese degree, but overworking does weaken a person's immune system severely, especially when done days on end. Japanese people work until they collapse, having often 16-18 hour work days, even sleeping at work. It's less of a cold and more of a severe sign of exhaustion, where the smallest things can make them fall ill.
Students are smiliar to a lesser degree, studying late into the night at their desks, usually not realizing how cold they are or in other cases finally catching up on their hobbies at night, because they kept working/studying all day. It's not a coincidence that many normal anime series have a 2AM timeslot.

I was replying to BV saying they think it would be weird for someone to be aro but not ace. In general, I'm not interested in romance, so I was using my limited experience to try to explain it.

My break up doesn't effect my views on romance.

So you were in a relationship despite being not interested in romance? Guess that was your experimental phase? Sorry it didn't work out then.

At this point it looks more like you’re trying to push someone into continuing when they’re trying to disengage. I don’t appreciate that, nor do I appreciate the “oversensitive” dismissal toward the other poster.

It’s clear that the time has come to drop it, so please do so.

I can't pressure anyone into doing anything they don't want, so I won't.
You know, that was me dropping it. Let me have my spite at least.

Well then tell me, if someone who had no business with your conversation told you to stop and then said they will leave, because you don't listen to their unrelated demands... how is that not oversensitive? I do not appreciate that kind of thing either, but I suppose I went too far somehow. You make the rules after all shrugs

2.5D!

She's embarrassed for getting so much candy? Or just overjoyed?

Oh, I thought it would be a fake out and she would go for the kiss instead. Still good.