I take random breaks from this series and every time I come back I swear everyone keeps getting ‘longer’??

Reiichi has serious yaoi body syndrome. Long ass limbs, oversized hands and whatever that chin is.

I don't think porn is the strongest indicator for someone's sexuality though. At least for women in general. If you've never had a crush on a girl (even if you're not straight) you can still watch lesbian porn and think nothing of it.

Well, I did mention that I think porn is not a necessary thing to figure it out, but I guess I could have broadened it to "it's not a real indicator either".

Like yeah, a good amount of straight women says they watch lesbian porn and even like it more than straight porn.
I on the other hand never liked lesbian porn, and I'm not straight. I only like it when I see it drawn, like in yuri mangas.

This is actually also a common thing, because the lesbian porn actresses are often faking it or putting on a show of what straight men think lesbian sex is like. Real lesbians can tell the details (like those godawful long fake nails. Ouch) are not adding up, so it turns them off. Of course there is no right way to have sex, so I don't particularly think they are always faking it, but whatever. Point is your opinion is not uncommon.
Though I have yet to talk to lesbians who enjoy watching gay(male) porn, so this whole intersecting stuff is hard to gauge for me.

I live in conservative religious country and we're supposedly first world one.

Welp, there aren't awfully many like that. I should probably remember that countries are not monolithic though. Murica for example has the bible belt of religious looneys and regressive rednecks, so I'd expect that kind of outdated thinking there. Similarily southern Germany or central Spain are also known to be overly conservative. I somehow doubt this stuff is common anywhere in France though (lol)

Whatever sign you put on a country, religion is luckily slowly dying in the West and conservatism shifts at a snail's pace as it always had. 100 years ago conservatives thought women shouldn't vote (well so did the liberals but whatever). So eventually they will get hung up on something new and think women watching porn is normal. Maybe.

Wow none of this really relates to the manga anymore, does it? Uh... something something donut holes are the best part.

BugDevil posted:

I think it's a weird stereotype that girls these days don't watch porn. You know that porn is also a taboo among boys? Adults always try to keep it from all younger people.

True, but it's more while children and teens in general are usually forbidden from looking at porn, girls are expected to never see porn, talking openly about sex and in general be innocent, pure, little angles their entire life. There's no such stigma for boys to talk or even think about sex. In fact boys, of any age, using naughty words, saying dirty jokes and sexually harassing someone is seen as boys being boys, while girls doing the same thing is considered unladylike.

And who expects that? Because most places I've been or seen have no such rules. It may be the conservative opinion and especially a religious rule, but among first world countries it is nearly expected that girls have seen porn. There is even this trend in recent years of couples watching porn together (don't ask me why).
I get your sentiment about men being more crude and won't deny it. I have seen that too. But anyone underage gets reprimanded or blocked from dealing with anything pornographic as far as society is concerned (not that it has ever stopped anyone).

Some religions have very strong opinions on porn and will punish people for that and I have no doubt that in those places boys are more likely to risk it than girls, but overall it's become pretty standard. Statistics on the matter exist and even if we assume that a majority of women does not answer truthfully, the already existing percentage proves that a huge amount of women worldwide do in fact watch porn. Incidentally... the most popular type of porn among women is lesbian porn, regardless of sexuality lol

I also note that once again defenders of the so-called big picture of this series have nothing to say about the high-schooler side characters, since even if you can hypothetically stretch a point to the breaking point and beyond to say that the themes of those episodes echo those of the main story, I haven’t heard anyone make a coherent argument that they amount to more than a distraction and occasional comic relief.

And I will uselessly chime in once again to tell you that those parts don't need to be anything more than what they are. It is your preconception that they need to fulfill a bigger purpose when they don't. Or rather your strawman of what "people defending the so-called bigger picture" want to see. I have only seen one person claim that and that's hardly representitive.

Your "nothing to say" accusation only would serve a point if it was an inherent requirement. That's all on you.

At least you didn't go back to your "these characters are pointless and don't contribute" thing again. I think I at least disproved that one back when Kuro and Miyabi gave Uta the push she needed to come to her conclusions. Even Konatsu's cautionary tale helped Uta. There are two sides to this story, the adult and the teenage side, both connected though Uta and Kaoru.

if you're not physically close to other females, it's easy to not recognize your reactions to those you do come close to, especially if you're strike zone is not in your peer group.

people blessed with the right surroundings, events, and people around them will certainly figure things out earlier, but not everyone is that lucky.

edit: and another thing that makes it harder for girls: porn is such a shamed and tabboo thing for younger girls to see/look at, so it's not even like many until their 20's that have really seen a lot of other naked women. boys have it much easier in that regard lol. like oh damn i'm getting way more turned on by the dude in this porno than the girl, maybe i'm actually gay.

I won't downplay your personal experience, I never denied it is possible. It should be mentioned though that you don't need to have someone from your strike zone among your peers to feel attraction. Just watching media with beautiful women in them can have just the same effect. I mean, someone posted an example of someone figuring it out from comics after all.
Porn is not really necessary to reach that conclusion, but I think it's a weird stereotype that girls these days don't watch porn. You know that porn is also a taboo among boys? Adults always try to keep it from all younger people. It doesn't work for either sex. Not with the internet so readily available to most countries these days. And seeing other naked women is actually not very uncommon in Asian countries, so even if porn is highly regulated, there are still lots of opportunities.

I guess what I am getting at is that my original statement still stands: It's unlikely to never experience an episode of attraction until the 20s. Not impossible, not even super rare, but unlikely. At least in this day and age.

edit: And that doesn't mean one figures out what that attraction means or that you are a lesbian.

last edited at Jan 8, 2020 3:58PM

^If the artist tags it Rape and NTR then we don't get to question it. It's what is intended.

The article posted upthread about a person who realized she was gay because of Kitty Pryde explains a lot in that regard, and also explains a lot of tropes... Definitely I can now see how a woman in particular could fool themselves in that way. Super friendship, right, like Nanoha and Fate! That totally has nothing to do with not being straight!

Oh I am fully aware of the methods by which one can justify this attraction as something unromantic, but at the very least something like it should happen. The very fact that the thought comes up (perhaps repeatedly) and that a justification needs to be produced is already what I am talking about.

If you take the protagonist from this particular story for example, she doesn't seem to have any such overly close relationships. Her self-loathing might be an extra barrier as she doesn't seem to want to show any of her true self to those around in fear of not appearing normal. Heck, maybe part of not feeling normal was that she got overly close to other girls in school, who knows?

These suggestions can give us gold on occasion. I somehow missed this one back then. This seems fairly in-character.

In most countries homosexuality is neither accepted nor legal. Considering how heteronormative most societies are, how rarely the topic comes up in real life or fiction and that being open about it can often give you more troubles than it's worth, so you might live your entire life never encountering it, not realizing you're gay and instead assuming there's something wrong with you doesn't sound that unresonable.

Although typically one would also be attracted to women, whether one realizes it or not, so that is something set-ups like this completely ignore. No matter how heteronormative or whatever society is, hormones are hormones. So an unaware lesbian woman never having felt any attraction to another woman in over 20 years is at the very least unlikely. That person still can feel like they are broken or wrong, but many yuri stories act like the woman in question never even felt anything for either sex until that fateful moment.

It makes more sense depending on how low one's sex drive is of course. But typically they start feeling it hard the moment the realization strikes like some kind of limiter is being released. The magic of yuri manga lol

Never forget.

That reaction is still out of the ordinary. Even if excitement/shame can make people blush something fierce, I still hold that this reaction was way overboard if Kaoru was not at least a bit interested.

The azur lane guys couldn't leave the work of animation to others so they started their own animation studio lo/ https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2020-01-08/azur-lane-yostar-establishes-animation-studio/.15514

Oh cool, so we finally get no yuri from the right hands instead of no yuri from the wrong hands.

Oho now these chapters start to have somethig akin to a plot. Such high quality art on each page is delightful~

Who at this point thinks that Uta getting together with Kaoru is a good idea, and, whether they get together or not, does the story actually seem to be moving toward the two of them resolving their relationship one way or the other?

I think I mentioned this a loooong time ago (somehow talks about the writing have long since usurped opinions on where the plot will actually go), but I don't think Kaoru and Uta becoming a couple is a good idea. I also never believed that was the conclusion we were headed for. The title has long since become universally applicable, but once upon a time, everyone reading this had already started out knowing Uta would not get her way.

If anything the plot has since evolved so far that some people can actually doubt that truth we thought unshakable at first. Because Uta is perhaps Kaoru's only true savior, the possibility of a romantic involvement suddenly is more than 0%. As for whether the story is heading for a resolution between these two, that's a given. We are currently figuring out how we got here. The next step is to see where we go from here and from all the plot points that were set up, Uta is the key, naturally.

As weird as it may seem, at this point she is sort of the outsider in the cluster of relationships around her. She is the wildcard. She is not involved with Reiichi/Risako and she is only passive on her friends and mother's side. The only thing that anchors her is Kaoru... and the reverse seems to be painfully true as well. Uta's main theme is indepedence and Kaoru's main theme is dependence. So they gravitate towards each other as they lose hold on everything else.

I've never hidden that my impression of the story is by far not as critical as most people's, but I do understand the concerns. I do not at all feel that the story itself is convoluted, but more like a puzzle. We essentially have most of the center pieces, but some of the border pieces only appear bit by bit. Speculation is what keeps stories like this afloat and revealing key details may also spoil other results.

This writing technique of withholding information for the sake of tension is double-edged for sure and sort of lazy, but in this particular case... we see how the characters act and feel nontheless. Uta and Kaoru are our eyes and ears, both of which are not aware of why Reiichi and Risako act the way they do. They may know a bit more about the death of the mother, but they are just as clueless as us towards the rest. We still see how Reiichi, Kaoru and Uta react to their mother. We can tell exactly what kind of relationship they have and what resulted from the incident back then.

Then the only thing we need to figure out the puzzle is Risako's intention and whether Reiichi did cheat. That's the only thing we need to complete the puzzle. But even after we complete that puzzle, the actual final arc of the plot revolves entirely around Uta's and Kaoru's decisions, which they will make regardless of what the whole finished puzzle tells us.

last edited at Jan 8, 2020 9:56AM

This story is getting very confusing...
Can somebody explain it?

As the great cynics of our time don't want to cooperate, let me try to do it.

1. Uta lives with her brother and his wife.
2. Uta has secret feelings for her sister-in-law, Kaoru.
3. Uta tells her the truth after a while and Kaoru rejects her.
4. Kaoru suspects her husband, Reiichi, is cheating on her with her old friend Risako.
5. Risako and Reiichi had been dating in high-school despite Kaoru's one-sided feelings for Reiichi.
6. Kaoru's mother died due to reasons that involve Uta's and Reiichi's mother who is a doctor (possibly medical malpractice).
7. Reiichi and Risako broke up after that death and Kaoru and Reiichi got together instead, then married.
8. Uta's and Reiichi's mother returns from overseas (she went there probably because her medical license was revoked in Japan after probably killing Kaoru's mother)
9. Mother tells Uta to move back in with her. Uta agrees, because Kaoru rejected her and she wants to get away from that.
10. Kaoru is left alone, doubting her husband, doubting her friend and missing Uta.

Bonus: Uta's friends Kuro and Miyabe start dating and are steadily getting a more solid relationship.
Bonus 2: Uta's other acquaintance Konatsu had a lesbian crush on her teacher/nurse in the past, but she rejected her after having sex with her once, because of their social positions. After that Konatsu stopped caring about love and just fills the hole with loveless sex.

That's about it. Some details have been left out.

last edited at Jan 8, 2020 8:13AM

Office romance is the second most common yuri genre at this point (next to the unbeatable school setting), but 90% of the time they don't even say what their company does lol
Seems a bit more lax this time as they don't need to wear suits. Good.

Feeling broken because you don't find the right guy... A common experience to be sure.
I feel a bit bad for the guy. He seemed sweet. He just happened to pick a closet lesbian.

PS: Somehow the phrase "donuts are good because they have a hole" rings some bells. I can't quite pinpoint it though.

last edited at Jan 8, 2020 8:18AM

Being cold, calculating and unable to relate to other people are signs of psychological illness after all.

Yeah, that's all signs of being a psychopath. I feel like the author is taking this too far with the characters. They seriously made me dislike all of them, even when the characters in question are not bad people. They're all unlikable for different reasons. Seems like Risako is going to be a bad person too.
Kaoru is highly unlikable at this point. Reiichi too. Uta is not bad per se, but her misery and her clinginess to someone like Kaoru just makes her unpleasant to read about.
I actually enjoy angst quite a bit, but this is straight up misery and depression.

Well I disagree with you quite strongly, but whether someone is sympathetic or horrible to you is ultimately a subjective matter. As much as Blastaar laments it, the lack of concrete information is also why I don't see these characters as terrible people... yet. All of them have their reasons, some not as explicit as others... yet.
Risako is being propped up as some kind of villain, but that seems to be just a red herring to her true motivation.

The psychopath/sociopath thing is just an option I added for the sake of completeness. It is very much an option not uncommon for drama and angst stories, but I doubt it will be used here.

last edited at Jan 8, 2020 5:29AM

I just don’t see how this supposedly disengaged and hyper-rational Risako squares with the bulk of what we know about the rest of the story.

It boils down to why she chose this method in the first place. Perhaps she realized that straightforward does not work with these two. As we've seen, Kaoru would rather cling to her hope than listen to reason. Reiichi seems to be too guilt driven to push Kaoru away either. Under those circumstances sowing doubt might be the only method she thought available.
There is also the fact that we don't exactly know how well she understands Uta's situation. They did not have many interactions, but she constantly heard about her from both Kaoru and Reiichi. Your example of telling Uta the truth, but Kaoru a lie would make sense if she assumed Uta would tell Kaoru.

And well, I also refer to the other possibility I added. Maybe Risako enjoys seeing Kaoru's emotional reactions? Perhaps messing with her is indeed the goal itself. I don't particularily believe in this one, but I have seen weirder twists. Being cold, calculating and unable to relate to other people are signs of psychological illness after all.

last edited at Jan 7, 2020 6:57PM

To me it doesn't seem like Risako loves Kaoru, at least not yet, but rather she just sees her as a close friend that she didn't want to see get hurt over an indecisive and lazy guy look Reiichi.

I would agree with you but the fact that she is still cheating with Reiichi after their marriage is only hurting Kaoro physically (broken leg) and mentally. Risako is supposed to be smart and logical but there is little logic in how she's going about this "protecting".

I feel like a broken record here after so many chapters, but we still don't have proof Reiichi cheated on Kaoru. I know to many it's a foregone conclusion, but there are quite a few twists that can change perspective (as this flashback is currently attempting to do).

So I don't honestly know whether Risako having a romantic interest in Kaoru is at all the way this is supposed to go. We have plenty of hints that she doesn't care about relationships and that she had no interest in Reiichi, but what we mostly have between her and Kaoru is envy. She envies the way Kaoru can be stupid and emotional and chase irrational dreams.

The question now is whether she wants to do these things to get more emotional responses out of Kaoru or if she really does care about her and wanted to spare her a bad fate. We do know that Reiichi only agreed to go out with Kaoru after Kaoru's mother died. That's when Risako and Reeichi broke up too. So Risako's plan to split them apart may have broken down, because she realized that Kaoru needed Reiichi to get through that. But now that Kaoru has stabilized she might feel confident that she can break them apart again. To "save" her from this hopeless marriage. She is certainly pushing both their buttons to raise friction.

If it really went the lesbian Risako route, that is at least marginally set up too. The reason she doesnt get into relationships and only focuses on work might be her sexuality. The reason she cares about Kaoru when she is generally neutral on everyone is that she could have feelings for her. It's quite interesting how several options popped up now in a short amount of time. This puts a lot of stuff into perspective.

last edited at Jan 7, 2020 5:46PM

Also, do y'all think the mind reading is going to stay, or do you think that it'll fade once it's no longer needed (a la Fragtime)?

I'm not sure why it would fade. It's relevant to make communication easy for this pair and it would seem pretty random to just lose such a power.

Sometimes these discussions do pop up and I'm always surprised that people hear actual voices in their heads when they think. I don't hear my thoughts, they just are there :P Not sure I can explain it any better

Nah, most thoughts are silent in your head, you don't even think about it. That's why I said conscious thought.
Try to say a sentence in your head. You actively are aware of that thought, but the voice is not really easy to pinpoint. I don't think it sounds like your vocal chords, but it's still there.

So the question of course is what the telepath actually hears/reads. Characters in manga seem to have extremely coherent thoughts that are closer to inner monologue, so they feel more like conscious thoughts.

last edited at Jan 7, 2020 11:53AM

my problem is not with the shortness of the chapters it is just nearly all the chapters feels like fillers. I guess I wished this story was more than a comedy where a lot of things just happens and ends. I like the art and character design so I will continue reading.

I am trying to explain to you here that the chapter length is the reason it feels like the pace is bad. 2 chapters of this are like 1 normal chapter in weekly manga. That means instead of 40+ chapter we are more around 20+ chapters. In that time quite a lot has happened, whether you want to acknowledge that or not.

Suddenly a tint of blue in a world of contrasts.

It doesn't really pertain to the chapter, but I do wonder what the inner voice sounds like to a telepath. Would it sound like mute girl's voice from before the operation? Or does it not have anything to do with that? If I consciously voice thoughts in my head, I don't think it reflects my actual voice.
It can't be that she just "reads" the words literally like she would a book, because then she couldn't tell tone or excitement, right? This has always fascinated me.

last edited at Jan 7, 2020 11:23AM

that is it I am now going ape mode WHY THE FUCK THERE IS NO DEVELOPMENT IN THIS MANGA

There's been plenty of development in the manga so far. If you're not satisfied with the pacing, you don't have to read it.

Not enough development for 47 chapters. Pacing is slower than my grandma. I know I don't have to read it bro don't worry asdf

We are talking about a manga here that has 8 pages per chapter at the most, sometimes just 6. And all of them usually need a punchline, which constricts them even more. This pace is absolutely normal.