Oh, I agree that's the concept, but her reaction seems much stronger than just to the idea of outliving people in the abstract. My reading, I guess.

Hah, I'd mentioned an akaname just before the chapter featuring one. I should capitalize on this precognition and/or author-inspiring power and suggest another "species". How about that youkai that demands you clean their giant foot? Or a nuckelavee (Irish centaur with no skin and poison breath)?

I'm not saying it's not a valid romanization or the intended romanization, just why a) the joke doesn't get made more and b) the long-o-as-ou is common in fan circles.

This is cute — I'm fond of "Honest Axe" references.

(The original usually has a sequel where a scheming fellow finds out about the woodcutter's new gold axe, so goes and dumps his axe in the same spring/pool — the god/fairy/whatever gives the options, but the guy is greedy (and presumably didn't get the whole story) so claims the gold one — and the god says "Liar!" and he loses it all.)

By the end it's quite clear that everybody waiting in the hall was expecting more or less this. (It's nice seeing the guys, too — "Oh, hi, Chrono, are we third-wheeling for your little sister again?" "No, we're third-wheeling for your owner, ferret-boy.")

For clarity, I think the flow on the last bit is:

Eli: I really respect and love her a lot!
Nozomi: I see~ *grin*
Eli: You too, of course!
Nozomi: Thank you very much~

last edited at Feb 17, 2020 2:03PM

Let's see...

If we're seriously mapping, Mami pretty much has to be Nozomi. Nico as Sayaka and Maki as Kyoko is, if anything, too obvious. Hanayo as Nagisa? ("Mami, cheese rice...").

Then again, since we've already got UmiEli as HomuMado, we're not strictly in direct match territory. Let's keep Nico as Sayaka ("Saya Saya Saaaa!"), but put Honoka as Kyoko (just imagine her saying, "If I see you wasting bread, I'll kill you") and Rin as Nagisa, for no readily explicable reason. Let's throw in Maki as Kyousuke and Hanayo as Hitomi for bonus points. Kotori gets to wear the Kyuubey costume.

Either way, Nozomi still has to be Mami. Huh.

Edit: Why does Nozomi have to be Mami, you ask? Eri has the answer.

last edited at Feb 22, 2020 5:06PM

Hmm.

This feels like it's trying to do at least two, maybe three different things at once. You've got the standard NicoMaki two-tsunderes-bouncing-off-each-other thing, you've got the whole "we have to pursue our separate dreams but once we achieve them we'll be real lovers (someday)!" thing that Japanese school romance seems to thrive on, and you've got the genuinely damaging "(some) women don't know what they really want is sex with you so your job is to force them into realizing it" bit. It's really kind of a mess.

But— this has moments I truly love. The exchange where they're both being real about the aspects of each other that they hate, and the flashbacks that show how hollow each of them is behind her persona — finger kiss perfection. We're often most frustrated at those traits in others that we have ourselves, and there's a strong current of self-loathing in both of them, under all the layers of pretension and anger at the world.

The thing is that Under Hair is essentially just a fetish piece; it's off-putting to those who aren't receptive to the fetishes it plays on, but there's not the hard core of "I don't understand anything that is happening here" Dadaism that a proper What the fuck am I reading? demands.

Tl;dr: "Eww" ≠ "WTF?"

Fetishes, by their nature, don't make sense.

I'm not particularly into this, but I agree with Cryssoberyl that the hot-and-nasty sex suits NanoFate just as well as the sweet-and-soulful kind. (And I'll admit to a certain amount of glee at the discomfort of other readers.) I think the two references to men in the book are less about flirting and more about flaunting; in a world where Nanoha has all the power she needs to back up her autonomy, she gets off on going "This is mine, not for you" for both Fate's and her own body. I don't think that's particularly in-character for the usual Nanoha, but there you go.

I like to think of myself as pretty relaxed about correcting translations or transliterations when new information presents itself. We've been saying "Precia", but the car she's named after was the "Presea"? Fine. The bridge bunny guys aren't Alex and Randy, but Allex and Landy? Sure, whatever. It's supposed to be "Raising Heart", not "Raging Heart"? Okay, I guess.

But there are times when a line must be drawn. I refuse to refer to the Best Dog in Multiple Worlds as anything other than Arf.

Back on topic, coming up with ear-licking from an entirely innocent place is amazing. More proof that Arf is best doggo, for facilitating this. May Madoka and/or Haruhi bless Nanashiki and bless NanoFate.

Life is tricky, fiction is trickier.

We don't know if Meg is immortal, or even whether she will outlive Elizabeth. She hasn't aged, so she probably won't start aging — but she has no guarantee against death or injury by disease, accident, or violence. Like the cliche says, you might get hit by a bus. You can worry about outlasting the ones you love, you can plan against a sad future, but you can't live there. Life is short even if you won't die.

(My wife is a dozen years older than I am, and her health conditions — and mine — make it pretty likely that, barring mischance, she'll die first. So I find this kind of fictionalized examination of those issues helpful, really.)

The first story is continued in Mangetsu no Yoru ni Hana, which is optionally continued almost immediately in Mangetsu no Yoru ni Hana ~ Tou because things stop being all-ages. Mangetsu no Yoru ni Hana was the first volume translated, so their order in the reader is a little odd.

I feel like part of Fate's character arc across the seasons is gaining the connections that she was denied as a child. Having Nanoha as best friend/lover was vital to her, but by this point she doesn't just have Nanoha — she has a mom, a brother and sister-in-law, a niece and a nephew, good friends, and three kids (maybe four, if you count Arf that way? It's hard to categorize their relationship).

She's come a long way from the child so alone that she built her own playmate. (Yes, that's not why she contracted with Arf, but...) I get the idea that she would still worry about going down Presea's path, were she to lose someone so vital to her, but the life she's built for herself is stronger and more connected than her mother's ever was.

I'd be more inclined towards "Why do you say that?" — I'm not sure that Madoka remembers the earlier conversation.

last edited at Feb 15, 2020 4:32AM

Y'know, I saw the alley scene as weird and creepy too, at first, but going back — it's uncomfortable, yes, but I think it's made less creepy by the fact that Kyouko leads Nakazawa into that alley; he's not luring her in. He misreads her intentions, and kabedons her. Boxing her in like that is bad, and his line sucks, but he seems mostly acting honorably, if misguidedly. The fact that Kyouko didn't have to break his legs probably speaks well for him.

(Does Nakazawa have characterization beyond "Either one is okay"?)

What about Maitake2 who draws her as a useless lesbian (which I think is very very cannon)

Well, the person you're asking has posted comments on the majority of Maitake2's works insisting that "Homaru" would never behave that way, and further, that the belief that Homura isn't always topping is some kind of psychosis.

My personal belief, and take this with as many grains of salt as you need, is that devil!Homura would probably top, if only to keep up the thin veneer of control that she's holding on to by her fingernails. This does play into some of Maitake2's stuff, but there you go.

Yes, Homura's overheard thoughts are nicely pure here, but notice how hard she asked whether Madoka had just been hearing her today? Hmmmm....

Oh good, my "The Law of Cycles afterlife is just a big poly pile" theory now has support.

I know it's troll-feeding, and the comment was a year and a half old, and I've given in to this compulsion too often already — but I just have to point and laugh at the person so concerned with the purity of their concept of some fictional characters that they post the same bitchy comment about these comedies being badwrong thoughtcrime on dozens of comment threads, while consistently misspelling the name of a character they're so adamant about the portrayal of.

I mean, this level of thoroughgoing threadcrapping is already kind of breathtaking in its pettiness — taking two posts for it? Really? So "insipid and forgettable" that you had to come back a day later to vent more? — but GID's ongoing demand that nobody portray "Homaru" in this way just elevates the whole thing to art, albeit in the same manner as Marcel Duchamp signing a urinal and titling it "Fountain," or maybe in the mode of those gag gifts from Johnson Smith of a dog turd encased in a polished resin dome.

1. Doujinshi that are sexy while still having the characters be not actually very good at sex? Supreme.

2. Syuko being a trans girl makes a distressing amount of sense with her backstory (for those unaware, she was kicked out of her house after "an argument" with her parents, and was recruited as an idol when she was living on the street and donating blood for money; she supposedly lived in the office for a while).

3. Syuko and Kanade are very hot together.

Condiments can be used either to bring out the taste of foods by contrast or to cover the flavor of foods by overpowering them. Which one you're doing generally depends on dosage. Eggs, like poultry meats, don't have particularly strong flavors of themselves, so easily lend themselves to being augmented with other flavors.

(My dad used to always put ketchup on his fried eggs; I currently find that works best with both a runny yolk and accompanying hash browns.)

Locking your frenemy in a book with a serial killer is a bit much for a wacky comedy.

(It always amuses me, in a dark way, the way that the fairy-tale Bluebeard has almost entirely eclipsed his inspiration — Gilles de Rais, former battle companion to Joan of Arc. After La Pucelle was executed without being rescued by his King or his God, his faith in both was shattered; he returned to his estates where he embarked on an epic career in black magic, rape, and mass murder. Where the fictional Bluebeard killed off wives, the real one mostly went for little boys.)

Ah yes, the two genres of Touhou doujinshi: "oh no, these snacks were given a magic aphrodisiac" and "I grew a dick, help me cum so it goes away"

You left out "...so the Scarlet Devil Mansion explodes."

I think the implication is that Ritsu stripped Azusa and bundled her into Yui's bed as a prank, and then missed her timing to come in and yell "punked!"