This was interesting. I wasn't expecting the continuation to go this way, but it makes sense given Midori's characterization. She knew Baba was cheating on her for a long time, that was never news to her. And it's also true that her face seems permanently locked into that sort of pleasant smile, so if Baba is one of the few people who doesn't mind that it makes sense she finds it relaxing to be around him despite his...*many* flaws.

Still, this is definitely a unique direction for a romance manga to go. As cute as Kyouko is, Midori is fast becoming my favorite character; I don't think I've ever seen someone quite like her.

This from an anthology on the author's pixiv of depressing yuri manga

I read through the other works in the anthology and this is the only one that's really yuri.

The moral of this manga is that feudalism is bad because it gets in the way of a happy yuri ending

Shun is so nice, just casually forgives nasty bullying plus murder attempt by a delusional damsel who inhaled too much shipnium.

least deranged shipper

Edit: With how this manga has gone so far, I expect Meiko to instantly start hardcore shipping Natsuki/Shun next chapter.

last edited at Feb 19, 2023 9:25PM

Honestly I do rather like how the waitress and her brother ask themselves "why are they even still together" and that that question is just resoundingly answered at the end of the chapter with "yeah she had to save up money first to be financially stable after breaking up with him"

Which on it's own is pretty grim but it financial dependency is the reality of a lot of relationships and I like how this story handles that even if it is easily glossed over.

This was possibly my favorite part of the chapter. Financial dependence causing women to stay in bad relationships is unfortunately common IRL but you very rarely see it depicted in fiction.

If you think about it, Asami never really lied to Keiko. When she said that she was never "lovers" with the student teacher, she meant that she never loved him, even though they (presumably) were in a physical relationship. (Edit: And when she says she hates Honda and he's a bad person who pretends to be nice, that seems like comedic exaggeration... until it turns out she was completely right about him.) So I choose to believe that dream Asami, too, was telling the truth at the end.

I've had an experience very similar to Keiko's, though it really was a friendship in my case and not romantic (...probably). My ex-friend left my life and cut contact for several reasons, but the major ones -- I'm pretty sure -- were that (a) he thought I'd be better off without him and (b) he thought I'd probably abandon him eventually so he'd rather cut the cord himself. Both of those seem to apply very well to Asami herself too. I think it's completely plausible that the reappearance of someone she thought she had escaped from would encourage her to run away from everything and everyone she knew. In real life, Keiko would never see Asami again and would never know what happened to her, but this is a manga so as readers we can choose a happy ending instead.

This manga isn't a 10/10 for me but it is very unique and speaks to an element of the human experience that fiction rarely recognizes, so I'm very happy I read it.

last edited at Feb 8, 2023 9:34AM

Inb4 the mysterious girl is Kanon from a different future that made a contract with a higher being to be able to help humanity but failed and now she regrets it and tries to change the past

That was my exact thought the instant I saw that they looked so much alike, and her eyes are hidden!

If Kanon is Shirou Emiya, it only makes sense that we'd get an Archer too.

I liked this chapter a lot more than the previous two; I think it does a much better job of characterizing the two girls and selling their dynamic. Looking forward to future chapters a lot more now!

WAIT! Before I get tempted into demon lord x cute human wife, how old is the demon lord again? Isn't she like an adult in a child's body?

Yvonne does state that Faye is "five centuries old" in chapter 45. On the other hand, it's not clear what Faye's mental age is -- she certainly acts like a child, at least.

She recognized Faye REALLY FAST??!!!!??? Ya wouldn’t have been at least a little confused????

The power of love

Nice, the manhua's back on this website. It's been pretty great so far; the art is excellent, the characters are enjoyable, the jokes are mostly funny, and I continue to appreciate the courage in making your protagonist this unlikeable to start out with.

Interesting theory. I just assumed Senpai was introduced to give Shiori (the short-haired girl) a consolation prize after she inevitably loses Kawase.

Thinking about this chapter made me realize something: Minamo's father is very similar to what Minamo was like at the beginning of the manga (before she met Yurika). Like her father, Minamo had strained relationships with every member of her family and only a single friend, who even happened to be of the opposite sex. The difference is that her growing friendship/love with Yurika has encouraged Minamo to make new friends, repair her relationship with her twin, think seriously about her future, etc, while her father -- even after two marriages and three children -- is still basically a mental teenager.

One thing I realized while thinking about the age gap discourse -- Xiaoen does hold a lot of power over Xingyuan, but it has nothing to do with her age or her position in the town. Rather, it's because she's the only person in Xingyuan's life who's accepted all of her (she has a good relationship with Wang but he doesn't know a lot of what Xioaen knows). She's almost alone, while Xiaoen has tons of people to rely on including both family and friends. This difference in emotional dependence is usually harder to ascertain than other kinds of power differentials, but it's oftentimes even more decisive. That's why, for Xingyuan's sake, finding a community she can trust is more important than entering into a relationship. If Xiaoen can help her with that, I don't think the age difference will be a factor anymore.

Don't worry, Kafka! Childhood friends always lose!

... I feel like the author went too hard to have some symbolism on this one. A pair that was essentially slacking off getting first place in the qualis just because one of them decided to have fun feels too much to me like "the power of love" pulled straight out the ass. I feel bad for all these other pairs that worked hard but had to lose because they aren't secondary protagonists of the manga.

The point is that Shion is a genuinely talented dancer, it's just nobody knew until now because she was content to hide behind Kiki's shadow.

Regarding the realism or lack thereof, I'm not going to pretend like I know anything about formal dance, but I also suspect the type of dance taught to Western adults is probably much different than what it done for Japanese teenagers, even if some of the terms are the same.

8/10
Because of the tomboy is not boti

she was boti for most of her life

I ended up putting this on hold on Mangadex cause I wanted to wait for it to finish releasing to see how I felt about the whole thing, but I remember feeling kinda "meh" about what I read cause the Otaku guy kinda feels like a pointless character most of the time.

I think the point of him was to assist their relationship at this point basically

Yeah, he's meant to be a wingman, but the way it's all handled he feels like he's just a plot device to move the story forward instead of an actual character that is helping move the story forward.

I know that sounds like the same thing, but I'm just terrible at explaining my thoughts. It just doesn't feel good to me. Like, Mio in I'll Cheer on my Yuri Onee-chan fulfills the same kind of role that Otaku does in this one, but I actually like him. He feels like an actual character rather than something that exists solely to move the plot forward, even though that is functionally what he does.

Nah, I get what you mean. It's true that the otaku here has basically no personality. That is part of the parody, since your average male romcom self-insert MC is similarly cardboard, but it's still a valid criticism.

3) Honamin's death was faked by her family under extreme duress.
4) This manga has been lighthearted, but there is a major threat to Aizawa Honami's safety.

I'm intrigued by the idea that Honami's death was faked by her family. Perhaps this is related to why she's mute? I'm thinking, a voice is an idol's most important asset, so if Honami somehow lost her voice (due to a curse perhaps), that might motivate her family to fake her death until they find a way to cure her and/or identify her assailant.

People here asking why the government isn't interested in a girl who can create matter, but we can assume that in this universe high schoolers vomiting foreign objects is a common enough occurrence that people are used to the phenomenon, even if they bully the poor teenagers who contract this fate.

Honestly at this point what is Michi still worried about when it comes to actually interacting with her? She had that one kinda scary moment a few chapters back where she was kinda acting off? But god damn I couldn't ignore something so cute. It's gonna be very interesting when she finally acknowledges her. I'm really interested to see if she can speak because I don't think she's actually said a word yet right?

Michi says in Chapter 1, "After dealing with this for over a decade, what I've learned is you do not want to be involved with any of these things." And in chapter 3, we see an incident where she interacts with a ghost and it goes poorly. While Honami appears to be different from all the other ghosts she's seen so far -- and you're right she has yet to say a word, even in flashbacks -- it's understandable that Michi would be wary. But I do agree that Michi is going to have to interact with her before too much longer.

I really like the little gestures and body language, the animation is just right, very pretty but I like how they take care to show the emotions without telling it to your face, we know very well the current emotional state of Euphylia and why she can't accept kindness right away and how the princess understood that it's going to take some time to break that wall.

Feels like, it will be better than the manga... That's rare these days!

I skimmed over the chapters of the manga that episode 3 covers, and I confirmed they're really cutting down the exposition as much as they possibly can. Anis's speech about spirit stones was far more elaborate in the manga, chapter 5 has long monologues by Euphilia where she explains how she's feeling that are mostly cut, etc. Personally I prefer the anime's storytelling style far more. For example, I think the added scene where Euphilia visits her old servants is far more effective at communicating how she's feeling than her just stating it to the audience directly.

I can't compare to the LN since I haven't read it, but just comparing the adaptations I think the anime is significantly better than the manga so far.

It's worth noting that some people have very flexible gender identities or don't see it as a core part of their identity. See: the concept of gender casual.

I feel like it could be argued that "not having a specific gender identity" is, in itself, a kind of gender identity (in the way that zero both is and is not a number), but that's also super in the weeds and not something I'm personally super familiar, with, so I don't want to put my foot in my mouth any more than I already have. :)

Speaking as someone who could be fairly accurately described as "gender casual," I think it's legitimate to call it a gender identity. To me, "gender identity" is how you answer the question "what gender are you?", and "nothing in particular" is just one possible answer to that question.

I just fail to see a meaningful connection between a deliberate action that comes with a plethora of emotional and psychological foundations, and a magical story device thrust upon a character by pure chance that more often than not comes with none of said foundations.

Magic/supernatural stuff is very often used as a metaphor for real-life issues, such as in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where (as just one example) the magic curse that turns Angel into Angelus is a metaphor for the very common teenage girl experience of "my boyfriend suddenly became a jerk after we had sex." Obviously genderbending and transitioning aren't exactly the same, but they are very similar, and so to declare any comparison between the two inherently off-limits is very strange to me.

I would actually be interested to see a genderbending manga that discusses and uses the similarity between its concept and the experiences of trans people. So far I have not read a single one which did that, thus the claim that "many" do it seems dubious at best from my perspective.

Aside from the aforementioned Ore Ga Watashi Ni Naru Made (which might even have a literal trans character), there's multiple genderbending manga where the MC is revealed to have had dysphoria all along, including Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl and this one.

And the reason we have to resort to pretending in your example is because the manga does not address the issue of gender identity at all.

Everyone has a gender identity. The fact that Takkun completely accepts her new gender -- with her main concern being that her girlfriend won't want to stay with her -- implies that she sees herself as a woman. That's not pretending, it's in the text. The speculation lies in whether her condition changed her gender identity too, or if she was comfortable with (or even preferred) being a woman from the beginning.

To be honest, I think it's kind of obtuse to argue that genderbending -- someone's body changing to the other sex due to magic or fake science -- and transitioning -- someone deliberately changing their body's sex with real science -- are totally different and incomparable. These concepts are very similar, a similarity that many genderbending manga themselves discuss and use.

Now, I don't agree with the argument that manga like this are inherently cisnormative. This is fake science, we can pretend that (for example) the "genderbend disease" also changed Takkun's gender identity because it's all made up. I actually think the genderbending trope can potentially be used for some interesting and nuanced explorations of gender identity, like in the excellent Ore Ga Watashi Ni Naru Made. But saying that the comparison itself is invalid seems clearly wrong to me. The mangaka will survive a couple English-language comments criticizing them, don't worry.

I don't know if I'd say it's a "big cliche," it's just that IRL a lot of women -- regardless of sexuality -- like yaoi/BL. There's even an autobiographical manga here that mentions it.