So we have now had extensive Shiho backstory, as well as seeing various actions in the present. Has she ever actually done anything for or even been motivated by the good of anybody else?

Don't get me wrong, there are obviously places for jerks in stories. Occasionally even "protagonist", in certain kinds of stories. But in fluffy romances, I think it's kind of emotionally unsatisfying for someone thoroughly unpleasant to be a major viewpoint character (and at the rate things are going, probably headed for a happy ending, having learned nothing).

The two original leads are basically nice people, so it's satisfying to see them being happy. That's what non-tragedy romances are all about.

Calling it now—10 bucks says that whoever finds Shiho in her Den of Mope says a version of, “I knew I’d find you here.”

I am NOT going to cover any of that action. No bet.

Did this really need some random half-baked (ha) drugging subplot?

Indeed, what a terribly unrealistic intrusion on this normally meticulously sensible manga. The randomness just jars in this setting dominated by thoughtful long-term character arcs. Who would have thought this mangaka would stoop to shallow, titillating lewdness?

last edited at Apr 23, 2023 2:30AM

It's funny, with normal characters we'd probably be talking about how it's bad to kiss people while they're asleep. With this lady I think we've all grasped that such ethical issues mean nothing to her--and I mean literally, not that she rejects them but that she has no concept.

Y'know, up until ch. 7 I was quite annoyed with Akari. Now, I suppose I still don't think she's handling things the best possible way, but I do see her point. This was not some kind of best friends when they were three years old thing with subtext. This was like grade 3 or something, full on kissing, mutually explicitly agreed that they were dating, and a flat out promise to be with her forever. I can absolutely understand thinking "She FORGOT me? Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME?!"

As a reader it makes me wonder, too . . . if Hina remembers those events as events, but has not connected them with present day Akari, why has having a new crush apparently never once caused her to think about the old one? She appears to have no regrets, no reminiscences, no worries about breaking her word, no fears about the impermanence of love, nuthin'. On the other hand, if she doesn't remember at all . . . what the freak is wrong with her? She hit her head or something?

last edited at Apr 19, 2023 12:56AM

So is it going to take Akari not having contacts one day and being forced to wear her old glasses she had as a kid for it to jog Hina's memory?

Finally an explanation! Akari has the Superman power! Her glasses form convinces people she's a completely different person from her non-glasses form!
Because otherwise I really don't get how Hina could forget about that. They weren't even that small.
. . . I suppose there are other explanations. This Hina could actually be possessed by someone from another dimension who got Isekai'd into her.

Asian show biz is really, really scary. And to think this is just book authors!

I think it's eminently reasonable that, if you're going to have some character development of the piece of crap cheating boyfriend, that he would have a rationalization for it. There are lots of people who cheat, and most of them don't want to consider themselves worthless wastes of space, so they'll have rationalizations. So that's just fine, very appropriate.

Except I'm really not interested in having character development for the piece of crap cheating boyfriend.

This is definitely at the silly end of the reasons-for-disappearing-with-no-contact scale. Honestly, cell phones make that whole schtick really hard to do without stretching the sense of reality to the snapping point.

What is this girl, the One Ring?

I was thinking this even in the first chapter, but with people as incompetent and stupid-comedy-prone as these two, the condition where you're stuck if anyone detects you seems really dangerous.

Imagine you enjoying lunch in the food court when, suddenly, an unknown girl gets up and starts shooting everywhere... (⁠⊙⁠_⁠◎⁠) (⁠⑉⁠⊙⁠ȏ⁠⊙⁠)

Fortunately, what I quoted was just an example - we don't live in a fiction, thank God (!).

I'm sorry to be the bringer of bad news, but ... the USA is a real place.

USA ain’t an fantasy place were this thing happens out of no were, i know let’s bas USA and all of that weird crap but really??

Uhhhh . . . it actually is, though. That's exactly what happens, people in some public place are minding their own business and some shooter opens up and kills a bunch of them. It's in the headlines all the time. Schools, night clubs, movie theatres, convenience stores, a massage parlor . . . I believe the US has passed the one per day mark.

Now the US is a big place--that still means you're probably going to live your whole life without ever having it happen right near you. But still--yes, the US is, as you put it, a fantasy place where this thing happens out of nowhere. No other country has anything like it.

Seers can see visions. But there's something else they can do--they can lie. I don't trust her. She's doing just a bit too much manipulating.

It's like the author said to their publisher, "I have a great idea for a manga. I'm going to take the gag plot from a harem romance series, and make it the whole story. I can get 33+ chapters out of it easily, and the one joke will NEVER get old".

You gotta admit . . . if so, they weren't wrong.
But given the web-and-then-magazine thing, presumably it was more like a publisher noticing them DEMONSTRATE this, and then said "Hey, how'd you like to prove that theory a bit further, for some actual money?"

Yeah mass shootings to set an edgy tone in your action manga isn't the most well-considered idea. Particularly when the manga is going out of its way to make the shooter's argument sympathetic in some goof way.

I think it would be even more unrealistic to expect the bad guy NOT to have some kind of self-justification.

This is probably the stupidest series I read regularly. It's like junk food. It can't be healthy, but I can't stop consuming it.

Agreed. But you know, it's pretty well executed stupid junk food. There is an art to junk too. :D

I' might be going out on a limb here, but I don't think the bullying flirting combo will catch on as pick up technique.

I thought that was the whole basis for that real life stupid pickup artist/jerk craze a few years ago.

last edited at Apr 8, 2023 12:26PM

This manga and its related ones definitely spend most of the time (not quite all, but most) having the middle school characters feel like they're in late high school. But I don't feel like talking about that because I feel like we've thrashed it out masses of times.

So, I just want to mention how hilarious I found it watching that gloomy, grumpy guy trying to look cheerful doing "Singing in the Rain". Final twist was pretty damn funny too.

This manga is so fun to read. Love how overdramatic it is

It really gets how dramatic interpersonal difficulties can feel in middle school.

This is definitely a time when the young characters felt young; that total commitment to a dramatic theory on flimsy evidence is so typical.
(Mind you, some people never grow out of it, and it stops looking so cute when you have major political factions using that kind of thinking to justify hatred)

"Huh? Um, you want me to massage your hands?"
"What? I said 'do me', I meant 'do me'!"

last edited at Apr 8, 2023 11:14AM

"...Dear God, I'm so pathetic."

Aren't we all?

Word.

Hmmm . . . well, I see your point, not gonna say you're wrong about any of what you're saying. But it doesn't bother me. How would I put this . . . it's like, usually with manga there are two basic kinds of characters that the stories are about:
1. Characters who get more or less vanilla stories, who have one or two flaws and anxieties but are fundamentally pretty amazing
2. Characters with major league flaws, who get to star in massive train wrecks where everyone cheats and does massive mind games and have serious breakdowns and all kinds of awful train-wreck stuff.

I actually find it kind of refreshing that here we have characters who are not just flawed but frankly not very amazing human beings, "no better than they should be" to use a cliche so archaic it stopped being a cliche about a century ago--and yet they get real relationships like people actually do, instead of being relegated to trainwreck punishment hell.

Basically, this manga has a good deal less moralizing than most, and isn't all about "Good things happen to good people (as they should)" or "Bad things happen to bad people (as they should)". We're not used to it, because typical manga have a very strong moralizing streak. And I mean, I don't want all manga to be like this one, but I don't mind a little break from the usual way of doing it.

last edited at Apr 5, 2023 1:27PM

I have now read all of Elisha X Honoka, and absolutely nothing else. Anyone have recommendations for which pairing I should read next?? :D

My favourite is Mahi-mahi, but it's not quite what most people would think when they say "romantic pairing". More like a two-person Yotsuba! with a lot of sugar added, although arguably that has shifted a bit in the last couple of chapters with them.

Wouldn't be an Isekai without a love triangle where one girl is inevitably going to get hurt. Especially since most of these writers never have the balls to go with the polyamory ending

"Balls" whatever. I have nothing against polyamory or people writing about it (except that I think there's a tendency to do a really crappy job), but the vast majority of people aren't poly and aren't really attracted to it, so they have no compelling reason to write or read about it. It's a small minority interest, it is likely to stay that way, so there will be some fiction written about it, but not very much, and that too is likely to stay that way. Saying people don't have the "balls" to write polyamory is like saying people don't have the "balls" to write stories about accountancy, or keeping reptiles as pets. Both of those happen now and then, but there will never be a revolution after which they achieve their rightful place with just as much stuff written about them as about sports or crime.

I hope the prince doesn't become the sole villain, that would be tired.

Seems unlikely. He appears to have just awakened to shipping them.