Yeah that whole aspect of the chapter felt like a bit of a dodge

Yeah Shino's always seemed pretty blatantly gay.

The one who's always been more of a question mark is Nozomi, who's always been pretty cluelessly heteronormative up until now.

Try to "seduce" a man and end up with a Yuri harem.

Worked for Oddman 11.

Worked pretty well for Watamote, too!

On the one hand the characters actions don't make any sense if you don't read it as romantic attraction between the two girls. Including the way the parents react to their relationship.

On the other hand the manga seems absolutely determined not to acknowledge the entire herd of elephants currently trampling through the room, so ???

Yeah Adachi struggles a good bit with The Gay in the earlier volumes. She repeatedly tries to justify how she's not actually Like That, and then she's got a long period where she hasn't fully admitted it to herself, but she mostly worries about if Shimamura will hate her if she finds out. She mostly kinda decides that well, she doesn't know about the big picture, but she knows she likes Shimamura and she wants her to like her back. But she regularly backtracks at random depending on how anxious she is about things. Until Shimamura drags the girlfriend word out of her I dont think Adachi is ever willing to actually think it, she just thinks how well it'd be cool if they were super duper best friends who go on dates and y'know maybe shimamura might randomly try to kiss her someday.

Shimamura's M.O. has always been to pretend like she has no idea how gay this all is, but then to subtly freak out and worry that people are staring at them when they're together. Like you can go back to almost any of their previous dates-that-aren't-officially-dates and at some point Shimamura will be noticing how all the other couples are hetero, or that people are looking at them, or how they don't really fit in.i

So instead she's just been like, uhh, well if I don't think at all about how this is totally gay then I can just pretend it's not an issue and maybe it'll go away on its own.

All this friendship for so long and yet I really started to think they might smooch. Soooo much romantic tension.

I kinda wish Yashiro had grown up, her just being a little kid forever is a little tough on little sister, lol

The Tarumi situation is interesting. Shimamura wants to still be friends with her, but then also at some level I think she does understand that Tarumi is hitting on her, which is part of the reason she feels extra awkward about the whole situation. She'd even probably be open to it if it wasn't for Adachi, but she prefers Adachi. But she'd still like to be friends.

Yeah, adachi was asking about getting kissed again, and plainly Shimamura's real reaction was "HELL YEAH" but she can't admit that even to herself, she's gotta act like it's a reward that maaaybe she'll give out. Like Shimamura's also always been more afraid of people noticing their gayness for each other than Adachi has, but now she's still feeding Adachi at lunch.

But Shima mostly acting all tsundere doesn't really help with adachi's worries about their relationship. And it doesn't really satisfy Shimamura either, because (at least going by previous books) she probably wants to be getting smooched too, but Adachi's not gonna just do that on her own and Shimamura is too embarrassed to ask.

last edited at Jul 4, 2020 9:59PM

Shimamura is really enjoying this whole being a girlfriend thing.

Being 16 never feels young when you're 16, or remembering being 16.

Then you hang out with some 16 year olds and you're like, holy shit, they're so young!

I mean if Adachi was 21 or something her jealousy could be a real issue

But they're both just kids and just started dating for the first time, they don't know wtf they're doing, they're learning.

Shimamura's learning to be more pro-active and open about her feelings, to hold up her end of the relationship.
And Adachi's gonna learn to trust Shimamura and not feel so jealous all the time.

I feel like one of these days ShimaMom is just going to accidentally blurt out "your girlfriend's here!" and her daughter will die of mortification.

Like these two are terrible at keeping a poker face, mom is already teasing shima, and plus they keep having relationship talks like while mom is nearby.

ShimaMom just walking past the door to see AdaShima just holding hands and smiling at each other and suddenly taking an intense interest in Adachi was fantastic

You could basically hear the quote marks in ShimaMom's voice every time she called Adachi your """Friend"""

Plus this is only shortly after Shimamura got all dressed up and pretty for her trip to a festival with a """Friend""" which mom helped her with.

I feel like one of these days ShimaMom is just going to accidentally blurt out "your girlfriend's here!" and her daughter will die of mortification.

Like these two are terrible at keeping a poker face, mom is already teasing shima, and plus they keep having relationship talks like while mom is nearby.

Yeah I bought the first two volumes and had a nice time rereading the whole beginning.

Rereading the early stuff does kinda highlight how frustrating some of the middle volumes are. Cuz like early shimamura is super into Adachi, and she seeks out excuses to spend time with her. Passive shimamura doesn't really make sense with that, except I guess in shima feeling generally in denial about things.

I feel like Shimamura would be the one to fall in love first if Adachi stayed the same.

Yeah I bought the official releases of books 1 & 2 for kindle, and rereading through the early stuff I had kinda forgotten how obviously Shimamura is into Adachi. Like even before Adachi has her kissing dream Shimamura is already like excitedly wondering if maybe Adachi might be gay, and well obviously that couldn't be true but if it is what should she do... And she won't shut up about how totally pretty Adachi is.

Like especially volume 1 they're just really blatantly flirting. It's making me look forward to the anime, for sure.

Loved Shima's pov. I almost can't believe she said I love you. I thought that was going to take a bit longer.

Yeah as soon as Adachi said it I was like, "Oh okay here's the whole book of Shimamura either being too embarrassed to say it, or just being too Shimamura to think to say it."

And then she just went ahead and said it.

I do love what a goddamn teenager Adachi is. She's like "HOLY SHIT THIS IS AWESOME WE'RE DATING.... uh, so what do we do now? I never thought I'd get this far!"

Still awkward!

seem like fathers accept the engagement for their girls :))))

How funny would it be if the dad's just like
"Hey... By the way, you know our girls are super gay for each other, right?"
"Oh, yeah, totally, how could you not They're mega-gay."

...And then we just go back to normal friend ship for another 10 chapters.

Yeah like for most of their relationship Shimamura's definitely liked Adachi, but she's always been content to just go along with Adachi and not take any initiative herself. She was always happy when Adachi moved things along, but it was Adachi doing all the work, it wasn't really very healthy for a long-term relationship.

Her spending time with Gon was kind of her just realizing that life is fleeting, and she can't just sit back passively and wait for things to happen. She likes Adachi so she should actually pursue her, too. She wants to make Adachi happy, so she should do things to make Adachi happy.

As far as future things I'd like to see, beyond the obvious growing romantic relationship steps, I'd really like to see them start dealing with actually telling someone else. Like almost any of the other characters finding out would be really interesting. The moms were already giving off the vibe that they knew their daughters were headed off on a date, it kinda feels like they already have their suspicions about those two, so it'd be interesting to see that. Shimamura's little sister would be quite intrigued to find out that hey, girls can date other girls.

I still don't think them ending up together will happen - or that it would be good if it happened.

OTOH I also still get the strong impression that Shino is gay. I've given up hope that she'll ever get with that underclassman though, considering how rarely she shows up.

honestly how is this not yuri?

I have to assume the magazine it runs in was like "this yuri thing seems popular right now, but... we don't want it TOO gay."

Like if this is really just a story about friendship then everyone involved is acting like a lunatic.

last edited at May 19, 2020 4:40PM

Obviously the confession and everything is great.

But I think my favorite sequence was like right before that, where both of the moms are helping their daughters get all pretty for what is pretty obviously a date. Like neither mom is super motherly normally, but it seems like both of them pick up on this being an important moment for their girls, even if they won't admit it.

Like yuri is so often either all subtext, or it gets all exoticized... It's just super nice to read a sequence where it's just totally ordinary teenage romance stuff, just a couple teenagers who aren't quite official yet going on a date and having a happy time.

Also like, we're totally gonna find out at some point that their moms have been sharing notes, right?

yeup, what they said. ^

I guess it's good that OP found out about this (and here's hoping to it just being a bit of appalling trivia for more folks in the future) but that doesn't magically disqualify words and phrases from having more than one meaning. Gay panic and the "gay panic defense" are two entirely different things, and they're very very easy to understand the difference in conversation.