^^^ Same, the song hit me before I even saw the Chobits AU note with the lyrics there. It's too catchy

By the way, what's the deal with the nun giving Hanako a new name to send her off? It's not remarked on at all, what am I missing here?

I'm guessing this is related to the old Catholic tradition where someone is given a new "christian" name upon joining the church to signify being "born again" as a new creation under Jesus

Old you say, or current!? This would be about the age for Confirmation, but that's an oddly particular Catholic sacrament to go for. Could be, though

Meanwhile, in the Nintendo headquarters

Nana and Junna missing from the final panel was a great touch

I did not expect a random rape scene to happen pretty much in the background / two panels aside of this story, without any real tie to the plot... Huh. Eww...

Yeah, and it's set up to make it seem like succubi casually whipping people up into a rape frenzy is a regular occurrence and is also not treated as very serious. It kinda feels like Ascendance of the Bookworm where the main story is usually light and low stakes but the world just around it is absolutely brutal

This was so much fun! I think they took a stab at adapting an existing fic, possibly accidentally

last edited at Jun 10, 2024 12:25PM

It feels heretical that this is becoming my top ship. They're so good and this manga only makes it better! More manga needs to be ambitious in its use of literary devices.

Movie Junna is so great! These releases are so much fun

I once lost my voice after a cold and had to teach a class sounding like Nana in those first few pages. Already cancelled class from being sick, so I had to make that one work! It went about as well as one would imagine

last edited at Sep 11, 2024 8:31AM

Again, I'm legit baffled at how you guys keep seeing Mei as cold, uncaring, and pushing Yuzu away, leaving her to do everything for their relationship when just in this chapter we had Mei openly address Yuzu's concerns and telling her everything about the Akamine business. We also had her going out of her way to find Yuzu a present in previous chapters.

The old Mei would've never been this open with Yuzu and she would instead use those showings of physical affection to make up for her shortcomings.

That's a lot of extrapolation from what people have said and gets at the same thing noted previously: we are told Mei cares, and yes, she is open about what she's doing rather than deflecting like she used to, but in all of these new instances Mei is portrayed with an almost monk-like stoicism. The old Mei was vibrant and alive, which is very clear by comparing the old chapters to the new ones, even in the less dramatic arcs I listed. I still enjoy Citrus, but it's very weird that Mei's character growth of being a better communicator is paired with a lack of affect.

I do still need to give this arc another chance for yuri. It's only been a few chapters, it just feels longer because it's been over a year and a half since yuri was driving the plot.

The rest of Mei's response is a predictable part of her personality. I'm not surprised by her personality after all this time. She has her quirks but it's noticeable when she's making an attempt to be "softer." For someone else that might be dry but for her it reads a bit different. She'll always be like that.

Your lack of surprise at Mei’s personality is neither here nor there. Mei now reads as even colder and more distant when interacting with Yuzu than she has in the past, and certainly more so than in the original series. I see this as less a function of the supposed psychology of Mei the imaginary human and more about Saburouta’s current perfunctory approach to characterization—Yuzu shall be warm and bubbly while Mei is reserved and emotionally distant in order to show the contrast between them, and thus it shall ever be.

Yeah, no kidding. Early Mei in the original is an absolute firecracker, but even after she's toned down a bit you can see it in their interactions in something like the date notebook chapters or when Yuzu ran for student council president. That Mei was vibrant and alive by comparison, hell she pushed Yuzu into a trash pile and basically told her to bring it. (The official TL from that one was great!) (https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/citrus_ch18#31). This new Mei doesn't even return hugs. Sad times.

It could also be just how less dramatic Citrus+ has been that the characters feel phoned in as well. I dunno, maybe the series is just sort of finished for Saburouta. If we're not gonna get fluff, then where's that sour punch that gives it it's namesake?? And why isn't yuri driving the plot?

last edited at May 21, 2024 7:23PM

While I was listening to the drama CD, I realized that the biggest barrier to making a good anime (or live-action drama) out of this is probably music licensing. The background music on the drama CD includes all your hit favorites from gunge bands like Nibana and alternate rock bands like the UFO Fighters, which is to say it's bland name stuff that sounds vaguely like songs from some of bands namechecked in the manga. A huge part of the charm of the manga is the specificity of the girls being super into bands that were at their peak decade(s) before they were born (believe me, writing that out hurt me more than you), and without that, it's less compelling.

OK MAYBE I WAS WRONG https://www.cdjapan.co.jp/product/UIJY-75274?rm=t&vg=3bac952f-e3a3-4030-7623-3b63e4f5868c

Trying to decide how badly I want this… I have a little while to decide, but getting vinyl sent overseas seems like a super dicey proposition.

It should be fine, I get vinyl from overseas pretty often and nothing's ever wrong with it. I haven't gotten vinyl from cdjapan before, but I've also never had any problems with other stuff from them. Other than shipping costs being nuts on some model kits. Although... They do have the witch from Mercury vinyl cheaper than anywhere else...

Also I'd say to be quick, it says there's like 20 left!

last edited at May 20, 2024 12:35AM

Next step is to isekai Oscar Wilde or Osamu Dazai to Gensokyo to create beautiful spell cards

If she played the part well, you're supposed to clap as she exits!

And Aquarium has been a rock-solid yuri performer for many, many years.

The Lots of animals tag has started trying to do this work. Which is probably not good because it's not going to be applied to/be able to collect all aquarium releases and at the same time basically makes it so a given release doesn't actually need a lot of animals in it to get tagged.

Might be worth pinging Orange Pekoe on, I know the tag has been requested for a long time and it would be about as much work to get going as setting up the Theater tag was. (But I wouldn't be surprised if there are bigger plans for tagging and categorization in the works.)

last edited at May 14, 2024 1:01PM

I love match soooooo much, but damn this is weirdly autobiographical for one of those official fan fiction anthologies, huh?

And PSA - if anyone can find any of the match FE - Three Houses or Sailor Moon doujinshi digital or physical please give me a shout so we can get them scanlated!

Google, find, acquire, print at Staples

Weird to draw all these conclusions about a prequel story

The dazzling lead!

I do feel for Tianli. She's genuinely remorseful and I'd like to see her character grow more. The promise was to "stop talking about her" and she kept that by leaving the chat. So I wonder if she'll show up again next year.

(Not forgiving something doesn't have to mean cutting someone out of your life forever. It'd be interesting to see the nuance of moving forward under a different kind of relationship explored after they've had more time to grow apart.)

And unless i missed something, Tianli doesn't know the severity of what she did because Xingyuan didn't mention anything about her father. Which is understandable, but Tianli might realize how trivial her hangups are in the face of that info and understand the Xingyuan's response better. When that flashbacks were happening, the interactions with her father seemed to be the bigger deal, so I was pretty surprised he didn't come up at all in panels dealing with Tianli and that (even just like, a note about Xingyuan intentionally not mentioning him)

Has Loretta always been this shredded? I don't remember it being mentioned in the LN...

Not that I mind, she's HOT!

Wildly enough, this came from when Coastal, a western fan pretty involved in the fan community, drew a muscular Loretta and then asked Aonoshima on Twitter if Loretta was muscular. (At this point she was probably always intended to be fit what with her family's position, but it's when she went from fit to shredded, just before the beach episodes were released in yuri hime.)

Overnight, Aonoshima drew a muscular Loretta and from then on her cut abs were canon. The second light novel for she's so cheeky was announced right around that day too, so the web novel descriptions predate the event quite a bit.

Here's roughly the tweet chain:
Original joke
https://twitter.com/CoastalService3/status/1590471608871047168
Sketching the joke
https://twitter.com/CoastalService3/status/1596380891952971777
Aonoshima previewing the upcoming chapter
https://twitter.com/aonoesu/status/1603240864184008704
Coastal "inquiring"about Loretta, somewhere here or elsewhere Coastal asks if Loretta's abs are ripped because Aonoshima refers to such a question later
https://twitter.com/CoastalService3/status/1603246683147489280
A quick response
https://twitter.com/aonoesu/status/1603248865326804992
A tweet about needing to check with Inori
https://twitter.com/aonoesu/status/1603251521776685056?s=20&t=3n9ZsOKobAzoCEj529iq9g
Then, ta da! Loretta's debut.
https://twitter.com/aonoesu/status/1603343068681613313
Google translate seems to say Aonoshima had to ask Inori if Loretta's abs were cut, then provides a lore response from Inori, then Aonoshima's interpretation. Thus the exact moment her abs became this cut with official canon blessing

I hope all these links are still live.

last edited at Apr 9, 2024 9:59AM

I feel like Chuck Tingle would tacitly approve

Elsa's Frozen connection confirmed!

Suddenly, fear. Time to fire up the angst machine!

Whatever I expected from this series, mentioning Itou Hachi by name wasn't it. :D

My job is done. The reference was understood. XD

In the top ten TLs of 2024 to date

The premise is a bit cliched at first glance- seemingly perfect girl struggles with living up to expectations and falls for someone her family wouldn't approve of- but the series could have more to it than that. I'm interested in finding out more about Asako's sister and what she did to disappoint their grandfather.

From what we've seen so far, there's really only one conclusion to draw. The grandfather is disappointed that the older sister, like in a shoujo manga, fell in love and left the life of a strong, independent woman to become a traditional wife in a het relationship. The grandfather, a true man of culture, knew to ban frivolous shoujo manga as it has no place in a yuri story.