Yeah, I've suspected for awhile that the timeline for all these relationships is jumbled up. I think all the holiday events are taking place concurrently, we just see them way out of order.

That would make a lot of sense. It's pretty much the only logical way of doing a very long running manga in a school setting, unless you go the comedy route and none of it really matters a la yuru yuri.

Mind you, the timelines still doesn't make sense. For instance, Honoka first meets Ed and Ian when Eli invites her to their home for Christmas. The next time they meet is during the summer festival.

Do they say that was a summer festival in that chapter? There are other festivals that are during the Japanese school year, including a couple in spring, to say nothing of possible local events. Festival activities are kind of the same for a lot of festivals, so unless they specifically called it out as a summer festival, I think there's wiggle room there. Very good chance there's other contradictions, though.

As I said above, the school year ends in March. The previous chapter confirms Eli won't stay in Japan long after the school year ends, since it's set a month before her leaving and Kaoru still hasn't graduated.

As far as I can tell, the time rules of this manga are something like this:
1. Chapters can take place whenever in the school year. Despite this, each storyline advances linearly. For instance, Chie and Ai are not dating in any chapter that appeared before ch. 105 and are dating in all chapters that appear afterwards, unless the chapter is clearly marked as a flashback.
2. To avoid really blatant paradoxes, no character is allowed to celebrate the same holiday or other event twice.
3. Entrance exams and running out of time with their romances because of graduation are not usually a concern to any of the third years. EliHono is the only couple on a deadline, at least for now.

Honestly if I had time I'd be interested in trying to see if I can zero in on a particular timeline, or zero in on explicit contradictions, but as a general rule I think this tracks.

My exactly same thought. After all those 5+ christmasts and valentine's days, too.

My favorite example of this is how one of the early Mio/Shizuka chapters is set on Valentine's Day and they clearly aren't a couple yet. The Japanese school year ends in March. The entirety of the Mio-Shizuka-Kaoru-Mask drama must have thus logically taken place over the course of a month.

Though in Kishi's defense, I don't think he's ever had the same characters celebrating the same holiday more than once.

Yeah, I've suspected for awhile that the timeline for all these relationships is jumbled up. I think all the holiday events are taking place concurrently, we just see them way out of order.

This series is so good, it is really distressing that it didn't find a bigger audience. Seems to happen with a lot of yuri-oriented fantasy stories.

Wow, I think this is the first chapter of a yuri manga in a WHILE that actually managed to piss me the hell off, we're reaching levels of trash not thought possible here.

??? This chapter was adorable. Minami is actually hopeful and expectant and Yuzu is making progress in spite of herself.

Like, you guys all get that when Minami says "Yep! Total Best Friend behavior" she knows that it isn't actually, right? She explicitly lays out her thought process: If Yuzu thinks this is "normal" for them, then she can't be more than a small push away from falling for her. She says "Yep, totally normal!" because she's trying to maintain that sense of closeness, not because she's actually dumb enough to buy the claim. This is the least useless Minami has been since this series started, she's clearly actively making moves. Kabedons, heart cookies, cheek kisses. Girl is on the attack, on purpose, because she has correctly sensed that it isn't a hopeless pursuit. She doesn't know that Yuzu actually is already head over heels, mind, she thinks she still has work to do, but she recognizes that the forehead kiss was definitely NOT far from a direct expression of romance, that's why her hopes soared.

(Edit: I mean, y'all, you realize the normal play for this trope is that Yuzu says "Yeah, totally a platonic forehead kiss!" and Minami would get all depressed about how it isn't romantic after all and lose heart? That's how this usually plays out. Minami going "Wow, that was SUPER gay for 'normal', maybe I've got a shot after all" is a subversion of the trope.)

As for the change in Yuzu's behavior, remember, until very recently, she was actively trying to surpress her feelings, because she already thought it was hopeless. The way I see it, now that Minami's on the offensive, like, actually trying to seduce her, her composure is cracking like a crumbling dam. She has changed, because she can't hold it in, because it's like Minami is TRYING to make her hope for more!

Because, y'know, she is.

last edited at May 10, 2024 11:41PM

UGGGH it's so nice to see more MariYuu (≧▽≦)
I think this chapter showed us more insight into their relationship and its really cute to see Mari getting some of that reciprocated love

also....that "ghost" kiss. Do you think that represents like even though we saw Yuu giving her 100% it still shows Mari's passion is stronger?....or is this just a representation of Yuu's desires?
.
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or did I completely misinterpret that and Mari /actually/ kissed her?

I feel like she actually kissed her? They call it "a momentary opening." Mari saw an opportunity and kissed her, then plays it coy. She's feeling bold because the sniff made her realize her feelings aren't as one-sided as she thought they were.

Oh my, Yuu never gonna live that one down. XD

I mean, Mari can't exactly say "I was watching you change and you sniffed my sweater," so I'd be surprised if she ever gets confronted with it, but I definitely think this changes Mari's perspective on their relationship.

renivxii posted:

In chapter 81 in the last panel is she laughing or is she shaking because she needed to puke badly?

Kanna is suppressing her laughing.

Honestly my favorite thing about this whole chapter.

I'm not crying your cryign

I honestly have never [interacted with] a human person and gone "Wow, she's just like a cat." Or "He reminds me of a puppy!" But I see this all the time in manga. Maybe all these manga characters have more imagination than me...

Perhaps it's a cultural thing. Personally, I've never heard anyone compare a person with pets in my life.

In the UK, comparisons to animals are usually negative - saying a girl is a dog would be... not nice. So it's probably a cultural thing.

Well, you wouldn't call her "a dog", that would imply an insult about her looks, same in the US. Comparing her to a puppy, OTOH, or drawing comparisons with specific breeds, is less "looks like a dog" and more of a cute personality thing.

last edited at Mar 24, 2024 11:08PM

"Throwing out", I meant throwing away, throwing in garbage almost full cans of beer, not vomiting (because I could not drink them, it was just some habit of buying what I knew I needed before)

Somebody already pointed out this was already correct, but just because you seem to have the phrases a little mixed up, the term for vomiting is "throwing up" rather than "throwing out". Throwing out just means to get rid of something in general, either by garbage, recycling, or just giving it to charity.

I don't think it was that common. I've been around since 2014/15 (this is my second account). There have always been transphobes on the internet (and there will always be), but dynasty had relatively few of those, and I never had to fight alone.

Yeah, I was also present years before subscribing here. It's not like I'm ignorant or that I don't know about people from our community, I just want sometimes to interact personally here with people.

edit: correction of some mistakes made by typing fast

At the very least I'd say the mods are always going to be on your side. A number of us here are very opinionated and can be snarky assholes sometimes. Gods know I piss people off sometimes. But very few people here are prone to or remotely tolerant of outright bigotry or transphobia.

The Mayoi image needs a Kaoru reaction shot.

Are you for real? Nurse knew a minor student since the beginning of high school and “waited” for her until she was an “adult". Please don't call that sht professionalism, the system education really failed you.

Waiting until someone is an adult is not grooming. Grooming is approaching and doing various activities that only an adult knows how to do well to increase the minor's attraction toward you. It's in the name. They're "grooming" them to be in love with them. The nurse explicitly tried to avoid doing that.

Yeah, grooming involves intent, or at least some manner of negligence that involves leading the minor on. I can't remember their every interaction, so I can't recall if she ever let slip that she planned to cave after graduation. I know we knew it, but I don't recall if she ever let on to Mizuki that it was in the cards. The actual appropriate thing to do is to shut it down hard and write it off in your own mind, though, and she clearly never did that. So while I wouldn't call it "grooming", it was at least inappropriate.

But, again, a thing happening in a story does not mean that it is depicting that thing as a positive example for adults to follow, and "My hot teacher is actually into me" is a very reasonable sort of fantasy wish fulfillment for the teens this manga is actually written for.

I...Did Evie literally just forget that she went back in time to find a way to stop the monster invasion?

Like, maybe she got what she needed somehow without realizing it, but SHE wouldn't know that, right? Shouldn't she be panicked right now because she hasn't made any progress on the thing she literally went back in time to stop? Am I missing something?

The curse now resides in Elsa, not Evie. I guess it's good-bye, System Administrator. I guess that's gonna massively change things.

Except as others have pointed out, this is closing the loop, the curse always resided in Elsa. If the system administrator is related to the curse, it was always tied to Elsa and Evie was just being coerced by it.

But even if that was the case, Evie doesn't have any reason to think any of that relates to the problem with the random swarm of undefeatable monsters that are threatening to gobble up all the children at Elsa's orphanage. Maybe the next episode shows her thought process and she's actually figured something out that she's not saying or "thinking out loud", but right now it just seems like she forgot about the monsters. ;p Maybe somebody that's read the novels can enlighten us on if this is covered there?

Also this arc started in February 2023. It's been over a year in the making.

What point is this trying to make? Are you saying that like "It's been a year, I'm sure they have it figured out" or "It's been a year, surely we can ignore them forgetting a critical plot point."

Because if it's the former, you'd hope so but experience tells me not necessarily, and if it's the latter, absolutely not.

I...Did Evie literally just forget that she went back in time to find a way to stop the monster invasion?

Like, maybe she got what she needed somehow without realizing it, but SHE wouldn't know that, right? Shouldn't she be panicked right now because she hasn't made any progress on the thing she literally went back in time to stop? Am I missing something?

I'm not sure why Mei pushed Karin away so much this chapter. She hasn't come across as particularly uncomfortable with physical acts, more overly excited by them and eager to go with the flow? Trying to fit it in the context it would imply she's at some point become uncomfortable with Karin specifically, and yet she told her she loves her and made those promises of support and oral. It's hard to tell what Mei is thinking here.

It's cute that you think Mei thinks. ;p

But seriously, Mei is a huge bundle of hormones who has no idea what she wants, but she knows she doesn't want a girlfriend that kisses other people. Karin, in very rapid succession, was caught making out with another girl, dragged Mei to a love hotel, made out with her, said she wants to kiss other people, but offered to hold off for Mei, exposed some serious emotional vulnerability, then tried to suck on her tits.

Like, that's a huge mess! It's not hard to see why Mei is having a difficult time figuring out where her own feelings lie in the face of all that, I think most people would have some serious emotional whiplash at that point.

last edited at Mar 9, 2024 11:00AM

I'll honestly read anything Yodokawa makes, but this chapter (11) felt like the first interesting one. Some pretty solid subtext... First time visiting her apartment, and they're already getting into domestic bickering like they've been dating for a few months.. <3
And the powerful gap moe of a dependable and diligent senior that is secretly a bit of a slob at home... Getting to stay over at her apartment in exchange for helping her with housework is such a good trope. Hopefully there'll be more of this and less about the high end clothing industry.

I actually find the whole series kind of weirdly nostalgic. My parents ran a fashion clothing store when I was a kid, so I spent a lot of time scampering around the back rooms while employees were doing all this stuff. But it is nice to have the author actually spend some time exploring the chemistry between the two leads.

I love that Matsuri's big origin story is "I saw it, and I liked it."

I love the bit where she asks Xiaoen "Are you going to stay the night there?" And she's like:

Whaaat? No! I am a pure and innocent maiden! (hangs up and drops the veneer) I mean she's been throwing up, I don't wanna kiss that right now.

last edited at Mar 5, 2024 2:21PM

I cant believe this place is more moderate in discussions about the various yuri elements in this manga than fucking mangadex. No grooming accusations, no love-shaming Riri accusing her of being a easy woman, no general shallow understanding resembling ironic yuriweebs. What happened? Did you guys lose all the twitter retards to that place?

I'll save my righteous anger for a situation that was actually real and not fiction. This is also pretty tame as far as those types of things go in manga (I mean this isn't even illegal).

I do wish we got more time with the main couple. They don't even appear in most of these chapters now.

Yeah, I mean....Teachers shouldn't date their students. Teachers shouldn't even think about dating their students. If you can't control yourself and set those boundaries, you shouldn't be a teacher.

But students have crushes on teachers all the time, and it's a natural thing to entertain fantasies where that works out, so fiction is always going to involve relationships that wouldn't be okay in the real world. It's fine. The existence of a story is not promotion of a behavior, unless the story gets, like, really anvilicious about it.

It's just harder for me to believe that Tianli would deliberately do such a terrible thing to Xiangyuan if she was in love with her, and hadn't even been explicitly rejected, and then stayed friends with the bullies that helped drive her love away. She definitely had some sort of monopolizing desire for Xiangyuan but it was one where she fully thought the ship has already sailed. This makes the study abroad scholarship especially seem like a very important motivator imo.

She might not have even been thinking about it as outing her, she might have been thinking of it as trying to chase Wang away from her. But even if that's not the case, when somebody is hurt, they lash out, and sometimes in the moment children (and I mean, that's the thing, they were children) don't understand the consequences of what they're doing.

Indeed KT would just as soon shoot himself in the foot rather than bring major change to the status quo. Think about how long it's been since Ayano and Miyoshi first kissed on the mouth. They're still doing it, and it's still friends being friendly. Now other characters jump on the bandwagon and have friendly kisses on the mouth with their friends. Context remains the same, and VE goes on.

Not saying things don't move slowly, but I'll reiterate what I said before, if you think nothing ever happens in this manga, all you have to do is click on almost any of the pairing tags on that huge list at the top of this chapter and go back to how they started. Mihoshi and Ayano are the useless lesbian outliers here, but there's still some progress. As for the others, Ai and Chie straight up dovetailed into a make-out session after their electric kiss, Mayoi and Ayano are in a VERY different place now, Nononon's crush is definitely not as unrequited as it used to be, And Miyu and Shizuka are DEFINITELY about to fuck again. And some of the other pairings weren't even pairings all that long ago.

I wouldn't call it text, there's some stuff we can interpret as potentially a romantic interest, but it could also be wanting to keep the attention of the cool popular girl who used to be very close to her and has left her behind. And those types of motivations can't explain all the elements in the chapter, like Xingyuan pulling ahead of her in the competition to get the study abroad scholarship Tianli's family was pushing her to get, and Wang, the guy she introduced to us as her crush, wanting Xiangyuan's contact info. She doesn't seem interested in him anymore, but that certainly doesn't mean she can't feel bitter about the thought of her best friend succeeding in yet another area where Tianli did not. And when she remembers Xiangyuan talking about not liking every girl, the image is not from that scene but rather Xiangyuan being popular with girls at school.

She specifically flashes back to Xingyuan saying "Just because I like girls doesn't mean I like every girl I come across." Right before she types a text to her saying "Why don't you care about me?" before hesitating and deleting it. Then she says the line "Why couldn't it be me?"

I mean, that's not just text, it's literally A text. I really don't see that as ambiguous at all. There might be other things going on, but I mean come on, if you're an author, you don't write those events in that sequence unless you're deliberately trying to draw a throughline.

If it weren't for the context I just mentioned, then yeah, maybe "Why couldn't it be me" could be about jealousy, but that context firmly establishes that she has romantic feelings on the brain, that she's upset that TianLi isn't regarding her as special, and that she's heartbroken.

That is unrequited love. I am very confident about this.

last edited at Feb 27, 2024 6:35AM

Wait so if Nononon ans Yumimi kissed and there was no spark, that makes it a real kiss right?
RIGHT!?!?
(ง ื▿ ื)ว

I think the implication is that Nononon chickened out at the last moment and pulled back right before their lips would have touched.

Huh, interesting, I wouldn't have thought to read it that way, but it is plausible now that I look back at it.

The "kiss" sound effect seems to imply contact, but the dialogue does make more sense if Nononon pulled away.

How is this YuruYuri? Yes there are some elements of the relationships being used for comedy but YuruYuri as far as the anime went just had the gay element only for the sake of comedy and beating around the bush. This series has actual couples and even sex. There might be some pairings that excused the kiss as part of the trend, but there are very clearly canon couples here that have been progressing forward.

I think the short chapters are skewing their perception of the rest of the series. The chapters with development still come with regularity, but there's a lot of little gags and snippets that have been thrown in the mix that give the feeling that there's a lot more silly fluff than there used to be. Especially since the translators did a big catch-up on those at one point, so there were a lot of content dumps of short chapters for awhile.

The old cliché about gay men being promiscuous and unfaithful is alive and well, I see.

. . . That isn't how I read that at all.

It sounds to me like Henry is an ex. Ed was about to bring up the story with Ian, which would have been very bad mojo. Confusing stories of your ex with stories of your current relationship rarely ends up as a positive experience.

Also, the one who wrote that this manga has turned into YuruYuri in high school was right. I bet next chapter everything is back to the status quo and nobody remembers all these kisses.

Man, you're just fun times all over, huh?

Not every kiss and every bit of development is a big earth-shattering event, but the point of this story is to show us bits of the relationships between the girls. It's a snapshot of where they're all at at this point in time. Catching us up, as it were. The rest of the chapters have all the development.

Christ, all you have to do is pick literally any one of those tags at the top and hop back to the first thing with that tag to see how much development all of these couples have had over the years. There is a whole lot.

(Edit: Well, ALMOST any one of those tags. Airi and Michiru has been spinning their wheels in the mud since day one, and MahiMahi are practically immune to the entire concept of character development.)

last edited at Feb 26, 2024 6:43PM