I hadn't known there were more available chapters to this. This was a heart warming surprise to find them uploaded here.

This has become mind-bogglingly abstract. As far as avant-garde art manga go, it doesn't get much more experimental than this. It's like trying to interpret the manga equivalent of a yuri Dali painting.

last edited at Mar 18, 2023 11:24PM

Sorry but the only thing that comes to mind as shojo and Josei centric is a youtube channel I recently stumbled upon. I'm not sure if there is a shojo equivalent to Dynasty.

https://www.youtube.com/@ColleensMangaRecs

last edited at Mar 17, 2023 2:47PM

The name is on the tip of my tongue and it's driving me nuts that I can't remember it. It's a yuri story that takes place in a Spirited Away-style inn that straddles the mundane and spirit realms. It has a bunch of cute Kitsune working as attendants mostly serving various kami guests. It was made into a solid anime about half a decade ago.

Konohana Kitan

Thank you.

The name is on the tip of my tongue and it's driving me nuts that I can't remember it since I want to see if it ever received further translation. It's a yuri story that takes place in a Spirited Away-style inn that straddles the mundane and spirit realms. It has a bunch of cute Kitsune working as attendants mostly serving various kami guests. It was made into a solid anime about half a decade ago.

last edited at Mar 16, 2023 3:32PM

So what exactly is the background situation here? The early reference to “cram school” suggests that sensei is an aspiring college student who is the JK’s tutor. Some scenes take place at sensei’s house and some at the JK’s, but there’s no evidence of parents being present. And the two of them watch movies and eat dinner together as if they’re roomies (they’re not, obviously, but they act like they are at times).

Am I just not picking up the clues that explain the overall setup?

I am pretty sure it's just a matter of the author not bothering to make up a logical background and just draws whatever floats out of the brain.

That’s fine—I just wanted to make sure I was getting what there is to get.

The whole manga is an almost dreamlike disjointed series of cute moments that seem to mostly occur over at sensei's place. I made the same assumption that there must be some sort of tutoring going on due to how much time they seem to spend alone together in domestic settings.

This series is great on its own, but the Chads have the greatest value-added credits in all of yuri manga.

I'd say. Their oneshots even have continuity now!

They unironically live up to their namesake.

That's tricky because the genders of many authors are unknown, and anyone who says they can tell when it's a man is lying.

i'm sorry, any time i see pointy balloon boobs i assume it's written by a man

The best way to tell is how the characters are written, but even that is just a guess. It's not like there are zero examples of emotionally complex character-driven yuri written by males and I've seen the opposite prove true as well on occasion. Most of the authors I consider female I can't even remember where I got that idea from. It could be anything from random internet conjecture to a proper public reveal but I just don't remember. I'ld hate to list a load of titles only to have it come back later that I was wrong on half of them.

This was surprisingly cute in the end.

It's alive! I've really missed this series. A new scantilator has picked it up.

It looks like that straight-up broke her brain.

My yandere senses are tingling.

Yes, that was the distinct sound of crazy entering the fray.

b58 posted:

What bothers me is the implication that they still live together, that's fucking messed up! are we going to see him from time to time bringing more women ?

... the first chapter basically straight up said she is moving out though. Can't imagine how "I saved up enough to dump you" and "I retrieved my things from your place" could mean she is staying. Maybe she is just visiting him to eat the cake or whatever (or didn't move quite yet :P)

I forgot LoL, that was bothering me too much, then it's all fine, the conversation made it look like she needs to take care of him.

Turns out the rest of the series is her feeding him cake while he's in a baby crib. That's when things get really weird lmao

I think I see what is going on. I can't say I like seeing this cheating bastard get coddled despite his morally abhorrent behavior, but what this does clearly demonstrate is that the flavor of love the OL feels towards her ex was never truly passionate and romantic in nature. One of the hallmarks of romantic love, at least for the vast majority of us, is a sense of possessiveness over one's partner and jealousy toward any potential rivals both of which seem to be very much missing here.

What she seems to have primarily experienced was the sort of motherly or familial affection one feels toward an adored pet, friend, or sibling. I think she likely wanted to marry him mostly because she was genuinely comfortable with and fond of living with this guy, and getting married to a man is what is expected of women, particularly in Japanese society. Having never really experienced passionate, possessive romantic love toward anyone she simply figured the more familial variety she developed with Cheater Mc Cheater Face was all there was to a romance.

Some are suggesting that she is just really well-adjusted, but I don't get that feeling from her. She seems to be a bit of a drunk and low-key emotional mess rather than some zen master with a measured, ironclad grip on her passions and romantic life but rather she simply seems very aloof and that she never really cared that much about all this to begin with.

last edited at Feb 26, 2023 7:45PM

Ok, now I’m just wondering if these two actually do any studying or whatever.

Like, I think sensei is supposed to be a home tutor or something, right? Is she just over everyday, lazing around and taking naps and watching movies and flirting with her “student” that she never teaches? All while getting paid?

Must be the best job in the world.

I got the impression it is the student visiting the teacher rather than the other way around but I could be mistaken.

That train ride scene escalated from zero to a hundred in the blink of an eye. O_O

I just finished rediscovering and catching up with Until I Become Me and I would love to find another manga in the same vein. It's a unique gender-bender story in that it takes its subject material seriously and does not fetishize it at all which is almost unheard of for this genre. It takes a rather nuanced and thought-provoking look into issues of gender and self-identity.

Does anybody know of any other thoughtful dramatic or slice-of-life gender-bender stories that either aren't romances or which at least don't fetishize the issue? Bonus points if the story has yuri undertones.

I currently have three on my list that I had started but got left behind during the MD blackout, but I need to go pick back up:

Okaeri Alice This one doesn’t have a GL tag but seems like it’ll be a love triangle (like an actual triangle) between 3 childhood friends.
Inside Mari This ones a body swap/gender swap with a GL tag. Only up to chapter 11 but seems pretty interesting so far. It’s a mystery plot. MD doesn’t seem to have everything. It’s up to chapter 80 on other sites.
Balance Policy By Akihito (Kyou Kara Mirai & Lily System) so it’s gonna be, well, interesting I imagine. I’ve only read the first chapter so far. Government sponsored Gender Reassignment to combat birth rates is the premise. But it’s tagged GL but I’ve been informed that’s not entirely correct.

I’m torn on recent developments in “Until I Become Me”. I’ll stick with it for a bit longer but I’m not confident it’s going to go the direction I’m hoping for.

Thanks for the solid recommendations. All three were stories that were new to me. Although they still had the usual issue I have with most stories in this genre which is that they tend to be a bit fetishized and revolve around romance, they were serious in tone and had a unique take on the subject. These manga were well worth the read.

last edited at Feb 23, 2023 1:02PM

I just finished rediscovering and catching up with Until I Become Me and I would love to find another manga in the same vein. It's a unique gender-bender story in that it takes its subject material seriously and does not fetishize it at all which is almost unheard of for this genre. It takes a rather nuanced and thought-provoking look into issues of gender and self-identity.

Does anybody know of any other thoughtful dramatic or slice-of-life gender-bender stories that either aren't romances or which at least don't fetishize the issue? Bonus points if the story has yuri undertones.

last edited at Feb 20, 2023 12:36AM

The simulation receives a dangerous upgrade.

luinthoron posted:

I don't think literally becoming music is such a good idea...

Hmmmm

I knew this world was one step away from chaos, but what now? we're going too deep!

Never expected to be so on point when I made that comment...

There has been a subtle but deep underlying tension and darkness beneath the cute surreal surface of this story since its start. I think we are basically watching an ongoing apocalypse in some sort of afterlife or matrix-style collective simulation. The catastrophe of complete freedom. The very same walls that bind and restrict us are the ones that also define us for better or worse. If you tear them all down... what are you left with?

last edited at Feb 14, 2023 3:05AM

^Ore ga Watashi ni Naru made

Thank you, there was even a load of new chapters for me to catch up on. I am glad I finally have this bookmarked again. I hate how Japanese and other foreign names just seem to evaporate from my memory. Hopefully "Until I Become Me" sticks a bit better this time than "Ore ga Watashi ni Naru made" did.

It drives me nuts losing the name of things in an age where you can find almost anything you desire so long as you know its name.

last edited at Feb 14, 2023 1:57AM

Ikenai Hito, which is no longer on this site.

Explains why I couldn't find it! Thank you so much!

Thank you for reminding me this exists.

On a different note, I am looking for the title of an unusual gender-bender manga that was likely not found here on Dynasty. It was a poignant story where a young boy who bullied girls suffered from a disorder that changed him into a female. What made this story so unusual was that, unlike 90% of gender-bender stories that go down this sort of route, it was not fetishized in any manner. The story was played completely straight and realistically with a slow burn nuanced characterization and development of the protagonist as it followed them through their early childhood into their high school years.

The story touched heavily upon issues of self-identity and how the former boy and those around him came to terms with the changes and complications they went through as they grew into their new self. As for details, the protagonist is haunted by the memory of what they did to a female student back when they were a young bully and the subsequent trauma they suffered at the hands of their male friends who post sex change pinned him down and stripped his clothes off in the bathroom at school to see for themselves if it was true, What follows is the protagonist being ostracized by all the girls for what he did to them in the past while he is actively abused by his former male friends, The kid is forced to change schools and moves out to his grandmothers with his mom who gains a lot of weight after his parents split up over the stress brought on by all that has happened. Now terrified of boys and incapable of relating to girls the kid is alone. He is ultimately saved from his solitude by the kindness of a single little girl who becomes his only friend.

As the years pass the protagonist slowly adjusts and grows into their new identity eventually making other friends, but they are plagued by the existential crisis of not really knowing if they are a boy on the inside pretending to be a girl, a girl both inside and out, or something in between. The kid's mom assumes he is a boy tormented by having to act the part of a girl in society and she fails to see that her child may actually be coming to terms with being female and no longer thinks of themselves strictly as a boy trapped in a girl's body. This in turn upsets the protagonist making them ashamed of the more feminine things they have come to truly enjoy and identify with. The story sounds really harsh in my description here but it's actually quite life-affirming and heartwarming overall. It has a sort of dramatic slice-of-life vibe to it.

There is a load of other details I can remember but I hope this slab of text is enough that anyone who has read it and remembers the title should be able to identify it.

last edited at Feb 12, 2023 3:56AM

I'm confused by what appears to be erroneous results from my "suggestions" tab in my account. I went to check on the couple of suggestions I've made and found no records of them, but in their place I found a single rejected tag suggestion I never made for a manga I have never read?!

Kaede totally got what Nanami's confession meant but she feigned ignorance bc she's not ready to face it yet bc unlike Koyuki's confession, Nanami's actually made her kokoro go doki doki and she has to hash all that out before she feels ready to reply to her.
At least that's my take on the whole thing

There are two ways I could see this going, The first is the heartwarming scenario you just described which is the one I am personally rooting for.

The second possibility is that she misunderstood the intention behind Nanami's confession as platonic in nature, but hearing those words out of her mouth still made her heart do a backflip which she hid because she didn't want to make things awkward by getting all visibly flustered over what she believed was intended to be a declaration of deep friendship rather than romantic interest.

The modern obsession with "avoiding spoilers" is not universal.

That's not even a thing. Misconception.

People love spoilers, for the most part. They won't admit it (fashionable contrarianism and all that), but research and focus group testing shows that to be the case. Movie trailers that have clear spoilers are more effective at getting people to come to cinema and talk about the movie before it is released. Romances often signal clearly who the true main couple is, no matter how insane the story itself turns out to be and how many twists there are. Isekai protagonists are usually practically invincible with plot armor, if nothing else, and are rarely put to a genuine risk and losing something of real value.

Only place where spoilers are considered bad are real mystery stories, where the whole point is to try to figure out whodunit or what is going on. If we're talking novels or manga, things like Re:Zero go to this pile, or romances that have a genuine love triangle with two fairly legitimate options, resulting from something like amnesia or deep-seated trauma that is incredibly hard to get past of. For yuri stuff, that's something like Letink's "Re-Blooming".

That's an overgeneralization. What the testing proved is that this is true for most people, not that this is some universal rule where everyone responds positively to spoilers for certain types of stories. If you spoil something publically, it may be the minority that it harms the experience for but that doesn't mean it's alright to do it.

last edited at Jan 24, 2023 3:31AM

Im annoyed that the tall girl became such a plot point by sowaro just wanting to keep to herself. Always frustrating when conflicts arise in a story due to someone unnecessarily withholding information...

Uruma Satsuki being there wouldn't stop being a plot point if Sorawo told them, the drama would just be different.

The bit about Sorawo keeping quiet about the twisted echo of Uruma Satsuki stalking them from the other side hasn't really been an external plot point so much as it has been a character-building exercise and source of internal conflict for Sorawo.

I'm not sure I would describe her actions as completely unnecessary either. We've seen just how dangerously fixated or even outright obsessed both of her partners are with Uruma Satsuki so there are some solid arguments for why it might be dangerous to throw fuel on that particular supernatural and emotional fire. It's true some of Sorawo's motives are a bit selfish and jealousy driven and this decision could eventually come back to bite her in the ass, but spilling the beans could have been even messier and more problematic.

last edited at Dec 22, 2022 2:47PM

I like the portrayal here where a person comes across poly at the very first time, decides to try it for the sake of the intense attraction, and immediately realizing it's not for them so they back down. very realistic. been there, done that. tho this seems more like a harem than pol.

The only real problem with poly is that so few people are wired properly for it and without the proper mindset most people will just implode the entire relationship before they realize what's going on. You get situations like I was in where one or two people really do have the proper mindset for it then several people who really are only suited for monogamy either are convinced or convince themselves that they can make it work then the whole thing lurches on for a bit before exploding in a world of hurt. I will never forget that wedding. Ever. Even if there comes a day when I can barely remember my own name anymore.