This went from, “shoujo manga tropes in a slice of life setting,” to “hyper-repressed with serious issues are soft and panicky together and some background fuckery is afoot” real fast.
Man, the emotions are so vivid, and there’s so much more to the side characters than one would initially think. I always love it when authors are like, “haha, unsatisfying anime trope” and then “we’re going fucking deep now kiddos” all of a sudden, and break out of the mold with something original and informed by life.
I have to say, the moment when nervous Mikoto gets into that bed, and is swamped by the feelings she doesn’t understand and gets all blinky-eyed and lovestruck and puddl-y, and she’s like, “I might have stopped seeing Nekozaki as a friend. And I want to go deeper in,” I was like, “oh fuck, it’s going down.” Most satisfying to thing to my gay hindbrain that I’ve seen like all year. Very nice, very nice.
I’m really loving the trend lately of yuri that establishes its dynamic and what’s allowed, much the way real life has its sort of rules of social conduct, and then pushes through and under that and lets things happen. It’s like, “oh, you thought we were keeping this PG/light/plausibly deniable platonic? Nah, the publishers weren’t telling us to do that, it was an artistic choice to set you up for this shit right here.” It’s got this exciting sense of realism, doesn’t it?
Everything about this comment is epic and I agree with it.
