I never understood the idea that if a small indie artist - in any field - music, manga, etc - get discovered and go big, they are suddenly somehow a traitor and selling out and now crap..?

I know she didnt think that far, but it was along those lines - like going big was bad somehow?

Two reasons- the first is based on actual concerns about Big Corporate, in that if an independent artist gets scouted by a big company, they'll have to rake in huge profits to justify their recruitment. This would require them to create content that is mandated 'safer' by their producers and companies, which many original fans interpret as a loss of the originality that made them fall in love with an indie artist in the first place. That's not to mention the pressures of AAA development in any kind of field, since corporations tend to overwork the hell out of artists and rarely give them the space they need to come up with inspiration and work at their own pace. So a fanartist who made uniquely aesthetic portraits or wrote thought-provoking doujins about the characters of a popular manga would, upon being recruited to do an adaptation, have to cut down on some of the flourishes they developed and stick more to 'canon' designs in order to not disappoint the wider fanbase, on top of having to slog through serialization and defer to editorial standards and the creator's demands. Some might say it's a part and parcel of moving up in the world, but if you value expression as an artist, it can be quite humiliating, both for the creator and the fans. The number of celebrity suicides of musicians who felt like they couldn't deal with constant live concerts and producer demands attests pretty clearly to this.

Reason two is personal- finding a good indie creator, particularly an obscure one, feels like you've stumbled upon a treasure- not one served up by algorithms or recommended by popular opinion, but as a reward of your engagement with the medium and the time you've put into exploring the niches. Artists at this level are much closer to fans, much more honest and available, and nurturing them feels less like paying money to a faceless conglomerate and more like direct patronage. Seeing those artists, who showed up at small jamming sessions (or obscure doujin events in this case) moving away can feel like you're losing a good friend, as they either go private and don't socialize thanks to work schedules, or put on a public persona to market themselves as a brand. As someone who's seen small series I loved become 'mainstream' and lose their individuality to turn pandering and dull, I can attest that it feels like a personal betrayal, even if you're happy that the creator got recognition.

Framing these complicated feelings through the lens of a couple that might need to compromise on their relationship thanks to one person getting a new, more demanding job is pretty clever, and I completely get why Aizawa would have mixed feelings about the whole thing- as the chapter title so succinctly puts it, her god is drifting away, leaving her world far emptier than it was before. Even though she respects Misumi, she considers her to be someone that belongs to 'her', closer to the 'fan' side than the 'production' side, and now that she's skipping to the other bank, she's obviously going to feel lonelier. I'm pretty excited for this development, especially if they focus more on how Misumi's new work schedules will clash with their growing intimacy and desire to be together.

To say, "the thing done in this story, if done differently or in a different context, could be bad in real life" is to say very little.

I'd have to disagree. 'Unrealistic' is a pretty common criticism for works across every spectrum of audiences, from your average consumer to elite critics. If a reader can't get invested in a story because they can't connect the events occurring to their own experiences, then they won't consume it. Some would say it's the reader's fault for trying to compare fiction to reality, others would say that it's the writers fault for failing to detail a scenario that's sufficiently solid. A lot of people criticize your average isekai harem story for being blatant wish-fulfilment, and you can't really say that those criticisms are pointless because within the story, our protagonist really is a perfect dude who was just oppressed because he was a gamer and could totally rule the world as long as everything was different. Similarly, criticizing works where rapists get away with their crimes and are rewarded for their aggression because in-universe, the victim was into it, or stories where cops murdering minorities are lauded as heroes, because in the stories, the minorities really were all criminals, isn't illegitimate. Obviously, this story isn't so blatantly problematic- it details a scenario that's unlikely, but not impossible, which is why I said that your enjoyment of it depends on how much you value realism.

Fiction can be problematic, and if you find yourself disappointed by a story because it clashes with the way you see reality, there's no problem discussing it. This forum is a space for expressing personal opinions about subjective stories, which is exactly what people are doing. I'll admit that 'wholesome' manga have a massive audience precisely because they show ideal scenarios and give people a break from the darkness and angst of reality, but if in doing so, they only remind people of the problems they're trying to ignore, then is it so foolish to point it out?

Personally, I've always disliked the 'let me change everything about myself to suit someone else's tastes' trope. As some posters above have pointed out, identities and aesthetics are fundamentally vague during childhood, so it's quite normal to be inspired by a film star or a popular trend or your peers to shift your aesthetic. Sometimes it helps you get closer to your ideal self, and at others, it becomes a dark past that makes you cringe half-to-death when you look back on it. Some level of experimentation is a given, and many people do it for goals that aren't entirely self-focused- I know lots of people who've changed their look for likes on social media, or because they wanted to get into a 'popular' clique in school or college. The end results can vary from depressing to liberating, depending on a huge variety of factors ranging from time, trends, responses and so forth.

The issue with doing it for one person's approval alone is that it's very high risk-reward- if they like you, then you get validation and self-esteem, and if they still aren't into you, then all your efforts have gone to shit. There's a lot of stuff that could've gone wrong in this case, like if the girlfriend turned out to be straight rather than into the aesthetic, or if her tastes changed over time, or if she made another offhand comment that caused our 'prince' to reboot her existence into a different kind of appeal. Obviously, this is a wholesome manga, which I've recently come to realize is a genre based not around realistic depictions of healthy affection so much as idealized scenarios where romantic intent always produces a proportional reward. Much like shonen or a dating sim, hard work in manga gets you love and affection, though I suppose that's a horrible message for those that want to be loved for who they are.

Ultimately, how much you like this story will probably depend on the level of realism you're willing to mix into your cup of steaming gratification. The 'ItS OnLY FiCtioN, don't think about it!' brigade will scream their cases out better than I ever could, while the folks who ponder the real-world implications of such scenarios have made some excellent points about how unlikely and dangerous this approach would be if attempted in real life.

Personally, I don't blame the author for portraying the golden ending, although the fact that the prince's condition is referred to as the 'Curse of Handsomeness' makes me wonder if they're self-aware enough to write a confrontation down the line where the girlfriend confirms that she fell in love with the prince because of her... well, something that didn't change over half a decade and not just her new look. Only thing to do is wait and watch (assuming there are still chapters left to be released).

last edited at Jan 6, 2021 10:10AM

^ Huzzah!

In my head, I've heard Azurite's entire cool monologue in Shamir/Yurina Watanabe's voice. Or was that Signum/Kaori Shimizu's?..

OK, show of hands: Who do you think should voice Azurite if this gets animated?

Nana Mizuki, of course.

^ Yes. I read an article about it a while ago and was a bit hazy on the details.

Huh. I didn't know this was being uploaded here. It's probably my favourite ongoing series, so that's nice.

What more badass than one lesbian with a handgun, her being with her lover with a mother freaking assault rifle XD. Love it.

It's not an AR, it's an SMG. An MP7, to be exact.

It's nice that her hitwoman girlfriend chose dual beretta's as her weapon of choice, they can share ammo :)

"S-sharing ammo? Isn't that, like, an indirect kiss?" - Jokes that would be made if this was a hobby-focused Kirara 4-koma about ambiguously gay hitwomen (I'm pretty sure someone will write one someday).

It's all fun and games until his friends have their first period. I imagine they will be far less grateful to MC when that time comes lol

If our protag's genderbending is an actual superpower with physical mechanics rather than pure magic, he could probably master the art of custom modifications to help with the period issue. Or maybe he could turn them back for the duration of a few days, or even reset the cycle.

Real sisters bleed together, though. Maybe this is foreshadowing for a yuri baby development down the line.

The logical conclusion of keeping a gun under the counter.

Porca-sama ga Miteiru

Isn't it common to indicate that it's characters inner world etc? That it's projection of their pure self. I don't think it's done for fanservice or anything (usually).

I've seen it done both ways, though if the camera lingers and pans around the body, you can generally classify it as fanservicey. Personally, I find that showing a character floating in an abstract background and speaking in a mildy distorted, echoey 'inner voice' is more than enough to get the message across without showcasing their tits, but it's something of an industry convention at this point. Evangelion used it a lot, but I'm not sure if it was the originating point, and anyway, that show had enough sexuality and body/soul/mindscape motifs to make it work. Imitators that lift the aesthetic mostly don't. Though at least it wasn't egregious in this UP's case.

So I watched it, and I must say that it wasn't as good as the manga. The pacing is way too quick, to the point where there's no time for any of the major plot points to sink in, and even though I knew the general beats, I still found myself rather disoriented by the pace at which stuff happened- and not in a good, 'whoa, this is insane' way, but in an 'Oh, that looks cool- aaaand it's over' kinda way.

The approach to horror in the anime's case seems to be focused on jumpscares rather than tension, and while some scenes, like the one in the elevator, felt appropriately tense, the big fight at the end was just rather forgettable instead of feeling like an epic confrontation. It didn't seem like two plucky girls in an absurd land finally figuring out the rules and striking back so much as a stock shonen scene in which a hero unlocks his powers and wrecks a mook.

The lack of buildup really hurts the show, because the otherside isn't an RPG dungeon- it's a large, complex world entirely different from our own. That difference should've come through in the air, the mist and every blade of grass, but it barely felt any different from the real world. So many scenes that smacked you in the face back in the manga slide by before you notice in the anime. The one with the dead dude was supposed to establish how deadly the world was, and just how terribly it could warp human bodies, but it felt hilariously perfunctory, and the reaction was less impactful than seeing the daily muder victim in a police procedural.

All in all, I can't help but feel like the anime staff misunderstood what made the manga and LNs work so well. It reifies the Otherside as the monsters instead of a world, and rushes to the fights so quick that Sorawo's final dialogue about wanting to keep the Otherside to herself feels monumentally stupid. We don't see her relationship with the Otherside, the way it pulls her in, the solace it offers her in between the cracks of the real world. We just see a nightmare battleground that no sane person would want to get within a mile of. As much as I loved the cute character interactions and the voice acting, it's based more on the impressions that I have from the source rather than anything the anime did to invest me in these people.

There's just something incredibly tokenistic and shallow about the anime. Save for a few scenes with cool direction, it just feels like a louder, dumber repainting of the source with very few attempts made to actually adapt its virtues to animation. When I first found the manga, it was a terrible scanlation with horrible formatting on a bootleg site lined with porn ads, and I could still tell that I'd come across something special and unique, something different from what the industry normally spews out. But the anime just left me feeling empty and uninterested, to the point where I'm honestly not sure it's worth my while to watch the remaining episodes as they come out. Maybe they'll have better episode directors or slow the pace down and focus more on the introspection after the first 'hook' episode, but I'm not optimistic.

At the very least, I hope this is successful enough to attract people to the (much better) source.

^ She has a kind, uncomplicated personality that's like a big sister who supports everyone. This gives her great dynamics with all the weirdos at the SDM, making her ideal harem protagonist material. Regardless of whether you go with the useless, dumb Chugoku persona who's clumsy in an adorable way, or with the idea of a disciplined, honourable martial artist from a distant land, she's got traits that everyone would like.

That being said, I don't know if it's a recent trend or if these are old images only just uploaded to Dynasty now. I've seen Meiling-centered harems in some older works too, so maybe it's just the result of being a popular character who's neither a MILF and nor a loli.

last edited at Jan 5, 2021 3:14AM

The Eggman (soon to be Eggwoman) cometh.

Characters trying to interpret everything as a manga trope before just giving up and being thankful for cuteness are excellent.

In the name of the moon, I'll ravish you!

Skittles.

In state 2 of the relationship, your thoughts and words are reversed, and you mentally write food reviews while physically gushing over your girlfriend.

Always nice to see Nana with her hair down (although I suppose they're never exactly vertical).

You aren't allowed into Seisho Academy unless you look dramatic at every point during your daily routine.

Niwatari in the background marvelling at the state of this bureaucracy.

Obnoxious horny catboy Miko is Kawayabug's greatest creation.

I don't know the whole story with "Their Story", but from understanding with what I've read around, the series has had problems with progression and being able to focus on the romance angle because of complications with outside interference, and restrictions on the series.

Afaik, Tamen de Gushi's author got into trouble with the government for printing physical books of a series featuring LGBT content, and could only continue writing as long she agreed to vastly tone down the gayness. You can kinda tell when you start reading the series because it starts off at a roaring clip with an honesty and openness to explore the budding relationship that very few yuri stories have, and then hits a brick wall very abruptly. Of course, even the 'filler' bits are quite funny and charming, but it's sad to think how good it could've been if the government wasn't dicking around with artistic expression.

Point being, the popular entertainment of a virtually ethnically monolithic island nation with a pretty bad case of literal island mentality - which tend to go together for obvious enough reasons (just ask the UK, a longtime repeat offender) - is going to be real slim pickings for "ethnic representation" in general.

I'll agree with you there. Though I've noticed a general uptick in representation lately, particularly as more studios pay attention to the demands of Western fans and globalization. Traditional anime like isekai and harems and lowest-common denominator stuff like gacha games will obviously go the pandering, safe route, but original projects tend to be surprisingly 'woke', so to speak. From what I've heard, there's something of a general divide in the anime/manga industry between creators who wanna create stock stories for fixed demographics, and those that wanna branch out and tell diverse stories about diverse people. In terms of profitability, the former is a much better choice, especially considering how hit-or-miss anime sales tend to be, but there's more support for the latter in terms of streaming platforms and so forth than there would've been a decade ago, so that's nice.

Hope those 2.2 million (and growing) people get their rep someday.

Edit: Since the post here is more of an addendum than a continuation to the argument, I don't see any reason to rescind it, but it's up to the mods to decide.

last edited at Jan 4, 2021 2:25PM