Maybe one day the Dynasty forums will learn that ambiguity and incompleteness have been extremely common themes in Japanese art for millennia.

That doesn't mean they have to like it! lol

Sure, but at least they shouldn't act like it's a result of authorial mistake. The ambiguity is clearly The Point.

Maybe one day the Dynasty forums will learn that ambiguity and incompleteness have been extremely common themes in Japanese art for millennia.

There doesn't seem to be an easy way to check, but I could probably write a Python script that collects these statistics. Maybe later this week if I feel like it.

And hey, the deeper level of this work's appeal is realizing there's consistency and mystery to the other characters, though I don't know if the author will ever cough up the details.

Quite true!

But Zumi is at least tertiary, I'd say. Where would you draw the line between secondary and tertiary? I'd say Ibu and Nae are secondary, probably Baba (don't see her as much now but had some key conversations). Makki and Fuki and Ken aren't. Zumi is in between in frequency and detail.

I'd say Zumi has gotten much less focus than Ibu and Nae. The recent scene where she expresses her stress at how not passing her exams will impact her life is the most we've ever gotten from her. I agree with the rest of your classification.

Or -- maybe the reason we've never seen her boyfriend and know literally nothing about him is because she actually has a girlfriend?

In a yuri manga, this tends to be true more likely than not, so...

Lol

Known WLW: Umi, Shou.
Strongly suspected closet case: Ibu.
Questionable: Nae, Zumi.
Ally: Baba.

Ibu's crush on Umi is so obvious that you might as well put her in the known category I think. :p Baba I think is also likely to be gay, not just an ally, given her "Every time I've liked someone, they haven't liked me back" line. By contrast, I don't know if I'd say Nae is "questionable"; she's quite touchy-feely but I don't really interpret that as romantic attraction. I think it's more she's kind of lonely; that's why she says she cries whenever she sees the lights of the city.

Incidentally, as I was looking for that Nae scene, I came across a page I had forgotten where Zumi sees Umi with Shou and seems to recognize the latter. So that's pretty interesting.

You also just made me wonder where her alleged boyfriend lives - if she escapes Ametatsu, will she be leaving him behind? But she got "good luck" in the plot-convenient fortunes, even better than Umi's alarming Moderate luck. Though we didn't get Zumi's fortune details...

I guess it's possible Zumi is in a long-distance relationship and wants to move to where her boyfriend is, but that seems unlikely to me. So either he's moving with her, or she's leaving him behind. Or -- maybe the reason we've never seen her boyfriend and know literally nothing about him is because she actually has a girlfriend? While there are plenty of reasons to want to get out of a rural area, "I'm in a gay relationship I need to keep secret from everyone here" is certainly up there, right?

...Perhaps I'm investing too much thought into a character who's tertiary at best lol.

I finally caught up with this manga, god it's good.

One thing I'd like to add to @rainbow8's analysis: when Shou's old bullies show up, one of them mentions that she saw Zumi, and another one says "we don't really talk anymore so it'd be awkward to meet again." In other words, it seems Zumi uses to be friends with Shou's bullies -- and, perhaps, used to be one herself? I feel like this is likely to come up if Shou ever actually meets Zumi on-panel. (For an extremely minor character, Zumi is pretty interesting to me -- she supposedly has a boyfriend we know literally nothing about; she's confused when Yosshi calls the tour guide hot; she's so desperate to leave the town she's killing herself studying; add being a potential ex-bully on top of all that...)

An interesting exploration of the potential coercion implicit when a longtime friend confesses their romantic feelings. I appreciate the ambiguous ending -- it's up to the reader to decide if their relationship will inevitably fail or if the girl will catch feelings for real.

Does anyone have any analysis? Ch02 p32 suggests that Gotou doesn't know that Rei is gay, then we have the kiss, and next chapter we seem to have Gotou fishing for info on Rei's sexuality. What do we think is up? It seems kinda dissonant for her to be so aggressive during the kiss scene and then act like she's not sure if Rei is into women.

Gotou definitely knows, or at least strongly suspects. Look at how she flirted in chapter 1, and her reaction after Rei got flustered. My guess is that she's trying to get Rei to directly admit she's gay, and -- her personality being what it is -- she's taking this indirect route to do it.

Also, despite the reputation the author seems to have (personally I haven't read anything by her), Gotou doesn't seem to be a super bad or toxic person at all, she's certainly troubled and I can see how that might become an issue down the line, but she's not all that bad. Even if she now goes down a delivery health or whatever route, that doesn't really make her a worse person, if anything, it is just sad.

Gotou occupies an interesting place among Kodama's love interests. A recurring character archetype throughout her work is, to quote a previous post of mine: "manipulative women who deliberately use their beauty, feminine charms, and interpersonal skills to their own advantage." Gotou certainly fits this mold, but I do think she's the most straightforwardly likable/sympathetic of them -- the only thing she's really done wrong so far is the kiss, and while Rei is paranoid that everything she does is part of her devious master plan I think it's more likely that she's just extremely lost and confused at the moment.

I think it's related to how this is by far the most overtly political of any of Kodama's manga, and this extends not only to her explicit criticism of the Japanese government's refusal to legalize gay marriage despite massive public support. In Chapter 2, Gotou explains that she acts the way she does because "I just didn't believe that women could succeed just by working hard". Kodama makes it clear that she isn't manipulative because she's innately evil, she's manipulative because it's the only way she knows how to survive in a patriarchal society. This awareness of how the political and social environment shapes the characters really separates this manga is what I like the most about this manga so far.

last edited at Jan 14, 2024 2:44AM

That author's note is rather painfully honest, lol. I've already went through this manga's flaws earlier so I won't rehash that. I just want to say that, despite its issues, the author's genuine love for the characters was clear the entire time, and she definitely has real talent. I hope she gets another serialization eventually, and when she does she applies the lessons she learned from this one to make something even better.

People gotta let go of their preconceptions about the author. This manga is significantly different -- and imo better -- than any of her previous serializations. I'm really enjoying it so far and I highly encourage even people who dislike Kodama Naoko's previous work to give it a chance.

Still really loving this manga, Aikawa and Katagiri both thinking of the other as this perfect, pure music lover and of themselves as a dirty selfish coward is a fantastic dynamic. Thanks for the translation!

In old romantic stories, even back in the 19th century, the love of a woman was what pushed the lazy scummy mc to cut the nonsense, change his ways, get a job, become a productive member of society; all to support the woman he loved.
Good to see that the old cliched developments of romantic fiction still work today.

Looks like you spoke too soon lol. The path to productivity is still long and hard...ganbare Makino!

Makino just keeps winning. good for her

Delightful!

Just have a little patience and wait for the translated chapters to come out.

Anyway, I liked this chapter a lot too. We're finally learning some more about Koto. What I found most notable was how when Aya wasn't moving while sleeping, Koto's immediate assumption was that she was dead or something. It really demonstrates how much Aya's disappearance affected her, and still affects her even now that Aya's returned. Thank you for the translation!

Thank you @HayaH, your point is much clearer now. I'm sympathetic to your argument, although I think comparing disliking characters like Meiko to fascism is a bit much.

I'm going to be honest, @HayaH, I legitimately have no idea what you're talking about.

Eri literally did nothing wrong and deserves happiness

That said, I do think it's fair to criticize the pacing for being choppy and the structure of events to be more like a dumb soap opera than a realistic character drama, which is disappointing when Kodama is trying to tackle such heavy subjects. As a result, while I think this premise had potential to be her best work, it ends up clearly inferior to Segull Villa Days and Fake a Marriage With my Junior. But it is interesting enough to be worth reading if you can handle dark subject matter and mutually toxic relationships.

While this sort of story isn't my main cup of tea, it certainly is interesting as change of pace from the run-of-the-mill yuri story.

But I think it's pretty clear that a lot of readers don't have much (like any) patience with stories about "mutually toxic relationships." In fact, a lot of readers seem to be dead-set on identifying "the good one" (as opposed to "the least messed-up one") in a story no matter how much of a trainwreck all the characters might be. It's remarkable how often people will go to the mat for "[X] did nothing wrong!" when it's pretty obvious that, while X might not have been the worst of the worst, X still did plenty of things wrong.

To be frank, I think a lot of people can't handle a female character specifically who's significantly flawed but still treated as sympathetic. If you look at het romances, male love interests (or even protagonists) are often far worse than even Meiko here -- and for not nearly as good reasons -- and yet are given way more leeway by readers than Meiko was. People, even a lot of yuri fans, just have way higher standards for female characters in general.

Seagull: Ashima, the dark-hair sister? She wasn't that bad, considering circumstances. "Terrible personality" is the MC's 'friend', the one the MC was getting away from. Tall glass of utter toxicity there.

Well, like I said, there's levels to it. Ashima's personality is totally understandable given her circumstances, but she does have a tendency to intersocial manipulation; same with Hana from Married My Junior, though Hana truly doesn't do anything wrong. My point though is that you can classify them as "tame" versions of a character archetype that also includes Meiko from World Without Freedom and Hotaru from NTR Trap. The MC's "friend" from Seagull, on the other hand was not depicted as remotely sympathetic so she doesn't belong to this character archetype of Kodama's, she's just a villain.

It's not that her manga are particularly "dark" (her darkest is World Without Freedom and I've read much darker yuri) or "realistic" (Kodama's manga are largely soap operas), but that they invite the reader to root for and be invested in manipulative women who deliberately use their beauty, feminine charms, and interpersonal skills to their own advantage, and that is a personality type most people have been socialized to despise on sight.

In fact, in the afterword to “I Married My Best Friend” Kodama draws herself as two avatars, “light Kodama” and “dark Kodama,” (the familiar “good angel/bad angel” images), with “Gentle Romance,” “Silly Humor” and “Boobs” listed for the light version and “Soap Opera,” “Jealousy,” and “Heavy” for the dark, with a footnote saying “Dark Kodama draws boobs, too.”

I’m not sure that completely tracks with Kodama’s body of work (except for the boobs), but that’s how they present it, anyway.

It kinda tracks, though I'd say it's more a spectrum than a strict binary. But even in her "light Kodama" works the love interest tends to be of the "manipulative beauty" archetype, just in an extremely toned-down form. The only notable exception is Seagull Villa Days, and that's only because she made Ashima from the sidecouple that archetype instead. There are a couple oneshots where this isn't the case, but those are definitely the exception. Personally this is what I like the best about her oeuvre because it's so rare to find this type of female character treated sympathetically, but I do think it's also the major reason why so many yuri fans don't like her.

I would say the one element that continually recurs throughout almost all of Kodama Naoko's work, both oneshots and serialization, is -- to use her own words -- "beautiful women with terrible personalities." Now, just how terrible they are varies widely from work to work, from "mostly just mischievous" like in I Faked my Marriage to a full-on emotional abuser like in A World Without Freedom (Hotaru from NTR Trap is somewhere in the middle); note that in Seagull Villa Days this role is taken up by one of the girls in the sidecouple. What I think renders her work so controversial is that she never sugarcoats or downplays the actions of these girls, but nevertheless still writes them as sympathetic and, frankly, desirable. It's a character archetype that you commonly see in male leads in romance stories but you rarely see for female characters, and I think that throws a lot of people for a loop. It's not that her manga are particularly "dark" (her darkest is World Without Freedom and I've read much darker yuri) or "realistic" (Kodama's manga are largely soap operas), but that they invite the reader to root for and be invested in manipulative women who deliberately use their beauty, feminine charms, and interpersonal skills to their own advantage, and that is a personality type most people have been socialized to despise on sight.

Definitely the darkest/most fucked up of Kodama Naoko's works, despite not having any cheating in it. Overall I think this was a very interesting idea that needed to be about twice as long to really be effective; with how complicated all three major characters are, and how much plot there is, one volume just isn't enough to adequately delve into the complexities and as a result it feels kind of surface level. In particular, there's lots of interesting stuff going on with Reo, from her suppressed jealousy of Meiko when they were in high school to her addiction to the dramatic lifestyle Meiko gives her in college, but Kodama doesn't really draw these threads together into a single coherent personality and as a result she feels more like a pinball protagonist that does whatever Kodama needs her to to move the plot forward.

That said, Meiko is a good enough character to basically make the manga worth reading by herself; she's almost too good for the manga, frankly. I think what a lot of people miss is that her behavior isn't solely due to her trauma from being assaulted and raped (although that is a large part of it). There's implications she's always been socially awkward and doesn't really know how to get along with people, and that plus her beauty means Reo was her first real friend, as other girls were jealous of her and the guys only pretended to be nice so they could get into her pants. The lesson she took from her rape was in this sense just reinforcing something she already believed: that she was a worthless good-for-nothing whose only value was in her looks. From all that, it makes sense why she would do whatever she could to tie down Reo, the only one she'd ever met who saw value in her as a person.

It hasn't escaped my notice either that so many people in this thread pulled out every misogynistic trope in the book to insult her, up to and including straight-up victim blaming with one person saying the rape must not have been so bad because she decided to use it to tie Reo to her, even though the manga hammers home over and over again via its flashbacks to high school that the rape was so traumatic it permanently warped Meiko's personality and her relationship with Reo. Meiko is both a victim and a victimizer, a terrible person who is terrible not because she was "born bad" but because her life experiences taught her to become that way, and while both she and Reo have made progress by the end neither of them is ever going to truly get over it. Which I find to be a lot more realistic and compelling than the "everyone goes to therapy which magically makes them healthy" ending that some people here were hoping for.

That said, I do think it's fair to criticize the pacing for being choppy and the structure of events to be more like a dumb soap opera than a realistic character drama, which is disappointing when Kodama is trying to tackle such heavy subjects. As a result, while I think this premise had potential to be her best work, it ends up clearly inferior to Segull Villa Days and Fake a Marriage With my Junior. But it is interesting enough to be worth reading if you can handle dark subject matter and mutually toxic relationships.

Is it me or there's a lot of double suicide going on? Also: Supernatural tag?

Lovers' suicides have been a common theme in Japanese media for centuries.

DIdn't though they would go all the way. That's a twist i didn't see coming.Also what can i say. Otome is a bitch who find a simpletonin Kazura and Kazura is an idiot who can't see she was getting played like a damn fiddle. So already on a great start in terms of characters. Don't know enough of Yoshiba to judge her.

Kazura knew very well she was getting played, she even admits it at the start. She just put up with it because it at least meant that someone valued her in some way, until Otome made it undeniably clear she didn't care about her at all.