I appreciate that. I've watched her lives after the fact since I don't have an IG account, but maybe Weibo is less invasive than things owned by Google and FB (I'll have to check) and I could make a temp account to join in?

There's youtube guides on how to set up an account in the US (or elsewhere), but if I remember right it requires phone number verification which you might find invasive. If you do plan to sign up specifically for the event I'd suggest doing it now in case you run into any issues vs right before she's live.

FYI Tracy is going to do a live QA on Weibo (link in her IG profile) October 6th talking about recent stuff, her future plans and taking story questions. She's got planned time off a few weeks in Oct. For those worried earlier about her being MIA on socials.

last edited at Sep 29, 2023 8:00PM

Anyone heard from Tracy Hu? I can see Twitter again (using Nitter's site), and it looks like she was supposed to be gone for a couple weeks, but dropped completely off all her socials for longer than that, I'm kind of worried about her!

A new chapter posted today on the app and the next one is announced for next Friday so maybe she's just taking a twiatus but otherwise fine.

Anyone heard from Tracy Hu? I can see Twitter again (using Nitter's site), and it looks like she was supposed to be gone for a couple weeks, but dropped completely off all her socials for longer than that, I'm kind of worried about her!

I don't know about twitter as I can't see anything there anymore either, but I support her on bilibili and Fridays are when new chapters drop. Chapter 46 is arriving 7/21 after the last chapter on 7/7. I think it said she'd take a week off and "see you every other" on there so it seems still on track? We shall see Friday.

Yes, the ones I have are about a day trip/train ride and a CD store shop hosted wedding. I handed off my two already so you'll get to see those eventually. Then after that we'll be in the same boat. LOL

@cranscape are you trying to collect the bonus pictures? I have one from the ebook, I don't think it was posted on twitter (I added the author's signature below just in case)

https://i.imgur.com/flSMtoa.png

Ooooo... I hadn't seen that one. Must be an ebook only perk. right click save

There are four "magazine"/8p booklets that have short stories in them of Aya and Mitsuki's year together with Aya's camera capturing things connecting them. I'm mainly wanting the booklets because it contains actual story. Even if it's just fluff the two I have are really cute. There are also two postcard sized benefits and I have the movie theater one.

Okey just got the physical manga and magazines....I have no words from the quality really; that and the attetion of the seller is amazing. Dont know if it's because of the normally treat in business here where I live or what, but the details are incredible. Really glad to experience all

It was really well made, right? I have one to read and one for the shelf. I'm hoping an English version is at least close to that print quality, but I'm not sure what publisher to be hoping for.

I think two of the booklets were still needed to be scanned. Spring and Autumn. Not sure if you have a public library with a scanner available. Still a little mad I didn't get all of them myself when I had the chance. I was able to sell off the extra books easily so in retrospect I should have just gone all the way even if I ended up with cough number of additional books in the process.

It feels like the telling of this story has become more disjoint. Is there a chapter missing or something?

It's always been rapidly jumping forward. Getting two chapters that are directly following each other is very rare in this series ^^;

Yeah, but last chapter was Aya fucking around and get being avoidant, now suddenly they're at a concert live they're best buds and the tension between them is gone.

It feels more disconnected than my recollection of earlier chapters where, even if they weren't directly sequential, they had a logical throughline that you can follow the plot easily. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

It was a little easier when it was just one constant mistaken identity storyline/gags sure, but there still are things linking the story together currently and there's always been an ongoing question to why Mitsuki is in her situation.

Right now there are two threads set up: First, Mitsuki being in her last year of school and the hints of apprehension growing about her future via her Uncle who somehow in the course of her life became her caretaker. He's extremely careful with her. Second, Aya being in the final stages of dealing with her attraction to cool shop Onii-san/actually cool shop girl Oshi/actually cool quiet Koga-san from school who she also gets the butterflies for now. The tension is less Aya spending several chapters accepting she's into all of them, and more her starting to question why there a fracture there in Mitsuki in first place to understand her better. Currently it's a superficial 'why is she hiding how cool she is' thoughts but there is something deeper going on. She has a pretty good vantage point as being someone who has been able to see the different sides of her even if she doesn't know the why yet.

Both of those threads seem related to Mitsuki's past and now we got some overly familiar older girl who existed in that past show up. Perhaps not a love rival, but someone with more information than Mitsuki has given out just at the time Aya is wanting to know more herself.

Kanna has a big sister or (way) upper classmate vibe. I do not think we get a love triangle now.

She seems like an adult to me. All the teens so far still have that baby face to them and she doesn't. Knowing Mitsuki well enough to be informal with her name and comment on her appearance changing feels more like something an older person would do too and with Mituski being 16 anytime in the past is basically her childhood. But if she knew her primarily through the shop then I'd argue Mitsuki always looked cool at least in that setting. If she knew her through school or maybe a more domestic setting that comment might make more sense right now.

I'm not feeling a love triangle, but I think she could be someone who knows a lot more about Mitsuki than has been willingly shared with Aya so far and Aya has been curious.

last edited at May 7, 2023 1:18PM

She sold 150,000 copies in a week, is getting a reprint, and when posting this illustration said she was on a business trip so I can imagine an English language publisher would be at least interested.

There's been teasing lately about the blank career paper and her being the same age as when the uncle was in his "hoodlum" phase and his general worry about her growing up. Now a cool looking woman appears? I'm thinking she will be an outside influence in music scene. That said I'd still welcome a long lost family member. We know so little about her family for a reason I assume and she's come into her uncle's care very early it looks.

Just curiosity, saw a few talking about the digital version of the manga to buy; never saw anything about it, so it got my attention hahaha how was it? a web selling it or something like that?

Amazon Japan has a Kindle version (she mentioned it in her original publication announcement) that became available on publication date. It doesn't seem like an option that reliably shows up if Amazon senses you are out of their local region. So there should be ways for you to get it if you can get around that little roadblock. I'm not sure of digital distributors for it besides Amazon but I wouldn't be surprised if there are.

As said before, if someone scans it for me, I'll translate it.

But I don't have the physical books.

I DM'd you on Discord.

To those who has the physical copy, are there any infos on mitsuki's parents or aya's dad??

Nothing more about either of their parents. There was a clear answer about why Mitsuki had such a strong reaction to Aya getting even slightly bullied by her friends after being associated with her.

Can you tell why?sorry if im asking too much im just i really curious

I'll give you the entire rundown, but I'd still suggest just waiting for a scan to show up. But if you still want it...

When she was little she knew she was different and that there was pressure to conform, but at first it was just her only friend telling her she'd look cute in a skirt and wanting her to get one. She laughed it off and said the skirt would look better on her friend than her. Mitsuki was already listening to Gorillaz and dressing like 1990s Seattle. Despite being aware they were different from each other she liked her friend and they got along. Even back then Mitsuki was charming and fine with doing her own thing and she was happy with her friend as things were.

Then she and her friend got peer pressure bullied at school by the cool kids group on the same skirt topic (they were both wearing pants or shorts instead of a skirts) so her friend, while feeling conflicted getting dressed the next morning, conformed to avoid sticking out. She had tried to encourage Mitsuki to do that as well, but Mitsuki showed up the next day still as her authentic herself. Which clearly troubled her friend who seems to have a tad more social awareness than Mitsuki, but nothing happened as a result for several days so maybe it wasn't a big deal in the end.

Unfortunately the consequences came later when her friend heard the bullies badmouthing Mitsuki so defended for her only to get retaliated on much worse. Mitsuki walked into the aftermath of it, and instead of this bringing them closer together her friend was very upset at her. She couldn't understand why Mitsuki wouldn't just conform even for that one day and had a meltdown and cried at her while Mitsuki stood stunned. Her friend ran off and she just stood there and let her go. That seemed to break Mitsuki. It was a trauma event for her. Feeling that emotional outburst, finding out it was because her friend tried to defend her, realizing (in her mind) how much she could hurt someone she likes by something as unchangeable as just being herself. She told herself letting her friend go was for the best. She wasn't just going through life with a different rhythm than others she fell completely out of sync with the world. She shut down emotionally at school and was totally alone for years. Until we see her notice Aya in class, just prior to the start of the series, sitting next to her and literally leaking sound into Mitsuki's cut off world via her loud headphones.

To those who has the physical copy, are there any infos on mitsuki's parents or aya's dad??

Nothing more about either of their parents. There was a clear answer about why Mitsuki had such a strong reaction to Aya getting even slightly bullied by her friends after being associated with her.

Is it just me, or did the timeline jump around a bit?

It goes... failed RHCP concert events, school goes on break and they don't see each other for a while, they run into each other on the return to school with the cherry blossoms where Aya gets flustered again, and now they are back at school and Aya is realizing she has an ongoing "problem" with being around Koga since the bedroom event.

Now that I'm going through comparing page by page (as one does on a Friday night) she actually has changed a lot more than I first noticed.

She's made a lot of the greens more dynamic with fades and screens that weren't there before early on. Mainly in the earliest chapters when she was still getting the feel for it. She did a transparency on Koga's mask at work for several key moments early on too so we can see how she's reacting vs the black mask originally. She slightly changed Aya's eyes/expressions a several times in the early chapters. To a more precise emotion. Koga too sometimes. Mouths cleaned up. I'd say their iconic moment expressions were the same though so no worries there. One thing I really like as a change is when she used to have a washed grey panel of someone like in a memory she now drew it as her normal style or uses a more balanced screen. That grey just never jived. Most of these changes are early on and balance the pages more or be more intentionally with Aya. It really refined her signature tight transitions even more from the beginning now.

I did see album art, tshirt art, and posters made more generic. They still specifically talk about the bands/show playlists, which is actually nice compared to other manga that Great Value Brand even band names to avoid trouble, but she can't get away with the album art in the published version 99% of the time it looks like. Unfortunate, but I don't think it ruined anything. Oddly the album art at the festival booth stayed branded Gun's N Roses but it's a different cover. Wonder if they got permission for one instance like that? I'm not familiar with the new cover, but it still had their name on it. Not sure if this is tighter or looser than what a US publisher would require. Hopefully they aren't forced to get goofy with the band names.

All that would have taken a lot of work to do so no wonder she was busier than she thought. Editor-san stuck with it. Plus the extra story (just noticed the first few pages were new material too and perspective bookending the new story at the end between Aya and Koga with her foot tapping connecting it...I was too stunned by the color to catch on first reading how literal that tapping linked it.) and bonus boolets.

I got mine in the mail today. The publisher must love her because they got every detail right. It's a larger format, printing under the dustjacket, several color pages (I'm not going to spoil the hair and eye colors), and of course the green throughout. Textured cover and matte pages even for the color pages, but the ink took really well. Very good value for the price.

I didn't immediately notice any large corrections or changes to the art so I assume whatever cleaning up she did was cosmetic. It ends with a new story called Rhythm B which is 13 pages of new content that answered several of my ongoing questions so to me is necessary to the story and not mere bonus fluff. Eventually it will show up online, but it's good to let people have a chance to buy their copies. She's been doing everything for free until now so I'm hoping everything is very successful with this first volume.

I have three bookstore benefits versions still coming and a couple books I'm going to put up on Mercari here in the US. If anyone is interested I can give a shout when I list those in like 10 days-ish. I closed my Buyee box so no more than that coming. Hopefully Kinokuniya in the US stocks them soon too. I want it to do really well.

Oh snap. I hope I didn't tip someone else off here. (looks around) It literally was just there. I had the diner postcard swiped out from under me. They even billed me and had to refund. There is a slight pause between Buyee clearing your money and actually making the purchase for you.

Try to get one or two, but don't let it stress you out if that's all you get. These are hard to nab even domestically. And from my experience yuri extras like this usually stay expensive so even one at or near retail is a win.

last edited at Apr 21, 2023 12:04PM

The top bar on Buyee it should say...
Yahoo! JAPAN Auction | Yahoo! JAPAN Shopping | Mercari | Rakuten ... etc.

Just have Mercari selected and then do your search as normal. It lets you select what shop to focus your search from.

last edited at Apr 21, 2023 12:04PM

Here is a picture of all of them together: https://twitter.com/chopsticks_sp85/status/1648268673902346241?s=20

I have Winter and Summer along with the movie theater postcard ordered. But it's starting to dry up out there and 99% of the time they are listed with books. Try Mercari in Japan (via Buyee if you aren't local) and you can still find some with booklets for inflated prices.

Eventually I'll put a few of my extra books on Mercari US. I don't need all of these dupes. Get some circulating here. Heh.

I used Buyee to ask for one, but given the price is a "only" manga, I will use buyee again for the autumn one, but winter is without stock (plus is with manga) and the others two (spring and summer) only could find them with the manga

Will keep searching after dinner

Edit: ufff is true.... in Buyee the prices are already insane....will try the official pages, but wow. At least could order for the autumn one from a offcial page

I see a 7,999 yen listing on Mercari/Buyee for 1 manga + the 3 non-Autumn booklets. A little spendy, but it'd solve your problem all in one go. I think I'm done myself. I was just lucky to already have a Buyee box open for something else when this dropped or I wouldn't have done as much as I did.

Here is a picture of all of them together: https://twitter.com/chopsticks_sp85/status/1648268673902346241?s=20

I have Winter and Summer along with the movie theater postcard ordered. But it's starting to dry up out there and 99% of the time they are listed with books. Try Mercari in Japan (via Buyee if you aren't local) and you can still find some with booklets for inflated prices.

Eventually I'll put a few of my extra books on Mercari US. I don't need all of these dupes. Get some circulating here. Heh.

I just receive the manga. Sumiko-sensei did a wonderful job! Color pages at the beginning, a long additional chapter at the end, and bonuses (and three different bonuses depending on where you buy it). No wonder she couldn't release new chapters lately… I hope she's not overworked.

Anyway, it's a real pleasure to finally having it in my hands. I hope the internation audience will have a release as well to support the author!

So do all four booklets have different story content or just different illustrations? I've got two coming (winter and summer), but I'm trying to talk myself out of getting the other two since I can't find them without books and I already got cough number of books to resell here in the US. Which might be easy to do or not since they are in Japanese.

last edited at Apr 20, 2023 10:41AM

Apparently there is an official spotify playlist now. I don't have the app to double check what songs they have listed, but that's a neat thing to go along with her book release today.

"The official playlist of the manga released today....now available https://umj.lnk.to/TheGuySheWasTP
The song that Mitsuki and Aya are listening to is selected by the author Sumiko Arai."
https://twitter.com/UNIVERSAL_INTER/status/1648523163238809606

https://www.udiscovermusic.jp/news/the-guy-she-was-interested-in-wasnt-a-guy-at-all-official-playlist

last edited at Apr 18, 2023 11:28PM

It's this interview from way back last June... https://getnews.jp/archives/3299988

Bad Google Translation:

"I tried to draw what would happen if the person I liked was really close to me. I love the combination of opposite characters so I thought I'd make a duo that would never get along if they were normal. I also like Western music, so it's nice to have a relationship that connects through music. I also think about it, and it's a story that's packed with my own 'likes'." ...

"I don't really know if the manga I'm drawing is a so-called 'yuri'. There was a time when I was worried about my sexuality, and I am very happy that people of various sexualities, backgrounds, lives, and occupations will be able to see the stories and characters that are born from that. I would be happy if you could watch over Mitsuki and Aya warmly.'"

So she had been talking about putting a lot of herself in the story including romantic likes. The fact a story born from her perspective (including her sexuality) can be enjoyed by so many people makes her happy. She's not worried anymore. She's put herself into this and found people have accepted it beyond a "so-called" category and it's become a universally understood feeling. There's romance in the story and it's between Mitsuki and Aya. Her own publisher frames it like that for the book coming out.

In the months since she's drawn them moving in together in the future, on a holiday together five years down the road, matching couple accessories etc, and they fall very neatly into her "type" from previous manga. Her muse has been constant over the years and you see whispers of the two in her prior work. The change is people accepting it beyond the usual reach. That has to be such a great feeling as she puts a lot of herself into it.