This has good growth potential, yeah. But I still feel bad for her lol. Also that moment between Jiang and Liu sure was interesting. Liu seemed to be kinda taunting her, I wonder why? Is she perhaps using this situation to play matchmaker? The only other possibility I can think of is some sort of animosity with Jiang and I don't know why she'd feel that way.

Wow the last two pages have been dumb. There's certain keywords that signify someone's posts should be scrolled by without reading and following a policy like that makes the Internet much less intolerable. :)

Also jeez poor Gal just suffered non-stop this chapter. She got horribly injured, it was suggested she become a fucking concubine for the misogynist who injured her, dealt with a week straight of miserable unending pain in regrowing that hand to avoid that awful fate, gets attacked and insulted for doing so and blames herself for it, and then feels guilty for a situation she had zero responsibility for between her mistress and the misogynistic piece of shit who is actually responsible for everything. Hopefully, unlike with her hand, they can pull the bandaid off this wound fast by having him rush off and do something unambiguously worthy of death in public so they can kill him and be done with it :) Maybe one of those "I'll prove to you I'm a big real manly man who's definitely not weaker than women by relying on the strength of this demon I made a pact with" situations.

last edited at Jan 8, 2025 11:18PM

I'm glad this was a double update because I would have been annoyed by just chapter 24. Too bad a ratio of kinda lazy fan service to actual story. 25 is great though :)

This is definitely a flawed protagonist but every honest 15 year old protagonist is flawed, teenagers are fucked up monster people. This is just a more honest comic than normal :P

Also I wish people would stop blaming "China" for the censored kisses, it's the webcomic platforms with that rule. China doesn't have any anti-kiss laws lol. Half the time when you see an uncensored kiss on a Chinese comic here, it's because the scanlators got that version from the author's Weibo or something, which is still posted in China. Webcomic platforms are just weird as hell. The webtoon platforms based in Korea are frequently weird too if they aren't explicitly adult-focused. The author of Mage and Demon Queen constantly had issues with Webtoons dot com demanding censorship from her.

I gotta figure that the M60 is supernatural, too. I've carried one with an assault pack and 500 rounds on an ALICE pack frame during the first war, and you won't casually throw it over your shoulder for long.

You must be really old to have fought in the first war, wow

Even if this relationship doesn't get extended past the deadline it's already been a huge success. She's gone from "all I know is that I've never met a guy I like" to "gay sex huh? I could see myself in that for sure" lol. It's genuinely adorable to me just how open Manatsu is to all of this. She's completely unguarded and willing to push this as far as it will go, no hesitancy, to find out what she truly wants. It's very refreshing to get a romance without any hemming and hawing for once.

We saw a profile picture of them last chapter and Yuri assumed they're a man based on it, but what would she know about butches lol.

Genuinely laughed out loud at Mitsuya-sensei's introduction. And at the phrase "We've got sweet fuck all for members," lmao. What an inspired translation choice.

It's really funny to me that Yuri simultaneously looks at Atsuko as a raging lesbian but then assumes that Phu Thuy person they're meeting next chapter is her ex-boyfriend after hearing about them "playing with women". Pretty high odds Phu Thuy is a woman lol.

Those goats are so fucking cute omg. That scene was adorable. Also lol good luck helping that straight girl with bad taste, angels!

Lol @ nobody else noticing that super obvious detail but the MC. Manager Wang Ran is hot as hell, even more than the two heroines imo, but she doesn't come across as very good at her job lol

Is Mieruko-chan yuri in the first place? I don't remember anything of the sort up until where I've read it, though its been some time since then. I have to admit that my expectations on this one are rather low. The scenes in the trailer didn't really convey the mood of the manga to me. I hope I'm proven wrong though.

Only in the broadest "yuri is about relationships between girls" kinda way, really. the manga has gotten a significant boost in gayness ever since Michiru got introduced though (which happens after the end of the anime). She is definitely, consistently, unsubtly, super hecking gay for Miko.

They've even held hands lol.
And idk maybe other people liked the Mieruko-chan anime but I did not. The scary stuff looks really cheap and fake, and they put a lot more focus instead on fanservice. Also the OP sucked but it's mostly the first two things that are bad

Luxi's been into BDSM for literally the entire comic, what on earth are y'all saying lol. It's the whole reason she goes along with Tongtong's "blackmail," because she enjoyed getting bossed around by a hot girl.

I'm just hoping the anime is passable at least, rather than being worried about the details. Horror yuri anime has a terrible track record thanks to Mieruko-chan and Otherside Picnic, so if this ends up even a 7/10 it'll be well above par

This chapter was especially funny on the meta level of thinking about how it's published in the official Touhou manga magazine that Zun runs. The guy who wrote these characters read this portrayal of them and gave it a thumbs up and that's hilarious to me.

Huh can't find any hidden haunting in this chapter...

Real "I know trolls who use subtext and they're all cowards" hours in this thread

Goddamn that's a nasty injury in that cliffhanger o_o Poor Serina. Getting a hand ripped off is a major life threatening injury due to the shock and blood loss, but fiction rarely ever considers that. Kinda like when people are shot in the shoulder and are mostly okay lol. Anyway, sure hope they can regrow that hand...

It's kinda funny to me in all the talk of potential moral flaws and good person vs bad person and theorizing why Aya disappeared, nobody ever really mentions that scene from the end of volume 1 where Koto appears to be writing How To Break A Triangle as a script, planning what Aya does before she does it. And I think honestly it's understandable to shelf that because it's still so wildly inconsistent feeling with every other scene of the manga so far. I wouldn't be particularly surprised if we found out that was retconned out and replaced with something nowhere near as sinister looking for the volume lol. It's so disconnected tonally and thematically from everything else, and it clashes so hard with Koto being a) mostly passive and b) getting dumped by Aya anyway, that even if I want to analyze it all I can really do is throw some wild curveballs and hope I get lucky with my guesses rather than actually build a theory based on the story.

which would get Erika doing things like childishly racing up the stairs and shouting swears in the middle of club meetings. 

@Gabinomicon
LOL
In fact, Erika had never shouted swears in the middle of club meetings. Though l can somehow speculate a bit why translator chose to translate that word the way he had.
Remember this, we are not even equal in discussing this manga considering you eventually have to rely on other people to translate it for you. It's a good example now.

Pretty sure my being a well adjusted adult with romantic experience and an earnest interest in discussing the fiction she likes with other like-minded people trumps your knowledge that she yelled "kuso" instead of literally "bullshit" that one time. :)

I don’t disagree with the main character-analysis points you make, but I don’t see the necessity, or even the utility, of putting those ideas in terms of “attacking or defending Erika” (or any of the other characters).

I once knew a therapist whose litany when people would voice their view of a situation, often in an aggrieved tone, would be to say, “Try that again without the judgement.” Readers here often seem to assume that it’s a given how someone should behave ethically in a situation where a close friend is spirited away in adolescence and then returns unchanged when the rest of their cohort has become adults. But, as I have been saying, one substantial point of the whole supernatural element here seems to be to put these characters into an ambiguous relation to one another that is both familiar and unprecedented. So much of this business about how the characters “should” feel or act seems to ignore the very founding premise of the story.

I agree with this. That analysis was going completely fine until it hit the dumb factionalism stuff. I think it's worth exploring one idea in particular there, that Erika's biggest weakness is not about her feelings or relationship to Koto, but her feelings or relationship to Aya. I feel like this last chapter has made it pretty clear if it wasn't already that Erika's handling her long-term unrequited love about as healthy as anyone could reasonably expect from a person. Even back at 14, her negative emotions wrt Koto and Aya were fairly subdued and mostly just sad, compared to her competition with Unbeatable Rival Aya, which would get Erika doing things like childishly racing up the stairs and shouting swears in the middle of club meetings. She's obviously gotten much better at keeping a lid on those outbursts now as an adult, but obviously it requires more emotional work than her interactions with Koto, based on how it's once again getting under her skin with the acting. And yet, she's still supportive of Aya acting. She's still inviting Koto to come see them both, with Aya's permission. She still wants Aya and Koto to be together to some degree because she cares about them and knows they care about each other, even though them continuing contact risks romance reappearing. Living with Aya and taking care of her changed her image of Aya from Unbeatable Rival Aya to Hard Life Aya to some degree, even if Erika doesn't know the details she could tell Aya was in a vulnerable place. As Aya gets into acting and Erika's insecurities flare up, she's still completely fine with Aya as a friend. Erika's problem is, as it has always been, with herself. Erika's flaws hurt herself, not her friends. In this way you could say she's very similar to Aya, her external presentation a front that's far more mature and healthy, covering a lot of swallowed pain and anxiety in a way that's probably long-term not in her best interests. Two characters defined by their desperate unmet need for therapy, lmao. The primary difference between them and Koto, of course, is that Koto is just not good at masking the pain like Erika and Aya are. She's still in desperate need of therapy lol.
I think their dynamic is super interesting, and I'm rooting for all three to end up happy, however that looks in the end. :)

last edited at Dec 29, 2024 12:41PM

This manga is so cute. The way they blush and look at each other is just adorable every time. Very interesting hint at the end of the most recent chapter, I wonder what influence this new character will bring. She seems mischievous lol

Thank you for providing the ultimate proof that no one needs to pay any attention to what you say about this series ever again.

I suspect that I’m not the only one who will find it a considerable relief.

Since I'm a hipster and trendsetter I'm just pleased to see the thing I got on two days prior become popular ;)

While it’s not exactly hard information, I thought this page was extremely suggestive:

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/how_to_break_a_triangle_ch17#34

• Top three panels: flashback montage from middle school through high school to the immediate present (they’re wearing same clothes as the preceding scene). Then:

• Tanabata wishes on a tree. (If I recall correctly, we saw a similar shot when Erika wished for Aya’s return, but not as part of her original disappearance.)

• Then what looks like a distressed Erika talking to Aya, who is dressed in her middle-school uniform.

I read this last sequence as reinforcing the suggestion that Erika did write a wish that Aya would disappear, either before or after their festival conversation. Erika’s distraught expression in the last panel suggests that she’s telling Aya that she loves Koto, not that she’s attacking Aya.

That last panel with crying Erika is interesting, since Aya being in uniform and carrying her school bag implies this did not happen that last time Erika remembers seeing her, at the festival. Or if it did happen on Tanabata that Aya had no intention of showing up and participating with Koto in the first place? Or possibly didn't know what day it was?
Considering the context of the next two pages I think is very possible the topic of conversation wasn't even Koto there, but Erika's insecurity in being compared to Aya, especially as an actor. I think it's pretty clear by now that Erika's unrequited love is not actually an urge driving her to action and controlling her path. She seems to actually have a pretty good self control handle on it, especially compared with her acting suffering in spite of herself not because of Koto but because of Aya. Romance with Koto is like "a really nice to have if I can get it in a way where we're all happy and she's not using me as a rebound," but her personal insecurities are much deeper and more effecting.

Best romance I personally ever had was when we both went into it as basically even worse mental health-wise than Io lmao. It faded eventually, nothing lasts forever, but the time we spent together saved each other's lives. Because of that very positive experience I'm a proponent of the "bad romance" now: if a romance goes against conventional wisdom but it makes you feel better than you've ever felt in your life, then trust yourself over what's best on average for everyone else. Especially if it's a queer relationship and that conventional wisdom is almost entirely stuff straight people say to each other.
There's a couple things in particular that stand out to me as unconventionally good signs in this specific scenario:
1) unlike Hase, who wants to own Io and control every aspect of her life, Misa is attracted to how well Io responds to her. She doesn't want to "own" Io, she wants to pleasure her. She's getting those good top "it feels amazing to give this woman the time of her life" endorphins. Her judgement might be lacking but her motivation at least is right where it needs to be.
2) Misa is very observant of Io's reactions and adjusts her actions and pacing for the most part. For most of the things we've seen that, from our perspective are major violations that Misa should feel terrible for, from Io's perspective they're just a little oopsie no big deal, and so while Misa will be unhappy with herself in her internal monologue, she still sets her external tone to what Io wants. Io doesn't want Misa to grovel and beg for forgiveness for the sleep masturbation thing, she wants to do it again because she thinks that was a super good time. And so Misa obliges, more and more readily as she goes.
Io is basically training Misa to be her perfect top, and getting positive results for that sure as hell seems to make her feel like she's on top of the world. It's a beautiful thing, really.

last edited at Dec 28, 2024 10:58AM