Not that we've been told, IIRC.

> English
> grammar

...pick one?

My Dia Can't Be This Smooth!

Also the dads super seem like they're picking up on what's going on. They both get that amused parental expression, and drop subtle lines about how they're supportive of their "friendship."

OMG, I think I just started shipping the two dads . . .

The dads get together

The girls just stay as friends

Dynasty explodes

Eh, I'd still read it.

Their current level of Friendship is already gayer than a fair few series tagged Yuri so wouldn't even be mad. o3ob

I'm finding that owo face Noah makes inexplicably amusing.

And that's some Subtext she's got going with Hinata holy shit

Dat Yumine trollface tho.

To be frank, does it matter? 90% people don't give any thoughts about making monster girls anatomy accurate. In fact, in most cases it probably is plain impossible or final design would be less than appealing. Series that actually try to tackle it are exception rather than rule.

That's the rub, though. Hayate's design is bad one for a harpy. It looks haphazard and inept.

I have no idea why the author didn't just use the various old depictions wholesale.

We're approaching levels of subtext that should not be physically possible

I get that she is a harpy monster girl, but a harpy is a monster in the full sense, and I assume must have none human teeth or they couldn't prey upon and eat creatures either - but monster girls like this, who are part of a society, live in a house, wear clothes, write notes, use computers, eat regular food? etc etc - I'd expect some concessions to practicality.

Imagine if centaurs had no hands and arms, just a human head? They couldn't possibly develop - couldn't make tools, buildings, clothes - anything. Same here - just not to the same degree. That's fine if you just have them as magical beings summoned from where ever - but not if you are having complex developed societies of them.

Again, she does have functional manipulators. Two sets in fact, which is one more than Homo Sapiens Sapiens boasts. Not gonna be making a career in fields that require fine manual dexterity obviously but division of labour is a thing going back to the Stone Age so eh.

@ Ropponmatsu I didnt want to even get into that as well lol - her chest and shoulder muscles are way too small as are her wings, for her to fly on physics alone. I was just gonna let them get away with it and assume it is mostly magic that lets her fly - like Aya from Touhou or any other character with wings that are 10 times smaller than needed - unless they are meant to be ridiculously light.

It's not just that the associated muscles plain aren't there, that's not how flight feathers on avian wings are placed D:
...which is one of my many gripes with her design in general and limbs in particular. Her leg proportions are also all kind of iffy though that might be more related to the artist having issues with body proportions in general...

Grass, greener, fences...

And it does not obsess me, I hate it!

Not mutually exclusive.

P much. It's sirens that were all over the place in the degree and configuration of avian features.

^ its not a thumb but a little claw thingy - and even if it can go up and down, without other fingers to work with all it can do is trap something smallish against her wing bone joint - you'd have very little control. No way could she use a pen well, or get dressed or do loads of things..

That's presumably based on the alula which in real (flying) birds is used for fine aerodynamic control and is anatomically analogous to the thumb; some also have a claw on it and use it as a perihensile climbing aid when young. Bats use their thumbs rather similarly.

Obviously her manual dexterity ought to be the pits and it's hard to see her having a very firm grip with that setup, but a manipulator is a manipulator. (Real birds use their beaks and feet as sometimes startlingly dexterous manipulators instead.)

And I don't get why the silly design in the first place - whats wrong with wings from her back/shoulders, and arms too - like every other winged humanoid ever?

That actually raises a bunch of issues with the skeleton (not that the centaur didn't have bigger ones...), but more to the point, harpies have been very consistently depicted that way from the very beginning. I have a bigger beef with the design of her limbs themselves as they're pretty shoddy takes on avian wings and legs in the first place.

I kinda wish she had a caring lover to support her instead of Touko.

What an odd statement. Until now Touko has been going off Yuu's explicitly stated original premise of never falling in love etc.; when she's told this is no longer the case her about first reaction is to kick herself over how much anguish she's unwittingly been causing the poor girl.

Pretty sure that's "caring" by any definition.

-- and ignoring the fact some of the designs are really silly and they wouldn't even be able to feed themselves, --

Eh, even Hayate has opposable thumbs and her design is far and away the most questionable in multiple respects.

Hey, no such thing as bad publicity etc.

This chapter is full of savage and win

lmao Kuro pls

^ That should be the case, yes, unless the author is totally ignoring elementary anatomy.

I'm... not quite seeing why you're asking that here though? Not even kemonomimi in sight...

I have a feeling that instead of creating female Officers, this academy is instead dedicated to cultivating lesbians

Remember the earlier mention of the Japanese basing their military on the Prussian model? Well the latter was also infamous for a ragingly homosexual officer corps so those are hardly mutually exclusive... ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

That'd be about two decades (or more, depending on which part of the Taisho era this is supposed to be based off of) down the road and I'm going to make the arbitrary assumption this series was never meant to cover that long a period...

It's in principle possible this is actually set before the local alt-history equivalent of the Great War and the somewhat modest Japanese involvement therein.

last edited at Jul 23, 2018 2:58PM

"Bigger and harder than mine!"

I like how in-game Otto is still a bit salty over losing out to some country-bumpkin backwoods priestess on the other side of the world, judging by the tone of the "Kallen Fantasy" game-within-game. :v

Right, the looser cultural zeitgeist of the 20’s was a far cry from the later period. But, although I’m not deeply read in the area, my understanding of Japanese military protocols of the entire modern era is that while in theory it was benignly paternalistic (everyone in the military hierarchy standing in kind of familial relationship) in practice it would be quite dictatorial, with corporal punishment (including group punishments when one member messed up) and casual physical abuse even of junior officers being fairly common.

Tbf most military "service cultures" of the era were more or less hair-raisingly abusive and tyrannical by modern (Western) norms, and the Japanese had consciously modeled theirs after the Prussian system which was notoriously draconian even by period standards; apparently Germans in the Légion Étrangère found that unit's famously tough discipline actually pretty mild and tolerable by comparison...

And women in the military would have been pretty much unthinkable.

Well, yeah, that was universal. Even the social-revolutionary Soviets only let them in due to the extreme circumstances they faced in WW2, and originally only as paramedics and the like in the ground forces - not that the commanders complained when they instead grabbed guns and started killing Fascist invaders ofc, motivated fighters are always welcome when times are tough. That's far and away the single biggest alt-history bit here one simply must handwave.

I’m just pointing out some context because I’m a little concerned that when officers start barking orders at the hamster and she gets scolded for screwing something up, readers around here are going to interpret it as a hellish ordeal rather than the hearts-and-flowers reimagining of a pretty harsh reality that this story seems likely to be.

I mean let's be honest - what are the odds most of the audience here has any idea of what actual military life and discipline is like, nevermind now back in less enlightened times a century back? I should probably go bookmark YT clips of suitable Full Metal Jacket scenes to toss at the bleeding hearts when the time comes, as it night certainly will...
Granted that's about rank-and-file boot camp rather than officer-candidate military school but same principles apply.

last edited at Jul 23, 2018 12:29PM

inb4 Nanoha moonlights as a visiting instructor to the school