Okay, I can in all honesty say I didn't understand a thing of this story. >_<

That conclusion confused me to no end.

If someone loved this and thinks it makes sense, could they please explain to the rest of us?

Yuu fell in love with Tamaki, and in order to make Tamaki fall in love with her, she attempted to "become" the girl Tamaki loved—her ex-girlfriend Misaki. Tamaki went along with this for... some reason? I'm not really sure why, to be honest. Maybe she wanted to emulate Misaki and act towards Yuu the same way Misaki did towards her. Maybe she actually cared for Yuu to some extent, but just couldn't let go of her feelings for Misaki. Maybe she just doesn't really care about fidelity in relationships, and thought it'd be fine to date Yuu even while still in love with someone else. Maybe (despite all evidence to the contrary) we're supposed to believe that she has a healthy and friendly relationship with her ex and thought that things would somehow work out with Yuu, who's obviously unhinged and obsessed to the point of attempting to "become" Misaki. Anyways, for whatever reason she agreed to date Yuu.

Finally, things came to a head with Yuu's repeated attempts to sever the connection between Tamaki and Misaki, by deleting Misaki's contact information from Tamaki's phone and then by trying to break Misaki's phone. Tamaki realized... something and decided she couldn't be together with Yuu anymore. Honestly, Tamaki's motivations throughout this whole thing are a mystery to me. If I were in her spot, I'd be fucking terrified by Yuu messing with my phone and trying to break my ex's phone (that's some serious creepy stalker shit right there), but Tamaki doesn't seem particularly freaked out, just kind of sad. After this, Yuu stops wearing makeup and trying to be Misaki.

Meanwhile, Nagi gets involved. At first she's interested simply because she thinks Tamaki is hot. She doesn't really seem to love her, she's just attracted to her. Then Yuu confronts her, and she decides that Yuu's a pain to deal with so she'll back off. But she runs into Tamaki by coincidence and kisses her, at which point she realizes that Tamaki's also a pain to deal with, but in a different way. I think this is when she really starts looking at Yuu and begins to fall in love with her. She feels sort of protective towards her (and maybe kind of guilty for kissing Tamaki) and decides to support them.

As Nagi witnesses the problems in Yuu and Tamaki's relationship, she wishes that she were the one dating Yuu so that she could treat her better than Tamaki does. She gets more and more involved but can't fix things and witnesses it fall apart. Then she decides that she'll play the role of Tamaki and date Yuu, replicating the events of the story thus far. However, Yuu responds by saying that she can just be herself, thus breaking the cycle.

last edited at Dec 21, 2018 9:46PM

Suggestion: Use Tags for what they are intended to be used for...

I'm srly sick an tired of people giving joke tags for whatever reason and moderators going along with it. If you can give out tags for the shits and giggles what's the point of giving them out in the first place?

Agreed. Useless joke tags like "yuri", "love triangle", "school life", and "NSFW" should all be deprecated. Only useful tags like "ham" and "lizard" should be kept.

There's just something wrong with this manga. It's composed entirely of cliches (really reminds me of Girl Friends in that regard) but somehow the message just feels so much more toxic than usual. It feels like this mangaka's sole interaction with human society is via reading romance manga (written by authors whose sole interaction with human society was via reading romance manga, and so on 5 levels deep).

The absurd focus on appearance is just too much. The only thing the characters care about is looking cute, and the only attacks they're vulnerable to are being criticized for not being cute—everything else they just shrug off. They don't need friends as long as they can look cute.

The worst was probably those guys at the pool. They're the usual really pushy guys who just haunt every pool, beach, and downtown shopping district in every romance manga, But when they switch tactics from trying to pick up Fujishiro to insulting Kurokawa, she completely flips her shit. They're random strangers who were just harassing you, why do you even care what they're saying? You were just yelling at them to leave you alone seconds before, and now their negative opinions are some kind of existential threat? You need to prove them wrong by tearing off Kurokawa's glasses and showing off her face?

Something is deeply wrong with the world of this manga, and wrong with the characters as well. This pursuit of cuteness is framed as some kind of critical quest for self-acceptance rather than the shallow consumerist bullshit that it is, and there's only rarely a glimpse of anything deeper than that.

screw license!!!!

Just buy the damn things if you want to read them so badly. You can get digital versions of all three volumes for less than $20.

An interesting plot-line would be if mild sister banged a guy

I was thinking that too, but then I remembered that this is Mira, and men don't exist.

What a kind sister. Most people would be a bit more put out by something like that.

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/hana_ni_arashi_ch28#5
What that's not a cabbage.. it's a Japanese pumpkin

Uh-oh... you're right. I have no idea why I translated かぼちゃ as cabbage. It's definitely pumpkin. It doesn't even look like a cabbage. It says pumpkin on the menu too.

There better not be some bullshit drama when Saijou realizes Touno meant to give the letter to someone else.

Deliberate or not, it was simply unpleasant to read. I don't read much manwha, but I'd say that any "deconstruction" was pointless. One of the first things I notice reading Korean comics is that the authorities are always presented as completely worthless. Women can be raped in broad daylight with a dozen witnesses and nobody even suggests going to the police. Or if they do go to the police, the rapist will somehow get off with a warning. Bullying at schools is presented similarly, with the school authorities completely unwilling or unable to do anything about even the most obvious of bullies.

Such a deconstruction as this (though even calling it that is too generous) amounts to nothing more than exaggerating something that is already so hyperbolic as to be absurd. These are aspects of these comics that readers are forced to willingly ignore in order to get any kind of enjoyment out of them, and this series decided to just be entirely about the garbage without anything worthwhile to balance it out.

I agree. This is one of those things that I finished and really regretted reading. It's not just that the message was dark, it's that there didn't seem to be any kind of meaning at all. It was just an awful story about awful people.

There can be lots of kinds of entertainment to be had from a dark series. Like in Murcielago, exploring the depths of Kuroki's depravity is interesting. But this was just... irritating.

What I find interesting is the hints that Saeko's insecurities could damage their relationship. She acts unilaterally to "defend" Miwa, just assuming that she too wants to keep their relationship a secret. Miwa at first seems unable to correct Saeko's assumptions. It looks like it got straightened out this chapter, but it's the first sign of a breakdown in communication between, which could lead to other things.

I think that's a fairly common reason for relationships to break down. Two people bring their own baggage and their own trauma, and if they can't find a way to communicate and work through that, then things fall apart.

last edited at Dec 17, 2018 3:31PM

Oh jeez, I hate that kind of stuff. Drama for the sake of drama. There was no reason for it to happen, they could just talk it over, but we need some shit happening at the end so they turn it into conflict or whatever other reason for it was. Sure it doesn't ruin everything else that came, but it still leaves bad taste and ends work on a bad note. Just ignore the ending/last X chapters is really not the way you want people to talk about your story.

Yeah. It feels very much like the publisher told the author to wrap it up about 4 chapters before the ending. Maybe he'd planned this all along but had to condense it, or maybe he had to think up something dramatic at the last minute to fill up the end of volume 3.

It's just really funny how often romance manga will end with one character suddenly moving away in the second to last chapter, and the other character having to either go find them or wait for them, with them reuniting in the last chapter for the finale. I can think up 5 off the top of my head, but I bet I've read at least a dozen that do this. It's like this is just the default response to "Oh shit! Manga's cancelled, I've got 3 chapters to finish it!"

Mind to spoil me? Want to know if it is worth reading after volume 1.

When it come to Volume 2 and the first half of Volume 3, I'll just say that they're very good, and largely continue the plot threads from Volume 1 Emi exploring her new world while trying to deal with unfinished business from her previous relationship.

But after that, Kei just up and leaves, disappearing without notice. It turns out her father died, and so she went back to the countryside to deal with family matters. For whatever reason, she decided to completely cut Emi and all of her friends out of her life, and doesn't speak to any of them or respond to their attempts to contact her. Emi finds her eventually, and convinces her to come back, but Kei says she'll have to spend a year getting her family business sorted out. It's a completely arbitrary, generic, and anti-climactic ending. Or at least that's how I remember it, I read it a while ago.

The ending isn't really bad, it's just boring. It doesn't ruin the stuff that comes before it, which I really did like.

Don’t get this manga, it’s bait and switch yuri and it’s terribly written!!!!

Huh? What the hell are you talking about? Did you even read it?

I have my own problems with the ending (kind of a lot of them), but you couldn't honestly call this series "bait-and-switch".

Eeeeee so cute!
Anyone know of some more foreign-transfer-student yuri? There's tons of this kind of setup in het stories, but this is probably the first yuri version I've seen.

There's this one:

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/the_foreigner_and_the_insensitive_tomboy

which is adorable.

last edited at Dec 14, 2018 7:11PM

Nice work Mom. Good advice. Guaranteed to cause no misunderstandings ever.

not all prequels are bad yeah! but this one is USELESS!! it's just a waste of time particularly for those who where expecting a sequel of what happen next why botherin g reminding the reader a shitty past when NOTHING matter because of this FAKE relationship seriously? there storie just lead to NOWHERE! so why the author still making us waste time over those two? and it's completly possible to make this developemetn throught little flachbacks in the continuation instead of a long shitty story only to add more content! stop wasting time with those two that's all i ask to this author! "bad end are more fullfilling" SINCE WHEN a manga is suposed to be "fullfilling? it's supposed to be fun to read! you want to feel fulfiled? go get a life instead of searching being fullfiled by manga!

I think if you removed your head from your anus and thought about it for a few minutes then you might understand that this is a story about Saeko and Miwa. I don't really know why you expected it to start up from where the oneshot left off. For all we know, it'll end at the same point, right after they break up.

I feel like you're just desperate for some fairy tale happy ending where the characters find true love. That might still happen, but that's obviously not what this story is about. However, you're in luck! There are plenty of yuri stories that cater to that exact desire. In fact, basically all of them do! You could read literally anything else and get exactly what you desire. And then you won't be forced to waste your valuable time reading something you clearly don't understand or care about.

That being said, Yuu's been giving me major red flags, like damn girl.

This is one of the things that for me works okay in fiction, but in real life I'd be running away as fast as I can. She escalated from "warning signs" to "active volcano stay away from the lava" in like a day.

I really like that they're developing the characters. It's nice to see the different ways two people view their relationship, and whether they're able to overcome their differences or not. Since we know (or at least can guess) how it'll end, we can pick out minor flaws or insecurities and wonder how they'll grow into an irreconcilable gulf between them.

Sometimes it's as simple as "I thought I loved her, but really she was just a friend I wanted to fuck", but even then I think you can ask the question "Why? Why was she just a friend, and not someone you could love?" And good drama can be made out of attempting to answer that question.

last edited at Dec 13, 2018 11:12PM

No one said anything about dating

Well, true you didn't say anything about dating, my bad for implying you did. But about a dozen other people have...

half the time I can not keep track who is into whom for what reason, which is kind of remarkable considering how short the story is.

I think that's rather the point.

last edited at Dec 13, 2018 11:03PM

I am so confused... I feel like a threesome would solve everything... whatever that everything is. Or a foursome, with the ex involved, that works too.

I've been wondering why people keep saying this. I understand that for some people dating multiple people is a viable lifestyle. But for most people it isn't. The majority of human societies throughout history settled on monogamy as a structure for human relations for a reason (and the exceptions are usually instances of wealthy and powerful men taking multiple wives, who are effectively their property).

Most people are simply born such that relationships are naturally one-on-one, and the alternative never even occurs to them. Even those who commit adultery are mostly just in several simultaneous one-on-one relationships, with no real overlap between them.

If you have a love triangle, for polyamory to be a solution you have to have a very rare coincidence: all three of the characters have to be willing and able to be in such a relationship. If even one of them cannot, then it doesn't work.

"They should just all fuck each other together" isn't a real solution for most relationship problems.

When I read this one, I just imagined this series going on forever with every single chapter being this same format. Girl badgers clerk, clerk fucks with her, girl takes it seriously, clerk disabuses her, the end.

And you know what, that wouldn't be so bad.

Keep in mind that we, the readers, have seen a side of their friends that the MCs haven't. To Nanoha and Chidori, the impression of their friends' reactions is driven largely by them wanting to make fun of another couple. I think their friends would be upset at them for keeping it secret, and also feel bad for making them feel they had to.

On the other hand, the way some couples end up distancing themselves from their circle of friends once they pair up, I'm kind of glad to see the group of them still hanging out and doing stuff together.

I think they're mainly hiding it because they're so easily embarrassed. They can barely suppress their blushing from indirect kissing, there's no way they'd be able to handle whatever playful teasing they'd be subjected too (and their friends would certainly tease them, that's just what high school students do when they find out their buddy's got a new girlfriend/boyfriend/whatever).

But also there's probably an element of them being unwilling to disrupt the status quo. Whether they like it or not, it would probably change the dynamic of their friend group.

I had just assumed that it was very rare for masters to want to take their beastkin outside of the country, so they didn’t think to check. Now that Master and Mel ran off they might start being more careful though.

Also, this isn't exactly a police state. It'd be pretty difficult to enforce any kind of strict restrictions on freedom of movement in a turn of the century setting.

it would've been nice if they took collette too...

She wants to retire and be with her family rather than move to another country. Perfectly reasonable.

Yeah, as far back as chapter 10, it was made clear that Colette had been planning to retire for quite some time. That was the main reason she suggested Master adopt a beastkin in the first place (after Master had said it was impossible for her to make friends or get married). Colette wanted to be sure that Master had one person in her life she could trust so that when she retired Master wouldn't be completely alone.