I'm not a big fan of her hairstyle but she's definitely got a nice enough face. :d

Not really even that, I'd say, but rather she's still trying to figure out what to think (and feel) about the whole affair. Teenager just ran headlong into her sexuality and is now confused.

(Also literally can't look Kousaka in the face without her libido going into high gear it seems.)

I'd say that's the least of her worries atm. Actually come think of it after Goggle-sensei clued her in on the concept the "woman" part in "I had sex with a woman" doesn't particularly seem to bother her in and by itself...

Looks are subjective. You might think they were ugly, but others might think they are gorgeous. And also, the dude fucking around when having a spouse is a piece of shit.

The first part kicks the chair from under your own previous argument. The second, while arguably true, is irrelevant to the topic except inasmuch that it illustrates being a dodgy bloke is no issue. ʅ ( • ε • ) ʃ

So I'm curious as to why she doesn't know anything.

It's not that she "doesn't know anything" - eg. she clearly picked up on what the adults were talking about here. It's rather that between her rather zoned-out mental state and not having a clue about this whole lesbian business it took a while before she hit on a sufficiently familiar frame of reference for the pieces to start clicking in place.

"Oh, so that too counted as sex..." sort of thing.

Appears to be unsettling all around in-universe too, as Natsume doesn't seem to be feeling very proud of herself and is clearly (and justifiably, as the audience knows) worried about how Maki's holding up.

That's some "can i go home now pls" face Nico's making...

lmao what

Progress! ヽ(･ω･ゞ)

Er... Are you really that new here? Or have you just not been looking under the NSFW tag? Because there are a ton of doujins where one woman comes on super aggressively, to the point that IRL it would clearly be rape, and the other woman is even saying things like "No," "Stop it," "Don't!" and it doesn't even give the aggressor pause. I'm serious, it's as common as dirt on this site.

Then again... >_>
Genre conventions are weird.

Ratri's little sister, surely?

My thought too, though she's currently triggering my retarded human sensor. Hopefully this arc ends soon so I can start fan-boying over her.

I'd guess the Teacher's imouto-chan actually, if the sheer attitude is to go by...

I'd say they're doing a pretty good job portraying incomprehension.

When Chinatsu is giving you pretty sensible and valid relationship advice you know you have ways to go.

This chapter is all kinds of 10/10 and win

Almost reminds me of Yuu from YagaKimi. Yuu, obviously, doesn't seem as dense to the prospect of relationships between two women as Maki does here, but they both clearly suffer from a lack of sense for the passion involved with a romantic relationship, as you pointed out.

Well, more like she's completely overwhelmed by the intensity of the emotions involved. That kind of thing can be pretty jarring and bewildering at first brush in general. To give a parallel one reason people tend to "freeze up" in dangerous situations is they don't know how to cope with the sudden rush of adrenaline - something appropriate training and experience helps a lot with.

You'd think this girl wouldn't have gone through with the whole thing if she didn't know what was going to happen, but I suppose Kousaka was being a little pushy.

I think it was more of a "I have no idea what's going on and it scares me but I'm also excited and curious and trust her" kind of thing on Maki's part. Such an anxious jumble isn't exactly unusual for teenagers having their first time I understand - nevermind now that the idea of two women doing it wasn't terribly familiar to her at the time, further adding to the disorientation.

Sounds like she's aware of the basic principles, going by how she started connecting the dots at "in and out". Seems more like she's blanking out on sheer emotional confusion.

Probably comes down to having to suddenly cope with the whole shebang of "passion" with no forewarning or prior experience. "Deep end of the pool and no floater" kind of situation.

Let's agree to disagree on the looks part, because no one extremely ugly, even if they were the most charismatic person in the world, could be great at seducing people. That is just not how things work. Looks matter more than people want to believe, because lying to themselves about things they don't have makes them feel better.

You sure showed that strawman who's boss.

last edited at May 17, 2018 4:24PM

I think you can currently write just about anything down to Maki plain having some trouble wrapping her head around the whole business. She is, for a lack of better word, dazed and seems to be all but sleepwalking throughout the school day (to the understandable consternation of her friends).

...I suppose it is to Kousaka's credit she's quite kicking herself over what she did. "What the actual fuck, me?!"

last edited at May 17, 2018 4:20PM

You do realise a lot of very successful seducers (of either sex) IRL aren't even spectacularly good-looking? It's more about interpersonal skills and that ever-ephemeral "charm" or "charisma" or whatever you want to call it.

And Touma really comes across as someone who doesn't quite grasp the actual meaning of what they're doing. She probably just thinks she's being nice.

last edited at May 17, 2018 3:01PM

Same. As mentioned before it remains to be seen if any of this will have any actual plot relevance - not holding my breath, personally.

So to sum it up literally nothing in those pages gives any actual hint for the particular reasons for their marriages. If you have to make huge assumptions then there really is no point to this.

You're welcome to come up with more plausible in-universe reasons for the phenomenom to still be kicking around than good old dynastic alliance-building.
I'll wait.

And you forget that this story takes place in the future and even in modern Japan using marriages to combine families is seen as archaic. Modern day arranged marriages are almost entirely done for purely business reasons or if the the participants are getting too old to waste time dating to find a suitable partner. Now this takes place in the far future, I doubt that they regressed into inforcing feudal traditions. Even if it was about combing two families, why do these two families absolutely require a combination that they are willing to sell their daughters for? Its these important details that I need or else Im just going to roll my eyes every time the subject is brought up.

You said it yourself - "business reasons." AKA what I've been repeating ad nauseum about strategic alliances, power and wealth.

You seem to have some rather odd, if not downright naive, ideas about how powerful upper-class clans have universally operated everywhere and still do in many parts, and why.

"For research purposes!"

Those would mostly be reflections of their particular sociocultural contexts. The stories people tell and enjoy say a lot of them as a group, as anthropologists have long known.

That seems unlikely as feudal decentralisation meshes very poorly with the extreme complexity of modern societies and the primary root cause behind it - need for local military defense in the absence of effective protection from an overlord or central governement - isn't terribly topical in modern contexts. (Organised crime tends to have some parallels in a far smaller scale though.)

And since nowadays married couples rarely live with either party's parents anymore who marries "into" whose family is somewhat academic. (No indication that has changed in the setting, either.) In the context I'd expect them to just combine surnames, or retain their own unchanged, and so on unless there's some specific convoluted reason to do different (in which case it basically boils down to arrangements between the people and families involved).

Uh-huh. Now show us on this doll where the bad Touma-kun touched you...