Nanase's profile at the end is kinda hilarious in how much it demonstrates she and Yuni are doomed. I mean c'mon favorite type is "a girl who's always smiling"? lol

Ain't gonna work out in the long term. The black-haired obviously still has a sex drive but just trying to act cheerful/pretend everything's fine for her gf's sake, but she's gonna feel unfulfilled in the long run.

This reads like an asexual woman's fantasy about the unrealistically ideal lover. Kind, pretty, compassionate, all-understanding without ever needing anything for herself. In fact, it looks like she always puts her needs after those of her girlfriend. And she says exactly the things asexual women want to hear the most in the way they most want it too. She doesn't feel like a proper character, she only exists as wish fulfillment for women like the MC.

She's definitely portrayed as basically perfect but one-shots aren't typically where you can expect a full 3d long term portrait of a character, especially when they're not the single main character. Dunno how that means they won't work out though. I'm not ace but if I had to choose between "no more sex with your gf" or "break up with your gf" I wouldn't find the choice difficult to make and I seriously doubt I'd regret it. I've gone years single and it somehow didn't kill me, so I'm pretty sure I can cope if I needed to. That might not be everyone but it certainly makes the character in the manga feel plausible to me, lol. Like sure, sex is great, but it's not as rare or special as a great romance imo. You can deal with the former on your own, you can't do that with the latter without becoming one of those "printing out my waifu so I can marry her irl" kinds of nerd

Loved the first two episodes, the actor playing Hiroko is killing it. I love how over the top a bunch of the scenes of Ayaka feeling frustrated over her coworkers paying attention to Hiroko and crowding her out are, when the one with the phone chest mounting thing happened I figured it had to be a dream sequence but nah, Ayaka's unique perspective on the world just makes shit come across as cartoonish lol

The current ch21 and one of the ch20 versions on Mangadex was not done by us. We accidentally uploaded ch20 too early on both sites a few days ago and took it down for more edits. Our edited ch20 version was uploaded just now. Apologies for the confusion and enjoy the chapter.

Thanks for your work!

Is that the version that got posted here and then removed? I don't particularly care about "sniping" if it's an earnest effort (reading two different interpretations of a work can be genuinely really interesting sometimes, like I read both ongoing translations for the trans manga "Until I Become Me" and both translators are cool with each other for example) but I would like clarity on who's doing what work. The big problem I see with sniping is "This high quality manual translation takes slightly too long each chapter so I'm gonna jump on this series with some AI slop and a link to my donation page" and having clear attribution helps avoid wasting time on garbage like that

last edited at Jul 17, 2024 12:20PM

How does that work? Does she hate it or is she just apathetic?

Yeah... that's the thing. It doesn't work.

She cares for her, but she doesn't love her. It's an entirely doomed one sided relationship. Areo Ace people can deeply care about and love people, but they can't ever be IN love with them. That's the aromantic part of aro-ace.

Functionally, she might as well be straight.

Asexuality and Aromanticism are related but distinct identities and lots of people can be one without the other. I don't think this character is meant to be aromantic at all. She's got a couple lines about not wanting to be alone, and how if she wasn't with Jun she'd probably get a boyfriend again, even with the same problem likely to reocccur. I also don't think their relationship is at all doomed or one-sided, there's like zero indications of any looming issues for them by the end. Jun's repeatedly emphasized how she's okay with Iori being ace and loves her for who she is. She technically can't get every single need she has met by her romantic partner, sure, but in practice that's true for basically every couple and expecting otherwise is frequently very toxic lol. It's not like people need a romantic partner to satiate their sex drives, that's such a solved problem that even animals know how manage there :P

last edited at Jul 16, 2024 1:26PM

Yeah really confused seeing people react to a chapter that doesn't seem to exist

Was that the lyrics on the blackboard? I'd imagine if they were something that important they'd be translated, so I guessed that was class stuff. Also ooh Mitsuki wrote a love song...?

Ah okay, the slash makes the difference lol. Speaking of tags, I wonder if this should have the bisexual tag? The perspective character is obviously not bisexual since she's ace, but she seems to be biromantic, which is an edge case I guess. Maybe this warrants creating biromantic as a tag even

Does this actually count as aro? Seems like there's at least some flavor of ro in there lol

Straight girls don't actually exist irl, so it's impossible to say what's normal for one or not :P

We do not yet know enough about his family, or even whether he and Xiaoen are biologically related (as Kat pointed out, the form of address itself does not necessarily mean familial relation). However, as pure speculation, if Xiaoyang's parents were the ones to give Xiaoen up for adoption, it could be because of the one-child policy, specifically because they wanted a son (this would also raise interesting questions pertaining to previous speculation about Xiaoyang's gender). Both Xiaoen and Xiaoyang would fall under the policy's provisions, based on their age.

The policy was never as restrictive as commonly depicted in western media, in fact, only around a third of the population was actually subject to having a single child. Two thirds of the population, mostly the rural segments, had the right to have two children in case the first one was a daughter and numerous other exemptions were granted.

If Xiaoen's biological parents were urban dwellers, however, they had a fair chance of falling under that third of the populace that was restricted to only a single child.

The way the coffee shop owner specified that Xiaoyang is Xiaoen's little brother and the talk about what little brothers are allowed to do felt pretty clear to me that was more than just honorifics but an actual familial relation, but I suppose it's possible that was just the result of a loose translation or something.

Well this makes everything much more clear through implication. And I'm starting to get an image of why Mu Xiaoen has such unhappy feelings associated with her little brother, since it seems very likely now that he's her bio brother, grew up with their bio parents, and likely suffered in the way she would have had her real parents not adopted her away from that family. This would also explain why he's clingy and desperate for affection to both her and her parents.
Dunno yet what sort of darkness exists in Xiaoyang's parents that led to this situation. They seem to have money, so it's unlikely to be severe poverty or something individually debilitating. There's a number of very dark turns the author could take in this arc but hopefully we focus more on Xiaoyang and Xiaoen reconciling instead of detailing his suffering too much. That kid feels like he needs it.

You know, I really liked this story when it was two girls' fumbling first steps into human intimacy. That was great.

What happened to that?

Normality and Monsters took over that role lol.

You can't cheat on someone who has turned down you asking them out, it would be really rude of Mei to judge Kirin for enjoying a good time with other people, or even to judge any of the other women in the house. None of them have any obligations to any other.

The author is fully intending on what they're doing, I really don't think we're reading into things when it's been hammered home so consistently. Subtext screamed from the rooftops. The only question is: is the author malicious, like how the writers for Supernatural and Sherlock deliberately gay baited their audience and then mocked them for daring to see it? I would be shocked if so because this is such a non-jaded work in general. It feels so earnest that I can't imagine this one specific aspect, the romance between Komichi and Erika, to be anything but just as earnest. The author would have to be a supervillain to pull this off negatively, a criminal mastermind devoting their life to hurting people through art like they're a batman villain

Thinking not about similar elements or plot points but rather similar feeling, this semi-official Touhou comic fits the first half of Green Manga, back when the main characters had more drama between them wrt identity and secrets. I don't think it requires much if any familiarity with Touhou beyond the basics of "Gensokyo is a closed off space where the supernatural can still exist even after people stop believing in it. There's a relatively normal Edo period-esque human village but also many different factions of yokai, fairies, etc. All coexisting within their shared confined world. The main characters of Touhou tends to be two human girls, a shrine maiden named Reimu and a witch named Marisa, and they solve problems together to safeguard the peace and safety of Gensokyo. Basically everyone sees them as almost an official yuri couple." This manga is about them in their early years when they still had a lot of unanswered questions about each other and themselves.
https://dynasty-scans.com/series/the_magician_who_loved_a_fake
(beyond any comparison to anything else, it's well worth getting into Touhou's basics just for the yuri. The Magician Who Loved A Fake, Wild and Horned Hermit, and especially Ladies of Scarlet Devil Mansion are three of the very best manga on this site imo)

Edit: rereading to double check, this recommendation isn't gonna really make sense until chapter 3, where they establish the interpersonal tension. The overarching story about witches isn't the thing like Green Manga, it's the relationship between Reimu and Marisa and how that's shaped by uncertainties about identity.

last edited at Jul 1, 2024 11:10PM

Seems like maybe this is suddenly going in a "The Summer Hikaru Died" direction based on the memories seeming like they're being read. Feels kinda gross in execution though, especially emphasizing her clothes being digested. This series has been all over the place and really doesn't feel like it's got a unified vision, what with one major character getting fully replaced via retcon and another seemingly poised to get replaced by a body snatcher monster, meanwhile the stereotypical mean girl also seems to have gotten swapped off screen.

Another moment I just remembered: when they take the AP 1 out for a drive at the beginning of Yannanoke Presence, they've gotta fold up the tarp that has covering it, which means coming together to bring the corners together. Sorawo has a gay panic about that, too.
Manga location: chapter 48, page 22. Although the manga undersells this particular example lol

last edited at Jun 30, 2024 4:39PM

I love this series. Sorawo having a big gay moment over Toriko sucking the blood off her translucent hand is so good. As is her "Awkward" shirt that turns the w into an awkward emoji face.
(Also like the horror is well done and presented even better than I'd imagined based on the novel)

I noticed that the way sorawo reacts to toriko's hand bleeding is very reminiscent of sorawo's reaction to a certain scene at the end of volume 8

There's also the moment in "Attack of the Ninja Cats", chapter 41 of the manga, where Toriko bites her glove off while they're in a crisis moment (since her other hand was holding her gun) and Sorawo gets completely taken out of the crisis moment distracted by this action, thinking "oh she's so cool!" lol

I love this series. Sorawo having a big gay moment over Toriko sucking the blood off her translucent hand is so good. As is her "Awkward" shirt that turns the w into an awkward emoji face.
(Also like the horror is well done and presented even better than I'd imagined based on the novel)

They can't adapt the internal rants of a LN in manga form. The format is totally different.

You can have a lot of introspection in a LN, but the heart of manga is dialogues. Too much exposition and tldr; and the manga gets axed.

Sure you can, just look at Otherside Picnic. It's just kinda hard to make internal monologues in a manga not boring when they're not on a situation with more intensity than "this bitch gave me money and won't take it back >:/" lol. Otherside Picnic uses it's monologues to convey the feeling of experiencing alien, otherwise unknowable dramatic situations, like actually getting a girlfriend from Canada instead of having to make one up

Oh it's one of those rich people who no one loves, got it, hope it ends with rich girl still loveless.

That's praxis

Pei Yu's strategy seems to be exactly the right choice for Liao, based on how happy she was this chapter. Hugging in a bathroom stall seems like a sudden leap, but to be fair it was Liao's stange idea to meet there lol

God this manga is hysterical. Zun's probably reading this and weeping that he can't write his characters this good.