This is interesting. The one thing I don't quite get is, why are they running away? The wife would be a suspect, but she didn't do it and has a strong alibi. The girl who actually did it, there's no reason she would be a suspect. I mean, just try floating the theory as a cop:

"OK, hear me out here--What if it was some woman who doesn't know the guy and barely knows his wife, and she murdered him either out of a sense of justice for the abuse the wife is suffering that we don't know about, or out of a twisted attraction based on a kind of sexuality we'd prefer to pretend doesn't exist?"
"Uh, OK. Ah, do any of the possible bare acquaintances have histories of violence or extreme senses of justice or lesbianism?"
"No, but--"
"Soooo, that co-worker said he had a mistress; have we scoped that out yet?"

Their chances of getting away with it by just carrying on normally are very strong. On the other hand, if they run, that's like admitting guilt and the long arm of the law will be looking for them and trying for extradition if it finds them. Their chances become . . . fair. Plus they have to try to start their lives over from scratch. How is this a good option, aside from "it lets the story happen"?

Sometimes you just really want to go to Vietnam with your gay high school crush and can't be bothered worrying how that'll make you look to the cops. I think Chappell Roan has a song like that.

Also, being selfish and taking care of oneself are not mutually exclusive. In fact, if one's way of taking care of themselves involves actions that represent an active imposition upon other people, that pretty much is selfishness, especially if one is aware how others feel about it (which Xiaoyang is).

True! But unfortunately Xiaoyang has been miseducated on this issue, as are most people who have nonstandard needs. "Why can't you just have what everyone else gets and be fine with that?" Is the everpresent refrain queer people, disabled people, and weirdos of all stripes tend to hear, especially if they live in conservative societies and/or have conservative parents. Needing something different is treated as demanding something extra.
Xiaoyang would probably feel guilty for his self advocacy even with 100% positive reception in Peach Town (and clearly there ARE people there who accept him, like Sisi setting him up to participate in the peach fair), so his feelings of guilt aren't actually useful for assessing him accurately without knowing more.

last edited at Jun 26, 2024 3:02PM

Neither of the artists has ever done Yuri before and the introduction of the work doesn't use the word Yur but the friendship so I wonder why is this work tagged as Yuri? Did at least one of the characters fall in love in the following chapter if not then I would suggest tagging it with subtext instead of Yuri.

In this site there's a tendence to tag with yuri any work in which there is more than one female, as the meme goes, despite the existance of tags (that are never used) for precisely this kind of works where there are two females which are NOT in any kind of romantic nor sexual relationship, despite appeareances to the contrary.

For extra amusement value, there's the not yuri tag for exactly this situation of what looks like yuri but one of the characters is not a girl. As one of them is a genderless monster wearing a human body as a puppet.

So not just the yuri tag should go (at least from the main series' tags), but also not yuri should be added.

The monster girl might be sexless but there's nothing indicating she's genderless. You could even argue she's trans (both -human and -gender lol) given her insistence on living a specific kind of life that was not assigned to her at worm birth.

I don't disagree with your assessment of the situation, just in your attribution of the problem. Xiaoyang's behavior looks to me like a child coping the only way he knows how to, in a way that presses upon the goodwill of others. He feels guilty about this. But I don't have the impression that Xiaoen's parents blame him for this, rather they blame Xiaoyang's parents for the situation Xiaoyang is trying to cope with. Like "because they don't take proper care of their child we have to make up for them to ensure the welfare of this kid". The ones they talk about being too cowardly to confront are the parents, not Xiaoyang. This is why Yundao confronting him feels surprisingly unsympathetic, because he's not really acting selfishly, just taking care of himself. I'd expect Yundao as a parent to have more sympathy for this unaccompanied child, but she instead seems to be taking her cue from Xiaoen, whose negative feelings are still a strange mystery, as is why people recognize Xiaoyang as specifically her little brother despite her parents not being his. I can't even guess at how that works yet lol

last edited at Jun 26, 2024 9:55AM

Hopefully there's a path out of this hole they've dug for themselves in the animosity going on between them. Maybe Takahashi will get into serious trouble and get helped by Itou somehow? Cuz right now Itou's position in their relationship is as a burden, an obstacle, and a liability. Bad places to be for a friendship, let alone romance.

Also I co-sign recommending the Otherside Picnic novels, they're the absolutely best implementation of the "slow burn" model for romance I've ever seen.

Xiaoyang isn't a college student, he's one year younger than Xingyuan, and he mentions this chapter just passing the tests to get into fine art school. And I don't think he's remotely as toxic or unpleasant as you're saying, he's just clearly got some complicated history we have yet to learn.
Also the part in chapter 55 with Mu Xiaoen's parents, they seem annoyed at Xiaoyang's parents, not at Xiaoyang himself. They seem pretty much okay with the kid, which makes sense given they raised someone like Mu Xiaoen lol. The mom says "this year must have been hard for you," so clearly there's some drama they know about that we don't that's yet to be revealed. My gut says Xiaoyang's queer and his parents don't approve.

Edit: Yundao putting Xiaoyang to work tutoring her kids for their art homework also implies he's not remotely that bad, because otherwise she wouldn't want him influencing them.

last edited at Jun 25, 2024 3:59PM

It's clear he's not biologically related but Mu Xiaoen's parents seem to accept him just fine as a guest at least, including snuggling on her mom, so he's obviously not just a stranger who's inserting himself into this family based on nothing. Yundao kinda comes across as being mean for no reason, claiming he's unwelcome here when at least for the parents he clearly seems to be accepted. She says "you don't make life easy for them" but since when is it the job of a needy child to make the lives of adults easier? Fuck off Yundao lol.

last edited at Jun 25, 2024 8:57AM

Hell fucking yeah! King Gizzard is the shit! EDIT: Wow...I got real excited just hearing it mentioned. Just waking up will do that to me I guess.

Idk why I'm so glad to see a band mentioned that's not like 30 years old lmao

They went nuts for Willow's Coping Mechanism when it was brand new last year

Welp, the driving question of this manga is shaping up to be: which of the two leads the title refers to? It would be much easier if it were a plural (see Idiot couple)...

For the first chapter it was easy: Atsuko kept calling Yuri "stupid woman" and they were meeting at a dinner at 2am. I dunno if that title meaning will evolve though.

Also I love the way Yuri is drawn, can totally get Atsuko's attachment to her in spite of the personality incompatibilities lol

except one's extremely shallow reading of the other as a generic popular girl.

This will be a plot point for both POV characters

Sure, but judging solely based on that first chapter it's a weirdly shallow perspective for someone close enough to pay her to lick her feet. It's the perspective you'd expect from a character thinking about someone they've never talked to, only seen from afar or something.

Didn't really feel much with this first chapter, it's too "in media res" and didn't really establish their feelings for each other, except one's extremely shallow reading of the other as a generic popular girl. If there's something here that's good, it doesn't seem to have arrived yet.

(not the anime or the official translation though. Can you believe those morons really translated "The Whispered Voice Requires Self-Responsibility" as "The Whisper is At-Your-Own-Risk"? Absolute clowns.)

Are you talking about the official translation of the manga here? To be honest, I find both of these titles kind of weird, but I don't know what the original Japanese title was.

The anime was definitely trash though, sadly.

Yeah that second title is from the official manga translation. Both titles are weird because they're translating a deliberately weird title, the latter is just really clunky. The actual way we'd normally refer to the genre of horror stories Runa is reading on the Internet in that arc is just "cursed stories". You could localize the title as thus "Beware the curse of the whispered story!" but that'd lose the deliberately ambiguous vibe of the original title, which the official novel translation (which this scanlation also uses, because why fix what isn't broken) successfully conveys.

It's honestly very funny how lowkey Sorawo could be a harem protagonist but she's 100% incapable of recognizing that. I don't know about Akari (she's got Nattsun) but definitely Kozakura and at least one other character who's currently in the manga but I won't name because I'm saying this based on future events from the novels :P

Honestly just in general one of my absolute favorite aspects of Otherside Picnic is how our perspective character has a terribly poor ability to accurately perseive herself, but she's got the right kind of people around her to reflect her back to us in the audience in various ways so we know when the things Sorawo tells us about herself are wrong. It's probably a difficult thing to write well and to translate well, but thankfully everyone involved is extremely good at what they're doing for both the manga scanlation and novels :)
(not the anime or the official translation though. Can you believe those morons really translated "The Whispered Voice Requires Self-Responsibility" as "The Whisper is At-Your-Own-Risk"? Absolute clowns.)

last edited at Jun 19, 2024 10:56AM

The character flaws are so important to this story and to each other, the core of the romance is Sorawo and Toriko being weird in ways that make them seem unsuitable for most 'normal' people but make them ideal for each other and for the Otherside. The only reason they even met is that they're both the rare kind of person stupid enough to dive into hell cuz they wanna explore it lol.

While I know what the title is referring to ("gap moe") I can't help thinking of it as referencing thigh gaps. In the eyes of these kohai, Aya and Mitsuki look like bowlegged cowboys

Why would her father want to execute her?

Also, why would they send androids to release sexual urges of inmates?

And finally, is the prison for both men and women? That never happens.

If it's women only, why would they send android women? And why not creating also android men for the women who want to?

The whole premise is lost on me.

Nice drawing, but the plot is full of holes.

I think the implication is that this is some different dystopian society (normally people can in fact get released from jail alive sometimes). But it's still very strange and nowhere near solid enough to get a handle on.

A society with a concept of fairness and justice is not typically a society with nobility lol

last edited at Jun 15, 2024 11:15AM

That dead wife on the car window is so incredibly creepy. She turned his truck into a Silent Hill truck. Also made it illegal to drive by painting over the windows and headlights lol.

Oof, the Little Empress is finally showing her claws. I hope she understands that she is officially declaring war on the Dowager at this moment, and has made off-screen preparations accordingly. :-)

I mean the Dowager's scheme here was already kinda declaring war on her. What was she supposed to do otherwise, let them smear her as a violent abusive empress?

Whatever you decide to do, Kirin-kun, thanks for your work on this series. I really enjoy the nuances of the story’s characterizations, and the central mystery really does lend itself to reader discussion beyond the usual, “I like/hate [character]” or “Here’s what I think is going to happen next.”

So thanks again.

I totally agree with this. The style of this manga works really well serialized rather than binged, unlike many others. Well worth the time and effort to properly digest rather than simply "consume".
Thanks for your work making it available to read, Kirin-kun. :)

You should try to hold out and wait for the high quality version Rehashed Scans is working on instead of settling for trash mtl.

On second thought, the way Rei's mon describes how Rei once were, "half of her soul is in another world" ... isn't it kind of creepy?
"Half of her soul isn't here until someone 'play the game of Revolution' ", maybe indeed so, games' main character isn't "full" until player's own will joined, but I have not thought of it like this before...

They're not in a game, just a world a game appeared to be based on. Rei hasn't had any stat screens or magic inventories or nothing and she definitely seems to regard this not as "I've seen this story before" but rather "I know some things about the future".

I think Aya is fully in touch with her gay feelings.
https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/the_guy_she_was_interested_in_wasnt_a_guy_at_all_ch77#last

I can only imagine the Empress Dowager's relying on assuming she can force the Emperor to take her side via filial loyalty and/or threatening to out her gender, and if either could actually work then we wouldn't be reading this story lol.

Looking back on the first few chapters, if you want an explanation or attribution for why Aya disappeared, the most likely clue we've got is the bell tied to Aya's left wrist. She's wearing it from the very first panel we see her in, with it having a "ding" sound effect to draw your attention to it, when she reappears it's announced with more dings, and she's continued wearing it all the way up to the most recent chapter. I'm not confident in what kind of cultural signifier that is and looking it up online is useless (like most searches these days ughhhh), but there's no way it's not important.
Also we see Erika in chapter 8 actually writing a Tanabata for Aya to come back, but she calls it absurd while doing so. Not sure she's even remembered doing it, because the far bigger absurdity in front of her lol. It certainly wasn't on her mind at the start of chapter 2, where she seems very openly baffled by seeing Aya, having to confirm with Koto that that really happened.

I really don't think this story has any sort of villain, nor any sort of actual culpability. Just three people with flaws and traits, trying to do their best.