Nara-sensei introduction is interesting. I wonder if she'll scout Touko after seeing her performance & that will give her a career path to work towards in the future instead of becoming her sister.

Very good call—I was wondering what the import of introducing an entirely new character at this late stage might be, and that’s an interesting possibility. Touko has been playing a role, of sorts, for a long time, so maybe a career in performance might suit her.

On the other hand, she doesn’t actually seem to have that chameleon-like affect that truly gifted actors can have—more like she’s shape-shifted into the one model she imprinted on. The major talents that she’s actually displayed—being highly organized and being able to get people to go along with what she wants without actually bullying or coercing them—suggests that she’s really cut out to be a director. :-)

Kase has always had a harem. She gets flooded with chocolate on Valentine's Day every year.

It's one thing to be surrounded by nameless, faceless admirers. It's another thing when they have names and faces.

What names? It’s been established since chapter 2 that Kase has fans (not always faceless—see chap. 3, p. 8, among others) and chapter 5.5 is all about why Valentine’s Day chocolate is a problem for Kase (“They even accompany me to the lockers”). Aikawa’s one-sided sports rivalry is a running joke in the omake, and if we know anything for certain at all about Inoue-senpai, it’s that she is officially NOT a romantic rival to Yamada.

last edited at Feb 4, 2018 5:08PM

Nice to see Kase-san's side, where she's the one freaking out about little things, and then going all dreamy when she thinks of Yamada. Most of the series is so closely focused on Yamada, we don't get that much of Kase herself, so this is a real treat.

We also don’t usually get to see either of them interacting with other people (except Mikawacchi or Kase’s fellow club members) without the other one present or nearby. So we don’t have much sense, for example, of just how much it might take for snooty roommate Fukami to really get under Kase’s skin, or even if it’s possible for her to lose her temper at all.

UNLESS YOU MESS WITH YAMADA—THEN YOU DIE!

Just so I have this straight, people are reacting to Mochi Au Lait stories according to the standards of real life, correct? Yikes . . .

Isn't that kind of insulting to Mochi?

Not at all—I think most of the stories are hilarious, in a quirky sort of way. But to me they have about as much to do with real people in real life as an episode of the Smurfs, or the Flintstones.

Just so I have this straight, people are reacting to Mochi Au Lait stories according to the standards of real life, correct? Yikes . . .

There used to be (back when most men and women wore hats) a superstition that it was unlucky to put a hat on a bed. There was actually a practical reason for not putting your hat on the bed--it's much more likely that someone will accidentally sit on it than if you put it on a table (or a hatrack).

"Don't put your glasses on your school desk--and certainly don't cover them up with anything" isn't an official saying. But maybe it should be.

last edited at Feb 2, 2018 9:24PM

The difference in tone/atmosphere between the chapter 23 "going into the light" scene and the new one is all I was really talking about. Also, Yuu looks adorable in her nurse outfit.

last edited at Feb 2, 2018 11:01AM

We've said all along that Nakatani does an exceptional job of keeping a pretty wide range of potential narrative outcomes open, all of which would be consistent with past plot and character development. I don't think anybody really thought that a tragic end to this story was the most likely one, but, especially around the beginning of chapter 23, there were significant hints that it might be on the table. But the most recent chapters seem to be a decided turn away from anything like that.

Remember when there was some speculation that Sayaka might turn to the dark side when she discovered the depth of Yuu and Touko's relationship? Instead, she's turned out to be maybe the most stand-up bestie in all of yuri manga (the recent ones I can think of, anyway). Even at the time I really didn't think she would go that way, but it wouldn't have been totally out of the question for Sayaka's snippiness toward kouhai Yuu and her slight possessiveness about Touko to take a darker turn.

Stories heading toward closure always choose one outcome over all the possible others, but that doesn't mean those doors were never there to be opened in the first place.

(PS: As always, I really appreciate the thoughtful and reasonable responses on this board when a new chapter comes out.)

last edited at Feb 2, 2018 7:54AM

OK, I don't know who's more nervous--me or the actors. Actually, although this really was a bit of a tease--we didn't really need two "day-of-the-play" buildup chapters--for me this one totally dispelled the impression that . . . that bad thing might happen. You know, with the trains, and the "no destination" and all. That one.

I think we're good on that score.

Has it still not been revealed what happened with Uta (I think five years ago) that is still making Kaoru guilty, or did I just miss it?

Realism/plausibility/real-life ethical implications aside, I’m mostly interested in the signals the story is sending, and the entire set-up of this situation depends on what happened in the past, events about which we have only gotten oblique hints (and very little recently)—the parents got divorced, Kaoru feels responsible for hurting Uta, Reiichi reversed his attitude toward Kaoru, etc.

But I think it’s a flaw in the story construction that we can forget about all that stuff for long stretches, so the focus of interest gets reduced to who loves/would be an appropriate partner for who. In other words, by now we have a very good idea of what these characters are currently like, but the story initially made (what seemed to be) an implicit promise to reveal how they got that way, and it shows few signs of making good on that promise. At least not anytime soon.

if the main characters were all normal people who talked about their problems

One of Mei’s defining characteristics from the very start has been a bad case of Cannot (or Will Not) Spit It Out

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CannotSpitItOut

Just got word from Amazon (US) that the next volume will be released a week later:

Takashima, Hiromi "Kase-san and an Apron"
Estimated arrival date: February 20, 201

Just got word from Amazon (US) that the next volume will be released a week late:

Nio, Nakatani "Bloom into You Vol. 4"
Estimated arrival date: February 20, 2018

Which is a silly line… If your girlfriend loves ice cream and you hate it, does that mean you can't love her?

Well, it’s the essence of Touko’s character that she’s incredibly smart and competent about everything except her own vision of herself. Of course it’s twisted logic—when it comes to valuing herself, that’s the only kind she’s got.

So far, that is . . .

I don't see moments like [the ice cream scene] very often so that left quite a positive impression on me.

Definitely true—yuri manga tend to bash you over the head when someone is a “bad guy” (or good-guy-turned-bad). It’s not that Reiichi is a particularly complex character; it’s just that we don’t often see this particular arrangement of character traits.

I feel like we need to get some clues about that past family trauma pretty soon, or I’m going to start thinking this author is just being withholding.

It’s not like she is a self-loather.

Yes, she certainly is; it’s one of her fundamental defining characteristics.

Chapter 22, page 28.
Touko to Yuu:
“How could I be in love with someone who loves what I hate? I hate myself.”

I don't know where people are getting this notion that Reiichi is "decent" from.

I was wondering the same thing, so I went back and re-read the whole story. The very first thing we learn is that Kaoru is excited about their first anniversary, while Reiichi has totally forgotten the whole thing.

He’s not shown as being actively evil or vicious (as characters with his role in the plot often are), but he’s consistently shown as unable or unwilling to give Kaoru what she wants.

And sudden, or suddenly extended, business trips that happen to coincide with special family occasions are a huge red flag, in fiction and in real life.

And if Touko is ready for someone to love her, Yuu has no reason to keep her feelings from Touko.

Agreed. Despite the oddness of Touko’s initial Sudden Onset Yuu-itis, there’s never been any indication that she’s not sincerely in love with her kouhai, just like any lovesick hormonal high schooler. It’s the being loved in return that’s always been the sticking point, under the perversely dysfunctional “I could never respect anyone who could fall in love with me” standard traditionally adopted by self-loathers since time immemorial.

Either Youko gets to a place where she believes she’s worthy to be loved or she doesn’t. But if she does, and assuming the characterization stays as consistent as it has been all along, an invitation from Yuu for a rendezvous in the equipment shed can only be the good news Touko would be looking for.

last edited at Dec 28, 2017 11:56PM

The TV Tropes website specifically mentions this manga as an example of the “My Sibling Will Live Through Me” variant of the “Replacement Goldfish” trope, saying,

“Bloom Into You has one [example] that goes into detail about the emotional and mental consequences of this [trope].” (Warning: time sink ahead.)

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MySiblingWillLiveThroughMe

Survivor’s guilt is certainly a plausible explanation for at least part Touko’s state of mind. The only trouble with leaning too heavily on it is that we don’t actually have any direct evidence that she even feels particularly guilty (it’s more than reasonable to think that she does, but it’s still just our inference). We do see what she tells Yuu in Chapter 10 along with her memory/thoughts at the end of that chapter, we see her dream/recollection of her sister’s death, and we see her being pensive in the cemetery. (The dream could suggest that she feels some degree of guilt, or it could just be a replay of her most traumatic memory.)

What she does directly say is that a) she couldn’t accept her sister’s death, b) she decided to become like her, and c) she liked the praise she got when she acted like her sister. That is, the loss of her sister opened up a role/niche in the family for her, and she took it, partly for herself and partly to honor her sister’s memory.

Even her discovery of what her sister was really like at school leads her to just say, in a very low-key way, “I have no idea what to do now,” as if a student council plan for some school event has hit an unforeseen snag rather than this new knowledge sparking an emotional/existential crisis.

You may well be right about guilt playing a major part in Touko’s ongoing emotional state; I’d be very surprised if it didn’t have some role. But my point is that, while we as readers almost can’t help reading these events in very dramatic terms, we’re basing that reading on inferences rather than on explicit evidence in the text.

For more of the same cuteness only with a much sharper edge, see this author's "The First Thrill of Excitement."

One of the great yuri endings.

As always, I'm grateful for the thoughtful and well-supported comments on this board. Although it's hard to avoid it completely, I try not to get too heavily invested in specific predictions about what will happen in the story, but I will say that from a storytelling/craft perspective I'm very interested in seeing how the actual performance of the play itself is handled.

As others have said, we've spent an awful lot of story-time building up to this event, and this chapter's confrontations (and Touko's initial response) have already accomplished a bit of what might hypothetically have been caused by the play itself--Touko's realization that her friends were using the play to try to help her, for example.

This story has tended to work by the accumulation of lots of nuanced, relatively low-key scenes rather than by big emotional set-pieces (Chapter 10 being the biggest counter-example); even the pivotal Love in the Shed scene, emotionally significant as we know that to be, to an outside observer was "only" a matter of which person initiated the kisses.

I'm looking forward to seeing if/how the execution of the play can possibly live up to the extensive build-up it's been given.

That collage reminds me, I wonder if Touko will ever get around to making Yuu her cheesecake.

I love the double meaning in your phrasing, since in the last panel of that penultimate page Touko looks like she wants to have Yuu for dessert.

Touko's internal turmoil is the only real conflict that drives the series

You make a plausible case, but I think the above may be rather overstated--we all seem to be taking Yuu's development for granted, but she still hasn't overtly said, even to herself (almost), that what she feels for Touko is romantic love. Sure, it looks to us like we're just one confession away from moonlight and roses (etc.), but even if that's where the story is heading, given the rather tangled emotional/psychological knots involved in the Touko/Yuu relationship, getting our pair to a steamy sleepover while someone's family is out of town may be considerably more complicated than we (and I do include myself in that group) have been assuming lately.

In other words, Yuu herself isn't necessarily a done deal as far as character development goes quite yet.

Granted, all it would take is one thought balloon of Yuu saying, "I want to touch senpai and be touched in previously undreamed-of places" to negate my argument. So there's that.

last edited at Dec 3, 2017 4:30PM

I think that's one of the strengths of this series, developments can be unexpected but well foreshadowed and consistent.

Bloom Into You has become one of my standards for complex characters with "negative" and "positive" traits/moments equally balanced and who make decisions more because of who they are rather than what the plot requires.

Just wanted to say that I think that schuyguy and riverFlower have hit a couple of bullseyes here.