While this manga is certainly slow and kind of meandering, I quite enjoyed it overall. The two protagonists have strong, compelling personalities, and for once I actually buy the lack of communication as plausible because they both have very good reason to believe the other wouldn't take the truth very well.

Hope the translators are doing okay, and also that volume 2 eventually gets translated, either by knight heron or someone else. I'm up for doing the translating but I can't do anything else scanlation-related.

last edited at Oct 7, 2022 7:24PM

^ Yeah, Turn A Gundam was supposed to have a female protagonist but the studio blocked it, so instead they just made him crossdress for a large part of the series lol.

Fight for your love, onee-chan!

If it werent for the fact that JYY had that experience with reincarnation where she saw JX cancel her marriage and weep on her grave I doubt she’d keep pushing like this

That's certainly true, but one thing I quite like about this manhua is that knowing the future doesn't prevent Ji Youyan from constantly fucking up lol. There's still a lot she doesn't understand about Jing Xiu which causes her to put her foot in her mouth a lot -- most memorably when she asks if they can be friends, completely forgetting something she told Jing Xiu in the past that clearly meant a lot to the latter. I like how going back in time didn't just make Ji Youyan a completely different person; she's still the same person who broke Jing Xiu's heart and then drank herself to death, she just has a little more knowledge this time around.

I feel like I'm less and less understanding the fighting between them

Ji Youyan is worried that her attempts to lighten the Simon Cowell role Jing Xiu has taken on are just annoying her. Jing Xiu doesn't want to admit she actually appreciates it because she's still hurt from when Ji Youyan broke up with her and is trying to maintain distance. I think it's actually pretty straightforward?

Jing Xiu is being a little bit disingenuous in claiming she's just pointing out the contestants' strengths and weaknesses, she's been 100% critical with zero praise so far lol.

This chapter did a very effective job of making me immediately despise Xingyuan's family

Mc has lived a life of counting her pennies. While Nakano is suggesting too frivelous a spree it is actually healthy for Mc to experience spending money normally.

I don't think jumping straight from "worrying about how much public tap water she uses" to "lol just buy whatever" is the way to teach Miyako proper money management. There are in fact stages between those two. Also Nakano is definitely doing this to make Miyako financially dependent on the sex work.

they're better off together than they were apart

I believe this isn't true because their relationship is predicated on reinforcing rather than healing their problems. I think it's basically going to nullify the therapy; therapy isn't some magic cure-all for mental health. To begin with, they'd have to want to change, to make effort towards overcoming their problems, and that's not going to be the case while their 'needs' are fulfilled in this manner. Mea especially seems like she's prone to becoming more and more yandere from getting positive reinforcement for helping.

Best case scenario is obviously them overcoming their problems, but I don't see that happening anytime soon. Before they met each other they were, if anything, spiralling deeper, especially Aise who seems to have been heading straight for suicide before meeting Mea. So I do think they are better off together because, as portrayed in the manga, the alternative is not better mental health, it's having the same self-destructive tendencies while also being alone.

Honestly, I don't really see a future where they break up (unless one or both of them recovers from their issues). They each fulfill the other's most fundamental desire. They're not going to break up because their personalities clash. Aise will probably just go along with whatever Mea wants to do anyway.

I wouldn't exactly call this a happy ending either, but they are both still in therapy, and they're better off together than they were apart. That's a lot more positive than most works in the "fucked-up romance" genre.

Makes sense, thank you! Maybe I'll check it out when I'm in the mood for some edge.

Would be curious to hear your thoughts on Spec-Ops Asuka after reading the manga. I kind of got turned off after reading some spoilers but maybe it executes its concepts well.

I finished reading it. What was it that turned you off? I can try to elaborate on what I thought about anything specific, but it would probably take ten paragraphs full of spoilers to put my thoughts on the manga as a whole into writing.

The main things iirc:

1. The main characters routinely engaging in torture and the narrative justifying them in doing so.

2. The main villain arguing that magical girls should fight "earthly" evils too and the protagonists -- who all work for the government -- responding "Yeah but you're evil so."

last edited at Oct 2, 2022 10:46PM

People are really freaking out about a single panel, huh

kinda feels like the author is procrastinating with all these "maybe in the future they'll be like this teehee" rather than continuing the plot

the fact that we get 4 pages with that level of polish (almost) every week is already pretty fucking generous imho

imo, especially considering they already have another ongoing series

I don't think she does...what are you referring to?

I love the one coercing you into selling your body in order to finance your life coming with the brilliant suggestion of, instead of using that money to actually finance your life, spend it all on reckless, pointless purchases so that she'll soon be broke again and having to continue selling her body... and then even selling pantyshots of her online. It's genius, really. A brilliant business strategy

Shocking similar to how real pimps operate honestly.

I feel like that's got to be intentional, right? The mangaka is steadily making Nakano more and more scummy with each chapter. Makes me think this manga may end up being more than just a cheap excuse for porn not that there's anything wrong with that.

This may have been the first time I’ve seen the literal term “prince” used for a girl with long hair.

There have been plenty of long-haired “perfect” students whom everyone adores, of course, but usually people called “princes” have at least medium-length hair if not an androgynous short cut.

That’s maybe the only way this deviates from standard-issue tropes, but we shall see where it goes.

Utena was likened to a prince fairly frequently and had long, pink, hair.

Right, but she wanted to be a regarded as an actual ”prince,” like in nobility, as opposed to somebody who is just given that label in high school.

This isn't the Utena thread, but "she wanted to be a literal royal prince" is not how I would interpret Utena's character; for her, "prince" meant the type of person who selflessly fought to save others. At the same time she is treated like a typical "high school prince" by others (well she's technically a middle schooler), with a bunch of girls worshiping her etc.

Anyway, as for the manga this thread is about, I agree with the general consensus that the writing in this chapter is kind of generic and exposition-heavy. But the art is really good so I'll stick with it lol. Shun at least has potential to be a more complex and interesting character than she may seem on first impression.

Would be curious to hear your thoughts on Spec-Ops Asuka after reading the manga. I kind of got turned off after reading some spoilers but maybe it executes its concepts well.

I didnt even know we had a "Insane amounts of titles" tag.

It was created for this series lol

I want to clear up this up because I feel that it might not have translated well in the comic: Ji Youyan did not break up with Jing Xiu for the sake of her career.

The bathroom scene did not highlight this as much in the comic but in the novel you could feel Ji Youyan's disgust with herself in the scene. "It was quite ugly. She hated seeing herself like that." In the starting chapters there's a foundation of how Ji Youyan's problem is her self-loathing/self-worth issues. Every angsty thought JYY has about JX in the intial stages is mired in her self loathing. Like "obviously JX is disgusted with me. I'M disgusted with me!" "I was very stupid before!" etc etc. She has very low evaluation of herself. . . .

To be clear, I said "apparently" for the sake of her career because that's the sense I got from the chapters so far; I recognize there's a lot to go and a lot that hasn't been revealed yet about Ji Youyan and Jing Xiu's past relationship.

I do appreciate the extensive analysis! It's true that, due to the nature of the medium, the manhua has to cut out a lot of the internal monologue and details that you describe in the novel. But I think it gets across the major points. Ji Youyan may not explicitly state that she hates herself in the manhua but you more or less get that idea due to how much she blames herself for her mistakes both in her previous life and in her current one.

As I emphasized, I don't think Ji Youyan is a bad person. I just think that she puts on an act of being a nice, bubbly "cute girl," when in reality she's extremely cynical, driven, and kind of selfish. On the other hand, while Jing Xiu comes across as cold and emotionless, her actual actions reveal her to be extremely caring and conscientious, even toward Ji Youyan who's clearly hurt her quite deeply. It's an interesting contrast, and I like how a story about the entertainment industry is emphasizing how our performative selves are often very different from what we're like on the inside.

I've personally never really had any issues with encountering noncon/dubcon in any ABO I've read(at least not between the protagonists), but I'm starting to think I've just been very lucky, so I can't really say if it going mainstream has anything to do with it. Based on what I've heard about it though it does sound like straight ABO is more rapey than sapphic ABO, so that might have something to do with it too. All though that doesn't explain what others have mentioned in this thread.

From what I've heard, straight and BL omegaverse do indeed have far more rape/dubcon than sapphic omegaverse. The yuri Best Friends manhwa (which I actually do like as an extremely guilty pleasure) seems to be how it tends to work, with the heat/rut concept being used to "justify" both the Alpha's rape and the Omega's enjoyment of being raped ("I was in heat/rut and couldn't control myself").

I wouldn't say it applies to everyone, but we're not talking about people with a developed sense of what consent means. We're talking about an average teenager that might come across this.

While it's good to examine the art we consume, I don't think "might this have a negative impact on a random teenager who reads it?" is a very helpful question to ask. It's not something we can ever possibly know unless you pay for a scientific study, and it doesn't really matter anyway. A single manga is not going to have an appreciable impact on societal views of women and sexual coercion. To put it another way, consequentialism isn't going to help you here; if you want to morally critique the manga you need to critique the manga in itself, not assert that it might have negative consequences on hypothetical teenagers.

last edited at Sep 29, 2022 2:27AM

The villains of the mafia arc have yet to receive their commeupance, so I'm positive we'll see them again.

Hmm, that's the thing, though. The entire first arc was about the orphan girls making it out of the slum life, which I think was the perfect comeuppance, and about Eve's character development. It was... very dramatically conclusive, too, what with Rose and all. As much as the unapologetically Anime golf was the reason I was so enthralled originally, I think it'd actually be narratively unsatisfying for Eve to return to that life now.

I doubt Eve will return to that life, more like that life will return to her lol. The orphan girls may have made it out but Catherine is still perfectly capable of using them to threaten Eve to golf for her again or something. Not to mention the ending of season 1 implies that Aoi's family has been involved in some fucked-up shit; the Amawashis being linked to the golf mafia is a natural way to bring both "worlds" together.

Ji Youyan is great, she's basically a classic "white lotus" fake good girl except she's the protagonist (and also genuinely smart).

The villains of the mafia arc have yet to receive their commeupance, so I'm positive we'll see them again.

@strayalive

Ehh... have you ever looked up MAL ratings for the "romance" tag? There's an overwhelming number of tearjerkers at the top; stuff like Clannad, Your Lie in April, I Want to Eat Your Pancreas, etc. And Makoto Shinkai has made a career out of scenes of longing (between two people who barely know each other, mind you) against the backdrop of an immaculately rendered golden hour sky.

@protectmomo

I don't find any kind of categorisation where "tragedy" and "romance" are exclusive categories to be useful in any way at all. I'd suggest that tragedy is on a dichotomy only with comedy; and that no matter where a story falls on the sliding scale of tragedy/comedy it can be romantic or it can be something else in addition.

As I keep saying, it really depends on how you define "romance." Romance as a genre has a specific set of tropes/expectations/"rules," including a happily ever after (among other things). These rules are not necessarily ironclad, but they are the overwhelming standard. But obviously any type of narrative can have a romance as a part of it -- call this romance as a "tag," like on MAL.

The reason I bring this up is that "yuri" is a romance subgenre. When people set out to write a yuri manga (or novel or whatever), they largely have romance genre tropes to fall back on. And as @Licentious Lantern says, romance tropes exist for a reason; the "will they/won't they" dynamic provides an inherent tension and a clear goal that automatically makes audiences invest in it. (Manga like Nisekoi and Rent-A-Girlfriend can persist literally only on that for hundreds of chapters...)

Also, this doesn't affect the larger point, but Clannad absolutely has a "happily ever after" ending.

There's a third path, where you both have an established couple, have an "ideal" relationship, and still have tension/conflict: by not making the story entirely about romance. That's what I want to see, and as of yet don't think I've ever seen it in a single anime.

I also would absolutely love to see more of this. The problem is that almost every anime -- frankly almost every piece of media -- with a gay main character is a "gay romance" first and foremost. I can think of almost no works of narrative art with an LGBT protagonist that aren't fundamentally about their love life. There are several reasons for this I'm sure, but the biggest is probably that (due to homophobia) studios and investors are afraid they'll lose a large part of their audience if they have a gay main character in an otherwise "mainstream" work. "Yuri" and "yaoi" are specific genres with their own built-in audience, even if it's a smaller audience than for het romances (especially for yuri). But if you're aiming at a more broad, mainstream audience, the funders are going to be terrified of scaring off the homophobes. Disney cancelling The Owl House is a case in point here.

That being said, there are actually a few recent anime with an explicitly lesbian main couple that aren't romances first and foremost. I can't vouch for their quality, but this is true for both Otherworld Picnic and Magical Girls Spec-Ops Asuka. MagiRevo is also getting an anime adaptation soon. I also have high hopes for Birdie Wing season 2. Times are changing, albeit slowly.

last edited at Sep 28, 2022 4:51PM