And how is Eagle Jump treating you?

Wow, you really do know everything.

unless you think Amazon is a really shitty company

Um, . . .

https://www.theverge.com/2015/8/15/9159309/you-probably-dont-want-to-work-for-amazon

http://www.salon.com/2014/02/23/worse_than_wal_mart_amazons_sick_brutality_and_secret_history_of_ruthlessly_intimidating_workers/

last edited at Sep 6, 2017 10:35AM

At least all of that lead to Yuu holding Touko in her bed.

I'd call Chap. 22, pgs. 26-27 some pretty advanced-level "holding." :-)

When Yuu saw Touko relying on Sayaka instead of her

That incident at the fireworks did make Yuu feel uneasy. However, Touko's initial impulse was to talk to Yuu, but she didn't want to impose emotionally on her--"to use up all her sweetness." (That's not what would happen, of course, but Touko isn't aware of that yet.) And Sayaka brought up the subject to Touko, not the other way around.

Top 10 manga betrayal

Oh, I still have my hopes up for a sex (ahem) emotionally touching physical intimacy scene.

Just not as the climax of the high school play. :-)

^^ All possibilities (some more probable than others). But a random list of elements I've been keeping in mind:

1) Touko's new insight into who her sister really was (i.e., Touko thought she was becoming a version of her sister, but she actually wasn't. So what's her motivation for continuing to cling to that role beyond the play?)

2) Touko's determination that the play will be the culmination of the "become my dead sister" cycle. Something comes after that, but nobody knows what.

3) The cafe owner's evaluation of Sayaka: "You're a good girl." (I think we can basically trust that, whatever temporary conflict Sayaka may cause.)

4) Koyomi and Yuu revised the ending of the play together, but we have no evidence that Koyomi is aware of Touko and Yuu's hidden relationship. So whatever the import of that new ending is, probably no sex scene, I'm afraid.
4a) However, we did see that particular scene twice and from two different points of view, which emphasized that we still never saw anything specific about what they said or did, so just maybe Yuu did spill a bean or two.

5) Maki's secret knowledge about the TxY ship has amounted to almost nothing so far--dropped stitch, or hidden plot bomb?

I have to say that I'm pretty impressed with the way Nakatani-sensei has set up a wide range of possible outcomes and different ways to arrive at those outcomes (including the possibilities that the whole thing will end unhappily or even tragically, or the opposite) and all of those outcomes could be consistent with prior events and true to the characters.

I have a few factual questions:

How many chapters of the manga have been released in Japan?
How many episodes of season 2 of the anime have been released in Japan?

And my real question: It seems unusual that a subbed anime and translated manga are releasing the equivalent chapters/episodes so close together. Is that true, or is it a quirk of the scanlation schedule?

(In other words, with ongoing series, my impression (which may be wrong and if so I'm asking to be corrected) is that the translated (i.e., subbed) anime usually is way behind the manga, but New Game isn't.)

Why is everyone blackbarring their comments

Because they're referencing material from a chapter that hasn't been posted here yet. I didn't in my last one because, in that case, I wasn't.

Their age difference was more than enough.

Really. That's the most interesting thing about this series--basically, how are they going to get out of this one (the main setup)? Mimika's lovestruck but not just a lolicon perv, and Yuzu is precocious and lonely; they're both getting something emotionally rewarding out of the relationship, but where does it actually go as it develops? (Without the story going from "oddly charming" to "seriously and criminally creepy," that is.)

Once the mess caused by our grade-school villainess is dealt with, that question remains, and I'm hoping the introduction of our grade-school villainess doesn't mean that the author can't find an answer to the question.

last edited at Sep 3, 2017 8:37PM

My K-drama rule of thumb for noble idiocy is (although I'd prefer not to have it at all) that the show gets part of one episode to introduce it, one full episode to suffer through it, and one episode to resolve it.

Anything more than that and they're seriously getting on my nerves. Here's hoping.

Oh, I'm confident things will work out, and there's not the slightest chance of a real (and probably not even a faked) attraction between Mimika and Ririha--we've seen that already. But I wouldn't be surprised if Mimika, who is not the brightest star in the sky, at least tries the noble idiot gambit on the grounds that it's what's best for Yuzu.

But my favorite thing in this series is when Yuzumori cuts right to the heart of the issue at hand, and I'm hoping for one of those scenes ASAP.

All I see happening is Yuzumori slapping some sense into Mimika

Love to see that happen, and quickly, but I suspect we may be in for at least a short spell of what in Korean dramas is called "noble idiocy." As majere says above, it's that "I'm quitting you for your own good" thing, usually accompanied by lying about one's real motivations, so that the dumpee has no clue about what's really going on.

The absolute worst version, because it's so painful for both the audience and the characters, is when, in order to do a complete break-up job, the person pretends to turn on the other one and claim that they were only fooling around or have come to their senses and now see how ridiculous the relationship really is, etc. (Noble idiocy, as the name suggests, also often requires previously intelligent characters to suddenly behave like complete morons.)

If the author remains true to the characters, there's no way Yuzumori puts up with crap like that for very long, but even someone as sharp as she is may take some time to get all this mess sorted. Here's hoping Glasses-chan has enough integrity to be helpful when things come to a head.

last edited at Sep 3, 2017 9:20AM

do you think Yuu will admit her feelings (at least to herself) naturally

I think the newly written sex scene between the amnesiac patient and the nurse at the end of the play will be all the catalyst anybody needs to put their emotional cards on the table.

It is a sex scene, right?

I don't think the new characters are necessarily hated--the Industrial-Strength Cute Chap. 57 suggests that eventually they'll integrate into the group just fine (with some bumps along the way, no doubt)--but there certainly was a lot of (justified, IMO) pushback against the idea that Chap. 58 is all about Naru bringing a new professional attitude to Eagle Jump that the company has been lacking (as opposed to showing a person who thinks the job is about following orders rather than making fun games).

I know that the survey form can't change but will just say as a point of information that I found answering the "favorite works" section a little awkward because I mostly "favorite" by creator rather than by individual works.

So I found myself listing "5 works I like a lot that are representative (to a certain extent) of my taste" rather than "my 5 favorite yuri works."

Hazuki says it straight out--games evolve as you work on them and get new ideas. And Umiko says that it would be great if every possible kink or issue in the finished product was foreseen from the start, "but that's not usually the way it goes."

I don't think Naru's tone or her failure to respect the hierarchy is the problem, it's that her focus is on the wrong things. Hazuki says, "You've made it into something really fun. Good job." That's what success looks like at Eagle Jump.

Every fictional storyworld sets up its own value system. Sometimes that's the same as in the real world, sometimes it's entirely different, and sometimes its the same in some respects and different in others. In the New Game world, working to make the best, most fun game you can is the first priority; work procedures are important as the necessary means to that end, but ultimately secondary to the main goal. Naru doesn't get that yet, and she needs to. (I strongly suspect that she will.)

It's always surprising to me how many people see the story that they want to be there rather than the actual text that is there.

Whether Naru would be right or wrong in the real world is irrelevant; in the world of the story her attitude needs to fundamentally change, which is exactly what Umiko (gently) tells her in the last two panels.

[Sayaka] is the number one enabler of Touko's obsession with becoming someone else.

That's true, but while there is something self-serving about Sayaka's strategy of pretending to be fooled by Touko's public persona, there's no indication that she's doing anything but supporting what she thinks Touko wants. And she has indeed been snippy when she thinks Yuu is overstepping her kouhai bounds, but that seems like simple low-level former-#1-friend jealousy.

If Touko's initial reaction to [whatever falls out because of the play/Yuu's hypothetical confession] is distress and rejection, Sayaka very well could turn out to be fiercely protective of the "old" Touko. But I don't think she's an inherently toxic person, (rather the opposite, in fact), and even though I'm not particularly fond of the character, I'd be disappointed if we get a full-on Dark Sayaka emotional meltdown.

last edited at Aug 31, 2017 11:39AM

It seems to me that Naru is focused on doing what she's told and following the letter of the law, while the veterans are thinking about making a game that's fun to play. That means lots of annoying changes, and it is true that vets need to be reminded how vulnerable a new employee would feel about missing deadlines, etc.. Umiko is second to none in getting annoyed at last-minute changes, but as she says, "I don't want to give up on the desire to create a good product."

last edited at Aug 31, 2017 11:16AM

Uhh didn't she just indirectly tell Maki she is rewriting the script in her text by accident?

Now that she's (almost, when she talks to Maki) done, I don't think it's supposed to be ultra-top secret--they had previously mentioned the possibility of revising the ending in Chap. 20. Koyomi and Yuu are a little worried about how the others will take having to learn a whole new ending, but minor rewrites to a (new, original) script are standard procedure in the theatre right up to opening night, and sometimes beyond.

Wow, you guys seem really close. :-)

Izzat Warlock as your avatar?

Yep, it is.

^
Thanks!