I liked this author's work. I looked forward to more of it. But unless it ever gets an official English translation, I'll probably never see it again.

Thanks!
Touko, like all the best people, has a glasses fetish, so in the end she runs off with Kanou Koyomi; bonding over their mutual heartbreak, Yuu and Ayaka eventually run a franchise of the Yuri-esque Café together.

I'm new to this board and have a question about spoiler tags. I get it about sharing information from material that hasn't been posted here (and from anime, when there is one), but I notice people in this thread using them for things like speculation about what might happen, or even just opinions about what they'd like to see happen. I looked around the forum for more details about what counts as a "spoiler," and if it's there I missed it.

I do want to avoid spoiling anything, so any help would be appreciated.

The ability to keep me on the edge of my seat with, what is essentially a simple romance story, is WONDERFUL!

Yes, the thing that sets it apart for me is the way that the changes in the characters are so fully set up and developed. In a lot of yuri manga characters seem to just flip one way or another as needed by the plot without much exploration of why it happens (from unawareness of another character's feelings, or to acceptance of a confession, or to "Let's go back to being friends," etc.). To have come this far in the story and given us such a clear picture of how and why the characters have changed, and yet still leaving us pretty much in the dark about where things are finally going to end up is pretty remarkable. (I can think of four or five different outcomes where I could look back and say, "Ah, of course, we've been given clear indications that would happen all along.")

At this point my main irrational fear is not that the right ship won't come in (although I certainly have my hopes) but that the ending will somehow be botched or unsatisfactory. That's "irrational" because the storytelling so far has been so skilled and self-assured there's just no reason to believe it will falter down the stretch (but such things have been known to happen).

This chapter is Yuu finally accepting her feelings for Touko and, by accepting her feelings, understanding that she's at the point of no return now, and she'll have to make Touko understand just how unhealthy and unfair their relationship is so that they can have a happier, more equal relationship.

And it's going to be immensely, IMMENSELY difficult to ensure the plan succeeds.

I agree--I think Yuu is right on the verge of admitting her feelings to herself, and since we know that she always takes a long time to decide something but then commits wholeheartedly once she does, it won't be long before she articulates her feelings to others (although perhaps not to Youko first).

That's why I think the play is so important--something needs to break up Touko's emotional logjam, and we've already seen that the play hits her deeply. It's fairly clear that the changed ending, with Yuu playing a much more central role, will probably be the occasion for a fundamental change in Touko. As you suggest, cleaning up the emotional debris afterwards probably won't be very easy, though.

Yuu, who is essentially gentle, kind, patient, has lots of self-control, & above all, mature.

All true, and yet I would argue that Yuu has a fair amount of growing up to do as well. Being someone who "always does what anyone asks" is not an entirely positive thing. Maybe it's that seeing herself that way, as she does, allows her to deflect ownership of her own decisions and then lament that other people aren't being "fair." Even before she meets Touko she claims that she was "manipulated" by her homeroom teacher into checking out the student council when he simply made a suggestion, to which she had responded with some interest (a fact which she then admits).

Yet another thing that keeps me, as a reader, a bit off balance with this story is that we can't always trust Yuu's inner thoughts. It's extremely common in yuri manga to have scenes where characters aren't being forthright about something, then as they walk away or in the next scene we hear what they're really thinking; those thoughts are usually presented as the real deal. But, especially in the earlier sections, Yuu often will think things that we can tell aren't true, at least not completely. She'll say things like, "I'm just being soft-hearted," or "anyone would have done what I did," or "she's not being fair," when we can see that she's not exactly lying, but is basically spinning her own decisions to herself.

So I think there's some blooming to be done (and in fact is well under way) from Yuu's end as well as Touko's.

This can go into angsty drama, or a heartfelt open romance, and anything in between.

Totally agree with this, and that may partly be where the reader unease comes from. The title seems to promise that the characters will end up together, but for long stretches it's hard to see exactly how they can ever get there. Touko has always needed to do something, and now she's clearly being positioned to do that something, but exactly what she'll end up doing I have hopes but no real idea.

(I'll give $50 for someone to break into Koyomi's house and get us an advance look at that revised play script.)

last edited at Jul 29, 2017 2:47PM

I'd argue the relationship has always been a trainwreck since it was founded on being one sided and the fact that Touko stubbornly pretends to be a version of her sister that never existed in the first place.

You're right that it's always potentially been a train wreck, but I'd save that label for when the final damage actually occurs (assuming it does). That initial set-up ("Let me love you even if you don't love me") certainly is weird and unsettling but not so obviously toxic; it's the shift to "I can love you only if you don't love me" that's the real dysfunctional move. At the start both Touko and Yuu in their own ways are emotionally locked down and static, and the "love without being loved" dynamic could be seen as emotional practice by two beginners. But by demanding that Yuu stay that way, Touko is insisting that Yuu put herself in the same straitjacket she's in. It's no accident that Yuu realizes this with that train roaring past in the background.

last edited at Jul 29, 2017 1:49PM

The recurring trains definitely add to the story's oddly unsettling subtext. As the feelings of the protagonists get more aligned, it looks like their relationship could be getting less emotionally fraught, but there's also the possibility of an impending trainwreck (at least figuratively if not literally).