I'm not really down with the romanticizing of maid cafes going on here. Like, cafe maids are just like any other service worker: they're paid to pretend to like you they don't actually like you it's all an artifice to get you to spend money. Guys always seem to forget this and get way too invested (or they actively take advantage of having a captive target who can't clearly reject them) and overstep the boundaries of that dynamic and there's not really anything servers can do about it besides grin and bear it. I can only imagine it's even worse with maid cafes considering they cater largely to socially maladjusted straight dudes.

I assume you also go to Love Live for uncompromising and hard-hitting coverage of the idol industry...?

I mean, yeah that's a big part of why I don't watch idol anime: idol culture is a fucking grotesque exploitation of young girls and it grosses me out so I have no interest in seeing it be romanticized. But this series never billed itself as being about maid cafes the subject just came up out of the blue and had me rolling my eyes at how hard the author is shilling them.

I'm not really down with the romanticizing of maid cafes going on here. Like, cafe maids are just like any other service worker: they're paid to pretend to like you they don't actually like you it's all an artifice to get you to spend money. Guys always seem to forget this and get way too invested (or they actively take advantage of having a captive target who can't clearly reject them) and overstep the boundaries of that dynamic and there's not really anything servers can do about it besides grin and bear it. I can only imagine it's even worse with maid cafes considering they cater largely to socially maladjusted straight dudes.

I think what I'm trying to say is, I wish we didn't have the drunken mixer as a way for them to have slept together and instead just have them idk flirting on the bus or something

Agreed. The way that she got picked up felt really sleazy, older woman clearly knew what she was doing when she took the younger one away (who seems unexperienced and easy to prey on). But the chapters after had a different flavour and I liked them.

You can read it that way but the fact that she took her to a cafe to sober up before making a move makes me a lot more inclined to believe she was sincere about getting her out of a situation she was uncomfortable in. Like, Natsuko never pressures Rika into anything she asks and Rika agrees even if she's a bit flustered about it.

God I'm glad I never had to deal with clique mentalities as a kid talk about fair weather friends. But yeah Fujishiro has pulled off possibly the fastest redemption arc I've ever seen that actually felt reasonable and believable.

I don't think many people think of themselves as actually being in a clique; they just hang out with a group of simpatico friends. It's those other people who have cliques. lol

Like yeah there were different groups of friends but it wasn't like I'm always seeing in American highschool media where it's like "and those are the goths and the jocks and the cheerleaders (I've never even seen a cheerleader irl)" and there weren't like social ramifications for being friends with people in other groups.

God I'm glad I never had to deal with clique mentalities as a kid talk about fair weather friends. But yeah Fujishiro has pulled off possibly the fastest redemption arc I've ever seen that actually felt reasonable and believable.

Characters using gags without discussing it first and setting up nonverbal warning signals always makes me so uncomfortable.

This is a pretty interesting twist on the makeover arc I gotta say. Also, their friends are kind of shit so I gotta say I don't really see the loss. Like is hanging out with fickle, shallow people who will dump you on a whim really better than being alone?

Holy shit actual development of the main couple!

you might as well stop reading this series given it's more or less about such.

Oh, this is definitely the last chapter of this I'm reading, I just wanted to express my opinion on how it approaches its rather controversial setting.

Then there's the fact that military schools are pretty much universally super creepy and abusive even in modernity.

...you sure you're not committing the common confusion with "reform schools" - a form of juvenile prison - discussed here...?

I mean those are also super creepy and abusive but no. Grooming children to be soldiers is child abuse as far as I'm concerned.

^Far be it from me to tell anyone that their feelings about a story are wrong, and there’s a grain of truth in all your objections. As in so many manga (especially ones with any kind of age gap/authority gap), we’re being asked to ignore (here, because they’re papered over with cuteness) a lot of things that would be uncomfortable, or worse, in real life.

But it's doing such a terrible job of papering over it which is my point. Like, explicitly making a point of Indou being unable to criticize Kagami in private correspondence with family does not help my discomfort with this dynamic it just makes me think "Oh shit, Indou has literally no recourse if Kagami abuses her authority over her." Her being unable to have private conversations with her classmates does not draw attention away from the unsettling authoritarianism of military schools. It's hard to suspend my disbelief about the implications of the setting when the writer keeps bringing me down hard into those same unpleasant realities.

Everything about this setting and dynamic is just hella uncomfortable. First you've got the whole "Imperial Japanese military as protagonists" which is its own can of worms. Then there's the fact that military schools are pretty much universally super creepy and abusive even in modernity. Finally, Kagami is kind of terrible. Not only is she so shallow that she only starts treating Indou with a semblance of civility after she discovers she's cute but any sort of pursuit on her part is a blatant abuse of the authority granted to her by the school's hierarchy. Like the text in no way attempts to gloss over the power imbalance between them and in fact goes out of its way to draw attention to it.

last edited at Aug 7, 2018 9:49AM

Ummmm...

The protagonist sure is cute. But as a Chinese I just can't read this without some weird lingering feeling. If only this was post-WWII.

im korean but i wasnt even thinking about that since it hasnt really touched that stuff too much

regardless, yuri makes almost everything pardonable

I think many of us have agreed that there's just no way this (so far adorable) series can even come remotely near to touching on the real-life history of the Japanese military without the whole thing collapsing like a house of cards.

I guess it's possible to imagine something more historically unlikely than a Japanese military academy for female officers during this time period. But it's not easy.

So if you're going to do it, you might as well make it really cute.

I mean, moeifying a fascist military could be the source of discomfort in and of itself ala one of the pretty major complaints about Hetalia Axis Powers. I'd totally understand people being put off by an institution that committed horrific war crimes against your people being the backdrop for a cutesy romcom. Like, I don't think I could stomach a yuri story about characters in the Hitler Youth.

People still keep complaining about the ending for whatever reason.... Can you just stop?

People need to complain about pretty much any series because it’s important to prove that they’re so much smarter and have so much better taste than the people who like it OK the way it is. In fact, they get money for complaining about it—I mean, they must, right? Because I don’t understand the depth of their commitment otherwise.

People are allowed to not like things. I mean, I had no problem with the ending but if others did that's their prerogative as a consumer of media.

Well, you could say the same thing about yaoi manga.

Like yuri, It's really niche and doomed to a late night slot on TV. Few anime companies are willing to take the risk.

I don't think it's fair, because het romance gets a lot more screentime, but knowing the state of society in Japan and of the anime industry in general, it's hardly surprising.

Oh it's absolutely true of yaoi too. Straight people aren't really interested in seeing healthy, happy queer relationships they want that gayngst because that's what society tells them the authentic queer experience is.

I miss this manga. It was perfect to me. It deserves an anime but isn't lewd or controversial enough to get one.

Yeah, yuri manga don't really get anime unless A) they're aimed at straight men, or B) they portray a clearly deviant or unhealthy relationship to implicitly support the cultural belief that sapphic romance is deviant and unhealthy.

Not sure "Bloom Into You" fits your framework.

And yet, it's getting an anime.

There are always outliers to any trend. But for every Bloom into You or Sasameki Koto there's 3-4 Happy Sugar Lifes or Sakura Tricks.

Also, I forgot the 3rd genre of yuri that gets animes: where it's completely played for laughs.

last edited at Aug 6, 2018 7:50AM

I miss this manga. It was perfect to me. It deserves an anime but isn't lewd or controversial enough to get one.

Yeah, yuri manga don't really get anime unless A) they're aimed at straight men, or B) they portray a clearly deviant or unhealthy relationship to implicitly support the cultural belief that sapphic romance is deviant and unhealthy.

Mimika is far too dedicated to making sure her interactions with Yuzumori never cross the line into ones that would be inappropriate for a child of her age to be sufficiently melodramatic.

I knew the make-over arc was inevitable because A) that's just the way things are done in this particular romance trope even Girl Friends did it, and B) Fujishiro places A LOT of stock in the importance of appearances so it would be entirely out of character for her not to try to "help" Kurokawa if she cares about her at all. Like yeah, it's a tedious trope with unpleasant implications when played straight but it makes sense here given the characters involved. We'll just have to wait and see how the author decides to play it and hope for the best.

last edited at Jul 31, 2018 7:11AM

Yeah, Kagami only being courteous to Indou after finding out she's pretty is not a good look at all. She seems like a shallow asshole so far.

-- the stupid ass idea that girls are just inherently attracted to men.

That's... something of an integral and necessary part of sexual reproduction actually...

You seem like you're just a "well actually" pedant so I'll save my breath.

I hate this author because of the shitty ending he made on Idol Pretender.

I'm still bitter about it. I'm bitter about every gender bender series that peddles the stupid ass idea that girls are just inherently attracted to men.

The colour picture where her skin is many shades lighter than it canonically is? Because white-washing doesn't literally mean paper white it means significantly lighter than the character/person is.

Again, it's what the art style calls for. Marina is often draw with lighter shades all around because the aesthetic call for it (generally softer colors are used).

Alright if we're pretending that "art style" is a legitimate defense then their art style is boring and homogeneous and they should learn how to incorporate darker skin tones into their aesthetic to grow as an artist and accurately depict the characters they draw. If your "style" can't handle black people then it's limited and bland and you should work to expand it if for no other reason than to be a more well rounded artist.

I think that's pretty much just what the art style at the time called for. The artist probably wanted to express the cuteness of Marina's expressions, rather than worry about what shade of grey she should be. It's obvious from the color picture afterwards that the intention wasn't to "white-wash" her.

The colour picture where her skin is many shades lighter than it canonically is? Because white-washing doesn't literally mean paper white it means significantly lighter than the character/person is.

I was super confused because the black one was immediately not black anymore.

this threw me as well. Great comic apart from that.
Not sure why some artist take dark skinned characters and make them lighter so often but they aren't real so I guess all I can say in the end is I favor "those" elements of the original.

Well I mean the answer is racism. Bigotry doesn't just manifest as frothing at the mouth genocidal rhetoric it can be subtle stuff like the implication that dark skinned people are aesthetically unappealing by lightening their skin in representations of them. Like Marina is pretty clearly black-coded and this artist removed every trace of that in their design.

I mean, calm it down please. Just calling the artist flat out racist is over the top, let's not do this.

I'm perfectly calm though I'm just stating a fact: white-washing is racist. I'm not saying the artist hates black people and is a horrible person I'm saying they did a racist thing, probably not even with any ill intent, which is something most people do. Nobody is perfect and we all have unexamined biases but ignoring them and then getting defensive and offended when they get brought up is how they remain unexamined.

I was super confused because the black one was immediately not black anymore.

this threw me as well. Great comic apart from that.
Not sure why some artist take dark skinned characters and make them lighter so often but they aren't real so I guess all I can say in the end is I favor "those" elements of the original.

Well I mean the answer is racism. Bigotry doesn't just manifest as frothing at the mouth genocidal rhetoric it can be subtle stuff like the implication that dark skinned people are aesthetically unappealing by lightening their skin in representations of them. Like Marina is pretty clearly black-coded and this artist removed every trace of that in their design.