I think the point here is that Miyu is a scared and withdrawn girl with strong defense mechanisms. She can't believe that Ao would like her, and she's afraid of being hurt, so she reacts defensively by impulse. The way she acts when confronted by the other girls really tells you everything you need to know about her. She's terrified but she also refuses to back down, and seems incapable of taking the easy way out. In some ways, she reminds me of me when I was in high school, when I thought any display of vulnerability would lead to betrayal and mockery.

However, Ao is clever and realizes that Miyu isn't truly rejecting her but is merely afraid. She realizes that her flippant attitude is part of the problem and resolves to gradually win Miyu over through displays of sincerity.

last edited at Oct 15, 2018 2:45AM

I think the "my love isn't like their love" line just refers to the friends talking earlier about how much Nanoha loves Chidori lately, on 06. So it's Chidori's inner monologue about how she actually is into girls romantically vs Nanoha just having a more friendly love for Chidori. You know, in Chidori's mind anyway. But hey, we'll see.

The phrasing used in the original is 私の「好き」とみんなの「好き」は違うんだから. Throughout the manga, when Chidori uses "minna" she's usually referring to her friends, so I think your interpretation is likely correct.

Amusing enough.

This has promise. It's pretty funny so far.

Well, that was a pretty big shift. And again, as I said before, I think this would be hugely improved if it were in chapters of 20-30 pages. Ideally, each segment of a story will tell a small story of its own, and some space is required to tell a decent story. I guess I can go on pixiv and just read a bunch of them in a row, but I still feel this story suffers from the author having split them up into 3 page chunks in the first place.

Whenever I read an interesting premise structured as vignettes, I always wish the author had written it as a more conventional narrative instead. Reading each page as an individual story always feels like being teased. Any dramatic arc (if there is one at all) has to be pulled out a scrap of thread at a time and then spliced together.

I guess every serialized story is like that to some degree, but usually they have the decency to give you like a couple feet of thread instead of just an inch.

POMF

Is this really the same sound effect, or is it a translation convention for all kinds of "falling onto bed" sound effects and also an inside joke?

Usually when translating you have a lot of leeway. There are many different ways to phrase something, and often the best translation will differ based on the situation as much as the original words. This is especially true with sound effects, where they all have multiple meanings that overlap into different categories of standard English sound effects. Additionally, you have to juggle the competing goals of accurately conveying the original meaning and creating a word or phrase that still fits on the page as an actual sound effect and not some extraneous narration. Generally, there are so many different priorities to balance that the translator has a lot of discretion.

But sometimes there's only one right answer.

last edited at Oct 5, 2018 1:55PM

Wait, why do they still feel the need to hide their relationship from others if there's a lesbian couple openly dating in the same school (Abe-chan and Yoshida-senpai from I-already-forgot-which-chapter)?

Anyway, just read all chapters, and it was uber cute.

Because they're super shy and wouldn't be able to handle the inevitable teasing from their friends. Notice how excited Kumako, Rei-chin, and Asumi get whenever the topic of romance comes up. Chidori and Nanoha are afraid they'd live in a state of perpetual embarrassment if those three ever found out.

Yeah. The idea of this poor stupid girl getting pregnant from being raped is really sad. Especially since we know what happens to her....

Well it was so over the top it was almost hilarious, like that emergence manga.

Well, yeah, it had all the subtlety of a bat to the face. But I just wasn't in the mood to read about her awful parents abandoning her after she got raped, no matter how ridiculous the presentation.

This in particular near broke my heart, even though I knew it was coming.

Hah! Are you serious?!

Yeah. The idea of this poor stupid girl getting pregnant from being raped is really sad. Especially since we know what happens to her....

I still don't have the courage to watch this nor read till the end. My heart can't handle all these sad stuff going on.

I have to admit that there were several chapters where I opened up to the first page, saw what was there, then closed it and put it away for quite a long time. This in particular near broke my heart, even though I knew it was coming.

Overall I think the anime turned out way better than I had hoped. They somehow managed to fit most of the manga up-to-date without feeling excessively rushed (they cut a lot from the last few episodes but the story still held together).

My guess is that the manga will end the same, in broad strokes if not the particulars. I don't think any ending where Satou escapes punishment would fit. Maybe, death, imprisonment, or having Shio taken away from her. As Satou herself says early on, when there is sin, there must be punishment. This story, with its extreme plot, its variety of twisted, but simple characters, and its deliberate repetition of key phrases and scenes, sometimes feels like a fable or fairy tale. "The Story of the Girl Who Could Not Love" or something.

And the thing about fables is that they always have a lesson for the audience.

female to male rape? Guess this manga is covering all the bases.

There was female to male rape in the very first chapter. Poor Mitsuboshi is just being revictimized.

I think this might be the first time the "secretly dating" line wasn't said in first person. For a moment there I thought the chapter would be from the pov of a classmate who already figured out they are dating. I got all excited for nothing. Cute as always, though.

You're right. I went back and looked, and the only other time that bit was in the third person was Chapter 10, in the flashback: "Chidori and Nanoha. Before they had started dating."

But I think it's just third person narration, not sure if it actually means someone's found out, though that is certainly possible. Just going by memory, I think that the introduction in the third person is used pretty frequently from this point onward.

You didn't imagine it after all:
https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/to_die_in_june_ch01#13
(It's right-to-left because of the time period)

Looks like I'm not crazy after all! Good to know.

I meant the Xs were originally circles in the raw, so interpreting them as redaction is legitimate but probably not correct in this case (the zero with a dash is from the font used for the translation). Honami's number should actually be 1010 (一◯十◯ or 一◯一◯ depending on the page) so I'm not sure why it's written 1X0X, typo maybe.

I feel like a saw a page with a ブキ showing on a cut-off sign in the background, but now I can't seem to find it.... That makes sense though.

If so, I missed it! I just went off the "with a cold name" (寒そうな*雪*の名前のふね) and the look of the ship.

I've read the whole thing so I can't really join in the overall speculation fairly.

Okay, I see what you're saying. I misunderstood about the circles. So they used 〇 like is done for blanking out letters and such. I haven't seen the raws, I didn't realize the numbers here were re-typeset. Though now that I think about it, of course they were, since they match the lettering.

I must've imagined I saw that, or maybe I saw something like it somewhere else.... Would they even use katakana to write in the ship's names? I have no idea.

last edited at Sep 14, 2018 9:32PM

why have they not adapted this into an anime?

I think adapting completed manga is very, very rare. The publisher wants anime that will attract to new fans to a continuing series and get them to buy magazines and volumes as they come out. The other funders want an anime that's attached to a currently popular series, one that's continuing and has lots of fans reading. Nobody wants to risk their investment on something like this when there are plenty of hot series that would more reliably deliver a return.

You're right (it's probably 1007 rather than 1XX7 but those ○ are tricky). I'm not sure exactly what the numbers would be called, but each girl has one that's consistently included as part of her designation. 7th Escort Fleet 1007: Tanabe Aka, 7th Escort Fleet 1006: Satsukibara Nae, etc. There's a full list of them, but it contains spoilers.

Oh, are they? Hanami Ryou has 1X0X, with the zero being just a circle with a dash through it, so I assumed that's how they'd be writing zeroes, not as Xs.

Pretty sure it's Fubuki, and the "boat with a name like a guardian statue" is Kongou. iirc the ships were chosen based on... which ones the author has put together plastic models of.

I feel like a saw a page with a ブキ showing on a cut-off sign in the background, but now I can't seem to find it.... That makes sense though.

I'm turning more and more towards the view that rather than some specific alternate history scenario, this series more represents a pastiche of late war stress and difficulty. It's hard to tell with just these chapters so far, vague as they are about the setting, but it feels more like an impression or evocation than true alt-hist, which tends to be more focused on details.

Oh. Well, no harm, and I completely agree with you.

schuyguy

It was never a secret. Granted, I have no idea if some of these works are older or newer than this one, but they were made available here sooner, at any rate.

That's what I'm saying. Over the years I've read enough of her little notes to get the picture. This one is somewhat more succinct than the others, but there's nothing really new about it.

I think your 4 is completely ruled out from the fact that in January they went sent on a large warship to go defend a "really cold northern country" from amphibious invasion. At this point Ouka's family had already died in a bombing raid. China lost most of its northern territory in 1931, years before the main fighting of the Second Sino-Japanese War started. Plus, China lost its entire deep-water navy before the first January of the war, which means they'd have to be setting out before the war started, but after Ouka's mother was killed in a bombing raid.

Also, the girls are waving Japanese flags here.

On a side note, I don't think 1XX7 is a date, since in the second chapter the pictures have 1XX4, 1X12, and 1XX6, while in the third chapter the pictures have 1XX8, 1X0X, and 1X11. Any way you slice it, that's an 8 year range, minimum, but the ages only range from 13 to 16, and these are all apparently girls who served concurrently. Maybe those are ID numbers or something like that?

last edited at Sep 14, 2018 2:09PM

I was going to say this was an alternate history where "Operation 100 Million Glorious Dead" was actually enacted, but I don't know any country that would've been desperate enough to send 14-year-old girls out to invade Japan, so I'm guessing the connection to reality is much more tenuous than I'd imagined.

Maybe that 1XX7 is 1947.

last edited at Sep 13, 2018 9:37PM

This girl is pretty thick. You don't have to be an honor's student to figure out how to touch yourself. I think I might have to add "too dumb to masturbate" to my collection of mean things to say to people.

Now that I know Kodama sensei likes to write trashy characters, everything makes sense.

Reading her author's notes really put her work into perspective for me. Kodama Naoko knows exactly what she's doing, and does it very deliberately. I get the feeling that she'd respond to those angry rants about Netsuzou Trap (or any of her more controversial works) with something equivalent to "I know, right? Isn't it adorable how awful they are?"

It's impossible to truly criticize an author who has already decided that what she's writing is garbage.

Yeah, no ears, hair's different, and no collar. Must some other lolicon work Itou Hachi has created.