Love in same sex never had happy ending

When it comes to classic Japanese literature, from which this dramatic manga is somewhat rooted, most love stories were tragedies.

last edited at Oct 1, 2018 8:58PM

I need help. Perhaps someone could either agree with how I feel or help me understand my confusion.

On page 18, I'm a little confused and frustrated with Touko's words.

"I can't answer Yuu's feelings."

The way I'm reading this puts Touko in a bad light. She's already told Yuu that she loves her. I don't think she's incapable of returning love. I think she's incapable of accepting love. Otherwise, I have to believe that Touko was lying and abusing Yuu for her own selfish emotional needs. I mean, just look a couple panels above and you see Touko in a dominant sexual position over Yuu. If what everyone says here about the author's visual clues are true then I would perceive Touko's thoughts as acknowledgement of her using Yuu for her intimate desires with no strings attached.

I don't want to have ill feelings toward Touko so, I would have rather it said,

"I can't accept Yuu's feelings."

It would make more sense to me, and I would have a little more sympathy for Touko.

I definitely agree that Touko's problem isn't that she is incapable of loving another, but rather she is incapable of accepting being loved back. She has really serious identity and self esteem issues complicating and ruling her life, but having said this I still believe Touko's been quite self centered in her relationship with Yuu.

She really needs to sit back and do some painful self reflection. She is not a bad person or a sadist so I am sure it was never her intent to hurt Yuu, but she has ended up doing just that due to her mental problems and obliviousness to Yuu's feelings. Tuko was looking for unrequited love and what she stumbled into was something much more frightening and outside of her control.

last edited at Oct 1, 2018 8:50PM

I remember being neutral on this series- but now I'm really hooked.

It's a slow burn and there is a surprising amount of subtlety to the story telling which I think puts a lot of people off at first, but most of the people I know who stuck with it came to love this series.

Statistically, there is a non zero chance that 4 siblings are gay. Like if you launch a coin 100 times, it could give 100 times tail.

Only case I can think of off the bat, of two siblings being both lesbians are Tegan and Sara, but I'm sure there are more.

I've certainly met two sisters who were both bi born to a mother who was also bi but leaning heavily in favor of liking other girls so these sorts of statistical anomalies really do happen. I mean if you run the odds of an lgbt mother having two lgbt daughters in a row its also pretty remote.

Edit: I guess the younger sister being bi would depend on how loose you are with the term. She was attracted to both males and females, but never made it much past second base with another girl, but I think a lot of that had to do with opportunity more than anything else. As I am sure most everyone here knows you run into way more strait men then you do women who are unto other girls.

last edited at Oct 1, 2018 8:17PM

After reading the chapter again, i realized that in this page both of them are showing how each of them are dealing with their feelings through the straps. Touko is trying to put the feelings she has for Yuu away, but ultimately can't and even seems to want to act upon them. Yuu is frustrated with her own feelings so she locks them away, maybe expecting them to just dissapear eventually. I'm pretty dumb and i just thought there wasn't any meaning behind it other than the straps reminds them of each other.

Nakatani always weaves an impressive amount of symbolism into her work. It's part of what makes her such a good mangaka. When ever a new chapter comes out I always read it twice. The first time I just read it causally for the story and the second time I go through more carefully admiring all the symbolism and amazing little details she crafts into each page.

Nakatani really is a master of putting the visual dimension of manga story telling to great use. Even though this chapter was just a series of panels illustrating Yuu and Touko's mundane school activities the composition and use of visual ques gives the reader a real sense of loneliness and sorrow. You can really get a feel for the numb, hazy bubble Yuu is wandering through her day in.

last edited at Oct 1, 2018 12:52AM

This is adorable.

The thing is... in the novel, the Salamander and the Frog don't date.

The Salamander imprisoned the Frog because it was feeling lonely, being unable to leave its cave.

In the end, the Frog can't leave, even if it wanted to, it accepted its fate. Somehow, they became friends.

Super Friends.

I honestly haven't read the story, but the brief synopsis you have provided sounds like an excellent metaphor for unrequited love.

i may be weird but i liked kurosawa more before the transformation

I sort of agree, she definitely looks way cuter after transformation, but before the transformation she had a kind of cool look like one of those female prince characters we see in manga...I was hoping for her to get a cool badass tomboy look transformation (which I think would be more suitable and her style), but oh well....

I never got a tomboy vibe from Kurosawa. She seems more like the cute librarian or bookworm type to me.

last edited at Sep 29, 2018 6:23AM

"Konatsu's feelings have reached Koyuki..."

(ﾉ^_^)ﾉ

Blastaar posted:

it’s worth pointing out that most of the sad past, marriage through obligation, etc. (i.e., all the non-Uta’s-unrequited-love stuff) was there from the very beginning or close to it.

I didn't mean to imply they added it in as story progressed. Rather it feels like they came up with Uta's unrequited love idea first, but then either started to fiddle further with story and adding more stuff to make it more complex or simply didn't think just that would be compelling enough and make for good/interesting/long story. The "mystery" was here from the start, because that was the setting they came up with in the end, but at first focus was only on Uta's love story. I could write it clearer, so my bad.

The sudden dramatic changes and twists that started being added to what had originally been a very slow paced but complex story about subtle character interactions has the stink of editorial meddling all over it. I think what we are seeing here is the end result of the mangaka being pressured by her editor and the magazine higher ups to make her story more exiting and dramatic like their flagship Citrus series was. Once it was clear Citrus was coming to a close a think they decided they wanted this series to try and fill its shoes despite the fact that it is really a very different kind of story regardless of the obvious thematic similarities. I think that's why we are now getting these sudden dramatic cliff hangers most chapters, which the mangaka then immediately backs out of because it doesn't fit all the storytelling and pacing that has been built to this point.

Only the mangaka really knows what is going on with the sudden changes in her story telling style, but I am friends with a writer and when ever I have see puzzling changes in their story telling style like this in their own work it almost always turns out to be due to outside pressuring by the people she works for. The goals of an author and the people trying to profit off of their work are often not the same. The people in charge of Yuri Hime are there to sell magazines rather than to tell a good story and it is sad but true that pulpy dramas with constant dramatic twists and cliff hangers sell more copy than more subtle and complex slow burn stories.

last edited at Sep 28, 2018 12:59PM

Love the art style.

Okay people, let's not front. It's still good old male Bowser inside. The crown doesn't do anything about that. So this is actually hetero.

I don't think that logic would convince everyone drawing Bowsette with Mario that they're actually drawing yaoi. Although there is gonna be a Bowsette Only doujin event next month that will feature crossdress cosplay, creating an odd scenario of males dressing up as a female version of a male character.

Wait... what?!

O_o

girl last tour
is the pilot dead? is this the pilot bones? RIP.
https://mangadex.org/chapter/205848/7

I don't know if those are the pilot's bones or not, but it certainly is heavily implied that with the passing of Yuuri and Chito we are looking at the end of mankind and the final silence of the world.

The new girl seems to know what's up!

This one's adorable.

This is less subtext and more text at this point.

Yeah, they are pretty upfront about being into other girls. I mean it deserves at least a Yuri Crush tag.

johnb posted:

Why do women let themselves get tangled up with married men!? It's not like there is a damn shortage of single men.

Nya-chan posted:

Because some women like the thrill of it, or "taking a man from another woman" reinforces their self-confidence about being better than others.

Or because not all women seek commitment (or are already committed) and having a married man is a way to lessen the possibility of him sticking to her.

Or because he seduced her and she hopes he will leave his wife for her.

There's plenty of valid reasons. But someone is probably bound to be hurt.

johnb posted:

I'm not sure I'd call any of those reasons valid.

They're definitely not valid to me, but this is what we got. I don't care what the rationale is, but I don't think it's going to be explained either.

And I don't think the guy is more wrong than the girl or vice versa. Both know he's cheating and are complicit in it. (Someone suggested that the partner might be okay with it, but given how the girl -- whose name I do not remember -- worries about what she and the manager can and cannot do even in private, I doubt they have the wife's blessing.)

Didn't like this chapter. From a narrative perspective, the girl's introspection and the ring panel in the beginning were well done, but then the date sequence was just meh.

I look forward to the day there will be enough ongoing mature yuri series that I don't feel compelled to read -- or watch -- cheating-centric narratives.

No, the guy is most certainly more wrong than girl in this case in that he is cheating on his wife and breaking his marriage vows. If Hikari was also cheating on and betraying her partner their sins would be of a similar caliber but she is not. Really the only thing she has done that is a tad bit shady is she is encouraging and enabling someone else to do immoral things.

last edited at Sep 23, 2018 7:59PM

Right up to that last page it was slightly twisted but cute. Then...

At this point this isn't subtext any more, its just text.

I'm not so sure. I think it's pretty obvious they both love each other a lot, but Sakrurako is the only one to show she is attracted to her roommate. Although she doesn't really act on it, she very frequently thinks about how lovely Kasumi is. It's kind of hard to tell with Kasumi since she is so sedentary and chill if she actually has those sorts of feelings or not, but she definitely enjoys being cozy with Sakrurako even if its not sexual in nature.

Although it fits with her personality, Kasumi really is quite unusual in that she is a high school age girl that does not seem to have any sort of sex drive at all. I don't think we have seen her even so much as thinking that another person is attractive let alone acting on it.

That woman doesn't just eat her Wheaties every morning, she drowns them in enough gorilla steroids to kill a buffalo.

I like how it goes from cute fluff to wanna **** in 2 panels.

Sounds like real life to me (sadly not a joke)

Have you ever met somebody addicted to inhalants? They make crackheads look like well balanced sane people. That poor girl.

last edited at Sep 19, 2018 1:04AM

i reread this yesterday so im glad the new chapter came out today. kinda wondering why she's saying that what they're doing is illegal. i guess its because minami isnt 20, therefore she's not considered an adult yet??

Exactly. In Japan I think you are still considered a minor at 18.

I loved it for as fucked up as it was, it's nice to go away from all the fluff sometimes. Hmm, probably uncomfortable question : Does masochism equals self-hatred or self-hatred is just a part of it? Or not at all?

Masochism just means you enjoy pain and although self hatred is not required it is most often present on some level.

So this is definitely in need of a BDSM tag because that's pretty much the focus of the whole story.

This really was an interesting read.

last edited at Sep 19, 2018 1:21AM

Super adorable.

No, you are presumptuous in believing I lacked awareness of the context of the scene. I have watched this entire anime and read the manga. I am fully aware of what was going on in this scene. If the author wants to make it clear that one of characters isn't gay that's completely fine. That has nothing to do with hating gay people. It's her story and her characters and she is free to do as she pleases with them.

If you have read it then why did you misrepresent it? And she has seen fit to make absolutely sure that this character not only explain that she isn't gay but that she isn't even aware that gay people exist in their world. Love is dependant on gender according to her.

If she had had Teko say something like," Of course the way I feel about Pikari is different from you because I am a girl and girl's romantically liking other girls is gross and wrong" that would be homophobic. Simply implying that she is strait through an innocuous line of dialogue is not.

No, that's not what she did. She didn't explain that she was straight, she explained that love is different depending on a persons gender. She explained that because she is a girl she can't love another girl, not because she was straight. She thought the same for the kid, but because she found out he was actually a boy his love can only now be romantic when before it was super friendship.

From what I can tell, the author probably was likely initially writing intentional lesbian subtext into her story because some of it is pretty on the nose, and for one reason or another she got pressured to stop doing that perhaps either due fan responses or somebody higher up with her publisher decided that lesbian love stories don't fit the publications image and target demographic. Monthly Comic Blade is a shounen magazine so I can see how she might get asked by her editor to either add a male love interest and or put an end to the lesbian subtext. I have never seen anything said or written by Kozue Amano to suggest she hates gay people.

Except when she added a male love interest and made her characters explain that girls can't love girls in order to kill the subtext. And talk about presumptuous trying to pin it on the editor, where you have far less evidence to make the claim. They didn't just wean off the subtext, they went staight for the juguler.

I don't see where some of the people on this forum get this whole, "It's heterosexual, quick burn it with fire" mentality. Seriously, that's the sort of crap you expect to hear from a bunch of intolerant bigots at a KKK rally when somebody spots a gay person or a black guy. It's not the sort of behavior I would expect from a strongly lgbt community full of people who know what it is like to be discriminated against.

It's a website that mainly hosts yuri content and you can't see why they don't want to see a heavy subtext yuri series turn into a het romance between a teenager and a preteen trap? Really?

Edit: I should probably add that your comment itself didn't really warrant my rant. It was more like the straw the broke the camels back in that it was the last in a long string of comments by people flaming content creators over harmless creative decisions they make for their work. Just because a creator sinks your favorite lgbt ship doesn't mean they should be called bigots or homophobes. Mangaka and other famous artists are people with feelings too and should be treated as such. I really liked Pikari x Teko too, but it doesn't make it ok to flame the poor mangaka just because she took her story a different direction.

And I think otherwise. When a mangaka goes out of their way to intentionally kill off the yuri subtext in favor of shotacon trap romance then they need to be called out for their dumb decisions. If they want to shove in their anti-lgbt story line then they need to be flamed for the bigots that they are.

You completely missed my point.