Understand the reader and you may understand their reasons.

OK, then—that’s that.

You'd have more luck reading this entire thread to find the answer to that question.

I actually have read most or all of the posts here at one point or another; I was hoping for maybe a condensed now-that-it’s-over-and-the-ships-are-all-in-port version.

last edited at Nov 18, 2017 3:11PM

This isn’t really a preference question, though, and I certainly don’t plan to argue back to anyone. I think that overall this story had a load of style but rather mishandled its characters by not giving the audience enough reasons to be invested in the relationship of the main couple. I’m just interested in why Seju seems to have sparked that degree of audience attachment.

Maybe it’s just that (in terms of the cues I was getting from the narrative) I always assumed all along that Sumin & Sungji were the inevitable couple, while others were reading the triangle as having a different potential resolution.

I have to admit (after a full re-read of the story) that I don’t get all the love for Seju as a character. I do understand the position that Sungji is rather underdeveloped as a protagonist, but Seju seems to me to be a classic needy, manipulative ex who exists to cause trouble for the main pair. Her feelings do seem genuine, even though a real relationship with Sumin is well past its expiration date, and she has a not uninteresting poor-little-rich-girl backstory to explain her present-day behavior, but the reaction here seems to go well beyond “at least she’s cooler than the bland Sungji.”

I don’t mean this as an attack on the character or people who like her—it’s just that a fair number of readers seem to be seeing something about her that I must be missing.

I’m not sure that “husband cheats, yuri ensues” is all that much more trite and predictable than “apparent cheating has innocent explanation”—(Reiichi’s business trip ended early, he wanted to surprise his wife so didn’t tell her, then he ran into Riyako by chance at the station, etc.).

I’d prefer to see the plot driven more by what Uta does than by chance or by the decisions/actions of her brother and sister-in-law, but since Uta seems to avoid actually doing anything at all costs, maybe that’s not this story.

Who is this woman in the top right panel? She is clearly older and Kaoru seems younger than her present self. It could be Kaoru's mom or whoever else, but it also could be Uta's mother. Now, what if Kaoru had some kind of unfaithful relationship with Uta's mum? Probably thanks to the mum initiative since Kaoru was probably in love with Reiichi.

That's not entirely farfetched, but not entirely solid, either (again, until we get more info). My previous post missed the point that not only does Kaoru feel guilty about the divorce, when Reiicchi says it wasn't her fault Kaoru says that in any case she hurt Uta specifically.

So how does Reiichi’s childhood friend/girlfriend contribute to the breakup of the marriage in such a way that Reiichi knows about it, doesn't think she's really to blame, but doesn't treat her feelings of guilt as completely absurd?

Maybe the father coming on to Kaoru was the catalyst for Reiicchi "taking responsibility"? At this point I feel like I'm just writing fanfic, so I dunno.

last edited at Nov 16, 2017 8:49AM

It's really hard to get a solid read on the marriage of Reiichi and Kaoru because there's that big past secret that we know very little about. We do know:

Uta had "serious hardships" and "family issues" in the past which significantly affected her personality.
Kaoru feels partly responsible for the divorce of Uta and Reiichi's parents.

We also know that Reiichi is "not reliable," and Kaoru likes him, or at least is attached to him, more than he is to her.

(As a side note, we have had some slight hints that Kaoru might be pregnant.)

So speculation on where the story is going from here is seriously hindered for the lack of important facts not (yet) in evidence.

The results from a recent survey here make for a decent starter list for exploration. (Caveats: Not all of the works listed are manga and not all are here.) And Citrus in particular tends to get love-it-or-hate-it reactions. But it's a place to start.

https://dynasty-scans.com/forum/topics/12810-survey-on-yuri-fandom-demographics-updated-with-results?page=1#forum_post_314095

Anyhow, my bet is that Shiramine beats Kurosawa and then confess. Anyone has any other theory?

1) Shiramine beats Kurosawa
Don’t see what else can happen, since it’s been the other way around all this time (Shiramine giving up on the competition just doesn’t seem to be in the cards.) The question is what the circumstances of that win would be—if Shiramine thinks it’s because Kurosawa is slacking off, there would be hell to pay. (The other possibility is a perpetual tie for best, but I don’t see what that accomplishes.)

2) Shiramine confesses
That’s got to happen in some way too, since Kurosawa has been one long confession from the very beginning. But (as they used to say in Tennessee) I also might could foresee first Kurosawa giving up as “not worthy,” and then Shiramine doing the, “Baka! Are you too stupid to see I love you back?” treatment.

Unlike some series where I’m anxious to see a big emotional confrontation, I’m actually fine with watching these two brainy idiots continue to twist in the wind for a while.

Like Koveras says, that previous (beaming, cat-eared) “love,” although sincere as far as it went, wasn’t the kind where Yurine actually put herself at risk; the way she feels now, to not have her feelings reciprocated would be emotionally devastating.

And like Lyendith says, some of Ayaka’s POV would be very useful right now to see where she is (or rather, where Little Miss Self-Deception is willing to admit she is).

last edited at Nov 14, 2017 7:28AM

Shiramine needs to go back to her old conditioner.

I meant “Just MAYBE the very first one could be a “like” (before she hears that Kase is into girls), but all the rest certainly should be “loves.””

And you nailed it—Kase-san’s “I’ve been in love with you for the longest time” speech loses a lot with the substitution of “like.”

last edited at Nov 12, 2017 9:13AM

That is, in fact, exactly what they did in the official English tank.

That is exactly the matter under discussion—which one works better?

Personally I like the “love” instead of the “like,” but eh.

Tend to agree. It’s always an important choice where there’s some ambiguity about the extent of the feelings of the characters—“She said she likes me, but is it that kind of ‘like’?” But in this case both characters knew that they had fallen hard for the other one pretty much immediately, and they found out each others’ feelings soon enough.

Maybe Yamada’s very first, “Please let Kase-san be in love with me!” in Chapter 1 could be ratcheted back to a “like,” until Mikawacchi’s “Kase dates girls” reveal in Chapter 2 puts the possibility of “love” front and center. (Even though at that point it’s a false rumor that turns out to be true.)

last edited at Nov 11, 2017 10:25PM

One thing I like about yuri is that it can throw more twists into the basic rom-com narrative arc. (For whatever reasons, in recent years I’ve moved almost entirely away from stories, movies, TV, etc. in which people are killed, shot, tortured, or things blow up, especially ones where women are killed, etc.). Since, in a het-normative world, we (or the characters) don’t always start with the expectation of romantic involvement between the characters, there are a few more possible turns/paths before we get to plot resolution.

It’s similar to one reason I like Kdrama rom-coms—it’s not the het/non-het aspect, it’s that often the tsundere chaebol protagonists are so emotionally oblivious that they have no clue why they suddenly start going doki-doki in the presence of some obviously “unsuitable” partner.

In US stories, the initial presence of romantic attraction is often signaled by the principals playing tongue hockey and having sex up against a wall. So where do you go from there?

I can't really judge this arc until we see how it ends.

It ends with the flaming deaths of Shima and Yuzumori, and the destruction of Mimika’s house, of course.

It’s going to be a “kamikaze” attack, after all. :-)

I think it has to do with the master feeling lonely and adopting a little pet to keep her company?

That's certainly right, and most of the series shows the two of them being sweet to each other, with the master coming out of her emotional shell by helping Mel in various ways.

The story where the master gives Mel a visible love bite to prevent her from working even though she's ill is a good example of a (to me) simultaneously squicky and quite adorable scene that would be, well, a lot worse/borderline criminal under just slightly different narrative premises (to say nothing of real life).

And the scene with the Halloween kidnapper, which reads as Mel being rescued by a loved one, could also be seen as a conflict between two pedophiles.

To tell the truth, the way this series makes me feel slightly uncomfortable while I'm liking it so much is probably the most interesting thing about it.

I really have liked this series, and still do, but there have always been a number of weird elements at or just below the surface that combine into an unsettling subtext (and sometimes text).

1) Mel’s status as a furry displaces our normal assumptions and creates a great deal of uncertainty about a lot of fundamental premises. Mel is certainly young, but in beastkin terms, how young? In flashbacks to the orphanage (?), Mel’s classmates seem to be at least late adolescents, and with no idea of their lifespan/developmental pattern, we also have no idea of how much of Mel’s apparent childishness is due to her age and how much is her personal naïveté and inexperience.

2) In the context of the story, Mel’s collar seems to be a voluntary personal ornament, which doesn’t change the fact that it also reads as sex fetish gear.

3) What is Mel even doing there in the first place? There’s certainly a master-servant relationship, but Mel’s role working in the house seems to be entirely voluntary. And we have almost no idea of the wider cultural practices concerning the beastkin—what even counts as normal in this world?

None of this is to say anything about the morality of the relationship one way or the other, but just to say that this has always been a loli d/s story. And it’s always been incredibly cute.

I'm pretty much convinced that every artists ever is interested in drawing porn/sexy stuff at one points, especially for characters they created.

For example, one of the best Archie artists, Dan DeCarlo, had some yuri in him (link definitely NSFW):

https://ibsearch.xxx/images/4339374

I hope next chapter will be good but at the same time I'm afraid everything will go to hell...

Me too, but I strongly suspect that both of those things will be true at the same time (especially since we apparently have an entire volume for things to work themselves out).

I must admit that the descriptive parts of this explanation sound like they’re accurate, but I’m still having trouble understanding the basis of why this situation is particularly awkward in terms of plot construction or storytelling.

the little focus there is [on Touko] just makes her look very one-dimensional.

At this point, she actually is pretty one-dimensional, and your post gives a good explanation of why—since she’s on the outs with Yuu, all she has left of her identity is this increasingly threadbare goal of putting on the play, no matter what its content.

Only Yuu, Touko, and Sayaka know that putting on the play is particularly important to Touko’s sense of self or that the theme has any parallels with her psychological state. (Koyomi has no idea that she’s hit so close to mark in regard to Touko’s character.) Touko already knows (from her sister’s senpai) that her “become perfect like Mio” project was based on a flawed premise from the start, so the play just gives her an opportunity to consider an alternative to her present dead-end course.

You’re right—one or more big confrontations are looming, but the performance of the play itself doesn’t have to be it. I’m just not sure how that translates into the narrative device of the play being problematic.

this climactic play-within-a-play stands out more and more as an obvious fictional artifact, something too convenient to exist outside of an imagined story

Yeah, that just ruined Hamlet for me too. :-)

The idea that “immersion” in this story depends on the plausibility and correspondence to reality of its plot strikes me as paradoxical, to say the least, given that the basic premise of Bloom Into You is one of the most obviously artificial fictional constructs I’ve ever seen—starting with a conveniently overheard love confession, a coincidental encounter between two girls who have never experienced love motivates one of them to instantly (and apparently sincerely) fall in love at first sight because she thinks the other girl can’t fall in love with her, and the other girl agrees to allow the first girl to love her despite her own (supposed) inability to sustain an emotional relationship.

And I’m not sure which part is more improbable—Touko’s instantaneous love for Yuu, Yuu’s willingness to go along with it, or the chance that two people with these odd psychological dynamics would encounter each other in the first place.

If a given reader is thrown out of the story for any reason, well, that’s that. But even though Bloom Into You is one of my favorite manga (hell, one of my favorite works in any medium) in a very long time, I’d put sheer verisimilitude way, way down the list of the qualities it even seems to care about.

last edited at Nov 5, 2017 6:03AM

Sayaka observing whats happening between Touko and You and saying nothing so far.

This one was nicely done--barely discernible on the page (it's a very wide shot), but quite suggestive given the previous chapter.

Is this manga still going really well?

Despite the comments on this chapter (mine, anyway,) overall it's going as well or better than ever--it's just that there has been a crucial confrontation (or several) looming on the horizon for some time now, and (again, for me) anything that doesn't get us there by the most direct road is way down my priority list. But I wouldn't call the story's direction problematic at all.

Doujima x Akari end game? More likely than you think.

Ah, put those two on a bus for all I care. I realize that my reaction to this chapter is mostly me being greedy—I just want Yuu and Touko locked in a cage for an emotional grudge match, and nobody comes out until they’re ready to Take It To The Next Level.

But that’s why Nakatani’s in charge instead of me.