I'm not blaming you, Gellydog.

The Holocaust discussion in the above thread has continued, and I really think it's both wildly inappropriate and will only serve to chill discussion. It certainly makes me uncomfortable.

There are plenty of male demon kings in contemporary shoujo

A chapter or Liberty that doesn't contain misunderstanding-fueled drama...it makes me nostalgic for the time I liked this manga lol. We all know Liz and Maki are going to end up together, but I would honestly prefer if they didn't, and instead grew and found happiness separately (like in this chapter). But I guess if that happened this wouldn't be a romance.

Laying the groundwork for this image

I quite like the irony of the cool, hyper-competent Xingyuan being a wage laborer while the lazy, possibly neurodivergent Xiaoen is the boss of what appears to be quite a large farm. Though she certainly isn't treated with much respect by the other characters; I guess she probably inherited the position from her parents?

Assuming that she's going to disrupt their life, harm productivity of the one who works from home, destroy their date idea merely by her presence, and cause tension between them, isn't "adopting Kurumi's perspective too uncritically", it's just reading the subtext the story presents.

You're reading the subtext of Kurumi's perspective, since the manga is told from her point of view. Kurumi is the one jealous of Rio, who felt disrupted by her presence (which made her unwilling to give Ruriko her present), and felt tension with Ruriko (since she saw Ruriko letting her guard down more with Rio than she does with her).

Looking at things objectively, though, Rio not only knows that Ruriko has loved Kurumi for years but is happy that she finally "bagged" her, even joking about wanting them to adopt her. Her worst crimes according to this thread are freeloading when she doesn't have money (I wonder what people think she should do instead) and not picking up her socks.

Like I said, if the complaint is just "I don't like this new character because I find her annoying," that's totally fair. You don't have to come up with an abstract justification for not liking a character. But I really do think the anxieties about her becoming a third wheel and causing dumb drama arise from adopting Kurumi's perspective, since she has those anxieties (which I guess means that the mangaka wrote these chapters effectively if they're causing this reaction). Trust in Ruriko!

I don't really understand what people are so upset about. Rio hasn't even been hinted at being into Ruriko, so I don't see a love triangle on the horizon,

No one said anything about a love triangle. It's that she's annoying and guaranteed to horn in on time with Ruriko and Kurumi. Like they were literally just planning their next ~date~ "bonding day" and now this.

The mangaka can choose which scenes to depict. If she wants to draw more Kurumi/Ruriko bonding moments, she's still perfectly capable of doing so. If you just don't like Rio because you find her annoying, that's fair enough, though I suspect it's because you're adopting Kurumi's perspective too uncritically.

But this girl has made a decision to be useless and dependent. She only needs help because she has explicitly chosen not to do anything that would make her not need help.

??? She's just unemployed? There's plenty of legitimate reasons someone might be unemployed. This is pretty excessively harsh on a girl we still know very little about.

I don't really understand what people are so upset about. Rio hasn't even been hinted at being into Ruriko, so I don't see a love triangle on the horizon, and I also don't think it's that unnatural for the lesbian character to be friends with another (implied) lesbian who was disowned by her parents and thus has nowhere to go when she's out of work.

I imagine the reason Rio was created is the same reason most new characters are: as a manga gets longer, the easiest way to add variety and new sorts of character interactions is to introduce a new person. This can be done poorly, but so far at least I think Rio has been written well; I particularly like the contrast between her upbeat, peppy attitude and the extent to which her actual life is really miserable.

I'm tired of arguing about the best way to interpret a single line from a single interview. None of us know for sure what Arai Sumiko thinks "yuri" is. What we do know is she hasn't hesitated to show wlw romance in literally all her other works, and there's no reason to think she's suddenly grown cold feet now.

last edited at Sep 7, 2022 5:11PM

After reading about Dominion Tank Police, it seems like a super good comparison because the protagonist of that series is also a trigger-happy cop who doesn't care about collateral damage lmao.

Read this page for more information on the connotations the term "yuri" has in Japan that it usually doesn't in the Western fanbase.

Um.

You see my point? If anything, by saying she's not sure if it's "yuri," Arai is (most likely) saying it won't end in ambiguity or subtext.

....Wait is this a thing???? Oh no. ):

No, it's not, people are misunderstanding a single line of an interview.

You mean the line where she said this is not yuri, it's 'pure love' between girls? e.e

That is not what she said. I translated her actual quote here:

"I'm not sure whether the manga I'm writing is what people call 'yuri.' It's more like 'love between women'; I feel a fascination toward that theme. There was a time when I myself struggled [she uses "nayamu" here] with my sexuality, so it makes me very happy to see people with different sexualities, backgrounds, lives, and occupations read the stories and characters born from that time [in my life]. Please continue to kindly watch over Mitsuki and Aya."

She did not use the term "pure love." She talks about her struggles with her sexuality when she was younger, and says this story was inspired by that time in her life. I don't know how this telephone game got started where people think she spoiled the ending; I assume it's a misunderstanding of what "yuri" means in Japan. It is not a synonym for "wlw"; at least for some people, it's a specific genre with specific tropes that Arai Sumiko does not necessarily want to identify herself with.

Here's the deal: literally everything Arai has ever written has contained yuri. All of the single images she's posted on Twitter are yuri, including the forerunner to this very comic. Her Twitter profile says she likes "love between girls," and the term she uses, 恋愛, specifically has romantic connotations. This comic itself has blatantly foreshadowed a romantic ending, with the character bios explicitly saying Aya isn't interested in boys. Somehow a meme to the contrary has spread based on a mistranslation or misunderstanding of a single line from an interview and it pisses me off lol.

Edit: The particular irony here is one of the connotations "yuri" has in Japan is actually that it's just "pure love"! Read this page for more information on the connotations the term has in Japan that it usually doesn't in the Western fanbase.

last edited at Sep 5, 2022 11:37PM

You're really going after a 15-year-old for being upset when she was reminded of recent traumatic experiences, then recovering quickly and apologizing?

This thread was getting too pro-Mimei so it was important to have a Meguru chapter to balance things out

Japan has a very low crime rate and a number of stores that don't accept credit cards so it's more common to carry cash with you there than it is in other countries. When I lived there I regularly carried 10,000 yen bills with me too (not three of them but I also never tried to solicit my classmates for sex).

I don't think it really matters if someone attaches a plausible label to a fictional character, as long as they don't get upset if others interpret the character in a different way (and Pyrrho has not). Xiaoen is not a real person and cannot tell us what her "correct" labels are, so let people label her how they want (within reason of course).

The first chapters established two well fleshed-out, attractive, adorkable female characters with delightful amorous chemistry engaged in a comedy of romantic errors that we all hoped would result in a yuri love relationship. Now we find it's never going to happen: they will just be buddies who share a hobby. It just takes all the excitement out of the game.

....Wait is this a thing???? Oh no. ):

No, it's not, people are misunderstanding a single line of an interview. I will be legitimately shocked if this doesn't end in romance.

This manhua is great, the protagonists already have a compelling dynamic. I am confused by what peach girl was doing at the end, though.

Applying an alcohol wipe to the cut she got from the peach stem in Chapter 2.

Thank you!

"I don't want to be all alone again"

I think this is a hint of Yvonne's backstory pre-reincarnation

This manhua is great, the protagonists already have a compelling dynamic. I am confused by what peach girl was doing at the end, though.

I personally think the chapter title translation is extremely clever, definitely a lot more fun than a literal translation ("A new semester for those who can't ask") would be.

I checked the author profile and they seem to be quite prolific, aren't they, any good manga of theirs you guys recommend ?

Hakamada Mera manga tend to be great most of the way through and then have highly disappointing endings. Her best manga is probably Watashi no Taisetsu na Tomodachi but it's also not really yuri (subtext at best). My favorite yuri manga of hers is If This Wish Comes True and its sequel All You. But if you like her work you should just read all of it, there isn't really any one I would say is significantly better or worse than the others.

I mean this honestly -- it's quite interesting that this manhua made its protagonist so unlikeable. She might have her reasons, it appears Obsidian not only killed her adoptive father but betrayed her to do so, but right now she's basically a racist cop who doesn't even care about collateral damage lol.

Or I guess the third path: messily oscillating between those two options, causing unhappiness and hurt for all.

"Unhappiness and hurt for all" is a given, but the third path is Tsuzuki falling in love with Kashiwai enough that she becomes willing to accept monogamy for her partner's sake.

last edited at Sep 27, 2022 7:21PM