It's possible that she never even slept with all of the dudes. I'm hoping she wants an exclusive committed relationship with the female protag

My interpretation is that she hasn't slept with them, and is interested in a relationship with Sawa, but it's sort of unclear.

I don't understand why being popular = being a slut. It's okay to want to be popular too, but it really bothers me when people get so envious that they start trying to make others look bad.

I think the issue wasn't that she was popular, but that she went out of her way to get guys to like her. The main character commented that Souma laid it on really thick with this cutesy act and flirted with many different boys. It's not like they just hit on her out of nowhere, she deliberately cultivated an attitude and set of behaviors that would bring people to her. Personally I wouldn't call that "slutty", but I don't think it's a case of "popular = slut", though you do see that in manga fairly often.

Someone ask Itou Hachi to give Master a name already; almost everyone else in this story has one. At this rate, her so far nameless **editor* will get a name before she does.

The editor does have a name. It's Mist.

It's rather amusing to see the increasingly precarious verbal gymnastics Itou Hachi goes through to maintain Master's lack of a name. It works fine when the only people talking to her or discussing her are her maids, who would be expected to call her Master or Mistress or whatever. But with Mist and now Stella introduced, and more and more flashbacks to when her family was alive, it seems very odd that she's never once referred to by name.

last edited at Aug 13, 2018 3:03PM

Stella says she came back to her home country only a week ago. However, we know that Marie was adopted (or purchased or whatever, maybe she's some kind of service dog) at least several months ago, maybe even half a year or more. So that means that Stella, while living overseas, came back to this country to get Marie. That indicates a certain level of commitment to the goal of acquiring a beastgirl, perhaps even this particular beastgirl.

Basically, I think Stella's demonstrated preferences rule her out as a any kind of serious rival to the Master/Mel pair.

Presumably the sports club members are busy practicing their sports so at least they have an excuse. The girls who shanghai'd Honami into doing all their work even though they either aren't in a club or don't have anything to do for that club are the real villains.

These characters are so incredibly awkward. Even the side characters are super awkward.

I feel like the ending was kind of disappointing. Obviously the characters made the right choice, to wait until Yuzumori is old enough to consent before they do anything. But most of the tension came from Mimika's desire to do something that is clearly wrong, and how she dealt with it. When she can just say "Oh I'll just wait" it feels too easy.

Maybe I'm saying I wanted her to give in to temptation (as creepy as that is), or at least struggle with it more, as a way to make the story more interesting.

last edited at Aug 9, 2018 9:05AM

I really liked this, but the pacing was a mess. It was hard to tell where this was going. At first it looked like a drama about Akira's trouble making friends. Then it seemed like the story would switch between Akira and her brother, but that was dropped after a few chapters. There were some hints about a romance between her and the guy who sits next to her. And then it was the photography club and finally the issue with the cafe.

I can see why this was cancelled. It really was a mess of a series, and took so long to get going that even after it's over I have no idea what the core of this story was.

Maybe the big showdown will happen with Sato vs Asahi, and Suu rushes in to "save the day" for Sato somehow.

If it's a competition, even in this world, the Aunt wins there. Things could get better. Or they could spiral even worse. I'm excited to see which, but either way, the aunt's probably not going to point him in Sato's direction like she did Shouko. I wonder what effect this will have on Sato's doomed plan.

I doubt Suu's saving anyone, probably not even herself....

I'm a little suspicious about Satou's plan. Notice how the Aunt was carrying all that gas upstairs, into her apartment. You'd think if she just wanted to dispose of a body, she'd use that car she rented to drive it somewhere safe and burn it there. No need to ever take the gas out of the car and into her apartment. Unless she's got a massive furnace able to withstand the heat necessary to destroy a body, then she isn't intending to just dispose of that body. She's going to dispose of the building. Though if I'm right, I'm curious how she expects to get away with this without being convicted of arson....

I think the way most people know grammar is that they're able to use and understand a language without knowing how to describe what they understand. Anyone fluent in English would be able to understand the meaning of "My mother, whom I admire, is a teacher" and would be able to see that something is wrong with "My mother, I admire whom, is a teacher."

When I was in school, the only English grammar terminology I learned was in Latin class.

Yeah, I really like the swirling red of Sato's eyes, that's a nice visual cue. And Suu would visit Sato every day in jail. They could even have their wedding there. Sato/Shouko has sunk, I must be adaptable!

Hey, the Suu-Satou ship has survived 20 chapter with Suu not showing up or even being mentioned. We can overcome any obstacle.

As for chapter 38, I thought he was going to kill her. I'm really glad he didn't. I was looking forward to this meeting, and it definitely didn't disappoint in terms of how creepy and bizarre it was. He's just no match for her. I'm actually wondering if she can "purify" him, like she claims she will.... The story so far has suggested that the only thing that can beat crazy is even crazier, and the Aunt is definitely crazier than the manager. So given the logic of this world, it's possible he'll somehow come out of the experience of her raping him better off.

And just because the two are mutually exclusive for a lot of people doesn't mean they're mutually exclusive for everyone either.

I actually have no idea what you're trying to say about English grammar.

I actually went and read it through after realizing the twist, and noticed that there are a whole bunch of times where it SEEMS like she's participating in the conversation, but she really isn't, like:
Chihiro's Mom(?): Hey, the bath is ready!
Natsu: I'll wait in your room!
Chihiro: Okay!
Like, Chihiro SEEMS to be reacting to "I'll wait in your room," but was actually responding to "The bath is ready.".
Clever.

In the beginning where Chihiro's sister(?) says "there's nothing here", it sounds like she's repeating Natsu's line to show agreement, but she's just saying it normally.

And when her mom says "I've made dinner for the two of you" it's for Chihiro and her sister, not Chihiro and Natsu.

So often authors will cheat to make a surprising twist. The sudden reveal is not actually consistent with what came before. But there's no cheating here, just misdirection. The ending makes perfect sense.

My one disappointment with the anime (besides the flash-forward at the beginning) is that they haven't really captured the eyes. The way that characters' pupils sometimes look like they were scribbled on with a thick pen, with those gaps and lumpy edges, is one of my favorite parts of the art.

Yeah, this and a lot of the visual things in the manga can't translate as well to the anime, and there are a lot of visual things the manga does frequent as a framing device to communicate "this is not a good thing" or an impending sense of horror, like the broken glass surrounding the vows in the latest chapter.

But as of episode 4, the anime direction is doing a lot of interesting things to cover the same material, mostly to make the characters clearer I guess? The manga cut off when Sato pulled out her weapons on the delinquents, but the anime cuts off as she's mutilating them and shows a shot of their dead bodies. We see Sato putting the padlock in place instead of simply seeing the lock. The voice acting sets up good contrasts and really uncomfortable moments that help build that sense of dread too. I wonder how it would communicate that Sato isn't delusional, she just outright lies to herself about things she knows are bad enough that she has to keeps them from Shio because she's willing to go that far for the facade and the codependency, and I'd say it's doing a good job getting that across. The cutesy, sugary effects like Taiyou's stars come across as over the top and fake, so that helps too. Is it just me, or is the teacher getting more focus in the anime?

I mostly can't wait to see the Sato/Suu kiss. I can still hope that they end up together in a happily codependent unhealthy relationship, right? Suu's alive, it could happen.

I have to retract my specific complaint about their eyes, since the animators have done neat things with their pupils looking like squirming curling lines a few times. And I agree, after the first preview looked kinda rushed and poorly made, I was worried about quality, but it's turning out way better than I feared.

As far as I can tell, every seen with the teacher in the anime came straight from the manga, except some of them happen in later chapters. So it looks like they're not really increasing the focus on him, just moving some things around.

I think the best hope Suu has for a relationship is that Satou ends up in prison and Suu gets to visit her every week, like those creepy groupies who fall in love with serial killers.

So, the real mystery is who the hell opens a convenience store next to a cemetery? Twice?

People need snacks while they grieve. Or cigarettes. Or cheap black umbrellas, because if there's anything I've learned from watching movies, it's that every funeral takes place in the rain, and everyone has identical black umbrellas.

last edited at Aug 5, 2018 3:07AM

> English
> grammar

...pick one?

Just because you don't know the rules doesn't mean there aren't any.

The supervisor girl is doomed to be bullied, because she's still weak-willed.

And once again, it ends abruptly.

Kodama Naoko is a premature ejaculator writer.

When the author given 10-20 pages in a massive anthology, it's pretty fucking stupid to blame them for the story's abrupt ending.

Not sure if there is going to be a sequel as the author is married with a child and only wrote yuri to find a husband.

Wut.

I mean obviously there's no better way to find a man than to write lesbian romance comics. Works every time. In fact, not only is it the most reliable way to find a husband, the only reason for a heterosexual (or bisexual) woman to write yuri manga is that they're searching for a man.

Neither is morally acceptable, but is the necessary conceit for the purpose of establishing Kodama's patented messed-up relationship.

You get it. That's what I love about most of her stories—it's great to see two people who are perfect for each other due to their complementary neuroses.

Wow, straight out of college supervisor positions? What reality is this?

I graduated from an Ivy League and I've never seen one in my life.

It's been several years since she graduated. As you can see from their little career path, she graduated, was recruited, attained additional qualifications, and then was promoted.

But some people do get recruited for supervisor positions right out of school, depending on the type of company.

She's not ugly though. She is just not putting her effort to make up.

Lots of different people (including her own mother) are repeatedly calling attention to her appearance, in a negative manner. She doesn't look plain or ugly. She doesn't even look like she doesn't take care of her appearance; her hair is tied up, her face is clean, her uniform is neat, there's nothing sloppy or lazy about her. What the characters are saying simply does not match up with what is portrayed in the art. When the author is telling us one thing and showing us another, it better be some kind of deliberate trickery or metacommentary, because otherwise it's simply failure.

This kind of thing happens a lot in movies and especially in theater, because the writer or director or whoever is constrained by the limitations of their media. Plus lots of different people are involved who might have different ideas about what they're portraying. Some inconsistency is expected (though this doesn't excuse the classic example of the "ugly" girl being some stunning actress except with glasses on and a sweater).

But when you're the writer and illustrator of a comic, consistency is expected. This same failure happens all the time in manga. It's similar to the issue where a manga starts off with some random characters talking about the main character, "She's gifted at sports, gets the highest grades, and is beloved by everyone!" or whatever. In that case, it's merely an example of the author being lazy and telling the audience what they should be showing us. Here it's worse, since the show and the tell actively conflict. I'm not saying this ruins the story for me, it's just lazy writing that annoys me.

• Chapter 5 directly invokes the word “pedophilia,” as the much more sexually explicit doujins never did, but also shows Mel nearly nude and depicts the Master checking out Mel’s private parts.

In the scene where Master looks at Mel naked, she doesn't appear to be bothered by seeing her, getting neither excited nor flustered. And her next thought is that Mel might be too cold at night from wearing pajamas that don't properly cover her. I think this is pretty much the kind of reaction you'd expect of a parent seeing their child partially naked. Without the context of the other works, I'd probably see this as all perfectly innocent. Also, with the addition of the end of volume extra, it seems that Mist accusing Master of being a child molester is just a running gag now. It's hard to tell how seriously we're supposed to take any of this.

About your larger point, Itou Hachi does seem to be addressing some larger themes in this version, first with the birds and the story about Master's past, and now with the abandoned dog. But in the end, there are still far more questions than answers, and the attempts to explore these themes are so far nothing really more than bare mentions or references. They function more as means to drive personal drama between Mel and Master than as grand statements about interspecies relations, and are completely worthless when it comes to establishing the details of how this world works.

It's hard to tell what's deliberate and meaningful versus what's there just because it's necessary to make the premise work. It's fun to wonder about this stuff, and it can be really funny when an author unintentionally (or perhaps intentionally?) creates some unfortunate implications in their cutesy fictional world. But overall, I'm certain I've spent way too much time thinking about this.

Ultimately, as in most stories like this one, the whole premise is demolished by the author's failure to make the main character ugly. You can't just draw a normal girl, put some glasses on her, and call her ugly. Now I have to just pretend that this character, who obviously isn't ugly, is. When the author of a visual medium forces you to ignore your own eyes in order to buy into their story, they have completely failed.

^Barring some explicit statement from Itou Hachi on the matter, I don’t get the sense that adherence to strict standards about continuity or “canonicity” is a very high priority with this author.

Even if some scenes get repeated, reworked, or echoed among the series, I’d guess that to the author all the scenes of these characters that she draws “really happen” to (more or less) the same degree.

EDIT FOR CLARITY: I don’t think it’s unreasonable to read the current series as if it’s a completely fresh start with no relation to the previous ones, nor is it unreasonable to imagine all the “Master & Mel” pieces as part of one big (somewhat shaggy around the edges) story. What I do think is untenable without more specific evidence from the author or some other official source is to insist that only one of those things is certainly true.

That's sort of my thinking at this point. It could be that this particular story happens before that one. Or it could be the author messing around with different ideas about the same characters. Maybe the rest of this series will clarify the extent of their relationship, or maybe it'll leave things open. Either way it's not really that important to me.

BUT: I will admit, I kind of went, "Oh, come on," when she started losing her power. Because, like, they framed it as a scary thing that the audience should be worried about... but, like, it's super obvious that the reason she's losing it is because she's growing out of it. I like that she did grow out of it, but I don't like the way they tried to frame it as a scary thing even though the plot twist that it was actually a good thing was super predictable.

I didn't get the impression that it was framed as something the audience should be worried about. They framed it as something Moritani was worried about. Like you say, it was obvious to the reader that she was losing the power because she no longer needed it. But to her, she was losing the only thing in her life that gave her any sense of security.