Honestly, I think it's pretty obvious this is going to resolve itself peacefully, but in ANY case it's nice to see something like development. I have a feeling both of the issues are going to end up resolved at the same time... Honestly, I think Ookuma seems somewhat past caring about gender anyways.

That being said, I didn't actually expect this to go on this long without resolving it, so what do I know?

Of course she can't say "don't go". She has to play the part of the adult.

Yeah, kinda what I was thinking. This is exactly the sort of thing where an adult can't say that, even if they think it. This is one of the places where Haru's age is a big factor. She doesn't realize quite that before everything else, Midori really can't tell Haru she wants her to stay. The circumstances - not just not being a relative, but also not wanting to use your power as an adult to influence a minor - just in every way, Midori doesn't really have anything she can do.

That is really frustrating for a kid, I think, I can see why Haru is not satisfied. She's just gonna have to read between the lines, cause Midori will indeed play by the rules here.

does anyone know where I can read the RAWs?

Well, you can buy them on the Pixiv manga app.

Yashiro has pointedly stated she is an alien, and that there are others of her kind that she has lost track of and is searching for. I have always taken it to mean that the characters in Denpa Onna and this work are different Yashiros but of the same group. That's my personal reading, at least. It's very clear Yashiro is some sort of supernatural being, presumably an alien as she states.

Is this mainland Chinese? Seems strict but I don't know enough about places like Taiwan to compare. Definitely I hope these authors don't get noticed if it's the mainland... America has the orange menace but we still can do what we want for the most part (well, except for now, because we don't want to die of coronavirus).

Also, reminds me, what happened to Beloved L?

I guess I should say, worst case, violence, abuse, and assault, though I'm honestly hoping we can not go further down that route. That said, the author has already brought that out so hoping it ends here is probably optimistic. Sadly.

Gonna point out one detail we are conveniently overlooking - Midori is, by any normal standard, cheating, while as far as we know Tazune is not (yet, though obviously thinking of it). Knowing Tazune is abusive, knowing the pregnancy is due to him just deciding he wanted to go in raw and nakadashi, and of course being on this site we aren't going to care much. From a perspective of ignorance, though, it looks flipped from what we see.

In any case it's obvious they aren't really into each other and both are more in for something on the side, so maybe, just maybe they should not get married?

I hope the new girl helps Maki and Midori get knocked out of the mental trap that keeps them from acknowledging that they are a couple already, obviously want to be together, and Tazune isn't committed to the relationship either so BAIL NOW!

I just know the damn pregnancy is going to make this shitty and complicated. If there is a fight over custody, once again, there is proof Midori is cheating and with a woman at that, while no one but us and Midori knows Tazune is an abusive dick. Best case, it doesn't come down to that, Maki and Midori get together and raise the child. Worst case, lots of drawn out drama.

My inner dialog...

"Please just figure out you're into her, please figure it out, please figure it out..."

I mean, I know the end game is them getting together, but the WAIT. It does make me realize that something like "Hana ni Arashi" is an outlier though.

I just hope Maki and Midori figure this shit out before the wedding. Seriously, it doesn't need to be any more complicated... It's better to be with someone you actually LIKE, even if it's not "normal," trying to live a normal life that doesn't for you is a recipe for disaster. You will just want to die, and be experiencing a living death anyways.

Just gonna speak AS A MAN and say domestic abusers are trash.

I don't think it's terribly hard to understand Tazune, the Doors sung years ago "women seem wicked when you're unwanted" and I'm sure even lesbians sometimes feel resentment stemming from a feeling of being unwanted - though being women themselves are probably less prone to constructing the sort of incel fantasy out of it. I have had a shitty love life, but since many of my closest friends have been female, I don't fall into that trap. If you don't have female friends (or vice versa) it's not hard to view the opposite sex as "other" rather than a human like you.

I think the posters who mentioned the pick up artist thing have a point. Tazune doesn't even see Midori, she's just another girl like any other, "good enough". He knows how to play the game - and there is something of a game to flirting and sex, we all know people who naturally or through practice seem to have a lot of sex, can always seem to get people in bed - but he still hasn't seen any of them as human beings like himself. He's a pretty trash person all around and him having been treated as unwanted or sexually "invisible" doesn't really make him very sympathetic to me. Being treated that way is very common for men and rare for women, though lesbians who keep falling for straight women will know what I mean by being sexually invisible.

That said, I don't consider this very realistic, usually abusers have seen it in their family or close to them and normalized this sort of behavior to themselves, but it seems to not have anything to do with being good or bad at picking up women.

That said I think a bigger point is being made and missed here. There is a theme about society's expectations and playing to them that is central to this manga. Both Midori and Tazune are illustrations of this (though Midori at least isn't an asshole). The regressive cultural norms about what women and men should do and how they should act are being played out. Toxic masculinity, comp het, the dating and getting married thing, all of it. It's the same toxic shit producing "red pill" incels or even gold diggers (who play the distaff role to toxic men, a toxic femininity that sees men as objects to be used). The point is these people have not so much defined themselves as let themselves be defined by what society says. Tazune is getting cheap self worth defined by how women treat him, which is why he is an asshole. I think the author is showing that this self image was threatened and that's why he became physically abusive. He doesn't have a core of self worth, it's entirely based on the toxic ideas from society about what it means to be a "man".

There is no point to living someone else's life. It is condemning yourself to death and then living in what is at best purgatory and at worst hell.

Midori, like most people who try doing this, is slowly finding this out the hard way...

Too bad living authentically can be hell too. Though Japan is actually a good place overall for this, by world standards. That said, I have a bad feeling the REAL drama might come afterwards - say Midori gets with Maki and divorces Tazune... Custody of the child comes into play...

I wish Mio was a bit more pushy? I feel almost like Shizuka misses the domineering aspect of Kaoru as much as anything. I normally don't like analysis of everything as top/bottom, but definitely in this case I feel there is something like that. Or like a strong flavor, Kaoru tends to overwhelm, especially for Shizuka. Mio is pretty close to vanilla. Vanilla is a great flavor, but pretty much everything overwhelms it.

I like Mio a lot so I hope this doesn't turn to shit, but definitely I feel like it's unbalanced. Shizuka is trying but unless Mio steps up somehow I don't see how it can hold together. I'm not trying to blame Mio, just that Shizuka can't will her way out of something so obviously outside of her willpower. She's trying to be good but to actually be good in this case requires her to be grabbed - psychologically and sexually - more forcefully.

I was just recently at Miyajima. I wholeheartedly recommend it and Hiroshima, which is one of the few actually pretty cities in Japan in my opinion. Some will say they are overtouristed, but there aren't many places without tourists of some sort in Japan, and Miyajima has been a tourist spot since the Edo era.

The torii is covered in scaffolding right now. I have some good pictures of it.

Also, these two are great. Reminds me somewhat of my parents. My dad doesn't always show what he's thinking but he is very considerate of my mom.

Reupload confused me so bad, I was just like... huh, I recognize these characters - oh.

Anyway, I don't think the boi is horrible, but immediately outing 2 people to a bunch of other people and making them gossip, especially in a homophobic society, kinda sucks.

On the other hand, a world where you can say it and people accept it is nice. Riri wasn't going hide it and in the end nobody seemed to mind. People will always gossip about romance, for better or worse, and we don't know the context here... You certainly want people to respect your relationship, but saying, "no, I asked but she's going out with friend X" isn't in itself bad. Japan, like the US, is not one way or the other, and whether a school or class is going to be cool or not depends. I think Riri had a confidence in the situation, which in another manga might be naive but in this case maybe is good.

You can only be outed if you're in the closet. For better or worse.

It's a good thing Subaru is there because otherwise these two would just spin. If one person has a hangup, it can be overcome, but of you have two people with hangups... It's just not very good.

I think the "herbivore" thing is mostly that being aggressive is not something that comes naturally, especially hitting one random people. In the hetero world, I think most of the problems are women and men not understanding each other's unique difficulties. One nice thing about yuri is that it's more even ground, and the weight of gender expectations is lessened. Though someone still has to start things, at least it's not "and you're supposed to pay for everything, and you're supposed to dress up and act cute in the most stereotypical way."

Also, hey, for all we know the guy could be gay or asexual or just not into that right now. I'm actually surprised he showed up again at all, I figured he was a throwaway.

saw the raw for ch 20 and whewwww

Link?

It's on the Pixiv manga app for free:
https://comic.pixiv.net/works/4616

This author really loves their cliffhangers...

Before Truck-kun appeared though, it kinda felt like Nika was starting to realize she had gotten over her feelings for Jun though, so I guess we're headed for Nika/Kurumi endgame.

me too, it felt like she was going to let go at that instant before the glove truck kun incident.

I have a bad feeling about this tho, either Nika gets hurt and she goes to the hospital and I don't know what happens there

or Jun gets hurt and then Nika will want to stay by his side since she will feel guilty and that will add a whole new layer of drama to her relationship with Kurumi

The possiblity that the truck hitting Jun would make Nika want to be with him, either out of guilt or mistaking her deep gratitude for risking his life for her as love, crossed my mind. However is there a reason you guys are giving the stupid truck a honorific. And why does it have to be male.

Seriously just Google truck-kun, it's a meme about how this one truck keeps killing people in anime/manga.

Also, if the author really either kills someone off or does the amnesia thing I will be really disappointed. This has been a good story so far and honestly I don't want it to fall into cliche. I mean, it's not high art the way some manga are, but it wasn't in the depths of soap opera like others either. I like soapy stuff too but still.

Is this manga like sold in plain brown wrappers, out of curtained back rooms, like weird fetish porn?

No, it's Japan. Yes, I actually saw this prominently displayed in a bookstore (on a stand on a display table) in Hiroshima. I actually cracked up a little. No, I didn't buy it. I did, however, buy two volumes of Parfait.

oh wow how Lucky I am ... for reading this XD
That reaction was super cute, they're both sooo cute!

A minor

Is she really?

Under 20, which is age of majority in Japan. Age of consent is not above 18, though (yes, national law is 13 but IIRC no prefecture is that low). They're in the clear but Tsubasa is still very young, 19 if I remember.

Honestly I'm not sure what it really amounts to, maybe you have to be 20 to vote. You can quit school after middle school (15), you can get an apartment and all the other stuff I think, so the only thing other than voting is buying alcohol and cigarettes.

Ughh... No matter where you go, work drama is there. The amount of sexist bullshit is super high but otherwise I think a lot of this is not much different from what you might get anywhere. Pressure from work friends to eat out, if you stop suddenly it gets awkward at best but can end up being isolating. I don't know how Satou deals, if she has another set of coworkers she eats with or if she's a lone wolf all the way. I feel like the main character needs to assert herself but it will inevitably end with a sort of distance between her and her current group.

Really she needs some distance, I don't know if those girls would get her anyway. Then again, we only see the pressure and there may be some misunderstanding there. I suppose it's not even that unlikely they would be trying to fix her up with a lady if they knew she was gay... You never know.

Well, she's definitely got a crush though, the little stuff from the last chapter is turning into almost teenage awkwardness... She should start bringing her lunch and eating with Satou, that's the obvious next step. I wonder how many volumes before the MC figures out she's hard gay?

(Oh btw, the expensive car? Chapter 18: check!)

Talking about cars, it seems the car is Lex*s LS 500

I looked it up, and I think you nailed it.
The pics online look just the thing. And the description says: full-size luxury sedan, hyped as the best of the best in Toyota's luxury division.
Then I looked up "price" and found that the Lex*s LS 500 starts at $75,450 and I spat my coffee on the monitor screen.
Shit, damn, being a manga editor gotta pay real well. Either that or that guy is so good that the company gives him CEO treatment.

Two points:
1. He's a manager of other editors, from his actions toward the other editor it's clear he's in charge and can make decisions.
2. Used cars in Japan are very cheap so if he's smart he might have bought that used.

That said, I think they're clearly saying he's loaded compared to the other characters. I have to wonder how much Shimizu is pulling down, she's clearly in a somewhat senior role in engineering. I would expect her to be making bank in the US, but she sometimes uses most of her paycheck on anime stuff so it can't be that huge. Then again, depending on what you spend....

Ok I apparently sucks at explaining myself.

It's okay this shit is like sometimes hard to put into words clearly, I'm not judging you. This forum can be a little annoyingly combative at times (worse for certain series) and half the time it's over dumb stuff. At least you're not ripping the series for not living up to some perfect ideal.

Also, I see this as less "coping about the body" than "coping about other people's expectations" and a way to show she can deal with it. Remember that Akira is not the tough type.

I meant it that way too. She was being rationalizing to herself why others ask her to do all that stuff and her explanation was "because I'm the strong girl" instead of damaging "because I'm/they see me as a guy".

She knows they see her as a guy, but is asserting her girlness to them while offering them a way to save face. She's not trying to save her own feelings, or avoid their attitude, she's finding a way to confront it without causing a fight or making the other girls feel on the spot individually.

Keep in mind Akira is not on hormones or anything, being a minor with parents that oppose their choice. She's already quite tall, so we're talking a teenager who has already gone through a lot of growth. It's not a surprise she has an advantage.

My friend who is transitioning now, in her mid thirties, has noted how just being on hormone therapy made doing hard physical labor a level harder. I don't know if that's true for everyone, but it doesn't seem a stretch that Akira would be where she is now.

Also, I see this as less "coping about the body" than "coping about other people's expectations" and a way to show she can deal with it. Remember that Akira is not the tough type.

That said, as a guy, and I am sure I am not alone, having all the physical tasks pushed on you is not cool. I can handle it but if you're supposed to do it and you can, you're just pushing your work onto me. I have plenty of hard things I have to do too. Well, in Japan, if you are new in a club you do whatever the sempai say for the most part. Akira is coping pretty well for what it's worth, I think. I do hope the other managers don't let her keep doing all the hard work though.

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/still_sick_ch18#15

Can someone remind me of these lines? I kinda really don't remember where she's said them. Tried skimming a handful of chapters just now but wow, guess I'm awful at it :s

It's paraphrases, but Chapter 3 is one place where Maekawa puts out a lot of those lines.