Yeah, it kind of feels like the author kind of gave up on Hifumi's character arcs lately. She felt like a more important character in the early chapters, part of the main cast. Now it feels like she's been demoted to a complete side character. :\

@juanelric Honestly, this anime is a bit more divisive than this comment section makes it seem. There are a few people out there that seem to truly dislike it for reasons I'm not 100% clear on. I'd say if you're interested in a mash up between a sci-fi action/adventure and western gunslinger flick then it's worth checking out. If you're looking for substantial yuri, then there's probably better places to look, but there are a few cute moments between the two main characters.

last edited at Jul 23, 2019 4:12AM

@Throbelisk So in other words, she looks the same as usual.

I disagree. The table tennis book is one of the first signs of change on Shimamura's side, something she would not have normally done, that signifies how much the time spent with Adachi means to her, and Adachi finding it is similar in significance for this story as is Touko noticing the planetarium in Yuu's room in Yagate Kimi ni Naru. Not showing it was a big mistake, and that panel barely showed anything of Shimamura's room either - nothing we hadn't already seen two pages earlier. Showing the book on her desk instead would have made this much more impactful.

While what you say is true for the most part, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on the importance of subtlety vs dramatization. Another reason why I like this version. Personally, I think it finds a nice balance between the two.

last edited at Jul 22, 2019 3:49AM

Huh, they didn't include the creepy dude.

Which wasn't too bad, but it also skipped the entire rest of the pool sequence.

This one IS finished, apparently. It got cancelled. And now a new adaptation is being made (with, in my opinion, worse art and weaker writing).

How can it possibly be worse than this one when the art in this one is very much barebones, often lacking any significant detail and backgrounds (which especially started to annoy me after chapter 6 saw fit to mention the table tennis book, but not actually show it), and it's skipping so much of the story. To be honest though, I actually just picked up the light novels myself yesterday, and I think they might have the best art of the three, although in limited supply of course.

I also prefer this one's artstyle. I think it shows off the character's personalities better, and looks 'cleaner' in general... imo of course. The detail and backgrounds between the two versions so far have been pretty comparable. I wouldn't say that the new version has improved on its predecessor in that regard, although a case could be made to say that the non-4koma format allows the new version more freedom in visual storytelling with its layout, although I have yet to notice any noteworthy examples of this in the new version.

I think your example of the table tennis book is a poor one. Visual storytelling should be used to provide the reader with extra information. Showing a table tennis book and then having Adachi comment that there was a table tennis book there would be redundant in this case. Of course, visual storytelling could be used to describe what kind of table tennis book it was, or what it looks like, but being a 4-koma and having a limited number of pages per chapter means that the artist and author need to decide what they show and what they don't in some cases. I think that the author and artist actually made an intelligent choice here, by telling us that there was a book there, while simultaneously showing us what Shimamura's room looks like, consequently maximizing the amount of information the manga provides us within a limited amount of space. This is similar to what I said previously about the writing of the two versions, which is that I think this version says more with less, which is one of the reasons I like this one so much.

Admittedly, I can't quite judge the writing of the new version yet (although being based on the same LN, writing is technically the same, it just depends on how well it is adapted into manga form) since it's still not added to MAL, though.

No, the writing is not the same. The plot is the same, or at least similar, but plot is only a small portion of everything that constitutes the writing. The writing so far has been quite different, and as I've been repeating, I find this version's writing to be far more efficient than the new one's, which is one of the best attributes writing can have, and something I seriously need to work on with my own writing...

last edited at Jul 21, 2019 10:53AM

@TheLostLight
K

You just had to do it...

Don't you just hate it when chapters end with plot points hanging up in the air like this ...

Nice...

Re-reading through ch. 1 & 2, I'm not fully convinced that that was Furuka's doing. Chapter 2 especially makes her seem like a normal girl. Although there are a few small things in chapter 1 that could be called foreshadowing for her being supernatural. I guess we'll have to wait and see at this point.

Also, Kon a cute.

I kind of only read this manga for Serina... Best sister by far, don't @ me.

Overly cutesy kouhai falls in love with clumsy male sempai: This is trash, misogynistic and the most pathetic wish fulfillment

Overly cutesy Kouhai falls in love with clumsly female sempai: This is the highest form of art and only deserves the utmost praise

The logic of everyone active on Dynasty Reader, in a nutshell.

I thought Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun was pretty universally liked though. In fact, the more I think about it, the more this reminds me of a reversed Nozaki-kun dynamic.

Anyways, I kind of like Aki and Yori. I wouldn't be too upset if Kino doesn't fall for Yori in the end.

@Serenata You kind of scared me until I got the joke, haha.

^^ Which explains why it was met with nothing but confusion and distaste.

I feel the need to remind everyone that relationships between cousins is really only considered incest in the United States. Across the vast majority of the world, marriage between first cousins is perfectly legal. There's very little scientific basis for outlawing it as well.

last edited at Jun 16, 2019 9:30PM

I'm not sure if this is considered appropriate to discuss here...

This is 100% on topic and not only that: also an extremely interesting contribution to the discussion. Thank you! d( ͡^ ͜ʖ ͡^)b

I mentioned before that I have read up to chapter 4 in Spanish. Well, the Spanish scanlators (team Rainy Devil) did a perfect job of translating that bit. When Yori's three friends demand that Yori speaks out loud her feelings for Himari and Yori starts stammering, it goes on like this:
Yori: "No... a mí... pues..." (In English: No... I... err...)
Aki: "¿A tí qué? ¿Te gus...?" (In English: You what? You li...?)
Mari: "¿Te gus...?" (In English: You li...?)
Kaori: "¿Te gus...?" (In English: You li...?)
Yori: "Me gus..." (In English: I li...)

Then, when Yori actually says it, "Me gusta..." (I like her...) is alone in the first, large bubble, and it is followed by "Creo..." (I think...) in the second, smaller bubble.

Which is exactly what you said was the correct, literal way of translating Yori's words.

Oh, well thanks for the affirmation :) I agree; I don't speak Spanish, but that looks and sounds like a very accurate translation.

last edited at Jun 12, 2019 9:25PM

Back to the series itself, this is about the most contrived, can-only-exist-in-manga setup I've ever seen. I mean the audacity of running with the concept is a bit appealing, but wow.

The art's great though.

I don't really think it's "contrived". The aspect of "she's a lone wolf that only subbed for the real lead" is a bit contrived - for a high school band I would expect they would have to play together more to be be good...

To be fair, we never really hear anyone say they were good. Himari says she, "[Doesn't] know whether it was good or bad" (which in my experience, it's pretty common for people with no musical knowledge to have a hard time judging the quality of a live performance, due to how much is going on in one at once, so that feels pretty realistic); Miki just seems to be excited about her sister rather than the performance itself; Aki says that it was their best one yet, which could imply a few things; and Yori just says that it was pretty bad.

So overall, their performance seemed to be mediocre at best, and as someone who has experience playing in bands that I've been a part of, and filling in for other people's missing band members, if Yori's just playing rhythm and vocals, it shouldn't be too hard to fill in, especially if it's kept simple and on ranges that Yori's comfortable with.

What I would expect people to find contrived is the whole "sudden fan thing", and the overall interactions between Yori and Himari, but again, as someone who has personally been on the end of ambiguous words of praise after a performance, it felt fairly natural to me, so I'd agree with you here.

I'm not sure if this is considered appropriate to discuss here, so if it isn't just feel free to remove my comment, but I found the typesetting/translation of pages 21 and 22 to be a little awkward.

First, it's strange that her friends lead with "Thi?" Yori isn't the first one to say this; Aki is. "Thi?" or even "think" seems to come out of nowhere here.

As you can see in the raw Japanese:

What her friends are actually saying is "su?" They aren't exactly trying to prompt Yori to finish a sentence she had partially began, at least not in the sense that they had some clue to what she was going to say next, but rather they are coercing her to say "suki" or in English, "I like her", the articulation of which is suggested by Aki herself. To me, this makes much more sense, because her friends are trying to insinuate that she likes the girl, not that she thinks that she likes the girl, which would be a somewhat strange thing to insinuate in the first place.

Then, when Yori actually says it, "suki" is alone in the first, large bubble, and it is followed by "kamo" in the second, smaller bubble. This puts emphasis on the "I like her" part of her sentence, and adds the "maybe" or "I think" part as a trailing afterthought. It's subtle, but I feel like it slightly affects the impact of the scene. If I were to translate it myself, I would have done something like have Aki say, "I? Li...?" followed by the other two girls saying "Li-?" and finally have the first bubble from Yori say, "Like her..." followed by the smaller bubble with smaller text say, "maybe..."

Again, I'm not sure if this is considered appropriate or on topic discussion, so if it isn't I apologize. The only reason I brought it up is because I recently took an interest to how the typesetting and formatting of manga/comic layouts affects the dramatization or comedy of scenes, and found this to be an interesting example of those subtleties that may go unnoticed, so I thought I would leave some constructive feedback. Either way, I'm grateful to the scanlators for the work they do, but find this kind of topic interesting, so I just wanted to throw in my two cents.

last edited at Jun 12, 2019 7:24PM

^^ Yep that's the joke. It's confusing at first when you're expecting it to be a 'time skip' kind of thing, but once you realize that it's a complete AU it makes more sense.

last edited at Jun 11, 2019 1:24AM

This last name first name stuff is always reeeally annoying

It seems to be far more common in Japan than western nations to refer to people by their last name. Here it's typically reserved for teachers or coworkers above you in the foodchain or, if you work in customer service, for customers you need to refer to by name. In Japan though it seems to be quite common to refer to anyone you're not particularly close with by last name.

Yeah, I get it but it is so damn overplayed at this point that it just comes off as being real cheap. I figured this author would use a bit better way of convening drama than something so token as that.

True, Kurokawa has always had a deeply ingrained inferior complex, as seen in the first few chapters. I’m glad the author brought it up since that type of thing is not so easily resolved.

Also it’s not drama over JUST the surname, it’s the authors way of showing kurokawas problem.

Exactly, Fujishiro got a little pouty for like, four pages, and then they instantly made up after a few words. That's hardly heavy handed drama. The real point of the whole name calling squabble was to reveal Kurokawa's emotional perception of her relationships with her classmates.

I can't help but roll my eyes at the pointless melodrama in this series.

You know, I was thinking this after reading the credit pages too, but I would hardly call highschool girls getting a bit jealous over their friends and then quickly making up after shedding a few tears melodrama. As for Kurokawa's monologue, the story has centered around her inferiority complex right from chapter one, and has only influenced her character and motives in subtle ways, which would be more apt to be considered regular drama rather than melodrama in my opinion.

Useless lesbian princesses, indeed.

As someone with extensive experience of high-school low-self-esteem, I will say that this is some world-class high-school low-self-esteem.

“Person would never want to be with me” when person is with you right that very second.

Well-played (or poorly played—not sure which is praise in this context.)

I don't think that's what Kurokawa was saying. She wants to be with Fujishiro, and I think she honestly believes Fujishiro wants to be with her too. It's just that Kurokawa doesn't want to stand in the same spotlight as Fujishiro. She wants to "support her from the shadows", more like a sort of 'groupie' than a 'give and take' role. I think that's what she was getting at in the first few pages too, where she says, "I didn't understand what Fujishiro was thinking when she hugged me... Whatever it was, it's not the feeling that I'm having right now" and "Fujishiro crying is something I can't allow." Kurokawa idolizes Fujishiro and wants to push her up, rather than stand side-by-side, due to her inferiority complex. I don't think it has anything to do with how Kurokawa thinks Fujishiro sees her as, but rather it's about how she sees herself.

Unless you were talking about 'being together' in a romantic sense. In that case, I don't think either of them have consciously even considered it a possibility yet.

I mean... something of a distance briefly made for something as minor as how you call each other? I'm a teenager, and even I'm baffled at how weird teen logic can be

Well, if you're not Japanese, then that would explain it. There's a very big emphasis on what you call each other and how you speak in front of others in Japanese culture, hence things like honorifics, teineigo, and etc. Letting Izumi call her by her first name and not Fujishiro is like saying, "I consider Izumi a closer friend than you, even though I've only spoken with her once or twice." Fujishiro honestly had every right to be pissed at Kurokawa.

Ep. 12 was interesting and obviously really well made, but to me it felt kind of... out of place? I don't know; it felt weird. I would've preferred something more intimate and true to the characters to finish off the anime/season.

^ LOL

I have to chime in; so far I vastly prefer the original in both art and writing. Going back and re-reading the first chapter of each side by side, it feels like the original gives way more information with less words. In the original, each piece of dialogue serves to demonstrate the subtleties of Adachi and Shimamura's personalities, their relationship, and their setting/motives all at once, whereas in this version it seems as though it's only used to move the plot along or provide somewhat heavy handed exposition and only shows their relationship and character motives at a surface level.

In my opinion, the slower pace and "less pronounced yuri" of the original that some have pointed out allowed me to become more invested in the characters and their interests, and helped make their relationship and attraction feel more genuine, rather than feeling like it's merely the product of being in a yuri story.

That being said, since it is the first chapter of a remake it could be that the beginning is partially written under the assumption that readers are familiar with the original and that the pace and dialogue will acclimate once the story has caught up to its predecessor. I'll just have to wait and see I suppose.

Hey I don't remember Adachi being soooooo awkward right from the start as some comments are claiming, you sure you're not mixing past and future event from the old one to judge only the beginning of the new one?

If you're still wondering about it, you could try reading the first chapter of the original. Adachi is pretty bumbling in it in my opinion and it doesn't take much for Shimamura to throw her for a loop.

@PureShipper Well, I think this is the root of the problem, which is that 残念 just doesn't have a real 1:1 translation. It's main use case is in a phrase which has a similar use case to the common English phrase, "How unfortunate," or "Unfortunately,..." which is why 'unfortunate' is a common translation for it, but as you say, the literal meaning is closer to something like 'regrettable' rather than unfortunate (from my experience at least).