Kuso TL: https://m.imgur.com/a/irSHm4H

The month break is normal since Ch 39 is the last chapter of vol 7. They always take a break between volume releases though usually with a special release on the break. The special for this volume (Miyako & Riko's backstory) was already out in November so we're not getting anything this time around.

April 27th will be big because of the 4th anniversary. They're already starting to count down the days on the official Twitter. Maybe there'll be some big announcement.

Here's something cool I want to share while waiting on TL: At the end of the chapter, Touko's text told Yuu to meet her at the student council room. We're opening the last volume with a callback to the very first chapter for the anniversary, folks. Nakatani & Kusunoki must have planned it well.

And this is of course rank speculation, of course, but that particular staging you mention strikes me as the kind of thing that need not be fully intentional in every detail (that is, Nakatani saying to herself, “OK, I need to put them down in one of those culverts so those stepping-stone paths can symbolize the connection/separation of the two characters, so then I can have a second scene where Yuu has to try to stand on the same stone as Touko, etc., etc. etc.”), but just more like “this feels right—it works,” at least initially.

I beg to differ. That entire scene is dissectible panel by panel & same goes with its parallel in ch 34. There's a reason why it was given the amount of attention it did in the anime (which some already did frame by frame analyses on). I'd love to break it down but that'll take a while & I currently don't have the time yet.

last edited at Feb 6, 2019 10:19PM

About my remark saying S2 will sell less than S1, it's not because I think people won't like it as much to buy it, but mostly because it's just the common trend of sales for subsequent seasons. For series like YagaKimi, I think the drop can be anywhere between 100-1000.

I'm curious, how well did the Citrus anime sell compared to YagaKimi?

I looked through someanithing database for y'all. Citrus BD & DVDs sales: vol 1 = 1,377, vol 2 = 947, vol 3 = 1142, vol 4 = 1,143. In total it made ¥36.9M as listed in that link Skull gave. YagaKimi BD & DVD vol 1 sold 3,975 & that's ¥35.5M. With vol 2 selling 3,792 already, you can add roughly another ¥33M to that. But yeah, the difference is huge. A single YagaKimi vol sold as much as all 4 Citrus vols combined lol

last edited at Feb 5, 2019 7:39PM

I won't comment on whether the leaf actually represents love or not since that one isn't as obvious so the meaning is more speculative. However, I do want to point out that the use of autumn as the backdrop to emphasize the theme of change is most likely intentional on Nakatani's part. Even back in ch 34, this page specifically, the connection is established. What Touko said in the original Japanese is "I like autumn, wouldn't it be nice if we could remain in this kind of season forever?" It very much parallels her wish for their relationship to not change as she later expressed here. But we know how that went. Their relationship changes for good after Yuu's confession & now, here we are in ch 38, still contemplating about changes in autumn.

Is that considered a reasonable amount of sells? I just don’t wanna get my hopes up for a second season just to be crushed. Even if I believe that the project won’t start until the end of the manga.

It's a very solid number for today anime industry's standard. It's basically in the top 10% for its season & probably the whole year as well. Based on that number alone, S2 is highly likely. However, there are other factors to take into consideration. YagaKimi anime sold well but it's not exactly a huge hit or a merch magnet, & S2 is pretty much guaranteed to sell less than S1. In other words, it's not super profitable on its own. Because of that, manga sales boost is a big factor in determining a S2 in terms of profits (like a lot of adaptations nowadays). This brings us to the biggest hurdle against a S2 right now: the release schedule. Troyca and Makoto Kato (YagaKimi director) are gonna be busy with the new Fate project till the end of summer season, so they won't be available to work on YagaKimi till after that. So for a decent S2 to happen, the earliest it should come out is around Spring 2020 or even later. If the prediction of vol 8 being the last is correct, then by that time, the manga has long ended, which would mean there'll be less incentive to make a S2. There are definitely some anime projects/sequels that happen even after the manga has ended, recent example being Mob Psycho S2, but that tends to happen with bigger named titles with the rare cases of passion projects. YagaKimi is pretty mainstream for a yuri but it's still iffy to compare it to the battle shounen titles and all the classics that get that kind of treatment. So basically, you can only hope that the production committee loves it enough to fund a full adaptation at this point.

last edited at Feb 5, 2019 12:29PM

Can someone explain the "arbitrary faith" (kuso) and the "arrogance" (4s) in page 13?
I just don't get it.

勝手な信頼　だけどね ---> Well, it's just a selfish trust/faith.
Sayaka is acknowledging the selfishness/bizarreness of her trust/faith. As in her hoping that the person she loves can still remain the one she loves even through changes might just be a selfish wish on her part.

Reading something in its native language will always be the best experience but I think Yagakimi especially benefits from this. Because there are so many word choices that draw interesting parallels between chapters and characters.

Yeah, it makes TL a bit difficult when you really want to convey some of the nuances & intentions in the word choices that Nakatani made but also have to make it proper English somehow lol

I just compared them and agree (almost) entirely. In particular, I thought in the boat scene the key word being “trust” rather than “faith” was much better (“faith” isn’t wrong, but the religious connotation is a little much).

I'll clarify the choice of faith over trust. The original word in Japanese (信頼) can mean both. But in the context of what Sayaka was literally saying "that you would remain the you that I love. It's an expression of faith/trust, I think," what she meant was that she could only hope that Touko would still remain being the person she loves even if she was to change. What Sayaka was hoping for is a lot more arbitrary since in the context of what she was saying, Touko could change for better or for worse and that's kinda out of both of their controls. In that light, we thought that faith conveys that idea better than trust. But yeah, it just comes down to preference and phrasing.

last edited at Feb 2, 2019 9:16PM

I'll just drop this here from Reddit cuz it's a really great write-up on this chapter.

https://twitter.com/kusunoki_AMW/status/1091364155578146816
https://twitter.com/kusunoki_AMW/status/1091364156823859200

So Kusunoki tweeted about how the English title came to be. They wanted it to reflect the idea of growth specifically in relations to flowers, so at first they came up with "Blossom out into Yourself." Then Nakatani reached out to an American friend for help and that person suggested "Bloom into You." That's how we got our title. Thank you, American friend.

This pretty much confirms the "Eventually, (You) will Become You(rself)" interpretation of the Japanese title.

She's better developed than Touko thought at least.

& Touko will help her develop some more in the future.

I’ve also been saying for a long time that Yuu, adorable and grounded as she is, still seems a bit underdeveloped as a character compared to Touko (and now Sayaka, to a certain extent), and there’s a good bit of room to explore her past and future character development.

What do you mean underdeveloped? As in her developments have yet to come together? Cuz as the protagonist, her getting to that point would be the end of the series if anything.

There are no official words on when the manga ends. Nakatani never said anything like that. The only thing she said was that the manga is entering its final stretch & that it is 80% done by the end of vol 6 in this interview. IMO, it'll most likely end with vol 8. With vol 7 confirmed to be released in April (in one of the antho's pages), given the volume length and release pattern, YagaKimi will most likely end some time around August or September with the final vol release in October or November.

TL: https://imgur.com/a/DigCm2h
The chapter is also uploaded on Mangadex but I heard there's some internal server issue that's making it slow to load (The file size is pretty big too so I might have to reupload). This was such an amazing chapter & a bit of an interesting one to translate. 4s version should still be coming at some point, but this should suffice for now. Enjoy, folks!

YES. I've been waiting for this since it was announced. Thank you /a/ for picking this up. God bless tkmiz.

Raws out: https://imgur.com/a/SnBxsoo

This chap is A LOT. I needed tissues. So proud of both Touko & Sayaka.

Also, YagaKimi stage play confirmed for May

last edited at Jan 25, 2019 10:56AM

Only seeing Sayaka as a third wheel kinda misses the point of the story. Sayaka is the triagonist of the series. Her story and growth provides another layer of depth to this whole coming of age tale. Her confession isn't just a move to simply help push Touko & You along. It will certainly do that, but ch 36-37 are another page in her own arc that shows how much she's come along since the beginning. Her "redemption" happens back in ch 26 when she chose to stop being a coward about the status quo and lend Yuu a hand in helping Touko. I don't see why who she is now needs any redemption. Sayaka did nothing wrong here.

If anyone is interested to see how the beta character designs look like, here they are: https://m.imgur.com/a/8pJjrJq

For a long time since that infamous Tou-kun coerced Yuu review, she said that the only thing she liked about YagaKimi was Sayaka (& the adult couples), that's probably why she picked up the LN. I don't know if this new revelation will help improve her reading comprehension of the series going forward, seeing how long she's gone misreading the entire series. But I guess I should give her the benefit of the doubt too.

YagaKimi made it into top 10 for the 2018 Nico Nico's annual anime general election voted by internet users: https://twitter.com/islamctear/status/1084455934519328768

It also won the Phoenix award (https://twitter.com/nico_nico_news/status/1083350152549548032 & https://twitter.com/yagakimi/status/1084446935967096833) where it was voted back into the main race for top 10 after being eliminated in an earlier round (top 5 for each season).

There was a live stream for the announcement and actual trophies were being handed out as well: https://twitter.com/nico_nico_news/status/1084460076444733441 (You can see YagaKimi's producer holding the phoenix trophy on the right. He's wearing a YagaKimi shirt underneath the grey coat with YagaKimi badges pinning on it around the waist. True dedication lol)

last edited at Jan 13, 2019 12:39PM

Way I took that hallucination where little Sayaka picked up little Touko was that it was a moment of personal integration for Touko.

Just wants to point out that this scene is specifically a reference back to this

Touko's psychological development was partially arrested when her sister died. She has lived both as a "fake" Touko who has grown up and a little Touko that has just been sitting in the dark, mourning and wishing she had not lost her sister and blaming herself. Going through the play allowed Touko to leave her self-destructive feelings behind, but didn't fix the inner conflict completely.

When Sayaka bluntly refuses to entertain her non-sense about "don't confess, because I'm a bad person" and just goes through with it like a confident adult, she also takes that little kid in her arms and tells her that it's ok to be a complete Touko. She has her back and she won't back out or run away from her. While Touko and Sayaka experience a different thing here (both have their own perceptions about it), it's a powerful moment for the both of them regardless.

While I agree that this chapter does further resolve Touko's inner identity conflict, it has less to do with Touko learning to be her complete self (tho I'm not dismissing your reading of that specific scene since it's valid, just wants to elaborate on the significance of this chapter to the plot moving forwards). The thing is Yuu has already told Touko almost the exact same thing in ch 28. Touko has already reached the epiphany that she can be herself, both the weak and perfect sides, comfortably in front of others since the event of the play thanks to Yuu (refer back to ch 32). In other words, Touko has learned about self-love (or started to). What Sayaka brought to the table in this chapter is placing this same concept in the context of romantic love for someone else. Since what Touko is struggling with right now is the idea that love is conditional and that people can only love an image of another person--which will result in them falling out of love with that person if that image doesn't live up to expectations or if it changes (which is why she told Sayaka "I am not who you expect me to be"). And this is exactly her current conflict with Yuu. She thinks she can't answer Yuu's feelings because Yuu is no longer "the girl who can't fall in love with her." Obviously, this logic is whack and it conflicts with how she actually feels towards Yuu since she does love her still. Sayaka telling Touko that she loves "everything" about her will challenge this view and help her come to the point where she can also say the same about Yuu.

Tldr Sayaka just gave Touko an important romantic advice. Thanks Sayaka and also RIP.

last edited at Jan 1, 2019 11:46PM

I agree that Touko only figured out Sayaka's scheme as it was happening. It's clear it was willful blindness on her part by now since we know that Touko was suspicious of Yuu too back in ch 24 but brushed it off. I think the reason why Touko realized it much faster with Sayaka in this chapter is because she went through this with Yuu's confession already. In any case, Sayaka's confession should provide Touko with the last piece of the puzzle to come to the realization that you can love a person for all of them and not just 1 image or another. That should help her reconcile her feelings for Yuu and take the initiative to fix the relationship. It's a character development necessary for Touko--for her to be able to think, reflect, and act on her own will instead of having to rely on others (namely Yuu & Sayaka) on what to think and do. It'll be interesting to see how she'll confront both Sayaka and Yuu after this.
I actually think we might get back to Yuu's end of the story first next chap. We talked about how she might get confronted and comforted by her friends and family (specifically Rei) to help her sort out her emotions. But what do you guys think is the logical resolution on her end? Yuu needs outlet for her emotions so she don't have to run away and deny her feelings anymore, but this doesn't resolve the fact that she thinks Touko rejected her.

The page composition and paneling in this chapter is outright amazing so I'm just gonna leave the spread version here for those who want to appreciate how well composed this chapter is: https://imgur.com/a/Zt0lAvd

The TL is pretty accurate so don't worry about the quality too much.

Eh, with it being yuri and the current state of physical BD sales, 4-6k is pretty unrealistic. It did well, better than most yuri that came out within the last decade (& a lot of anime that come out nowadays), but not as well as we would have hoped, really. Though, that is only a 3-day figure (YagaKimi BD came out on a Friday). It can still hit 4k by the end of this week, though don't have too much hope.

last edited at Dec 26, 2018 1:45PM

Uh... I wasn't talking about the subtitles. You could hear both the baka and suki. Which kinda makes sense, due to the fact that the word was merely cut off in the manga, meaning you needed to at least know what is implied, but that's like almost impossible to do with thoughts and words coming out at the same time.

I've rewatched that scene a couple of times to confirm & even with headphones on, I don't hear "suki." Kusunoki confirms that it was concealed in the anime so idk what you mean there unless my hearing really sucks.

last edited at Dec 22, 2018 6:59AM