Forum › Posts by Simca

joined Jan 3, 2020

Edit: hold on, this is chapter 30. Does that mean we're getting a whole volume 7 now? Five more chapters would be nice.

Based on what the author has said, it sounds like we have 2 more chapters, and that Volume 6 is just bigger than normal.

joined Jan 3, 2020

Both explanations they give are actually technically true (well, the fat burning thing isn't exactly true because very little fat burn is localized, but when working out women usually lose fat on the bust and hips first, so it ends up being true anyway), but the effects are miniscule unless you are doing something fairly atypical (in the fat burning case, that would be doing actual exercise and in the hormone case, that would be taking large amounts of artificial hormones).

joined Jan 3, 2020

It's weird that Ada doesn't consider a third option: align herself with Kaye (and potentially the professor).

She could set up a situation so that there's no need for Kaye to take revenge on her while simultaneously trying to see if she can stop it in the first place.

Worst case scenario, Kaye takes revenge on others and is defeated later and Ada has to play innocent. I think she could pull that off.

It really is the best plan.

Simca
joined Jan 3, 2020

I don't understand why it was called "bullying herself" or "self-abuse". It sounds so strange. Is this a weird Chinese expression that doesn't translate well, or just a weird choice on the author's part?

I think it's a Chinese thing. Whenever it is a topic that would cause embarrassment (sex, masturbation, sexuality), they often dance around the words and never actually use them.

A Chinese webnovel I like (She Is The Protagonist - quite good btw) does the same thing. It uses phrases like "pleasures for adults" (sex), "breaching the gap to adulthood" (having sex for the first time), and similar phrases.

In manhua I've read, being queer is often rarely referred to as well. The common phrasing is "that way", like "I didn't know you were that way." or "She's that way."

Maybe a native or somebody more familiar with the culture can enlighten us as to why this is. My guess is that it has to do with politeness.

joined Jan 3, 2020

Genuinely shocked we're seeing a sequel to The Girls Arcadia. It's been a long time since then.

In case anyone else forgot the original and goes to re-read it, read from "Erosion" up through "Afterwards". This sequel follows the events of "Afterwards".

Art style has changed quite a bit, but I guess that's no surprise since it has been 4 years.

last edited at Oct 16, 2023 11:58PM

joined Jan 3, 2020

Feels like a super abbreviated version of another manga I read once. Basically, the femme is jealous (and maybe a little resentful) of the butch's semi-successful manga and upset at her own lack of success.

Maybe even a little implication that she's growing up now and that she always expected this to have to happen.

joined Jan 3, 2020

I am glad that for once, a person being not okay with things and not being good at them is not treated like a character flaw to be overcome, but simply a part of who they are.

I liked that too. I don't like my appearance, and I never will. No amount of "you just have the wrong mindset" character arcs in fiction (or reality) will ever convince me otherwise. Heck, stories with those arcs actually feel really fake for me because of that. They remind me of childrens' stories in that way. Real life rarely works out like that.

joined Jan 3, 2020

Why even make excuses, she was just talking to her moments ago as well... :D

Yeah... I'm not sure what's up with that. Maybe some meaning was lost in translation or something?

It sounds like the orb is just supposed to show whoever is on your mind, and she was just talking to Kaye, so obviously Kaye would be on her mind. That shouldn't imply anything unusual at all, but she acts absolutely panicked about it.

joined Jan 3, 2020

Ends with a wedding ceremony I guess? That's always a good ending. For those, I totally respect people who want to wear suits, but I am a complete sucker for the double wedding dress setup. It really tugs at my heartstrings for whatever reason.

joined Jan 3, 2020

I've re-read this a lot over the years since its release, and I really appreciate how many minor details there are.

For example, Pure is really, really clumsy in the opening chapters, tripping over her own feet and falling several times. She's even taller in the future, so this clumsiness is implied to be because she isn't used to her 17-year-old body.

joined Jan 3, 2020

not liking lemon cheesecake

How can they be so cute yet so terribly wrong?

For me, it has to do with the pairing of texture and taste. If I liked lemons and I liked cheesecake, I would almost certainly not like lemon cheesecake.

That's how it works for most things for me. Combinations of multiple flavors that I typically associate with other textures are somehow 'wrong' to me and almost never enjoyable. It's part of why almost everything I do enjoy is 'plain' or 'original'.

It's an autism thing in my case - pretty sure it has to do with my body's extreme oversensitivity to touch.

joined Jan 3, 2020

My reaction reading this chapter:
"Oh? Aromantic maybe?"
flips 2 pages
"Oh nevermind; I see we have chosen the path of destruction."

joined Jan 3, 2020

I don't like the way A Qing's lover keeps throwing sex at her, whenever she get's close to figuring something out.

That said, the car scene, with the flower, was FREAKING AMAZING!

Yeah that was a really cool way to do a NSFW scene. Also unusually explicit for a manhua that isn't actually adult. Usually they're either depicting actual sex (extremely explicit) or barely even depicting kissing (sometimes even censoring it). There's pretty rarely an in-between like this.

I actually get the feeling that her adoptive father and lover are trying to protect her (based on the phone call where her lover says she doesn't want to hide things). However, if they're doing what they seem to be doing, they're obstructing an investigation into what appears to be a serial killing purely for the emotional well-being of one person. Well intentioned or not, that's pretty fucked up.

My early gut feeling for "what would be the most awesome plot twist?" is "what if A Qing was the serial killer and didn't know it?". Unfortunately, that doesn't fit since her memory blackout period seems to be only as a child, unless there's some sort of plot device that is forcing small children to kill their own adoptive parents or something.

I do really like how the MC acts in Chapter 5 where she goes through things from the angle of "let's eliminate these possibilities", since it's a common flaw of detectives in fiction to not think about the unusual crimes where say, a child murdered and transported the body of an adult twice their size (and somehow cut the corpse into precise slabs of meat, through bone, with tools that would have had to be industrial grade or way beyond the size she could have ever handled). Okay... maybe I just talked myself out of that possibility making any sense.

last edited at Oct 2, 2023 11:05PM

joined Jan 3, 2020

I've been reading too much manhua recently because the first thing that popped into my mind for "what's gonna happen next?" is Fuuko picking up a knife and going for them.

Especially with all the blackened text boxes and sheer despair in that scene.

last edited at Oct 2, 2023 9:35PM

joined Jan 3, 2020

If this turns out to be an actor thing... that feels like SUCH a common trope in manhua. Famous actors being all about that Gay.

Manhua : actors :: manga : schoolgirls :: manhwa : office ladies

Obviously, all three do all three, but that's my anecdotal experience as to what the go-to setting is.

I'd honestly say Manhua : actors, murderers.

The number of really weird Chinese comics about Yuri killers is staggering.

Just off the top of my head:
Savior
Kill Me Now
Killing Mr. Park
Let's Kill My Husband
Killing You

If you add in webnovels, it skyrockets way beyond that list too.

joined Jan 3, 2020

I wonder if the author is going to do the "she's already dead" thing, where Shizuku pours her heart into the novel and finishes it and then rushes back to the hospital to find that Kaori died earlier that day.

Just one more chapter in this volume. I guess this will be it. Shizuku's novel gets an ending, maybe there'll be a confession, and then Kaori's death.

Like all good stories, I definitely don't want this story to end, but it probably has to. Not sure if my heart could take five more chapters after the next.

Is this really the last volume? Don't they usually say ahead of time if the next chapter is the last chapter of the series?

This is the last volume. The author announced that Volume 6 would be the last one ahead of time.

The logical conclusion is that we have 1 more chapter left and maybe an epilogue if we're lucky.

last edited at Oct 1, 2023 10:20AM

Simca
joined Jan 3, 2020

rereading the first chapter to remind myself of what happened, that felt like... an abrupt change in direction?

Chapter 2 was also 11 pages shorter. I wonder if the page length was truly just "the amount of space that was free in this month's issue".

last edited at Sep 24, 2023 8:52PM

joined Jan 3, 2020

I've just been reading the titles for this ever since a couple chapters after the "I'm not a guy" reveal at the concert. I was hopeful that reveal (which was what... 35 chapters ago?) would take things in a romantic direction. And then it didn't, despite how much blushing the characters did in those chapters which was entirely some new form of friendship blushing or something.

And then I saw this chapter's title, and was like "did they fuck yet?" and was mildly shocked to learn that they haven't even realized they're in love yet. My god.

I guess at 4 pages a chapter, 59 chapters is like... 8 chapters of some other manga, so I should just continue to temper my expectations until we get into the hundreds I guess?

Simca
joined Jan 3, 2020

So... Kyou speedran the confession (a few sentences after the first time they ever talked), then speedran the jealousy, and tried to use those feelings to speedrun the sex, which failed (and amazingly she didn't force Mion), so they speedran the breakup.

That was certainly... one of the stories of all time.

Simca
joined Jan 3, 2020

Excuse me for this naive question, but... these girls are Kyou and Mion, right?
Who the eff is Daisy??

Isn't it just a metaphor? They're hardy flowers that last if cared for, but they still generally die by the end of summer.

Yeah I also think it is just flower symbolism. Extremely common for flower names to end up in Yuri titles.

joined Jan 3, 2020

Wait up! They're simply roommates, right? Yuiko's in love with Mei, while the latter is tooooo dense to notice it. That was why Mei thought Yuiko might simply be doing some kind of training for when she gets married to some one else (not her) in the future. Anyway, that's some really nice art.

Yeah Mei is obviously oblivious to Yuiko's interest.

That's why Yuiko hints at the end that she wants a special wedding dress.

I can't see this ending well for them, tbh, even if Yuiko confessed to her.

joined Jan 3, 2020

Somewhat tolerable even though it isn't really Yuri. Wild - I never thought I would say those words.

joined Jan 3, 2020

The Tags are kinda confusing is it a more of a yuri or het love triangle? or equal possibility? I'll find out on my own

I would say it's more het since she makes out with the dude in almost every chapter. lol

Overall, what I feel about this manga is that it's interesting as a regular manga but somewhat disappointing as a yuri manga. I think when it comes to storytelling, the "journey" is as important as the "destination". If 80-90% of the "journey" is het stuff, I'd feel I wasted my time reading it regardless of how it ends.

Yeah it's really hard to say from the perspective of an English reader. Like others have mentioned, despite having several translated chapters, they are short, so if you compare this to a longer manga, it's like we're only on chapter 3 right now.

Maybe the het stuff drops off after a bit and then there's a slow build yuri romance for most of it. We'd need a JP reader to read ahead and provide some very light spoilers (in spoiler text), such as "yes, there's a good amount of yuri in most of the story".

joined Jan 3, 2020

The pacing is weird, yeah. My only guess is that maybe the author intends this to be a slow self-awakening/love story. Though, it's a bit too fast for even that.

Lilian deserves to be with a girl too

Honestly I wouldn't be shocked if it ends up that way.

The most "typical" way for the manga to play out from this point is to have slowly fall in love and then have the climax of the plot center around the public discovering Ciel's true gender. Then the adversity of the situation forces the two to take a stand for their ability to be together (and either they run off together or convince Ciel's parents and the public to accept them).

It looked like Lillian in this chapter was doing some heteronormative self-denial, so the perfect ending/epilogue would have her break up with Mark and follow their example.

last edited at Sep 10, 2023 11:00PM