Oh wow, I'm very interested in this, I think. Lots of thoughts. Uh, let's see:

1) The conception of tengu as 'sky-eaters' who consume the heavens is fucking metal and entirely too cool for what seem to be largely a bunch of uptight warring houses squabbling over airspace and indoctrinating cool kids like Kureha into thinking that they need to belong and serve the nation to be valid and valued. I hope she eventually realizes that the power of flight is just objectively better if you're using it to mock the silliness of borders and traditions and transcend everything to kiss your birb GF at the first blush of dawn above the cloudscape. (Also very interested in the other Eaters)

2) Loooooove the art. It reminds me of a bit of those wildlife photos that focus in to grab a snapshot of a diving bird juuuust above the surface of a lake or in the process of hooking onto prey, wherein the surroundings are shifting out of focus due to the immense speed of the event, but the camera still captures the ruffling of feathers, the glint of talons, the sparkle of raptor's formidable eye, all that jazz. For some reason, I just adore art that's very obviously 'doujin-y' (?) in the sense that it's not really even trying to look fully composite and is openly like, "Aight, this is my blorbo rendered with beautiful precision in an idle moment and around are chicken scratchings and sketches to create a sense of space and signify that there exist people who are not my blorbo, but who I have rendered regardless to give my little guy abstract little creatures to interact with". You also sort of see this in Caelum (another new yuri series I'm mildly obsessed with) and I just find it really fun when a series is just sorta wavy and bouncy and scribble-y and foregrounds the "Uhh, um, lotsa ideas that make brain go whirr and I gotta just, um, splash them all onto a wall right, right now" aspect of creativity and art as opposed to the illusion of a very coherent, organized, 'complete' edifice with all the Unities and Phases and whatnot. It's a good energy, is what I'm saying.

3) Really interested in the author's note about visual novels and stuff? I've been very intermittently reading Akai Ito (the pacing is sorta glacial even for a VN, but Kei's internal monologue is hilarious enough to keep me coming back; she's such a funny little wood pigeon of a human being and I hope beautiful women fire her out over the horizon and take turns shooting at her in a very homoerotic way) and I definitely felt that same sorta, hard-to-define-but-you-definitely-know-it-if-you've-encountered-it type of 2000s occultish cryptid shoujo yuri vibe from this series, wherein you've got ambitions and worldbuilding and big concepts, but also this strange sense of fragility and obscurity that came from the overall nicheness of yuri in those (and also these) years that the creators were also aware of on some level, which just gives these stories a strangely frail, wispy, fever-dreamish vibe, as if they could vanish and pop in the telling and leave you wondering if all that actually just happened (there's probably a tangent you could build on there about queer media self-conceptualized as ephemera on the margins of the mainstream that constantly negotiates, alloys, undercuts and inscribes its own obscurity with and upon tropes taken from the mainstream zeitgeist and complicated, queered, in sense if not in system...). Anyway, it's interesting to see that the author's also taken inspiration from those works and I hope they do successfully get the VN out someday, because I'd be really interested in a Japanese fantasy multi-route yuri VN, which is a subtype that's distressingly rare in the already-niche genre of yuri VNs- like, I actually tend to prefer the linear, one-set-couple-narratively-centered approach that a lot of the current yuri VNs take in general because it allows for quality-over-quantity and yuri VNs already tend to be much shorter than regular ones on average, buuuuut I also just really want to see a yuri work being bold and ambitious and colossal and multibranched and trying a dozen different things at once across a messy-ass epic narrative of conspiracies and allegiances and paradigm shifts, because the genre deserves that kind of space and reach (and also because I, personally, deserve a work massive enough to lose myself in and hyperfixate on for ages that's not a fucking gacha game oozing repetitive, soulless content out for however many years it can milk for profits, which is why I like big VNs and also fantasy novel series- they're immense, complex and filled with the potential for interpretations and fanwork and speculation while also crucially being complete and driven by an installment-model that's centered mostly on artistic vision and not indefinitely-extensible-profit-generation-schemes).

Anyway, yeah. Me like this series. Hyped for more.

WataTabe spinoff where local moms line up to feed Shiori anything they can think of and happily commend the zest with which she eats.

Shiori polishes off an entire deer carcass "My! It's amazing how she doesn't waste anything! You should see how picky my kids are."

Shiori laps the tongues of fire from a 50 vehicle pileup "Oh, dear! She's always so ready to try on new flavors! I never have to worry about whether a dish is too experimental for her."

Shiori swallows a small island, the borders of her mortal raiment parting to reveal the abyssal tendons coiling and churning beneath "Wonderful! More sacrifices on table three, please! She's a growing girl and she needs her nourishment!"

The particular brand of interactions this manga provides that're essentially just "Oh, hey-" (tries doing something cute or playful or friendly and ends up being profoundly homoerotic) "Ah, sorry" (Tries to deescalate, but does so in an even more homoerotic way) "Okay, let's calm down" (flustered, does something that maxes out the homoerotic meter) "Argh!" (lapses into helpless silence that is now indisputably and painfully gay) never cease to entertain me, and approach levels of fruitiness in mundanity that I haven't ever seen outside of date events in Blue Reflection Tie. Hijiki deserves a medal.

This series, in addition to being wonderfully moving in general, is also one of the most efficient tragedies I've read? Like, it's made me so fundamentally emotional about the story that I don't even need to read the story to be reduced to a wreck at this point. I will simply see the words Ari or Seiran in isolation and need to lie down. By now, my tear glands have developed such a Pavlovian response to this series that they're going to wring themselves dry in the brief time window between my seeing a chapter title and the first page actually loading (although that amount of time can be anywhere between ten seconds to a century, given this site's reader). Looking forward to all the irreparable damage this series is going to hit my nervous system with in the chapters to come.

last edited at Jun 9, 2022 5:41PM

Really like this premise? The particular genre that's essentially just there exist forces and entities in this world beyond the mortal ken that are... extremely silly and want you to have a gay old time with the besties is one that I always like to see more of.

Tsuzuki: What if I was just a brilliantly programmed hallucination, a dream of what you dread and desire, a demon split from your subconscious who can act and speak and surprise you in all the same ways that you confuse and befuddle yourself, and am yet not Really Real, not in any way you could ascertain, not giving you an easy answer, but demanding that you- yes, you with all your complexes and preconceptions and fantasies and ambitions and paradoxes- had to figure it out yourself, not with certainty, not by a long shot, but on the strength of your belief alone. What then, huh?

Kashiwai: Babe, if you're a philosophical zombie, then call me a necrophiliac, 'cause I'mma be all over that body.

Tsuzuki: Yeah, ok, fair enough.

Ohsawa Yayoi: I see you casting Alienation Under Late-Stage Capitalism at my Level 35 Depressed Office Lady and counter by having my Level 39 Autistic Girlfriend heal her for 500 H.P with Talking About My Special Interests.

Really hyped for this series, because it definitely plays to what I'd consider my favorite aspect of Tokuwo Tsumu's excellent body of work- their ability to blur genre lines, to complicate and challenge the implicit divisions we deploy between gentle fluff and hard drama by uniting them within the same topos as the products of private spheres and naturalized norms, of the rafts we build for ourselves to navigate tumultuous worlds, which are sometimes solid and stable enough to make us feel we're on solid ground, only for the swell of a wave or the bugle of a larger ship to remind us that we've always been at sea. You see this floating, numbing darkness lapping intermittently around the edges of Shuuden, gurgling up menacingly in the last chapters of Ise and Shima, and sluicing down the gaps between timeframes and bodies across Tsuki to Koi, jerking the characters out of the genres they've taken as the norms of the world, their comfort zones shored up by shared umwelts. And yet so much of the warmth of Tsumu's stories comes from the ways in which their characters face this encroachment-that-was-always-there, this already-ending, and strive to push it back with moments and memories, seeking utopia in not some faraway paradise, but in the recollection of days where they were allowed to be quotidian, when nothing happened and everything was, those neat, calming rows of times both fixed and fillable like the ones we see laid across Sakura's diary, packed with the potential for both infinity and emptiness.

In this story too, the challenge comes in writing the unspeakable, of penning the repressed, of connecting the fragments of Haru's scattered self, because a missing link invalidates the entire chain, and she can ironically only move on, move forth, if the path winding down her life, lending it its shape and form in bliss and misery, is reconstructed to allow her passage again. To write, to read, to fill out a diary is to traverse a life, to chart and cross the ocean of her memories, letting her find and trace Sakura among the entries already present, and to perhaps reinterpret her as something more than a gap, an absence, a wound once she fills everything out. To avoid engaging with a tragedy is to avoid catharsis, because the purging of pain, misery and dread is found in the journey across a path we know well, in the tracing of a closed circle, in an acquaintance with what has already happened, but this time with out feet fixed and our hearts set, letting ourselves feel everything again, not so that we'd be empty at the end, but so we could fill with emotion anew- a new spring, a new opportunity, a new journal, a reclamation of the present. It is in the embrace of the quotidian that the traces to Haru reside, the key to purging the venom and filling herself with spring, with Sakura again, to constitute her love for her as something other than a lack, to fill the pages and make them more than paper. It's going to be difficult and heartbreaking and slow, but if she lets time move again, then spring- Sakura- shall also arrive, just as she arrives at the end of the chapter, representing perhaps Haru's subconscious desire to move on, to achieve some sort of final catharsis and completion. And then, at the end of her journey across herself, when she's brought herself to chart the geography of her soul and confirmed there's still places to go, can Haru finally resurrect Sakura in the truest sense- not as a void, not as a corpse, but as spring, as life, and the promise of a hundred springs more, finding a memory that convinces her to live on with love and hope, a past that connects her to her future and to herself.

(Also, I love how Early Haru looks like an Amano Shuninta character, what with the fangs and the scrunkly energy, because Tsumu and Shuninta are two of my favorite creators in the tangerine scene [obligatory sobbing for I Wouldn't Mind Being Loved to update])

Love how this chapter explores in detail one of the series' central themes and motifs- traces, specifically through the images of scars, rotting, bodies and remnants. A scar is an incredibly complex symbol, because it both fuels and undercuts the otherness that necessarily drives horror. On the one hand, a scar is inalienably tied to bodies, to life, to a corpus upon which it may be engraved, an ideal, unmarred form that it both suggests and smears, and yet scars also serve as inscriptions of death, of pain, of the vulnerability of the body, and of its biological, fleshy nature, refusing to let one cling to notions of a nonmaterial human essence. This churning, abject dichotomy instills in many people a sense of discomfort, leading them to stigmatize, essentialize, obscure or otherwise reduce the scarred subject to some manner of essence- the victim, the veteran, the monster, the survivor and so forth, symbolically replicating that very process of scarring, of a reduction and subtraction from the ideal form, which retroactively reinforces that very narrative, creating a vicious cycle that inscribes itself into the mind of the one who was scarred- that they've been left lesser for it, that they've become abject, dirty and soiled, that they'll never recover what was gone and, more importantly, never grow anything that might replace, surpass or otherwise improve their state. It is a mindset that Hinako has obviously imbibed, defining herself not only with reference to her scars, as a perennial leftover, a trace, a corpse-to-be, but as a scar in and of herself, because that is what her environment has reduced her to by constantly framing and viewing her as a victim, as someone who has suffered either That Which Must Not Be Spoken Of or That Which Must Always and Only Be Spoken of, either a silent sufferer walking by or an eternally medicalized diagnosis. Hinako in this sense may be read almost as a monster in and of herself, where monster suggests not necessarily a predatory entity, but an affect produced in the sociocultural imagination, a figure both alien and familiar, for it suggests in its plight what we shall one day face, or might have faced, a potential tragedy that must be cordoned off, explained away or profoundly personalized lest it become too universal- in short, an abjection, just like the pale hands reaching up from the beach, neither dead nor alive, but somehow all the more unsettling for it. Shiori calls them halfway between humans and monsters, but if humanity is an island and monsters are the ocean, then they may as well be halfway to infinity- a calculation that defies distance, logic, and tugs the seams of the coddled, untroubled mind apart, forcing us to see the telltale fingers and toes sticking out from underneath the stark white robe spread over our worldviews, suggesting that the world may well be a morgue. If we are to differentiate ourselves at all from these corpses, then they must be covered up or labelled, and that is what happens to Hinako- small wonder, then, that she already considers herself dead, and only awaits the second death, the inner death to accompany the outer, the death of sensation, of the child staring into the cracked mirror at the other to finally close her eyes and sink into a place beyond language, beyond the tyranny of signs that has designated her an anathema.

Miko, absent though she may be from this chapter, understands this extremely well, being a Scarred One herself- literally, in the tails she's torn off herself, becoming freakish both to humans and monsters, and in her more general narrative as a defeated monster who's now become a failed goddess, never quite fitting into any category. If Miko was judged solely on the basis of any of these archetypes, held beside an ideal type- the Apex Predator or the Mother Goddess- she would certainly be deemed a tragic failure, a leftover and a contradiction, because there shall always be a part of her that doesn't fit in, a reduction, a trace of that fleshy, material thisness, of who she is, of a complexity that cannot fit into a binary and is thus unsettling to most. And yet, in her own way, she feels the most human among the trio precisely because of this, solely due to her overflows, compromises, concessions and scars. Miko, in order to live with herself, to hold onto any sense of worth after her dual failures as beast and deity, had to have accepted the complexity of individuality, the inconsistency of uniqueness, the value of life in-and-of-itself, without being reduced to a narrative or a trope or a type. This is exactly why she can comfort Hinako, why she's the sole spot of light in Hinako's life- to Miko, Hinako's pain doesn't need to be discussed Right Now or shoved into some dark corner, but may be dealt with gently and spontaneously as and when it ebbs and flows. She doesn't essentialize Hinako, doesn't swell her into a Portrait of Our Times or reduce her into a Poor Traumatized Tragedy, but simply... lets her be, gives her space to breathe. Sadly, this isn't enough, because Hinako didn't recognize that her kindness came from a place of empathy until her self-worth was nearly too low to be salvaged, and indeed views Miko as too good for her, doing to Miko precisely what's been done to her, repeating the cycle of reductions by viewing her as this sunny angel who deserves to live for better things than managing some irrelevant accident survivor's trauma. The erasure of Hinako's complexity has in turn erased her ability to process complexity, and left her yearning indeed for simplicity on the other end of a life-death binary, a simplicity she sees in Shiori's open, unabashed monstrousness, viewing her as a perfect darkness in contrast to Miko's perfect light, and choosing the former, the Other Half of 'Halfway Between Human and Monster' that is in fact anything but equal, the dual lessness and excess of death.

But this chapter throws a wrench in that, because it hints that Shiori, too, is not free from that complexity, not capable of delivering Hinako oblivion, because just as Miko is not an absolute addition, Shiori is not an absolute subtraction- they're both neither parts and nor wholes, but variables, being at every given point more-than-themselves, just as Hinako is, regardless of how hard she tries to ignore that life is not a series of moments, but a tissue of potentialities. Shiori repeatedly undercuts the tension, stigma and abject otherness of Hinako's trauma in a way that's both similar yet different to Miko- while Miko gives Hinako distractions, new ways to perceive and define herself, and space, Shiori employs directness and humor to offset the terror of the hidden, as demonstrated by that delicious joke about how she'll yank Hinako's folks out of the waves and introduce herself. She's so incredibly blunt, unconcerned and different that Hinako's problems seem irrelevant before her, and so Hinako views her as an entity outside the moral cobwebs of signification, responsibility and meaning her environment has trapped her in, seeing her as an escape. But if Shiori wants, as she (increasingly unconvincingly) claims, to consume Hinako, she must necessarily give Hinako value, to want her As Herself- a want that Hinako is comfortable with insofar as it constitutes her as a product, as meat, because it's the same reduction she's faced all her life, only now with the promise of following itself through, of not reducing her with intent to reproduce the reduction, to keep pushing her away or crying for her pain, but to reduce Her, completely, to nothing, to silence. But if that floating future, that reference to a goal was revealed to be a lie, then Hinako would be desired solely for herself, valued because She Matters, not because of her scars, but despite them, beyond all questions of beauty or hideousness, beyond a binary of Life as Happiness and Death as Nothingness, but because she is, currently and indisputably, for all her pain, alive, full stop. And if Hinako realized this and enjoyed this, if she could bring herself to say, like Faust in Goethe, "I wish this moment would last forever", knowing full well it'd drag her to hell, then she would certainly instead be borne up to heaven, given human salvation because she recognizes herself as a human deserving, a human who loves life, which would make Shiori a willing Mephistopheles, a kind devil, a Monster Who Wants Me. But is there any place in heaven for a monster? What does it say about Hinako's society that the only reason she might ever want to keep living in it is because she was convinced to do so by its demons, its abjections, its Others? The attainment of true joy for Hinako would not be an ending, but a beginning, and yet we still don't know what that changing of phases, that transition shall demand, and if it shall leave a trace, a scar of its own, converting Hinako from not-quite-unfamiliar to not-quite-familiar, and leaving upon the earth the crust of a cocoon, the hidden, disembodied scar that even glorious chrysalis, marvel of nature, must necessarily generate. As always, I cannot wait to find out.

Sal Jiang doing great work as always. Love how Saho's handled here- her chubbiness isn't made the center of the narrative or her character, but isn't easily dismissed either- the remark about how people see her as a mascot is quite apt, since even the nominally-positive trope of the 'jolly chubby person who's friend-shaped and full of happiness' is a stereotype too. Being reduced to a cuddly, docile panda whose acceptability in society is contingent on her amiability can prove just as restrictive and hurtful as being insulted in more direct ways, and this anxiety about dismissal, this expectation of gratefulness wherein Saho feels that an acknowledgment of the additional space she physically occupies must necessarily be balanced by a reduction of the emotional, personal space she's allowed to claim subtly manifests in her dynamic with Kenji. Even though he seems to be an archetypical Nice Guy creep who's been hitting on her during working hours (extremely uncomfortable in and of itself, as most people working such a position can tell you) for two fucking years, she's still sorta hesitant to turn him down, and this unwillingness to fully express herself is particularly ironic given her dream of being a singer, but also especially cathartic when she finally commits to claiming her space, sounding out her voice, and pushing Kenji away, refusing to be the soft, docile girlfriend he thinks himself entitled to in his Kenji-centric model of the universe.

And yet, though this story acknowledges the abrasion, the chafing that results from Saho moving through a space that doesn't fully fit or accommodate her, it's also willing not to define Saho solely with reference to that discomfort, and lets her be attractive, desirable and ultimately independent. You could read the story as an allegorical exploration of the issues chubby people face even in societies that are not openly fatphobic, but still privilege a certain type of beauty, both physical and emotional, that forces women to occupy minimal space, or you could read it simply as a fluffy oneshot about a lady realizing her feelings (to say nothing to other readings, like one that interprets Saho through the lens of bisexuality, a sexuality that is also viewed as demanding too much and therefore negatively associated w/ excess and indecisiveness). Thus, it strikes a very neat balance between an Explicit Issue Story that yells, "YO, ASSHOLES, CHUBBY WOMEN ARE VALID AS FUCK!" (a perfectly reasonable approach, given how suffocating traditional beauty standards, especially Asian, can be) and vapid wish-fulfillment in that detached-from-reality pocket dimension that so many yuri stories place themselves in (again, also reasonable, because dealing with bullshit daily takes a toll and sometimes you want to escape, but the bullshit's still going to be there tomorrow and it's important to call it out). Overall, excellent effort.

Ahhhhh, this was so good? The art's fucking amazing (love the chonky teeth), the characters make such a good impression in a few dozen pages (they designated Monet a villainess because she had too much drip and was too gay for the class system to contain) and the author really gets how to write a good relationship dynamic, the essence of which is that all parties get to be equally cool and cute and pull their weight. The Yuri Villainess subgenre in general is one that's really grown on me, because while I'm not really a fan of the otome-game, generic medieval rich-bland-white-people European setting most of them have (and also because the first work in the subgenre I read was IFTV, which I found to be extremely mid), every consecutive Yuri Villainess story I've read has somehow managed to be better than the last. It's actually insane how they consistently keep exceeding my expectations even as they heighten, with this one easily making its way to the top so far. Hope to see more from the artist as well, because damn, they've got style.

That was... a ride? I started off thinking this setup reminded me of those 2000s yuri stories where some stormy, tormented kid agonizes silently over the girl she loves possibly slipping into the arms of someone so privileged over her in the hierarchy of norms that all competition feels helpless; she's led to swing between desperate attempts to surpass her (oblivious) competitor and then fatalistically enact the sisterly best friend, transformed by turn into pathetic parodies of the stereotypically assertive prince and the stereotypically passive maiden, because she can't enact her liminal, individual identity, her combination of intimate empathy and transgressive boldness until she comes to accept herself and proclaim her love in the end.

It's a good setup for depicting the intense, turbulent emotions so many queer kids often feel in adolescence, this terror of growing up from a world of childish, unlabeled intimacy into an adulthood of suffocating roles, and the pressure to be perfect and flawless in order to pass as normal even as the toll this performance takes on your composure threatens to make you explode into those very grotesque, predatory, monstrous stereotypes you want to avoid. Case in point, Yoh's ideal combination of empathy for Misa's feelings and the courage to stand up for her when she's bullied mutate as a result of her repressed emotions into an exploitation of those very virtues- Misa's trust for her as a fellow girl and friend afford Yoh closeness to Misa in her most vulnerable moments, and Yoh's intensity and determination are here put to horrific use in what she does to Misa while she's asleep, which to any outsider would seem like a classic example of that odious archetype of the Predatory Lesbian.

It's a tragic inversion, but if this story is trying not to be a textbook tragedy about how Yoh's circumstances lead her to ruin her relationships and turn into the exact kind of invasive, manipulative scum she hates (like the senpai who picked on Misa), but a romance that nets her a convincingly happy ending anyway... yeah, the author's got their work cut out for them. Like I said, this story is very 2000s, but that also applies to the rampant sexual assault, which in so many works of the time, yuri or otherwise, was not dealt with remotely the nuance and sensitivity such themes required. There are, theoretically speaking, ways this story could portray the nature of Yoh's desires as a horny, uncertain, impulsive teenager while still underlining that there are certain lines that must not be crossed lest she alienate those best-suited to understand her- the Icky Segment at the end of Ch 1 could be retroactively presented as a fantasy on Yoh's part that she's ashamed enough of to flee, for instance- but I'm not really confident that this story will pull it off and rise above the potential pitfalls of the premise. Heck, the blatancy of the molestation in this chapter and its bizarre, romanticized framing is already a red flag, and I wouldn't blame anyone for dropping this series for that alone. I'll cautiously give it another chapter out of morbid curiosity- perhaps this series shall swerve as deeply into Misa or Ren's perspective as it did into Yoh's and present us with a completely different view of reality as per their desires- but I'm not optimistic.

Ah yes, St. William, patron saint of adopted children, clearly alluding to how Mashiro's onee-sama (an adopted relation) is actually baby. This anthology's referencing game continues to be on point.

Mikage's really elevating this series for me? Like, it was pretty neat based on the premise alone, but Mikage's introduction largely serves as the key into the deeper aspects of the setting and world, offering us just a glimpse of an older, stranger side of Japan whispered of in folklore and passed down in hushed voices, a realm of midnight figures and liquid shadows, of tricksters dancing under moonlight and monsters swapping yarns round mountain fires. I also love how it does ultimately tie back into the central theme of alcohol, the spirits that go into spirits, the things you can only see when inebriation blurs the lines between dreams, imagination, reality and Something Else. Each sip of the tale brings you closer to strangeness, to the fluid, undefined and unrestrained, to a point where chains of all kinds melt off and the world coheres via incoherence, swirling into a freedom that accepts everything- Naori's desire to be loved and to spread happiness, Hinata's desire to fly free and transcend her limitations, and Mikage's will to fully become herself, not just the oni as a shadowy beast, but the oni as a people, in all their traditions of unrestrained exultation, honesty and courage, which the curse has impeded them from embracing. So yeah, I'm really interested in what the story's going to do with Mikage, because I think there's a lot of potential to explore the oni not just as a stereotypical group of monsters who just want to be like Everyone Else or an analogue for a big, oppressive noble family that Hinata has to escape to pursue her dreams, but as an entire culture, a vast and diverse group with their own history both parallel to and separate from that of Human Japan. I'm not really concerned with the shipping part, but I just hope the giant, proud oni lady gets at least a couple chapters wherein she stalks down starlit roads in places beyond civilization and communes with phantoms from ages forgotten. I'd also love if we got more characters like her, because there's a certain Touhou-ness to this premise with its mixing of the ancient and modern in smoky cocktails that I think would really bring out the story's full potential.

Fuyumashi Kaiko's just so good at what they do? Like, they've created some of my favorite short manga ever, because in the sorta uniquely hyperreal place that the Japanese highschool for girls has become in pop culture, embroiled in fantasies and significations and aesthetics and references to phantoms of people that never existed, Fuyumashi amps up the absurdity and the menace and the insularity of it all to stunning levels, and in doing so, creates these internal tableaus of anxiety and dread and jagged, repressed, creeping emotions that are, in their very idiosyncrasy, frighteningly authentic to the experience of drifting teenagers. In their uniquely cold, achingly silent, realistically uncanny ways, these understated micro-tragedies remind me of those mid-20th century English plays where a domestic environment was, through clipped conversations and somber moods, transformed into an unimaginably oppressive labyrinth of personal meanings. It just hits very different.

Tsuzuki: So anyway, the other day one of my boyfriends asked me what I thought about wedding planners, and I said, "Sure, I could wed a planner."

Kashiwai, taking her shirt off: You disgust me.

Obsessed with the positioning of Aquarius in every group image? She's perched on the roof on the cover, peeking with an impressively horizontal angling of the neck from behind the door at Virgo w/ the others, and standing ominously with her back to the viewer in the second group pic (while signaling the number of her sign and decked out in black like a boss). Truly straddles the boundary between hidden optional endgame boss and hilarious little local court jester. Extreme enby energy, she just like me FR.

Hinata: Listen, Naori, traditional depictions of ogres are horribly unfair. I'm not a bloodthirsty monster. I just want to lift this curse and live a happy life because that's what we both deserve.

Mikage: Listen, Naori, traditional depictions of ogres are horribly unfair. I'm not a bloodthirsty monster. I'm just going to gently strangle you because that's something we'll both enjoy.

(On account of this now being a story about a gloomy girl caught between two demons, one bubbly and one terrifying, I shall be mentally referring to this manga as A Monster Wants to Drink Me from hereon out).

Matsuri: All these people keep asking me if I'm gonna be the next Miss Sunflower, but I just wanna be the first Mrs. Sunflower!

Kaoru, holding back tears: I miss Sunflower so much.

This is just an OL Yuri version of that one Tumblr post in which a lady tells a close friend she's got a crush on her and the other one blinks and goes, "I thought we were already on our sixth date." In other words, absolute gold.

Aquarius and Sagittarius have my favorite dynamic so far? Waiting for the twist where it's revealed that they joined the dorm and took on false names because they're wanted in twenty seven jurisdictions for crimes ranging from armed robbery to egging major politicians at rallies.

Matsuri: Moe is mostly something you see associated with younger characters, but you just seem to get more moe with age, Miss Sunflower! I wonder if there's a term for that?

Miss Sunflower (sliding up her glasses): The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Teacher: Please state your reasons for applying to the aquarium committee.

Shiori: I find it immensely amusing to watch how people go to these silly little exhibits and gaze and coo and snap pictures of the poor captive creatures puttering about for their entertainment behind the glass, blissfully unaware that even as they securely ogle these pathetic prisoners from the sea, a being from unfathomable depths, as superior to them as they are to these dumb little fish, might be gazing upon them as well, and laughing at how they bob about in their puny land-cages, convinced of their longevity.

Teacher: What.

Shiori: I like it when the. the fishy puckers its lips. so cute.

Aaaand the classic Akiyama Churn™ manifests. I had a feeling it'd show up soon, because in Octave as well, nothing was ever simple, no issues so facile as to be dispelled by a simple change of space or attitude. There's always this creeping, encroaching tension between the eagerness of people to forgive, forget, adjust or compromise on the one hand, and on the other what AH seems to view as the fundamental capriciousness of human nature. The principal characters here, much like in Octave, seem obsessed with deferral, with emotional displacement, with a suspicion equal parts terrified and obsessive that there's a Something Out There that might make them happier than they are now, some secret key that they haven't yet found, eternally cooking up golden pasts, hopeful futures or alternative presents to distract them from the growing emptiness of the now, from this gnawing dissatisfaction that they can never shake for long. The momentum of the narrative is the hunger of characters for that Something, the force of that obsession, which shall inevitably be disappointed when it is attained, only to spur a new one, a new phantom from a body that never was that must be verified or exorcised.

Here and in Octave, Akiyama excellently captures the anxiety of ennui, the terror that at 20-something, you've might already peaked and there is nothing ahead but a cavalcade of greying days that blur into each other like the smoke from a million cars on the streets of a shitty town you'll never get to leave. Akiyama's drama is her skill in the construction of the threat of a looming anticlimax, in her insightful portrayal of the lengths that people will go to, both in order to feel and, vitally, to stop feeling. Both here and in Octave, there seem to be no saviors, no Manic Pixie Dream People to bear all your burdens- if you happen to be a queer person grappling with depression and profound alienation by every segment of society in the orifices of a soulless urban hellscape, asks Akiyama, why on earth would you expect someone similar to you, someone who perfectly understands how you feel, to be any less fucked up after suffering the same things?

In lieu of dreams, paradise or solutions, the only solace offered to her characters is to stop thinking, to pull for one seconds their minds free of this churning, yawning abyss of unease. They try to drown themselves in jobs, hobbies, relationships and, most prominently, in sex- the petit-mort in Octave is no amusing euphemism, because it's the only thing that blanks out the jagged, grayscale oppressiveness of Tokyo, letting Yukino and Setsuko melt into each other in seas of blankness, so close that they feel like the same person, returned, if only for a moment, to some manner of primordial Platonic unity, before the ugly edges of Personality arise from orgasmic hazes and plunge them back into the damnation of individuality- a similar sentiment to Tsuzuki's desperation to dispel the irritation that seems to haunt her even in the seeming freedom of her open arrangement. Wedding rings, antique books, blooming flowers, daily planners- frantically, people try to ward off the nothingness with symbols, with bookings, with values. But it presses inward, and all they can do is keep running into ever shifting sets of arms, in webs of bodies with nothing to stand on. Akiyama's worlds are so very raw, so very earnestly, unpretentiously bare... I love them.

Every chapter of this series further cements my hc that it's a Flowers AU where Shirahane Suoh just ended up in a regular(ish) school, but managed to land herself in a mysteriously alluring place with an esoteric private history featuring degrees of homoeroticism directly proportional to the density of ambient literature anyway.