IOW, our hopes are raised to the highest point then completely dashed.

In other other words, just like Ruriko! Ruriko had a brief moment of hope before being utterly crushed by her interpretation that Kurumi was just fooling around while drunk. Funny how the forum denizen's vehement reaction to disappointment almost perfectly mirrors her own kneejerk reaction.

Napes are so powerful, yuri should really utilise them more.

Yeahhh . . . how often does the governing party ever change in Japan again?

I like how the answer is "basically never" and yet this raises far less eyebrows than it should.

That shouldn't raise any eyebrows, really. For a number of reasons.

• It was 12 years ago, which is pretty fairly average for a parliamentary democracy. In comparison, Germany's CDU was in power from 2005 to 2021, and also had two other stretches of 16 and 20 years before that. The US would also have similar numbers despite not being parliamentary if it weren't for the wonkiness of an electoral system that gives land more power than people; one party has won every popular vote since 1994, excepting 2004 which came with a very large asterisk attached.
• Stability is a highly desirable trait. A nation reversing course every four years to do the exact opposite of what it was previously doing not only fails to lead to meaningful progress, but creates a massive amount of doubt and uncertainty. Situations where parliamentary democracies are changing governments every four years or less are not generally indicative of a good thing.
• The design of a parliamentary democracy heavily mitigates the power of the leading party anyways. It is extremely rare for one party to ever have majority representation, meaning it relies on a coalition with other parties to maintain power. Even if one party remains the leader, the actual coalition in power often shifts composition between elections, and either way the leading party must compromise with its coalition partners because without their support it ceases to have power.

The main problem regarding gay marriage in Japan is that the constitution is not ambiguous. It very explicitly defines marriage as between man and woman. Ironically, despite Americans now berating Japan's backwardness, it was the US that imposed that into Japan's post-war constitution. Anyways, public support for gay marriage is high but the bar for enacting constitutional change is higher than passing a normal law so the status quo will take a while to overcome.

M is living her best life, reading manga in a onesie, and I'm here for it.

This was what I'd have expected from a 2013 manga, but in the Reiwa era one expects to see actual relationships depicted in their romcoms.

laughs in literally every other popular teasing romcom like Takagi-san, Uzaki-chan and Nagatoro

Takagi-san is literally a 2013 manga, though. And it literally got an entire sequel dedicated to their life as a married couple, which has been running for 6 years. I don't think you could pick a worse counterpoint to my statement!

last edited at May 15, 2023 10:50PM

Put me in the mild disappointment camp. This was one of my favourite ongoing manga for the first 15ish chapters or so. After that, it had kind of worn out its welcome with me with absolutely zero progression for a hundred chapters. And now that there was finally progress, it ended. I didn't hate it, but I would've liked this a lot more if they started going out much earlier. Especially with the central theme being teasing and making her do embarrassing things, that would have still worked perfectly fine with them as a couple the entire time. I feel like this manga was released in the wrong era. This was what I'd have expected from a 2013 manga, but in the Reiwa era one expects to see actual relationships depicted in their romcoms.

I like how the author told us to think of this as a "friendship" story xD

Where the fuck do I get friends like this

Have you tried living in a gay manga?

Wouldn't be an Isekai without a love triangle where one girl is inevitably going to get hurt. Especially since most of these writers never have the balls to go with the polyamory ending

More writers have the balls to go poly than to have a clear-cut ending where one love interest is picked and the rest are cleanly kept away without wishy washy ambiguity.

Please tell me where this supposed trove of poly stories is, because I'd love to read that.

Though based on you saying wishy washy ambiguity, I think you're talking about something completely different.

They're talking about harem endings. And they're correct. If you count harem as poly, which we seem to be considering we're calling one girl having two girlfriends who have absolutely zero interest in one another "poly", harems are far more common in the isekai genre and adjacent genres than monogamous relationships. The "wishy-washy ambiguity" part comes from the fact that the protagonist doesn't usually officially end up with any of the countless characters in love with them, so that the reader self-inserting can fantasise about the protagonist ending up with their particular favourite love interest.

And that's why this is such a point of contention. I think poly-enjoyers might have the wrong idea that poly itself is hated, but in this thread harems and poly are being fully conflated. Harems are, narratively speaking, disgusting. They're Mary Sue bullshit, bad writing that objectifies women for the purpose of fulfilling people's gross self-insert fantasies. I get that there's a market for self-insert fiction, a massive one at that, but harem fantasies in particular reduce women to being property. Every girl in a harem story exists for the sole purpose of falling heads over heels for the self-insert, usually as soon as they meet and for no discernible reason other than "they were nice to me once". I loathe it. Absolutely, positively hate it. It is literally the single biggest problem with the ACG fiction bubble. But it fucking sells. It sells incredibly well, and for bigger series it sells figurines and merch as people chase their waifus. So it just continues proliferating and my hatred of it continues growing.

All of that to say, this is why I desperately hope this manga doesn't go down that path. I'm not opposed to reading about open relationships. But you will never see any of the non-MC characters in these stories having their own relationships. Not with each other, and not with third parties who aren't involved with the MC either. In my eyes, that is absolutely not poly. Because all of the characters exist only to serve the MC's desires, and have no desires of their own. There's nothing romantic about that, and it's certainly not a progressive depiction of relationships.

I feel like this is more than moderate

Inflation is out of control. A few years ago, 10 pages of lewds would get you a Lots of Sex, but these days even 20 pages isn't enough. Cute gay sex just isn't worth what it used to be in today's economy.

As a person that enjoys both works I feel like the creator, in my opinion, did a fine job setting the mood in both. The relationship between Chisato and Takina feels intimate to me, and the sex works well. Of course if people disagree with me that's fine as well, just for me at least there's a romantic and intimate mood in both that works well.

Oh, I 100% agree. I didn't chime in on the discussion about whether it did or not myself because I didn't think I had much to add to the conversation, but I personally found both of these to be quite lovely.

last edited at Mar 11, 2023 2:12PM

Guys it's just porn it ain't that deep

There are 15 pages leading up to the smut, I think it's perfectly fair for people to discuss the content of the first 2/3rds of the book. And, like, for men who have a tendency to just jam it in at the first opportunity those pages probably don't matter, sure, but for most women setting a proper mood first is as an important part of making something appealing as the actual sex, I think. Not that I don't enjoy plain porn, but a good doujin can be so much better than that.

last edited at Mar 11, 2023 12:01PM

The love bite was a great touch. It's cute seeing the always calm and composed Takina lose herself while making love enough to do something like that without even realising it.

More generally, I appreciate how this artist draws sensual doujin without drawing 50 close-ups of their bits.

you can't just draw this and then not give us the lyrics

before it was raised to 16 last year out of misguided moral outrage

I've seen a lot of garbage on this forum, but unironically advocating for 30-year-olds to be able to groom and sleep with 13-year-olds really takes the cake. What the fuck is wrong with you.

exactly at the time most young people actually start having sex

With each other. Not with adults. Jesus fucking christ.

^^While I very strongly recommend Raven... it's entirely straight, if anything at all. Maybe if you have some incredibly strong, prescription-only yuri goggles you can see something I don't, but I would really not go into it with that kind of expectation. There is a cute friendship but zero romantic tension or anything at all there, IMO.

Raven elaboration, details about the vibe of the show but no major spoilers:
I wouldn't even call it straight, really, at least as far as was adapted. The Emperor is fond of Jusetsu but she has agency and firmly rebuffs his advances without it just being a tsundere routine, which is refreshing to see in an anime. There are indications that she will probably grow to like him later in the story, but in what was adapted thus far it was less a romance of any kind and more a tale of two people isolated by their positions becoming genuine friends.

no need to take it seriously guys

I'll have you know yuri is very serious business.

As much as I love this comic, I find it deeply concerning how Hiyama's friends appear to have severe anterograde amnesia.

The full-length version of Ano Bando is actually so good. I keep coming back to it almost daily...

That's not a healthy relationship.

thatsthepoint

Have people never seen a yandere before? I'm surprised by how many people are taking this seriously.

this is just terrifying tbh

what would have happened if she hadn't remembered it on time?

Something other than the cakes would get divided into two or more slices

This artist has drawn a whole series of images of these two fapping together, for people who want more.

She sobered up.

Lies. As if such a thing were possible.

Yeah, but where's your avatar picture from?

Woing

I think the "but we're both girls" trope is a lot more realistic than pretending being gay is the default in the story. Like the person above me said a girl might be worried about losing her friend and she doesn't even bother to think if said friend is into girls without having asked. At some point I just can't even suspend my disbelief. And then all the side characters turn out to be gay too?
Sure, it's a bit tiring to have to go through that denial phase in every story but given the high school setting I think that's the normal thing to go through. I went through it and a lot of people living in more homophobic environments did as well...

For me, and I think a lot of people, we already had enough of the homophobia experience IRL. I really don't care if it's realistic, I have absolutely zero, zilch, nada interest in reading about it in fiction. I certainly don't feel like it breaks suspension of disbelief in any way; the key to suspension is internal consistency. As long as a story is internally consistent, there's nothing to disbelieve; stories don't have to take place in our homophobic timeline. In the same way there are fantasy worlds with magic -- including ones with contemporary settings -- there are 'fantasy' worlds where being gay is normal, and to me that's just lovely.

That's not to say that it's a bad thing to write stories that are true to our own timeline, as I'm sure a great many people also appreciate having stories to relate to their experiences of discrimination, but just as many people read fiction for escapism from the more unpleasant aspects of our reality and it's perfectly valid to write that kind of story.

Do they just keep mistakenly calling her Tada-san and she's too meek to correct them? She said her name was Tano.

I don't have access to the raws so I can't check but probably a translation oversight, kanji can be read multiple ways.