Yo dawg I heard you like mothercons so I put a mothercon on your mothercon so you can incest while you incest.

"no one shipped them with the original game "

Hahahaha...

HaHAHAHhahahah...

HAHAHahaHAHAHHEEHHAHHAHAHHOoHOHOHOHOHAHAHAHAHAHAHOHEHAHaEheha

I'm actually really curious what if anything was there in the original japanese.

It was actually a sfx that did not have a translation (we couldn't find it on sites and O-chan, who is much more exptert than I am had lots of difficulties as well.
So we were trying to figure out how to get the feeling, and we just said "that's the sound effect for wholesome lesbians" as a joke. Then since we couldn't find an answer, we went for that.

The solution is fantastic, I am also curious what the original sound effect was, though.

Heterosexual love triangles are exactly what this manga needed.

It's not just a triangle. Akira and perhaps even Yukka will be dragged in as well if this keeps up. Hime became a harem protagonist. :p

Man, I would -love- a harem manga where the MC attracts folk of both genders and the author treats all of them like they're viable contenders.

The one and only. I hope one day soon Shimamura will finally show that she feels the same way about me...but I still can't stop myself from wondering: just who was that other girl she was with...? Hmm...still, I won't give up on her no matter what! I'll be the one to stay by her side forever - no more running away!! Look out, Shimamura - here I come!!!
...
....Um...yeah...please ignore all of that...

Nah, don't buy it, Adachi would never waste her time going on a forum that doesn't have Shimamura on it.

Oh, and seriously:

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/run_away_with_me_girl_ch13#24

Has this kid's teacher never seen a freaking sunrise?

Sadly, elementary-equivalent grade school art teachers aren't there to foster actual artistic ideas, just the basics and get the job done. I still have memories from 4th grade where the assignment was "draw a town" and I wanted dinosaur shaped houses, even made it work with cutaway presentations, and the teacher was not amused.

Yeah, but my point is, it's not like the kid drew a dog with deer antlers or a person with three arms.

Pink skies are a thing that happens. All the time. It isn't a weird artistic choice, it's literally just the kid depicting a different time of day.

Oh, and seriously:

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/run_away_with_me_girl_ch13#24

Has this kid's teacher never seen a freaking sunrise?

Okay

Personally disagree with inserting stuff like that into the panels. I'd rather have the author's original work maintained to the greatest extent possible.

I'm actually really curious what if anything was there in the original japanese.

Imho that guy found Midori either through ATM records or with Doumyou's help. The latter is more likely. Remember how, last time they were together, he asked her to do something for him? I suspect he made her call Midori to get the info. Doumyou probably played the "worried friend" card and tricked Midori into revealing her whereabouts.

Oh, BTW, this is a really good point. I forgot to address it before, but it does suggest that Doumyou had some sort of role in whatever he was planning next. I think this and the ATM suggestion are both plausible explanations for his appearance as well.

I don't mean she called him to ask him to take her back. I mean she was assuming that Midori was going to go back on her own, but she also knows now that Tazune can get violent when he's upset, and she knows Maki has been ignoring his calls and texts. My thinking was that she might have called him to try and give him some kind of story that would abate his temper, Like "Hey, Midori asked me to call because her cell doesn't get reception here in (current location) but she isn't ignoring you so don't be mad at her she's coming home soon." Like her goal was just to make sure he didn't have a violent outburst at her whens he inevitably returned. In this hypothetical situation, she wouldn't have expected him to come find them based on her story, she just would have been trying to keep him from getting mad at Midori.

She wasn't considering the possibility that Midori was really seriously considering leaving Tazune for her, which is why when Midori actually proposes exactly that, she's stupified.

See, I just don't think that makes any sense. Hell Maki's smart, she sniffed Tazune was bad shit the second she met him basically. She knows Tazune got violent with Midori, I imagine she's smart enough to know trying to abate his anger or w/e wouldn't work either, especially considering (And I wouldn't be surprised if Maki and Midori talked details off page) Tazune smacked her for literally nothing. Like feeling a little out of it because you kind of expect to wake up from a nice time doesn't mean you're gonna call your girlfriend's abuser to try and hopefully chill him out or w/e.

I don't get why you think that. First of all, whether it's likely to work or not, people who are abused often do work to avoid arousing the anger of their abuser, and people who are supporting the abused will help them make excuses. Tazune isn't old faithful, he doesn't explode every 90 minutes no matter what happens. He loses his temper when triggered. If a white lie could keep him from getting mad this one time, leading to possibly one less violent encounter, why not at least try?

Maki doesn't know that Tazune suspects infidelity or that he's seen a picture of them kissing. As far as she knows, he's just antsy because he hasn't heard from his fiancee. If she provides a reasonable excuse, acted convincingly, there's nothing for him to be mad about. She could even butter up his ego in the process. Being smart doesn't just mean she sees through him, it also could mean she can figure out how to play him.

Plus you'd think she'd bring it up or something after Midori kind of cemented "No I really, really want to be with you. But what to be do about him?"

I don't think we can speculate on what she'd bring up, because we know nothing about the flow of conversation after that moment of confession, or even how long it's been. For all we know she confessed a few feet from the train station, they spent a bunch of time buying their tickets and stuff, and they just barely picked the topic back up. But why would she need to mention it? If my idea is corrrect, then calling him is something she did because she thought Midori was going back to him. If she's -not-, then it doesn't matter what he thinks of the nature of their trip, or if he thought Midori was ignoring him or not, and so it doesn't matter if Midori knows about the call or not. She clearly didn't forsee him using the information to track them down, Plus, mentioning it means admitting that she had no faith in Midori's feelings for her before the most recent proposal. That could hurt Midori, or start a fight, maybe even cool Midori's heels on the whole "spend my life with you" thing. I still doubt Maki's confidence in Midori's feelings is rock solid. She's been hurt before.

So I don't think it's unreasonable to think that she might not have gotten to mentioning it, or even that she's deliberately procrastinating about mentioning it.

That said, I can't imagine a fight happening. Last thing Tazune would wanna do is to get himself in real deep trouble assaulting his ex fiancee and then Maki lmao. He's an asshole and a creep, but him hitting Midori was the mask slipping imho rather than an established go to. Would he resort to violence in the future? Yeah, I'd think so. In a public place with a pregnant woman and her friend? He'd have to be as stupid as a brick to do that.

Yeah, guys like Tazune are more likely to firmly hold their fiancee's arm while cordially excusing them both from the public eye, then beating the shit out of her at home.

I mean, that's not really comforting, the situation is still dangerous, but I mean it's unlikely anybody's getting hurled in front of a train or anything.

last edited at May 8, 2020 1:17PM

If things turn violent, I sure hope she finds a lead pipe nearby at hand.

Even if you have two people half the mass of the aggressor, they’d have a 66% chance of kicking the bully’s ass.

Oh, also, one of those two people is PREGNANT and absolutely should not be getting into fights.

Even if you have two people half the mass of the aggressor, they’d have a 66% chance of kicking the bully’s ass. I mean, how do you think wolves manage to take down prey that’s ten times the mass of a single wolf?

Specialized jaws for biting and tearing and razor sharp teeth.

Depressing as Fuck

Imho that guy found Midori either through ATM records or with Doumyou's help. The latter is more likely. Remember how, last time they were together, he asked her to do something for him? I suspect he made her call Midori to get the info. Doumyou probably played the "worried friend" card and tricked Midori into revealing her whereabouts.

It had never occurred to me, until I read some of the comments, that Maki could have called Tazune. Sure, the whole "I forgot my phone" scene looks suspicious... but, the way I see things, it was just a means to get Maki out of the pic for a few minutes, so that Midori could have a tête à tête with the inn manager. There's no way in hell Maki would call Tazune to ask him to take Midori back.

(I mean, if Tazune was a nice guy and Midori was simply going through some sexual confusion after a lesbian fling, there is a chance Maki could have decided to push Midori back into her husband's arms for her own good... but Tazune is a woman-beater and a total piece of garbage, and Maki would have to be crazier than a tree full of owls to think Midori can be happy with a man like him.)

I don't mean she called him to ask him to take her back. I mean she was assuming that Midori was going to go back on her own, but she also knows now that Tazune can get violent when he's upset, and she knows Maki has been ignoring his calls and texts. My thinking was that she might have called him to try and give him some kind of story that would abate his temper, Like "Hey, Midori asked me to call because her cell doesn't get reception here in (current location) but she isn't ignoring you so don't be mad at her she's coming home soon." Like her goal was just to make sure he didn't have a violent outburst at her when she inevitably returned. In this hypothetical situation, she wouldn't have expected him to come find them based on her story, she just would have been trying to keep him from getting mad at Midori.

She wasn't considering the possibility that Midori was really seriously considering leaving Tazune for her, which is why when Midori actually proposes exactly that, she's stupified.

last edited at May 8, 2020 1:36PM

Um... didn't she ask if they could drop the honorifics and then keep using the honorifics the rest of the chapter? WTF?

When she says "drop the honorifics" she's making a request to shift to a less formal mode of speech.

They were previously both referring to each other as "-san" which is the appropriate way to show respect to someone who is older or a work colleague. Kaori asked Kayoko to drop the formalities when talking to her, because Kayoko is older and Kaori wants to be spoiled a bit. So Kayoko switches from "-san" to "-chan", because that's an expression of closeness to someone younger. It is still considered polite to refer to someone older than you with a respectful honorific, so she stays with "-san"

Dropping the honorifics entirely is something you wouldn't really expect until they're like, family levels of close

So I am confused. We had a flashback to them explicitly having sex in the karaoke parlor, but now it seems like they're suggesting they didn't do anything until they got to the hotel? Or Shion was like....trying to hypnotize or reprogram her memories? Chapter 4 just seems really weird, and honestly mostly makes Shion look -worse-?

Either way, yeah, this ended up pretty problematic in the end.

It's not okay to get your friend drunk and take advantage of them!

...Unless of course they decide after the fact that they're happy about it, Then hooray, girlfriends!

Yeah, no, it still isn't okay. Sure, it's not -as bad- if Nozomi literally asked her to do it, but Shion still should have -turned down- the girl who was too drunk to make an informed decision.

And given her behavior, I get the sense that she was just waiting for the dream to end and for Midori to go back to Tazune.

There prolly was a little of that. Midori is a dreamer, but Maki is a woman with both feet solidly on the ground. The idea that Midori, once their little escapade was over, would cave under social pressure and return to her "husband" Tazune was not at all unreasonable and could not be discarded just like that. It would be understandable for Maki to hold such fears.

Of course, those fears were blasted to smithereens once Midori proposed. By the end of the chapter, we see them making plans for their future together... in particular, how they will deal with Tazune and whether Midori alone or both of them together should go tell him that he has been dumped.

She still loves her, but she has no faith that Midori will stay with her.

Hello? PROPOSAL! All doubts has been cleared by the final pages!

I don't think I explained my thoughts very well. At the point in the story where I am suggesting that she might have contacted Tazune, she had no faith that Midori wants an actual relationship. She thinks she's just running away from a difficult time in her relationship with Tazune. The proposal is the first moment where she starts to clue in to the thought processes that we've been seeing from Midori. I'm not saying she has zero faith at the end of the chapter, I'm saying she had zero faith through like, page 30.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if she still had lingering doubts that need to be squashed. And what better way to squash doubts than by having the two of them weather a crisis moment together? Midori needs to understand how insecure Maki has been about her feelings, and they really need to affirm their relationship at this point.

I for one I'm glad Tazune showed up at the station. I didn't like one bit Midori's decision to go meet him all by herself. It looked to me like a direct route to a big domestic violence incident. Thank goodness, now the asshole will have to deal with both of them at the same time. And in a public place, too. Better a hundred times than having Midori face Tazune alone, one against one, in an apartment that belongs to him.

Eh, there's drawbacks to this, too. Best case scenario, Maki isn't responsible for his appearance, in which case....well, that's pretty fuckin' scary, right? Conveys to Midori that "Hey, no, you can't confront him in private on your own terms, he could literally show up anywhere you are." It also shows that he is willing to fucking stalk her to claim her, which is somewhat dangerous behavior. Guys like Tazune also don't respond very well to public shaming.

But I agree, this was gonna happen anyway, and it's better if it doesn't happen when they're apart.

Unless Maki is the one that called him, in which case the next chapter is gonna have feels. ;p

This manga is as bad as ever I see.
agree

Door's right there, don't let it hit you on the way out.

How the frick-frack would he even find her though?!

Maybe they share the same credit card info Midori did use her card to take money out of the atm. Tazune could have looked at the transaction statements.. and found the location that way.. makes sense to me

I hope it's something like that, but I'm a bit worried about Maki's behavior in this chapter. She wasn't around for Midori's "we're lovers" proclamation, she was absolutely stunned at the "I wanna spend my life by your side" proposal. And given her behavior, I get the sense that she was just waiting for the dream to end and for Midori to go back to Tazune. Given that, she might have messaged or called Tazune herself, thinking she could smooth things over for Midori. That "I have to go back for my phone" bit just feels a little suspicious to me.

I could be wrong, but the issue we have at this point is that we've seen how Midori is coming around to the realization that yes, she actually CAN choose to be with the girl she loves instead of marrying the abusive jackass, but Maki doesn't know any of that. She still loves her, but she has no faith that Midori will stay with her. So I think that's the problem that defines our climax, here.

I really hope my Bad Ending Sense isn't right on this one. But unless Train-sensei intervenes, I dunno how Maki and Midori get out of this one...

This doesn't really feel like a bad ending kind of story? I mean we just had a parable in this chapter about how you can make mistakes and mess up and still have a little window of happiness and rainbows at the end.

I mean, they were always going to have to deal with Tazune. Midori had to resolve to leave him, and then she has to deal with the logistics of that decision. This is going to make that messier, but unless the series takes a really suddenly dark turn, I am willing to bet that mess will be transient.

She was definitely a wreck after her mom died.

No doubt few will now recall that at the start of the series it was Uta who was depicted as the recently damaged and emotionally fragile one. She was characterized as having been a cheerful kid who was traumatized by the divorce of her parents and was just now (at the the start of the series) beginning to come out of her shell. (That was the explanation for her living with Reiichi and Kaoru in the first place, and why Kaoru, and to some extent her brother, were quite solicitous of her.)

There hasn’t been any mention of that business for quite some time, though.

Actually, it came up right before she left. Kaoru was worried about her being on her own with her parents, and Uta expressed that she wouldn't get depressed again because she was looking towards her future and working toward it on her own terms. And then the subsequent stuff has confirmed that although her parents haven't really improved, she's coping better because of this change in her attitude.

(I just re-read that chapter)

Honestly, the more this story carries on, the more I feel like Kaoru is a pretty authentic picture of someone who struggles with chronic depression. her inability to cope with change or be proactive, her low self-image, her tendency to shut down when problems crop up...

One of the struggles of depression is that every bad thing is amplified and when they pile up they seem overwhelming. So you encourage people to just focus on the things they can do in the short term to avoid getting overwhelmed. Don't think about running to the far end of the problem, just focus on the next step. I feel like this is what Uta's getting at with "Try to do what you can for now." Just take steps where you can. Build momentum. Get things started. Break the malaise.

Obligatory: I am not a psychiatrist.

Nor am I, though I am diagnosed with chronic depression.

Although I'm aware that depression doesn't really have a hard and fast definition, and there isn't really a hard line between depression and anxiety disorders (plus often co-occur), I'm not sure it is a good fit:

For starters it isn't every little thing piling up - Kaoru's trigger and focus is external and very specific - the problems in her relationship with Reiichi. Furthermore when she addresses her anxiety (eg being comforted by Uta), she has a very rapid and fairly persistent recovery in her mood, seems more like anxiety than a major depressive episode.

I believe you're referring to grief rather than anxiety. Anxiety is characterized by nervousness, feelings of panic. Sweating, shakes, feelings of dread or fear. Although there have been moments when Kaoru has had some panic attacks, these have been acute episodes related to specific trauma.

Her overall demeanor is far more indicative of a state of depression. She stares into the distance, casts her eyes down, she has low self-esteem, she uses a lot of self-deprecating language, they specifically reference weight loss when she was living on her own, which indicates loss of appetite.

The low self-esteem is the big indicator that makes me think her problem is a mood disorder rather than just normal trauma response. She is really negative and down on herself all the time.

I hear you on that one. It can be tempting to take language that's absolutely fine in one context (say, among your friends while you're playing a game) and just start using it everywhere, where folks might not get your intent so clearly. Thanks for being so chill about the whole thing.

To be honest, faggot isn't really used as a homophobic slur anymore from what i gather. It's more of a slur tossed at someone you see as a coward or overly sensetive person, although that might have it's origins from negative stereotypes. The word will probably become more and more distant from homophobia and change meaning completely with time though. Language changes over time after all. Like how gay only meant fun or something similiar way back. Disclaimer though, english isn't my first language and this is what I've seen on the internet which is the only place i regularly use it.

That is the internalization of the homophobic message. Calling someone that because they're a coward or overly sensitive stems from questioning their manhood or masculinity, which is seen as negative because of internalized sexism and homophobia. It's still hurtful and upsetting, and yeah, not at all uncommon as an anti-gay slur in the United States.

Yes, language changes over time, that doesn't mean the history and recent usages of words don't matter.

As someone who has read and studied a lot (and I do mean a lot) of autobiographical and fictional comics/graphic novels about trauma and psychological dysfunction, I think this may well be right as far as a diagnosis of Kaoru goes. As stories, those other narratives do tend to place the sufferer and the disease at the center of things--the person's struggle with depression, and other people's (positive or negative) attempts to deal with them are the story.

Casting a high-schooler, one who is in love with the sufferer no less, as the de-facto therapist to a depressive adult as a plot point in what first appeared to be a romance but now seems to be primarily a family melodrama opens up more questions than ever as to what this series thinks it's about--is Kaoru's attitude situational, brought on by her discovery of her husband's possible cheating, or is her inability to deal with that possibility a function of longer-term dysfunction?

And how does this make Uta and her feelings (which is where the story started and spent much of its initial time and energy) anything except a sacrifice to the problems of the adults?

Considering, y'know, Japan, most likely the author isn't conscious of the mental illness their character is exhibiting. More likely Kaoru is inspired by either the author's struggles or the struggles of someone they know, and the only way they know how to deal with those problems is with the support of a loved one. Or they know she's depressed and just don't think it would be relatable to most people to talk about it in that context. I am told Japanese perceptions of mental illness are improving, but it's hard to gauge where an individual author with their own lived experiences is going to fall on the awareness scale.

As for what brought on Kaoru's depression, It could be predispositional, or it could be the result of...I mean, Jesus fuck this girl has been through a lot of trauma. Her single parent (do we know what happened to her dad?) not only passed away young, but apparently also did everything she could to make it as traumatic as possible, her best friend stole the guy she'd been in love with her whole life, he finally leaves her to marry her but the circumstances of that change are really clearly sympathy-based. Not only does she have pretty good reason to assume he married her out of pity, he forgets important relationship landmarks, and puts work ahead of her repeatedly, her sister-in-law, her most trusted confidant, confesses to loving her and leaves because it's too painful to be around her, the best friend that stole her first love before is apparently lying to her about meeting with him recently, then, y'know, head trauma....

She didn't seem -too- depressed at the start of the series, she was upset at Reiichi's neglect, but she was working, she had hobbies, she was hanging out with friends...But it's hard to know how much of that would have been a cover for deeper worries. She was definitely a wreck after her mom died.

I thought they were going to sleep in the bed

Same, sleeping like that can't be good for your back.

Yeah, honestly this. If you're going this far, just ask her to come sleep in the bed with you. It's not really much if any worse than saying "can I lay beside you", and I'm absolutely certain it would be more comfortable for both of them.

last edited at May 5, 2020 12:50PM