Well. Just read through what we've got so far. I think the most likely reason for her scent is that her family is spiritually important/powerful in some way, and the inheritance passed to her when her parents (specifically, probably her mother) died. After all, "scent" is basically a metaphor here--only spirit beings can "smell" it; what they're "smelling" is spiritual potency of some sort, that can "feed" them in a way random meat cannot.

Her family probably have historically had some important protective role, and had enemies wanting that to stop, who were responsible for that car "accident". I mean, nobody really thinks that the car spontaneously exploding was really by accident, right?

I have a hunch it was because of that power that her mother managed to say, or convey to her, those last words when any normal human would already have been dead and wouldn't exactly have been audible from under water anyway. Probably also used power to eject her safely from the car.

It's been strengthening since--you can call it puberty, you can call it coming of age, coming into her power, whatever. Maybe if she was able to find out just what that's about and gain control over it, she would be able to camouflage it, as her mother or parents presumably did.

Likely the fox spirit doesn't exactly know about any of that--maybe her monk told her back in the day to keep a special eye on that family, but, holy men tending to be cryptic, never said why.

Ditch that company. Seriously, tell them to gf themselves.
Just get an arubaito or two, be a shop clerk or something like that, and it'll be more than enough to make ends meet. Anything's better that working in that hellhole. It's no different than being a slave at the salt mines.

You have revealed the true nature of all labor. Salt mines all the way down

Why you need a union.

^^ Thats their honest opinion tho..

All i'll add is the artist isnt always the same as the author- tho presumably it will be on such a short manga.

@g2s There isnt much to get. Just like those documents are permenantly marked as belonging together by having a stamp that overlaps them both- psycho girlfriend thought she would shove a scalpel though both their hands so they would share a scar- to prove they belonged together.

Really, the punchline isn't that so much as the "Geeze, tell me next time so I can get my clothes out of the way!" totally unfazed reaction.

One thing about this particular robot . . . she probably in some sense has free will . . . but she also has certain drives very deliberately built in. She probably can't not want sex. Which is, OK, pretty much true for the rest of us except in our case evolution built it in, it wasn't anybody's fault.

It's somewhat like the main dish in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, a cow-like being who solves the problem of humane eating by having been bred to actively want to be eaten, and after talking up the deliciousness of various portions of his anatomy, excuses himself to go commit suicide. "Don't worry, sir, I'll be very humane." The problems here rather pale by comparison

All that said, I think this isn't really the venue for deep ethical exploration. It's a romantic comedy, and the ultimate answer is going to be, look, SHE thinks she loves you, SHE thinks she wants sex, and that is in the end not less real for having been built in, so why not give her what she wants? I'm not saying that's actually a decisive argument, although it's fairly defensible. But it's the line a romantic comedy has to take, overtly or tacitly.

That doesn't address whether it was OK to build her like that in the first place, but in terms of their relationship it's a little late--it's no more ethical to forcibly change her mindset now that she's been made than it was to make her. Which leaves either dealing with her as she is, or junking her, which doesn't seem very nice either.

Well, finally a customer. Hopefully, that will lead to great things--people will see someone in there and try it out themselves, and the fame of the good food will spread. This could be the crack in the dyke . . . um, I mean . . .

Also I misread "titleless" as "titless" and I was wondering what Elsa's breasts had to do with anything for a few minutes. The theory I had was that "titless" is some obscure idiom about lacking drive which is akin to one lacking... tits.

That reminds me of how weirded out I got by a brand of golf balls. They're called "Titleist" and I looked at that and it really took me a while to figure out that they meant it to be "Title-ist" and not "Tit-leist".

Well-deserved "lots of kissing" tag.

In something like this you have to have some perspective on the question of "wholesome" or "healthy". By some standards there are no doubt wholesomer, healthier relationships . . . but their relationship is certainly by far the most wholesome, healthy thing in either of their lives. It's clearly making a big net improvement rather than creating a train wreck. So it's wholesome in my book.

Why does this remind me of Inugami and Nekoyama?

Dash it all, these two are so deuced cute!!!

It seem that the path to a much more peaceful life is finally about to settle in.

Remember,kiddos,persue the path of decent happiness and decent pay,never the path of large pay with tiny happiness.

I read a book recently describing the upwardly-mobile careerist appearance-oriented approach to life like this: "And then one day they look around and realize their life is all wrapping and no present."

…also am I crazy for wanting a poly ending where they include the boat lady?

No you're not, I immediately felt like there was some cute chemistry going on as well xD

Naaah, I’d rather it remain a couple in this case. Just a feeling I got. And honestly, they were much more forgiving of someone stealing their bike than I would have been.

I'd have been FORGIVING; I suppose it was an understandable mistake and she didn't take anything, including their so-essential wallets.
But they were acting downright GRATEFUL, and I wouldn't go that far. They're talking like it's thanks to her that they have their stuff . . . but sheesh, it's thanks to her that it was gone in the first place, so.
On the other hand, it's probably a good move. That girl is their first social contact on the island, and small communities run on social contacts. Cultivating her is a lot smarter than blowing her off would be, that's for sure. And she seems nice.

last edited at Dec 30, 2021 10:45PM

Cornonthekopp posted:

But even if its a bit romanticized I think the desire to have more control in your life and escape the corporate grind is understandable, and I’d rather be poor and happy vs wealthy and destroying myself.

I mean, it's not that I don't understand that, but that's assuming they'll actually find a job to be poor and not simply change to being jobless on the island and will end up begging for money on street or something. That'd be kinda... worse than what they had I think? I thought the whole point of moving out was, so they don't need to spend entire time worrying about job hunting? Cos they kinda still do. Even more than before I'd say.

Well, two things: Thing one, they have far fewer expenses now. Rent's free, business attire is decidedly optional, no transit pass needed et cetera. So, they can have a comparable lifestyle for far less money, can get by on employment that is either not full time or far lower pay.
Thing two is, the more relaxed, slow-paced lifestyle of smaller places and particularly islands is not a myth. They will not be interviewing with suits who are processing the recruits in batches without seeing any of them as human, they will not be interviewing for high-pressure, high-stress jobs that will expect masses of unpaid overtime to make artificial deadlines, they will not be expected to be self-sacrificing cogs in the firm. Rather, it will be some shopkeeper saying "Yeah, I could use a bit of help around the place" or whatever.

So they could plausibly live OK, with far less stress and a far lower workload.

That little kiss on the hand at the end, too much~

Our crass modern age has too little hand-kissing.

Just gonna go against the grain here and say that:
a) I hate this side "couple" and
b) the nurse saying "hurry up and graduate" made me wanna puke. It's almost no different from when people used to have countdowns for when some famous underage girl was gonna turn 18 in the 90s (eg Emma Watson). Yuck.

Shit like this creeps me out and then the comments calling it 'cute' creep me out even more. Y'all give way too much of a pass to things just cause it's two female characters instead of a grown man and an underage girl (which brings up another problem: fetishization of lesbian relationships, treating them all as inherently 'pure' and so on).

I'm glad this is being kept mostly to extra chapters instead of the main story or I would instantly drop this.

This argument assumes that all age-gap romances are inherently bad and exploitative. I've known more than a few such relationships in real life, cutting all different directions--younger man/older woman het, gay male, lesbian, etc., many of which have worked out long term to the satisfaction of both parties (and some that didn't, like other relationships). (Note: I'm not talking about student-teacher relationships below the graduate-school level here.)

And in this particular case, it's not even clear that the nurse is saying, "Hurry up and graduate so we can be together." Granting for the sake of argument that she is attracted to the student, she could mean, "Hurry up and get on with your life away from here so I won't be tempted into something inappropriate." Whatever she feels, she hasn't done anything wrong.

So be creeped out all that your heart desires, but don't assume that you're voicing a universally applicable moral judgement.

Just for the record, I have been for 25 years married to a woman 15 years older than me. Dating her was the best decision I ever made. Before that, for a couple of years I dated a girl 8 years younger than me. I don't keep in contact with her much, but it's very friendly when we do because we had a good time when we were together and frankly I had a very positive impact on her life; we were good friends for years after we split up. For that matter, she had a good impact on my life--helped me loosen up a bit.
Mind you, in neither case was anyone in a position of authority over anyone.

last edited at Dec 27, 2021 3:22AM

Lot of people seem to be big fans of Yoshitomi Akihito. I dunno. I mean, I'm reading this, and it's kind of interesting, and there's always something interesting in the dialogue, but . . . at least half the characters just don't feel like people to me. This chapter actually felt a bit more naturalistic than many, but often it's either stiff or I'm just constantly thinking "What on earth kind of person would say/do THAT?!" all the time. And not in a "how gloriously weird" kind of way, just in a "This feels like a fake person constructed to create certain effects" kind of way. Similarly, the art looks good, but somehow reminds me that it's art rather than sucking me into feeling as if I'm looking at people. It's odd, I've read manga where the art was both not as skilled and more stylized and yet still felt warmer and more people-y than this, pulled me into the story more.

I felt the same way about, what was it (looks up), Sisterism--about these girls supposedly into each other's little sisters, and it always just felt like they were being maneuvered through the motions, I never felt like anybody cared about anybody or even seriously lusted after anybody, it was just this series of mildly ecchi events.

Overall, I'm always just on the edge of not quite feeling like bothering. So I don't quite get what everyone's so excited about.

Wh.. what's the "different" holiday song??? The ghostbusters theme song???

Oh, great, now I've got Ghostbusters/Nightmare Before Christmas mashups going through my head.

If there’s something strange ‘neath the Christmas tree
Who you gonna call? (Ghostbusters!)
If Jack Skellington’s bringin’ Yuletide glee
Who you gonna call? (Ghostbusters!)

I was drinking a cup of hot chocolate when I read this, so somehow I knew where the end was going (no snow here, but a good bit colder than usual today).

Funny, I was thinking "Hot milk? Without any cocoa powder and sugar in it?! What a tease."

At some point they will have proper sex in front of us

Isn't sex rather improper by definition?

I've seen plenty of normal manga done by people who used to do hentai and made a transition away. This is starting to look like the reverse process.

I do wonder about the subtext. One thing I'll say for sure--while nothing overt may ever happen in the manga, while neither character may ever have any kind of realization . . . the MANGAKA sure as hell knows what she's doing.

Yeah, the covers and the spot illos alone give that game away—I recall one with strawberries being particularly yurilicious.

And then there’s the constant blush-sex. And of course the totally non-erotic experiential-learning boob-groping . . .

Not to mention all the comments by other characters saying "You're acting like someone talking about their girlfriend, not their sister". Subtle.
Sometimes I feel like they'd be screwing like bunnies already if they didn't have to work through their grief first.

last edited at Dec 17, 2021 3:49PM

So I hadn't actually read this until Blastaar mentioned it as being good. I guess I looked at the title and thought "Huh, this seems way to triangly for me" and then at the subtext tag and thought "And yet at the same time, not triangly enough". Which in a weird way is actually true despite her brother's, uh, circumstances--but it doesn't matter because it really is very good. Thanks for the tip, Blastaar.

I do wonder about the subtext. One thing I'll say for sure--while nothing overt may ever happen in the manga, while neither character may ever have any kind of realization . . . the MANGAKA sure as hell knows what she's doing.

OMG, a giant bomb of sugary cuteness death is coming your way in the form of Chapter 3.

You have been warned.

That was a very fair warning.

Its not that rare that kids physically mature early compared to others. Even to this degree- tho rarer ofcourse.

All I can say is, she'd have to have been drinking a LOT of that American milk with rBGH in it.

(recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone)

"Usually." Hee hee.
I love that isekai stories and reincarnated-into-a-game-world stories have become so common that one can talk casually about what people would "usually" do in those situations.

I hate that. It was always a stupid premise. Not that there never should have been any of 'em, but a few would have been enough. How did it come to this?!

last edited at Dec 13, 2021 4:59PM