Sakurako is such a good soul: even while literally dying of thirst, she still remembers to double-check for consent.

Ah, yes, the "boyfriend". Rrright. Poor mom is never gonna see any grandchildren at this rate...

Would be funny if older sis was also a scumbag but just way better at faking it

Neesan has lots more experience, obvs.

"The Gift of the Magi" isn't centered around sacrifice but on the gesture to a heartfelt gift to their loved one. This story as the tag says is a parody, both the bird and the rose just want to give the other something heartfelt. Only Rosie has read the book and she understands that Christmas is an occasion to give a gift to their loved ones and she uses her own Roses to make a coronet. Birdie on the other hand just wanted to show Rosie a glimpse of world she is able to see.

The two stories aren't based on mutual sacrifice, but the feelings one has on the other.

While I disagree with your interpretation of O. Henry's themes, I haven't really noticed Birdie's "gift" in the first reading of the story. After rereading it, I realized that the gifts were indeed, mutual, though I still think that quoting O. Henry was a tad gratuitous...

Guys, I assure you that this series is more wholesome than you think it is. Don't let the steam get the better of ya.

That's the cue I was waiting for, thank you. Like Purple Library Guy, I have been thoroughly weirded out by the series' presentation of Swallow's intense discomfort as something romantic and cute, but you seem to say that said discomfort isn't actual traumatic stress, so I will read on to see for myself if that is correct. :-)

I am not sure how this one is supposed to work? O. Henry's original short story works because both people sacrifice their most valuable possession to buy a gift for the other, and both gifts turn out to be (immediately) useless because they are supposed to complement said sold possessions. In this case, only Rose is concerned with making a good gift, and instead of sacrificing her possessions, she instead plucks some other flowers. She then gifts the resulting flower crown to Birdie, who can just accept it since she didn't even think of giving Rose a gift, let alone sacrifice her head/hair/wings/whatever for it.

So what is even the point of quoting "The Gift of the Magi", other than to sound Deep As Fuck™?

Corollary to the law of uselessness: If uselessness in one part of the couple decreases without the addition of new useless lesbians, uselessness increases in the other.

Ah, the law of universal conservation of lesbian uselessness, as derived from Noether's theorem and the thirst translational symmetry within a bounded yuri volume.

So the Lady elopes with her Maid, huh. Not with a suitor, or a foreign prince, her maid.

Who recommended this book, again?

Elsa is playing a very long game here. Which is funny, since this is exactly what a player character in an otoge should do: choose her romance option and raise as many event flags with her as she can...

I think you mean roommate

My brain: Dont dare say it

Me: OMG THEYRE ROOMATES

My brain: Dammit!

Now Im thinking of spider roommate yuri, your fault

I've created a monster. :'D

last edited at Feb 7, 2022 2:46AM

You know a story has great characters when every new character that appears, every one, instantly makes the readers change their otp ship to mc x new character. ¯⧵_( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)_/¯

It has already happened with Ena, with Izumi, with Serina, with Nao...

It's still Serina x Asumi for me, though. That mad top energy is hard to dislodge. :P

I cannot help but admire Hinako's earnest wish for death.

I can. Get a grip, girl. Your parents would want you to live. You've got a friend who would give her tails to help you live. You'll never forget your family, you'll always mourn them, but there's plenty worth living for and your family would want you to find it.

When you’re in the hole like she is, that’s only going to come off as platitudes, unfortunately. Convincing someone in that headspace of a nebulous “something” worth staying miserable for is a hard sell

And yet that is exactly what proper psychotherapy does. If only such a thing existed in the magical land of Japan...

The surest sign that Hinako's poor brain is broken is her belief that Shiori and Miko have any reason to be friendly with each other other than herself.

Sempai: Oh, do you have an opening for a housewife?
Me, a squeaky-clean brain: ...and where is that opening?

...

I'll show myself out... >__>

last edited at Feb 5, 2022 6:07AM

Last page...I'm Siscon...that way to social suicide is in another level

I am afraid she is already too far gone to care. :-(

Also, if they do end up teaming up with the rest, it'll be a nice symmetry: a human couple, an antinoid couple, and a human/antinoid couple...

Don't forget the antinoid couple's kid!

Yeah, she is kind of a wild card here, since she hasn't been paired up yet. But I guess her inclusion makes sense numerically, since it brings the "good guys'" count up to 7, a magical number, and super sentai is all about significant numberings.

I forget, have the sisters been directly participating in the whole superhero/antinoid business before? Also, if they do end up teaming up with the rest, it'll be a nice symmetry: a human couple, an antinoid couple, and a human/antinoid couple...

The least justifiable one when it comes to having underlying logic is a general fear of spiders in my opinion. Most spiders aren't dangerous to humans and on top of that are even helpful since they'll help deal with annoying bugs. I've got a spider living somewhere in/on/around my desk that I see crawl across my monitor at least once a week or so but I just leave it alone since it's not a pest.

Common spiders are real bros. I have one living in the corner of my bedroom and go out of my way to not disturb its nets when I am vacuuming up all the dead bug husks it gets rid of for me. If you give them their space, they won't have a reason to move around and get where you don't actually want them, too.

last edited at Feb 3, 2022 3:47AM

Is ch. 23 making a Nanoha reference?

Only visually, at best. Nanoha has never really had a dark and edgy phase like Ruby (though she definitely does have a dark edge under her gentle facade).

last edited at Feb 3, 2022 3:43AM

I lived in a house with a lot of cockroaches as a kid, and it's not so much that they are scary, but rather repulsive. Other beetles and even spiders have that redeeming quality of somehow connecting to the nature outside, so they feel "clean", for lack of a better word, as long as you don't look too closely at them. But cockroaches, man, they live in our houses and feed on our dirt. They're like everything ugly we like to pretend about us doesn't exist, but can skitter around and jump in our face whenever we least expect it.

Remember, kids: Always hug responsibly.

I fail to see how Seungha taking her apple, giving her milk she didn't like and grabbing her hand are bullying. She was just an annoying kid at worst, and nothing we have seen so far compares to "pulling hair/shoving down".

I think we haven't seen all of their interactions yet, and I also believe that part of why Swallow saw it as bullying was that by singling her own in that way, Seungha made her even more of an outcast from the rest of the class (that one frame where the classmates give her weird looks for letting Seungha step all over her). I get a feeling that Swallow has always been an introvert, so being put on the spot in front of everyone like that must have been mortifying for her.

next chapter is not to be viewed by children huh... well then I think I can make a prediction as to what is about to happen

Handholding? Headpats??!!

Hey, cover that lewd stuff with spoilers, at least.

lol Tong Tong is me

Also me, at every Global Game Jam. "Welp, time to learn a new engine!" [after a 20 minutes basics tutorial] "Welp, it's back to Unity again!"

I don't say this often, but this chapter was too Wholesome for its own good. Slow burn, indeed...

Comedy was on point but poor Magenta's suffering really brought things down. Like she feels especially vulnurable for some reason.

Because unlike the masochistic Azul or the defiantly confrontational Sulphur, she is not powered up by violence directed at her. She actually reacts to it how a sane, "normal" person would, which makes her uniquely vulnerable in the world of high-powered, libido-driven magical girls. I am very curious what her La Verita form will be.

last edited at Jan 24, 2022 4:24PM

This chapter felt a lot more villainous, in large part because Magenta's reactions were relatively normal, unlike Azul who enjoys it and Sulpher who fights back. It was basically just Baiser and Leopard abusing a kid.

I also found this chapter very uncomfortable due to Magenta's relatively "normie" reactions. Baiser hurting Azul and Sulphur could and has been described as "two perverts playing with each other", but in this case, it went far beyond "play". In the previous "torture" encounters, Baiser always showed some empathy for the MG, but here, she and Kiwi felt almost like they were experimenting on an inanimate object, trying to figure out its "trigger". I hope this doesn't become a norm, otherwise I am going to find it very difficult to sympathize with Utena...

Still, this chapter has been as competently written as the previous ones: Enormeeta's motivation is clearly established, their sub-goal (finding Magenta's "trigger") achieved, and their increasingly questionable methods at least lampshaded as kidnapping (if not really called out).

...so she's now awkward around other people too? Either it's been so long I don't remember or that's new, how does one become a CEO when also having problems with ordering stuff :P

It's actually quite common. Amano has a lot of self-confidence in the business (public) domain, but very little of it in her private life. The contrast is exaggerated for comedy in this manga, but it really matters to some introverted people with self-worth issues whether they are speaking "as CEO/professional" or "as just old me".

last edited at Jan 23, 2022 3:04AM