I see no reason to guess this series is ending anytime soon. It's bigger than ever and they've got a lot of development left to develop (they might finally get together soon but I trust this author enough to assume they're not the kind of hack who ends a story at the beginning of a relationship like some kinda shounen romance). The only premature outcome I can feasibly imagine for this is something like The Princess of Sylph, a serialization that results in a reboot, but this manga's so high profile at this point with that "This Manga is Amazing!" result that I can only imagine the author's received and turned down offers from magazines at this point.

Alisha x Honoka is still my personal favorite ship (their whole dynamic is so fun) but I gotta give Mask the respect she deserves. She got Kao wrapped around her little finger.

Also goddamn does Kishi Torajirou just write the most realistic feeling lesbian dynamics for someone who uses he/him lol. Basically none of the many relationships in this series feel like they're based on hetero dynamics with one gender swapped, nor the completely artificial pure class S bullshit of old. I don't know if he's a he/him lesbian or if the gender is part of the pseudonym or if he just reads a whole lot of lesbian authors (I wonder if Rubyfruit Jungle has a Japanese translation) but he's clearly going far beyond his gender peers. Hell, just the bl angle alone, I know so many irl lesbians into that and I've never once seen it in yuri before this series.

Where is Mashiro?

There's absolutely no way Mashiro and Toxic Mom could wait in the same room together, and there's no way Toxic Mom would back down and let the person who should be there be there. Mashiro's probably nearby but chased out of the room itself.
Also Makino is almost certainly on her parents' health insurance, considering they haven't yet made a big deal out of fully disowning her yet, so there's no avoiding her parents finding out here. I wouldn't expect Makino to remember to change her emergency contacts either lol.

Edit: I looked back and I don't even think Makino's mom knows that both her kids are gay yet. The confrontation with Mashiro in chapter 59 was about trying to force Makino to marry a guy, which she vocally refused not because "I'm gay" but because "I want to get into college". Toxic Mom knows Mashiro and Makino stuck up for each other but not really why yet.

last edited at Dec 16, 2023 11:15AM

Do they count as useless lesbians?

Only if you're judging their "usefulness" as providing you with some boring wholesome relationship to look at or something like that. That term was coined to describe women too insecure and awkward to make anything happen for themselves. They're useless for achieving their own desires, not for anyone else. It's basically a mean perjorative for bottoms lol. That's extremely not these main characters, who are fully actializing their desires on page two of the first chapter. These are some of the absolute most proactive and forward lesbians out of all the series on this website lmao.

One thing I'm uncertain/confused on, do her boots allow her to walk? Since I think their "travel" designs are after all of this, where she's walking. I might have missed something.

That head nun said she was sending the pair to a healer who knows how to properly reattach limbs, although who knows how truthful that was since this version doesn't address that at all. Guess we'll see when the serial catches up.

I still can't get past how Seo was simultaneously trying to be good until the President's attempted murder made her snap, AND planting very complicated traps that are hardly stable by themselves in the school. Filling the school gym with hydrogen gas for example, I have no idea how feasible that is but if a spark from a single flame backstage could blow up the whole building then any random thing could have set it off. You couldn't even explain it as a contingency, making it 100% requires intending to kill people. And she was apparently working closely with Komachi, discussing ways or murdering people. But we get explicit internal monologue from Seo about how she's tried to be good. Considering this chapter seems to finally be an ending to pressing disasters, or at least I fucking hope so, they really need to go back and explain this all real good, hopefully with something more convincing than "Seo has a split personality and Good Seo didn't know what Evil Seo was doing", because it's so big that it distracts me from appreciating the rest of the manga.

last edited at Dec 15, 2023 1:51AM

I wonder how this scene might eventually change in the serialization, because in that one emphasizing that the princess tries to push herself too hard to live up to an ideal as a "child of the spirits" hardly needs more help lol. The use of magic wasps is fun though.

I was expecting them to fight with the evil parents and try to save Mashiro's job, so for them to instead just leave and go start a "Yuri Is My Job" crossover is fascinating and a way better turn for the story lol.

Sara's suicidal ideation is such a serious and raw theme running through the twitter version, damn. I wonder if it's something that started after that seed was planted in her, or if it's been going on for even longer...

They aren't idiots, they're just awkward.

You can read it multiple ways obviously, but the parallel Kanna makes in this chapter sure puts it all in a pretty yuri perspective, to me at least. Does she perhaps suspect something Aya herself doesn't quite realize yet?

Oh I think that's 100% intentional, drawing parallels is a common and important storytelling tool and this is a very clear example of that technique.

last edited at Dec 3, 2023 4:08PM

Do you not know what an allegory is?
If anything, the fact that it's love literally/textually doubles down on the genderqueer interpretation - the love leads to kissing, which is what changes Hodaka's body.

That would be the reverse order of what you guys are on about, you don't get the effect before you eat the medicine

Either way it's clearly a forced fantasy to think of the story in that light, people are allowed to have their head cannons but don't push them like that

Nobody's "forcing" or "pushing" anything lol, people are just discussing their reads on the fiction. A read that is probably intentional, there's more than enough factors to point at the magazine and the author to both be knowledgeable of the trans angle on genderbending stories and be interested in portraying that, since this manga is following up on Welcome Back Alice and started the next issue after that manga ended. Just because you don't see the points where these topics touch doesn't mean they're not there. Surely as English language reader of manga you should be familiar with the concept of differing cultural contexts that can cause things to come off differently for different readers, right?

chap 75 spoilers
When did Seo even have the time to research, plan, and set up all these kill traps????? And how did these get setup unnoticed?

This has been a pretty huge question for a while now, given she was, even as far as we saw of her own thoughts, trying to be nice right up until the Prez almost strangled her. It's like her choice to give up being good somehow magically retroactively made her evil the whole time, which makes zero sense unless they're gonna get into alternate dimensions or timelines or something.

People clicking on a manga about smoking, titled the smoking maid, and then complaining about the smoking is hilarious to me lmao

lol maybe Dynasty needs a "dead dove: do not eat" style tag. Something to say "Look, it's not just a background character smoking, this is some hardcore graphic explicit on-screen smoking. Content Warning for smoking. The surgeon general has found this manga is bad for your lungs."

I feel like there’s a few explanations for Chiharu, but while the boyfriend could be a lie to hide her own feelings, I actually wonder if it’s a similar Mei situation where she fell for a guy and Mei, but was all too sure that Mei would reject her and seeing as it would be awkward to live with someone you have feelings for but can’t pursue, ended up dating the guy. And then, she realizes that she likes Mei more than the guy (hence the “I love you” thing at the end). Either way, she’s definitely cooking
All the while, Mei is living the dream at college with every hot lady pursuing her lol

I dunno, I wouldn't call being fetishized by a group of women being the dream. None of them like Mei for who she is as a person. They are all just obsessed by one aspect of her.

That's true for maybe the smell girl at first but not really the rest of them and certainly not at this point in the manga. They're attracted to her due to a primary feature that they like, but they've all gotten to know her personally and like her as a person after that first attraction. That's not "fetishization" or "objectification" that's just "how normal real people work irl" lol.

I genuinely wonder if these writers ever consider like, the fact that trans people exist. They at least acknowledged that gay people exist here cause they went "if a woman kisses someone of the opposite sex", so I guess gay women in her family don't gotta put up with any bullshit. But I've never seen them really acknowledge trans people existing in any real way, even though a LOT of gender bender media feels like wish fulfillment by trans people who are very deep in the closet.

Zenbu Kimi no Sei is a genderbend series about people who's bodies change whenever their heart races, and it also includes at least 1 major trans side character who works at the cosplay cafe with them

Tried this manga out and almost dropped it right away due to the prurient gaze feeling of it, but it got better pretty quickly. I like how they explore all four permutations of the main couple, and I loved the arc with the lesbian grappling with being in love with the straight trans man and choosing to respect him over her romantic interest.

Goddamn, that boy really said "I love you more than I love being cis". That's how you know it's real.

Edit: about the dad, there's a clear question and answer this chapter: "Will I be unable to change back at some point?" "There's no precedent to that". I think the implication is pretty clear that she embraced being a woman and Chihaya's parents are just making out all the time. She did say about the picture "Back when I was still a man" but that's the kind of language trans people use in manga to refer to themselves pre transition all the time.

last edited at Nov 30, 2023 11:55AM

Every time I read this story it makes me happy. I love women cheating on men with other women lol. I love "Run Away With Me Girl," I love "Even Though We're Adults," and I love this. Yeah it's a complicated, bittersweet situation, but the kids make all the choices people externally would demand this couple make infinitely more complex and risky than they would be otherwise. So they make the best of a bad situation and that best is actually far better than most people would guess is possible. Look at these supermoms making it work! I'm happy for them. :)

last edited at Nov 29, 2023 10:25AM

It probably bothers Yunduo, too. She's smart enough to know what she's doing with these comments and feeling incredibly guilty about them, but they seem to be somewhat impulsive, probably the expression of her repressed feelings too bitter to remain buried. She doesn't seek out Xingyuan to snipe at her, rather it's when she's already in a conversation with her alone and Xingyuan says something and Yunduo responds in a pessimistic way. She's not trying to be a bully or take things out on Xingyuan but the person who can do what she cannot has multiple times now come to her for advice on how to do that exact thing, and god it probably eats her alive to hear it.

Yundao has been putting everyone else over herself and putting off self care and stress relief this whole time. She's got so much pressure built up that it's amazing she's merely leaking a bit of hater instead of exploding after being poked by these events.

last edited at Nov 28, 2023 4:32PM

The title of this manga caught my eye due to it using the same Welsh concept in the title as this one:
https://mangadex.org/manga/dbb977c7-c4c2-4c53-b01a-accb76b62e9a/hiraeth-wa-tabiji-no-hate
I wouldn't be surprised if it's a direct line of inspiration, given they're both about suicidal lesbians meeting a tall dark handsome stranger who is also seeking death, although in the case of Kamatani Yuhki's manga instead of a love interest it's an adult mentor. Kamatani's manga also has less of an edgy dark feel to it by comparison, despite the subject matter, there's a beauty to it's mournful emotions, compared to the stark misery this manga is portraying so far.

I had a premonition that the anime would be bad right from the opening scene, which cuts out Sorawo's narration of what the Kunekune is doing to her head in favor of a couple seconds of visual glitches. This premonition proved correct lol. What even is the point of Otherside Picnic without the psychological aspect of what the Otherside does to Sorawo or Toriko? If they're not going to feel the Otherside why bother even including the scenes of them going there, might as well cut it down even more to be a yuri about socially awkward college girls lol.

While I get what you mean, and the anime was definitely very bad, both as an adaptation and as a stand-alone work, I actually appreciated the effort to replace some of the monologue with visuals. I honestly feel like the manga is too heavy on the inner monologue/narration. If I wanted to read all of the Sorawo's thoughts, I would read the novel (and I do!). When it comes to media like manga or anime I expect to see the character's feelings on their faces, not have them narrated to me. The problem is that the anime failed to convey those thoughts properly, which I don't think is an indication that it would have been impossible to do so, only that the writing was rather subpar.

Oh I totally agree you could hypothetically pull off replacing overt monologue with really good visual direction and metaphor to convey those same feelings. The anime just does not even come close to succeeding there. The digital glitch effects make it look like the kunekune is affecting our "camera" rather than the characters lol.
Remember the opening scene to "The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask" when Link gets turned into a deku shrub? How his vision gets dominated more and more exclusively by hostile plant people until he turns into a plant person himself? That scene conveys a feeling like Sorawo describes feeling looking at the kunekune far better than the anime does.

Edit: that just reminded me, in one of the novel end notes the author points of the similarity between the Japanese term we're translating as "Otherside", and the Japanese term for the "Dark World" in Zelda (and apparently that's the same word used for secret levels in Mario iirc?). I think it might be that they're both "urasekai". Maybe this connection between Zelda and Otherside Picnic goes deeper than I thought...

last edited at Nov 23, 2023 5:44AM

It used to, yeah. And it used to really feel like it was going to have actual gay romance going on what with the scene from when Akari spent the night at Satsuki's house and how Satsuki kept blushing. But then I guess the author decided he'd rather pull a Lycoris Recoil on us lol rip.

Yundao dresses "that way" for her work, not as some sexual signifier one way or another. Building a take based on her white collar work uniform and her short haircut as if that makes her a walking stereotype, as if there's nothing else to her character, feels ridiculous.
In general, the idea that suits and lesbians are connected is a pretty silly idea. Whether or not someone wears a suit is almost entire defined by their job. I've never once gone to a lesbian meetup and seen someone just casually standing there dressed like a bank manager as a fashion statement lol. The only times I've ever seen that association are on dumb 90s era tv shows, nothing actually reflecting reality. Instead, plenty of women, gay and straight, wear suits every day just because they have a job that, like Yundao's job, expects them to.

last edited at Nov 23, 2023 12:33AM

My imagination of the Runa scene was a much more realistic and bloody image. In the manga she's strangely... okay looking? Like clearly fucked up but it's not like her cheeks were torn, she's not covered in a ton of blood. It's like she was "modified" in some way rather than "injured". Very different to the brutality with which Uruma treated her mother. It's unsettling in a completely different way from straightforward violence.

I had a premonition that the anime would be bad right from the opening scene, which cuts out Sorawo's narration of what the Kunekune is doing to her head in favor of a couple seconds of visual glitches. This premonition proved correct lol. What even is the point of Otherside Picnic without the psychological aspect of what the Otherside does to Sorawo or Toriko? If they're not going to feel the Otherside why bother even including the scenes of them going there, might as well cut it down even more to be a yuri about socially awkward college girls lol.

last edited at Nov 21, 2023 4:41AM