Thanks for the translation, but the new font is pretty hard to read (especially when it's not in a speech bubble)

last edited at Aug 6, 2020 2:29PM

Wasn't expecting that twist... a little creepy, but I get it. Getting the chance to work with someone you admire in a field you're passionate about is great, wouldn't really count as stalking (given she's applying the normal way and is qualified) but the romantic angle makes it... ehhhhhh...

Still, cute

If anyone's confused, you read top-to-bottom left-to-right, not left-to-right top-to-bottom like most western order comics

For people who read comments before reading the chapters... maybe take a pass on this one unless you're really looking for these specific tags. It's not poorly drawn or anything, it's just thoroughly unpleasant from beginning to end.

Cheating tag ? I mean, you can see a ring on the boss's hand multiples times and it even said it's an affair.

Seems like it. She didn't have a ring in the flashback so I guess she got married in the intervening years

is there like any context for this? or is this like a metal gear solid moment where its just dissociative disorder

In this future, there's this valuable mineral called Originium, which infect people with a disease... these girls have it, but thanks to it they can also fight. Lappland apparently has a lot more of it than most though, which makes her ... let's say psychologically unstable... the disease has a 100% mortality rate...

The last two pages probably depict a mercy-killing.

Additional context: the two of them grew up together in mafia families and used to go hunt members of rival families. Texas's family was eventually wiped out completely and it's implied Lappland had something to do with it. The "old texas" is the Texas she knew back then.

last edited at Jul 11, 2020 6:41PM

insert "uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" visible from outer space

Turns out this was about Kaoru's unrequited love the entire time

Molester prince needs a good solid punch in the mouth

Could easily read it as a "someone important to me died so I cyborg'd em but they can never find out" sort of story

Man I love the character designs in Arknights, but I really don't want to invest in a gacha game. If only its monetization model is more like Girls Frontline...

There is a free pull system sort of like GFL's (but worse), so you could play without paying and eventually get a decent set of units - people have successfully cleared almost all the content with only freebie stuff. But it's definitely a struggle unless you pay, so if you have trouble with getting tempted to drop cash on these games definitely don't play it.

I like the character designs a lot but I wish it focused a bit more on character stories. Outside of the main story cast we really only get occasional character-focused events and the lore text in their profiles. :/

Okay, so how does Line work? Can you have multiple accounts on the same number?

Aside from the option of an account not tied to a number, if she has two numbers she could have one account attached to each

How can she possibly be still in the dark when her fire team squad mate sounds exactly like her boss, takes calls at the same time she goes afk, and her texts go to the same number?

Editor could be using an office/corporate number for her work calls, it's not uncommon to have a work phone even if it's a mobile. Every place I've worked has had an option for at least partial reimbursement of a phone if you needed it for work.

I really want to find this cute and adorable, and I do on same level, but the is a limit to airheadedness that crosses over into complete psychosis

It's unrealistic but it's not that implausible that the artist wouldn't recognize her editor's voice, especially if she has no reason to suspect they're the same person. The odds of having her editor as a gaming buddy just by chance are pretty low.

I've personally had a couple chance encounters like that where my gaming or social media circles overlapped with an old acquaintance, and it was definitely a surprise to me each time. In this case there's not an obvious connection between the two so I can understand the artist not catching on

I'd be pretty happy if this series just focused on heke and rara from now on since my opinion of the other two couples has taken a nosedive

last edited at May 12, 2020 6:12AM

Meanwhile Sakura may have an eating disorder.

The way the phone conversation went, I think their mother might be the one with a disorder and Sakura has just been pushed into imitating her. If her mom has been really bad about remembering to eat or eating enough, it makes sense that she'd ask. She mentioned earlier that since Mogumo isn't around "everything has fallen to me", which seems like it probably means pressure from their parents.

I feel like none of Mogu's friends are concerned about this random chick showing up and violently ripping their hair tie out? That must have hurt and was totally unprovoked. I'd be very worried after that.

They probably wrote it off "because she's family", you definitely see that dynamic sometimes where people don't feel like they have the right to intrude on interactions between family even if they're crossing some lines. Naturally Tetsu intruded because he feels like he has the right to (or doesn't care, I guess)

I'm glad to see more Arknights stuff here. The series is ripe for yuri content. Angst with Scavenger trying to get over her past girlfriend, Rhine's labs has Saria/Silence and Mayer/Magellen and all of them get to be Ifrit's moms, Texas/Lappland angst with Texas/Exusiai good times, Projekt Red, her weird trait to terrify lupos, her love of fluffy tails, and any other Lupo gal operator, and the list goes on!

AFAIK Provence also looks like Scavenger's ex which is an added twist.

There's also Schwarz in love with Ceylon, Skyfire in love with the concept of girls, Franka/Liskarm's flirty-harassment relationship, Sora's infatuation with Texas, and of course Shaw/Crownslayer (snip). Fandom seems to think Chen/Hoshiguma and Grani/Skadi are a thing but I haven't seen anything supporting it in the global version yet

Oddly there's not much BL subtext in this game despite all the yuri subtext (and occasional text). I'm not sure if that's an intentional choice or just a result of the cast being mostly female.

last edited at May 1, 2020 6:46AM

WHY SO ANGSTYYYYY?

kaltsit is implied in lore to basically be the doctor's angry ex-wife

Is this gay?

Shino is obviously at least bi, there are multiple times she makes it clear in her dialogue. One of her classmates also seems to have a thing for her. It's treated as a fluffy sort of thing though, not a major plot thread in the chapters I've read.
I don't think big sis is but it remains to be seen.

Should I read this?

Yes. It's great.

last edited at Apr 2, 2020 4:20AM

Edit: Actually, now that I think about it, the whole premise of this manga is a woman being sexually harassed by anothe woman is comedy gold.

Switching up the genders to (intentionally or otherwise) draw attention to how messed up some romance classic tropes are is pretty common in comedy/comedy-adjacent manga at this point. Nozaki-kun did it with Kashima and Hori (the standard trope with the Funny Abusive wife and the Idiot Husband), Usotsuki Lily does it with the main couple (in both crossdressing and non-crossdressing variants and in a couple cases explicitly saying 'wait, this looks fucked up'), and more than a few traditional yuri series on dynasty do it too. Kuzushiro uses this trope a lot.

It's kind of interesting how easy it is to just write it off as romance comedy until you realize we were just taught that this stuff is okay and funny even though it's often not. Alongside that, these kinds of abuse are common in the real world and treated as minor or hilarious just like in fiction, which is pretty harmful. I appreciate it when the work appears to be self-aware about that, though I don't know if the author is doing that here...

last edited at Feb 11, 2020 7:55AM

Taking bets on whether demonic pacts were mentioned in ch02 because one of the girls is going to use one as an inadvisable revenge tool in an upcoming chapter

The bit about custom engineering a bullet designed for a precise, reliable, near-instant suicide is extremely direct and dark even by Sayman standards. Makes me wonder if this story is more personal to him somehow

How is groupie girl able to keep her powers then? Maybe she's not really in love but merely just infatuated? Or maybe she's already losing her powers. That would explain why she can't fly her broom.

The idea of love coming in many forms/variants is common in western philosophy and eventually got introduced to Japan in the early 1900s, so it would make sense if the "love" here refers to a specific form of love or the side effects of that form. [snip]

Are you referring to the old Greek storge, philia, eros, and agape or to one of the later theories? Just curious.

It's been a while since I did my reading on this so my memory isn't super clear, but it was definitely a mix of the old greek hierarchy along with some more-modern thinking - Passionate Friendship goes into depth on this if I recall right because of its overlap with Class S and some similar concepts (https://www.amazon.com/Passionate-Friendship-Aesthetics-Girls-Culture/dp/0824836383) - the idea that class S relationships could prepare girls for marriage by introducing them to some (but not all) of the forms of love.

If I can find it on my bookshelves I'll try to find the section I'm thinking of, the authors go into one or two formative works from that time period that explored the (relatively uncommon in Japanese fiction until that point, apparently?) themes. I believe one of them was a story about a relationship between a teacher and a female student (which would have been even more controversial then than now, most likely), where the love between him and his spouse was contrasted with the "different" love he held for the student.

Edit: Found it, the novel I mentioned above is cited on page 25, "Futon" by Tayama Katai.

last edited at Dec 8, 2019 8:34PM

This author's specialty is yaoi.

It shows. They don't know how to write yuri.

I mean realistically speaking any author is going to have some weak spots if only because they don't have enough lived experiences to deeply grasp everything. Maybe if you had a multi-author writing team or something. The author's focus and specialization here means this isn't going to be a world-class Yuri Story, but that's fine isn't it? This is an ensemble cast featuring people across the spectrum and it's clearly not trying to downplay the L side of the spectrum.

I'm certainly not going to hold weaker depictions of lesbian relationships against the author if she's straight or ace...

Most manga featuring trans themes that get adapted into english are pretty weak in the same fashion, because they're written by people without the lived experience to go from. They have to go off friends' second hand stories or research, which is really difficult! There are trans people writing manga or LNs about their experiences in japan, but a lot of them don't get localized right now (that's changing, thankfully) and some of them simply don't want to write about being trans. I think that's valid and something we have to accept when trying to engage with the LGBT content we do get over here: A lot of it's going to be deeply flawed and a lot is going to be more heavily weighted towards BL or GL.

One example you're probably familiar with if you frequent dynasty: I consider YUI_7 a world class GL artist (though her plots are a bit... confusing...) and while she's trans she hasn't written about it in her work at all (I asked her about that on Twitter and she was kind enough to answer). I don't know whether she's a lesbian either, I don't recall her disclosing that anywhere in public. Whether she is or not I think her work is good.

last edited at Dec 8, 2019 8:40AM

How is groupie girl able to keep her powers then? Maybe she's not really in love but merely just infatuated? Or maybe she's already losing her powers. That would explain why she can't fly her broom.

The idea of love coming in many forms/variants is common in western philosophy and eventually got introduced to Japan in the early 1900s, so it would make sense if the "love" here refers to a specific form of love or the side effects of that form. Groupie girl is showing us a possessive/jealous form of love - obsession/infatuation/etc - which doesn't seem to be the kind that suppresses powers in this series, at least not yet.

I could see the loss of power being connected to sacrificial love, a kind often associated with parents being willing to throw themselves away to protect their children. That shows up frequently in spousal relationships too. If the problem is witches falling in love with ordinary people - or men, in any case - you could imagine a logical reasoning for their magical powers to vanish: Becoming ordinary allows them to live in ordinary society or raise non-witch children who won't be persecuted. If that's the case we're eventually going to see that all the teachers at the magic academy are either single or no longer witches, and that all the witches' parents are single or can't use magic anymore.

We'll see if the other lead actually loses her powers, and whether it's just because she can't stop viewing the Normal Person Lead as someone who can only be close with a non-witch. Magic being an issue of confidence or state of mind seems like something that's going to happen here since the ordinary lead failed to use magic in every situation before the end.

last edited at Dec 8, 2019 8:33AM

I don't know if Dynasty just has no particular rules about how edgy content can get (which, okay I guess?) but this is maybe the worst thing I've ever seen on this site. And it's not particularly abusive or violent or something it's just... an elementary schooler? Happy Sugar Life was brutal but this feels worse in a weird way because of the framing.

I've enjoyed most of Itou Hachi's other work too despite how much she leans into age gap stuff, but idk. oof. I was really surprised to click this on Recently Added and see what it was.

last edited at Nov 2, 2019 8:52PM

This setting gave me stress flashbacks lol...

Amen that!

Also, people can life weights and read at the same time?! My life is a lie. I need to incorporate this into my day

Multi-tasking like that isn't too bad if they're not both taxing your brain in the same way. I can sing while reading if I already know the song. (Singing while playing an instrument is kinda similar as well even if it's not the same as reading)

That felt like the exactly the same scene from 1 x 1/2 but with Haru witnessing a feverish Midori. What is it about fevers and the subconscious state?

If you get a high enough fever your brain stops working right, sort of like you're dreaming. So a lower fever + normal dreaming is probably pretty weird too. I had a dangerously high fever once and being awake was extremely strange.