"I'm . . . not serious enough about her." Not my favorite line.

I know that Xiaoen is often gleefully full of crap (much of the dialogue this time either is about that or demonstrates that), but I'm not sure what minimizing her interest in Xingyuan accomplishes here. And I know that the MCs have been doing a dance around the matter of how "serious" their relationship is, or should be.

Maybe I just expected Xiaoen to send a "hands off my girl!" message, and instead this felt like she was selling out her own feelings. But a bit of a disappointment to me.

C’mon, folks—give Tsukushi a little time to process here. We already know that she takes a bit longer to emotionally process than the average person.

She’ll catch on eventually—like the next Ice Age, maybe.

“I’m not interested in being a dom.”

Noooooo, that’s perfectly obvious, dear. You’re simply being accommodating. Because you just can’t help being a people-pleaser.

Nice story, but the title should be “The Thing That Binds You And Me.”

English speakers have been conditioned to shy away from the use of “me” in compounds like this, but it’s easy to figure out the correct pronoun form simply by dropping the other term.

For example, “My mom and ____ went to the mall.” Unless they’re Tarzan of the Apes, a native speaker would never say, “Me went to the mall.” It’s “My mom and I.”

Same here. Unless the person is a Rastafarian, they wouldn’t say, “The thing that binds I.”

Still, a very nice story.

It needs to be mentioned that the editor in charge of "How To Break a Triangle", Kusunoki Tatsuya, was also in charge of "Bloom Into You".

If you see similarities in some developments, it may not be an accident.

One thing both series have in common is an implausible (or in this case, so far unexplained supernatural) premise that takes a very distant back seat to character development. (I've always said that YagaKimi's "I'll fall in love with you basically at first sight because you can't fall in love with me" set-up was borderline preposterous, yet it led to one of the best-told stories I have ever read in any medium.)

This series theoretically could turn into a Qualia the Purple-type "Erika Transforms Into a Cosmos-Spanning Mage Altering Fundamental Aspects of Reality Via Tanabata Wishes" story.

But I suspect not.

So what exactly should Erika do? Just disappear?

Yes :)

This is a joke, of course, but I do believe that Erika is being a hypocrite. I really hope she won't be endgame, regardless of whether the other two stay together or not.

I guess technically it’s “hypocrisy” whenever you profess some publicly approved or benign attitude that you don’t really believe, but a lot of times that just amounts to being a participating member of society, like when an athlete says, “good luck!” to a rival before a competition, or you say, “Have a good day” to someone when you don’t particularly care what kind of day they have. The important thing about a possible charge of “hypocrisy” is that you don’t then do anything to make that person’s day worse.

Whatever her interior feelings, at this point Erika is not actively (or even passively) doing anything to hinder the Aya/Koto relationship. As the above question implies, there’s literally nothing she can do in order to be a “better person.”

Well, nothing bad so far in their past, but something must have happened to cause this rift between them. Maybe Tianli's crush fell for Xingyuan instead?

I thought Xingyuan’s “You don’t have to take it [the secret of her sexual preference] that seriously” line was notable. It suggests that Tianli later outs her for some reason but perhaps without anticipating what the full consequences turn out to be.

This chapter made me re-read the whole series from the beginning. (I had entirely forgotten that early faux-confession scene on the park bench.) So many excellent touches, including the wonderful helpers: as others have mentioned, Hinoka’s all-star ally Mom, Sara and Yuu (who seem like a real couple in their own right, not just a plot device to help the MCs), and even Sara’s sister Rumi acting as wingwoman to the wingwomen.

The story also seems much less repetitive when read all at once rather in 5-page chunks—you can see more of the (incremental, to be sure) progress being made rather than just focusing on the sometimes frustrating chapter-ending blocks/cliffhangers.

And yes, props to the scanlators for posting these last 3 chapters all at once rather than having us wait over the course of several weeks to get this lovely payoff. Thanks, and well-played, folks.

It would be great if the manga got back to their relationship instead of all this musician angst drama. There's still hope, I guess.

????

This has always been about their relationship. Aya just married Koga, fer cryin’ out loud.

Maybe one day the Dynasty forums will learn that ambiguity and incompleteness have been extremely common themes in Japanese art for millennia.

That doesn't mean they have to like it! lol

Sure, but at least they shouldn't act like it's a result of authorial mistake. The ambiguity is clearly The Point.

Obviously, for a number of readers explicitly depicted yuri, ratified by kisses and/or other physical intimacy, preferably naked, is the One and Only Point, and anything else is an offense against, well, something . . .the universe, themselves, the grand and ancient bylaws of yuri, or something.

I personally wouldn’t want all yuri to be like this, but I’m very glad some stories are like this.

Takamine - Dense and cowardly. This adorable little idiot probably hasn't crystalized her feelings yet but instinctively places herself everywhere Sakura is.

Actually, Takamine isn’t so little. jk!

Seriously, I agree with all your points and I thought this one was especially well-expressed. Takamine seems to keep all her feelings at arm’s length (at best).

And sometimes what looks like “cowardice” (OK, is cowardice) is also a function of a kind of emotional intelligence, of understanding the potential stakes involved in putting yourself out there with all your vulnerabilities. It’s hard enough finding good friends to go ahead and risk those relationships by changing the terms to romantic.

It’s also not easy writing such feel-good, wholesome yuri with an edge of real emotional drama. It’s nice to see it done well.

Maybe one day the Dynasty forums will learn that ambiguity and incompleteness have been extremely common themes in Japanese art for millennia.

That doesn't mean they have to like it! lol

This chapter is so freaking healing, I think I overdosed.

Off to a good start, but the protagonist’s hypertelorism sure kills the mood sometimes.

But characters with eyes 4 times larger than irl you're OK with?

did you really whataboutism on the fact that even for the standard big eyes characters style, it STILL LOOKS WEIRD????

even i though it was weird how her eyes look

"Looks weird" is in the eye of the beholder. And some people's moods die more easily than others'.

^
I dunno, the shear levels of hubris she's giving off makes me think this whole scheme of hers is gonna come crashing down on her head.
Will prepare the popcorn in...a month or so

I agree with that. But straight-up stalking turned out to be basically an age-gap meet-cute in 14-sai no Koi, as well as a bunch of other benign things. So I dunno.

I just wanted to step in and remind everyone once again that stories by this mangaka, including the one that this was spun-off from, routinely include an enormous amount of normalized surveillance—people following, spying on, and what to normal humans would be considered a criminal level of stalking (at least) characters without other people batting an eye. It’s treated like curiosity or interest or something.

Things might end up being different this time—this is pretty blatant behavior. I wouldn’t put too much money on it, though.

last edited at Jan 28, 2024 1:46PM

I'm very interested how the author will present this story and explain phenomena when someone is completely pulled out from time and returned again

I certainly could end up being totally wrong, but at this point I'm not certain that the author ever will present any explanation for Aya's disappearance/reappearance at all, except maybe something hand wavy at the end like "the mysteries of Tanabata, star-crossed lovers, something, something . . .".

Which is fine. This could well end up being a very good story by just concentrating on the relationships among the characters--other manga series have featured weirder premises than this without worrying too much about the nuts and bolts of how those premises work.

There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy, after all. Or so I am given to understand.

last edited at Jan 25, 2024 2:39PM

But it's not just "missing person is found," but "missing adolescent returns after 7 years completely unchanged physically and mentally."

Sounds like a hoax to me. :-P

Cue the crowds of paparazzi mobbing her while shouting, "Ushio-san! Look this way! Ushio-san, why won't you come clean to the public about where you really were? Aren't you really part of a sex-slave ring?" etc.

Seriously, I know this story just wants to bracket off the question of what exactly happened to Aya (at least for now), but the "rabid press horde publicly hounds innocent person" scene is so ubiquitous in Japanese and other Asian media that I can't help imagining how it fit in here.

last edited at Jan 25, 2024 12:57PM

I'll just leave this here: https://findmyparent.org/country_page/japan/

It's a difference in culture I guess. Family issues are considered highly private. Police probably didn't spread the news.

She's over 20 and so not considered a child anymore. She has no family, but some people vouched for her and she's not homeless. What else are they supposed to do?

Sure, it all be explained away any number of ways--as Erika says in Chapter 2: "Supernatural or whatever . . . ."

But it's not just "missing person is found," but "missing adolescent returns after 7 years completely unchanged physically and mentally." And there are no parents or other family involved at all.

As the former classmate says, "Quite the outlandish tale indeed."

So, is there any adult beside Koto, Erika and their gang that know about Aya's condition? Local police or child service for example? Or they keep silent about it?

Child service? She's officially 21. There are records of her. She exists.

Who would believe "I traveled magically through time"?

As far the authorities are concerned, she's an adult and can handle herself.

Yeap. That police officer they talked to was only concerned about her "missing person" status. It was like:

PO: "Okay so her name is Ushio Aya, she went missing at 14, now she's back and she's 21. She's an adult and she's not missing anymore. She claims she wasn't abducted or anything, so there's no criminal case. I'm closing the missing person file. That's it, thank you, good bye."
Aya: "But... what should I do now?!?"
PO: "Get a job, bum."

Right, not even,

PO: "So, just out of curiosity, where ya been for those 7 years?"
Aya: ". . ."
PO: "OK, well then, stay out of trouble. See ya."

I still think the Japanese reality-TV/tabloid-documentary people are really falling down on the job here.

"Yui-chan to Tomoka-chan"? I dunno--that's gonna take some getting used to.

Of course, not a problem when they're naked together. . .

Fluffy nude cuddling fluff in their own fluffy abode—that’s more f*cking like it.

You were “so full of expectation” because you’re a horny little lesbian, Shun.

Maybe not as horny as Hinata, at least not yet. But getting there.

Off to a good start, but the protagonist’s hypertelorism sure kills the mood sometimes.

But characters with eyes 4 times larger than irl you're OK with?

She definitely could've worded that better lol, it's valid for her to not want to associate with her anymore as friends after confessing but making it seem like an ultimatum made this bad for the both of them

Well, a confession between two best friends/childhood friends kind of inherently is an ultimatum—it’s trying to get what you want at the risk of losing what you have, which is why so many useless MCs agonize about it so much.

In this case, it’s a borderline-yandere character who makes that dilemma explicit. And I agree with ColdGoldLazarus—this (especially the choking part) read at first like it was going for black comedy but then didn’t commit to that bit, so it ends up feeling awkward and ambiguously sinister.