She really is the platonic ideal of a Yuri-ota character. It would probably be dangerous for a human to be this committed, but fortunately she's an extraterrestrial that doesn't need to eat or sleep. Though apparently she still drinks coffee from a tiny mug...

I will cut her slack because the prince had tried to suffocate her earlier, but clocking a crossdressing person still feels like a lame way to win a fight. Even if the prince is just a cis girl.

Still, from this mangaka, it's kind of interesting to see a less wholesome pairing as a main couple.

On the bright side, this anecdote will go crazy in a lesbian bar

"[If] Misa-san is a lesbian [...] her [male] clients will walk, seeing as men aren't her target market"

I don't know about this. I assume her relationship with Io being exposed will put her position as #1 in jeopardy but... Not because the clients will respect her lack of attraction to men as a lesbian, or even accept it as a fact. At least I would not expect that to be the case in real life. Or is it too harsh to assume at least some of these men would feel "tricked", or pursue her even more persistently?

last edited at Jun 7, 2025 12:17AM

I'm just glad the girlies finally talked in this chapter. I will gladly take the hopium.

One major problem with trying to determine if you like girls by agreeing to an intense fake-dating scenario for 7 days (assuming that anybody would do something like this in real life, and I mean, real life is often stranger than fiction) is that it may be hard to be confident about a positive result unless you end up liking the specific girl you are fake-dating. So the romance wasn't just an inevitability because this is a yuri manga, but the concept of the test stands on shaky legs because the outcome that Nagi wanted to avoid by insisting on strictly 7 days was likely to occur on Manatsu's side in case of a positive result. Maybe even guaranteed since the test concluded in a weekend of comfy domesticity with lovemaking.

Maybe I would not think about this so deeply if Manatsu did not at least on some level seem convinced that the test was 'real' and not only an excuse for fooling around or for something else. Early on she handily dismissed suspicions of Nagi having motivations any deeper than her own curiosity.

As for Nagi's motivations, I suspect she already realized Manatsu was exactly her type before she made the proposal, and that's why she was so concerned with things "getting complicated". I'm intrigued by the subtle ways in which the two of them are not on the same page about this operation and I really want to see a POV chapter with her...

I'm thinking about Pohi bending the rules to cover for Terra despite not being unhappy with her own marriage. Unlike Eda and Diode's mother, she's not the type I would expect to be an ally, and yet... Maybe from the relative security and autonomy of her position, one where her husband is convinced of her loyalty, she can act on her intuitions as a fellow woman and decompa, as well as some of the values she may have carried with her from her home clan.

Just one sentence from this part that might need clarification:

and whether Terra really was discussing boarding a man’s boat after barely a week later despite no prior connection

"after barely a week later": "after" and "later" provide the same meaning. I suggest removing "after", adding a comma after "week", and adding "with him" to the end. It would go: "and whether Terra really was discussing boarding a man’s boat barely a week later [i.e. her split from Diode], despite no prior connection with him"

last edited at May 29, 2025 1:45PM

It's kind of cute to see this kind of casual and self-indulgent short story from the creator of that somber Taisho era yuri

I'm normally not a huge fan of the extremely pushy/stalker type of love interest but I trust Battan to make it interesting. Definitely looking forward to more!

[And from a different comment]

But on the other, she's just so grossly unprofessional that i can't believe she didn't get reported to company
I legit feel so uncomfortable in the way "how this girl even allow to act like this on the job, this is professional setting"

Well yeah, pushy and stalkerish is an understatement. This woman isn't just creepy or a 'red flag'; there are actual man-eating monsters in yuri series (WataTabe, Futsuu to Bakemono) that are better at posing as 'normal' humans than she is. The double page spread in particular is so weird it would feel at home in a horror series.

She's also different from the typical yandere in that she shows little to no deference to the object of her obsession or seeks her approval at all. She's convinced of her own superiority and invincibility, assured in her ability to win over the main character through sheer force, like a classic vampire.

It doesn't count as our first kiss because we're both girls but at the same time we can't show the photos of us kissing to anyone

The creepy lady reminds me of an old school vampire. Very cool

This was a satisfactory ending :)

Edit: wanted to see a non-angsty kiss tho

Yeah it's the ending I wanted basically. Maybe the volume 2 extras show a bit more flirting?

I feel so bad for Toriko but her expressions in this chapter are kind of hot

I'm not saying the chapter was handled well, but I don't think Aya was doing malicious rape. They're basically a couple of 16 year olds re-inventing power-exchange BDSM with no guidance and not enough communication. Aya thinks she's "bought" Marika (CNC) and they have no safeword.

Well, I'm not that invested in calling it that (notice how I've avoided the word so far). My criticism has been about how the scene interacts with the surrounding narrative, so I'm not here to prosecute Aya Fuwa.

Also, not to be too woke or anything, but wouldn't "malicious rape" imply the existence of "benign rape"? I assume you just meant Aya was not acting out of malice, which is fair enough, but that is quite the unfortunate phrasing...

Ch 8 is why that's a bad idea. Fortunately Marika ends up more into it than hurt, but it could have turned out very badly.

I don't think chapter 8 shows it to be a bad idea. Marika would have to be affected in some way, or the story would have to comment on it in some other way, in order to say something about it. ...Not that I would fault a lesbian bodice ripper (shout-out to Me-A Scans for planting "lesbian bodice ripper" in my brain) romcom for not being didactic about the dangers of bodice ripping.

last edited at May 22, 2025 5:58PM

The main character is cute, sure, but the personality mangaka seem to give male characters by default is about as pleasant to me as nails being scraped on blackboard. I mean the male classmate that insists on yelling on every panel, not the crossdressing kid, obviously.

last edited at May 22, 2025 4:57PM

Okay, after rereading a bit, I think I understand the crux of my issue with chapter 8. Marika is feeling really vulnerable in that chapter because she had just seen Aya with another girl, while she's growing more conscious of her own feelings. She meets with Aya anyway, but for the first time she makes it clear that she's not in the mood for the usual stuff.

So I feel like this could have been the time where Aya backs off for once, and asks if Marika is okay. An awkward moment where Marika can't tell her anything without losing their bet then could have been followed by the encounter with Asta and so on. The explanation about Aya's relationship with Asta and Marika figuring out that Aya likes her happens in chapter 9 anyway, so I think their first time as a couple in chapter 10 could have had a bigger impact if their usual routine had been interrupted in chapter 8, leaving the girls and the reader hanging. If Aya, who had liked Marika for a long time, had shown a bit more sensitivity when it mattered.

An alternative is that chapter 8 proceeds the same, but then after the encounter with Asta, Marika could be a little bit more visibly hurt. I mean, right after she convinced herself that it was actually fine that Aya had her way with her as usual despite Marika feeling insecure and clearly saying she wasn't in the mood, a girl shows up calling herself Aya's sex friend. It makes sense that she still won't admit why exactly it hurts to see Aya with someone else, but not even a little choked up, no almost-cry?

Well, people can disagree, and maybe Teren Mikami knows something I don't. I do stand by my take that this plot point was not treated with enough weight, given that while yes, Marika technically protests through all of their previous encounters, the way she refuses in chapter 8 is more serious, so the end result feels like the narrative taking a brief dip into noncon at least.

last edited at May 21, 2025 7:22PM

With the hindsight of a year or two, that one part feels even more surreal. Most of volumes 1-2 conjure a pretty straight-forward smutty romance with a dubcon and "straight girl" conversion theme, but then... The reader is probably not supposed to think anything of what happened in chapter 8-9, and were it a random one-shot I wouldn't either, but the speed at which the story moves on and switches gear to romance and coming-of-age fluff turns it into an elephant in the room for me. I know I'm supposed to forget about it, but... I mean, it's right there.

This is not meant to be criticism exactly, I'm just processing. I find the decision to interrupt the lighthearted lesbian smut with unambiguous sex crimes, only to sweep them under the rug expeditiously, fascinating. It's exactly because the rest of the story is so cute that that part sticks out so much to me. Rather than 'unrealistic' its very randomness makes it feel more 'realistic', even though Teren Mikami, agent of chaos that they are, probably just thought it would be funny.

Ch 8, the 'rape' scene? I think it's mostly confusingly (poorly?) written. It's not just that the story moves past it or forgets about; right in that scene Marika switches from "no" to "let me pleasure you". And then right afterwards they're cuddling and Marika is asking "what do you really think of me?"

Rape, or Marika playing hard to get, or existing consensual non-consent? Aya probably thought it was the second or third. And even Marika's own thoughts don't really clarify her feelings: "if you really hate it that much, just push her away and go home."

In my limited experience with noncon smut, the receiving character's enjoyment of being subjected to non-consensual sex is not a bug but a feature a lot of the time. But what is depicted is still, you know, sexual activity without consent, which is why this kind of thing normally bumps up the darkness level of any long-form story. A random porn oneshot with the standard "no means yes" package has less need to concern itself with continuity or tone, but these girls started out having sex under some form of consensual agreement, then arrived at "no means yes", and finally went back to consensual sex again. It's not that I think Marika 'should' have been traumatized, but there is room between that and a total lack of any serious reflection. (Aya started stripping Marika and fingering her when the latter was having doubts about Aya's intentions. Aya kind of steamrolled her there, much more so than any time before.)

The reason why I also included chapter 9 in the surreal-sex-crime-whiplash is because that's where Marika, the protagonist, finds out that Aya and at least one other girl was sexually exploited by the owner of the lesbian bar where Aya works at. She even reacts with "that's... that's illegal". The story then swiftly turns up the fluff and moves on from this plot point as well like a funny anecdote.

This following up of the sudden, relatively dark plot points with fluffy sweet romance in ch. 10 and after, creates that strange and disorienting effect I mentioned. And yet, I'm not willing to write off the whole series because Mikami's writing has a charm to it, and the central relationship is otherwise pretty easy to like. I'm conflicted, hence the paragraphs.

Also this bartender owns a establishment that serves alcohol, allows minors where she can easily prey on said minors and has several beds set up where she lets said minors have sex in, this shit just gets worse the more I think about it lmao

Yeah, I wonder what Teren Mikami was cooking there. It's such a cheeky movement, and it's dropped in with little to no buildup or resolution.

last edited at May 21, 2025 5:53PM

With the hindsight of a year or two, that one part feels even more surreal. Most of volumes 1-2 conjure a pretty straight-forward smutty romance with a dubcon and "straight girl" conversion theme, but then... The reader is probably not supposed to think anything of what happened in chapter 8-9, and were it a random one-shot I wouldn't either, but the speed at which the story moves on and switches gear to romance and coming-of-age fluff turns it into an elephant in the room for me. I know I'm supposed to forget about it, but... I mean, it's right there.

This is not meant to be criticism exactly, I'm just processing. I find the decision to interrupt the lighthearted lesbian smut with unambiguous sex crimes, only to sweep them under the rug expeditiously, fascinating. It's exactly because the rest of the story is so cute that that part sticks out so much to me. Rather than 'unrealistic' its very randomness makes it feel more 'realistic', even though Teren Mikami, agent of chaos that they are, probably just thought it would be funny.

Fuyou is looking really bleak and I wonder if it's even worse for the girls who are not pseudo-royalty. As much as I hate Meika, the thought that she will probably be stuck there alone soon is still kind of a downer.

last edited at May 18, 2025 4:34PM

For me it's been a surprise that the characters are allowed to be 'bad people' because the art style is so cute. But after re-calibrating my expectations the anime has been quite fun and provides a nice balance to the much more upbeat Rock Lady that also comes out on Thursdays.

last edited at May 18, 2025 3:10PM

It doesn't take much for Luluna to reach into the cookie jar after all. Deeply concerning. Will continue to monitor the situation

It's now Yuni's turn to sit in the cuck chair

Leg girl Suletta

"Sweet mother, I cannot weave. Slender Aphrodite has overcome me with longing for a girl."

The Sappho quote that became literal in chapter 6.

last edited at May 17, 2025 11:13AM

Maybe this sex magic thing is the real reason why it's standard for the saint and the princess to get married

Maybe but they're apparently the only ones ever with the deficiency that one can't cast spells and the other doesn't have magic :P Or maybe their records just suck.

I was just thinking the energy exchange could be useful even without any deficiencies