And there we have it. Certainly not much of a father, but not the asshole many expected either, to the point that in the end he never even touched the money.

On one hand, that does say a lot about him. On the other hand, he did hold a woman at KNIFE POINT and (temporarily) stole his friend’s car so he wouldn’t have to deal with the consequences of his actions, so I feel like it’s still fair to call him an asshole.

I absolutely adore how giddy Hinata is in this chapter. She’s literally bouncing in her seat in some of the panels here.

Hinata is thankfully not a cheat! Though to be fair if we took bartending as the relationship it is analogous for it does paint a very fun picture wherein Hinata is exclusive to Naori but Naori is open to pretty much all female ogres. Lmao

So you could say that Hinata is the leading lady in Naori’s Harem of Hooch, then?

so how come yuzu didn't mind extreme skinship in the past and now that it's revealed that she was in love since ages ago she's so self-conscious? it's like her character has changed tremendously in only 2 chapters, no consistency at all

If you’re referring to what they did when they were little, that might just be an example of childhood innocence. If your referring to Yuzu’s actions earlier in the story, it seems like she had done a pretty good job suppressing her feelings until the cultural festival, so I would just assume that she’s becoming too conscious of it now that her feelings have welled back up. Either way, I wouldn’t call it completely inconsistent, just somewhat.

I don’t know what happened to the pink girl’s legs, but they are freaking me out.

I don't understand how people would see this as pointless at all, it's just... puzzling. Does the story suddenly have no meaning now?

Yes. As they betrayed the primary point of the story. I have the same opinion about Your Lie in April btw.

What do you believe the primary point of the story is?

I don't understand how people would see this as pointless at all, it's just... puzzling. Does the story suddenly have no meaning now?

As for me, probably one of the best works I've read tbh

In fairness, I’ve had moments where I’ve criticized a story with an ending that made me upset in some way, especially when I was holding out hope for a happier ending. A lot of times it’s less of a “here’s my well thought-out critique of the work” and more “fuck you for making me feel these emotions!” I can’t actually speak for the people calling it pointless, but that’s what it’s been sounding like to me.

Well everything was pointless. All of that for nothing she dies, end of the story. It was too long for what its worth.

Death comes for us all eventually, but it is never the point. The point is the journey we take before it, and the people we meet along the way.

Fuck.

Kaori has to be the unluckiest name in anime/manga. This, Akira, Strawberry Panic, A Lie in April...

I mamed my siamese cat Kaori and it just got ran over.

I’m so sorry for your loss

it's becoming increasingly ridiculous that "oni" is being localized as "ogre". they're two very distinct creature types.

Why? Both are hulking, supernaturally strong, human-like monsters with a penchant for cannibalism. There’re differences, of course, but not enough to detract from the story. Plus, “ogre,” or “demon” tend to be the two most common translations for “oni” in English, and the former fits better here than the latter.

Photographic memory, good observational skills, strong enough to lift another person, lightning fast reflexes, and an interesting aptitude for magic . . . .

The strength, observation skills, and reflexes could potentially have been developed as survival mechanisms from whatever hell her "adoptive parents" put her through. Her magic may be some kind of "monkey see, monkey do better" baloney, but I'm going to assume from the pacing and immediate introduction of a rival that that's not the case - she was probably just kinda slapped together to be able to handle just about anything with little to no character development.

Ah, well, it's still interesting :)

Yeah, the first chapter had me thinking the MC was going to have to rely on her observational skills to survive the world of the nobility and all their scheming, low-power badass style, but now she can apparently use magic at an almost expert level simply by seeing someone do it once or twice (despite having almost no familiarity with it before said chapter). Add to that the fact that how unintentionally charming she apparently is, and my Mary Sue alarm is starting to go off.

I’ll probably give it a couple more chapters to see if this is all just a case of early story weirdness and my suspicions are wrong (which, considering the pacing so far, might constitute the entire story), but I’m not holding my breath.

TFW you’re so prone to overthinking things that losing intelligence can be considered a buff.

These two are taking the term “idiot couple” to a whole new level and I am here for it.

last edited at Dec 21, 2023 1:05AM

Hmm… you know, this is pretty baseless speculation right now, but I wonder if Lord was faced with an Azul-type situation when she was on her “magical girl hunt.” Baiser and Lord were already pretty direct foils for each other as sadist leaders, so it wouldn’t be out of the question for there to be a masochistic blue foil to Azul who was actually allowed to break, a la chapter 10.

Is… is that ghost hunting down Aizawa’s idol group one-by-one? I know this series had a dark side, but zoinks.

Ah yes, the good ol nebulous bloodspewing Japanese cough
At least we MIGHT know about how she died

In fairness, the Bloody Cough of Doom is a pretty common trope throughout the world. Even Shakespeare made use of it it. It makes sense, since coughing up blood is generally (although not always) a bad sign no matter where you are.

…So, like, is the baby biological, or is there just a second, smaller robot inside of the sex robot waiting for human DNA to activate it? If it’s the latter, why does it need DNA? If it’s the former, how is the robot going to keep the fetus alive for 9 months? Will the baby be part-robot and part-biological? Is Nadeshiko part-biological? Is Akane also a robot and doesn’t know it? Why does that last page make the science lady’s grandchild plan seem so sinister? I have so many questions, and this thing seems content to answer NONE of them!

last edited at Dec 18, 2023 8:34AM

I wonder if Elsa gets the curse and the Villainess system is part of her punishments/complications? It specifically desires to make her life miserable. Seems it could go either way. Interesting stuff.

I’m actually wondering if the Villainess System is the curse’s attempt to make itself whole after being split between the two. Remember Chapter 1, where a “mare” is trying to pull Else off a building while the Villainess system tells Yvonne to either push her or watch her jump? Maybe the whole point of the Villainess System is to either get one of the girls killed or trying to accelerate its progression in one or both of them (maybe misery can speed up the curses’s progression)? After all, if they do both possess the curse, and one of them dies or enter the eternal slumber before having any heirs of their own, the other girl would likely be the one to inherit the rest of the curse. Maybe the curse even realizes that Yvonne has been isekai’d into that role, and is choosing to present itself as a gamified system specifically to trick her into complying? I don’t know, but I’m interested in seeing where this is going

I am guessing the correct way to deal with the curse and solve the time travel plot is for Elsa and Yvonne to split the curse between them.

Share the neural load, so to speak. I'm pretty sure the two of them are drift compatible...

I never knew how badly I wanted a Pacific Rim-Please Bully Me Miss Villainess crossover until today.

Fuck, that was sweeter than the candy.

She just dug a hole in her own grave? I don't think that's quite how the saying goes.

Not even remotely, but it still works if you consider that Ruka dug her own grave when she first brought up the sefure thing, which she has now managed to deepen. Thus, a hole in the grave.

"I wanted to fall in love, now I have regrets" -> "Ok, become a cupid and never get the chance to fall in love ever again because rules say so"

Now I wonder who is forcing this on the girls. It's clearly not with the best intentions in mind. x.x

I mean, last chapter it was stated that they do all that work in order to get a second chance at life (and thus, love). It’s possible the story could take a dark turn into “they’re lying to you” territory, but’s it also conceivable that being a cupid is a sort of purgatory for souls who want to try again.

Well, that’s a hell of a way to kill a character. Like, I figured she was going to be hit by a car or something, not impaled by falling rebar. I have to give the author credit for going with a less tropey death. I also like how the gash on Koharu’s forehead became the red streak in her hair. I wonder if that’ll become significant later on.

also i gotta wonder, what happens if there's literally no compatibility? like does it fail to have any effect, or what

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/love_bullet_ch00#60
Based on this page, I imagine it would just have no effect if both sides were completely incompatible. So you’d have a wasted shot and possible collateral, but little else.

What I find interesting is that in most media and so forth getting shot by the local cupid type of thing is full on love-of-your-life you don't get over it kind of love, whereas here it seems that if it stays one sided long enough, one can. Makes some of the collateral damage of cupid fights less tragic, I suppose.

Also worth noting that OG Cupid had two kinds of arrows; the lead ones either ended love or made someone outright dislike a person. Makes me wonder if there will be anti-cupids or fallen ones consumed by their jealousy later on.

That anti-cupid would be cool. Something like, “I lost my chance at love, so I cannot allow anyone else to ever love again.” After this chapter, I could even see Aki being revealed to be one of those down the line. Either that, or reappearing in the form of one Koharu’s assignments.

last edited at Dec 5, 2023 11:35PM

I chuckled when I saw a cupid loading a love-Glock, then lost my shit when the love grenade launcher came out. Fire that thing off in a crowded room and you’ve got an instant orgy.

On a related note, heavy weapons cupid is my favorite.

That's a wild concept for a manga.
Though I'm not sure I agree with the result. Her aim was to keep the three of them together, but when two of them will be heartbroken, who knows if that'll work out.

But at least then it’s just two cases of one-sided love. They’ll still be sad for awhile, but it’d make things within the group far less awkward then it would’ve been if two of them got together.

I did think she was going to shoot the other two friends as well, though, so they’d fall in love with each other and close the triangle completely.

Edit: I also just remembered the bit about modern cupids updating their weapons of choice, and now I have the mental image of a bunch of 18th-century cupids marching around with powdered wigs and smoothbore muskets floating around in my head.

last edited at Dec 1, 2023 9:13AM

I like the overall trajectory of the story so far, but the secret test of character with the amnesia tea was a bit off-putting. Why some people seem to think that emotional manipulation is a better gauge of character than open and honest communication is beyond me.

They summed it up pretty well in this chapter, I feel. Open and honest communication is ideal, but the problem is that both of things require the good faith participation of all parties involved. A person who doesn’t want you to know something can lie, dodge questions, or just say whatever it is they feel you want to hear, and it’s not always easy to know when someone is doing that. When a person doesn’t think they’re being observed/tested, however, they tend to be a bit more honest. Thus, the secret test of character.

Granted, I’m not sure if such measures were necessary here, but it is a major family secret, so the paranoia and least makes sense from a story perspective. My question is what exactly they were planning to do if he failed the test. Like, were they planning on to give him a second cup of tea? He already thinks you poisoned the first cup, so why would he accept any other drinks?

Oh, so that hooded lady wasn’t Elsa!

It was her mom.

So you think Elsa is Olivia's daughter? That would explain her demonic traits, but why would Olivia even have a child? She has shown zero interest in anything except magic and her teacher's legacy so far.

I mean, the demonic traits, the natural talent for magic, the strong resemblance, and the fact that Elsa’s caretaker was a demon. It’s possible that Olivia could have had a child during the period between her master’s funeral and her confrontation with Lena, and simply left it to an orphanage (as you said, her only interest seemed to be saving her teacher).

Although, as I say it, I am starting to like the theory stated above that Elsa could be Olivia’s attempt to reincarnate the Sage (either as a direct reincarnation or as a vessel), since that would explain why demonic activity is starting to pick up. The Sage was supposedly using her spirit to seal the Demon King, and if that spirit is now in Elsa…

I would also count that as being as her “daughter,” albeit not quite in the way I originally thought.

Oh, so that hooded lady wasn’t Elsa!

It was her mom.

My suspicion was that she'd send Maron (i.e. Satou's alter ego, not as Satou) to wrap him around his finger as a ruse, but the way I remember it Maron doesn't cater to male customers, so idk. Maybe her study mate, but she's also not really that close to our leads and I'm not sure Makino would think of her as funny and cute.
I'm just not sure what it's gonna be.

I feel like Makino isn’t clever enough and Satou isn’t emotionally stable enough to successfully execute and get away with such a plan. I personally agree with the people saying it’s going to be Rina, simply because her whole character could be summed up as “Makino+”. She might not be interested in men, but since when has Makino thought that far ahead?

I mean, that’s great for her and all, but I didn’t see her clarify anything at any point after he said “so our engagement is established, then,” which sounds to me like he views her taking the card as accepting his offer. Until that little misunderstanding is cleared up, he is going to continue to view himself as her fiancé, which is bound to cause problems.

It takes two people to be engaged and married. He can think what he wants. That doesn't mean he's her fiance. She didn't hear him, in the last chapter because she was enamored by her thoughts of what she'd buy Mashiro. She never verbally accepted, even wondering why he was still around her and didn't disappear. She's just a (mostly loveable) idiot. In this chapter, she made it crystal clear that she did not consider that an acceptance of anything. So he's not her fiance, just a miscommunication or bad assumption on his part. So, it's mostly "great for him and all," if anything. He can tell people he's her fiance but he'd be wrong. The misunderstanding can cause issues, sure but he's not her fiance. I agree that his role is up in the air. He seems too obviously antagonistic to me but he could team up with the mom.

My point isn’t that they’re actually engaged. Maybe I should’ve put fiancé in quotes. My point is that so long as he thinks they’re engaged, he’s going to be an issue, and once he finds out that they’re not engaged, he might start looking for ways to change that. Plus, the perception that they are engaged could be just as problematic as Makino actually having accepted the engagement.

Tags should just be gone. What people want is full on spoiler summaries for complete series anyway, and tags don't actually serve as in their function as cataloguing content anymore, so better ditch them before further devolvement. People need to be untrained from checklist reading. ^^

What are you talking about? They’re still useful. Speaking personally, I’ve found works that I’ve wanted to reread but have forgotten the names of by searching one of the tags I remembered it having. I never would have found some of them if I just had to go back and search through this site’s entire catalog.

Also, what’s checklist reading?