Yes, she's been really transparent about the work she's been doing on the redraw (she's moving very quickly on the drafts) and writing a lot about the changes that were made. I think maybe there's a desire to prove that the work is technically good enough to be published, but I don't think she has any illusions that that would happen. When she brought it in to publishers in February, it seems like it was already well received, but the blanket prohibition on the theme made it impossible. I think it's closer to "if I'm going to stay self-published, and if I'm going to continue the story from here, I'm going to make the foundation of the work consistent in quality before building on it further", and while you can argue whether or not that could be demotivating/is too much work, make it feel too polished, etc, it seems like a pretty well-reasoned decision to me.

I'm honestly kind of curious - would a Vol 10 that just wraps everything up neatly have been preferable? I guess that's kind of a false choice, but I always got the impression that that was Taiyaki's original plan before this, and I was worried that there really wasn't enough space to give any satisfying conclusion. When she announced the redraw, she explained how it's not just a "yuri work", but even if that was all it was, I'm always a little disappointed when series end without really exploring the new relationship and its dynamic, and I can't imagine it would do much justice to this story.

last edited at Aug 16, 2020 12:48PM

I did end up sending Taiyaki a message with some of the sentiments here, namely that while there were worries about the particularities of her work being lost and the momentum going into the next volume, above all it was felt that (while it might be expected from the fan perspective) her existing technical skill is excellent, her passion makes it stand out, and we support her and her hard work. So if you're anxious about something, know that at least she probably has it in mind. I don't know how much she'd want me to share, so the summary is she really appreciates all the overseas fans and wishes it was easier to communicate, and she may be doing something in the future that'd be helpful in that respect.

Now that some of the redraw work is actually up, I think I can understand better the approach she's taking than when I read the first announcement. It's behind a (very small! so go support her on Fanbox!) paywall, but the first chapters were arguably the ones that needed the most radical work, and she's putting a lot of care and thought into each change. It's clearly still a ton of work, but it appears as if she wants to go much further with the story and with that in mind it makes more sense to do it now. The Vol 9 extras should be pretty enlightening.

last edited at Aug 11, 2020 3:00AM

I think Taiyaki should see these opinions. Maybe you two could write them on her twitter?

Also, she is planning to start re-writing right now and not in the future.

I'll definitely think about it, or at least asking her about some of this. We talk occasionally so I don't think it'd be weird, but she seems a bit shaken up recently so I'll give it some time.

Did I miss something in the post about the timeline? From the last update, I thought her whole goal for doing this was to spend the 6 months trying to gain the skills that would would be necessary to re-edit it in a realistic time frame in the first place with a team. I figured she'd spend the meantime finishing the last volume, and return once those skills were there: it's a small amount of extra work, but you have a completed draft to work off. If she's... starting re-editing when she doesn't know if she'll be able to re-edit yet.. eek. I completely understand the need to refocus the work eventually, but I can't think of a worse time.

Part of me sees statements like "イチトニブンノイチを親子百合界のやが君にする" and wants to be supportive, but the "works in a creative field" part of me sighs, because she's already made "百合界のイチトニブンノイチ", and I don't think she truly understands how big of a deal that is. When she was discussing how the reaction was split between fans that say "this is amazing" and the rest, I began to wonder if maybe recognizing an unrealistically uncritical fanbase might lead her to put more stock in professional criticism than might be constructive for the work.

Off topic, but if anyone knows how to contact someone about every post I make tripping the spam filter, please let me know.... I tried in the Rules thread and didn't get a response.

last edited at Jul 24, 2020 10:09PM

Re-editing it had been in her plans for a long time, and I think everyone assumed at least the first chapters would get redone somehow when that happened. I didn't expect her to redraw the entire thing.

My takeaway was that she received professional criticism that while it's a very engaging work, it's very convoluted at times. The kind of story she's trying to do is difficult to accomplish (lots of character threads simultaneously), and she's had the attitude that all the characters needed to be fleshed out as if they were main characters. Additionally, she came to recognize that it's "yuri manga" in a secondary way - she wants to write about human drama, the differences of romantic vs. maternal love, and so on, and was told that part wasn't coming through.

Since she feels uniquely blessed to have a readership that enjoys and appreciates the work despite the unevenness, she's trying to balance the two perspectives, and this is the solution that she came up with. It does appear it's going to be a significant rework and will focus more tightly on Ayako and Asuka, so some scenes will change but the essence will still be there.

There are some legitimate narrative criticisms: the Miyuki arc drags on quite a bit, characters like Jun/Rui (Akira less so) appear and then fade into the background once they prompt a realisation. There's a lot of jumping back and forth that's hard to follow, so it would benefit from the side-chapters being folded in. But I'm a little worried she's falling into the perfectionist-artist trap of realizing the end is in sight and suddenly being much harder on herself about the work as a whole than is healthy.

I think it's wonderful that she's receiving criticism at a professional level and that's the way to improve as a professional, but I feel that Taiyaki's work has a unique charm that may come from her being more of an outsider. I totally disagree that it doesn't express its themes effectively, and I'm concerned that focusing on Asuka/Ayako more may actually exacerbate some of the current issues. I hope this is a long term goal for after the series is finished, once she learns to manage an editing team effectively as she mentioned in the last update.

last edited at Jul 16, 2020 7:55PM

I thought that since she has books on Amazon, she had some small deal with some publisher or something like that, so everything is done just by her?

I'm pretty sure she handles at least the listings herself, she tried to list Kimi no Kimochi at one point and that didn't go well. That's been in continuous print, though, and Let's Meet Again Tomorrow is back as well. I don't know how the actual printing process works, but I get the impression the burden is mostly administrative, and a lot of it has to do with her wanting to do the future re-edited physical release rather than keep it web-only. However, when trying to find a publisher she said that discontinuing physical copies was her backup plan, so there must be some difficulty there.

Also, on the topic of the LINE stickers, the Japanese version can be bought in the US too. When they first came out, I talked to her because they were region-locked (I was concerned this might mean the English ones may accidentally get locked as well), and I don't know what magic button she pressed but she made it happen.

I didn't get if she would try to do a release or two in that period.

I think she's going to try to get back on a normal pace, but even with her tenacity, while she's doing this I'm not really sure if it's realistic. Hopefully I'm wrong, but even with the cliffhanger, I'd be happy to see more shorter works like we've been getting.

last edited at Jul 11, 2020 1:55AM

uhhh... so is it bad that i now want AyakoAsukaAkira ot3

Of course not, so does Akira!

This is fucking amazing. This is breaking new ground. I love it.

Just pointing out that in the raw the grandmother asks Sayaka to call her okaa-*sama*

Hah! Thanks for that detail.

Out of curiosity, in the same area, what is "Hyes" translated from? I mean, I know it's meant to be 'yes' but how is it written in Japanese?

ひゃい ("hyai")

Shinjuku Hanamuraya here is riffing on the famous real-life Shinjuku Nakamuraya, right? Hence Taiyaki going by 中村たいやき now as well.

edit: Oh, I totally forgot her being excited once because Nakamuraya's official account followed her on Twitter at some point, so that's definitely it.

last edited at Jun 23, 2020 4:01PM

Fanbox shows English natively for me when I checked so I always thought that's what English speakers were using, but if you use Fantia there's an auto-translate (in the top-right) that works okay. I had written a bit about how some of the more poorly-explained-in-English features work on Fantia but the board keeps flagging my replies (even those not about this subject) as spam... However, if anyone has questions about how it (beyond what's already been covered) or buying the manga overseas works, I'll try to answer them, because figuring it out myself was difficult.

last edited at Jun 12, 2020 3:39PM

She seems to be okay with fan works in general, and also seems to really like them. If I remember correctly, there's at least one person that writes fanfiction that she retweets occasionally. It's crossed my mind a few times to write something, but I felt Miyuki was the only side character that was distant enough from the main plot (there's still a lot of mystery behind Akira that feels like it could be very consequential, for example), but that also had enough presence that her motivations and character were clear enough to work off of, and I'm not that interested in her.

last edited at Jun 6, 2020 1:37AM

I still can't get over Yuuki's other parent in the diagram being cut off by both the frame and a line about her mom's precise job title, Taiyaki is the best

The title is 姉の娘と正しく在りたい世界の私, the Japanese store link is here. It looks interesting!

last edited at Apr 16, 2020 4:27PM

On that subject, if anyone's interested in buying the series, I was looking at the digital editions recently (note that there are no previous volumes on Fantia/Pixiv because of Amazon's seller TOS) and Amazon offered me half the first 4 books' price in points toward a future book purchase which should be usable on the next 4. So I thought that was a good way of picking the whole thing up and supporting her. I really hope she can find a publisher soon, her tenacity (self-publishing for years, meeting with a couple publishers but which fell through, now this situation) is super impressive.

edit: I should also mention that if you've ever added a US address, you have to switch your digital content region to Japan separately in "manage devices and content" for digital books to show up, otherwise they'll default to your home region and show as "Currently unavailable". This tripped me up because I had a Japanese address on file for other purchases, but the digital download region is a separate setting.

last edited at Apr 14, 2020 2:09PM

Taiyaki wanted everyone overseas to know that updates might be slow for a little bit. Because of the coronavirus, she's been really busy helping out at her family's restaurant. They converted from being an Italian restaurant to doing okonomiyaki because sales were slow, and from her following on Twitter plus a few famous VAs' retweets, this generated a ton of press (TV news, etc). They're doing really really well, but things with 1 1/2 might run a little behind schedule.

I'm getting the "Your post has been detected as spam, please contact us if you think this has been an error." message trying to make a reply, the only thing in my post was a markdown spoiler tag and it doesn't say who to contact...?

Between Comiket, her Yuri Drill work, and Comitia, I think she's just really busy right now. She's really sweet and it's great to see her doing well (the Yuri Drill thing in particular seemed like a big deal to her), so I'm happy to wait even if it's particularly difficult at this point in the story.