Meanwhile, a bathhouse visit? Sheesh, this is blatant pandering to baser fan instincts!
. . .
Well? come on, pander to me!

At first I thought Tadokoro would be sad and angry at Nikaidou because, when asked about their relationship, Nikaidou denied that they are girlfriends and said they are just friends.

Then I realized that Tadokoro and Nikaidou are probably on the same wavelength when it comes to coming out... Tadokoro is prolly very happy that Nikaidou kept their relationship out a secret.

I'm not sure either of them saw it as denial or "keeping their relationship a secret". She didn't say "We're just friends, nothing weird nope nope nope", she said "Our relationship is VERY FRIENDLY". Just how friendly? Friendly enough that she was holding Tadokoro-san possessively as she said it. I think in her mind she was saying "She's mine" in a less-embarrassing, subtler Japanese sort of way, kind of like one might indicate "I love you" by saying "The moon is beautiful tonight".

And Tadokoro-san probably more or less got it and was happy. It's just that eyepatch girl is not mega-subtle and didn't catch the signal.

The scanlators pages at the end of the chapters are epically hilarious

Poor lonely Karen. :D

last edited at Jul 25, 2021 4:07AM

Well, that was a metric buttload of karma, wasn't it?
Either that or Sakurako-san's chi is so powerful she was able to direct him into self-injury without touching him.

So Ghika is so pissed off that she threw a cup into the TV screen and broke it. Meanwhile I doubt we will see this henchman again, as per Ghika's "No second chance" policy.

I begin to feel, just my guess, that Ghika was turned unwillingly by Aria originally (if you recall there is a scene in a middle east desert with everyone dies except a child). Ghika's full name is Arabic. Being that young as a Lilu can really screw up the person who is essentially a child. And if Aria taught Ghika about being a predator, but then turned around and not being one, then Ghika might felt being betrayed. There are lots of reasons I can think of this hatred. Also, Aria might have felt guilty about Ghika, and thought that committing suicide was the only way to repay Ghika. Anyway, my guess is probably nowhere near the real plot.

If she was a small child when she turned, wouldn't she still be a small child?

Yeah. They're fine. Remember, they're idiots but they're still alive anyway because they can't be killed.
The one did have her spell interrupted, though.

In other news, awwww that was sweet.

GO LIVE TOGETHER ALREADY, YOU DORKS

. . . because with their combined incomes they could probably afford more square footage for storage each?
No, I mean, um.

I am concerned. On the one hand, it is very pretty. On the other, Romeo and Juliet was not a romance, so comparing the main couple to them is not a good sign, for at least one of two distinct reasons.

Lol okay yeah that was me being liberal with the translation ^^' The chinese was something meaning like enemies-to-lovers/a couple/rival families so I spun the wheel of my vocabulary and called it a day at 'Romeo and Juliet'.

That's fair enough.

While they get reduced to "fated lovers from rival families" fairly often, Romeo and Juliet also involve a lot more ... less pleasant baggage. It's a story about young idiots getting people killed, including themselves, for nothing. Their deaths, at the end of the play, do a good job of exemplifying everything else: Rather than die for love, they died because they were too impatient and refused to think things through.

I don't see how we get from "They were idiots" to "It wasn't a romance". If we disallow anything about idiots from being romance, that cuts rather a lot out of the genre. Likewise anything with a bad ending.
While I'm not going to claim that they were patient and clever, one thing that to a modern view tends to make them seem stupider than they were is the difference between modern and medieval/renaissance feelings about the importance of place and family. The concept of exile isn't a big deal to me, but to them it was arguably as bad as a death sentence, something worth a lot of desperation. It's hard to wrap one's mind around that headspace.

The term is "star-crossed lovers"

No. Star-crossed lovers specifically refers to a short lived love, a bright flash that quickly fades away. The phrase comes from the sight of two shooting stars crossing and then going their separate ways.

Pretty sure that the term refers to lovers whose love is hindered by forces or events outside their control. You know, given how Bill coined the term to refer to Romeo and Juliet.

This. And while R&J certainly died, thus technically ending their love, there is nothing in the text to suggest their love would have faded away. Also, I do not think it refers to two shooting stars crossing at all. It refers to being "crossed" by a star/the stars. To "Cross" in this sense is a term mostly archaic now, surviving mostly in the word "double cross"; it means to act against, thwart, like that. Meanwhile, in Shakespeare's time astrology was a very big deal. One's fate was written in the stars, and all that. "Star-crossed" meant that the stars were giving you a hard time, handing you a tough fate.

I'd say the term "star-crossed lovers" in an Asian context could powerfully refer to Tanabata / Qixi festival, and the pair who can only cross the river of stars between them once a year.

last edited at Jul 16, 2021 1:18AM

I have NEVER commented this before . . .
Just fuck already.

Are aquarium dates really popular in Japan nowadays or something?

Aquarium dates have been a standard thing in romance manga whether shoujo, yuri, I think even shounen although I don't read a lot of those, back to at least the 80s I think. What that means in terms of actual popularity with real people dating I don't know, but in manga they're as inevitable as nearly dying from colds.

I've loved this ever since it started. As that vampire said, it's "so . . . much . . . FUN!"

Well, well, now the normal is on the other foot.

"No, I meant how much do you love me?" "Oh. Well, the 'I want to taste' part still applies."

Interesting visuals: Their social media was immaculate; their bedroom was pristine; but their living room (where mundane day-to-day life occurs) was full of trash. Trash that was never talked about or even acknowledged.

Oh, interesting! This is the kind of clever stuff I never notice.

It has an oddly unfinished feeling, for me. The other girl is, as far as I can figure, still out there somewhere. I feel like normally the story would continue until she turns up in some way and they hash things out, have their painful breakup and stuff.

Alcohol! Helping lesbians get laid since . . . hang on . . . no, according to this manga it doesn't work for lesbians.

It kind of seems like Liane is going to go looking for Ruri and find this fight. If she gets involved, I'm curious about the basic question: Will she be terrible at fighting because she's a total nerd and does terrible at PE? Or will she be amazingly badass because the intellectual skills they're learning are about applying "angel power" AKA divine magic, so she'll be able to wave her finger and turn someone inside out? Could go either way. So we don't know just which of them will be saving which.

So far I'm loving the series, thanks for the translation!

The former idol cliche is super overdone at this point but I just love adult yuri stories . Count me in !

Out of all my years reading Yuri I don't think I've seen the former idol plot beat "that" many times. At least not in Yuri specifically, so personally I'm fine with it. Also I think with how being an Idol is a big dream in Japan, and there's a often major problems with being an Idol, that a former Idol narrative makes sense for a Japanese series to have. Kind of reminds of the "American Dream" not working out type of narrative in American media. Both types of narratives are still relevant in current day.

It's just a trope I've seen too many times for my liking, not just in the yuri genre specifically.

I can understand that. But I think it'd be a bit unfair if every trope other genres beat to death becomes off limits to yuri because they didn't get to it in time.

Actually, what she's feeling is Envy, Jealousy is feeling like something you already have is under threat, whereas Envy is wanting something that you can't have.

That's an interesting distinction that I can see being useful, but I don't think those words actually are distinct that way in either dictionary definitions or usage.

Webster's New World: Envy- desire for something another has. Jealousy- resentfully suspicious of rivalry. They are distinct concepts as the first party stated. We must adhere to definitions or words become Newspeak.

Oxford English Dictionary on Jealousy (just part of the definition, which is very long cos it's the OED): "resentment or ill-will towards another on account of advantage or superiority, possible or actual, on his part; envy, grudge."
Note the second to last word. These things can be slippery, and words which have some distinction and are not exactly synonyms can still edge into each other. Jealousy does have MORE emphasis on what you said, but envy is still part of its use and is indeed right in its definition.
And seriously, the OED is THE dictionary--everything else is pale imitations.

Actually, what she's feeling is Envy, Jealousy is feeling like something you already have is under threat, whereas Envy is wanting something that you can't have.

That's an interesting distinction that I can see being useful, but I don't think those words actually are distinct that way in either dictionary definitions or usage.
I have a similar thing--I like to see a distinction between ethics and morals, where ethics are grounded in some kind of philosophical principle, while morals are based in community standards, religious strictures and similar authority-based foundations, and may from an ethical position be completely arbitrary. Note that religious texts can contain ethical principles, like "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you". So in this scheme, for instance, disapproving of gays is a moral position, not an ethical one, since all the justifications for it ultimately come down to "God says" or "That's what the community thinks", but nobody ever advances any actual reasons why gayness is a bad thing.
I think it's a useful distinction and I think there's some basis for it in usage, but in the end I can't really defend it. Pity.

Man, I wanted to tell you for a long time, so this is as good a time as any: If you ever decide to write a book, post a link, and I'll buy it.

Why, thank you very much. It happens I did decide to write a book, which is mostly finished, but I've kind of lost momentum, so I find this rather heartening. Science fiction with a definite political angle.

Just for the record, I'm a guy and I think this is pretty hilarious. Not one of the Great Works, but I don't bitch about that with manga as a rule, so I'm not about to start just because it's calling out sexism. Maybe the sexist jerks being pointed out don't bother me because I don't actually see myself in them . . . makes me wonder about the people it does bother.

last edited at Jun 29, 2021 10:03PM

Gotta say that after the 17th variation on the same theme from this author, it's getting a little stale.

There isn't much similar beyond '2 females of different station' the story/setting and characters differ quite a lot each time.

Yeah the main common theme with this author is height difference and maybe age difference, which isn't even that present here. So I feel like they're complaining that this author keeps making Yuri, which makes me wonder why they're even here haha

Plus you'd think with how annoyed they sound they would have stopped reading this author's works after like 3rd or maybe 5th time, but here they are complaining about the "17th" time like they're being forced to read it.

Gotta read it to know if it's any good.

Haha well I definitely won't disagree there. I'll usually check out almost all new works even if I'm not a fan of an author, but I also fully acknowledge that's my choice and I'm not going to get annoyed with an author for writing something that's not my cup of tea, or for writing reoccurring themes, simple stories, so fourth. Critique can also be good discussion of course, but ultimately I'm mostly trying to say that people shouldn't feel forced or obligated to read/consume media that isn't to their liking. Life is shorter than we think and we should enjoy it while it lasts as they say.

There are different reasons to read fiction. For me, for this kind of thing, I don't worry too much about predictability or, up to a point at least, stuff being kind of the same. I don't read romance for ingenuity or innovation. Rather, the point is more about basic emotional payoff, and that requires certain patterns that fundamentally satisfy, and there aren't that many of them. So for instance, the (person) has to get the (person), and you have to feel like that's a good thing because they are good for each other in some way. Originality is nice, but if it changes the formula in a way that loses that fundamental payoff, it's worse than pointless. Which is not to say nobody is allowed to read romance with different objectives. And for that matter I don't have the same lens for everything I read; if I read a cyberpunk novel I'm looking for some very different stuff. Or if I see under author, "Dowman Sayman" I'll put on a rather different readership hat before going in . . .
Still, I think it's very common for people to read this sort of thing with the basic idea being that it will make us happier, tickle our warm fuzzies, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that--it's about basic human condition stuff.

last edited at Jun 20, 2021 4:02PM

Good lord this is cute.

I can totally get why she's doing what she's doing, and why it's getting to her . . . but at the same time, I dunno how to put this . . . If you don't know what kind of person your dad was, if he never bothered to be near enough to your life to make an impression on you, then he was just this older man you hardly knew. So does it really matter what he was like? Light some incense now and then and thank him for going to work so you could spend your childhood not starving, but beyond that (shrug).

I'm saying this as a dad . . . my daughter damn well knows who I am, for better or worse, and I can't imagine having so little presence in her life that she'd have to do something like that if I croaked. Even my stepdaughters, including the one I didn't come on the scene until she was in her teens, besides that I like to think they're very fond of me, we've made strong impressions on each other, paid enough attention to each other to have pretty good ideas what we're dealing with. I just feel like if they had no idea who I was, I wouldn't deserve much from them.