So the admins tagged it as subtext only, not yuri, and loads of readers believed it. That's why there used to be so many posts debating the 'hints of dating' between them, and whether we as fans could assume them to be a couple. In time the admins realized their mistake and corrected the tagging, and that was how the silly debate came to an end. And the admins learned a lesson: never trust Erica Friedman, never.

I am reasonably confident that zero of the staff here chose the tags thanks to Erica Friedman's comments. But keep writing that fanfic, I'm interested to see where it goes from here.

It totally ships you with Erica Friedman.

Arisa vs. Sakurako, who is more dangerously gay?

Arisa. Hands down. Sakurako is really gay, but Arisa is so gay it literally broke her mind.

“Kasumi can’t imagine life without Sakurako but are they dating?”

Not really sure if anyone actually cares about that at this point. I think the college chapters have framed it well enough by now, that there is no merit to any kind of discussion whatsoever about it.

It's not like there has been anxiety or tension of that sort in RfT for a long time. Relationship just exists and that's all there is to it.

Hush now, there are people who are very invested in pretending there's a huge, active faction of people still arguing that they have no real connection to each other. You don't want to take that away from them, do you?

Nah, at this point, we're just making fun of how wrong they were, we're not really under any illusion that they're still there.

So I notice that when she accidentally mishears the topic of making out, Kasumi's only real concern is about doing it in public. ;p

Is it possible to learn this power?

Not from a Jedi.

Allow me to present you both with 1 internets. Congratulations on your win!

So I was kind of kidding before, but that close-up of Rei's reaction to "gift of a friend" seems kind of conspicuous?

When did they start dating? I swear I´ve missed something XD

Well, it's hard to exactly pinpoint when. I doubt it's even possible to find a certain point. To me, it was more of a gradual transition or something, blurring the line between "friendship" and "dating", and in more ways than one. Like, take, for example, how Sakurako attempted to define their relationship here:

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/a_room_for_two_ch53#5

They definitely haven't been dating from the first moment, yet they definitely are now.

I describe it as they -were- dating from the first moment, they just didn't realize it for awhile. Kasumi starts to catch on when she starts realizing how many matching things they have.

Are their kisses deleted scenes?

Dafuq r u talkin bout? Do I literally need to browse through the manga again, this time searching for kissing scenes?

First kiss happened on an insert, IIRC, and involved swapping candies First intentional kiss that was just a kiss was at the sakura viewing party, but Sakurako was drunk (but when sober indicated she wanted to kiss again) There was at least one kiss after that that was just sincere affection, the most recent was Kasumi kissing Sakurako hello when coming home from work, which is the most "these two are just fucking married" moment we've had.

Guess we know where that sniffing cat business come from...

I was thinking the same thing! I know very well that most people with cats don't have a habit to sniff their bellies, so I was curious as for where that crazy idea came from. Now we know.

Actually, I've seen this in other manga, so it seems like it's a thing in japanese culture?

And with all these of mention marriage, unless the author get yuri blocked by her editor, I'm pretty sure we will get a marriage chapter one day, even if it's the very last chapter of the manga

There was a proposal in this chapter. Saku flat out told Kasumi that she wants to marry her. Only things missing were the bended knee and the ring.

Actually, thinking about it, it's kind of surprising that Saku hasn't suggested matching rings before.

Wow, Mari used to be way more chill.

Mari is still pretty chill, though. Honestly, chill is her main defining characteristic? She's the tsukkomi to Arisa's boke.

Nah, she's definitely different. Old Mari doesn't really react to anything, doesn't even care that someone's sniffing her panties, etc. New Mari will blush and get awkward at the drop of a hat. Probably because she spent time with Old Arisa, the super perv.
It's true that she (ironically) is the straight man, but Old Mari is deadpan, New Mari is embarrassed.

Eh, she gets embarassed when she's presented with public awkwardness, and she gets a little bashful when it comes to their actual relationship, but when it comes to stuff like nudity and underwear, she's usually been pretty relaxed and nonchalant about it.

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/bright_and_cheery_amnesia_ch00#7 I mean the first chapter made this point pretty well.
https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/bright_and_cheery_amnesia_ch06#7 She also doesn't really care about or react to Arisa being nude unless the situation is intimate.
https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/bright_and_cheery_amnesia_ch06#13 Heck, even when Arisa had to help her bathe, she doesn't react at all until she literally has to touch her hoo-ha.

Also, she's not "sniffing her panties", she's reacting to the fact that there were panties in the stack of clothes Mari gave her, and Mari is just pointing out that they're unused, so she doesn't care. ;p

Wow, Mari used to be way more chill.

Mari is still pretty chill, though. Honestly, chill is her main defining characteristic? She's the tsukkomi to Arisa's boke.

last edited at Apr 7, 2019 4:28AM

aww rats! I was looking forward to seeing how she reacted to getting her memory back. i guess we'll have to slog it out for another chapter or two.

Last chapter explicitly said on the last page that we were getting a flashback arc starting with the next chapter, so...I'd settle in for a bit of a wait?

Yeah, these three goofballs wouldn't be able to keep it a secret if they knew. There'd be endless teasing.

Yeah, you're probably right, but the series puts so much emphasis on "they're secretly dating" that I think it'd be the best possible punchline if they weren't actually fooling anybody.

I swear one of these days they're going to come out to their friends, and everyone's just going to be like "Yeah, and?" "Wait, you thought it was a secret from us?"

What are Y'all talking about? They just explained their relationship and in 53. Like seriously Sakurako spelled out the exact nature of their relationship and the reason the don't label it before having a lie-down on Kasumi. And already resolved to be together forever. It's a frequent event, actually. All bases are covered at this point. All of them. They're in love, They're going to be together forever, they're accepted by each other's family as in-laws, they cuddle often, they kiss often enough tfor it to be casual.They flirt all the time,hold hands, sleep
in the same bed in lingerie. What more do you need?

^I absolutely agree with everything you said here, but to answer that last question:

I do think the label holds some significance. It'd make me happy to see "partner who's something like my girlfriend" becomes just plain "girlfriend" (along with the other stuff still intact) before the manga's end. This is not to downplay the love for each other they've demonstrated all throughout the series, but just as kissing is a symbol of romance, so is stating or at least thinking concretely that the person you love is your girlfriend, at least to me.

I feel like that line was mostly about Sakurako not wanting to overstep.

This chapter made me smile despite a migraine. I've been waiting since the beginning of the series for a moment like this. Kasume kissed her! Kasume, who never shows interest in any sort of physical romantic intimacy, kissed Sakurako of her own volition! We've never seen anything even close to that before. That was awesome and adorable.

(✿◠‿◠)

Kasumi is often the one initiating physical intimacy, though? She initiated their first kiss, she did the "lying naked on your lap" thing. If you go back through the comments, somebody posted a series of links not too long ago, IIRC.

Am I the only one who thinks what Sakurako described with her labels is "wife"?

No, you are not.

Looks like a suitcase on page 109, so she left. One might argue that it's not really adult yuri with basic communication incompetence like this. Was expecting the worst when I saw Shuninta's name, though.

The shot of the girl with the suitcase is the happy working girl, not the neglected girlfriend. Look at the hair length and the energetic nature of the panel.

You're right.

This still leaves us with a story where at worst, she left, and at best, basically nothing happened at all because they won't talk to each other.

Given that it's just a narrow slice of their life together, I doubt any major life changes are happening during this story. The point of the story is probably just to remind people not to take their partners for granted and that neglect can happen with the best of intentions.

Wh-oh, riiiiight, Thanks for disillusioning me early, Dynasty, this'l make the rest of the day way easier.

The only thing I have to say about Ch. 52 was that I was surprised to learn that clarinets could be part of something called a "brass band" considering that it's a woodwind instrument.

Well... Even though saxophones are made of metal, their structure is similar to the likes of oboas, clarinets and flutes, so saxophones are also counted as woodwind instruments, despite not containing any wood (well, the same "woodwind instruments, despite not containing any wood" thing also applies to flutes, but you get my point), so a woodwind instrument being in a brass band isn't nearly as far-fetched as you'd expect.

Actually, Saxophones are classified as woodwind because of the wooden reed on the mouthpiece. The distinction between brass and woodwind in an orchestra can be pretty well split up by the style of mouthpiece. The exception is actually flutes, which (usually) have lip-plate style mouthpieces that don't have wooden reeds.

But "brass band" is kind of a vague term. It can refer to a military band, a marching band, or certain types of jazz bands, and a Clarinet wouldn't be out of place in any of those. It's hard to tell from the context what type of band they're talking about, too. She says she'd have a hard time playing in front of people, so you get the impression this is a little private group that plays for fun, which seems more likely for a jazz band.

That said, https://www.theclarinet.net/History/cleveland-brass-metal-clarinet.html It's not like clarinets can't also be made of brass anyway.

Is it just me, or was the whole “clarinet/nimble fingers” thing sort of lewd?

I think that was the point. People who play instruments often have very nimble fingers (percussion can fuck off I guess). Nimble fingers are like magic for lesbians.

Hey, waaaaitaminnit. Have you even SEEN a drummer work those sticks? You wanna talk about nimble fingers...

Shoujo ai is made up term by westerners, because they needed a way to market SFW and NSFW yuri and needed a clear distinction.

And yet despite this supposed distinction, most yuri manga are either tagged both, or just yuri even when it's SFW. Talk about useless

Eh, that's because Shoujo Ai -isn't- really a term made up by westerners. It's a term used in japan, but it just refers to the girl's love genre in general, as does Yuri. They're just synonyms. There is no real distinction in how the japanese industry uses the terms, from what I've seen. But somehow this idea that yuri=sexytiems and shoujo ai=innocents got started and they started getting used as seperate tags with supposedly seperate meanings.

But you honestly never know at the beginning of a series where it's gonna go by the end, and since the terms mean the same thing in Japan, you routinely see series marketed as "girl's love" (shoujo ai) that end up having sexual conduct, or series marketed as "yuri" that don't, so western fans that think the tags started out in japan make wrong assumptions about what the series is going to be.

It's actually REALLY EXASPERATING.

You could at least pretend to care.
Edge syndrome is a serious issue. They will cut themselves eventually and then it gets so messy.

Point taken. I'll definitely try to work on my "pretending to care" skills.

I guess even wishing for random horrible outcomes for fictional characters that one finds annoying is a form of caring . . .

You don't know that's their motivation! Maybe they just (justifiably) believe that the situation is untenable, and that Kaoru will inevitably leave Reiichi without an escape hatch, ending up homeless and forced to turn to prostitution to survive, at which point their sincere hope is that Uta will find Kaoru and rescue her from the gutter! ;p

I can't agree. I mean, I think this is where it is For Kaoru, sure, but with what we've seen of his and Risako's behavior when they're away from Kaoru (hell, sometimes when they're with her) I think it would take a special kind of naivite to rule not guilty.

We’re not disagreeing—I’m talking about what has been made definitively clear in the text itself. You seem to have considerably more faith than I do that the author couldn’t potentially pull some fake-out to explain away all the circumstantial evidence that so apparently points to Reiichi cheating.

We’ve also established that you have considerably more respect for the writing and structuring of this series than I do, so what I see as authorial dithering and intentional withholding of information from the audience for no legitimate reason you see as . . .something better than that. I actually hope you’re right.

Fair enough. I dunno, when I look at this series as a whole, to me it just looks like pieces of a puzzle gradually snapping into place. Every little revelation that we've gotten, Reiichi's cheating (probably) his background with Risako, Kaoru's mother's death...It all feels like it perfectly explains behavior that previously seemed a bit off. The characters feel like real people, too. Even Reiichi, cheating scumbag though I believe him to be, I kind of understand why he's like that. He married Kaoru out of obligation and pity because he felt responsible for her mom's death, because his deadbeat mom was literally responsible for her mom's death. It all feels to me like a perfectly credible clusterfuck of bad decisions made with good intentions. I'm just hoping the author has a route intended that untangles it, tho there's no way that isn't messy.

I've just had a lot of "oooh, THAT'S why." moments with this series, and I appreciate that feeling.

last edited at Mar 26, 2019 7:52PM

Love without sexual desire is platonic. Love with sexual desire is romantic.

Both are romantic, one just happens to be platonic as well. These aren't mutually exclusive.

What's wrong with just using words, to mean what they mean.

Words don't have meaning. They have usages. Communication means making sure that your usages sync up with the person you're talking to, otherwise you have a fundamental inability to understand one another.

Stop insisting that people conform to your idea of what the words mean, and try understanding the ideas behind the words they're using, as they're using them.

Romantic love means different things to different people, Instead of demanding that they conform to your usage, explain what it means to you and ask them what it means to them.

Actually, I wonder if both Marikas swapped world.

If both Marikas were "abnormal" in their respective setting, it could mean the missing Marika was straight in a yuri world.

Not that she had a choice. What could have been the trigger of them swapping? Hope we will get a reasonable explanation.

I was considering the same thing actually. All the little evidence across the board implies that yuri!Marika wasn't "normal" and never had a girlfriend etc. Kazami's memory of her might also play a role there.

This yuri!Marika apparently liked occult stuff and sci-fi books according to the bookshelf in her room, so maybe she did some weird ritual or the like. It's hardly going to be reasonable haha

I can see two mutually exclusive twists. 1, It's been implied, I think that Kazami was interested in her world's Yurika before she swapped, and seized on this opportunity to date her. So maybe at the end, Marika has to swap back with her other self, sad farewell, but she finds out that her Kazami is also into her back home. 2) The Yuriworld Marika was straight, and did something to try and get to a world that has boys. Meanwhile Marika Prime is actually gay, but was trying to conform because of a past trauma, so at the end they stay swapped..