The earlier part about her experience with mental illness is very engaging, but like most works about dealing with depression, the part about her improvement is insubstantial. I think this is mostly due to the nature of recovering from severe mental illness, where statements that hold life-changing significance for one person sound like empty platitudes to another.

She attributes a lot of her improvement to her newfound willingness to be honest to herself to be open about herself. But in her case, open honesty resulted in her receiving widespread external support and a publishing deal. The cynic in me asks: "does she feel better now because of inward change, or because her life circumstances have improved?" The epilogue as a whole feels somewhat self-satisfied and lacking in insight, a bland "what I learned" tacked on at the end of an otherwise deep and personal story.

last edited at Apr 11, 2017 8:04PM

I'd be so happy if you could remember the title, it sounds like something I must read

sorry that I've spoiled the ending. Take heart that that is probably the most mundane of the of the bizarre revelations in this story https://dynasty-scans.com/series/mugen_no_minamo_ni

Secret ending reveal: Shio's the murderer.

Shiro's the mastermind she is just acting all cute while in real she is the devil her self.

And Sato being the agressive yandere is a ploy to protect everyone around her. Its not gona happen but if it did that would be so amazeing.

I remember reading some other yuri psychological horror with an amnesiac little girl and a murderous older girl where the murderous older girl was attempting the whole time to prevent the little girl from remembering that she herself had killed her parents.

last edited at Apr 7, 2017 5:54PM

Secret ending reveal: Shio's the murderer.

No matter how many times I read it, this page does not make sense. I get that it's supposed to be a flashback, but why is the aunt telling Satou of all people this? Surely the manga is not implying Satou is the one who inflicted all those wounds on her? Then again, note that little Satou's little stuffed bear had its head ripped off.

I don't really know what's going on in that flashback either.
The original text on from the flashback lines on 174-176:

「さとうちゃん」
「いいの」
「何をしたって　かまわない」
「ね？」
大丈夫
どんな欲望でも　全部飲み込んで　あげるから
だって　それが
愛だから

One problem is that the lines serve two different functions: They're a continuation of the Aunt's lines in the present, and they're what she said in the flashback. There is some ambiguity in the lines, so they could mean slightly different things in the different scenes.

The main problem is that there's just not much there - two panels.

My assumption is that the child Satou was upset about something and threw a tantrum, destroying her toy. Her aunt responded to Satou the same way she did to whoever beat her up - "go ahead and do it, I'll happily swallow your every desire, because that's the meaning of love."

I'm not sure exactly what function this scene is supposed to serve - is our partial understanding intentional or not. Are we supposed to know exactly what happened? Is it just a snapshot meant to convey an impression of Satou's childhood? Is there more to the scene that will be revealed later? What seems to be most important is just the knowledge that this is the definition of love Satou grew up with, and what she is attempting to rebel against.

Shouko didn't fail a test. The past two chapters were Sato's deliberate scheme to drive her away, just like all the other threats to her castle. Sato is very good at customizing her plots for each victim:

Sane friend (Shouko): Show her something unbelievably fucked up. Then, when she shows the slightest hesitation at getting involved (you know, the sane reaction), heap guilt upon her to make sure she never tries again.

Stalker (Suu): Give her everything she wants and more. Then, threaten to take it all away unless strict conditions are met--namely, stay away.

Adults (teacher and manager): Adults have a public face they need to protect, so threatening them with exposure is a good way to get them to back off and provide favors (trash disposal and higher pay).

I feel like there might be a little more depth in the case of Shouko - a possibility that Satou, deep down, felt some hope that she might be accepted, and that she pushed Shouko away partially as a defense to protect herself from one more rejection. I do believe that it was mainly a ploy, she was using Shouko as a pawn in her game, and this was her way of eliminating a piece that was no longer needed. But Satou's flashbacks after she leaves Shouko standing in the street show genuine pain.

Either way, it seems like it will be incredibly effective in getting Shouko to leave her alone. That girl will probably blame herself for this for the rest of her life, and will find approaching Satou again overwhelmingly difficult.

I do wonder though how Satou would've reacted if Shouko hadn't wavered like that.... It's really a question of how completely corrupted her soul is. Will she ever be able to trust anyone again?

last edited at Apr 6, 2017 7:16AM

My favorite part of meeting the aunt is going back to the chapter with Suu, where Satou's aunt "guides" her via Satou's hallucination.

The sudden trip abroad might bother me more if it seemed like it was the sole driver of the conflict (like in that Ratana Satis series, what a mediocre ending...). But in this case, it was clear from the beginning that Wei was resisting the idea of a relationship with this girl and was planning on dumping her all along. The trip isn't some imposition from outside forcing the characters to react - she has internal reasons for wanting to break up, and this is, at most, an excuse to do what she was already intending to do.

Whoever she ends up with is gonna have a rough time keeping up with her.

If you look at the tail of the speech bubble in that panel, it seems the girl was asking the Doctor to buy a new carton of eggs. The Doctor then replied that she would buy more eggs, but she purposely chose not to. The lack of a new egg carton (and the emptying egg carton) foreshadowed the limit on the girl's stay at Doc's home and possibly an attempt to end the relationship. If the Doctor had bought more eggs, then it would be safe for the girl to believe she can stay longer because someone has to eat them.

Eggs = a promise of a place to be. She figured it out.

I think the metaphor was a somewhat heavy-handed in its presentation, but it was helped along by existing network of associations surrounding cooking as a sign of domesticity and companionship, and eggs as fragile things that are inevitably and necessarily broken. Add in the art showing a bleak, sterile view of the cartoon sitting in the refrigerator, being used up one by one, and it was a very effective and compelling symbol for the chapter.

What the fuck am I reading?

The greatest literature known to man.

The first two in this collection were pretty brutal, but this one was sweeter.

Also, SFX are definitely the worst. Often they are untranslatable - the original "onomatopoiea" is meaningless in English, the intended meaning has no English SFX equivalent, and putting a whole phrase or sentence in would be unfaithful to the original.

Personally I think "Stab" works well, since it conveys a sudden, piercing pain, of the kind that might result from an emotional shock, and is common in English figurative language about emotion and betrayal.

last edited at Apr 1, 2017 2:46AM

Date for 2 years before calling each other by their first names, and then have sex for the first time five seconds after.

That is some real acceleration in progress.

For some reason, I had confused this series with another I didn't like this whole time and never gave it a chance. Well, now I'm all caught up and enjoy it a lot.

Zombies are certainly hard to do without being, well, overdone as they are but I'm really enjoying this series.

Like any good zombie series, it's not really about the zombies. The fragility of the human mind is a more interesting topic, and it's covered well here, especially with the focus on mutual dependence.

How far through are you?

I'm just talking about what's been translated and presented so far on this site (that's all I've read). So purely speculating about further developments. But the ex-boyfriend turning into a crazy stalker is simply boring, and contributes nothing to this story. The main plot is much more interesting than this kind of tired cliche.

Sadly that horrific stuff is a trope unto itself in a whole subset of television, in Soap Operas, Telenovella, K-Drama, etc.

Agreed. I don't mind it if it's well-developed. After all, people are assaulted in real life, and often they find themselves unwilling or unable to go to the authorities. I do know people who have had horrible things done to them, and in an attempt to forget them and return to their normal lives, they try to pretend that it never happened.

However, the way it's presented in fiction is often really aggravating because it's somehow shown to be the "right" thing to do - that declining to press charges on the stalker/serial-rapist goes somehow makes you the better person, when in reality it's a personal failure that (though understandable - not blaming people who suffer for the decisions they make out of fear) could condemn the next victim to the same fate.

Hopefully this story is going in a different direction. But I'm already irritated enough that her decision to give him back his ring instead of pawning it to cover his debt was somehow shown as liberating. That plus this stalking plot-line have triggered some warning signals for me.

I really hope this isn't going somewhere awful. In almost every Korean romance comic I've read, some guy (or sometimes a woman) does something horrific and illegal (assault, rape, attempted rape, threatening someone's family, blackmail, etc.) and NO ONE EVER GOES TO THE POLICE. Even when the police get involved, THE VICTIM DOESN'T PRESS CHARGES, rationalizing it with some bullshit, like "as long as they stay away from me from now on, it's enough".

Aside from my rant, this is just a really tired and cliche plot development that has nothing to do with the actually interesting parts of the story and just serves to create meaningless suspense.

last edited at Mar 20, 2017 2:33PM

I'm thinking this is all a red herring, and Kusanagi is actually targeting Mikoto in order to get to Sayuri. Just for maximum drama.

In the epilogue, they go to family services and the father gets imprisoned. The older sister is hit by a bus. Jun's existence is punishment enough for her crimes. Happily ever after.

There's nothing in the Japanese in that panel about it being a same-sex lover. Possibly the translator mistook 同棲 (cohabitation) for 同性 (same-sex) as the furigana and first kanji is the same.

Oh. You're right. Apologies for the screw-up, looks like I'm blind.

It's still a bit of a stretch to deduce that she's sharing a home with a girlfriend just because he had to dispose of a body.

Satou also talked a lot about love in the presence of her teacher, in her kinda psychotic way, plus he's been stalking her for a while, so he has quite a bit of evidence to put together.

coures posted:

Sigh, I don't know why I love toxic relationships, but I do.

I feel that. They can be just so delightfully awful (to read about - living through them is a lot less delightful and a lot more awful).

I like stories like this, and all the ones in this book. There's nothing unnecessary, just a very concise short story that introduces you to the characters, introduces the conflict, and hints at resolution.

Also, how did he know about the "same sex lover"?

He probably deducted that this is the thing her aunt would be against.

Anyway, I kinda hope it is her aunt there, and there's some twist about who was the body. We just assumed it's her aunt all this time.

turns out the "trash" she made the teacher throw out really WAS trash and the last chapter explains how the entire series was all just one huge misunderstanding.

what a twist!

In chapter 17 it's revealed that Satou was Shio's mother all along. She wanted to cook a big steak dinner to celebrate Asahi coming home, but it got all over the wall, and he's been out looking for more steak, and passing out flyers to celebrate Shio's birthday.

last edited at Mar 13, 2017 5:21AM

That hand that opens the door is all bandaged up in the same way as Shio's brother's...but I'm not sure how he'd have gotten inside, how a fairly young boy would impersonate an old woman, or how he'd know that Sato used to live with her aunt.

There's another character with bandages. Though I'm not sure what the author is going for, since the hints there seem to indicate she's dead.

last edited at Mar 12, 2017 8:45AM

It's not necessarily a problem. Everyone, including the beastkin, seem perfectly happy with the situation, and there may very well be an explanation that obviates any discussion of slavery. I'm just saying that there are some superficial similarities to a slave society, such that this may potentially be an issue.

What is somewhat troubling is the fact that it seems "natural" that the beastkin be raised by humans in order to become their pets/domestic servants. "They are incapable of taking care of themselves" "they are childlike and need masters to look out for them" etc. are all explanations that were used to morally justify slavery throughout history. Maybe, in this world, those explanations are simply true, and this arrangement benefits everyone. Maybe there's something else going on.

Whatever it is, I don't think it has to be a problem, it just reminds me of a problem. Mel is obviously happy with her situation and is treated like a member of the family. The story is adorable, and I eagerly await the next chapter.

last edited at Mar 12, 2017 6:32AM