But to return to a point some ways back in the thread, that does make Risako primarily a “plot device,” not necessarily to get Uta and Kaoru together, as the OP was arguing, but to move Kaoru off her “starting over with Reicchi” stasis, anyway.

I wouldn't call her a plot device, because being a force to push the main character(s) is very important on itself. Plus, a plot device suggests something being blank. Risako's character is thought out and doesn't only have one layer.
True fillers here would be Uta's friends because they don't influence the story and its protagonists, despite them interacting with Uta for several chapters.

Point is, OP was saying Risako is useless, which is not the case because if you remove her, the story changes quite a lot. Now, remove Uta's friends and nothing happens. Both of them and Risako could be considered as secondary characters, but there's a difference of who is important for the story or not.

last edited at Aug 4, 2020 4:52PM

This is inaccurate. She doesn't do anything. Reichii loves Risako but Risako herself doesn't do anything to help Kaoru until after they are caught. She would've let Kaoru feel the way she does if their little secret continued or if Reichii didn't come clean. Reichii is the one that brought things to the surface not Risako. She just reinforced what Kaoru already knew

You miss the point of Kaoru's very distinct characteristic. She always avoids everything hurtful, like her mom.
The situation with Risako and her thinking Reichii was cheating on her was what pushed her to discuss about it with him, and that's because she felt he was cheating.
If Risako didn't exist, Kaoru would barely process in her mind that maybe Reichii doesn't love her this way. Her mom died and she never told her she was sick.

You don't actively have to "do something". You can still be a catalyst regardless. Her presence influenced Reichii to meet with her, and then pushed Kaoru to finally talk about it after she saw them together.

last edited at Aug 4, 2020 3:56PM

Its like she's there just to make Kaoru suffer, which makes her more of a plot device to get her and Uta together.

That's pretty inaccurate. If it wasn't for Risako, Reichii's lack of romantic feelings towards Kaoru wouldn't come to the surface. Kaoru would probably always feel there's something missing with Reichii, and even get more and more miserable with years because of him not responding to her feelings.
Risako is the catalyst-wake up call for Kaoru to highlight the reality of her relationship with Reichii.

Oh, I wasn't following this conversation right from the beginning regarding Kaoru and Uta's dynamic, so I was replying to that general notion of whether 18 year olds are mature enough or can be as mature as someone in their twenties.

If we talk about these two, I'd say their maturity difference is not unrealistic because they don't have a big age gap. And by maturity I don't just mean the emotional and intellectual only.
When people grow older, it is impossible to remain the same because their life situations force them to change, take responsibilities, not being able to do the things they used to because of their agility deteriorating and having more health problems etc.

Risako is gay, isn't she?

Yes.

last edited at Jul 31, 2020 3:41PM

18-year-olds are not as mature as 22-year-olds--except for the ones who are. 25-year-olds are more mature than 18-year-olds--except for the ones who aren't. (I can name a half-dozen childhood friends who haven't matured past the mental age of 17 in several decades.)

Exceptions don't make the rule, and these exceptions shouldn't be used as examples for taking away the right for the teens to be treated as teens, or for immature adults to be treated as adults.

There are some kids who get a bachelor's at 11, should we bend the rule and expect from every kid the same? If the divergence from the norm is too extreme (like some people remaining exactly the same at 50 as they were at 12) then this is more of an anomaly.

Isn't she like 6 months from graduation? 17.5 isn't really 'child' even if we sometimes pretend it is for the sake of legal categories.

Is 18 years the age of "adulthood" for where they are at least? If i'm not mistaken, in Japan is 20, but i'm not sure if they're living in Japan or not...

Can you really consider a 18 y/o as a kid ?

In theory she's not a child (a few months away from 18), but 18 yos are quite different than 25 or even 22.
Just because someone turns into an adult and can vote etc, that doesn't immediately make them mature.

OK, Blastaar agrees with MacySan and circamoore on the same day. Let’s all shake hands, and come out swinging next chapter.

Ok then (y) You guys do you, I also think Circamoore could write a good fan fiction of this story and I'm not saying this in a bad way.
Peace.

If you insist of thinking this story is about them ending up together,

OK, this is just bad-faith argumentation—the story may or may not be about them “ending up together,” but that’s not the argument.

What happens with Kaoru and Uta remains to be seen. (At this point, as everyone has been pointing out forever, it seems unlikely, but with the way this trainwreck is told, who knows?)

But the story set up at least the potential for Kaoru’s feelings for Uta to take an overtly romantic turn from the quasi-romantic form they took in the early part of the story.

I don't disagree on that

It's just mind blowing how you are so willing to press on Kaoru having a crush or the potential to have a crush/sexual attraction to Uta,

It’s ridiculous to deny this—that’s literally the entire initial premise of the whole series.

Kaoru is extraordinarily bonded to and emotionally dependent on Uta, she expresses her affection in notably physical ways, and (as almost literally couldn’t be made more obvious) Kaoru uses Uta as a replacement for the attention and support that she doesn’t get from her husband.

If that were not the case, Uta’s feelings would just be completely delusional and perverse—“Here’s the story of a weird girl’s obviously doomed quasi-incestuous crush” is not how this story has presented itself.

Omg, do you guys even read what I'm saying? I should probably stop replying because this conversation is on another type of pink fluffy cloud.

You literally cut my sentence right in the middle (the comma is still there) and deleted the other part which is the most important part of the sentence, only to repeat again the same point you made above. If you can base your whole view of what a story is about based on a couple of scenes and ignoring the "contradictory" scenes only in favor of making it seem Kaoru is aggressively affectionate to Uta, then it's mind blowing to me how you can brush off the scenes with Reiichi and Risako.

No, if Uta's feelings are truly unrequited, that doesn't make her creepy and it doesn't make this manga meaningless. Stories are not always about finding love. It can very well work for showing how hard it is to overcome a love, and showing the stages of doing so. Uta has shown some of the stages of getting over Kaoru so far.
First was realizing it. Then she went on thinking she could keep living with it and ignore it (denial). Then she accepted it and had to make the hard decision of cutting off Kaoru. After that there will be slip ups (like how she went back to the house for checking on her) because it's not easy.

If you insist of thinking this story is about them ending up together, then you will read all the rest of the info about Uta getting over Kaoru as "the story contradicting itself" and bad writing.

It might turn out to have been a rather clever way to distract us from just how aggressively affectionate Kaoru's behaviour actually was.

Lmao I cracked at this xD this is a manga, not real people who try to go out with each other and get away from prying eyes.
If the author wanted to add that, they would.
I'm not denying there is a possibility they'll end up together, but you are just literally isolating this specific scene and writing paragraphs on it to make it seem bigger than it is in the grander scheme of things. It reminds me of these people who think everyone who looks at them fancies them.

It's just mind blowing how you are so willing to press on Kaoru having a crush or the potential to have a crush/sexual attraction to Uta, yet with Risako's feelings and Kaoru's feelings for Reichii you are literally applying the exact opposite logic.

I guess a better title of this manga would be "Kaoru and her aggressively affectionate sexual advances to her sister in law"
Rated: X

last edited at Jul 29, 2020 8:59AM

Weren't you telling me only a week ago, re Risako, that being unable to give up an obsession with someone means attraction?

Yeah, except I don't think Risako's interest is simply an obsession. I think it starts from attraction, and because Risako is the person that she is, it gets expressed as obsession because she tries to suppress and erase the feelings instead of accepting them and move on.

At least this is based more on the reality that's presented by the manga, if you compare it to your own theory that's literally a headcanon about Risako's family.

The statement that "Kaoru never had any romantic feelings for Uta" is, of course, an irrelevant red herring--the question was not did she have those feelings, but could she develop such feelings

When you talk about scenes like the necklace, then someone who reads your post will think that you are talking about whether she had those feelings in the past, especially when you don't mention that your are talking about the possibility of her developing these feelings.
Not everyone will automatically know to which one of the two you are referring to, especially when there have been posts above of people saying Kaoru might be a lesbian.

the idea that the title constitutes some sort of ironclad promise about the nature of the story's conclusion is simply preposterous

I didn't say that. But it can very well do, so that's for some people who read the story with the narrative they wish to happen and skip other clues because it doesn't fit into that image.

aggressive skinship

Yeah, that's a strong language to describe them, I'd personally only use that it they rubbed carpets.

last edited at Jul 28, 2020 11:11AM

Harumin's facial expression and the way the whole scene was, made it clear (to me) Harumin had a thing for Yuzu that she decided to give up on right there and then to support her as a friend

Yeah like come on! I know they will never be a thing, but to me it's astounding how far people can go to excuse something blatant when they just don't like that certain narrative.
And I'm not saying this necessarily means Saburuta doesn't make fun of HaruYuzu shippers through Nene, but since I believe there were some underlying feelings from Harumin, I don't think she'd make fun of her own writing.

But then when Uta made her feelings clear, everything went hard in the opposite direction, all of which can be rationalized on psychological/character grounds, but making "where does this story think it's going?" more of an open question than ever.

This story's direction was clear right from the beginning. Only if you read the necklace moment as a romantic development and hoped/thought it meant they were going to end up together, it doesn't make sense.
It makes sense right from the start if Kaoru never had any romantic feelings towards Uta.
These scenes that people keep mentioning are not much really. Hence why it's called Unrequited Love. Kaoru is attached to Uta, but that doesn't mean in a romantic sense.

I was reading Citrus on facebook, and the translations there were behind compared to other manga sites. I wanted to see people discussing about it, but in these other sites there barely were/are comments and only on facebook you'd see people having full conversations about it.
Then someone in the facebook comments linked this site and said "go ask them when the new chapter is coming out"

I like how the fourth wall kinda breaks here with author having the mermaid say that there are weebs in Europe lol. The author knows we're reading.

I wonder how Anastasia watched anime into the sea though. Electronics and books don't really work underwater.

Jesus Fuck.
I've been following this manga for so long I don't want to read another 10 chapters of love triangles
Lemme see main coulpe scissor each other already :/

Lmfao for that you'd have to wait at least some 100 chapters, since they're so useless.

They don't have to scissor or even kiss, but this jumping to the secondary characters right after there has been some development is really annoying.

But physical attraction of some sort is rather critical to whether her feelings for Reiichi are evidence of heterosexuality, even more so if we are talking heterosexual attraction to the exclusion of homosexual attraction (it wasn't a mandatory checklist, it was just a few examples of things that someone attracted to men, not just a particular person, might notice. My mom loves beards, but that definitely isn't Reiichi).

Although I think it is unlikely at this point, even lesbian isn't out of the question. Fixating on an idealised unattainable guy isn't unheard of for for lesbians still working things out (it is safely theoretical, and gives a handy reason for not being interested in available ones).

Fixation is a very strong word for it to merely end up being nothing. If you ask any lesbian she won't tell you she was ever fixated with a guy in the romantic sense.
If we really thought like that, then every single woman in the world can theoretically be a lesbian. Because if you take it a step further, even the ones who exhibit sexual attraction towards men could be doing it because they are attracted to the idea of what that man represents and be conditioned to think it's sexual attraction. Also even in rape situations, the woman's down low gets stimulated automatically, which could be used as an argument that even arousal is not a sexuality indicator (it's not with the rape situations, I'm just using it as an example)

It's contradictory when you say Kaoru could be a lesbian because we haven't essentially seen them doing the deed with Reichii or Kaoru drooling over him, but at the same time she never showed any sexual attraction towards Uta or any other woman. She even slapped Uta's hand away when she confessed.

Attraction doesn't always express itself a certain way. You don't have to "like someone's smell" to check attraction points.

Risako is trying to get rid of "these feelings" for years, and she dated Reiichi to prevent Kaoru from confessing. Idk what else you would call that if not attraction. It doesn't always start from finding someone hot.

Risako is a lesbian imo. And there were strong hints about that during that chapter where she and Kaoru were hanging out with their other friends, and Kaoru said something like "it must be nice that you can focus on your career and not be so dependant on someone" (a man, because as far as I remember they were talking about men before that)
And Risako was like "Do you think I like it?"

It confuses me how people don't even mention that and are still surprised Pikachu face about Risako's sexuality.
Also she wasn't even interested in Reiichi and only got with him after she realized Kaoru was getting bolder with her attempts at confessing to him.

Regarding Kaoru's sexuality, I still don't believe she's even bi, but for manga's shake she might very well end up being, although I'd rather that to remain realistic and true to the development so far.
As for attracting two females, that really has nothing to do with her own sexuality. There is a bigger percentage of straight people, so it's just all about statistics. Plus gay women are hint on by men too.

last edited at Jul 22, 2020 1:06PM

when and how Saburouta hinted that Harumin has feelings for Yuzu? she just said "I love you too....as a FRIEND" that was just Harumin trolling around with Yuzu and I think that scene was needed to clear any doubt about Harumins intentions for Yuzu

She didn't need to clarify it though. If there was nothing there, a simpe "I love you too" would add up more. Like, you don't clarify the "as a friend" or "as a family member" etc, when you say I love you to your friends and family. Also the way her expression was drawn was weird.
Even better, because that scene was emotionally charged, a "I support you no matter what" would make even more sense. "Saying I love you too...as a friend", especially after someone comes out just makes me wonder.

Anyway, it's clear Yuzu never had feelings for Harumi, but I think the opposite is pretty debatable.

Except that's not what the former wording implies. Not inherently, anyway, 'less you're kneejerk paranoid.

Lmao what? You're not making any sense and just diverting from the actual point of discussion to make a straw man argument.
Plus, it wasn't your comment and words I was replying to, so you don't even know what that person exactly meant by that.

"Make fun of" is not the same thing as "find ridiculous", just sayin'.

And the point is? "making fun" and "finding ridiculous" doesn't change the meaning and context of the argument.

Not sure what "argument" you're even referring to, but I'd say the difference in tone would be quite relevant.

Saburuta making fun of HaruYuzu fans.
Saburuta finding people who ship HaruYuzu ridiculous.

There is a small difference if you want to be 100% accurate (ridiculous is an even stronger version of making fun), but both words just imply that Saburuta dislikes the HaruYuzu pairing, and that disliking of hers was manifested through Nene to make fun of the people who shipped them.
But at the same time she added that very unnecessary for the plot Harumin scene after Yuzu coming out, which was like a hint that Harumin liked Yuzu that way. All this after she already knew people were shipping HaruYuzu.
The fact that she finds it funny or wants to make fun of these shippers is contradictory with her adding that scene, especially when it had no point for being the for the plot development.

"Make fun of" is not the same thing as "find ridiculous", just sayin'.

And the point is? "making fun" and "finding ridiculous" doesn't change the meaning and context of the argument.

Lmao this was pretty hilarious. I've always found Nene's reactions funny
When she was clinging to that wall, pretty sure she was stalking HaruYuzu lol

Also I always felt like Nene was a manifestation of Saburuta that secretly ships HaruYuzu.

Nene us just sabus way of making fun of people who ship the wrong ship lol
At least that's what I think

I disagree. Sabu almost hinted that Harumin might have feelings for Yuzu when Yuzu came out with dating Mei. She didn't need to add that, if she found the HaruYuzu shippers ridiculous.