Agree with both of the above. ^

They make a stunning couple, I must say.

(Those last two panels suggest that whatever epiphany Koga had during her Lost Week, it had to do with realizing how important Aya is and has been to her.)

last edited at Aug 4, 2024 8:22AM

She's just a kid and it was up to the other two women to do something about themselves... but of course considering their past relationship, their unresolved feelings and the entire mess that her reappearance is, can we really expect them to be mature about it? Not really and that's fine, that's one of the reasons why I like this story.

In fact, I think putting these characters into such a radically ambiguous, both/and past/present relation is (at least so far) the entire point of the story. Otherwise I can’t see any purpose in setting up what is basically a story of down-to-earth, complicated emotional relationships within the framework of a supernatural premise that the narrative seems otherwise uninterested in exploring.

That is, nobody in the story seems to be the slightest bit concerned with the basic question wtf happened to Aya seven years ago? What are the mechanics of Aya’s time skip? Is Erika some kind of mage who changes reality via Tanabata wishes? All that really matters is how the characters are interacting with each other in the present, but those interactions are (partly) determined by the anomalous situation in which they find themselves.

The only exception is the still very vague and ambiguous matter of the actual Tanabata festival that Erika remembers and Aya is just beginning to recall, and it will be interesting to see whether that develops into a simple reveal about what the characters said to each other back then or something bigger about the supernatural framework.

last edited at Aug 4, 2024 8:04AM

People are getting hung up on the word “abusive” and playing Family Services counselors as to the technical definition. So let’s stick to mangaspeak and just say that Koto really let her yandere freak flag there for a moment. She almost certainly is already sorry that she let Aya see that side of her and realizes that it was a counterproductive move in regard to their relationship.

The fact remains that she has that side of her and that at some level those are her real underlying feelings—you could hardly get a bigger red flag that things are presently fucked between the two of them.

I’ll remind the Ethical Behavioral Tribunal once again that a major problem here is:

Past-Aya was top dog of the the three—Erika’s unbeatable acting (and later love) rival, and Koto’s longed-for love object, at first unobtainable then inexplicably lost just as she was obtained.

So it’s not surprising that both Koto and Erika have trouble taking a consistent stance toward Aya—she’s both a vulnerable middle-schooler thrown into a disorienting situation with no external resources besides her old friends as well as The One in their triad as if she’d never been away. Sometimes Erika or Koto treat her as the first and sometimes the second—and sometimes in the same sentence.

last edited at Aug 4, 2024 7:20AM

Does "acting on her selfish desires" have to be to literally lock Aya inside the house? Saying that she is lonely and begging Aya not to interact with anyone else is emotional manipulation.

Of course, it doesn't have to be literally locking Aya inside, but I don't think what she said here is a tactic of emotional manipulation either. As you can see, Koto does have these selfish thoughts, and she is aware of how bad they are; that's why she tried to keep them to herself. However, when Aya kept asking what was wrong, Koto became so emotional that she couldn't hold it in anymore and let everything slip out. I see it as letting your emotions get the better of yourself, and because of that, you said what you weren't supposed to say. Of course it's a different story if Koto keep pulling this shit, but for now, I think saying that she abused Aya just from what she said when losing her composure is a bit unfair to her.

“Losing control of one’s emotions” is the explanation of every person who does something abusive in a relationship. This is blaming Aya for asking why Koto was acting strangely.

Koto said what she really meant.

If you are trying to make this person cut tie with her friends, telling her "cut tie with all your friends" is not the way to do it, everyone knows that, right?

No, as a matter of fact, not everyone does know that. Quite the contrary: the traditional way to make someone cut ties with their friends is to tell them, “cut ties with your friends,” as has been done by abusive partners since time immemorial.

It’s totally mincing words to argue that the Aya/Koto relationship hasn’t become abusive because Koto’s abusive desire hasn’t been put into practice yet.

Blastaar posted:

Man, you people sure must be all up in your friends’ business in a way I simply don’t recognize. I’ve had very close friends that were no less close than family, but when it came to their romantic relationships, I tried to be a listener and to supply what support and advice I was able, but that could include hard truths or criticism, too. In the end, their business was theirs.

There’s attributing responsibility here that makes little sense to me.

Yeah, but you were not in love with these friends, were you? Or in rivalry with them.

Well, personally, sometimes yes and sometimes no. In any case, when two of them were in a relationship, that was on them, not me.

Man, you people sure must be all up in your friends’ business in a way I simply don’t recognize. I’ve had very close friends that were no less close than family, but when it came to their romantic relationships, I tried to be a listener and to supply what support and advice I was able, but that could include hard truths or criticism, too. In the end, their business was theirs.

There’s attributing responsibility here that makes little sense to me.

Even if she doesn't actively try to break it, she passively allows it to deteriorate.

Wait, although I have no interest in the “who is good/bad” debate, I don’t understand how Erika can be accused of “passively allowing” anything at all to happen to the Aya/Koto relationship.

Aya is insecure because she’s a young person out her time struggling to adjust to a disorienting situation; Koto is insecure and irrationally clingy because of the traumatic disappearance of Aya in the past.

Why does a third party, Erika, have any responsibility for proactively making the Aya/Koto relationship work, and how would she even go about attempting to do it? Koto’s destructive wish for Aya to have no outside life and Aya’s rejection of it has nothing to do with Erika or her feelings.

Koto asked Erika out and Erika turned her down, knowing the relationship would be unhappy. She's not some mindless obsessed love slave, she's just got some lingering feelings for Koto, and she has never chosen to pursue those feelings at the expense of anyone else.

Yes, she has not lost her control yet. But who knows how long that state can persist. Like this chapter l can fully feel her jealousy and even some hatred towards Aya. If this keeps going, l wouldn't be surprised one day Erika feels she have had it enough and decides to do something really bad, which would hurt both Aya and Koto in the end.

This set of assertions consists of emotions projected onto the characters rather than on the evidence of the text itself, as well as speculations about things that have not happened and may never happen. In any case, it bears very little relation to the story that I have been reading.

Putting aside for a moment the great Tribunal to Determine the Worst Person and Then Castigate Them for Eternity, the person at the lowest point right now is Koto. Erika and Aya have outside activities and other people to talk to (not necessarily intimate heart-to-hearts, but basic human interaction), while Koto is spiraling into a very bad emotional place.

She has to know that cutting off Aya from everything else is a terrible idea for Aya personally and for their relationship, but the trauma of abandonment has her solidly in its grip, at least at the moment.

God.
This is so out of the line.
What the hell is Erika doing here telling Aya she's not in love with present Koto？？？

That simply did not happen. Erika asks Aya, “Do you truly love . . . The present Koto? How about you give it a second thought?”

I really can't tell the difference lol.

Then you really don’t understand the English language.

God.
This is so out of the line.
What the hell is Erika doing here telling Aya she's not in love with present Koto？？？

That simply did not happen. Erika asks Aya, “Do you truly love . . . The present Koto? How about you give it a second thought?” Which the next two panels show is exactly the same question that Koto herself asked Aya.

However one reads the ethics of what Erika is doing, that is a false statement about what the text explicitly shows.

Wingmom down for the lewd.

I think it’s pretty useless to try do a psychological/relationship reading of this chapter’s underlying significance without actually knowing what went on with Mitsuki while she was gone, which I assume we will see in the next chapter or two.

I would assume she was busy recording her song.

Well, right—I would think that goes without saying. I was talking about this obviously significant moment of character development.

How exactly did she arrive at the unexpected final strategy of showing up in her cool persona and confronting Nakajima with her recording? Did she go home devastated by her previous humiliation and need to talked into confidence by Uncle Joe? Did she think of Aya’s support as she decided what to do? Did Kanna put in a good word?

I think it’s pretty useless to try do a psychological/relationship reading of this chapter’s underlying significance without actually knowing what went on with Mitsuki while she was gone, which I assume we will see in the next chapter or two.

What we actually do know is that she’s shown herself at school in a way that she has never done before.

yeah Koga needs to first get comfy with herself before her and Aya could start doing stuff like that

This is her finally embracing. I imagine next week we get Koga's POV where uncle gives her a pep talk

That’s what I was thinking—it’s not like this author to have a major character transformation/epiphany take place entirely off-panel.

[Prepares trenchant analysis of new chapter]:

Kyaa! So cool!

[Crap—I made a weird sound.]

I feel like I didn't read the same comic as some of the people commenting here??

The reason her work is not accepted is outlined in the very first page. Kei is extremely uncharismatic and her work has huge ethical concerns. The latter part is what this entire comic is about. Granted her presentation didn't necessarily involve the romance code, but sentient customizable AI is pretty inherently rough territory.
She gives a breakup speech to a mere robot because she is human and did see Marie as a lover on some level. She questions herself after the fact why she didn't just cut that step out. It's not like the author just forgot she could do that.
I also really don't feel like the comic "suddenly got dark". The setup should be very unnerving if you think about it for even a second. The twist seemed pretty inevitable and like an appropriate exploration of the dynamic to me.

You’re absolutely right. But the visuals of that opening sequence immediately position the MC to arouse the sympathy of the reader—she’s young, wide-eyed, and under duress, while the people she’s talking to, at first unseen, are revealed to be a group of literally faceless bureaucrats who won’t even let her finish speaking. And the ethics concerns are not even first on the list of their objections.

So I agree that the setup should be unsettling if you think about its implications, but the way it’s presented seems to be designed for us to not think about that very much as we focus on learning who this MC is and what she’s about.

From what I know of this author’s other works, I suspect that discrepancy is intentionally part of the story’s narrative dynamic rather than an accidental double message. But it’s only a feeling of mine.

This is reminding me of the recent race arc in Kase-san, in that it's one of my favorite series taking an abrupt nosedive in quality due to a dumb drama arc that makes very little sense. At least Nagisa finally told off the glasses girl this time, though it's kind of ridiculous that Nagisa immediately starts pressing Mashiro to answer her own question after brushing off Mashiro's question. Not a good look.

So far, this series has been really good at keeping up a brisk pace, so I'm still holding onto hope that this will be resolved swiftly and won't drag on for more than a couple chapters after this. Maybe the creator can stick the landing, but so far it's hard for me to see this arc as anything other than a misstep.

I made the same connection, the commonality being that there's a demand or set of expectations coming from a character who is, or should be, in no position to say anything at all about what the MC does, and then the whole previously established characterization getting thrown off-kilter as a result.

In both cases the response should have been, "Who the hell are you to even bring this up?" > end of storyline. And in Kase-san the final outcome was exactly what we knew it would be (indeed what it had to be), and if anything ends up being different here I'll be beyond shocked.

Oh no—this conflict between our cutie-pie MCs is so searingly profound that there’s no way it can ever be repaired!

Lol

Needs World Without Yuri Manga tag.

And I know this isn't the first "divorcing parents split up twins" story I've read--is it just a story trope or another cultural weirdness thing?

I think it's neither, really. I think twin love is one of the more fascinating philosophically introspective topics in romance, and within the GL or BL realm in particular it takes on a nuance that is sorta a "double negative", given the core logical argument against incest is often the real problem and consequences of inbreeding..which sorta takes on a significant amount of water with homosexual love, whose own """wrongness""" comes from not furthering the bloodline or whatever bullshit.

And sometimes it's just people who really love incest in their fiction and honestly all the power to 'em lmao.

I totally get the twincest thing, and I agree with your analysis of its appeal in stories, but I was specifically asking about the splitting up of twins (or any group of siblings) in a divorce. A quick search suggests that “split custody” (one parent getting one or more of the kids and the other parent the rest) is fairly rare in the US. Says one source, “unless there are extenuating circumstances, the court rarely separates siblings in divorce.”

I was wondering if that’s considerably different in Japan, or just in manga, which seem to revel in all sorts of family-configuration complications, like “children of the Dad’s dead mistress,” etc.

OK, another quick search reveals that only since this very May has Japan even allowed joint custody (where both parents have parental authority over the children)—in 90% of the cases custody of children went to the mother. Seems like a story-land thing, then.

And as my “world without yuri stories” crack was intended to imply, there’s a curiously old-fashioned tone about this one, with “but we’re both sisters” taking the place of “but we’re both girls.”

last edited at Jul 22, 2024 9:46AM

Waaah! Now I want to hear the sister's story!
(stamps feet, pouts)

Needs World Without Yuri Manga tag.

And I know this isn't the first "divorcing parents split up twins" story I've read--is it just a story trope or another cultural weirdness thing?

Six years of living together and fucking is one hell of a long con to carry out just to steal the savings of a factory worker. Was this just impulsive and opportunistic when she realized how long she'd been stuck with the same sugar momma?

From the evidence we have, she was just sponging and then for some reason, which we may or not eventually discover, she decided to cash out. I guess “someday I’ll bail” is technically a “long con,” but not much of one.

@lukhas: The chapter title “Former Part” suggests that there will be other parts.