Did this just end?!

It's one of those titles that is woefully underrated, but at the same time, I can see why it wouldn't be the sort of thing that will appeal to everyone. It's certainly not the sort of title I would recommend to most gung ho shonen-loving manga readers, but in a thread on Dynasty for "Ah... and Mm... Are All She Says" I think it has a far better chance of finding its audience. I hope it doesn't turn out to be a waste of your time, but worst-case scenario it'll cost you like 5 minutes of your life. One thing I can say for certain is the author is either on the spectrum or has loved someone who is.

https://mangadex.org/title/8ae4d0f6-152a-4956-8664-4405758d26ae

https://manganato.com/manga-fu983277

Thanks for the recommendation, but now I'm between a rock and a hard place.
All I wanted was to check if there was a lively discussion around the Manga that this thread is about and of which I've only read (and loved) three chapters so far, only to find a recommendation for another work that sounded intriguing and instantly proceded to captivate me
Asuperu Kanojo is pretty much what I expected from the title and I love/hate it for it, because it seems to be pretty well done. It's wowed me pretty hard so far. I take it the EN release is quite far behind?

Yeah, I believe the series is like 120ish chapters and complete in its original form. The English translation is at maybe 45 chapters last I checked. But it's still updating in English. It's not a dropped translation project.

Sorry, I kinda derailed this thread a little. I just thought the parallels between the two stories were strong and when it comes to niche works like these they can use all the exposure they can get in order to reach an audience that will appreciate them.

last edited at Aug 22, 2021 10:14PM

This series continues to be unlike any other manga I've read. Really enjoying every chapter.

You might want to check out Asper Girl sometime. It's got a lot in common with this manga, but it's also got a bit of a darker more realistic edge to it, yet it is very much so still quite warm and fuzzy in a lot of ways just like this is. It's a slice-of-life manga with some light romance that follows the life of an ero mangaka who suffers from depression and a young woman on the autistic spectrum who moves in much like the MC from this manga.

Fair warning, although the overall feel of Aper Girl is positive and life-affirming it does not flinch from showing mental illness in a strikingly realistic light so there could be some triggering stuff for those who struggle with similar conditions. It's not some misery-driven aaaangst parade, but it is also a story where the camera never flinches. It really is quite special.

I'll give it a look, but it might be too much for me. Warm and fuzzy is good. Is it on MangaDex? I couldn't find it.

It's one of those titles that is woefully underrated, but at the same time, I can see why it wouldn't be the sort of thing that will appeal to everyone. It's certainly not the sort of title I would recommend to most gung ho shonen-loving manga readers, but in a thread on Dynasty for "Ah... and Mm... Are All She Says" I think it has a far better chance of finding its audience. I hope it doesn't turn out to be a waste of your time, but worst-case scenario it'll cost you like 5 minutes of your life. One thing I can say for certain is the author is either on the spectrum or has loved someone who is.

https://mangadex.org/title/8ae4d0f6-152a-4956-8664-4405758d26ae

https://manganato.com/manga-fu983277

last edited at Aug 22, 2021 7:06PM

This series continues to be unlike any other manga I've read. Really enjoying every chapter.

You might want to check out Asper Girl sometime. It's got a lot in common with this manga, but it's also got a bit of a darker more realistic edge to it, yet it is very much so still quite warm and fuzzy in a lot of ways just like this is. It's a slice-of-life manga with some light romance that follows the life of an ero mangaka who suffers from depression and a young woman on the autistic spectrum who moves in much like the MC from this manga.

Fair warning, although the overall feel of Aper Girl is positive and life-affirming it does not flinch from showing mental illness in a strikingly realistic light so there could be some triggering stuff for those who struggle with similar conditions. It's not some misery-driven aaaangst parade, but it is also a story where the camera never flinches. It really is quite special.

last edited at Aug 22, 2021 6:21PM

that was simultaneousy the saddest, cutest, weirdest oneshot I've read this week.

Yes.

Okay the chapter did end really good but did Isa just forget Shima told her she was gay that one time?

That was my question too. This setup didn’t quite make sense, given what Ise knows about her.

I'm not sure how it is in the jap. script but at least as far as the translation goes, Shima technically never said she "only" loves women. So being bisexual is totally smth in the realm of possibility for her.

I see the point, but I'll admit I'm one of those that read her declaration to Ise as a pretty direct "I'm gay" and her recounting of being irked by her former classmates setting her up with men make me think she's nowhere near bi. Sorry if that sounds bad/weird.

Also, the fact that she seemed to have as much confidence in coming out to Ise like she did, if she was bi I'd see no reason to not declare it as such. I hope that makes sense.

Shima never went on to clarify if she was in fact strictly lesbian or if she was bi after the first time she came out of the closet to Ise. The entire point of contention in this fight was the resultant misunderstanding born of Shima never really opening up to Ize about that part of her life beyond that brief initial confession and Ize never really figuring out the implications on her own.

This is the reason Shima apologized for getting so angry since she never really fully explained her situation to Ise and Ise doesn't really process social interactions the same way others do and thus didn't even really understand why Shima blew up on her this time. On pg 18 its very clearly shown just how little Ize actually understands about what's going on with Shima. She's basically crouched on the floor holding her head much the same way my autistic nephew does while he is overwhelmed. Even while they make up, Ise is kind of apologizing for the wrong reason, or at least she fails to understand all the emotional implications that made Shima so upset.

last edited at Aug 14, 2021 5:03PM

I guess it all depends on the quality of work required. Some of the touch up can be done real quick with some tools, like erasing a bit of areola, or "whiting" an area (assuming by that, they do ask to simply put a white circle/square on the ko part), but yeah, toning down nipples or slimming down a model might require more work (though it also depends on several factors).

Having worked as a graphist myself in printing industry, this gives me flashback of one of my worst job where I was required to make adjustements for cards and expected to do nearly 250 a day. Thankfully, a good chunck of that was very minor stuff and in the end, only a bit over half actually require some "real" work, but yeah, you have do dedicate your whole day to that and learn to streamline with tools as much as you can, so you can do a job in just a few minutes. But yeah, sometimes, a work is so botched up to begin with you simply can't do it fast, or it'll come back to you later with a revenge.

The number of work and the deadline is still heavy, especially for a newcomer who they probably don't really know the level of skill, but at this point, it's obvious it's intended to be an absurdly demanding job.

WTF, you had to edit 250 images a day?! You poor wretched thing, I am so sorry. What sort of alterations were they? Outside of doing batch file work, where you basically set up the initial template then hit go, I don't see how that would even be remotely possible even with a pot full of coffee, a fist full of Adderall, and 4 hours of mandatory overtime every day.

That's less than 1 minute 50 seconds per image. I suppose it really comes down to the amount of editing work required, the file types being used, and how much of it can be automated, but if you are running on a bad setup with outdated poorly set up computers, which always seems to the case in places like these that value quantity above all else, then simply opening and saving your files can take more time than you were given to do each of your edits.

Back at my old job, I remember having to troubleshoot and fix a problem I was having with CS 5 taking over a minute to save each of the PNG files we were using. If you had a similarly poor work environment then that would be over half the time you had allotted for each of your adjustment jobs. ~shiver~

After months of minute-long save times and management calling in 2 different failed work orders to the outsourced IT people they used instead of an actual system administrator, I decided to try and figure out the problem myself. (Seriously we had a 100+ workstation network and no full-time system admin or tech department.) Anyway, to make a long story short it just required the removal of adobe drive which I had to have the outsourced Tech team come in for yet again because I didn't have the required permissions to remove it myself.

Anyway, back to my original point before I started on my crappy job flashback, which is that the sort of work she is being asked to do cannot be automated for the most part. These sorts of detailed photo manipulations which involve going in by hand and significantly altering the original high res RAWs of human models are not something you can bang out quickly without running into the uncanny valley particularly if she has never worked on this sort of subject matter before. Having like 11 minutes per photo is insane for a newbie. At my old wage slave job, about a third of my duties were editing the photos I had taken and I did about 50 a day, but those were very limited, fast, and easy touch-up jobs of pictures of items and they were photos I took myself so I could somewhat limit the need for corrections rather than having to correct the work of others like the MC is doing.

You know, after reading this manga, hearing about your 250 a day quota, and remembering my own horrible stint working with photo editing, I think I see a pattern with this kind of work...

last edited at Aug 13, 2021 4:46AM

edit: I (...don't...) recommend looking up a manga named Cocoon. It's a historically informed story about a class of schoolgirls during the Battle of Okinawa IIRC, slightly yuri and really fucking depressing.

Sounds up my alley, thanks for the (non?) recommendation

grave of the fireflies is absolutely heartbreaking and beautiful. it was such a huge thing when i was younger that i forget that not everyone knows of it now. it's like schindler's list, an absolute must see for every single person. it's important to see these movies so we don't make the same mistakes, and help us grow to be better people.

It is high praise that this manga gets spoken of as a peer to Grave of the Fireflies. For those fond of these sorts of deep but sad stories, there are a lot of high-quality but relatively obscure works that can be found out there.

I probably shouldn't be reading this manga but it is too well done for me to ignore.

I see chapter 3's couple as a pitiful future. One who will do anything to keep the one she loves by her side, knowing that the longer she continues to do this the more and more twisted her original feelings will become. It's the knowing that you can have everything about that person, except the one thing you're longing for the most, that type of emptiness really isn't worth what you get from the relationship.

And the other, who will atone for not being able to return the feelings that the other one has. She must believe it to be her greatest sin, great enough that she can throw away everything to repay it; her happiness, her future, even potentially her love, if ever she finds it.

This couple feels like they'll be together for a long time. Falling deeper into the abyss, knowing that they should end this pitiful, toxic relationship, but just can't extricate themselves from it.

Been there. Done that. I would not recommend it. It leaves a twisted aching hole in you and far too much scar tissue to ever heal properly or fill with real untainted love.

last edited at Aug 12, 2021 3:44AM

Is someone gonna teach her how to photoshop or is she supposed to learn on the job while having to amend 280+ pics on a 10-ten deadline? I'm like feeling so bad for this girl... she seems like a pushover.
I'd rather be unemployed or working a part-time job while trying to find something thats not so sketch if this was the work environment I was getting into. God this is reminding me too much of my first job, especially the enormous first assignment with no proper guidance/training while my manager downplays the workload.

She almost certainly knows how to use photoshop, but you do have a point that she likely does not know the specifics of the touch-ups and alterations that are desired in the adult entertainment business.

Also, this is beyond being a black company. This is a straight-up yakuza-owned sweatshop where you get horrendous fines for being late and are paid in cash while listed as an employee of some shell company that acts as a front for this shady mess. Altering and touching up 283 high-res photos from a multi-model shoot in 10 days would be ridiculous even if she was a veteran at it. Assuming an 8-hour workday, that's like 16 minutes a photo and that's presuming she has absolutely no other duties and dedicates every moment she is there to this task. Working on photos of humans, particularly faces, is even more exacting and time-consuming since people tend to be very good at picking up on even minute nonconformities when it comes to examining the human form. Thus the work has to be done to a higher standard than most other subjects and there are a lot of corners she can't cut.

last edited at Aug 7, 2021 11:24AM

I think at this point it's becoming clear that Kurou is probably what's left of her mother after the Gods struck her down for seeing too much.

So the simulation is like a fish tank, makes sense. The fact they only get out until they're about to get eaten is a worrisome metaphor, I hope Chito and Yuuri stay there forever.

Whereas this story normally meanders along at its own languid and surreal pace, lately I have been getting the feeling it's building towards something monumental and many of the signs of what it is building towards are quite ominous. The fishtank metaphor is one of the more troubling indicators I've seen lately. Reality has begun to crack, and the occupants of the fish tank are getting their first glimpses of what lies beyond and they are afraid.

Well, it can`t be called subtext anymore since one of the lady is confirmed into woman

Possibly yuri crush would be a slightly better tag for this story but even that doesn't seem quite accurate. If it wasn't for the chapters about the guy on the train I would say this was an example of Ace and Lesbian life partners.

Going back to April, we've introduced a few new, fairly specific tags to continue rounding out the database. Anyone interested in helping with suggesting works that need these tags are welcome to participate:

Long strip
Couple life
Mature
Finger Licking
Ramen
Angel
Suicide

Please see the bottom of the FAQ for instructions on suggesting (existing) tags. Please read the respective tag descriptions before suggesting, it will save us both a little sorrow! Thank you!

I just thought I would add my two cents after being redirected from the Ends of a Dream discussion. Although I think it's nice to put up tags to warn people about potentially triggering content, please take into consideration that there are cases where more specific traumatic content tags like Suicide can be extreme spoilers for some stories and that in those instances it may be a better compromise to stick with more broad warning tags such as Angst and Drama or Depressing as Fuck.

In the case of "Ends of a Dream," it could probably use a slightly stiffer warning than Drama without it being too spoilery. Not much gets to me badly, but that one has some seriously gutting stuff in it for those who have lived something similar.

last edited at Jul 29, 2021 3:53AM

Ouch. Ever watched first your lover and then your father slip away forever into irreversible schizophrenia and terminal alzheimers respectively?

I have.

So, how much time did pass between 1st and 7th chapter? Mizuki at least completely changed her attire, and considering the travels, it might have been over a week. But where were they resting? And wheres the money coming from? (Something Mizuki wondered herself.) They should have to go at least to inns, to keep appereances up as depicted in this manga.

I reread this since it flows much better if read in a single continuous sitting rather than in piecemeal and from what I can tell there are few time skips before the end of chapter 6 and those time skips measure just mere hours. The one place there seems to have been a larger time skip is between chapters 6 and 7, but before that jump, I don't think they've spent more than 3 or 4 days together.

last edited at Jul 29, 2021 4:49AM

I don't trust anime studios any more. We've gotten a few of my favorite female protagonist stories adapted, and they always screw them up.

12 Kingdoms and Seirei no Moribito went well. Scrapped Princess anime was better than the novel translations. Kino no Tabi. Spice and Wolf ('protagonist' is debatable I guess.) Ghost in the Shell. Yona. Akagami no Shirayukihime. Ouran Host Club. Karin.

Those are all older than the stuff I'm worrying about, but you are correct that I should have said "adapted recently" instead to specify that it's the recent trend of such shows that I'm concerned about, rather than just ALL female protagonist shows. Otherside Picnic, Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear, and Make My Abilities Average are a few of the shows whose adaptations have been less than stellar, in my opinion.

Girl's Last Tour was surprisingly well done as was Non Non Biyori. Made in Abyss was worthy. If you are referring specifically to book adaptions, Violet Evegarden is quite polished. Ascendance of a Bookworm isn't bad although the animation budget was visibly tight on that one.

There certainly have been quite a few disasters but there are some quality adaptions that have been done recently.

I think I read something similar about a girl that could see entities from the other side. The art was a bit more "mature" tho.

https://myanimelist.net/manga/116790/Mieruko-chan this? Much more a horror though.

Mieruko-chan is comedy. You just need to look at it with the right kind of eyes.

It is great, though. I could even see it going down the yuri route. There are already hints of subtext.

last edited at Jun 20, 2021 7:35PM

I'm really sad to see it go, but it was pretty obvious to me that the series was wrapping up after the big reveal of their identities and that they really are into each other. This was a light-hearted comedy series that was sort of built around the conflict between their awkward budding attraction and the complications caused by their working relationship and their secret identities. Once that tension was resolved the comedy dynamic had pretty much run its short but sweet course and the story was going to have to either conclude or radically change gears and go down the romantic slice of life after story route for its second act.

Gotta admit that title drop was sweet.

last edited at Jun 6, 2021 11:48PM

What's the cause of all this though? Is it something bad?

This world appears to be some sort of glitchy purgatory or afterlife that is prone to occasionally unraveling and is affected by the thoughts and emotions of those who are present. Several of the characters that appear in this surreal world we know have died. We see Chi and Yu from Girl's Last Tour wandering around as background characters. The main character of this series is heavily implied to be that girl who committed suicide in the one shot released right before this series began. The last thing she says to her girlfriend before she says goodbye is she wants to be a shimeji mushroom so she won't feel lonely.

last edited at Jun 3, 2021 4:41PM

How is it that this yuri comedy manga has better action sequences and more dynamic character artwork than half the shounen action series I've seen?

Seriously, the art style is a cut above. The characters smoothly transition from being adorably emotive dorks to badasses tearing apart monsters with such intensity that it shreds the paneling and then go back to being adorkable in the course of like 3 pages.

last edited at May 24, 2021 11:28PM

Ok, so this is just strait up adorable.

(◡‿◡✿)

Shouldn't this latest chapter in the bath have an Ecchi tag? Or am I missing something about Subaru getting washed by Hazuki?

I think this whole series could use one. It's a cute manga but we've had a LOT of bath scenes at this point.

last edited at Apr 27, 2021 11:11PM

This series always manages to make me smile. It's equal parts adorable and hilarious.

It's a shame stories like this don't seem to get serialized often.