"Oh, but the blushing!". The fact that Aya knows that Mitsuki is a girl, doesn't change that she still looks like a hot guy. Her brain knows that she is a girl, but her eyes see a hot guy. It's like watching a horror movie. We know its fake, but our eyes see otherwise, so we feel afraid anyway.

Once you start pulling out the "being attracted to a girl doesn't make you not straight as long as that girl is kinda androgynous" take, I think that's a sign that it isn't subtext after all. Everything else you describe is standard romantic tropes (a misunderstanding leads to a feeling of betrayal and estrangement before a dramatic gesture reconciles the leads; the tsundere character insists that the other lead is "not by boy/girlfriend").

About Mitsuki... we have no idea what she's into. No posters nor magazines or anything that indicates what she is attracted to. The times that she looks hot are completely unintentional, she's not trying to seduce anyone.

Mitsuki deliberately flirts with Aya in chapter three.

Have you ever looked up a trope called "stupid sexy Flanders"? Basically, it's a thing, usually in comedy, where a character feels inexplicably attracted to someone outside of their normal orientation. These relationships don't usually end up going anywhere, even when played serious. The name comes from a scene in the Simpsons where Homer Simpson is bothered by his strange sexual attraction to Ned Flanders

While I don't, personally, think Aya and Mitsuki are straight, I was mostly pointing out why it is not unreasonable for people to feel like this story wasn't going down the yuri route if they don't know the author's previous career. Stories have done the "straight the whole time" thing before

Except we have zero indication that either Mitsuki or Aya is straight, unlike say Homer who is married to a woman. The sole male character (aside from Mitsuki's uncle) is never presented as a romantic option and in fact supports the yuri ship. Furthermore, them being attracted to each other is not a one-off joke like the "Stupid Sexy Flanders" scene but is a consistent theme running through the whole manga.

I understand that a lot of yuri fans feel a certain paranoia; there's often this constant fear that the characters will be revealed as "just friends" and "actually straight all along" unless there's some sort of extremely obviously explicit indication otherwise. We even saw this with G-Witch, another show people often accused of being "subtext" and "bait" despite Suletta and Miorine getting literally, non-metaphorically engaged to be married in episode 1. While I don't think this fear is grounded in reality -- the last time this happened was, what, Amanchu over 6 years ago? -- and often causes people to dismiss slow burns and ambiguous feelings as valid ways to depict sapphic relationships at all, I recognize that it's coming from a place of real pain. But that doesn't excuse this website from using the subtext tag when they should very well know Arai Sumiko's history.

It's actually a subject of much debate due to several ambiguous statements the author has made over whether this series should be considered yuri. It also hinges on where people daw the line between yuri and sexually confusing friendship

I don't want to redo an argument I already had in this thread dozens of pages ago, but in that interview Arai basically said the Japanese equivalent of "I don't write yuri, I write wlw." This was then taken out of context by people who hyper-focused on the one word without knowing the history and implications the term 'yuri' has in Japanese that it doesn't in English. Regardless, Arai's Twitter profile literally says "I like love between women," and everything that she has ever written without exception contains explicitly sapphic protagonists. I don't think it's hard to guess where this comic will end up.

Also, I don't understand what you mean by "sexually confusing friendship." Like, if a man and a woman have a "sexually confusing friendship," we just call that "sexual tension." I don't see the utility in yuri fans holding a F/F relationship to such a higher standard than a het relationship before we accept it as legitimate.

Honestly, I think it's absurd to call this manga "subtext." The beginning is an obvious romance setup, the girls frequently blush around each other, they care deeply about each other, other characters observe they act like a couple, etc. That some people might theoretically interpret them as "just friends" is immaterial; some people interpret Suletta and Miorine as "just friends" and they're literally married at the end of the show. People frequently dismiss F/F relationships as "just friends" due to homo- and lesbophobia, but yuri fans shouldn't add to that phenomenon. If Mitsuki were male, literally not a single person on Earth would think their relationship is "subtext" and they're "just friends."

It looks like I'm locked out of recommending tag removal for this series (edit: nevermind I was dumb), but fwiw, I heavily encourage swapping back from "subtext" to "yuri." People have been really weird about this series from almost the very beginning, presumably because it's popular, but Arai Sumiko has repeatedly shown in her previous work that she doesn't hesitate to depict lesbian relationships and I see no good reason to expect that to change in this manga.

last edited at Oct 24, 2023 7:23PM

The solution to mutual jealousy is yuri. An inspiring message

While we know from elsewhere that Ao-chan eventually does build a happy life for herself, one can't help but wonder

Care to elaborate? What "elsewhere" is this?

We see a brief glimpse of her as a television personality in another Arcadia chapter, but also I strongly suspect that she's the mother of Yuu in Ami-chan's Diary for reasons I expound on in this comment.

Ultimately, this chapter is the part of Yatosaki Haru's Arcadia series that sticks with me the most. While I like happy endings too, this short story of a girl's weakness and selfishness causing her to permanently destroy her relationship with the one she loves is quite rare in fiction despite how depressingly common it often is in real life. While we know from elsewhere that Ao-chan eventually does build a happy life for herself, one can't help but wonder if she might've been happier had she managed to hold onto Tsutsuji (of course, who knows what would've happened to Kotoko in that case). It's a very bittersweet story that only becomes all the more poignant due to Yatosaki's signature dreamlike style. I love it!

Lol at "boku girl boyish-chan" not being tagged tomboy. Big cultural difference in perceptions on display here I guess.

I suggested the tag be added especially for you :D

So the art is very cute at a surface level, and obviously there's a setup here for lots of mischief, but is anyone else getting Kitakawa/Manio vibes? Like there's something that could be potentially even darker beneath the surface?

The stuff about how Ami is the teacher's "favorite" is giving me some bad premonitions for sure. If Ami were groomed by her teacher and is treating Rei this way in an attempt to retake the power and control that was stripped from her, that would explain a lot. Not sure if the author wants to get that dark with the story though.

I hadn't considered the possibility that Koto's script may have played a role in Aya leaping forward in time. The issue with the theory is I don't see a motivation for Koto to wish that Aya would disappear, while both Erika and even Aya herself are shown to have plausibly wanted that. But on the other hand, Koto is the character we still know the least about, so maybe that'll change in future chapters as we learn more about her.

The legal drinking age in Korea is 19 -- specifically, January 1st in the year they turn 19 -- so it's safe to assume Jiwon is a graduating high school senior.

Why people assume the person is trans ? There is no indication of so and no confirmation. As per usual, forumers jump at throat on so little.

They didn't.

They were talking about the trope of "molester trying to get close to a girl by disguising themselves as a woman". Which is also a transphobic trope.

Yeah, the point isn't that the fictional character in this oneshot is trans, it's that transphobes think trans women are just men who disguise themselves as women to deceive others. The scene would've worked perfectly well (and been more realistic) if the creepy guy had just been dressed like a man instead. It's a shame because I do think the discussion about how some types of makeup and styles are appealing to men and others are appealing to women was quite interesting.

Kosuzume's author's note here isn't quite at the level of the one where she rambled about how pretty her (female) editor is but it's still very funny

I couldn't find this romantic at all. Devoting all of your energy to obtain literal seconds of contact at a door frame with a stranger sure is a perfect metaphor for parasocial relationships.

Yup. I get that the author was going for a mutual attraction story, but if someone were to describe this oneshot without showing the art, it would seem super weird.

While I sort of get your point, describing a manga without showing the art is like describing a book using charades. Comics are a visual medium; the art is extremely important!

This manga continues to do a great job of advancing the plot and characters while keeping tension high by drip-feeding us both answers to questions and new mysteries. Interestingly Aya's the closest we have to a viewpoint character since we, like her, have no idea what happened in the seven years since her disappearance. It feels like discovering the mystery of what happened to Aya is intimately linked with discovering the mystery of what motivates these characters and what they've done during these seven years, which is great.

The revelation about Aya's grandfather did give me another theory. While I do still like the idea that Erika made a Tanabata wish along the lines of "I wish Aya would go away," I think maybe Aya also made a wish along the same lines ("I wish I would go away"); in fact, that lines up very well with the attitude she expressed in chapter 1. It takes two to Tanabata, after all, so it makes some sense that the magic could only happen if two peoples' wishes lined up with each other. If so, this would add even more complexity to Aya and Erika's already extremely complex relationship.

Koto's still the weakest part of this manga to me, but hopefully her date with Aya will give us more insight into her. Though it also makes me wonder...when should we add an Age Gap tag? lol

Honestly, this chapter did go a fair ways to making the Mizuku/nurse couple compelling to me, which I had not really thought was possible beforehand, so good job author lol.

Thats kinda funny because it does the opposite for me, now that I know the nurse met her back when she was still a middle schooler I think its even weirder that she would ever want to date her

I don't really see a big difference there tbh. Either way she met her as a minor. But I also don't have a problem with age gaps in fiction generally, so...

Honestly, this chapter did go a fair ways to making the Mizuku/nurse couple compelling to me, which I had not really thought was possible beforehand, so good job author lol.

I'm already lost with this story. Mashiro is still a prostitute sleeping with anyone but she makes a promise with the idiot who accepted the credit card? I don't know what the point of the story is anymore.

Makino told Mashiro she loves her but now Mashiro thinks she was lying due to a misunderstanding.

This manga though has been pretty quick to clear up misunderstandings so I'm not too worried, mostly looking forward to seeing how much Makino suffers lol.

It's hot and all but did she put Chasing Spica on hiatus so she could waste her time drawing YuShizu porn? It's a shame.

I don't think this is the right way to look at it. Writing a serialized manga with a continuous story and writing semi-connected YuShizu hentai are much different; they could be feeling burnout on the former while the latter is like a vacation. Plus I wouldn't call this "wasting time" since all their YuShizu doujins are quite high-quality imo.

god this manga rules. these two girls really do deserve each other. rooting for them!!!

I enjoyed this first chapter. It's so rare for a romance manga to start with a confession, and then have the conflict arise from both parties trying to navigate what to do while already in a relationship. That in and of itself is enough to make me want to read it, and the characters and artstyle are all very cute.

God Flowerchild was cooking with white-hot flames when writing these chapters. This is some of the hottest content I've ever seen. Misa and Io are so effectively characterized with a bare minimum of exposition, and their respective massive character flaws match up so well together. Normally I would worry after we already got watersports in chapter 3 but I trust Flowerchild to be able to continually top herself in each subsequent chapter. Really, really looking forward to more!

Still one of the best oneshots/twoshots I've ever read

It's curious how it changes from a colored long-format format to a black-and-white page format. Why the heck is that?

A unique way of indicating it's a flashback.

I don't quite understand the conflict here. If the blind girl doesn't know what the brother likes she could just say anything. Just tell her your favorite foods.

The conflict is that Hana hates herself because she thinks she's the reason her brother died. Recall she was a second away from literally committing suicide in chapter 1 before Lily (inadvertently?) stopped her. She's not just doing this "become Kaoru" plan for Lily's sake, she's doing it as a form of suicide. By symbolically killing off "Hana" she can atone for her (self-perceived) sin by reviving "Kaoru." That's why she can't lie.

Anyway, I thought this chapter was good. It's not a perfect manga; it gets a little repetitive/slow in places and it leans too heavily on exposition sometimes, and Lily is a pretty flat character so far. I'm definitely curious to see where the current cliffhanger will lead, hopefully it won't just be a return to the status quo. I also am harboring a pet theory that Lily already knew or guessed Kaoru was dead from the beginning -- we already know he told her he was sick, after all -- and started treating Hana as him as a way to take revenge for Kaoru's death before genuinely coming to care for her as they interacted. It seems unlikely at this point but it would at least make her a much more interesting character.