This was really good, love the art

I forgot we had DGS content on dynasty, Haori IS super gay. I love that sprite where she looks at Susato with those puppy enchanted eyes and holds her hands together lol

This was lovely and the TL notes were great

Just some pages where how they act may be relevant. I'm writing this down for easier access once there are more chapters and I want to revisit those scenes.

Erika:
School girl usual romance talk, pages 12-13
Tanabata day memories conversation, pages 27-30
Her opinion on how Koto should act about being reunited with Aya, pages 08-11
It's not clear what she means by fair in this, pages 30-31
Self-deprecation? Page 07
Briefly mentions how Koto "has changed", pages 17-18
Calling herself awful, pages 24-25
"What do you think? Aya.", pages 17-18
Recognizing herself as Aya's stand-in, pages 25-28
In the same chapter, pages 29-30, tanabata is brought up again and her wish is shown.
Still within chapter 8, "I consider myself an awful jerk" pages 35-36
Flashback from briefly after Aya's disappearance, makes a question Koto seems a bit confused about, page 11
"I'm not... Anyone's great friend.", pages 20-24
Her animosity towards Aya becomes more noticeable and so does the fact that she's hiding something, pages 09-13, Aya briefly recalls something and Erika's muttering seemed to be directed at herself.
Later, "meaningfully" smiles towards Aya, page 22

Koto:
Second confession, already showing her desire to be the center of Aya's attention, pages 28-31
"I just knew she would respond that way" script and stage, which could mean nothing, pages 32-36
Anxious over Aya's sleeping figure, pages 24-29
Anxious over Aya seeking for a job, pages 31-33
Watching Aya leave for work, page 32
Her wish for Aya to quit leaks a bit, pages 07-12
and in the same chapter, gets somewhat more intense, pages 19-25, as Aya talks about how she wants to keep moving forward
gets more anxious when Aya starts to focus on achieving her goals, pages 35-36
"I would never let go of Aya-chan", pages 31-36
Loses her cool, pages 01-05
and then feels betrayed pages 17-18
Lastly, the part where her emotions leak and she tries to control Aya's actions, pages 25-36 and makes it clear that she is a child and that she is scared of Aya disappearing again.

Aya:
The "If not here, where is it?" scene, pages 18-25, Koto feels as if she's being messed with.
still during the first chapter, she's found looking somewhere far away, pages 28-30
Can't recall what happened and feels insecure about how the current Koto feels about her, pages 27-34
Her reaction to her grandfather's death, pages 01-02
Her reaction when Koto first confessed, pages 01-02
During their date, reminisces on how her feelings for Koto changed since her first confession, pages 10-15 and is now more aware of how she is attracted to her.
Still within the same chapter, her fear of being abandoned becomes apparent, 18-28, at this point she's still very naive and unaware of her partner's mental state or what it means to have disappeared for 7 years.
Becomes lost in thought again, looking somewhere far away. pages 05-07
This entire part where she isn't certain of her standing with the other two, pages 19-36
Feeling bad again for being the only one left behind and a child, pages 23-35
Anxious over a possible break up, pages 02-05
Feeling anxious over Koto, pages 15-30, and getting very awkward after and "comfortable".
During Koto's emotional moment, pages 27-33 her being a child and her disappearance are the two things she seems to be the most sensitive about. In this I'd say her desire for not being "stuck" is made clear.
And she does want to be independent, pages 07-09
Starts to question how she feels towards the current Koto, pages 16-17
And finally starts to become aware of the gravity of her situation, pages 28-36

This was amazing

It took me a little too long to understand the gesture here... Anyway, another very nice chapter

I thought that Senpai was going to go the cheap route and get together with Asumi to "save money". Using their birthdays to bet was really cute.

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.
(...)

Fully agree with this. It's been completely buried under their own conflicts and none of them have delved much into it but it's as you've said. We'll have to wait and see where the author wants to go with it.

I cannot imagine Aya just putting up with this situation when freedom is so important to her. It was like her ENTIRE thing back before disappearing, how much she wanted the freedom to get away from her shitty grandfather and a life controlled by others, and one of the major elements back then of Koto and Aya's relationship was Koto at least claiming to be willing to follow Aya's lead and run away with her.

Then l have to say you have misunderstood what she really wants in the beginning. I can 100% assure you freedom is not in Aya's desire list. At least not at the top. And the reason she fell for Koto is kinda abnomal. Since Aya being abandoned by her own mom at very young age, l think it justify her distorted mindset.

I don't see how freedom wouldn't be in her desire list when her first thought after hearing about her grandfather was that it was finally over, there's also this conversation she had with Koto way back in the first chapter, and while it was on the surface a conversation about a book they have read, I don't think she brought it up for no reason, it's very possible that she did want to be "free" of a "something" we don't know yet. Her reaction when she first arrived in a faraway unknown place to me also implies that she wanted to get away from something, be "free" from it.
And then she ended up in another cage where there was an attempt at limiting what she can do.
When you think of a child, you think of someone who can't do much. They can't be away from home for long (assuming they can leave it, at all), they don't have much money, they don't get to choose what happens to them, what they eat, what they wear... They can't go against their caretakers. While the majority of them act excited about being adults because they see it as being "free" until they see another part of how society works. Aya does have a dislike for being treated as a child in general so I could see her connecting that with being trapped.

I don't think her falling in love with Koto can be considered sudden or abnormal when it is be expected to happen after you spend time with someone who treats you as an equal or even above herself and that person treats you well, and yes she does have a fear of being abandoned but I don't see how that would mean she wants to date another person who was traumatized by the same thing and affected in a way that makes it so that she only feels safe if she feels like she has some control over it. You can't say for certain that this is the kind of love she wanted all along and is now paying the price for it and I feel that more than anything she wants to be on equal grounds with the others.
Yes, there is the fear of abandonment, the very page you've mentioned is proof of that, but that also does not take away her wish for freedom or else she wouldn't be trying to keep moving forward with her life and keeping up with her friends because she doesn't want to "be left behind", it's what she says from pages 19 to 25.

So, it's really easy to make Erika the villain here, because of what she possibly did on the Tanabata day and because she's passive aggressive towards Aya. Koto has her faults, but Erika is literally playing on these faults to break them up.

I don't disagree that Erika could have said something about Koto's state of mind, although not as a friend, but as an adult the moment she noticed things were getting a bit too obsessive. But also, is she even in the right state of mind for that? Can we really expect things not to be emotionally packed?
Would that have done anything?
Would a naive Aya just accept that, when she's in love with Koto and only became aware of the weight of the situation after Erika suggested another way of thinking about it?

I wouldn't consider myself an Erika defender since I try not to see their good/bad actions as fully defining of them as characters, what bothers me are how certain posts are oddly reductive of what's happening when it comes to both Koto and Erika by trying to turn them into things they aren't (genius manipulator, evil mastermind). Still, I do not think that she is a villain as a character can be an antagonistic figure (Assuming that she could be considered one, but then, who is or are the protagonist and what is she going against? Is the Aya x Koto relationship really what one would want? Is she not relevant to the triangle?) without necessarily being a villain. Of course if it turns out that Erika had vile intentions all along I'll consider her a villain too, but so far it makes no sense for that to ever be the case and, for me, it feels more like conflicted feelings manifesting themselves as friendship, jealousy, animosity and possibly regret.
She's a human, a person. To be reducing them to simple words is to ignore the complexity of the situation they've been placed in and their relationship.

Not excusing either of Erika's or Koto's actions, they are justified, it's been discussed multiple times already. If Erika is really the cause behind Aya's disappearance, then that certainly messed her up and I don't think she's at her best state right now when her accidental victim is right in front of her. It is in her interest of course that Koto gets over Aya as what she desires is Koto to be with her, however in this chapter I think that the advice she gave was actually good and it's the other things that should make the reader a bit wary of her such as what she muttered here which seemed to be way more directed at herself than at what she was discussing with Aya before... Which could possibly mean that she DOES blame herself for what happened and feels bad about it.

I've just re-read chapter 13 and noticed that on page 11, when Aya recall hearing what Erika said somewhere before, there is a shadow of someone (the person who said that to her in the past). That shadow doesn't match young Erika or young Koto, but look like adult Erika or adult Koto. Is it just me or something weird going on here too?

It could have been ambiguous like that because she's just starting to remember so the memory is quite foggy, but if it was an adult Erika or Koto I think we'd be stepping into Bayonetta territory. I think it makes sense to think that it was a teenager Erika because it was triggered right after she said that phrase, and Erika is most certainly hiding something from the other two she doesn't want them to know because it would advance the crumbling of their friendship.
But if it was another person, then... who? I think it would be weird to introduce another character who was relevant in the past at this point and if it was an adult Erika/Koto... I think this would get into a time travel theme it's not really going for so far.

Well, you just did. To have an abusive behavior, you need a clear intend to harm. It is just not the case. Her trauma makes her say irrational and hurtful things, that doesn't mean it was the intent. Two actions can have the same results while being different.

You can be abusive without intending to. Keeping someone in a cage with no freedom is abusive even if she tried to do it out of love. It's not healthy, it's not rational, it's not ideal. That doesn't make Koto evil and hurting and being hurt is part of life, even when you don't want to. What matters is what Koto is going to do about it, if she'll improve herself or if she'll give in to her fears.
Besides, kids often can't tell that they're being abused until later in life.

Blastaar posted this while I was still writing my post but I couldn't put it any better:

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 and 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.

And it's literally this, I know it might not be the intention, but many are thinking in black and white here. It's like when people try to argue that a morally grey character is definitely evil or definitely good.

Well, it's really hard to regard Koto as an abuser while Aya is the one who holding more cards in this relationship.
Despite the sudden seven age gap, Koto still not see herself as equal.
Aya is so god like to her lol.

In the relationship yeah, maybe, as the result of Koto's obsession with her, but as an adult, Koto does have more power over Aya's life, considering how she's got nowhere to go other than to two mentally ill women with an unhealthy triangular obsession.
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.

And if you're this obsessed with someone to the point all of your value depends on them, it's up to you to do something about it before it corrodes you and it destroys your relationship.
I've been obsessed with others, Adachi Sakura style, so I'm not saying this to be mean... It's just true, or else you'll be destroying yourself.

I don't understand why the focus on the use of "abuse" when it's a simple way of describing the result of Koto's actions if Aya hadn't ran away and Koto allowed her feelings to control her, with time things would get ugly.

Aya is my favourite in this story and I just hope that it works out somehow for her in the end and she can recover socially, stay happily single or find a girl who's more stable but I also wouldn't mind an even more tragic ending because we need some painful yuri works.

This was really nice and the art very cute, thanks for the upload!
"It's not like I'm gonna get eaten or anythin'." Sure...

Ogayu!

Gyaah

This is not relevant to what is currently happening in the manga but Terra's hair colour is quite confusing to me and I'm not sure if it was a misunderstanding on the (novel cover) artist's part or if blonde (金髪) could also include the lighter shades of brown...
Because in the novel it has been mentioned multiple time that Terra has "blonde hair" and in this sentence:
高揚のあまり、麦わら色の金髪をジェルの中に大きく浮かび上がらせて、テラが身振り手振りで語ろうとする。

It was compared to the colour of wheat straws (麦わら色)
Can wheat be that brown?! Would anyone think of brown if they heard 麦わら色の金髪？！

last edited at Aug 2, 2024 9:04AM

This one's title is great

The bizarre ways people read Erika based on their hatred of her is fascinating. Aya shows up on her doorstep asking her for help and so Erika begrudgingly tries to help by talking Aya through her feelings, but somehow this is none of her business and her telling Aya what to think lol. Let's just completely ignore the entire arc of the chapter showing that Erika's advice to Aya, which Aya specifically sought out, has led her in a positive looking direction. Nah she's evil somehow lol.

Yeah for months now there's been this insistence that one of them must be evil and have malice behind all of their actions as opposed to the easier explanation that they're conflicted, mentally ill and/or scared. Calling her a "bitch" and "toxic immature shit" for having feelings that conflict with each other, okay... certainly not filled with hatred that is affecting how she (and Koto even) is being interpreted.
"Manipulative"
"Selfish"
"Evil"
Next is homicidal. Pedophiliac if it's sunny outside.

It doesn't feel like we are reading the same manga sometimes.

is it an trope in people that read manga to excuse garbage toxic behaviour and pretend the character did nothing wrong??

Except nobody is doing that, no excuses, only other users discussing why those characters are doing what they're doing.
How's anyone supposed to explore the relationship between them when the moment things aren't all going well those characters are reduced to "malicious" with no chance to be developed, no opportunity to have their behaviour justified (and justified doesn't mean forgiven).
Erika is not perfect, but Aya and Koto, no matter what, are her friends. She's trying to deal with her feelings in her own way, it's not healthy to allow an obsession to control your life this much, but again, if they were healthy this manga wouldn't exist. Characters don't have to be perfect and them having multiple flaws or messing up once doesn't automatically turn them into an evil villain. It's how tension can be created in a story, being hurt or hurting others, forgiving or moving on. Sucks to see this reductive behaviour on a manga that is very refreshing to see in the yuri genre.

By conflicting feelings I mean the fact that she's helping her "love rival" despite it all because she's not the awful person that some posts here want her to be so bad, she's lending a hand to her friend whose growth got stunted out of nowhere during a vulnerable moment in her life.
Again those words she said are only cruel because of the context, and even then them being cruel doesn't change the fact it's something Aya needs to think about, she doesn't have the time to be a kid anymore. She was weaned too soon and now she'll have to grow quickly against her will.

You can dislike a character without distorting the entire text surrounding her.

None of them are evil, they're just mentally ill individuals that can't deal with their emotions now going through a situation that shouldn't have been possible from the start, and that situation directly involves the person that caused all those emotions. For Erika, this is a chance for Koto to get over it, for Koto, this is a chance to get back together with the girl she's been obsessed with for almost a decade, closure.
They'll be harming each other and themselves. It's a tragic situation where none of them can truly "win" because the moment one gets what they want, the other will lose what they want. From how I see it... Aya, freedom, Koto, safety and Erika, love.
The things Erika said, independently of their nature, are true. They are cruel not because of their meaning but because of what it means to accept them in Aya's situation, she herself understands she's got nowhere to go, she's a child in a body the law considers to be that of an adult.
No family left, no other friends that could offer her a place to stay, nobody else other than a boy that understands a facet of her situation. All she's got are two women who were deeply affected by her disappearance and never got over it. The only way she'll get a chance at being independent is with time and even then there's a chance she may just disappear again, if she disappeared once, what guarantees that what brought her back... couldn't just take her away again? I don't think that we'll be finding out so soon what took her away, and I think it's safe to assume things will explode once the cause is made clear. Was it really Erika? Maybe not. If she thinks that she had part in it, does she blame herself? Maybe. Likely Aya didn't sense this (maybe not so faint) animosity Erika has towards her until this chapter.

Erika isn't as mature as she may think she is. She's not above Koto, the difference is that the girl she likes didn't disappear and is instead a different kind of "unattainable", she's there, so close to her reach, but her sight is somewhere else entirely. Instead of moving on, seeking comfort in other things, distancing herself, she kept Koto around while her feelings got more warped over time.
She's throwing a lot of weight on a girl that got weaned off too soon, just like Koto did when her emotions got out of control.

There's no villain, only 3 girls who need to heal before they can hurt each other further beyond repair.
They are being forced now to develop their emotions and figure them out, we can't be assuming one is a "manipulation genius" or "evil" and really, the most tragic of it all is watching a girl having to grow up within months without proper support, crumbs of a safe space or a guarantee she'll be allowed to exist without an expiration date.
Was her return with a goal in mind? What were the terms settled when she disappeared? How will her memories of the day she disappeared affect the current relationship of the three?
And do they really think this will ever work?
Maybe with Koto if she ever learns to be healthier about her emotions and control them because what Aya is doing is the best for her in her current situation as she wants to have a chance at being independent, and she needs to be, most don't want to be in a cage where you have no freedom.

Yes I could be wrong about all of this if later on the author decides that there is conscious malice and manipulation behind their actions, but so far that doesn't make any sense and it's not what is being shown and is closer to a bad faith interpretation of their actions. You can harm others without intending to and it's your responsibility to accept that and make up for it.
Their actions aren't good but that doesn't mean the person behind them is evil by nature

Ideally they'd be mature and give Aya space to process what is happening, but then we wouldn't have most of this work

KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK

I wonder where the idea of milk making breasts bigger came from other than the connection between... milk and breasts of course.

Cute how you can tell how old this drawing is just from the art style alone.

Looks very comfy, cute

Ah.

I never considered height gap MikuTeto until now, this is very good

I liked it, need more that is tragic like this

Finally stopped to read this and it was awesome

In this one I'd say that she's just top heavy and gynoid bodies tend to have a bit of fat around the hip area with a pronounced pouch and the artist tried to portray that (Some of the rolls do not make sense to me, though. There are also some other anatomical oddities). Her tummy in this illustration however is still quite sucked in and, rather than overweight, for me she's more muscular and that makes her upper half look wider which is very likely the result of somebody still learning to draw this kind of body.
However even in the original work she is still a bit on the bigger side (not necessarily overweight but by default more "mature" looking) when it comes to her structure as a whole so I don't see the issue as a bit more fat in the body is normal as the result of estrogen.

No firing your gun in the street, okay...