I love the manga and all but Nio made a bit of an obvious misstep around the play IMO - namely the play went pretty much EXACTLY how we were specifically and explicitly told it would go in the chapters leading up to it.

That’s certainly a defensible position; I (like many readers I would guess) was initially surprised that there wasn’t some kind of twist or unanticipated complication in the presentation of play.

In fact, we were set up to believe there would be one when Sayaka explained to Yuu that it could be a good thing for Touko to fail publicly by freezing or forgetting her lines. But not only did the play itself go off without a hitch, the psychological effect it was designed to have on Touko also seemed to have worked out perfectly. So there was something anticlimactic about that whole sequence.

But there’s a sense in which I think I prefer it this way. The student-council play idea first appears in chapter 6, and is the main structural element for over two dozen subsequent chapters. It would have been a reasonable storytelling choice to just show us pieces of the play and then let us infer the rest, since we’ve been so steeped in the play and its themes.

But by the time we get to the play it’s really like the events onstage are allowing us to go inside Touko’s psyche at last, and to not show all the play feels like it would be shortchanging us. And then to throw in some plot complication just to liven things up would be a distraction from this event that has been invested with so much significance all along.

I’m actually pretty confident that this author could have presented the play ten other ways (including not showing any of it at all) and still made it effective for the overall story. But I still feel like there was something very solid and satisfying about seeing the play presented straight and in full, just like we expected it.

What's more, I'm actually not sure the author could've shown the lead-up to the play in a clear and comprehensible way without giving us some context on what the play is about. it kinda feels like her hands were tied for the story she wanted to tell.

CAN'T YOU JUST USE A MIRROR YA DUMMIES

She literally does that exact thing at the end.

I DOUBT the coming-out phase will be a big focus at all in the manga to come. I feel like if Nakatani wanted to write about that aspect she would have added in more foreshadowing or worries of what friends/family might think earlier on in the manga.

Right—the only hint of anything like that has been in Yuu’s family, where the dad said something like, “I’d have to put my foot down” about Yuu having a girlfriend. Meanwhile, Big Sis Rei is ready to help pick out the wedding flowers.

I don’t get the sense that Dad’s foot carries all that much weight in that house full of women. The house located above his mother-in-law’s bookstore.

I half-wonder if the "put his foot down" could have been more of a general 'dad doesn't approve of daughter's significant other' stereotype and he really doesn't care about the gender. That's how I initially read it, and sis's thoughts would support that. Not sure, though; with Japan's attitudes it's hard to tell.

Eh, most likely he's just going through the motions of a dad in a society with internalized homophobia.

He probably hasn't ever actually considered how he should react if one of his daughters came out as gay, he just knows that society considers it inappropriate. When confronted with an honest-to-god lesbian daughter, His empathy and affection for his kid will probably prompt an epiphany in that respect. At least that's what Rei seems to think.

The fact that she thinks her mom is harder to lock down is a little concerning. Maybe mom has a strong traditional/conservative streak?

last edited at Aug 2, 2018 6:15AM

The “ugly girl doesn’t look ugly” thing is an issue of long-standing in popular culture, although a slightly different one in comics/manga than in live-action.

The "ugly girl doesn't look ugly" thing is an issue of long standing in -real life-.

Standards of attractiveness are arbitrary and subject to all kinds of irrational biases. I have met dozens of people over the course of my life that have been mocked and regarded as ugly by their classmates who look perfectly normal.

People get called ugly sometimes because they have a feature that stands out (in another decade, that same feature might get someone called pretty) Sometimes they get called ugly because they just don't try to be pretty, sometimes they get called ugly because somebody popular felt threatened by them and wants to turn public opinion against them. Sometimes it has nothing to do with their appearance at all, but because it gets repeated by enough people, everybody just seems to accept it.

Sure, some people are more traditionally attractive than others, but the "ugly kid" is almost always more likely to be a victim of the social pecking order than their actual physical appearance.

last edited at Jul 31, 2018 6:58PM

Somebody please confirm this because my Japanese skill is not great. On page 14, the "this can't go on" in Japanese is "dame nanda ne" which is more accurately "I can't do it huh?" in that context and then the "I have to say it" is "iccha dame nanda" which is actually "I really can't say it." These have very different meanings. If how I'm understanding the lines is correct, Yuu was actually considering of backing down again in order to follow along with Touko's status quo and then waiting for Touko to change enough by herself to reciprocate her feelings someday, but in the end, she could not hold back her feelings any longer so she went and took that leap of faith right there and then.

Yes. She says "I can't say it" and then thinks it's fine because that way she will be able to be by Touko's side the same way as always. The translation is basically on point besides these huge fuck-ups.

That is weird considering how accurate they normally are and that they even went back and redid chapters from other translator to fix errors. I wonder if 42 checks dynasty forums and if so would correct it or if someone on the 4chan if I understand is their main forums they use would mention it they would put out a revised version.

This dialog would make the scene even more powerful as Yuu makes the sudden leap of faith to Touko despite all her fears and kissed her and confessed before she could back down from doing it. Then only to think she was a idiot for having not backed down like she thought acting on her emotions instead of sticking to her more normal logical thinking type of character she is.

I'm not the translator, so I'm speculating as to their intentions, but as I see it, It isn't a mistranslation or an error, it's a choice on how to frame the flow of Yuu's thoughts. In Japanese, the natural priority when a request is made is to address the specifics of the request. Touko asked her to stay by her side just as she has been, unchanging. The original japanese version of Yuu's thoughts there are basically "I can't..." followed by "I can't say that" (referring to the thing Touko has specifically asked her to say) The reason she thinks that is because she has already resolved to confess, but if you do a strict translation here, it sounds like she's having doubts about confessing, which is probably why the translator decided not to go word for word, because it introduces an ambiguity that isn't in the original japanese.

She goes on with "It's alright, I'll still be by her side", basically trying to psych herself up.

This tendency to directly address questions and requests in the language is ultimately what causes the misunderstanding, as well. As Gudetamago commented:

I’m just a little disappointed because I expected a little more understanding from Yuu.

It's her first time confessing, girl thought she jumped the gun there. Remember that Yuu has been expecting rejection more so than acceptance from Touko so Touko saying "I'm sorry" comes off as an answer to her. Classic misunderstanding.

It's not even that she was expecting rejection, although she was certainly afraid of it.

It's that "I'm sorry" IS the traditional rejection for an unwanted confession. When you want to turn someone down? That's what you say. It's an idiosyncracy of the Japanese language paired with their infuriating politeness. ;p

They don't have a "No, thank you", they just have "I'm sorry that I can't accept." Thing is if you're sorry for something -other- than turning the person down, you get a miscommunication.

The one that made the mistake here was Touko, because she said the words for rejection when she was trying to apologize for something else entirely. Yuu's reaction is pretty understandable, because she has no reason to think that Touko wasn't directly addressing her confession.

Touko could have cleared that up quick if she could have just stopped her, but she got paralyzed by her own fears of expectations.

last edited at Jul 31, 2018 3:00PM

Still wondering why QT friend disappears every time SJ shows up, I get not wanting to be a third wheel but... Maybe is a character that we're not supposed to care about? I remember SJ saying that she didn't have many friends (probably just that one) so ... I don't know.
But I'm happy seeing moreeee!!

. . . Maybe....

THEY'RE THE SAME PERSON!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1Y73sPHKxw

So I had assumed the trip would be to someplace semi-educational, like the zoo, but they're just at an amusement park? Do Chinese schoolkids get to take field trips to amusement parks??

in the US we do
i believe its a thing for china too

atleast it aint the beach every fuckign time

O_o Well apparently your school was more laid back than mine. All of our field trips had "educational value". Zoo, science museum, parks...

So I had assumed the trip would be to someplace semi-educational, like the zoo, but they're just at an amusement park? Do Chinese schoolkids get to take field trips to amusement parks??

https://tenor.com/view/fake-proposal-finger-nope-prank-gif-5069687

Guys, c'mon, you need to get on your meme game around here.

Hey, pal, you got somtin' against mutants??

Wait. f the next chapter is the last, then we won't get the sex scene. -_-. K, I guess. But I have been waiting to see some hot action of them for over a year

Great, thanks, my eyes rolled into the back of my head and now I'm permanently blinded.

Sayaka confessing is fitting as a sign of character growth, I can't see her holding it back much longer. Touko rejecting her is just as certain in my mind. Most narrative paths seem to lead there, the only one where she doesn't confess that I can see would be if she simply realizes Touko isn't right for her / she's not right for Touko and Yuu can have that honor. Highly unlikely because Sayaka needs to embrace her feelings more, not run away from them and keep them a secret.

I think there's actually a pretty good chance Sayaka confesses to Touko before Yuu, and Touko accepts it, and here's my reasoning:

If Touko -is- to the point that she's ready to accept someone's feelings for her and enter a reciprocal relationship, then she'll be, at some point, reconsidering whether she wants to stay in a relationship where the other person is (as far as she knows) aromantic. Partly because she honestly wants to be kissed by the person she loves, and because of the loneliness of a one-sided relationship like that, but more than any of that, I believe she'll expect it to be a relief to Yuu. Touko has expressed several times her inner thoughts of imposing on Yuu, of Yuu being patient with her desires and "putting up" with her. I can easily envision a scenario where she agrees to go out with Sayaka because she thinks releasing Yuu from their relationship is a favor, oblivious to the hurt it will cause.

Of course, if that happened, I'm sure it would come as much as a surprise to Sayaka as anybody. I think she's aware of Yuu's feelings, and she's definitely aware of Touko's, and I expect her confession would be more with the intent to process her rejection. She'd be stunned if Touko said yes, and I expect she would actually end up being the one to give Touko a nudge back towards Yuu. Possibly literally, as that's a pretty common visual metaphor in these things.

I think it's also kind of implied that Minami is fine with girls. I'm pretty sure the implication here is Kouhei loves Minami, but is stuck in Haruka's body, But Haruka is into girls and is fine with being Minami's "boyfriend" regardless of who has the reigns on her body at any given moment. So...it's gender-swap yuri paired with single body polyamory or possibly a yuri crush (Haruka on Minami).

This is getting old though... it'll go nowhere.

have to agree need a little more growth, same gag is getting stale. i'm honestly just starting to feel sorry for the girl hishikawa

I was a bit disappointed with the route the juice sharing took, made me feel like they aren't going to have any real progress

You can do it hisikawa!

(Also why do you need a reason to visit your friends house, komaki you weirdo)

Because she knows that what Hishikawa is actually after is sex. She always has her guard up because the girl just comes on too strong. It's actually a little heartbreaking to watch.

Sooooooo... Are these girls dating? Are they not dating? Nobody is gonna talk about the kiss? No one will even bring that up and it´s implications? Don´t you guys think it´s time to adress the lesbian elephant in the room?

Well, I mean, it came up in the strip not long ago. It was a little ambiguous, but QT did not decide to shut Sun Jing down, so I'm guessing she's just decided to go with it.

And a QT-initiated hand-holding! Time to pick out the wedding china!

(Do they have wedding china in China?)

They just call them plates.

Some of those scenes seemed less than consensual.

Every single scene was less than consensual.

Well, the one with the teacher seemed pretty consensual. I mean, the girl flashes her panties and Sensei just starts going to town, evidently. It was fucked up, but it wasn't rape. (well, technically it might be statutory depending on where you live)

Here's the thing I'm not completely sure Touko hasn't just replaced one act with another. Something just felt off with her behavior. First off why didn't she tell Yuu she joined the troupe . You would think Yuu would be the first person she went to about it even just about considering it. Second did she ever go back to Yuu to claim the denied kiss that was suppose been kind of a reward for the play?

I am fairly certain this was never a thing? Like I don't think Yuu ever offered a kiss as a reward for the play. If I'm wrong, I'd have to ask you for a page number. She offered to give her a kiss for the sports festival, then backed out, and during the crisis point before the play she denied her a kiss but she never said "You can come get it after the play" and she certainly never said anything about a reward that I can remember.

I think Touko didn't tell Yuu she joined the troupe because it didn't occur to her, because she isn't used to doing things for herself. She went on impulse, without thinking about it. It's not like she told other people and Yuu found out later. She brings it up when it comes up, and Yuu finds out about it with everyone else. She also probably doesn't think Yuu would be particularly interested.

I think a lot of what people have said here about Sayaka is solid, but I'm interested in how Touko might respond to Yuu's confession. A lot of people seem to think that because she seems like she's starting to become happy with herself, that Nanami is likely to accept Yuu's confession, but remember that that wasn't the original problem.

Touko thinks that love is about expectations and restrictions. She even viewed her own love for Touko as contingent on Yuu not feeling love for anyone. It's not just an issue of self-loathing, or even "they don't really love me", it's several layers of misconceptions all built up on one another. One of the key roadblocks is that she loves Yuu because Yuu has no expectations of her, but she doesn't realize that Yuu's unconditional acceptance of Touko is Yuu's love for Touko.

Now, it's possible that that all unravels when Yuu confesses. It's possible it all unravels if Sayaka confesses. She might actually find that when it comes from someone that she really trusts, she finds it easier to accept their feelings. (after all, the other confessions have been from people she barely knows, given over superficial reasons that didn't feel like they connected to her real self.) But that doesn't mean things go smoothly.

There are actually a lot of things that could go wrong. Sayaka might decide to confess, just to put an end to her feelings (I don't think she'd try to subvert Yuu, but she might just do it for her own sake, expecting to be rejected) and Touko might accept, thinking she's imposed on Yuu too much.

Yuu might confess, and Touko might retreat because she doesn't know how respond to that change in their dynamic. It's even possible she might take it as a betrayal, an attempt to impose restrictions on her at a time when she's still struggling to find her identity. I could see them separating for awhile over something like that.

Of course, if either of those happened, I'd lay odds that Sayaka would be the one to give them a push back together. Or maybe I'm just totally off base, and the next phase of the story is about Yuu and Touko learning to develop their mutual feelings together. I just wouldn't expect things to go that smoothly unless we were right at the end of the story.

Honestly, I get the reasoning behind the accent, but I think maybe part of what makes it so distracting (at least for me) is that accents in text just don't work to begin with. I think it's a pretty natural thing when you're reading to just read in your own natural way of speaking. Except in cases where I'm reading something for which I've seen an audio/visual adaptation or tie in (and therefore have a feel for the character's voice and accent) When I read, in my head, everybody just has a neutral american accent. And as soon as I hit a "ye" or an "aboot", all of a sudden it's a neutral american accent that is forcing in random words from a scots accent.

That doesn't read as an accent, that reads as a bad impersonation of an accent, and that's what makes it hard to swallow. It's like somehow the experience of a bad dub has been translated into text form.

I do think the page at the front of this update was worth including, though. It was less distracting having a more thorough explanation of the reasoning at the beginning.

3.1415926535897932384626433832795

Thats about all I know welp. Kudos to Junna

It wouldn't surprise me if she just starts making them up after she hits the limit of her knowledge.

Anyway, their basic relationship is ambiguous. One calls the other Juuna-san and the other calls her Mayumi. The latter is awfully familiar. There's an asymmetry here I can't make something of.

Drinking together, I'd think they are co-workers, but their relationship remains fuzzy. It must be because of too much alcohol.

Eh, not really. Some people are more comfortable dropping honorifics than others. It doesn't necessarily mean their relationship is asymmetric, it could just mean that their personalities are different.

Yuzu is way too selfish on this one. She came out of the closet and forced Mei to do so. This isn't something you do for someone. This is a personal choice and even though it went very well, she shouldn't have done that.

Plus, she is forcing this relationship. Mei chose another path, and Yuzu doesn't respect that. Love doesn't justify all means. Let's imagine Mei is coming back to Yuzu, I don't think she will be thrilled AT ALL that Yuzu say all of those things.

The fact that everyone is supportive is great but I really don't like how it happened. This is either poorly written or it will backfire at Yuzu (and even though Mei had been hard on her, she would deserve it this time).

Agree with this.

We don't actually know what Yuzu said, though. She could easily have admitted her feelings and attraction to Mei without stating that Mei likes her back. I doubt it, but it's possible. Of course, there is the fact also that she's a kid and doesn't know a damn thing about gay culture, so it's likely she doesn't even know that she "came out", or that outing Mei is bad. But Mei isn't any less selfish. She made all of these decisions without even talking to Yuzu about them, and left her feeling desperate, broken, lonely, and helpless as a result.

But you expect that when kids are stepping into their first romance. They're young and stupid. They aren't supposed to be role models.

I think this chapter is ridiculous. How come their parents just accept the fact that their daughter dating her own step sister.

Because they're caring and understanding parents, and they've been pretty liberal (even bohemian at times) for the entire comic? And because a stepsister isn't a blood relation, so it isn't incest, and there's nothing wrong with being gay, and you can't help who you fall in love with anyway. I'd probably move them to separate bedrooms, but I wouldn't have a problem with it if it were a kid of mine.

Honestly, the common trope here is the parents find out and react badly, but that wouldn't have made sense at all given the way they comport themselves. I'm exceptionally refreshed to see GOOD parents in a Yuri story for once.

So I haven't read this, because age gap/loli yuri is not my thing, but did anybody else look at the first page of the update and mistake it for Subaru from Nanashi no Asterism? <_<

Not really, unless that’s the only manga you ever read with a gothic Lolita dress in it

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/nanashi_no_asterism_ch10#35
https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/nanashi_no_asterism_bonus_2

Ah, c'mon, it's damn near the same hairstyle (just missing the little bits sticking out to the sides) The face isn't that far off, and the outfit is the kind of thing he wore when in drag. When I first pulled it up, for a second I thought this was a spinoff. ;p