People can have their lolis if they want in fiction. A fantasy is a fantasy. But don't go casually throwing around bullshit justifications for actual pedophilia.

She's however 16, not 8 or something. A little young, maybe, but legal in most countries for a reason (minus the incest part of course).

(that children = slave thing makes no sense though, I agree ^^)

I don't think MrCatt was talking about the protag of this manga specifically. If he meant 16 year olds, that's a little more ambiguous, but as you said, 16 is legal in most countries. Since he specified "children", not teens, and explicitly people who are not old enough to legally exercise their judgement over who to have sex with, I take that to mean people below the age of consent.

Okay, i think i mentioned this in my very first post on a mochi story, but i am a woman who is in a romantic relationship with her sister and we have been for years now. Our lifes are great, we have not been inconvenienced that much (hiding your relationship in that situation is surprsingly simple. No one thinks anything of it when you live together with your sibling.), and we are happier now than we have ever been.

How exactly are we hurting people? Why do we deserve to be charged with a crime and potentially serve jail time? We grew up together, for some reason or another the Westermarck effect didnt work, we have always contributed to society as much as anyone else, why is our love wrong? Should we split up and be miserable? Why? We have just as much right to be together as anyone else.

Its nice to see that there are some people who accept this kinda thing though.

I think part of what complicates the issue is that incestuous relationships often have a lot of other issues entangled with them. Obviously with heterosexual relationships, there's the inbreeding angle, but also family dynamics often involve a power disparity that can be problematic. Two sisters near the same age who are both adults is one thing, but a mother and a daughter? An adult with a young person is risky to begin with, because the adult is in a position of authority and responsibility, which gets in the way of determining if consent is really possible. (And with an actual /child/, it definitely isn't.) This is why age gap yuri makes me sort of eeeeeh sometimes. Even with siblings, often an older sibling can have a real feeling of authority and/or responsibility over the younger one, which isn't a good starting point for a healthy relationship. For example, in this manga, the mother consents to a make-out session not because she's actually interested in her daughter, but primarily because she feels responsible for her and is afraid of what will happen if she rejects her outright. That's got a great basis to start a relationship on. If the roles were reversed, and the mom was pushing her feelings on the daughter, we'd rightly call that child abuse. Power dynamics are a big part of the ethics of relationship.

There's also the issue of what happens if the relationship doesn't work out. You can break things off with friends and ex's, but your family is your family, and the family unit is a bedrock to healthy development. Stats show that while families do not have to be "normal" in the traditional sense, -Having- one is a huge boost to a personals functionality. Fact is, most relationships don't work out. Most people you meet didn't end up with their high school sweetheart. They tried a bunch of relationships that fell apart for various reasons before they (maybe) found somebody they're compatible with. If your ex is your sister, one or both of you can kiss family dinners goodbye forever.

None of that may apply to you and your girlfriend, and I'm not judging your specific relationship. These are just some of the issues that crop up when you start discussing it seriously. If you guys are happy and aren't hurting anybody, I don't have any personal problem with that and I'm happy that you're happy. But the fact that you guys successfully avoided the pitfalls doesn't mean they don't still exist for other people.

Now, should there be laws? Ehh. Should their be jail time? Ehhhhhhhh. Should people avoid sexualizing close family relations? Generally, yeah, that's probably a good idea?

But the thing about fiction, and the reason a lot of people are okay with incest in fiction but not real life, is because in fiction, you can focus on the outliers. You can focus on a story where the main couple overcomes the obstacles and bucks the shackles of an often depressing and inconvenient reality, and there are no real consequences.

Just my two cents on the issue, anyway.

last edited at Mar 25, 2018 3:38PM

All I want is for Touma-kun to end up falling in love for real with the most plain looking and apathetic girl in school

From what I understand about Touma-kun's character, she would be fine with that. After all her point is, all girls are cute in there own way. It's actually a positive message. Kind of sweet when you think about it.

Not really? I mean, to quote a great genius, "When everybody is special, no one will be..."

This comic is a perfect example of how treating everybody like they're a special precious flower just ends up hurting them, because you may say they're great, but then you turn around and treat them like everybody else, which ultimately means they mean nothing more to you than anybody else.

I also gotta take issue with all the people in this thread making excuses for Touma. It doesn't matter if she's being maliciously manipulative, or if she's just carelessly insensitive, the end result is the same. She's leaving a string of broken hearts in her wake exclusively because she doesn't spend any time thinking about how anyone else feels. She doesn't deserve your excuses, and I'd bet she knows exactly what she's doing. Yuki tries to get closer, and Touma just brushes her off with a smile. She comes and literally begs to have her feelings acknowledged, and Touma literally laughs it off with an insincere "sorry".

If this character was a guy, would any of you guys be this forgiving of that kind of callous behavior? Somehow I doubt it.

She's a player because she's playing with girl's hearts, and it's tearing up at least some of them. I mean there's Yuki, obviously, but also you can see the tension fall over the rest of them when Touma says Yuki is special, before she completely invalidates the compliment by spreading it to everybody.

This girl is the worst.

last edited at Mar 25, 2018 3:37AM

Btw Children are basically just slaves if you think about it – not able to do anything without their’s master’s permission, including having sex with whoever they want, till they are 21 or whatever. But that’s another story.

They aren't slaves, they're -CHILDREN-.

It is a medical fact that children do not have fully formed brains, nor do they have the knowledge or context to make informed decisions about sex (or various other issues.) They are also generally smaller, weaker, and unable to physically resist most adults. An adult, however, should be perfectly capable of realizing that such a massive imbalance in power with someone that is too young to produce informed consent means that any kind of sexual act is -their- responsibility to stop. So yeah, we don't let them "have sex with whoever they want", just like we don't let them take other stupid risks with their own bodies and health.

People can have their lolis if they want in fiction. A fantasy is a fantasy. But don't go casually throwing around bullshit justifications for actual pedophilia.

Honestly, the mom and the aunt raising their little girl as a big gay family is adorable and I now wish that was what this manga was about in its entirety.

Huh. Is this the first ever 'good' amnesia twist in the history of manga?

It's almost as if this whole series were about some kind of...amnesia that is...bright and cheery.

It's...It's a hat. what the hell are you -doing- to it that it needs cleaning?

The way they looked at each other right after the kiss in the bath...

They are flushed from the heat of the bath, which undercuts it a bit, tho.

Honestly, I want there to be a deeper chemistry that they're ignoring, but I can't tell if that's where the author is going, and it's kind of driving me a little nuts.

Why is this manga on Dynasty reader if this isn't yuri?

Because Dynasty Reader was never meant to host exclusively yuri.

Okay, alternate question, given the first issue of this manga features a girl using a remote control bullet vibe (which is evidently under her exclusive control) to make another girl cream her brains out on a public street, why isn't it tagged yuri?

I am an identical twin and I also studied psychology, if there were twins that were in this kind of relationship it would DEFINITELY be narcissitic, I mean, yuri love is already considered narc. Because we share the same body so add being a twin to that equation ^^;;

(stare) Yeah, I STRONGLY disagree with that "yuri love is considered narcissistic" bullshit. As a bisexual, I'll tell you right now that when I am attracted to someone of the same gender, it has nothing to do with any kind of similarity to me or my body.

I also question that "studied psychology" thing, because it sounds to me like you think "I read a book about Freud" qualifies as "studied psychology", but I have numerous friends who are actual mental health professionals, and the consensus in the field is that Freud deserves credit because he got people thinking about psychology, but was wrong on pretty much every conclusion he ever came to, including the "gay people are narcissistic" thing.

last edited at Mar 15, 2018 6:00AM

You also have to keep in mind that reincarnation is a central tenet of buddhism, which is much more common in Japan than it is in the west. I really think that's the intended implication, but I'm also fairly confident this author isn't done with these characters.

^ No, if you think properly about how to interpret what the mangaka has chosen and not chosen to put in, if a more complicated, more specific interpretation is intended, then the mangaka would have put in things to lead the reader to that interpretation. The absence is therefore evidence against the more complicated explanation, so the balance of evidence for it is weaker than for a more natural interpretation.

Occam's Razor as applied to gay lady manga.

I have no idea who swapped with who this chapter. Didn't Natsuko and Haruka decide earlier they weren't going to swap with other people?

Nobody swapped except for Haruka and Natsuko in this chapter, tho?

I don't get why manga artists these days are so obsessed with drawing people sticking their tongues out and rubbing them together mid-air. It's like they all only learned about french kissing by watching Japanese porn videos.

Yeah, also japanese porn stars are THE WORST at kissing. I mean truely awful.

Pyoro posted:

Glad to see someone is actually looking at the pictures in this visual medium. You don't waste panels in a 8 page long story if it isn't significant and in this case, it's a very blatant hint.

I was too distracted by socks. Look at the ones the "heroine" wears. Then at the one we see of the one who killed herself.
...

Well. But reincarnation/past life makes sense, insofar such things make sense.

It's true that the furniture look like just out of the 80s. The TV set, the phone. And then, there's the flat screen on page 7: time skip.

She looks to young to be remembering something that happened 20 years ago, so reincarnation? Ghosts? This maybe warrants a supernatural tag.

It's obviously NOT a "repressed memories" thing.

The fashion is also consistant with early 80's japan.

Also...You realize the 80's were -30- years ago, right? (or more, for any year before '88)

I think reincarnation is the most likely, although ghosts or psychic powers could also be an explanation. It is definitely supernatural.

^ So addicted that you are straight making stuff up. We never saw the day Mo interfered, she stopped SJ for apparently a whole day and then we literally saw nothing else. QT is not showing any sign of anger, disappointment or frustration. She is acting like chapter 148b never happened.

First off, she wasn't stopped "for a whole day". Chinese schools get out late afternoon/early evening, so they don't have that long to hang out after school. I know the translation said "She didn't show up that evening", but that doesn't mean she never contacted her to say "go home without me, I have to take care of something today", which would be the polite response to a serious delay. In fact, the next scene in the plot we got (the sweet potato scene, which we know was the next time they saw each other because QT had SJ's coat with her) QT asked if she finished her business, implying that they had been in contact.

We still don't know how SJ let down Mo, or what Mo's reaction was, which is frustrating to me, but I'm still holding out hope that QT asks about it and we get a flashback or a recap.

FrostBite92 posted:

This is so bizarre. What happened to the other girl? Why are both of them acting like nothing has happened? Is Tanjiu seriously going to sweep it under the rug after all that build-up? Like that confession scene before?

But they're talking about the confession scene, they just did!

They're talking about the kiss scene. I think Frostbite is talking about when Sun Jing confessed to Qiu Tong and then afterwards things just kind of went back to normal for awhile.

last edited at Mar 15, 2018 12:32AM

Maybe it's a supernatural story where she's somehow got memories of someone else's life.

I just kind of assumed it was a reincarnation thing, yeah. The mention of the apartment being a bit old-fashioned and the presence of the old CRT TV, compared to the modern flatscreen in the narrator's apartment, makes me think Kuniko and Mihoko's story might have happened a few decades ago.

Yeah, I agree with you. How else could you explain the random technology close-ups? Plus, you can see the rotary dial phone on page 4 along with the old TV. I mean, this should be some kind of a hint ...

The close-ups could just be there to show you how much time has passed.

Well, yeah, that's the point. They're clearly there to show you that the girl having the dream is living decades after the events of the dream are supposed to transpire. Since the girl in the last part clearly isn't 50+, which she would have to be if the 20-something lived through the three-four decades it takes to go from rotary phones and channel-dial CRT televisions to flat screens, we know that she isn't the same person.

I'm also inclined to go with reincarnation. The era difference is important. The rotary phone and old school TV are out of the 70's. If "Mihoko" followed her lover, This girl would be the right age to be her reincarnation.

Just because this isn't a serial doesn't mean it might not be a two-shot or something. I suspect there's a second part in the wings, maybe where she meets Kuniko's reincarnation?

And that's why the author made them "meet" at 13 years old.

Anyway, twincest is always quite narcissistic. Like kissing your reflection in the mirror.

Eh, I disagree with the "always". Your reflection is your reflection, but a twin or lookalike is still a different person. I'd say it depends on what's going through your mind. If you're like "Man, I am HOT", then sure, but another angle is "This person understands me better than anyone else ever could. Hell, you could even have somebody who is kinked up by the idea of two identical people doing stuff, even if they aren't super fond of their appearance.

In any event, QIU TONG THAT IS NOT HOW POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT WORKS.

Eh, the author has been going through drama with the publisher of the book version of their comic being censored by the government, so maybe this is their way of coping? I am also eager to return to the plot, but it's not like this is the first time the series ever had out-of-sequence intermissions.

I thought Mochi was pure.

(tilt head)

(blinks)

That would be an interesting twist, but let's see what's really happening here. Reiichi-kun might not actually be cheating. We just don't know yet. Like, okay, it's weird for the lesbian to be pulling for the het ship, but until he proves to be doing what we suspect he is, give him the benefit of the doubt.

I seriously don't even believe it's worth doubting at this point. I realize I've already had this argument with people in this forum, but seriously, it isn't just that he's been doing things that are super sketchy, and it isn't just that we saw him with this girl under suspicious circumstances, but to explain his behavior, and Risako's behavior, and the inner thoughts and comments we've seen from them in a context of "Whoops! It was all just a big misunderstanding!" Is just...too much of a stretch. It becomes comical at that point.

...of course, if he is cheating, I hope Kaoru dumps him like 75kg of compost and pairs off with someone who actually loves her.

That we agree on, although as much as I want Uta to have a happy ending, She obviously already has some kind of resentment towards her dad over something he did, and it's gonna suck for her to see her relationship with her brother soiled by all this.

I need to ask who is the name in the bottle

Pretty sure that's Guk-Hwa's abusive grandmother.