I kinda think Uta didn't explicitly confess, but she gave Kaoru such an extremely deliberate Meaningful Look that Kaoru couldn't help but understand anyway. But it's Kaoru we're talking about, so even so she knows, she was completely in denial about it, and spends most of chapter 15 in a weird limbo of trying to pretend that nothing happened and everything is completely normal, while also being extremely conscious of Uta, hesitating to wake her up in the morning, not talking about love charms, feeling startled to find herself in Uta's arms when she fell, etc. Wondering about older people from Uta's work or school was her last attempt at avoiding the issue, until she finally admits to herself that she knows very well who Uta's in love with.

That might end up being the most significant difference between the two siblings: they both harbor messy and uncomfortable secrets that radically threaten Kaoru's status quo, but while she tries to gloss over and ignore Reiichi's secret no matter how obvious it becomes, she can't help but be honest about Uta.

I love how everyone came up with all these genuinely interesting and novel ideas that could explain Liz's issues, but in the end, it's just because she had a somewhat unpleasant breakup. It wasn't even an especially awful breakup, it was just somewhat unexpected and upsetting in a completely ordinary way. Like, it's the one thing nobody guessed, because it was too normal. Oh well. I guess it's... Realistic? Maybe?

I'm not sure which of Takemiya Jin's works gave you that idea? I can't remember any of her stories that ended with a happy het marriage. I don't doubt you, I honestly don't remember.

I'm mainly thinking of Fragments of Love, chapter 1. Ends with a woman who harboured some regrets about her past, some doubts about her sexuality, finds out that she could be happy with a woman if she wanted to, but ultimately decides to marry and have kids, and is strongly implied to have earnestly found happiness that way. I'm also assuming that the woman wasn't exactly head-over-heels in love with her prospective husband at the time, if she was still concerned that she might not even be interested in men.

It's not quite the same situation as what we've been talking about, and a lot of the important details are largely up for interpretation, but the overall impression I get is that there's space in Takemiya Jin's work for characters to choose a traditional arranged marriage, and be perfectly happy and fulfilled by it. I contrast this with how marriage tends to be depicted by Amano Shuninta, i.e. a bland and unfulfilling burden that you put up with while finding socially unacceptable ways to make your life interesting.

To be clear, I'm not really talking about what the author's themselves believe about real life - I'm thinking specifically about the kind of attitudes I expect to find in their work. It's more about the kinds of stories they tend to write, their typical genre choices and narrative tendencies, than anything else. So I'm not saying that Amano Shuninta definitely thinks of marriage as a miserable trap for unhappy women, just that those are the only kinds of marriages she's interested in writing about. So when she depicts a woman sealing away her youthfulness to attend an omiai, I don't assume we're supposed to read that as a true and happy ending for her.

I mean... Like the metaphorical Touma-kun, I'm kind of inclined to see the marriage interview as a purely symbolic motif for accepting adulthood, rather than a literal man she went off to marry in spite of her own wants or desires. Even if Amano Shuninta doesn't personally believe in "marriage = maturity" as a universal truth (which she almost definitely doesn't, let's be real) it still functions as cultural shorthand her readers would be intimately familiar with, and if I'm already interpreting Touma as metaphorical, I've got no reason to take the marriage as strictly literal either.

The bitterness people feel about the nurse accepting the omiai may be fully intentional on Amano Shuninta's part too; she might be deliberately portraying conventional adulthood as an unpleasant and unwanted burden foisted upon us by societal expectations. We might be supposed to question whether or not the nurse made the right choice, and in so doing, question what it means to be an "adult" in the first place.

If this was a Takemiya Jin work, then I'd probably interpret it differently, because she seems a lot more sympathetic to the idea that a woman can find genuine happiness by settling down with a man and starting a family, even if it's not exactly where she wanted her life to lead.

But this is an Amano Shuninta joint, so even if the nurse does canonically go off and have a lukewarm marriage with a man chosen by her parents, it's just so she can cheat on him with the neighbouring housewife or her stepdaughter or whoever. If anything, the fact that she's setting off on her stoic adulthood with her lingering desires for lost youth locked away in her heart, means that she's almost guaranteed to fall into a torrid love affair with a precocious, smart-mouthed teenager who relentlessly teases her but nonetheless makes her feel young and pretty in all the ways she secretly wished for. So y'know. Swings and roundabouts.

last edited at Apr 21, 2018 3:32PM

But their conclusion is always terrible. If Amano is trying to give some message, I don't think I like it.

I mean, if we're going to get into it, people can change in sub-optimal ways, or learn the wrong lessons, or grow embittered instead of enlightened. I agree that "personal growth" implies something positive or beneficial, so it wasn't the best choice of words on my part. I was just trying to say that the characters all changed, in some way. They "grew up", for better or worse, and it was Touma - or rather, the formational experience that Touma represents - that served as a catalyst for this transformation.

It might seem like Amano Shuninta is approving of their choices by how lovingly and sincerely she's depicting them, but if there's anything we know for sure about Amano Shuninta, it's that she absolutely adores messy, twisted characters who revel in their terrible life choices. I'm not sure how interested Amano Shuninta is in depicting the internal lives of healthy, well-adjusted people.

last edited at Apr 20, 2018 6:59PM

At this point, I can't really argue about the morality of Touma's actions or whatever, because I'm completely unable to see her as a real person. It's gotten too absurd for that. She's treated like this irrepressible force of nature, both by the actual characters who interact with her, and by the narrative itself. However, when I stop thinking of her as a character, and consider her instead as the Platonic embodiment of the teen girl experience (or something along those lines) then it kinda starts to make sense for me?

Girl A defines herself strictly by the role of "student", and can't find any value in herself, until she experiments with and embraces girlish joys like love and beauty, and finds it liberating, even as she mourns the loss of her childhood.

Girl B believes that her girlishness makes her unique, that she possesses some insight or quality that others don't, only to realise that her seemingly transcendental experiences are actually rather mundane. She loses heart, until somebody else shows her that she can be special after all, just in a simpler and more personal way.

Girl C believes her girlish days should be behind her, but she feels like her youthful longings disqualify her from being a real adult. She discovers that all adults have a few childish tendencies here and there, and though she's initially disillusioned by her seemingly immature cohorts, she realises that there's no magic moment that a child transforms into an adult, and that maturity is a matter of taking on the responsibilities of adulthood for yourself, even while you long for simpler days.

It's all a big metaphor for personal growth. If Touma was a tarot card, she'd be Death. That's why she's a hairdresser - cutting your hair is a common symbol of rebirth and change. It's why she's so inescapably enthralling. It's why she's strange, unfathomable, and a little scary, but ultimately necessary and beneficial to those she touches.

Ultimately, it's why she's a hot butch who has amazing sex with everyone. This whole thing is Amano Shuninta's love letter to femininity, and Touma is her expression that all girls are wonderful and special and deserve kisses and love, no matter who they are.

Anyway, everything I just said is definitely a whole load of airy pretentious bullshit, but I still find it preferable to trying to read this as a conventionally engaging story about believable characters, because it's definitely none of those things.

last edited at Apr 20, 2018 2:20PM

I thought it was a bit weird when Sachi said she was going out for food with her friends and wasn't immediately like "Ayari, you're coming too, right?" But I still really enjoyed this chapter because it's a great way of showing what it looks like when Ayari spends time with someone as a Close Platonic Friend, and how it's super different from when she's around Sachi.

I mean, look at all the things that didn't happen! They got ice cream and didn't share any of it! They made dinner and Eri didn't get dazzled by Ayari's cooking skills! Ayari got dressed up in new clothes and didn't get flustered or embarrassed - until it was time for Sachi to see her! It's like they're drawing a very deliberate line between Cute Girls Doing Cute Things, and the special atmosphere Sachi and Ayari have together.

Touma has been completely up-front and honest about her feelings. When asked in the first chapter, she openly admits to Karen that she has intimate relationships with many women. In this chapter, Yuki asks for an exclusive relationship, and Touma politely declines. No lies, no stringing along.

I mean, the time for honesty and up-frontness is before you shower insecure and starstruck girls with compliments and rush them into a sexual relationship, not afterwards. We very clearly see her MO in chapter 1 - with Karen, there's no communication, there's no honesty, there's not even any time to really think about what's happening, just an endless stream of affection and compliments until suddenly she's being kissed.

Only afterwards does she reveal that she does this with everyone, and that's only because she was explicitly asked. And if the other girl doesn't ask, either because she doesn't have the courage to, or doesn't think she should have to, then we get situations like Yuki's, who still ended up dreadfully misunderstanding her situation even though she knew how Touma behaved. That doesn't sound like an up-front and honest relationship to me.

I know it's the Amano Shunintest thing ever to have these charismatic player-types who are terribly irresponsible but so gosh-dang hard to hate because they're so self-assured and straightforward about their intentions, but that doesn't actually make them good or reasonable as people. They're interesting and compelling characters, for sure, but we don't need to make excuses for their behaviour as if they're somehow not responsible when their careless actions hurt others.

A bit off-topic, but what happened to these two in the manga? Haven't read it for quite some time.

Historia became queen after killing Rod Reiss and Ymir got devoured by another titan shifter.

So basically no happy ending for these two :,(

Ymir's death is somehow made worse by the fact that it basically happens offscreen. It's mentioned in an offhand comment, and another character has a flashback about it later, but for such an interesting character, with such a significant name, her actual death is given almost no emotional or dramatic weight whatsoever.

Rather than dying, it's more like she was written out of the story, and the author killed her off as an afterthought because he still needed her blood more than he needed her character. The connection she had built up with Historia gets unceremoniously dropped because the author wants a whole new character to have her power instead.

The fact that Historia also hasn't been a major character in forever makes me super suspicious, too. Like, the only two members of the old recon corp to get unceremoniously pushed out of the story happen to be the couple fans latched onto for being super gay? Hmm. It could just be a coincidence, but it's a pretty unfortunate one, at that.

Anyway that's why Ymir/Christa fanart is the most tragic shit ever and even when it's great it makes me want to cry, the end.

last edited at Mar 18, 2018 6:27PM

I always breathe a slight sigh of relief when a story with an angst tag starts out with the character mopey and suffering, because it usually means the story arc is going to carry them out of it. It's rare that a character will finish exactly as unhappy as they started, unless that's just what genre they're in to begin with.

The stories you really have to watch out for are the ones that start off superficially peaceful and happy. Then you're just asking for trouble.

Not my taste, like the eye eater doujin.

Can someone link me to the eye eater doujin?

I think it's this one:

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/my_eyeballs_told_me_to_dedicate_everything_i_have_to_you_first_part

Or, well, if there are multiple eye-eating doujins on here, I'm not sure I want to know about them.

Eiko just stayed over? Must've messed up the harem route somewhere...

Okay, haha, oh wow. I was thinking that Ayako was letting a few unmotherly feelings slip, in earlier chapters, but I didn't expect things to escalate this quickly.

Actually, now that it's come to this, Akira might make a surprisingly strong addition to the story. I know people hate love triangles, but the biggest tension in Ayako and Asuka's potential relationship - okay, the second biggest tension in their potential relationship - is that Ayako may be looking at her daughter as a substitute for her husband, right? Asuka has half his DNA, etc. Well, if that's her motivation, then doesn't Akira serve that purpose much better than Asuka ever could? Not only does she share much of the husband's DNA, she shares Ayako's pain of having lost him, she's an adult, and, y'know, she's not her goddamn daughter. That's (usually) a bonus.

If Ayako wants a replacement, Akira is eminently the best person for the job in every way. If Ayako chooses Asuka anyway, then it'll be because of Asuka's unique qualities as an individual, and not because of her similarity to her father. Or it'll be because Ayako secretly has a massive incest fetish and just thinks it's totally hot to get it on with a family member, but shhhhhhh, never mind that.

Also, jeez, all these three-syllable names beginning with A are a bit much. What's next? Will the father's name turn out to be Akio? Are we going to meet their neighbours, the Aikawa family? Is a CPS agent called Atsuko going to threaten to tear them apart just as their relationship is starting to take off? Watch out! She doesn't look like much, but she's a specialist in aikido! Christ.

Yeah, this whole thing of... "My wife asked to sit down and discuss something important, going as far as requesting it specifically in the morning, and then waiting for me to get back from work late so we would have the chance to properly talk. Oh, there's a phone call from my dad. Mm? You want to meet him? Nah, that's fine, you don't need to get to know my parents. Anyway, that's it for today, I'm going to bed now, bye."

Like, dude. What are you doing? Entirely aside from brushing off the idea that your wife would have a reason to meet your goddamn parents, did you just forget that she had something to say? Are you deliberately avoiding her, or does she really register so little in your mind? The strong possibility that he's cheating is almost immaterial at this point, he's such a shitty husband that it's not even worth pretending that the relationship is still functional.

Even if Yumura likes guys too, and ends up choosing to be socially "straight" as an adult, her physical interest in Kurahashi is pretty undeniable. She's at least bi, even if she decides not to explore that part of herself in the future. I'm pretty fine with that outcome, if only because they specifically and consciously allow Kurahashi to reject that path for herself. For her, at least, it's not a phase, and they don't treat it as one. They might stay together, or they might not - but the good ending isn't contingent on their relationship status. They found something in each other that allowed them to understand themselves and their place in the world a little better, and the experience let them grow as people.

I guess that's satisfying enough for me because it didn't really feel like a love story? The love was the means, and not the end, so the fact that it didn't end with them conclusively together felt fine. I didn't feel as if the story tricked me into getting invested in their romance and their feelings for each other, so it was fine for the ending to emphasise their growth instead.

last edited at Feb 19, 2018 1:59PM

Eh? What do you mean, "the end"? What about the other two? That girl doesn't even know she's in the middle of a breakup. At least have the dignity to properly finish things before you go having tearful makeouts with another girl.

Maybe it's fitting for the character, but her realisation about how much her careless self-indulgence hurt someone close to her comes off as pretty shallow, when she has zero awareness of the fact that she's also been incredibly disrespectful to Koko as well. Yagi may have taken her relationship with Koko ridiculously lightly and was just going with the flow, but Koko was practically obsessed. She's going to be super upset when she realises that Yagi was just jerking her around the whole time, but Yagi barely realises she's there. It's not really a character arc when the character hasn't actually learned anything or grown in a meaningful sense.

And then, come to think of it... Why was Alice? Did she actually do anything? I figured she'd eventually pair up with Koko (like everyone else did) and it'd be a whole thing about how liking someone as a fan isn't actually the same thing as loving someone as a person, and the people you take for granted can be the people you can't live without, etc etc, but no, she just hung around as Koko's lackey in the background and didn't actually affect the story in any way. It's weird.

Is there a bonus chapter or follow-up that actually finishes out the story, by any chance? I feel like the actual ending has been cut for time.

Oh no, I just realised.

Her: "Doing something like this on the middle of the night makes me really nervous."
Her sister: "Why are your pants down in the middle of the day?"

...How long was she lying there?

Somehow, I get a really suspicious feeling when a girl in a Mira story says she frequently visits a popular, prince-like girl called Yuriko at home to "have some fun", especially when she seems to think pretty highly of her ability to take the lead. It's... Probably unintentional, right?

Okay, so, there's the Bloodborne hunter, Geralt, and Dante, but who's the guy with the thousand years of bloodline hunting arts? I can't place him.

...Y'know, when she asks for a sincere response to her confession as a reward for getting into a high-level college in another country, I can't help but think she's fully expecting to be turned down from the start. Like, what if the teacher said "Actually, you won me over, I'm totally in love with
you now, but I don't know if I can handle a long-distance relationship, I'm sorry"? Either she's making very elaborate preparations in advance to be harshly rejected and flee the country in embarrassment, not even considering the possibility that her feelings will be returned, or she hasn't thought this through very well.

last edited at Feb 3, 2018 8:58AM

Maaaaaaaan. I saw the angst tag, and thought, "Okay, if it starts out glum and depressing, then it'll likely have a happy ending, but if it starts out seemingly fluffy, then I'll probably be in for a bad time". I hate being right.

The doctor tosses something small and bloody back to an assistant and says something like "I'll keep the next one." It seems pretty obvious to me that it's a severed finger.

(replying to a post from 6 months ago, but) I'm pretty sure that was the cigarette she was smoking in the other panel

I also thought it was a cigarette, but then I realised, you definitely wouldn't drop a recently-burning cigarette butt into somebody's hands, especially not when both of you are all cleaned up and ready for surgery. Between that, her skeptical comment about a machinery accident, the "I'm keeping the next one" warning, Dr. Simon's "It's not going to happen again, it was an accident right?" and all the previous pictures of hands getting very intimate with some exceptionally sharp-looking teeth... I think it might have been a thumb, after all...

Well that was super mired in heteronormativity.

I mean, it definitely was, but that was also the entire reason their relationship fell apart, and overcoming those assumptions and dropping their self-enforced masculine/feminine roles is what allowed them to actually see and love each other properly, so... Good?

Huh? didnt Yamanaka already have someone she loves?

If you mean Toudou, then no. That was pretty clearly a friends-with-benefits arrangement.

Not Toudou - I was also confused by this. It was mentioned in the college flashback: "You're only kind to that woman you're in love with. Does the girl you're dating know you're in love with someone else?"

I think it means Mihashi, the pregnant woman from chapter 1, since although Yamanaka is far from kind to her, she does admit to having been in love with her. I'm only just now putting that together with the flashback, so I guess that means that they'd known each other (and had complicated feelings for each other) for much longer than they'd been working together. I guess that's backed up by Mihashi calling her "Emi", which even Toudou doesn't do, at least not openly.

In any case, aside from lending an even more tragic spin on chapter 1, the fact that Yamanaka used to be in love with someone for a long time seems to be over and done with. Maybe it'll come up again in the future, as a reason for Yamanaka to be closed off and resistant to having a real relationship with Taneda, but only in terms of being a difficult past for her to overcome, rather than someone she still wants to be with. That's how I've put it together, anyway.

last edited at Dec 23, 2017 2:44PM

Jeez, there's being inspired by a style, and then there's literally putting speech in blank cutaway panels, having a character jokingly stutter by repeating syllables in a person's name, and sticking random monochrome pictures of food in at unexpected places. Even the meandering, off-beat rhythm of the dialogue is the same. I don't know how I feel about this. I guess it kinda helps if I think of it as basically being a Monogatari doujin, except instead of using existing characters and story elements, it uses existing jokes and styles, but... Eh.

last edited at Nov 7, 2017 3:47AM