Finishing work at eight pm is already grossly overtime...

Not in Japan. It's common to finish work there at 9 or even 10PM. They're trying to fix the problem, but "company loyalty" is deeply rooted in their society, so it's gonna take time.

Every chapter of this manga is my favorite chapter.

Aoi Shoujo Scan translated the two last chapters. They are a little surprising, and the incest route is open again ?

Chapter 8 : https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.360626858706077&type=3&__tn__=-UC-R
Chapter 9 : https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.388094575959305&type=3&__tn__=-UC-R

I mean, I guess you can read these if you don't mind terrible translations.

should be replaced with from

Done.

bread?

needs more rampant deforestation tbh

The process of making bread DOES involve rampant deforestation. All that wheat needs to be grown somewhere.

What? no bread tag? My disappointment is innumerable and my day is ruined...

It has been added.

Wait, is same-sex marriage legal now in Japan??
I feel so ignorant for not knowing T.T

It's not. At least, not in the whole country. There are rumors that they may legalize it next year, but I'm not holding my breath. There are some places where you can get a civil union certificate, like Shibuya, though.

last edited at Nov 23, 2020 12:03PM

Question will there be a new chapter out this month?

Sadly, no. Next real chapter won't be out until December.

Hope you guys enjoyed the new chapter. This is my first time typesetting, so I might have messed stuff up. Gonna do the other bonus chapter soon.

And "soon" apparently means six months after. Well, it's here and there's nothing else left for this series. Enjoy.

Very 尊い.

Gladly, but I have a stupid question before that: What does JK stand for in this case?

Stand for Joshikausei or Highschool girl in english

Thanks.

There are generally three acronyms that stand for girls in different school groups in Japanese otaku subculture. JS is 'joshi shougakusei' or elementary school girl, JC is 'joshi chuugakusei,' middle school girl, and JK - 'joshikousei' or high school girl.

Don't bring drama from other forum threads here.

The time has come, and so have- /slap

Anyway, I've just fallen into the VTuber rabbit hole recently, so these are certainly welcome uploads. Thanks a bunch.

last edited at Nov 2, 2020 10:24PM

Well, that was hot. Didn't know that was a thing, but I'm glad it exists.

Heck yes. Dude why is no one funding this! Plastic pollution wouldn't be a thing if big companies made the switch...But I know that it would be more easily damaged etc, etc and be nothing but a liability to them having to ensure their product sells soon.

Oblaat is made of starch. It's only ever used as a candy wrapper to shield them from moisture, or in earlier times, as a packet to contain bitter powdered medicine so kids don't have to taste them. It can't work as a replacement for plastic or paper bags because they disintegrate instantly when wet and tear too easily.

This was short and sweet. Also, inb4 the cries of dubcon - no, that last panel means your argument is invalid.

Dubstep convention.

So... what's up with that title :?

It's just a pun with Satou's name.

Ohno

so what is the problem with the heart in the right? people would find out and hate her for that? I mean..... it's not even a case

You'd be surprised by how deep Japan's bullying problem goes. You can get bullied for just about any reason. And sometimes, they don't even need one. If it's your turn to be bullied, it's gonna happen.

I apologize if I sound ticked off, but honestly, I am a little bit at this point.

That’s because you seem to be unable to recognize when people are agreeing with you from a slightly different angle.

Are you, though? What you have been doing is telling me: "Hey, I know you said this thing, but I think it's actually this different thing." You're saying that both thematic and technical shortcomings pull the work down, and I'm saying that the problem's overwhelmingly technical, and the perceived thematic shortcomings are a drop in the bucket, if even that.

EDIT: Fourth time that I had to reiterate my argument. Am I going insane?

last edited at Oct 25, 2020 7:19AM

I’m saying (and will let other posters speak for themselves henceforth) that they can be both—the two go hand in hand in this case.

So that added a particular flavor to the authorial malfeasance here beyond simply yet one more manga series that looked promising at the start but ultimately crapped out.

Like I said, this manga has interesting themes that made readers resonate with it, and that's why people "stayed with it despite its many technical deficiencies," clinging to a hope that Uta will have a end to her story that will help in their catharsis. HOWEVER, and I can't believe that this is my third time saying it - the story fails to deliver on its implicit promises - a resolution to this unrequited love conflict that the entire premise of this story in the first place. IF the story managed to resolve said conflict, no matter how the author may have done it, the reader will have closure. Todokanu Ito's conclusion is a non-ending, and that is a cardinal sin in storytelling. The flavor of the authorial malfeasance is overwhelmingly dwarfed by sheer technical incompetence - is my whole point, and I'd even go so far as to say that this whole story is invalidated by that joke of an ending. The story does its themes a huge disservice, not the other way around.

I apologize if I sound ticked off, but honestly, I am a little bit at this point.

The problem is, the themes ended up being really trite. I've read a kabillion manga with a high school girl opining "I will lock away the precious blossom of my youthful love without regrets and move forward celebrating the bittersweetness in my heart."

I think there just kinda was never a lot any author could do with Uta. She's in love with Kaoru and has decided not to try to get over it and is pretty much mature about the whole thing. "Unrequited love exists" is... not deep or interesting.
Kaoru (and Reiichi) is in a much more interesting position, wrangling societal and parental expectations, figuring out the difference between different kinds of love, trying to balance your own desires with the needs of others. But Uta is portrayed as the protagonist (at least at first), and anyone empathizing with her is going to just be frustrated with Kaoru. I feel like the big selling point was "a high school girl is in love with her sister-in-law!!!" and with that the author painted themself in a corner.

I don't think the themes are trite at all. To say that is to dismiss the very real feelings a lot of people have to go through in life. That's like saying that exploring the nuances that can be found in the clash between good and evil in a story is trite. It's simply not true. A good author will find a way to write a good story for the themes of their choosing. You can have compelling characters, a unique setting, etc.

"Unrequited love exists" is... not deep or interesting.

That's not all there is to it. The main conflict of this story is "How will Uta ultimately deal with her unrequited love?" and not just "Does unrequited love exist?" That's an absurd thing to say. On the topic of this main conflict, the author decides in the end to NOT answer this question, and instead faff about with things nobody asked for, like Risako and Reiichi's drama, that girl who was in that beach photo in the end, that whole "I wanna have kids" moment with Kaoru, etc. The author wasted a lot of time on actual narrative garbage instead of putting that effort into exploring the themes they brought up in the beginning of the story. A bunch of non sequiturs that all ended up in the garbage bin along with the main plot point, unresolved, until the end of time.

last edited at Oct 25, 2020 5:55AM

Lucas Magnus, I should probably let Linterdiction speak for themselves, but I don’t think their call was for a definite happy yuri ending, but just for a legitimate development of the central situation to a logical resolution (happily romantic or otherwise), given the story’s starting premises.

For me, as the story went along and there was still absolutely zero indication of Kaoru becoming aware of any change in her sexual orientation, I looked for signs of some kind of “Uta moves on” resolution but of course we didn’t get that either.

IOW, it would be just as respectful to the personal experience of people traumatized by unrequited love to explore the implications of that love remaining unrequited, and you two are saying much the same thing only with different emphases (as I did in my response post above).

Wait, hold on. We're getting far from the point I'm trying to make. I made no claims that there's no merit to exploring the trauma people experience. What I'm saying is that, at its core, the failures of this story are technical, not thematic. To be more specific, I actually think that the themes of Todokanu Ito are refreshing, but the way the ending of this story was handled was a disservice to its themes. You can have an ending where Uta moves on from Kaoru, or one where they get together, or even one where Uta is left to evaluate and sort out what path she will take moving forward, introspection-style, but we got none of those. The author chose to ignore the central conflict and chose to give the readers an ending that refuses to address the elephant in the room. That's why it fails, and not because of any reader's personal experience. If that were the case, then a lot fewer people would be upset about the ending.

last edited at Oct 24, 2020 9:28AM

Now I feel like unrequited love and being strung along are especially sensitive, common traumas in the wlw community. And in the yuri-reading community, many of us "aren't wlw" but yearn for the relationships we see displayed and think we can never have--and later turn out to be trans, so the idea of an impossible love that sits on the horizon grabs onto a lot of baggage there as well. Basically, a lot of people demographically who would be reading this might have trauma that is evoked by its main scenario.

So, I think ultimately the reason people are so upset is not just because this was a promising story that ended poorly, but because it led us out into the woods and then left us there. I think people are receiving this ending as a personal betrayal, and on some level they're right.

I dunno, that sounds like a bit of a stretch. While I'm not saying that what you said doesn't apply to anyone in this forum thread, I think you might be missing the forest for the trees here. People, regardless of sexual preference, can appreciate good stories, and will be rightfully disappointed when said story doesn't deliver on its implicit promises. The problem here is much more generic than you may think. A well-written story will not have nearly as much criticism than a badly written one.

To give you an example - Madoka Magica (the anime series, not the movie) had a lot of yuri shippers, but that didn't end with Madoka and Homura living happily ever after. That series is still regarded as one of the better anime series out there despite this, and that's because, even for its faults, the conflicts that the story introduces were all resolved in at least a competent manner. Todokanu Ito failed to resolve its most important conflict - Uta's unrequited love for Kaoru. If it somehow ended with Uta not getting with Kaoru, either implied or explicitly shown, as long as it was done well, it shouldn't be that much of a problem. However, that's not what happened, leaving most people who put up with the story for four years understandably upset. It's a storytelling failure, not a social one, for the most part, at least.

last edited at Oct 24, 2020 7:20AM

All this arguing just boils down to whether or not the ending to this manga justifies what it asks its readers to sit through. Personally, I think the ending is downright horrible because it fails to resolve its central conflict in service of following multiple unrelated subplots... all of which the story also fails to resolve in a competent manner. While I won't rag on anyone for liking this story, this one really fell flat on its face with how it ended, just from a storytelling standpoint. How stories end are very important. The author is expected to tie up any and all loose ends that they've created, but this final chapter has failed on that front in an honestly spectacular fashion. Any claim to the contrary is willful denial of the facts.

I could have sworn that I've seen this before based on the title, but this is indeed my first time reading this thing. Weird.

In the end, I guess we really were the Todokanu Ito da to Shite mo.