I was just about that mad regarding Love Lab, so it's sort of relieving to see others get mad about yuri bait.

But I'd prefer to focus on this nice series.

https://i.imgur.com/CJfMI2q.jpg

Like whatever uncomfortable miasma of gender identity "My Wife is a Man" lies in.

There is literally nothing wrong with My Wife is a Man.

They don't have feelings. They don't exist. Yes, the bigot should be ignored but their feelings that actually exist still outweigh nothing it's the feelings of the real gay people who would gain from lesbian representation that outweigh theirs and should be prioritized.

You can see it that way, sure, but the feelings of the real people or the gay community don't come into mind for me. Except for mine. I mean I hate the anti-yuri folks, so I get that satisfaction, I guess. But primarily I'm thinking about the characters. If you're going to argue that the bigot's unsightly and ugly feelings stand above the love of the character's, well I can't agree on that.

I don't read yuri to fist pump that it's another victory for the gay community, I read them because I love the characters and the way the interact with each other.

last edited at May 10, 2019 7:31PM

Do you think we should treat real people and fictional characters with the same level of ethical priority? If the trolley problem had your favourite fictional character (who doesn't exist) on one track and an actual living breathing human being on the other would you be conflicted about saving the actual living breathing human? Like that's what I'm talking about here not like really loving fictional characters and investing in them but straight up believing they have the same intrinsic worth as actual human life.

Well, the equivalent of the fictional character on the track would be the concept of the fictional character being erased from existence, as that would be the equivalent of death for them.

And to answer your question. It depends a lot on the identity of the person on the track.
(and to a lesser extent, the character whose existence is in question on the other.)

I mean I can count a lot of fictional characters that bring greater joy and good to the world than quite a few real people.

last edited at May 10, 2019 7:25PM

Prioritizing the feelings of fictional characters that do not in fact have feelings over those of real people is delusional. Empathizing with them within the context of their stories? Perfectly reasonable and part of the point of stories. Thinking they have the same ethical standing as actual people in a real world context? Psychologically unwell.

Depending on the situation I would certainly prioritize the feelings of the characters over the feelings of real people.

Like, say, a very common type of person that would feel threatened by a potential lesbian couple in fiction because it damages their ability to enjoy the story. I often wonder what kind of person would want to destroy the feelings of the characters for the sake of their own self-satisfaction. That would count as prioritizing a fictional character's feelings over a real person's.

I suppose that makes me psychologically unwell. Who knew?

last edited at May 10, 2019 7:22PM

Koguma is not a real person therefore her feelings have no bearing on ethical considerations outside the text.

Not everyone consumes fiction this way, nor are they obligated to or should do so in this way.

If such a thing were so self evident then this discussion wouldn't be happening, but I'll concede I may have misinterpreted the statement. (or may not have! It's pretty ambiguous).

Are people actually arguing about this adorable bundle of cuteness?? I love this series. If it makes you uncomfortable, that just says something about YOU, not the story. Get over it. Love the cute. FFS people.

Here's how I think of this: could the receiving character claim the other character molested her, and seek legal action? If the answer is yes, we have an uncomfortable, rapey situation, and the other character should not have done it.

If you're going to take the context of their relationship out of the equation then you might as well cry foul on hugging too then. Or kissing. Or anything really.

last edited at May 10, 2019 6:40PM

If it was merely a matter of stating one's discomfort, I'd have no problem. Personally, I'd say a bit of danger is the spice of life, and I don't understand the need some people have to sanitize something to the point where I'd feel the lifeblood and excitement's completely drained from it, but to each their own.

What I do find fault with is the need to cast the author as some kind of sick fuck because they didn't do so and also may (or may not even, apparently!) draw loli on the side, which even if they do, would be a massive leap in reasoning. It's literally a case of "stop liking what i don't like" but dressed up as moralistic prattling.

last edited at May 10, 2019 5:58PM

y'all can like your non-con loli porn all you want.

Whoa, I missed when 'non-con' was brought up.

Meh, I went through their Pixiv and the closest thing I could find to "loli sex" was two separate comic strips of Sakurako and Himawari from Yuru Yuri, where both comics fade out and return to them nude (with their genitals covered, either by sheets, frames, or body positions) implying they had sex during the interval.

The only other thing that stands out to me is an illustration of a frontal nude of Sanya and Eira from Strike Witches sitting lateral to each other, with a gap between them, where their body proportions appear quite juvenile. Their breasts and nipples are exposed, however their vulvas are concealed. The illustration doesn't seem very sexualized in any other way, other than a blush and expression on Eira's face that could be interpreted as arousal.

Other than that, the artist seems to have a preference towards small/flat breasts and has drawn some feminine looking men (noteably Hideyoshi from Baka to Test) topless. It seems to me that the person who brought up issue with their pixiv is more concerned with the body type then the emotional/moral content. I'm guessing they just threw in the 'non-con' bit as a last minute strawman insult because they found it more damning than 'consensual loli porn'. Or else they're implying that no porn involving lolis can be consensual, thus the comic strips involving Himawari and Sakurako are 'non-con' by default, but in the comic strips mentioned, both characters appear to take active roles, and anyone familiar with the characters should be able to imagine the emotinal states concerned with such a scenario.

Edit: As it turns out, both of those "comic strips" of Himawari and Sakurako have been translated and uploaded here on Dynasty already.

Regardless if the claim is true or not, what the artist draws on the side is irrelevant as long as they draw good yuri.
If people want yuri to expand as a genre beyond the current niche it is, then the first step is to not shit on the artists for things they're interested in drawing. I've seen this happen time and time again for whatever reason, at least in western communities, sometimes voiced even directly at the artist.

last edited at May 10, 2019 2:25PM

Wow some people are taking this a bit too seriously. This is a lighthearted romcom, not a serious dramatic romance exploring the psychological effects of dom/sub relationships. At no point are we led to believe that Hino has any malicious intent towards Koguma, nor that she wouldn’t stop if Hino seriously told her to. And it would be unnatural for them to have a well defined and explicit power dynamic with safe words and everything when the entire story so far is about ambiguity.

There's always people who feel the need to suck the joy out of things because they lack the capability to take context from whatever they're reading and insist on judging it by rules that clearly don't apply to it.

Sometimes I wonder if it's even fun living like that.

last edited at May 10, 2019 1:36AM

Oh, c'mon. If instead of yuri it was any other genre it would be an instant drop for all of us. If anyone paid it any attention was because it is yuri. If it was scanlated it is for the yuri.

I'm not disagreeing with that at all. But I don't mind mediocrity if it's mediocre yuri.

It's not like the series is particularly upsetting like a handful that come to mind for me so I don't mind it.

Oh, I don't like Kuroneko either, I just feel like OreImo is like if someone made a romance with King Joffrey Baratheon as the love interest.

I wouldn't know the details of what you're referencing because I don't watch things I don't like, which is evidently not the case with you. That or you're just memeing on a character after watching a handful of episodes, because her behavior given the circumstances revealed later aren't at all unreasonable or particularly childish. She has a pretty believable reason to be tsundere.

last edited at Apr 13, 2019 11:44PM

Mediocrity aside, yuri manga getting canned is never a happy thing for me.

Getting a free pass just because it is yuri ain't good either.

I'm not giving it a free pass so much as that it's just mediocre to me, but that's not really a bad thing. I keep up with it because it's alright enough to keep reading, if I hated it it'd be another story. The biggest problem I had so far was that the developments in this chapter were rushed as hell, if I had to complain about something.

I mean, you like what you like. I'm not gonna be that asshole that insists my opinions are objectively correct . People love Kirino Kousaka, so anything's possible.

It's time to let it go.

Anyway, unrelated anime aside, I don't mind cliches, but the developments this chapter were kinda way too fast. Feels like it's being pushed towards an ending, I hope it's not a cancellation in store or something. Mediocrity aside, yuri manga getting canned is never a happy thing for me.

last edited at Apr 13, 2019 5:03PM

To be fair, it's not about bisexuals being cheaters, it's about the thrill of cheating itself + and picking the other female main character over a guy, usually.
Maybe there are some, but I don't really recall her doing "cheating lesbians", but I'd say that the reason for that isn't because she thinks or wants to portray bisexuals as morally depraved. It's probs because she fetishises the sort of cheating that's "feelsgood". As in, most readers would probs feel bad if the character was cheating on a girlfriend/wife tbh. Generally, to make readers root for cheating/not feel too morally uncomfortable with it, the partner that's cheated on must be someone they disapprove of. They may be abusive, they may be a cheater themself, they may be negligent, etc. Something is put into place to justify why "cheating is okay and although it feels wrong, it feels good and it's okay in this case". In yuri manga though, often just having the partner being male is enough for those who have a bias/much prefer women to disregard relationship morality as a factor of that equation.
That's simply what she likes to write. Rather than a jab at bisexuals, I feel like it makes sense, for what she wants to write, for her characters to end up being bi.
She likes bad girls, she likes dysfunctional relationships, she prefers having guys being the one cheated on.

In the end, it's her cup of tea and you can read whatever you want despite knowing that you dislike the author's tastes, but it doesn't make her "objectively" bad or anything if your main criticism is basically that you personally don't like what she likes to write. There's obviously an audience for her work. To be upset when you're not part of that audience is kinda weird imo.

It's true. I didn't feel a lick of pity for either guy in Netsuzou.

I liked it.

The worst was probably those guys at the pool. They're the usual really pushy guys who just haunt every pool, beach, and downtown shopping district in every romance manga, But when they switch tactics from trying to pick up Fujishiro to insulting Kurokawa, she completely flips her shit. They're random strangers who were just harassing you, why do you even care what they're saying? You were just yelling at them to leave you alone seconds before, and now their negative opinions are some kind of existential threat? You need to prove them wrong by tearing off Kurokawa's glasses and showing off her face?

Nanaki feels compelled to prove them wrong because of how Kurokawa is.
Kurokawa has been saddled with feelings of worthlessness all her life, and telling her to ignore the people putting her down isn't going to change that. It's Kurokawa's feelings that concern Nanaki more than anything.
Remember it was Kurokawa's tears that made Nanaki hit the teacher, not the insult itself.

The only thing the characters care about is looking cute, and the only attacks they're vulnerable to are being criticized for not being cute—everything else they just shrug off. They don't need friends as long as they can look cute.

It's not that they don't need friends, them losing their friends was a show of why their friends weren't good friends - although for different reasons - and those reasons reflect their own flaws, which is why they needed to cut those friends off. They obviously need friends because the entire manga started off Kurokawa showing genuine empathy to Nanaki, something she likely experienced rarely at best knowing the circle she choose to associate with.

last edited at Dec 20, 2018 2:59PM

And while Homura did legitimately love Madoka, her constant resets and loops were because of what she wanted for Madoka. At least, it eventually got there.

My problem with this line of reasoning is that for Homura, her actions have always been dictated by what Madoka directly requests from her. She tries to save Madoka because Madoka didn't want to die. She starts controlling Madoka and not allowing Madoka to make decisions for herself because Madoka requests that Homura stop her self-proclaimed stupidity from allowing Kyubey to trick her. She upholds and protects Madoka's new world, willing to face a fate worse than death because that's what Madoka wanted. Even her betrayal - in her mind - is what Madoka wanted, because according to Madoka's own words during her amnesiac state, she'd never want to leave her friends and family behind because it would make her incredibly sad.

After all, Homura gains nothing from the betrayal. She had the opportunity to ascend to the afterlife and spend the rest of eternity with Madoka. But she rejected it, because the amnesiac Madoka said she would never want to leave her ordinary and happy life, spurring Homura to believe that Madoka's sacrifice was merely out of necessity rather than her true desire. So she rejects the Law of Cycles, taking on the mantle of Madoka's enemy, and constructs a fake world where for as long as the barrier holds, Madoka can live peacefully and normally, cut off from all the things that might link her back to the world of magical girls and incubators.

Misguided and obsessed, perhaps. But selfish is hardly what I'd call it. The true dichotomy between the two is not selflessness and selfishness, but the difference between one who'd try to love and save everyone in the world even if it would make the people they love sad, and one who'd sacrifice everyone - including themselves - in the world because they love one person.

Every wish made in the show, with the exception of Madokas final wish, was a selfish one. That was the point that Kyubey kept trying to hammer in, and why he was so shocked when Madoka broke his "rules".

I also strongly disagree with this. First of all, Kyubey doesn't and wouldn't care for applying such a moralistic rule or having such a thing broken. What shocked Kyubey is that Madoka's wish is itself a paradox that requires the entire universe to be restructured

Remember that in the series, wishes and curses counterbalance each other. A great wish must be balanced out by a correspondingly great curse. Madoka's wish was born out of the combined weight of the negative karma built up through the hundreds of loops Homura's gone through trying to save her. That amount of negative karma should be enough to create the greatest witch that would destroy the planet, and it does in most of the loops. But Madoka's wish defies that - the negative karma accumulated by Homura is miraculously converted into positive karma by Madoka. It's more or less deus ex machina, though I don't mean that in a bad way, since it's intentionally supposed to be a reality-defying miracle, hence Kyubey's shock. "Are you trying to become a god?" he asks, because attempting to rewrite the rules of the universe is more or less what that entails, with Madoka destroying her own witch the moment it's born, something that shouldn't even be physically possible.

This makes much more sense than him being shocked that Madoka wasn't selfish, given the cold and rational nature of his species. He wouldn't care if a wish was self-serving or not, even differentiating between a selfish and selfless wish would be petty nonsense to his race. I believe there is a narrative about selfish and selfless wishes, but it's strictly limited to Kyouko and Sayaka's story. After all, I think it'd be excessively harsh to frame the phrase "I don't want to die" from the addled mind of a little girl bleeding out to death under a car as selfish, it's probable she wasn't even sure what was happening because it was a little alien cat thing that was asking her what she wanted. Meanwhile, Kyouko and Sayaka's wishes were explicitly laid out to have ulterior motives to them; Sayaka wanted Kyousuke to heal so he'd love her, Kyouko wanted her father to be respected so they'd stop being poor and have food. Nevermind the fact that Madoka's original wish was just to save the life of a stray cat, it'd be difficult to tack a narrative of selfishness onto that.

last edited at Jul 25, 2018 6:07PM

"I don't mind loli"
"loli is DISGUSTING"

last edited at Jul 25, 2018 11:43AM

It's really weird reading a Madoka story that portrays Homura's (actual Homura's, not AU Homura) love and devotion for Madoka as genuine and supportive instead of obsessive and selfish. Even before rebellion.

I've seen this accusation thrown around but I don't agree. Obsessive yes, but Homura's hardly selfish. Even her betrayal was spurred on by Madoka's own declaration that she'd never want to leave her friends and family behind for anything. The somewhat erroneous conclusion that Homura drew was that Madoka was not truly happy with her sacrifice. While there was obviously an element of dissatisfaction on Homura's part from the end of the anime, from her own thoughts we know she was clearly willing to honor Madoka's wishes until the moment she became convinced that it was not Madoka's true desire.

Even her controlling behavior during the anime was spurred on by Madoka's own request to "save her from being stupid" and to not let her be fooled by Kyubey into making a contract again. It's little wonder that that was the timeline in which she starts taking a more heavy-handed approach when Madoka herself is calling her decisions stupid and wants Homura to prevent her from making them again.

On a side note, people also read way too hard into her wish. It was a high stress situation with only a single thought running through her head - that her own weakness forced Madoka into shouldering everything. Are we to presume that Mami doesn't care about her parents either because she didn't wish for their survival?

last edited at Jul 25, 2018 11:23AM

I don't even know why someone would push for the title of this to be changed to "Non-Canon OneeLoli Hentai, Master and Mel." It reeks of absolute desperation to reject the well-established fact that this is how Itou Hachi feels about her characters. Canonicity probably isn't even something that crossed her mind because whether it has happened or not at the current point in time of the story is irrelevant - to her, it's something that inevitably will happen.

The idea that it would somehow reduce the number of these supposed misclicks (which totally aren't just people who know they hate it and feel compelled to read it so they can complain about it more) is ridiculous, when that's not even the source of the problem in the first place.

But it's not grammatically incorrect. You start letters in english as, say: "Dear [Hoky]," or "Dear [Bob]" with the subject in the brackets I'm placing.
In this case, it'd be "Dear [My Teacher]." That's absolutely correct. Saying "My Dear Teacher" is something entirely different in meaning. In the former case, it means something along the lines of "to my teacher" and in your erroneously fixed version it means "my important teacher." The point of the title is that it's the person's feelings they are trying to send to their teacher.

"Dear Teacher" would probably be a more natural way to phrase it in English than "Dear My Teacher", but eh, it gets the idea across.

Back on topic, I'm starting to think that another commenter's theory earlier in the thread that Rii was Kohsaka's previous target is right on the money. She's being a little too serious and intense for somebody who doesn't suspect what's going on.

It also sounds significantly less personal to say Dear Teacher.

last edited at May 22, 2018 11:46PM

Okay this is going exactly where I expected it to. And that's not a good thing. While I'm not shocked, I'm not going to hide my disappointment and disgust. There's no question that woman's a rapist. And this author is condoning this behavior as acceptable as a romantic relationship. I'm understand the draw of loli and age gap manga. While I'm not big on loli I've enjoyed various age gap stories like My Dear Teacher (I refuse to use the Engrish title). Such stories didn't involve watching a grown adult grooming a child and outright tossing her into bed and raping her. This one goes beyond the pale. Keep in mind, I'm cool with the story being here and being available for everyone to read. I'm sure there are some people who're enjoying it. But I'm thoroughly disgusted with it.

How is Dear My Teacher engrish?
It's supposed to be read like as if someone composed a letter "Dear, my teacher."
It's not even the only thing I can think of that uses this idea, there's "Dear my future" in Pretty Rhythm/Pripara
http://pripara.wikia.com/wiki/Dear_My_Future_~Mirai_no_Jibun_e~
And the Japanese half the title even calls it "to the future me"
Based off of a quick google search, there's also "Dear my friends," "Dear my lover," "Dear my girls," and "Dear my human" (it's a pet show, so I presume this is directed at the owner), all of which are asian mind you, so it's not even a completely uncommon thing either.

Calling it "My Dear Teacher" is literally changing the meaning to something else entirely.

last edited at May 22, 2018 10:39PM

I've never watched Hibike! Euphonium, and I don't ever intend to do so (partially because I just hate anime), so here's an example I'm more familiar with. In Ken Akamatsu's manga Negima!, when the character Setsuna is introduced it's quickly established that she has feelings for one of the main female characters, Konoka. As the story goes on, their relationship gradually progresses. HOWEVER. Even while that's happening, both girls are still being pushed as "romantic options" for the protagonist. As soon as the two became a thing, I lost all investment I had between either one of them and the protagonist, which makes me wonder why they couldn't just be together without the protagonist's involvement.

To be fair, he did make them straight up get married at the end, and apparently have science babies in the sequel.

I, uh... don't think it worked out that way. I'm not up to date with U.Q. Holder, but from what I've read so far, "science babies" isn't a safe assumption to make.

I thought they had descendants that looked like literal clones of themselves, but I was already fed up with Negima by the end of it for non-yuri reasons so I didn't pick up UQ holder and this is just what I've heard, hence the "apparently." The marriage was a thing though, at the end of Negima.

last edited at Apr 28, 2018 12:36PM

I've never watched Hibike! Euphonium, and I don't ever intend to do so (partially because I just hate anime), so here's an example I'm more familiar with. In Ken Akamatsu's manga Negima!, when the character Setsuna is introduced it's quickly established that she has feelings for one of the main female characters, Konoka. As the story goes on, their relationship gradually progresses. HOWEVER. Even while that's happening, both girls are still being pushed as "romantic options" for the protagonist. As soon as the two became a thing, I lost all investment I had between either one of them and the protagonist, which makes me wonder why they couldn't just be together without the protagonist's involvement.

To be fair, he did make them straight up get married at the end, and apparently have science babies in the sequel.