Sexy Santa outfits are passé, it is now the era of the comfy, oversized Santa riding cloak.

Santa's going down something tonight, and it's not the chimney.

This is the culmination of Christmas tradition. Combining the presents, stockings and tree into one muscular, highly-huggable GF.

The Fodlan equivalent of Christmas is just Byleth's birthday.

That's one way to inform someone that you're giving 'em a heart transplant.

Don't you just hate it when your clothes vanish halfway through the latest episode of Japanese CSI?

^ The actual ending of the manga is just Mayuki writing about her polyamorous adventures in every paper, and the teachers passing her out of sheer respect. Mayuki then becomes a household name, and the educational system is overhauled to replace all subjects with lesbian training. It'd give a whole new meaning to the terms 'class topper' and 'bottom of the grade'.

Yukari surfs on the boundary between Cupid and coochblocker.

In an odd twist, Remilia was the least vampiric person in this story.

As a romance story, this was brilliant, and though I wondered why it needed to be specifically Touhou, I think the emotional attachment I had to the characters as well as my general knowledge of their personalities really elevated this story to a different level. Though I'm not exactly a fan of removing characters from the worlds that have shaped so much of their personalities, this story takes the surface traits of complex characters and places them within different contexts- Sakuya's themes of devotion and loyalty without a clear revelation of her feelings translates wonderfully into an inability to tell whether she's in love, and Alice's fragile, sadly smiling, always-reaching-but-never-connecting persona does convey some parallels to the lonely puppeteer who was once human. This story doesn't have the benefit of Gensokyo to enhance it, but there are also no distractions- quite simply, the author distills these characters to their cores and weaves a tale between them in a neutral location suitably representative of uncertainty in adolescence. Fundamentally, it's the essence of the highschool AU, removing characters from their home setting and using the disconnection felt both by the audiences and the characters as an openly-acknowledged theme and conflict in-story.

Also, the art is brilliant and features Komachi in a suit, automatically making this one of the all-time-greats of doujinshi.

last edited at Dec 25, 2020 10:26AM

Last episode of AdaShima didn't make any sense to me. They ended up nowhere in my book. Series ended and Adachi hasn't even confessed nor does she know what she wants to do with Shimamura lol.

Wasn't that a foregone conclusion? The novels progress at the rate of a lead ball in a glacier- heck, even the second manga adaptation, which speeds things up significantly, wouldn't have gotten anyplace definitive in a 12 episode run. The anime production team had three choices- they could either a) respect the spirit of the novels and recapture the lazy, hyper-introspective pace at which the story is told, b) skip enough content to get to a significant stopping point, which would piss off source readers and also not fit the tone of the story, or c) create an anime-original ending, although this would require the author's counsel and approval and be generally very complicated, not to mention dissatisfying regardless. An anime adaptation is first and foremost a sales-booster for the source, and by putting AdaShima on screens across Japan and making watchers curious where they'll go, the anime ends up attracting them to the LNs. From that perspective, it probably succeeded.

Haven't seen these levels of homoerotic mindgames since Kakegurui. Although I guess they're gambling virginities here.

The flirtatious-pretty-fair-skinned-girlfriend is the bonus boss who's stronger than the final one.

Theatre kids and their performative struggles.

This series is leaning a lot deeper into the HR angle than I'd expected, which is neat, though I imagine the people who were expecting a playboy yuri-fest will be somewhat miffed. Anyway, the Pygmalion Effect is an extremely contested concept with an interesting history.

This was such a great battle chapter. Tons of action, mini-arcs resolving, characters pulling last-minute saves on their way to fight the big bads, and pockets of lesbianism approaching a singularity. I'm really liking all the characters here- Bone Saw McGraw is cute, the Tribbianis have great style, the Robot is bitch-slapping its way into my heart, the scientist unironically said Boop, the Pope is like Griffith getting eclipsed by his own demons, Dorothy is moving pieces around on a chessboard composed solely of queens, and our girl Maria is now giving out free bottom lessons to Shannon, who seems to be taking fashion hints from trashy erotic novels and somehow making them work.

Good shit.

"Local miko kisses 7head."

Excellent series. The whimsical, hysterical humour and explosions of lily-themed imagery somehow lend it a very classic, iconic, quintessentially yuri feel.

This is an interesting one, to be sure. Secret romances are nothing new, but it's interesting how both characters are from privileged positions in society, and yet deal with their statuses in entirely different ways. I like the minimalist approach to dialogue and the dark, cramped posturing- it's intimate as heck, but also suffocating.

What makes you say they're both coming from privileged positions? Chayama seems anything but privileged, to the point where people, allegedly, avoid a bathroom just to make sure no one thinks they associate with her.

The summary (only on MD, for some reason) mentions that Chayama's the sole daughter of a tea plantation owner, which is why she's bullied, since the local politicians believe that the plantation's bad for the environment. So while her current popularity is definitely low, I'm assuming she was born into some decent money, since big plantations don't come cheap. Heck, that might actually be one of the reasons for the bullying- I don't think random bitchy teenagers give three shits about the environment. They probably just saw a shy, gloomy rich girl and felt envious of everything she had.

last edited at Dec 24, 2020 3:24AM

Everyone's in the mood for Chinese takeout sometimes.

As a ReiAli shipper, this makes my day. Bless Oinari and their abundance of little fangs.

^ That is actually a really good catch- it could be a case of samefacing, and twintails are a pretty common hairstyle for the eternally 12 year old persona idols get paid to project, but having the yandere be a fellow idol would eliminate a ton of logistical difficulties when it comes to stalking. It also contrasts her to the protagonist, since she's actually successful and employed and knows about Cirno's 'real' persona as opposed to her idol persona as a result of working together with her, making her love more 'genuine' than the MC's in a twisted sort of way.

Besides, if our protagonist actually ends up with the yandere, then the title will still hold true- just in a different way than we'd initially expect.

How to subtly signal that you want to use the strap-on tonight.

At this point, Ayaka is at Would You Kindly? levels of instinctive Sora obedience.

In one corner of the ring, we have a girl whose entire existence revolves around the worship of a celebrity. In the other corner of the ring, we have... another idol stan, but with twintails and the potential for manslaughter. And in the middle, we have a girl whose only defining trait so far is that her name sounds like Cirno.

Overall, this seems like halfway between Oshibudo and Perfect Blue, and in a rare combination, the wholesomeness is directly proportional to the creepiness, since any progress with the saner fan will lead to much pain from Twintails McGee.

Then again, the art and cover give me fluffy romcom vibes, so maybe the yandere will just defuse in a couple of chapters, or be outed as Cirno's childhood friend or first fan to give her a fighting chance in a love triangle. I suppose it could also go poly, since we got a nice Warrior-Mage-Rouge triangle going here.

Personally, I'd like to see Cirno telling them both to screw off and leave her alone, because I imagine her job is exhausting enough already, but that's not how romances work. If they do keep the yandere as a committed antagonist, then I guess we'll just have a comedic mindgame battle between the two stans while Cirno remains oblivious. Maybe one of the yandere's ploys will end up endangering her goddess and lead her into depression, shortly before the protagonist tells her that all her crimes were in the past and that she deserves to live, spurring a redemption arc.

Anyway, I'm interested to see where this goes, if only out of morbid curiosity.