They're totally in a closet at the end of 41, but they can also go through walls (see page 1 of this chapter for foreshadowing). They may have just went in to spy

Yeah, no. That didn't sit right with me. It's a living room in a traditional japanese house. It's bordered by shoji-style doors, so it probably doesn't even have a closet, so I went looking through some of the other chapters to get a read on the layout of the room, and it doesn't. It's bordered on three sides by the entryway, the hallway to the bedrooms, and a another room adjacent to the courtyard. The third wall faces the outside of the wall and seems to have a window, although I'm less sure about that.

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/ayakashiko_ch06

In the middle planel there, The doors in the foreground are the same doors that we see Yukime and Kuuko hiding behind in the latest chapter. That's another adjacent room they're in, which is itself adjacent to the hallway that leads out to the courtyard.

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/ayakashiko_ch03#24

Here's a shot of Mahoro in that room, looking out into the courtyard.

They're definitely in the next room. Alone. With the lights off for some reason.

last edited at Aug 7, 2018 9:16PM

joins the discussion
see that has 46 pages
oh

Generally you can just look at the dates, and read through the dates from the last update or two and get by.

Yeah, but we aren't talking about another series, we're talking about this one, and that kind of twist is rare in the most favorable conditions, and doesn't really seem like Nakatani-sensei's style.

Fussing about the fact that a thing has happened once somewhere is not a great way to go through life.

I'm just saying we should keep our minds open to all the glorious possibilities.

My money is on (story)

I'll take that bet! 10 dollars on "not that". ;p

(Hey, just playin the odds)

(So Sayaka will go with you to the police station and stand by you when you turn yourself in; Matsuri knows how to get rid of the body.)

I'd definitely prefer to have a friend like Matsuri in that situation.

Do....do you expect to BE in that situation? ;;;¬_¬

Is that even the closet, though? Just because it's dark doesn't mean it's a small, enclosed space. More likely they're outside the room, peeping through a cracked doorway.

Ever read Fuuka?

Spoiler Warning:

Yuu getting splattered by a bus is just the traumatic set up for the real story of how Touko becomes an idol which will conclude over a hundred chapters from now.

Yeah, but we aren't talking about another series, we're talking about this one, and that kind of twist is rare in the most favorable conditions, and doesn't really seem like Nakatani-sensei's style.

Fussing about the fact that a thing has happened once somewhere is not a great way to go through life.

I find it fun to comb back through a lot of the previous comments just to see what everyone had to say about it while it was being freshly released and how wrong most people were concerning the story.

I've definitely had my share of missed guesses and misinterpretations.

Sorry, I didn't mean to point us down even a facetious path of dark speculation. lol

Remain in light, folks . . .

Hopefully we're all aware enough to recognize that there isn't actually any danger of this stuff happening.

Yuu gets hit by a car while running home and falls into a coma, both keeping them seperate AND repeating Touko's trauma. THEN she wakes up and has amnesia. Also her parents introduce an arranged marriage and Touko's dad becomes a an anti-gay-rights politician.

Sayaka makes a surprise heel-turn and introduces magic love potions and Yuu decides post-coma to go out with the guy from the first volume after all.

Am I missing anything?

You forgot the NTR and other unexplained scenes of sexual harassment that implies one or more of the characters might have been abused in the past, but oh well, we will never know because everything will be wrapped up in a single chapter where nothing really happens except for a timeskip.

If she goes back to the guy from chapter 1, that's where the NTR is. But you're right, Touko needs repressed memories of molestation by her sister. (nods) (nods)

@Pyoro bro are you seriously saying that these two gal pals aren't totally holding hands when their parents aren't home?

Naw, as alluded to on the previous page I'm sure they're doing all sorts of things; but it's fun to pretend that the author is just an incredible troll or as oblivious as their characters and having no clue what they are writing.

"I don't get these reactions. I'm just writing about girl friendship. What are you people going on about?"

"What's the big deal, me and my best friend were like this all the time. We even used to kiss and go out on dates! You know, like friends do!"

Also the dads super seem like they're picking up on what's going on. They both get that amused parental expression, and drop subtle lines about how they're supportive of their "friendship."

OMG, I think I just started shipping the two dads . . .

The dads get together

The girls just stay as friends

Dynasty explodes

Isn't that basically just Nanashi no Asterism?

Nanashi no Asterism ends with the strong indication that two of the three leads end up together, or at least very likely could. The triangle has essentially resolved itself at the end of the series, people just rail against it because they can't take ambiguity. The main character recognizes that she never had a chance and moves on. I get that it isn't the ending a lot of people wanted, but c'mon, do we really have to rehash this all over the place?

Am I missing anything?

You’re good. In a really horrible way. But good.

( ￣ڡ￣)=b

What I absolutely don’t want is artificial bullshit keeping Yuu and Touko apart for the sake of mere drama. That happens a lot at this point in this kind of story, and I don’t know of any author/creator/director, etc. in any medium who I think is less likely to do it than this one.

I mean, they mentioned that Touko's year has their class trip coming up, so I suspect that Yuu and Touko will be on their own for at least a bit...

Right, I meant of the “Touko stops going to school for a month” or “Yuu’s family suddenly moves to the US” or even “Yuu runs away any time there’s a chance to see Touko” type of bullshit.

And I’ve seen worse than that—life-threatening illness, amnesia . . .

Yuu gets hit by a car while running home and falls into a coma, both keeping them seperate AND repeating Touko's trauma. THEN she wakes up and has amnesia. Also her parents introduce an arranged marriage and Touko's dad becomes a an anti-gay-rights politician.

Sayaka makes a surprise heel-turn and introduces magic love potions and Yuu decides post-coma to go out with the guy from the first volume after all.

Am I missing anything?

last edited at Aug 5, 2018 7:06AM

^
Personally, I’m trying not to get too wrapped up in predictions about what comes next—at this point pretty much any of the major characters talking to any of the others could potentially be Nakatani gold.

Yuu and Touko talking to each other.
Yuu OR Touko talking to Sayaka.
Yuu talking to her sister.
Yuu talking to Koyomi.
Hell, Touko talking to Yuu’s sister.

What I absolutely don’t want is artificial bullshit keeping Yuu and Touko apart for the sake of mere drama. That happens a lot at this point in this kind of story, and I don’t know of any author/creator/director, etc. in any medium who I think is less likely to do it than this one.

I think there's a good chance they're not back together before Touko leaves for Kyoto. That probably wasn't dropped in for no reason. We probably get Sayaka either making a move or properly abdicating her chances for Touko's sake (maybe both), depending on how things go down. In the meantime, we'll get Yuu receiving comfort from her sister and friends.

The next month is going to be an agonizing wait.

Also the dads super seem like they're picking up on what's going on. They both get that amused parental expression, and drop subtle lines about how they're supportive of their "friendship."

OMG, I think I just started shipping the two dads . . .

The dads get together

The girls just stay as friends

Dynasty explodes

Eh, I'd still read it.

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/nettaigyo_wa_yuki_ni_kogareru_ch11#20
i feel sorry for that girl who got "handsome foreigner"

I have to assume that there's someone specific at the school that the signmaker had in mind. Like a french exchange student that everybody knows, or something.

It's a pretty dick move otherwise, for sure. ;p

I totally think he was, indeed.

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice ... I won't be fooled again. guitar riffs

Thanks, George.

So much friendship.

When they will be married, their kids will play together.

Well of course they will. They'll be siblings, after all.

The text continues.

I love the manga and all but Nio made a bit of an obvious misstep around the play IMO - namely the play went pretty much EXACTLY how we were specifically and explicitly told it would go in the chapters leading up to it.

That’s certainly a defensible position; I (like many readers I would guess) was initially surprised that there wasn’t some kind of twist or unanticipated complication in the presentation of play.

In fact, we were set up to believe there would be one when Sayaka explained to Yuu that it could be a good thing for Touko to fail publicly by freezing or forgetting her lines. But not only did the play itself go off without a hitch, the psychological effect it was designed to have on Touko also seemed to have worked out perfectly. So there was something anticlimactic about that whole sequence.

But there’s a sense in which I think I prefer it this way. The student-council play idea first appears in chapter 6, and is the main structural element for over two dozen subsequent chapters. It would have been a reasonable storytelling choice to just show us pieces of the play and then let us infer the rest, since we’ve been so steeped in the play and its themes.

But by the time we get to the play it’s really like the events onstage are allowing us to go inside Touko’s psyche at last, and to not show all the play feels like it would be shortchanging us. And then to throw in some plot complication just to liven things up would be a distraction from this event that has been invested with so much significance all along.

I’m actually pretty confident that this author could have presented the play ten other ways (including not showing any of it at all) and still made it effective for the overall story. But I still feel like there was something very solid and satisfying about seeing the play presented straight and in full, just like we expected it.

What's more, I'm actually not sure the author could've shown the lead-up to the play in a clear and comprehensible way without giving us some context on what the play is about. it kinda feels like her hands were tied for the story she wanted to tell.

CAN'T YOU JUST USE A MIRROR YA DUMMIES

She literally does that exact thing at the end.

I DOUBT the coming-out phase will be a big focus at all in the manga to come. I feel like if Nakatani wanted to write about that aspect she would have added in more foreshadowing or worries of what friends/family might think earlier on in the manga.

Right—the only hint of anything like that has been in Yuu’s family, where the dad said something like, “I’d have to put my foot down” about Yuu having a girlfriend. Meanwhile, Big Sis Rei is ready to help pick out the wedding flowers.

I don’t get the sense that Dad’s foot carries all that much weight in that house full of women. The house located above his mother-in-law’s bookstore.

I half-wonder if the "put his foot down" could have been more of a general 'dad doesn't approve of daughter's significant other' stereotype and he really doesn't care about the gender. That's how I initially read it, and sis's thoughts would support that. Not sure, though; with Japan's attitudes it's hard to tell.

Eh, most likely he's just going through the motions of a dad in a society with internalized homophobia.

He probably hasn't ever actually considered how he should react if one of his daughters came out as gay, he just knows that society considers it inappropriate. When confronted with an honest-to-god lesbian daughter, His empathy and affection for his kid will probably prompt an epiphany in that respect. At least that's what Rei seems to think.

The fact that she thinks her mom is harder to lock down is a little concerning. Maybe mom has a strong traditional/conservative streak?

last edited at Aug 2, 2018 6:15AM

The “ugly girl doesn’t look ugly” thing is an issue of long-standing in popular culture, although a slightly different one in comics/manga than in live-action.

The "ugly girl doesn't look ugly" thing is an issue of long standing in -real life-.

Standards of attractiveness are arbitrary and subject to all kinds of irrational biases. I have met dozens of people over the course of my life that have been mocked and regarded as ugly by their classmates who look perfectly normal.

People get called ugly sometimes because they have a feature that stands out (in another decade, that same feature might get someone called pretty) Sometimes they get called ugly because they just don't try to be pretty, sometimes they get called ugly because somebody popular felt threatened by them and wants to turn public opinion against them. Sometimes it has nothing to do with their appearance at all, but because it gets repeated by enough people, everybody just seems to accept it.

Sure, some people are more traditionally attractive than others, but the "ugly kid" is almost always more likely to be a victim of the social pecking order than their actual physical appearance.

last edited at Jul 31, 2018 6:58PM

Somebody please confirm this because my Japanese skill is not great. On page 14, the "this can't go on" in Japanese is "dame nanda ne" which is more accurately "I can't do it huh?" in that context and then the "I have to say it" is "iccha dame nanda" which is actually "I really can't say it." These have very different meanings. If how I'm understanding the lines is correct, Yuu was actually considering of backing down again in order to follow along with Touko's status quo and then waiting for Touko to change enough by herself to reciprocate her feelings someday, but in the end, she could not hold back her feelings any longer so she went and took that leap of faith right there and then.

Yes. She says "I can't say it" and then thinks it's fine because that way she will be able to be by Touko's side the same way as always. The translation is basically on point besides these huge fuck-ups.

That is weird considering how accurate they normally are and that they even went back and redid chapters from other translator to fix errors. I wonder if 42 checks dynasty forums and if so would correct it or if someone on the 4chan if I understand is their main forums they use would mention it they would put out a revised version.

This dialog would make the scene even more powerful as Yuu makes the sudden leap of faith to Touko despite all her fears and kissed her and confessed before she could back down from doing it. Then only to think she was a idiot for having not backed down like she thought acting on her emotions instead of sticking to her more normal logical thinking type of character she is.

I'm not the translator, so I'm speculating as to their intentions, but as I see it, It isn't a mistranslation or an error, it's a choice on how to frame the flow of Yuu's thoughts. In Japanese, the natural priority when a request is made is to address the specifics of the request. Touko asked her to stay by her side just as she has been, unchanging. The original japanese version of Yuu's thoughts there are basically "I can't..." followed by "I can't say that" (referring to the thing Touko has specifically asked her to say) The reason she thinks that is because she has already resolved to confess, but if you do a strict translation here, it sounds like she's having doubts about confessing, which is probably why the translator decided not to go word for word, because it introduces an ambiguity that isn't in the original japanese.

She goes on with "It's alright, I'll still be by her side", basically trying to psych herself up.

This tendency to directly address questions and requests in the language is ultimately what causes the misunderstanding, as well. As Gudetamago commented:

I’m just a little disappointed because I expected a little more understanding from Yuu.

It's her first time confessing, girl thought she jumped the gun there. Remember that Yuu has been expecting rejection more so than acceptance from Touko so Touko saying "I'm sorry" comes off as an answer to her. Classic misunderstanding.

It's not even that she was expecting rejection, although she was certainly afraid of it.

It's that "I'm sorry" IS the traditional rejection for an unwanted confession. When you want to turn someone down? That's what you say. It's an idiosyncracy of the Japanese language paired with their infuriating politeness. ;p

They don't have a "No, thank you", they just have "I'm sorry that I can't accept." Thing is if you're sorry for something -other- than turning the person down, you get a miscommunication.

The one that made the mistake here was Touko, because she said the words for rejection when she was trying to apologize for something else entirely. Yuu's reaction is pretty understandable, because she has no reason to think that Touko wasn't directly addressing her confession.

Touko could have cleared that up quick if she could have just stopped her, but she got paralyzed by her own fears of expectations.

last edited at Jul 31, 2018 3:00PM

Still wondering why QT friend disappears every time SJ shows up, I get not wanting to be a third wheel but... Maybe is a character that we're not supposed to care about? I remember SJ saying that she didn't have many friends (probably just that one) so ... I don't know.
But I'm happy seeing moreeee!!

. . . Maybe....

THEY'RE THE SAME PERSON!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1Y73sPHKxw