How did everyone miss that she was kissing her under water? Last I checked, pool water isn't the most concealing of substances.

Light gets refracted and reflected on the surface of water. People would have to see the girls from above or from inside the water to be able to see what they are doing. Otherwise they just see wobbly shapes and the reflection of the sky.

last edited at Jun 14, 2024 7:58AM

When an artist is such a tasteless hack even a good yuri ship turns into shit in his hands... Almost impressive, really.

last edited at Jun 9, 2024 10:35AM

Curious why the human protag is supposed to be executed, since she appears to have simply been born in the prison. Wondering how she'll get to know the android sex bot.

I can see that the file the warden is looking at is left almost completely empty. That, and the fact that the warden is very invested in her execution, is suspicious. But I don't think the comment about her coming "into this world" means she was born in the prison. This setting doesn't come across as crazy as Stone Ocean, and even Emporio was only able to stay in the prison by hiding himself from the guards. A max security prison keeping a child imprisoned seems really far fetched, unless they needed her for some evil purpose like human experimentation.

I'm putting my money on something else for now... Though I will say that if some powerful entity simply wanted to get rid of her, sending her to a max security prison and on death row is a really convoluted way of doing that. If she was e.g. a spy or assassin burned by her employer, it would make more sense for them to kill her on the outside. So she might really be just a dangerous criminal?

Soooo....not Yuri?

Just one woman being unable to keep her eyes off the other, and committing murder for her on short notice.

And of course, the leads being offended at the mere suggestion that they have feelings for each other is always guaranteed to stay that way.

Jokes aside, this premise goes hard, and I'm shipping these women anyway

last edited at May 29, 2024 8:58PM

Somehow the person with the most characterization is the dude? (Did I missed it or does one of the girl not even have a name?)

The popular girl is Hideka, the cute one is Nami

last edited at May 27, 2024 8:53AM

This development is comedy gold (and I say this with love)

I know this is probably not the place for this but
Page 30, first dialogue

こんなバカみたいなことに付き合おうなんて
I can't believe she's going along with my foolishness.

Looks like a mistranslation to me.

Yeah, it's Almelia who is going along with the silliness, not the other way around, and those are her thoughts

The story keeps threatening to leave the all-ages zone but that just can't happen in this magazine

last edited at May 10, 2024 1:09PM

I appreciate the fixes in general!

While I was listening to the drama CD, I realized that the biggest barrier to making a good anime (or live-action drama) out of this is probably music licensing. The background music on the drama CD includes all your hit favorites from gunge bands like Nibana and alternate rock bands like the UFO Fighters, which is to say it's bland name stuff that sounds vaguely like songs from some of bands namechecked in the manga. A huge part of the charm of the manga is the specificity of the girls being super into bands that were at their peak decade(s) before they were born (believe me, writing that out hurt me more than you), and without that, it's less compelling.

They could name drop and reference the bands and albums without necessarily playing them. The only music that absolutely to be played at length is the stuff that Mitsuki makes, no? Otherwise it might be enough to license at most two or three dad rock songs for the most important moments.

I assumed Asako would be more passive, since she seems to regard shoujo manga like textbooks for love, but she is flirting back already? And she has to be doing it on purpose since she dropped the honorific there. I'm warming up to the character designs too, so I'm more optimistic now!

I was surprised to see how MangaDex's comments section is absolutely dominated for calls for this to have a poly ending. Some of the calls for that have almost 100 upvotes, which is pretty wild.

It made me really curious what separates this manga from others with love triangles where you don't see that type of behavior in the comments. I think it's probably because the least likely corner of the triangle (Diana, the one not in the title) is so hard to dislike. She's earnest, straightforward, and fairly relatable (a teen girl having a very obvious crush on another girl who is oblivious). Since you can't see an obvious "Natori + Diana" only outcome, Diana fans hope for poly, I guess?

Typically, most love triangles I read are manhwa with much higher stakes and where most of the characters are very manipulative. The comments on those stories are generally like "X is a bitch and should die". Nobody is calling for a poly ending there, lol.

Anyway, when you get down to analyzing things, Natori hasn't shown any romantic or sexual interest in any character. I wouldn't even be surprised if she was ace. Obviously, the OTP is Lapis + Diana. Let's go!

Yes, Diana is such a sweetie that most of us don't want her to end up alone, and there isn't a fourth girl to pair her up with. (There is the cat girl, but they haven't interacted almost at all.) It's kind of rough.

The few yuri and lesbian stuff I have seen with a poly ending, that were remotely serious (i.e. not goofy harems like I Won't Sleep With You For Free), signaled that endgame pretty early - at least before the half-way mark. (E.g. Muted by Miranda Mundt.) It feels like this one is past the point where it should have marked Diana as having a legit chance, and Lapis as open to sharing Natori with someone. If Lapis were on a route where she would eventually warm up to the concept, that should have been signaled by now too. I say this because the story feels like it has concluded its first act, where most of the players including their goals and character arcs have been established.

Lapis' arc of getting de-radicalized from her mass murder plans could theoretically happen in parallel to learning to love polyamory. But after the disaster has been avoided and Lapis has found a reason to keep on living, the story will probably end pretty soon. So if she doesn't complete her polyamory journey by that point, we will probably never see it at all.

last edited at Apr 27, 2024 6:53PM

I think it's a decent twist that the villainess falls first and instead of being "fixed" by it, a new level of crazy comes out

Take this skeptically but Isuzu's hairlick is drawn so sharply and consistently this chapter, and her incisor when she scowls, I'm starting to doubt she's fully human. The comparison with Hinata in c36 p21 says it all. Isuzu's hair spike is always there, and her pointy fang when she scowls, makes her resemble the ogre characters much more than the human characters. And her ogre-level strongman ancestor has a version with a non-human biodad, so it's not breaking from the false-history worldbuilding. If so grandpa could be more racist than sexist about which traits disqualify her from being a warrior. Finding out you're more diverse while grappling with racism is less of a feelgood plot but would have a more interesting family dynamic. I'm leaning a bit over 50% she's technically an ogre girl, take a shot if I'm right.

It's also grandpa's fault she was put off and forgot to order more mint liquer. Bad human.

The ward placed by this enemy is supposed to disable humans, but Isuzu doesn't seem to be affected. Maybe it's been explained with something else and I just forgot; it's possible that Isuzu can withstand it because of her training, or the enemy deliberately excluded her from the effect because otherwise there's no sport in defeating her. But if Isuzu were part youkai, that would also make it more ironic when she says she can't "mix" with Naori and her ogre friends.

last edited at Apr 20, 2024 8:27PM

When Rubeus claims Diana wants to marry Natori, isn't that basically a confirmation that same-sex marriage is possible in this kingdom? I don't think it has been mentioned before. If that information was in the game too, it's even funnier that Natori still hasn't figured out that she is in a love triangle with two girls.

"All those rabid fans hurling abuse at Chika online? They are in the wrong! But only because Chika is innocent. If Chika had been actually guilty (i.e. the victim of sexual abuse), then her fans would have the right to be angry at her!"

In chapter 13 Yasumi jokingly compared Kagazaki being affectionate to an abusive boyfriend's lovebombing, And in #14 both Chika and Yasumi jokingly remind each other that sexual misconduct can happen between two women. Which is why it's weird that during the scandal neither of them noted even privately that if a 16-year-old girl were to get any job position in exchange for sexual favors, that would make her the victim of sexual exploitation. Not the perpetrator of any wrongdoing.

Maybe this is just a silly and sleazy light novel that I should not take too seriously. But this doesn't feel right in a story that tries to create drama from an underage voice actress getting roped into a sex scandal. A story created in a post-metoo world, where even real voice actresses have spoken out about e.g. being pressured to give male directors or other stakeholders creepy favors like private bath sessions. Is it really too much to ask that a story like this gives the bare minimum amount of pushback to slutshaming, especially when it affects a girl in high school?

I would have let it go without comment, but I had to say something after the girls made jokes about the topic. It's weird to reference intimate partner violence and corporate HR speak only for jokes, but offer no criticism on the base assumptions of Chika being accused with "sleeping her way to the top", and to not acknowledge that she would be the victim in that situation. The creators want to milk "the dark side of the industry" for drama, but they can't even acknowledge the power dynamic between a boss and employee, or adult and teenager.

I'm not saying the whole series is bad or anything, in fact it's because I otherwise enjoy it that I'm frustrated because of this.

last edited at Apr 19, 2024 7:44PM

Still pretty normal so far, even if this girl has recognized the other from the moment they met. It is kind of strange that nobody has been given a name yet.

The Romance and NSFW tags on this site are used to indicate a clear romance plot and sexual context, respectively. The former was not applied here, and the latter only to the first chapter. This was a silly horror comedy from the start, and most people correctly suspected that a sex scene between the human girl and the doll she's obsessed with was unlikely to happen.

I also don't think a short series like this is worth getting so upset about. It took most of us about 3 hours to read in total, and it was scanlated to completion over the course of just 3 months. Assuming you have actually read it, and aren't just complaining for the sake of complaining.

You are also free to request changing the Yuri tag to Subtext, or just removing it, if you really believe that's more correct. That was always allowed.

This is not even tagged as yuri but it's very cute. As expected from a master of yuri, God bless

In the immortal words of the author of Otherside Picnic: "This too is yuri". The author clearly just trusts your intelligence too much to tell you outright.

(Also because sexuality would probably push Akari well over the line in how bearable her creepiness is due to, y'know, how basically nobody consents to the things she does with them.)

I get why some would say this is "not yuri" in the sense that there is no romance plot, but the story still fits the broader definition of the genre, in that it focuses on very intimate/intense relationships between women. Akari may call her obsessive behavior an expression of friendship, but only a fool would take that at face value. She is creepy, but in a pretty gay way. Yoshino is a whole fruit cake too, let's be real.

It's not exactly wrong to call it "subtext", but it's still a horror comedy about a group of girls who are probably not straight (and their non-human ghost friends). It succeeded in those terms, so I don't see the lack of a romantic conclusion as a problem here.

plus, something about the rough style of the manga brought back nostalgia of early indie mangas that I read from long ago

The drawings are not super detailed, but there is an elegance to them, and they suited these characters really well!

last edited at Apr 13, 2024 5:04PM

Mona joined the social dance club because of her grandma, but she was interested in dancing with a girl, not out of ambition but just for fun. Then she quickly noticed Shion with her massive crush on Kiki, and was like "she's perfect". Sure, this is a yuri manga, but all of that happened before she started catching feelings for Shion. So I wonder if she knows that a straight girl would be unlikely to end up in a situation like this.

While she didn't exactly confess outright, Mona let her feelings slip quite a bit here ("you haven't looked at me at all", "I have always seen you"). Shion has always been a bit of a mess, but she has never looked smaller than this time. The fact that she has kept wallowing in her guilt for so long, and that she appears to be so alienated from everyone else, makes me worried that some deeper issue might be in the background. What could be so awful in her life that she would prefer to dissolve herself in an unrequited love, surrendering all control to her friend, and later sinking into a pool of her own guilt?

Well, maybe the alienation and guilt is just because of internalized lesbophobia, and her parents just work out of town instead of being actively neglectful or abusive.

The idea of "closure" these series propose has always been selfish to me but maybe that's my hangup.

I think that was precisely what Mona was getting at.
Her whole point is that being selfish and doing selfish things is just something people do. That being in love with someone (and thus projecting their feelings onto them) is inherently selfish to some extent.

She also never says that it doing so isn't wrong, or that she shouldn't feel bad at all, which i feel is important. Just that nobody is a saint and Shion shouldn't wallow in self-hatred like she's the worst person ever just bc she's, y'know, acting like people do.

The impression I got was that Mona now wants Shion to vent her frustrations, how she felt and how she still feels to Haruma and to do so for closure. So they would be continuing that selfish act, rather than avoiding it. That's what my response was focused on.

That kind of thing is unnecessary to me and serves mostly to make the venter feel better at the expense of someone they claim to care for, yet many series treat the act like a good thing. I'd rather (and still hope) that she continues talking with Mona (who is trying her best to show her worth to Shion), comes to terms with her feelings together, and then meets Haruma after she's overcome her issues. She doesn't need to trauma dump on Haruma, for "closure."

Bottling up your emotions and never giving them an outlet is unhealthy and can trap you in those feelings. Taking up emotional space is not some odious thing you inflict on other people. Is there a form and pattern of venting that can be toxic? Sure. But that doesn’t mean that accepting someone’s offer to emotionally support you is inherently bad.

Yeah. I think fixating on Mona's exact phrasing is a mistake here. She is not giving Shion therapeutic advice, but releasing her own frustrations that she has been pushing down until now. I'm sure Shion takeaway is just that she should clear things up with Kiki, not that she has been using the wrong girl as an emotional dumping ground.

I don't think the story is purely using closure as a framework here. This friendship is not guaranteed to be fixed by a confession, far from it, but it can't be repaired if Shion continues to hide this part of her from Kiki. The guilt would continue to eat away at her, and Kiki would also continue to worry and possibly blame herself. If Shion can confess, it will be the opening -rather than closing- of a door, letting fresh air into the room.

last edited at Apr 12, 2024 7:24PM

Yuri is generally written from an abstracted point of view where the audience is not necessarily intended to involve themselves personally in the media at all. Even wall-kun otaku are getting too personal with it.

What do you mean "abstracted point of view"? Of course 1st person POV visuals don't make sense in a manga format! The narration is still happening in first person, so please don't tell me you can't determine which character is the POV here.

I hate this kind of attitude where people try to make yuri out to be more exotic than it really is. Female characters are not suddenly more "abstract" or "removed" just because they're gay! Lesbians and all sorts of women create and read yuri all the time, and this might be shocking to hear, but they sometimes relate it to their own experiences. If you refuse to empathize with a character just because she loves women, that's your choice. But it doesn't mean the character, story or the whole genre was designed to be alien, unrelatable or impersonal.

A massive staple of romance for straight women is the passive "good girl" lead and the aggressive "bad boy" love interest, and nobody pretends to not know who the reader is supposed to identify with. But supposed "yuri enjoyers" encounter the exact same dynamic, just with two women, and seem to become illiterate on the spot. They see a sentence like "lately she's been kissing me every time we met" in the narration box, and argue it is not the good girl protagonist talking, but some kind of mysterious, disembodied voice of unknown origin. Like we're observing the mating dance of some strange animals, narrated by David Attenborough.

last edited at Apr 9, 2024 11:11PM

Shou's useless-lesbianess reached peak levels this chapter

Hey, she's been good.

"That's fine. I don't want you to ever stop liking me."

"Kiss me, now, before you change your mind."

Yes, I legit don't know how anyone can call Shou "useless". Considering the walls she had to build around her heart to protect herself, she has been making a lot of progress since befriending Umi. She didn't fumble any opportunity here; even if she were ready to get physical with Umi, doing it in private would be better than in a room with other girls sleeping.

Maki witnesses how the men at the mixer treat Mei: asking creepy and invasive questions, trying to get her drunk, showing a total lack of respect for her as a human being. It seems like she realizes that something isn't right, and though she doesn't confront them directly, she diverts their attention to herself, possibly saving Mei from trouble.

And yet, a few days later she calls the men "bastards" not for being massive creeps... But because she failed to hook any of them. She is even excited at the possibility that one of them might be texting her, and doesn't even seem to know what Mei is thanking her for. Which draws into question whether she indeed realized what was going on at the time, or if she was just jealous of Mei getting more attention.

I'm only making note of this because the oneshot presents it without comment and just kind of leaves it on the table. Maybe there is no other point to it than Maki being an airhead and in denial, but even then she lacks awareness on a level where it's more concerning than funny. And maybe there is something unpleasant about a yuri work using men's misogynistic behavior as a setup without confronting it at all. I have seen the trope of woman A saves woman B from trouble at a mixer, but when foul play is involved there's usually at least some gesturing at the wrongness of it, but the protagonist in this one seems entirely oblivious to it.

Yes yes, it's not that deep, I'm ruining the wholesome gyaru yuri with my yapping, etc. Feel free to throw any stray rocks at me

I feel like she only just realized what "I love you" means lol

I re-read some of the chapters because I was wondering about this too. Shou was aware that Umi wanted to love her physically, since Umi mentioned it soon after the confession (ch. 8). At the time Shou knew for sure that she liked Umi, just wasn't certain about the specifics. Though she has caught herself a few times noticing Umi's body since then (e.g. in ch. 11). So I think what she realized here is that if they hadn't been interrupted, she would have wanted Shou to keep going. That the lust she's suddenly become so conscious of is the same thing Umi has been feeling for her this whole time.

last edited at Apr 8, 2024 2:26PM