This intense, dark horror manga is really harrowing. I hope the main character escapes the daily threat of sexual assault.

I think it's pretty clear the author has no intention of making the central relationship very complex, so new characters causing things to happen is very welcome.

Isn't it totally appropriate for the student rep to be asked to help another student? And isn't it totally appropriate for the teacher to write a rec to a student who does something extra like actually go to the person's house?

I agree, Hani Ni Arashi seems to be catching on. The writing is fiiiinnneee, but it's the art style (Chidori's design is especially unique and cute) that is catching on.

I also tend to like adult life stuff... my personal favorite right now is 2DK, G-pen, Alarm Clock, but that doesn't seem too popular around here, possibly because of its stupid-ass name. But it's got a really likable protagonist and, even though it's not like super deep, it's more complex than your typical fare.
Speaking of which, I second So Do You Want To Go Out, Or...?, which has a very appealing art style. I also like how it's portraying a couple with, like, more real-life problems than most yuri, but in the process features two characters who communicate better than almost any other manga couple I can think of. There's nothing approaching "What are these strange feelings??" here, thank god.

The most popular new thing seems to be Tadorokoro-san, which is pretty fluffy but avoids being too trite.

The editor was wrong.

Uta finally is about to confess to Kaoru about her feelings. Then it ends on a cliffhanger and for few chapters we don't know how things went until we're given a very short few lines summary, blink you'll miss it (I did) in Uta's thoughts. Something that was presented as the most important thread in the story and what kept most people interested in reading it is not even shown and treated as a after thought to the story. Uta's confession should have a huge effect that seriously shakes the story, but we didn't even see it happen and it didn't really affect the plot until Uta forced Kaoru to actually acknowledge her feelings. Uta confronting Kaoru is probably only plot thread that was set up and actually delivered on next chapter (or at all).

Well see, the first thing is, it's NOT true that Uta's confession was "what kept most people interested in reading it." I can absolutely see that if you were looking at the manga that way, you'd be frustrated. I... honestly don't understand seeing the manga that way, but fine.

Uta confessed and then nothing happened because Kaoru wanted to ignore it and because Uta could stop herself from giving Kaoru an out. This really isn't the kind of manga where a confession happens and a bomb drops; it's the kind of manga where people make baby steps forward with a hundred little conversations because they've all been socialized by Japanese culture to keep from making waves. This is the most interesting thing about it, for me. Even Uta, who WAS affected massively by the experience, got an ellipsis and not a big boom moment.

The author could definitely overplay their hand here, for me, too. Kaoru's passivity could cross the line where I get sick of it, and it's the same thing happening over and over. But she IS moving... getting more fed up and lost as she loses her excuses, and she realizes her search for external reasons to justify whatever path forward she's going to be on is pathetic and empty. It's not just the same thing over and over.

Withdrawn information and constant cliffhangers that are never resolved/takes many chapters to even be addressed again to keep readers interested in what happened is a classic tactic of mystery stories. Nothing has to be satisfactory explained or resolved, because the intrigue of how it all will end is what keeps people reading. The issue with that is because series heavily relies on us not knowing the exact details and having to understand events based on our assumptions and interpretations, once those details will be given and they turn out to not satisfactory explain events or behavior of character, then whole story will turn out to not make much sense and re-reading it knowing those information will make it unreadable. So yes, calling it a "masterplan" is pretty fitting, since at the end of the day the story's impact rely on all those things author set up to properly fall into places once they're revealed. If answers to those questions will end up being unsatisfactory, calling it a grand, Lost-esque twist that never came would be a very appropriate way to name it.

This is just such a weird take to me, I can barely even parse it. This isn't a big mystery; it's a conflict that's mostly from Kaoru's point of view and about her more than it's about anything else. This story might a well be named "Character Based Not Plot Based," so I just really don't see these mysteries. The author is doing one thing: leaving the question open about whether or not Reiichi is cheating because Kaoru herself doesn't know and the story is about how Kaoru deals with this situation. We're sitting with the tension as Kaoru tries to address it without actually making any waves, and that's not working.

Nothing doesn't make sense; nothing is setting up a grand twist. This isn't some complex twists and turns, here. This is one thing we don't know because we're supposed to be sympathizing with Kaoru. This is one reason I think reading chapter by chapter is detrimental especially to this story, and reading it all at once helps: It keeps you from seeing cliffhangers and expecting big reveals.

I just want Osaka and the jock to make out. When do Osaka and the jock make out?

(Also, hot take: the student council isn't funny and doesn't add anything and shouldn't be in the story.)

(Hot take note: Of course I'm not counting Sera; she's the best in the whole thing and needs her own spin-off.)

After rereading this series again for the billionth time, isn't it kinda weird that mom has told Nikaidou that she's fine with her dating her daughter, but she hasn't told Tadokoro that she knows she's gay and that she has her mom's full support? Or Nikaido could tell her that mom knows. Dunno, it feels kinda sad that Tadokoro thinks she has to keep her relationship a secret even at home.

I assume the idea is that she wants her daughter to be the one who brings it up, and in fact encouraging Nikaidou is a way to speed that up.

Why the hell is this manga full of couples that aren't actually dating? This damn school needs some ghosts, or something.

You’ve mistaken me for the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz.

I'm sorry? Could you just straightforwardly say what you mean? I'm confused why you make a baffling one-liner like this instead of responding clearly to anything I wrote.

I would have thought the analogy was obvious--those are strawman versions of things I've said. And insofar as we've discussed such things, it was done elsewhere, so clarifying what I meant would be off-topic here anyway.

Ohhhh. No, it wasn't obvious; it was confusing.
And fair enough, but I don't think pointing to a mysterious Real Job analyzing narratives is very helpful, either. If people think someone here is wrong and make an argument supporting that, any outside authority any of us have isn't really relevant, and trying to invoke it isn't adding anything.

It's obviously possible to summarize this plot so that it seems to flow smoothly, and to defend the logic of the events, (perhaps by ascribing the muddled nature of the presentation to Kaoru's own less-than-sharp mental and emotional state). As I said, readers have been working overtime here to attempt just that.

Of course, that's mostly possible by simply ignoring the abortive cliffhangers/mechanically interrupted confrontations, the chapters that accomplish almost nothing, and the periodic digressions into the high-schoolers-in-love subplot(s).

It's certainly within the realm of possibility that there's some authorial masterplan that will eventually reveal an ingenious rationale for why such basic information as the reason Reiichi married Kaoru or why Kaoru feels guilty about the breakup of Uta's parents' marriage, etc. needed to be kept from readers after being introduced as issues at the very beginning of the series, in which case I'll apologize for doubting the author's competence if and when that time comes.

OK, again, people making this point have kinda dropped the thread when asked to give examples for all this. I grant the Kuro plotlines don't fit in a way that I really understand, but other than those, I'm flummoxed about where all the interruptions and abortive cliffhangers are. People keep saying "nothing is happening!" but... a lot has happened.

I think a lot of the missing info is just for one simple reason: We haven't had anything from Reiichi's POV yet, and that's where all the missing info is. He's an impenetrable box for both Uta and Kaoru. But whatever the reason, isn't phrasing it as "some authorial masterplan" just kind of unnecessarily hostile? This isn't a particularly extreme or odd story; it's not warranted to sarcastically act like the people engaged with it must be waiting for some grand, Lost-esque twist that may never come.

You’ve mistaken me for the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz.

I'm sorry? Could you just straightforwardly say what you mean? I'm confused why you make a baffling one-liner like this instead of responding clearly to anything I wrote.

Everything you said makes sense until this.
I'd sooner throw myself off a building than side with Reiichi, regardless of whether he's cheating or not.

But that's because of how he's been presented. Kaoru's going through some shit, and she's all messed up. We're intimately familiar with that, and it's a big part of the point. But presenting a character at the end of her rope makes it easy for the reader to think she's being unreasonable or paranoid. Giving us hardcore evidence he's cheating (even if he isn't) keeps anyone reading from thinking she's being unreasonable.

Regarding the cheating not being explained, that's just how a story works.

Please, I'm very well aware of "how stories work"--analyzing narratives is what I do for a living.

Aren't you the person who denies that authors can be morally judged for the themes they choose to put in their stories... or even that stories can have themes at all? That's a very untraditional stance for a person who analyzes narratives. How do those coexist?

There's a difference between a story built around mysteries and simple withholding of information about characters and their motivations. For chapter after chapter readers have had occasion to argue that we're just about to learn important information about these characters and their past and present relationships, but we very rarely do. Or else the plot suggests that something major is just about to happen, but it doesn't (and if it ever does happen, it will be several chapters down the line).

There's no reason to think that Reiichi isn't cheating except for the fact that final, definitive evidence has been withheld from us. Was Kaoru delusional when she thought she saw them together? No, Risako admitted to Uta that she was at the accident. Was there some innocent explanation for why they were together? If so, Reiichi declined to mention it when Kaoru was in the hospital.

Getting around to clarifying the events of Chapter 10 by Chapter 27 would be the farthest thing from "explaining them fast," and I actually don't expect that the story will end with no explanations at all. However, given the many occasions where readers have been mis-led into anticipating that important information will soon be revealed or a significant change is about to occur in the plot, there's no reason to believe that such explanations will occur except in a massive info-dump when the series is about to end.

Again, when you sit down and read it all at once, it doesn't feel nearly as slow and piecemeal as when you get it chapter by chapter. I was surprised when I did that, the other day. It actually flows very well.
Also... you're waiting for significant changes in the plot? Uta confessed (twice) and moved out. Kaoru's suspecting her husband of cheating with her friend, after having literally feigned amnesia to avoid thinking about it before. She's picking fights with Reiichi. Her mother-in-law has been revealed to exert huge control over her husband, and whenever she's involved, he acts just as passive as Kaoru does all the time. All this is pretty big.

The author throws evidence on the pile of Reiichi cheating with Kaoru but doesn't confirm it outright because that's Kaoru's whole deal. She suspects it but doesn't know, which sucks for her, because if she knew, she'd be able to do something about it. Her marriage sucks and neither of them are happy, and these suspicions are pushing on the dam, making it about to burst. She'd never be suspecting Reiichi like this before recently.

Of course, it's also playing out for another reason: I personally predict that Reiichi ISN'T cheating on her... rather, Risako is his only friend, so he vents to her about his shitty marriage and has sworn Risako to secrecy about it. If this is where the story is going, then there NEEDS to be a lot of evidence to the contrary, because there's the real danger of Kaoru coming off as PARANOID. As it's written now, her suspicions come off as totally reasonable (though not confirmed, and played kind of ambiguously)... if the evidence given to the reader was more scant, then we'd be in danger of turning on her and siding with Reiichi. It's way better to make us think he's probably cheating (thus sympathizing with Kaoru) and then switching it, than to make us think he's probably not (thus thinking Kaoru's crazy for suspecting him) and then switching.

Anyone else disturbed by how many readers find Risako gaslighting Kaoru to be romantic?

Her friend was looking to her for reassurance, and she lied to her, waited until she was vulnerable, then implied she was paranoid and guilted her into apologizing.

I mean, it's obviously not romantic if she is actually having sex with Kaoru's husband. But we don't know that's why she was with him and why she lied. That scene was so deliberately odd, with Risako bringing up the issue, then getting bizarrely flirty, then looking surprised when Kaoru dropped it, it's hard to know what's going on until Risako gets her own chapter.

I disagree that the characters (with the possible exception of Uta) have been "well-developed." Characters behave erratically, information is withheld from readers for no reason, important scenes are chopped up almost randomly (like Uta's "cliffhanger" confession that only got replayed several chapters later in a flashback), and plot lines get picked up and dropped with little or no discernible rationale.

This just isn't true. Kaoru is extremely well-developed (her character is what's keeping me interested), the pacing of scenes is pretty traditional and normal for manga, and I haven't seen any plot lines get dropped... what are you referring to?

If you, personally, don't like Kaoru, then of course you're going to dislike this manga: she's one of the two main characters! But this isn't the story going off into unfocused chaos, just because you'd prefer it to be about a different character than it's about.

The series was not like this at the beginning, though. It started out pretty strong, and had a clear and concise theme, a girl with one-sided feelings for her sister-in-law. But along the way it started to lose its focus, and it muddled things to the point where it looks like it will need a further 30 chapters at the very least to resolve anything. Focusing on the side characters too much, adding unnecessary plotlines (to the point the original one pretty much vanished), I do not think the author is making a "slow burn" out of it, I think the author simply has no, or almost no idea where to take this, and is aimlessly drifting. I would be very surprised if these chapters are actually planned in advance.

Well for one, Uta's situation is much less interesting than anything else going on, so I'm glad the series branched out. But I think the thing is, the story was NEVER just about Uta. The first volume goes out of its way to present her idealized concept of Kaoru, and the second volume immediately plays against that. Someone mentioned it earlier, but it's really true: The Uta/Reiichi/Kaoru story actually has really good pacing and is completely coherent if you read it all at once. And, the Risako deal absolutely is being treated consistently, as a mystery being set up to pay off somehow. We're meant to see it from Kaoru's point of view: There's a million clues Reiichi and Risako are fucking, but nothing so blatant that we know for sure. With the info we're given, we can speculate that Kaoru is wrong, but she doesn't come off as paranoid. (Personally, I think it's building to a reveal where Reiichi has benign intentions towards her after all, but that's just one of several possibilities that's being set up.)
The way the chapters are coming out really hurts this manga. I don't really see a lot of chaos and contradictions in the plotting, when I go back.

I think the problem is, people got it into their heads that Uta was the main character, and the story was about her crush on Kaoru, and so anything that doesn't focus directly on that is a useless tangent. But I kinda don't think that's true. Uta and Kaoru are supposed to be contrasts, and they're both co-protagonists. Uta speaks up, Kaoru won't, and we're examining the consequences.

Now, the whole Kuro thing I just don't get and I can't defend. I honestly think there must be some cultural thing I don't understand about her character, because she doesn't fit into any psychological boxes I'm familiar with. Without any way to grok her, I cannot thematically connect any of her shit with the rest of the story.

Also, uh... WHO IS THAT CHICK who lives in her apartment? I CAN thematically connect her to Kaoru and Uta's deal, but I still don't know how anyone knows her.

People seem pretty adept at making excuses for this one. Convincing arguments that it’s a successfully achieved authorial intention? Not so much.

Well, but what is the authorial intention?

That’s been the question all along—WTF does this author think they’re doing?

...how can you criticize the author for not achieving what they intend when you don't know what they intend...?

Anyway, it seems to me like the author is trying to tell an engaging melodrama about unrequited love and the costs of not speaking up about your feelings. Based on the reactions, some people think the author has succeeded and some don't.

People seem pretty adept at making excuses for this one. Convincing arguments that it’s a successfully achieved authorial intention? Not so much.

Well, but what is the authorial intention?

I went back and skimmed a few chapters, and there have been repeated references to Kaoru being familiar with intense, unrequited love, and some sort of romance drama that happened to her in high school. Do we know what that is? Is that... Reiichi while he was dating Risako?

I am 90% sure that Reiichi is NOT cheating. Instead, I think Risako is his outlet for talking about his relationship with Kaoru. I also think it's pretty clear Reiichi knows about Uta's feelings, but after trying and failing to talk to her about it, he just mysteriously 'leaves town,' and hammers it home, "Hey, Kaoru, you and Uta TAKE CARE OF EACH OTHER WHILE I'M GONE, okay?" Actually, a couple of times, he 'leaves' and really plays up for them to spend time together. And if Risako knows about Uta's feelings, that explains part of the weirdness with her giving Uta the gift for Kaoru.

Yuri-goggles tells me it makes a lot of sense that Kaoru had a crush on Risako in school, and both Risako and Reiichi know. Kaoru does not know... or at least, she won't admit it to herself. So for Reiichi, who wants Kaoru to be happy but lacks the ability to firmly say anything (especially that his parents would disapprove of), he'd see Uta's feelings as a potential way out. Kaoru admits she's gay, and now they have a reason to get divorced that's no one's fault. As a bonus, Uta's happy.

(Even without yuri-goggles, Reiichi's character makes a lot more sense if the secret he's keeping with Risako isn't cheating, but just that he tells her that he doesn't want to be married but would never actually bring that up to his wife.)

last edited at Nov 16, 2019 5:22PM

I'm actually rooting at this point for Reiichi NOT to be cheating. It makes too much sense: Kaoru desperately wants external reasons to justify doing things, so in a hazy moment, she WOULD invent evidence for a very convenient suspicion that would be a socially justifiable reason to divorce her husband. This actually does fit the theory that she's very closeted... though that isn't the only thing that's work.

I'm rooting for him to not being cheating too. But that's because I can only see Kaoru being with him. Her being in the closet seems way too stretched imo and literally the only reason this might happen would solely be for the happy yuri ending.

Kaoru being in the closet fits her whole deal very well THEMATICALLY... she ignores things because she hates taking a stand, and she'd absolutely sit on being gay because coming out wouldn't be what the people around her want for her. But it hasn't really been foreshadowed.

Either way, I dunno if Kaoru/Uta is the end goal. It could just be a coming-out story for Kaoru. (it actually kind of is no matter what, just "coming out" might not be literally about being gay for her, but rather just having desires of her own at all)

What was with that weird 2-page page towards the end, there? I think I get that Risako just naturally gets flirty when she's trying to be persuasive or ingratiating, and Kaoru was caught on the dilemma of whether to directly confront her or not. But the scene didn't play out like Risako actually keeping a big secret... SHE brought the whole thing up, and her irritation about Kaoru's suspicion had no sign of fakeness. But then she looked surprised when Kaoru didn't pursue the whole thing? And like... was part of Risako touching her that Kaoru liked it in a way she didn't want to admit?

And her whole deal was weird... she doesn't want to be married, but she also doesn't want to live alone? (Isn't that code for being gay in manga like this?) Maybe the deal is, she is cheating with Reiichi and she's guilty so she wants to be caught? (or she wants Kaoru's attention?) I dunno, there were just a lot of very deliberate choices in the dialogue and art that added up to something odd.

I'm actually rooting at this point for Reiichi NOT to be cheating. It makes too much sense: Kaoru desperately wants external reasons to justify doing things, so in a hazy moment, she WOULD invent evidence for a very convenient suspicion that would be a socially justifiable reason to divorce her husband. This actually does fit the theory that she's very closeted... though that isn't the only thing that's work.

I demand fucking more

You and Kase both.

karp posted:

to take advantage of the fact that it's one of the very few pieces of yuri media that acknowledges women don't have sex by just kind of lying near one another.

How many yuri mangas have you read? Because there's plenty which acknowledge that, but I have hard time thinking about even 1 which does what you say. Are you sure you just happen to not read any NSFW works?

I very much tend not to read NSFW works, but mostly because the fact that most appear to be by and for, uh, a particular kind of straight man.

The real, secret story of this manga is about one woman's conflict between her love of women and her love of having long, beautiful fingernails. It's gonna be really dramatic when Yuna makes her choose.

All you need to do is cut the tip. Just the tip. Also, make sure it's cut cleanly. You don't have to worry about losing the whole thing. After all, you only need to get rid of the unecessary extra part that usually ends up accumulating waste.

I am not certain I agree, but these are the kinds of things I want to come up in this manga. Not just because it'd provide useful advice, but also to take advantage of the fact that it's one of the very few pieces of yuri media that acknowledges women don't have sex by just kind of lying near one another.

I assume this is just Kirigaya getting insight to how sexy Tadokoro is, thus getting over her jealousy about Nikaidou liking Tagokoro instead of her.

The real, secret story of this manga is about one woman's conflict between her love of women and her love of having long, beautiful fingernails. It's gonna be really dramatic when Yuna makes her choose.