For those of you who are interested in the anime, some key visuals for the characters have been posted :-

http: // yagakimi.com/news/

And OP/ED songs.

Wanna hear that Yuu/Touko duet...

Also, Sayaka's going to be played by Ai Kayano. Seems like a good pick - she did Rin Toyama in New Game, for instance, and I can see a similar sort of performance fitting Sayaka really well.

...only a month to gooooooooooo

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.

...Is this referring to a specific manga?

but lacking that certain something . . .

Silky hair and long eyelashes? :v

Tiddy

Honestly, I had completely forgotten about the "guy from the first chapter" until I read Dynasty's description for this series. At this point that almost feels like a different story.

...I forget, does that guy even go to the same high school?

^
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 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...

LMFAO at Koyuki losing her goddamn mind over Konatsu's ponytail. Somebody please get this child a cold glass of water before she dies of thirst.

Yeah, to be clear I don't think the way the play was done was terrible or anything, there's totally a ton of value to seeing Touko and pals actually go through the motions and process the actual event even after having it explained to us in advance. I just think there was a bit of redundancy in there, too. Happens all the time.

Again, the second one is easier to explain as just Touko’s confused and distorted thinking, but it does seem odd that her central fear is based around an assumption that she will inevitably change when she seems to have devoted herself to not changing.

Yeah I'd say it's just a function of her self-loathing, mostly - especially at the time she says it. She's trying to be like her sister, but because she hates herself she isn't confident in her ability to maintain the front she assumes she has to put up to keep deserving someone's love.

Also, in some regards her finally starting to move past her obsession with emulating her sister - or really, the image SHE had of her sister - is a double edged sword. Now, of course, she EXPECTS herself to change to an extent as she finally allows herself to explore and develop her own identity more freely. But she still fundamentally doesn't think very highly of herself, and still also thinks...well, precisely what she said in the chapter: that if somebody says "I love you" that means they specifically and exclusively love the image of herself she's been presenting, and that if she should ever be unable or unwilling to conform to that image any more, she'll lose that love.

I'm wondering how many chapters the anime will cover. The pacing in the manga doesn't give the impression that there's much room for further improvement. It'd be quite a tragedy if the plot is rushed. Almost as worrisome would be a "go read the manga" ending.

12 eps would be too little to cover all the materials & 24 eps would be too many. This is why I don't like how almost every anime has to stick to these numbers. It's most likely going to be one cour, so in order for the anime to reach any sort of proper resolution (I'm guessing the play), it will need to cut out some earlier chaps.

I expect 7 manga volumes with 39 chapters in total. 1 cour can absolutely fit 13 episodes which makes it roughly 3 chapters per episode, or approx 2 episodes per volume. I expect the cuts on volume 5 to a single episode due to some filler materials there. And given the level of the scriptwriter/series composition, the anime delivery should be absolutely awesome! I just really hope the director doesn't mess up the rest.

There's definitely some easy editing they could do around the play. 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. The screenwriter - who's been REALLY good on a bunch of other projects - could easily save a lot of time by skipping a lot of the pre-play explanation or by condensing the play itself into a montage or something.

I think they've got a good shot at catching up with the manga if they're smart about how they edit things, tbh.

last edited at Aug 2, 2018 6:22PM

I wonder if we see Touko coming out though. I have a feeling her family is not gonna be too happy about it.

Touko’s family has been pretty supportive, though. It’s very clear that the pressure Touko has felt to be “perfect”/emulate her sister is primarily self-imposed.

I’m guessing that having lost their only other child they might be disinclined to stand in the way of their surviving child’s happiness.

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.

Interestingly, didn't Rei say that she expected Mom to be the stumbling block two chapters ago? "[Dad]'s a softie deep down. Grandma will defer to Mom. If anyone would oppose it, it would be mom..." And I don't think we really know enough about Mom to try and put that into any real context. Which, again, leads me to suspect that Nakatani doesn't plan to detail that part of things. Or at least she didn't when she was writing the first few volumes, anyway. Always possible she changes her mind or a publisher asks her to keep going past where she was planning to stop and she needs to reach for new ideas, or any number of other things.

I wonder if we see Touko coming out though. I have a feeling her family is not gonna be too happy about it.

Touko’s family has been pretty supportive, though. It’s very clear that the pressure Touko has felt to be “perfect”/emulate her sister is primarily self-imposed.

I’m guessing that having lost their only other child they might be disinclined to stand in the way of their surviving child’s happiness.

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.

I kinda wish she had a caring lover to support her instead of Touko.

What an odd statement. Until now Touko has been going off Yuu's explicitly stated original premise of never falling in love etc.; when she's told this is no longer the case her about first reaction is to kick herself over how much anguish she's unwittingly been causing the poor girl.

Pretty sure that's "caring" by any definition.

What I meant was that, so far, Yuu has been the only one supporting Touko in her dreams and hardships. Touko never even asked what Yuu was going through, she just kept dragging her along with whatever she wanted to do, never coming too close. I wish someone would do for Yuu all that Yuu has done for Touko.

Sir, I'm pleased to inform you that you might have incidentally stumbled across The Point Of The Story.

And, I mean, yeah, I agree with what Blastaar said - once you get past Touko's initial request that Yuu not develop feelings for her, which yeah is messed up because That's The Point, Touko's been a pretty good friend for her. It doesn't show in as showy or scandalous a way as Yuu letting Touko throw romantic advances at her, but Yuu's genuinely enjoyed Touko's company from the moment she met her, a point when she was feeling kind of lonely and directionless, and I've always gotten the impression that, quite in opposition to Touko's fears, Yuu appreciates how open Touko can be with her and being able to help her wrestle with her insecurities. Yuu doesn't want to spend less time with Touko, she just wants to be able to be honest with her about the one thing Touko accidentally asked her not to be honest about - an unfair request that neither of them even really understood Touko was making at the time.

last edited at Aug 1, 2018 7:11PM

Yeah, the more I chew on it the more I kind of admire this chapter for introducing a good old Third Act Romantic Misunderstanding without an iota of contrivance or breaking character in the slightest. Touko and Yuu are both acting EXACTLY as the manga has always been telling us to expect that they would, acting in line with what we've always been able to see about their motivations. But for just a moment their hangups and fears intersect in just the wrong way, and Oh No.

It's all the more devastating for how natural it is, even though I fully expect things to work out for the best by like the end of the next (last?) volume.

Also the art is SO fucking good. That POV show of Yuu as she takes her hands away from her face is just gut-wrenching. Watching Yuu finally show some of the stress she's handled so admirably for so long is really something. There's something I just can't quite describe about the way Nakatani does her characters' faces that I so love to look at.

last edited at Jul 31, 2018 4:34PM

Quit whining about tags on some website and read the good manga, lol

Just had a nightmare that came with this thought...

what if https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/bloom_into_you_ch34#31 is the final scene in the anime..

I'd be shocked. I expect the anime to either go all the way through to the likely end of the manga next volume or to end like right before or right after the play, or maybe do a semi-original ending. Aren't really any obvious cutoff points besides those, and I don't get the impression that Nakatani would like to have the anime end on a sour note.

Just had a nightmare that came with this thought...

what if https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/bloom_into_you_ch34#31 is the final scene in the anime..

I'd be shocked. I expect the anime to either go all the way through to the likely end of the manga next volume or to end like right before or right after the play, or maybe do a semi-original ending. Aren't really any obvious cutoff points besides those, and I don't get the impression that Nakatani would like to have the anime end on a sour note.

I really, really, REALLY want Touko to get advice from Riko and Miyako.

I can't wait to see the chapter, been avoiding peeking under the spoiler tags but it's getting harder and harder to resist... Any clue when it'll be up?

Just hit Mangadex, I imagine it'll drop here soon enough.

I'd say things actually went slightly better than the raws made them look. Touko clearly wants to accept Yuu's feelings, but the surprise + her immense talent for self-loathing made her blurt out an "I'm sorry" and give Yuu the wrong idea.

And why the next issue is on September? What a long wait!

It's the end of the volume. Happens everytime.

There would be a bonus chapter between the wait though. Seems like there won't be one this time around. Anyone thinking there's a possibility that the next volume is the last?

I mean, heck, I thought for a while that Yuu's post-play confession would go well the first time and it might end THIS volume. Nio could easily end things pretty soon if she wants. She could also keep it going a while yet - even if/when Yuu/Touko get together (or don't, for that matter), there's no reason Nio couldn't keep writing about the new phase of their relationship if she wants.

And why the next issue is on September? What a long wait!

It's the end of the volume. Happens everytime.

Oh are we taking a month off? I missed that.

Oh yeah, lol I definitely want Nio to do what she thinks is best for the manga's story first and foremost, just griping a bit.

Yagakimi full raw in HQ
https://imgur.com/a/bawenUd

I can read not a word of Japanese, so maybe I’m completely wrong.

But the pictures tell me it’s going to be fine.

lmao no. the storm is here

As I’ve been saying all along that it would be and really should be. Going directly from the play to moonlight-and-roses would have been completely inconsistent with the rest of the story, and in fact would have trivialized Touko’s basic psychological dilemma. This is the storm that was always going to have to blow itself out before smoother sailing could become possible.

Yeah, in all fairness I doubt things are gonna stay bad. These two being unsure and afraid and whatnot about the nature of their relationship changing was eminently predictable, but between what we know about them personally, the way they're framed in the raws, and the general tone I've always gotten from Nio's work, I don't see any reason to think things won't work out.

I'm mostly just a bit annoyed that, 3the longer it goes, the harder it's gonna be for the anime to cover enough material to hit a satisfying ending, lol

I have 0 knowledge of Yuu's seiyu... I'll just wait for the pv to judge

Aoba from New Game?

http://moetron.net/post/175233255990/

Yuu and Touko have their actresses for the new anime. I really like the picks, especially Touko's.

How frequently are new chapters of this published? Since the translation has almost caught up, I'm wondering how long we'll have to wait between chapters after that.

I thiiiiiiiiiink the manga runs in a monthly magazine - but Hachimitsu, the group doing the english scanlations, have said they'd rather work off of volume raws, which means that this is it until Volume 3 comes out in a few months. Unless somebody else decides to start working off of the monthly chapter raws, anyway.

...Have we met Hana-chan before? I feel like we have but I can't remember when...