Well, it isn't a reference to Kaitou Kid. It is a reference — both of them are — to the broader phantom thief genre, which goes back in Japan to the Fiend With 20 Faces/Man of 20 Masks (created by Edogawa Ranpo in the 1930s, and reused by many since), and his predecessors in English and French mystery fiction like Raffles the Amateur Cracksman and Arsène Lupin (around the turn of the 20th century). There's dozens of phantom thieves in anime and manga, and they all use a lot of the same tropes; both Kaitou Kid and the Phantom Thief Eli card set are very consciously playing in that field.

Aww. Now I want Rina to have kigurumi pajamas for everybody who sleeps over, a la Yuru Yuri. (And if you count the SIFAS Daily Theatres, that includes Ruby!)

Y'know, that does make a lot of sense.

...y'know, arguably, YouChikaRiko is the point of the "Koi ni Naritai AQUARIUM" PV.

Y'know, out of all the odd choices made in this book, both by the characters and by the author, I can't help but think the most peculiar is not even anything butt related, but why Hibiki decided that her little doll of Kanade needed nipples.

Love this a lot.

last edited at Aug 25, 2022 3:36AM

It's the School Idol Festival; this is presumably off-screen during the last few episodes of the anime's first season, while Yu is running around preparing venues and coordinating with the other schools and the volunteers.

(Or the corresponding timeframe in the game, but it's arguably not Yu there, which complicates things.)

...really, if Kanna is consistently living with humans — going to school with them, participating in all the same events and rites of passage as they do — it really wouldn't be odd for her self-image to grow as quickly as they do, just from experiencing life at the same speed and to the same degree.

( There is certainly a degree of voluntary shapeshifting to all of the dragons' human forms, though I don't think they've got complete control over how they look.)

My understanding was that Tohru/Elma is — I guess post-endgame is the best way to put it. That their relationship qua relationship has been sort of acknowledged, but is in abeyance for... effectively, for a human lifetime.

It's an odd statement, yeah, but I mean, she doesn't — she's shown sleeping on the sofa she's got in her room, the one Ayumu tackled her onto.

Ah, light comedy and subtle horror.

Actually, it's not all that subtle, is it? I mean, the first ends with Homura and half-Madoka surrounded by the lobotomized remnants of their friends and acquaintances, and the last in a double homicide. Fun!

Nekotofu has a number of stories that are cute and funny over deeply distressing details. (Not just the doujin work either; I dearly love "Onii-chan is Done For!" but there's some messed up elements.)

It's awfully cute, but I'm not sure about the implication that Riko is the one who carried both of them. My admittedly limited experience with women who have had children suggests a scene with a line like, "If you want another one, you can give birth this time."

The Shioriko/Ayumu page, and the subsequent page with them and Yu, I would bet take place in a — shall we say, heightened — version of the SIFAS storyline where Ayumu quits the School Idol Club after she and the player character have a fight; she hangs out a lot with Shioriko, who had not yet joined the club and was still a semi-antagonist, until they reconcile.

last edited at Mar 21, 2022 5:34AM

There's a second part — https://twitter.com/myonglette/status/1500723043781722113

July 2022.

Very nice.

Hmm, Riko and a Nijigasaki girl, huh? Assuming we don't count the obvious Riko+Yu/Anata,  SIFAS does gives us some shipping fuel. There's been a side story featuring Riko and Setsuna getting caught coming back from a "special" bookstore in Ikebukuro. The Daily Theatres also offer:

• Emma gushing over her piano playing, leading to Riko offering to accompany Emma as she sings her favorite songs, capping with an "Riko-chan, I love you!"
• Swapping book recommendations with Setsuna, getting worked up, and giggling a lot
• Riko's birthday 2020, where she's brought to the party by Kasumi; Riko gushes over Kasumi's koppepan
• Teaching Rina the piano
• Karin at Riko's for a pajama party; Karin, as usual, gets a little flirty
• her and Ai near Christmas, out looking at music-themed tree decorations
• Emma and her discussing summer vacation, leading to an invitation to stay at her house in Numazu
• Kasumi and her at the movies, with Kasumi lending her a handkerchief
• Riko having Lanzhu over for Hinamatsuri

(Riko's Theatres with Ayumu have been about other people, with Kanata just about cooking, with Shizuku just about training, with Shioriko about dance and going out with friends, and with Mia about keeping her and Maki off each other's throats.)

Lack of canon date-like interaction has never stopped anyone from shipping a pair — witness this image set! — so you're spoiled for choice, really.

last edited at Mar 14, 2022 6:08PM

One of the ongoing bits in the Daily Theatre skits is the girls getting enthusiastic about having matching items with each other. It's pretty adorable.

last edited at Mar 14, 2022 12:07PM

It's Setsuna's place — Yu doesn't have a bed.

Okay: as if summoned by this doujin, Rina's friend and classmate Asaki just showed up in the game, in Rina's latest bond episode — though they transliterate her name as Asagi. She's been revealed in that continuity as one of the ones who assisted Rina with building the electronic Rina-chan Board for stage use.

Oh, okay, I get it: it's "Outside (the club) X Inside (the club)". Lots of great stuff. Scattered thoughts:

• Karin is so proud of herself for dancing at the girl she doesn't realize is crushing on her, and bragging about it to the girl she doesn't et c.

• Asaki is cute, if a bit too indirect. (I think Rina may, in addition to her inability to show emotions via facial expressions or tone of voice, have trouble with interpreting the nuances of other people's facial expressions.)

• I guess I need to look up the names of Rina's other classmate friends. (And maybe the names of Ayumu's fans.)

• I love the bits with the Student Council Secretaries; recent SIFAS chapters have had them — Satsuki and Uzuki, if I'm remembering right — become huge fans of Shioriko, and are determined that she should surpass Setsuna — to the point of studying yoga and Pilates, in order to teach them to her, and getting their beautician's licences.

Wow, some raw pain being dealt with here.

The baby is adorable, though the cutest thing might be Eli devolving into a nesoberi.

Umi's sister does have something of a point, though it may be the familial straightforward nature talking there — that she, like Umi, has no guile and therefore no time for it in others — and she's speaking from a position of straight privilege.

My theory on what she whispered — based on Eli's reaction — is something along the lines of "Please don't hurt my sister".

Something I hadn't noticed before is how much Umi's relationship with her older sister is an undercurrent of this set of doujins. It's set up here, and then foregrounded in "As Our Lives Become Interwoven".

It's probably meant to highlight Umi's guileless nature (c.f. Old Maid) and the way that that outlook won't allow her to see hidden feelings — or motives — in anybody else.

I actually ended up going back and doing some research because I'm really bad at not overthinking these things, and came to the conclusion that the most likely diagnosis was a ependymoma — a nonaggressive primary tumor, and the most common glioma among young children — in the brainstem/upper spinal cord. Ependymomas don't really respond to chemotherapy, so she wouldn't lose her hair that way, and the position would let the surgeons go in from the back; she might have a bald spot low in back, but one that's easily covered.

(Nico probably was having offstage headaches, vision problems, incontinence, and seizures; staying all Nico-Nico-Ni through it is impressive.)

The couple of months of post-surgical retrograde amnesia would then be a result not of the surgery itself, but sort of due to the brain's rebound after the cranial pressure was released; probably the whole period while she had the tumor is fuzzy at best.