That's not butch! She's still clearly feminine (VERY feminine) and you can be both butch and trans fem, for butch think of someone with very short hair and a very masculine dressing style and preferably fat and/or muscular. Now with that image of a masculine lesbian in your head, you are free to imagine a long-haired butch, but this is not it!

This was so cute! Thanks for the upload

Plushie vore... I like her :3 face in this page

I'd keep my hopes low for a translation for now... I do hope that it gets one eventually because it's really good.

I'm honestly tempted to buy and scan the books myself just to machine translate them (not to post, just for myself) but I know how involved that would be and how messy it would be to clean up the translation without social context. But I genuinely struggle to keep interest in a story when there's a long period between updates. At least a lot seems to happen each release. Really wish I'd discovered this story like a year from now when I could at least get a good first arc out of it then abandon the manga until another year later.

Yeah I think that due to the complexity of it using machine translation wouldn't be a good idea... If I had the brainpower to translate I would gladly do so but sadly I do not. It's also got a bunch of physics-related terms in the text and I could see the more descriptive scenes getting confusing. Best choice for now might be to set it aside and wait unless you want to support the author and buy them anyway.
The first novel is also quite dense in how its chapters are divided so I'm glad it's now something in the style of "chapters divided by multiple parts" instead of huge sections with no clear spot you can stop on.

This page reminded me of that one magical girl x plushie oneshot

Reading earlier chapters after this is quite something with all instances of her being called 'manly' and 'cool'... I hope that she's fine now that she's older because whatever happens next is going to be very painful.

Also are they eating ... flowers on page 28 chapter 8?

They are sucking out the sweet nectar, which apparently is a thing kids do in japan (and maybe elsewhere as well? Only ever saw this happen in manga)

Did that while growing up in the US. My mom would tell me not to steal the hummingbirds' food. The honeysuckle would bring a lot of them around.

I've done that too with some flowers the school I went to had for years until 2020, tasty as hell. I'm Brazilian though

And for those who care about the fish there are some cool ones which we'll be seeing later... :)and cool clouds and storms but a good part of the fun atmospheric phenomena is near the end and also in the second volume of the novel so it will be quite a while until then
If I were to complain about something it's that there wasn't enough fish but the cool fishing scenes make up for it

Edit: Can't find any translations of the original novel. Here's to a painful wait over the next year lol

I'd keep my hopes low for a translation for now... I do hope that it gets one eventually because it's really good (I'm currently halfway through the 3rd volume of the novel) and considerably refreshing when it comes to the setting. I'm really excited for when the manga starts showing more of Terra and Diode's personalities and their moments together.
Really not much can be said without spoiling the future events but this deserves so much more attention than it got, it's got a fun setting with an interesting system, the two main characters aren't ashamed of being gay and are going to do whatever they can so they can stay together in a society that wouldn't ever accept them and value them for what they are.
They're runaways for a reason and this will make more sense in the next few chapters to come.

It's leaning a little too hard into sexist stereotypes (that is, stereotypes of sexism) and trivial criticism of the main characters for my suspension of disbelief. Every single time someone else seems reasonable, they have to say something that reverses or undercuts it. The writing feels like it has all the grace, nuance, wisdom, and polish of an angry middle-schooler's rant about how mean and unfair the world is.

I'll keep reading because the main characters are decent enough, the setting is weird and cool, and the artist likes putting them in attractive outfits all the time, but damn is the allegorical technique on display thus far just JV as fuck.

i hate thous type of stories, i just checked the comments to see if it’s worth reading, i will just jump from first chapter to the last and read from there, cuz i’m not wasting time on an story that tries to hard to send a message, let’s see how much the author is gonna hand-fist the sexism in this story.

I can now safely say that this is false. There wasn't a single event that made me think "this is too absurd". The bioessentialism that is rampant in our society plagues theirs just as much and we got the first strong taste of it through Xeon. The insistence that social roles and behaviour are "natural" despite them being violently enforced with limitations based on nothing other than culture, those roles being treated as immutable and those who diverge from it being punished harshly with women being seen as less and only useful to marry, impregnate and keep the cycle going is realistic enough.
And they DO treat marriage like it's the ultimate goal in life and all it does is keep the characters chained down to something futile (The Bow Awow being seen as one of the most important events to happen in their society), they're girls who can't have kids so they're "wasting" resources that someone else could be using by playing around with the tool that was made for a Real Couple, because of course a gay relationship couldn't possibly be genuine and they have nothing worthy to provide if not kids.
Their deck dresses are like that to please their husbands. The sexual harassment Terra's gone through coming from both men and women... Terra's having to learn from 0 the things that she's fine and comfortable with and accepting that she doesn't need to get married... It's not absurd. She was seen as an attractive fertile body and nothing more to most people she interacted with until meeting Diode — not to mention the treatment she gets for having too much of an imagination and being known as "Tell-Tale Terra" against her will.

The misogyny and how the characters try to survive around it is an essential part of this work. It's not being "hand-fisted" into it when the very system of their society is one based entirely on sexism and that's what the characters are running away from. You can't hand-fist what the author wants to be one of the main themes of the work, lol.
The main conflict is that they're not allowed to be together because of how their society works so if you remove it... you're getting rid of the entire story. If what brought them together was the fact that they aren't satisfied with the cage they live in, if you get rid of the cage, what conflict is left?

MASSIVE SPOILERS FROM THE NOVEL
It's hidden away that the two most relevant individuals who first made it possible for them to live in the FBB 300 years ago were a lesbian couple in a very high position in their own fleet who were already exiled themselves for having an ability that was undesirable in the rest of the Galactive Interactive (I may be misremembering this term), that ability being DECOMPRESSING and it's considered a crime to do so anywhere else. Those things are all social and not biological and that they must enforce it if they want it to be seen as the default way of men and women being.

SPOILERS FROM DIODE'S ORIGINATING CLAN
It also only gets worse, hers is especially sexist and limits what women can learn in their education programs with her using her stay at Terra's clan as an opportunity to pry into things she wasn't allowed to before. IIRC women are compulsorily made to train as Decompas at some point in their lives and Diode is REALLY bad at decompressing.

My memory is bad so those things probably aren't accurate but it's enough to get the general idea of what is happening in their setting.
Everyone is allowed to dislike things but I find it a bit rude to be diminishing those works that focus on themes like this when you haven't even read it yet nor plan to and immediately assume bad things about it.

Also there's something very romantic about this manga, more romantic than the soppiest yuri rom coms. I can't pinpoint what it is. Maybe it's been a long time since I saw such unquestioned teamwork between the leads. Usually the drama comes from one angstily second guessing the other but either they've skipped all that or it's not the main focus right now, the main focus being fighting against societal bigot baddies.

This remains accurate throughout the work. It's one of the things I love the most about them and an example I can give without spoiling anything much are those two scenes from Volume 3, one where Diode is deep into thought about their future:
あるどころか、こうしてすっぽり抱かれていると、初日に感動していた女に勝るとも劣らない、その一〇〇倍も強い嬉しさと有難みに襲われて、泣き出してしまう。
「テラ、さん」
　──この大きな体の素敵な人が自分を選んで、好いてくれているのは、なんて幸せなんだろう。飽きるとか詰むとか色褪せるとかなんてのは、恐れるべきことでは全然ない。
　──本当に怖いのは、この人に見限られることだ。
「好きです、ほんとに好き、好き、好き……」
「へぁ」
　肌に涙を擦り付けてささやくと、女が間の抜けた鼻息を漏らして、ぽん、ぽん、とダイオードの肩を叩く。
　この人と生きるために全力を尽くそう、とダイオードは心に誓う。

and the other where Diode brings up about wanting to be alone sometimes, Terra mistaking it with her possibly being too horny and that being a bother(lol) for Diode and then understanding that sometimes people need to be by themselves and mentioning that she "didn't know because she had no past experience with that(dating)".
「つまり、その」テラは顔を押さえる。「私が、淫乱だってことですか……？」
「いえ待って待ってそうは言いません絶対そうじゃないです、そのままでいてテラさん」猛烈にあわてた様子でダイオードが言ってから、テラが顔を上げると、決まり悪そうに付け加えた。「ただほんのちょっと、頻度が高いってだけです。これは単なる調整です」
「単なる調整……」
「わかってください、一人になりたい時があるんですよ」
「あ」テラははっと閃く。「そ、そうですね！　一人になりたい……つまり相手に見せたくない時って、あります、私も」
「わかってもらえました？」
「わかりました！　お付き合いしたからって何もかもひとつになるわけじゃないんですよね。すみません私、全然経験がなくて……」
「いちいち煽らなくていいです、じゃあそういうことで、私、出ていくので」

When making a choice they always think of each other and Diode makes a point of being understanding with Terra, incentivizes her to say what's on her mind and to tell her if she's uncomfortable with whatever they're doing at the time and that she will stop if told to. This is Terra's first healthy relationship. They're quite horny if this matters to anyone.
Diode is also a bit of a tsuntsun with quite the vocabulary and gets weirdly clingy at times so I'm really looking forward to when she starts showing more of that side while Terra is like "Hehehe... My aprtner is so atrauctive asfdodiujfszxcbv"

VOLUME 2 NOVEL SPOILERS
She gets mad when エダ calls Terra "Terra-chan", エダ (who is also quite into teasing) then switches to "Terra-kun" and this is how she reacts
『てことでしばらく、相互理解の多いあたしとテラくんで話す。テラくん、説明するが』
「あ、はい！」「くっ……」
ダイオードが歯嚙みしつつも口を閉ざした。

And this Terra said near the end of the Volume 1 remains legendary to me:
「これでしょう！　おっぱいでしょう！　こういうの大好きなんでしょう！」

Two cute illustrations from the comic-growl upload of it if anyone else hasn't seen them yet: 1 2

last edited at Aug 18, 2024 11:25AM

This last page is adorable, I hope that she curls on top of her like a cat as a fun harmless prank

This was great nonetheless :P Really liked their dynamic in this

This page sure is intense. Seems interesting though, appreciate the themes Usui Shio is up to write about.

last edited at Aug 14, 2024 1:30PM

Mizuki might learn what "jealousy" and "taking for granted" means in a second. Let's see how she takes this. I'm 1000% sure nothing will ever happen with her sister and that, that's just the setup gag. She already started last chapter but maybe this is will create another opportunity to see Mizuki's growing feelings for our MC. Should be comedy either way.

I'm really hoping for this

This was really good, love the art

I forgot we had DGS content on dynasty, Haori IS super gay. I love that sprite where she looks at Susato with those puppy enchanted eyes and holds her hands together lol

This was lovely and the TL notes were great

Just some pages where how they act may be relevant. I'm writing this down for easier access once there are more chapters and I want to revisit those scenes.

Erika:
School girl usual romance talk, pages 12-13
Tanabata day memories conversation, pages 27-30
Her opinion on how Koto should act about being reunited with Aya, pages 08-11
It's not clear what she means by fair in this, pages 30-31
Self-deprecation? Page 07
Briefly mentions how Koto "has changed", pages 17-18
Calling herself awful, pages 24-25
"What do you think? Aya.", pages 17-18
Recognizing herself as Aya's stand-in, pages 25-28
In the same chapter, pages 29-30, tanabata is brought up again and her wish is shown.
Still within chapter 8, "I consider myself an awful jerk" pages 35-36
Flashback from briefly after Aya's disappearance, makes a question Koto seems a bit confused about, page 11
"I'm not... Anyone's great friend.", pages 20-24
Her animosity towards Aya becomes more noticeable and so does the fact that she's hiding something, pages 09-13, Aya briefly recalls something and Erika's muttering seemed to be directed at herself.
Later, "meaningfully" smiles towards Aya, page 22

Koto:
Second confession, already showing her desire to be the center of Aya's attention, pages 28-31
"I just knew she would respond that way" script and stage, which could mean nothing, pages 32-36
Anxious over Aya's sleeping figure, pages 24-29
Anxious over Aya seeking for a job, pages 31-33
Watching Aya leave for work, page 32
Her wish for Aya to quit leaks a bit, pages 07-12
and in the same chapter, gets somewhat more intense, pages 19-25, as Aya talks about how she wants to keep moving forward
gets more anxious when Aya starts to focus on achieving her goals, pages 35-36
"I would never let go of Aya-chan", pages 31-36
Loses her cool, pages 01-05
and then feels betrayed pages 17-18
Lastly, the part where her emotions leak and she tries to control Aya's actions, pages 25-36 and makes it clear that she is a child and that she is scared of Aya disappearing again.

Aya:
The "If not here, where is it?" scene, pages 18-25, Koto feels as if she's being messed with.
still during the first chapter, she's found looking somewhere far away, pages 28-30
Can't recall what happened and feels insecure about how the current Koto feels about her, pages 27-34
Her reaction to her grandfather's death, pages 01-02
Her reaction when Koto first confessed, pages 01-02
During their date, reminisces on how her feelings for Koto changed since her first confession, pages 10-15 and is now more aware of how she is attracted to her.
Still within the same chapter, her fear of being abandoned becomes apparent, 18-28, at this point she's still very naive and unaware of her partner's mental state or what it means to have disappeared for 7 years.
Becomes lost in thought again, looking somewhere far away. pages 05-07
This entire part where she isn't certain of her standing with the other two, pages 19-36
Feeling bad again for being the only one left behind and a child, pages 23-35
Anxious over a possible break up, pages 02-05
Feeling anxious over Koto, pages 15-30, and getting very awkward after and "comfortable".
During Koto's emotional moment, pages 27-33 her being a child and her disappearance are the two things she seems to be the most sensitive about. In this I'd say her desire for not being "stuck" is made clear.
And she does want to be independent, pages 07-09
Starts to question how she feels towards the current Koto, pages 16-17
And finally starts to become aware of the gravity of her situation, pages 28-36

This was amazing

It took me a little too long to understand the gesture here... Anyway, another very nice chapter

I thought that Senpai was going to go the cheap route and get together with Asumi to "save money". Using their birthdays to bet was really cute.

In fact, I think putting these characters into such a radically ambiguous, both/and past/present relation is (at least so far) the entire point of the story. Otherwise I can’t see any purpose in setting up what is basically a story of down-to-earth, complicated emotional relationships within the framework of a supernatural premise that the narrative seems otherwise uninterested in exploring.
(...)

Fully agree with this. It's been completely buried under their own conflicts and none of them have delved much into it but it's as you've said. We'll have to wait and see where the author wants to go with it.

I cannot imagine Aya just putting up with this situation when freedom is so important to her. It was like her ENTIRE thing back before disappearing, how much she wanted the freedom to get away from her shitty grandfather and a life controlled by others, and one of the major elements back then of Koto and Aya's relationship was Koto at least claiming to be willing to follow Aya's lead and run away with her.

Then l have to say you have misunderstood what she really wants in the beginning. I can 100% assure you freedom is not in Aya's desire list. At least not at the top. And the reason she fell for Koto is kinda abnomal. Since Aya being abandoned by her own mom at very young age, l think it justify her distorted mindset.

I don't see how freedom wouldn't be in her desire list when her first thought after hearing about her grandfather was that it was finally over, there's also this conversation she had with Koto way back in the first chapter, and while it was on the surface a conversation about a book they have read, I don't think she brought it up for no reason, it's very possible that she did want to be "free" of a "something" we don't know yet. Her reaction when she first arrived in a faraway unknown place to me also implies that she wanted to get away from something, be "free" from it.
And then she ended up in another cage where there was an attempt at limiting what she can do.
When you think of a child, you think of someone who can't do much. They can't be away from home for long (assuming they can leave it, at all), they don't have much money, they don't get to choose what happens to them, what they eat, what they wear... They can't go against their caretakers. While the majority of them act excited about being adults because they see it as being "free" until they see another part of how society works. Aya does have a dislike for being treated as a child in general so I could see her connecting that with being trapped.

I don't think her falling in love with Koto can be considered sudden or abnormal when it is be expected to happen after you spend time with someone who treats you as an equal or even above herself and that person treats you well, and yes she does have a fear of being abandoned but I don't see how that would mean she wants to date another person who was traumatized by the same thing and affected in a way that makes it so that she only feels safe if she feels like she has some control over it. You can't say for certain that this is the kind of love she wanted all along and is now paying the price for it and I feel that more than anything she wants to be on equal grounds with the others.
Yes, there is the fear of abandonment, the very page you've mentioned is proof of that, but that also does not take away her wish for freedom or else she wouldn't be trying to keep moving forward with her life and keeping up with her friends because she doesn't want to "be left behind", it's what she says from pages 19 to 25.

So, it's really easy to make Erika the villain here, because of what she possibly did on the Tanabata day and because she's passive aggressive towards Aya. Koto has her faults, but Erika is literally playing on these faults to break them up.

I don't disagree that Erika could have said something about Koto's state of mind, although not as a friend, but as an adult the moment she noticed things were getting a bit too obsessive. But also, is she even in the right state of mind for that? Can we really expect things not to be emotionally packed?
Would that have done anything?
Would a naive Aya just accept that, when she's in love with Koto and only became aware of the weight of the situation after Erika suggested another way of thinking about it?

I wouldn't consider myself an Erika defender since I try not to see their good/bad actions as fully defining of them as characters, what bothers me are how certain posts are oddly reductive of what's happening when it comes to both Koto and Erika by trying to turn them into things they aren't (genius manipulator, evil mastermind). Still, I do not think that she is a villain as a character can be an antagonistic figure (Assuming that she could be considered one, but then, who is or are the protagonist and what is she going against? Is the Aya x Koto relationship really what one would want? Is she not relevant to the triangle?) without necessarily being a villain. Of course if it turns out that Erika had vile intentions all along I'll consider her a villain too, but so far it makes no sense for that to ever be the case and, for me, it feels more like conflicted feelings manifesting themselves as friendship, jealousy, animosity and possibly regret.
She's a human, a person. To be reducing them to simple words is to ignore the complexity of the situation they've been placed in and their relationship.

Not excusing either of Erika's or Koto's actions, they are justified, it's been discussed multiple times already. If Erika is really the cause behind Aya's disappearance, then that certainly messed her up and I don't think she's at her best state right now when her accidental victim is right in front of her. It is in her interest of course that Koto gets over Aya as what she desires is Koto to be with her, however in this chapter I think that the advice she gave was actually good and it's the other things that should make the reader a bit wary of her such as what she muttered here which seemed to be way more directed at herself than at what she was discussing with Aya before... Which could possibly mean that she DOES blame herself for what happened and feels bad about it.

I've just re-read chapter 13 and noticed that on page 11, when Aya recall hearing what Erika said somewhere before, there is a shadow of someone (the person who said that to her in the past). That shadow doesn't match young Erika or young Koto, but look like adult Erika or adult Koto. Is it just me or something weird going on here too?

It could have been ambiguous like that because she's just starting to remember so the memory is quite foggy, but if it was an adult Erika or Koto I think we'd be stepping into Bayonetta territory. I think it makes sense to think that it was a teenager Erika because it was triggered right after she said that phrase, and Erika is most certainly hiding something from the other two she doesn't want them to know because it would advance the crumbling of their friendship.
But if it was another person, then... who? I think it would be weird to introduce another character who was relevant in the past at this point and if it was an adult Erika/Koto... I think this would get into a time travel theme it's not really going for so far.

Well, you just did. To have an abusive behavior, you need a clear intend to harm. It is just not the case. Her trauma makes her say irrational and hurtful things, that doesn't mean it was the intent. Two actions can have the same results while being different.

You can be abusive without intending to. Keeping someone in a cage with no freedom is abusive even if she tried to do it out of love. It's not healthy, it's not rational, it's not ideal. That doesn't make Koto evil and hurting and being hurt is part of life, even when you don't want to. What matters is what Koto is going to do about it, if she'll improve herself or if she'll give in to her fears.
Besides, kids often can't tell that they're being abused until later in life.

Blastaar posted this while I was still writing my post but I couldn't put it any better:

So it’s not surprising that both Koto and Erika have trouble taking a consistent stance toward Aya—she’s both a vulnerable middle-schooler thrown into a disorienting situation with no external resources besides her old friends and The One in their triad as if she’d never been away. Sometimes Erika or Koto treat her as the first and sometimes the second—and sometimes in the same sentence.

And it's literally this, I know it might not be the intention, but many are thinking in black and white here. It's like when people try to argue that a morally grey character is definitely evil or definitely good.

Well, it's really hard to regard Koto as an abuser while Aya is the one who holding more cards in this relationship.
Despite the sudden seven age gap, Koto still not see herself as equal.
Aya is so god like to her lol.

In the relationship yeah, maybe, as the result of Koto's obsession with her, but as an adult, Koto does have more power over Aya's life, considering how she's got nowhere to go other than to two mentally ill women with an unhealthy triangular obsession.
She's just a kid and it was up to the other two women to do something about themselves... but of course considering their past relationship, their unresolved feelings and the entire mess that her reappearance is, can we really expect them to be mature about it? Not really and that's fine, that's one of the reasons why I like this story.

And if you're this obsessed with someone to the point all of your value depends on them, it's up to you to do something about it before it corrodes you and it destroys your relationship.
I've been obsessed with others, Adachi Sakura style, so I'm not saying this to be mean... It's just true, or else you'll be destroying yourself.

I don't understand why the focus on the use of "abuse" when it's a simple way of describing the result of Koto's actions if Aya hadn't ran away and Koto allowed her feelings to control her, with time things would get ugly.

Aya is my favourite in this story and I just hope that it works out somehow for her in the end and she can recover socially, stay happily single or find a girl who's more stable but I also wouldn't mind an even more tragic ending because we need some painful yuri works.

This was really nice and the art very cute, thanks for the upload!
"It's not like I'm gonna get eaten or anythin'." Sure...

Ogayu!

Gyaah