Damn i hope there is more!

It's a running series in Galette now, so yes, there is more.

I can enjoy the cute love story, but at the same time I'm very aware of the unfortunate implications. Whatever Itou Hachi intended, she created a world that's pretty fucked up.

And all of it's right there in the text. You don't have to read between the lines to see that the beastkin's position in society is subordinate to humans. The author chose to bring the racial inequality to the forefront by how she constructed the plot. This didn't have to be a story about a love forbidden by the laws of their society. There didn't have to be a subplot about kidnappers stealing beastkin and selling them. The author didn't have to tell us that beastkin cannot travel or use public accommodations unaccompanied. She didn't have to have a character who constantly calls Master a lolicon, or otherwise implies that she's a pedophile.

None of that was necessary for this story to work, but it's in there. You kind of have to deliberately ignore it or pretend like it's not there.

Yup.

I think Itou Hachi wanted to draw loli maid animal girls, but started thinking about the implications, and ended up in a dark spot. Then ran with it. As you say, the story world didn't have to be this way. Itou Hachi also tends to put some dark plot points into longer works (like the doctor with anxiety issues, a damaged eye, and badly scarred face, whose father died in the fire that destroyed her eye). This one is just darker than we expected from the cover art, because we're a bunch of people who are suckers for cute loli animal girl maids.

This isn't really that much of a surprise in context of the other works by the author, and we're just following Chekhov's gun down off the mantle for this story. We have kids raised by an institution and farmed out as maids once you take away the animal ears. Already that's not a sweetness and light story. Adding animal ears doesn't turn it into one suddenly, instead it brings up more questions that have to be answered by the story.

Itou Hachi seems pretty committed to answering those questions at this point.

You know, it strikes me that CGDCT never, ever is allowed to "go" anywhere. I can think of only Sakura Trick as having actual yuri development. Even yuruyuri, well especially yuruyuri, never goes anywhere (though to be fair Himawari x Sakurako is solid).

Could you even have real yuri development in a moe slice of life type show successfully? Would it have to be a spin-off? What would that even look like?

I don't really read doujin much but this was pretty good, I guess is what I'm saying.

The biology of this whole thing is not even slightly filled in. How do beastkin reproduce? Where do they come from? Do they get old? How big do they get?

For all we know, Mel is full grown. Or she could not be full grown until she was 30, live to 200, and look like she's 14 as an adult. Or turn into a dog when she reaches 16.

I'm sure Itou Hachi has some sort of idea of how this works, but so far we have no background. It seems to me like there must be some weird science going on, because this doesn't seem like a magic type world, though at the same time it's clear this is a low tech world for the most part.

Ultimately I think this was meant to be an excuse to draw loli 15% furry maids but just for story's sake there is going to have to be an explanation.

I actually looked up "Salamander" by Asuji Ibuse and it's a really depressing story. It's a parabola about depression and loneliness actually.

The frog is trapped by the Salamander and is slowly dying.

It's about their acceptance of their fate: being trapped and dying.

Ok, thanks for the flashback of my college years... I studied Japanese literature... If that isn't screamingly typical of Japanese lit, I don't know what is. Melodramatic angst followed by death (most preferably by suicide).

To be honest I thought they were already banging, but I guess Mikoto is taking it slow? Glad that Kaoru decided to clear things up.

And what could be more wholesome than lovers having sex? Nothing. It's not like handholding or something!

I wonder where they go from here. My view is usually ambitious, high achieving people end up split up because they put their ambition first and go to college. The people I know like that all didn't get serious or married until like late twenties or later.

It would be a shame for their relationship to be over before it even started... At least in fiction there is more of a chance.

I cannot express how much I love this sometimes... Torako is incredibly moe in a very untraditional way.

22/7 member became a youtube idol ... The only one who speaks english hehe
https://youtu.be/IrqXCa6BxWM

I totally just subscribed to that. Sally may not be the idol we expect but she's the idol we deserve! And they're right, having her on YouTube is going to work out well.

Not so much a love triangle as a love line segment.

I lol'd.

This little story pretty much made me realize I would be a terrible teacher in Japan. If I were the advisor, I would destroy that band. One of the substitutes is super skilled but pushed out because they don't like her? One of the other substitutes sucks and rather than practicing MORE they are making her run errands? What if your clarinet player gets a cold and you NEED her to not suck? I would be hated because I would violate every bit of Japanese power dynamics. Like in that anime we all refuse to mention.

Also, I'm a flute player and have had that "too nervous to play" thing happen to me. Obviously I'm a guy so the circumstances are different but hell does it suck. It was the worst.

Galette 6 is already out, you can buy it for Kindle (nice if you can read Japanese). There seems to be some Japanese stuff that's available on Kindle now overseas. I have the recent issues of Galette and one other thing I read originally here. You don't have to have a Japanese address or use Amazon.jp either, it's in the US Kindle store.

This is being surprisingly realistic! I'm looking forward to what happens next.

God damn most of you take this silly ass manga WAY to seriously

I briefly went to grad school for literature, so yeah...

Well, at the end of the day, I find Touma a little dull, with no special salient trait.

All the girls around her are more interesting.

Honestly, Touma's main personality trait (besides being cheerful and outgoing regardless of the circumstances) seems to be that she's a complete idiot: she consistently fails to know or understand pretty much anything, even things you'd really expect her to. It's just that everyone's too charmed by her to notice. It's why I haven't been as harsh on her as some folks in the comments; I don't think she's being manipulative, I think she just acts on instinct and genuinely doesn't understand human relationships well enough to realize what effect she has on people.

THIS

Touma is not the point of this series. Touma's effect on the other girls is the point. I think it's very much the idea of the series that Touma is essentially blameless. Touma is basically sex itself - in fact, the near ideal of no attachment, no consequences, gentle, consensual sex. I think Amano Shuninta is playing with the effects of this on the characters, how it intersects with life and love. Touma represents different things to different people, but Touma is basically just Touma. Sex is just sex.

Sex and lust don't follow rules. Even consensual sex. It doesn't respect your person or status. What you desire doesn't respect what you intellectually think you SHOULD desire or how you think things should be. It's just there. And it completely disarms everyone, strips them bare.

I think Shuninta writes very well and just has a bad reputation here because a lot of people have hugely idealized visions of love and sex, and think it should follow rules that it just doesn't. But I like her characters, even the ones I don't "like".

Just caught the latest episode of Comic Girls... It has passed the barrier, I repeat, it has passed the barrier!

I was actually surprised at how easily it just outed yellow and set her up on a date with blue. And the only one who seems to be bothered by the same sex part is Koyume herself, though Tsubasa is exceedingly dense. To be honest it was a bit surprising how blase it was about it, and that itself seems hopeful to me, we've crossed into a world where they don't have to bother with subtext and nobody blinks. I'm used to CGDCT anime having subtext or characters that are kinda gay, but it seems like it doesn't have to be yuri to be yuri now, I guess? I hope this reflects a change in the real world to some degree.

While we're all here complaining about how yuri anime always fail, I'll just mention that Marimite was adapted into 3 full length series and 5 50 minute OVAs. So clearly there is no hope for yuri anime!

To the extent there is an issue, it's that making a long running anime is always dicey. Getting a single season is not hard, but romance anime as a whole - including straight stuff - rarely gets long runs. Maybe a 26 episode run, maybe a bit more. Kimi ni Todoke got 38 episodes, and that was HUGE by romance standards. Nothing like the hundred+ episodes that shonen battle series get.

I think the last fairly long running yuri anime was probably YuruYuri, which got 3 seasons and some specials. That said, I'm not unhappy with what we get, rather I think the mediums are different and call for different stories ultimately. If you made a yuri series that fit in 13 or even 26 episodes you could anime the whole thing. Citrus is not that, and neither is Yagate Kimi ni Naru.

Looks like this series managed to stay in the first place of www.sunday-webry.com daily ranking.

https://s19.postimg.cc/a9qvst3bn/hana_ni_arashi_daily_ranking_1st_sunday-webry.com.jpg

Sunday Webry is an official manga hosting site that Kovachi Luka uses, it has coins as currency. You can easily earn free coins after registering. Heck you don't even need to register if you use the mobile app, and you get 1000 bonus coin for free!
You can give 10 hearts at chapter's last page, and mark the series as favorite by clicking the star button.

Help Hana ni Arashi to stay on top ranking by spending free coins, giving hearts, and commenting each chapter~
Use this official app on your android if you have problem with playstore's region lock. You still get the 1000 bonus coins~

What is the deal with these stupid region locks? What do they hope to accomplish? I'm glad comico doesn't do it for their app, though they did it for comico plus which folded in the end anyway. Are they just trying to NOT take my money? Comico has probably made a couple hundred off me by now at least...

last edited at Apr 19, 2018 10:38PM by Nezchan

A weird thought on cheating and divorce - this is not a situation where he has a girl "on the side" but makes all the major events with his wife. This is a situation where he doesn't love his wife and has skipped every. damn. thing. It's also a love marriage rather than one of convenience, they didn't marry for economic or practical reasons (at least on Kaoru's end).

These being the case, there really isn't anything there to salvage. You can't fix what isn't there in the first place. So divorce it is.

Pffft, they are very likely going to spot him and the other "friend" together during the trip. Classic.

I hope so, even better if they confront each other. If it's going to be messy it might as well have a nice fight, and honestly I want Reiichi to DIAF or at least get dumped by Kaoru. I want to see a divorce by the end of this, cause that guy is a dick of dicks.

Honestly, I am more convinced with every chapter that the unrequited love here is really Kaoru's more than Uta's. Uta has half a chance, Kaoru has none. I could see a yuri end but there is no way at all that there can be a happy marriage end for Kaoru and Reiichi.

Ding Yi is serious in a way young people often are and older people very rarely are. Wei Wei is kinda hedging her bets still, trying not to go deeper than a physical relationship, trying not to face it head on - and I don't really blame her. Being with Ding Yi means making hard choices, and who knows if Ding Yi will keep that youthful sincerity? Ironically, being the older one her position is weak in a certain way.

But I kinda root for Ding Yi. I mean, why the hell not, if it makes you happy? A career is just as fickle as any love affair, you can find you can't go on in the middle, or it can not work out how you expected. Maybe it won't last either, most people find themselves changing something up in the middle.

That said, if they did stay together, would that even work in China? Would Wei Wei be likely to lose her job even if Ding Yi was older? I know China is on the middle of a media crackdown on LGBT stuff like this very comic. Would they have to hide? Or move overseas?

In the end, society is going to say what it wants, but your own happiness isn't society's to decide, and doing what's "proper" isn't anything like a guarantee you'll be happy with the results. But if you decide to go your own way, you have to be serious about it.

What gets me is that they've disowned her, but had a whole second mansion built just for her. And even if they mansion existed, she's got money and the run of the place, and probably servants as well (although we don't see them, we also don't see either of the girls doing chores, preparing meals, etc. over the course of a year) That's a pretty extreme thing to do for someone you don't consider your child or even want to speak to you.

That's a more traditional way of dealing with black sheep and/or illegitimate children than outright disowning. Historically probably the more common way - give them a manor and some land somewhere out of the way and pretend they don't exist, maybe just enough money to almost maintain it but not enough to function in high society.

Every once in a while, we get the reminder that there are less free countries... The US is ruled by a group of mostly old conservative men, but even they dare not mess with our freedom very much. Most of Europe is similar.

China seemed like it was just like the western world because it became rich, but a crackdown like this shows the truth - it's not a free country. I hope this doesn't get worse.

Could one make a critical analysis on Girls Last Tour? It certainty is a work I feel that leaves you with emotions.

I've finally watched some of last year's Amazon anime starting with this one (I didn't want to pay for both prime and anime strike, so I only recently signed up). I think there is an awful lot in Girl's Last Tour to talk about. It's essentially a thought experiment in a lot of ways, like "if it were REALLY the apocalypse and everything was REALLY dead, what happens to the last people?" on one hand, and "what is life for? What is being human?" on the other.

I would only do a real analysis if someone would give me a Master's degree for it (long story, I kinda hate writing), but my thoughts in brief - from an existential POV, there isn't that much between each of us and Chito and Yuuri. We are all headed towards certain death. We have made decisions about how to live our lives, and make decisions every day, but when we face death in the end there is still no answer to whether we made the right decisions or not. We are severely limited in abilities and our lives are short.

Each of the episodes touches on small parts of what it means to live and be human. I was particularly impressed with how it touched on the human relationship to nature in the living fish episode - the sentiment is not new but the context makes a point usually missed by most people in our society, namely that human beings are entirely dependent on the natural environment to survive. We must eat living things, the air we breathe is made by living things, and in a "city world" we are made unconscious of our actual means of survival. The music episode was also interesting to me on a personal level, really what is music and why is it pleasing? The aesthetic experience of art and music is one of my reasons to live, certainly. Several time the question of what culture is and what it is for are brought up.

There are a lot of things in there. The manga and the anime have different endings addressing different aspects of human life.

If I were more ambitious and/or rich, there are a few manga I would like to see in print for what they are - important contributions to human culture on the same level as great novels. Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, Koi Kaze, and Girl's Last Tour are on that list. If I were handing out Nobel prizes, I wouldn't be talking about Haruki Murakami, I would be talking about the authors of works like these.

Weird thought - the unrequited love is actually Kaoru's for Reiichi. Uta has more of a chance with Kaoru than Kaoru has with Reiichi, in my opinion.

This is a textbook case of why you shouldn't marry someone just because you're best friends or think you're supposed to marry them. Reiichi is a dick.

Job interviews are hell, especially for people starting out. They are easy if you feel like you have choices and don't need to be perfect... But recent grads have a "this is your future" thing piled on them.

Honestly I'm not surprised, I've done a couple interviews for Japanese companies and they were almost all terrible. Like they think you should be eternally grateful if they offer you a two bit job for the same pay as McDonald's. And you better dress better than your interviewer!

I guess this is why, despite a humanities degree, I ended up getting a 2 year tech degree and working as a factory mechanic? This is a great reminder of why I hate white collar work.