And when did I ever mention that it was? I was providing a possible reason for Sei to feel that what she did was justified, not justifying it myself - putting myself in Sei's shoes, so to speak. I've noticed it for a while now, but it seems that you easily get so confrontational when someone doesn't share your opinions. You might want to rein it in a bit. I'm not trying to justify anything. That was your assumption.

Well, when you say that Sei didn't do it maliciously but rather she did it to confirm her suspicions, it does sound like you're partially excusing it. Despite that fact, I didn't quote your post specifically because I don't know your stance anyway, so I took this post as an opportunity to mention the phenomenon of people excusing the shady actions of a character because the manga itself is excusing them. It wasn't meant for you directly.

I don't intend on being confrontational, maybe I have discussions with people I disagree with more often when I could just say nothing. But that's what also creates a discussion.
I just think that the other side isn't heard often. So for example, in a yaoi manga called warehouse, the "love interest" straight up rapes the guy, but because he also loves him and takes care of him the fandom ships them.

I think stories like this(Yuri here) are interesting regardless, but also we should point out when abusive relationships get romanticized.

I don’t want to hope for one because I don’t want to raise my expectations.

That depend on what you consider a good ending

I straight up think they will end up together and Sei will "be fixed" lol. Could totally be wrong though.

last edited at Apr 26, 2020 11:39AM

Since when taking someone's nude photo without their permission is ok because she didn't do it for revenge porn, she was just conducting an experiment. With both Haruki and Aya as her lab rats.
Just because there's a reason other than revenge on Aya directly, doesn't make it acceptable...
That's what I don't like about stories like this. They can make you excuse a character's actions because they are the main character.

Haruki cared about Aya since they were kids. We saw the flashback from their childhood and she had her back ever since. Unless she was planning to seduce her ever since they were 6 or something.

last edited at Apr 26, 2020 10:42AM

The fact that she could talk to Sei without awkwardness and reservation meant a great deal to Aya. She felt someone out there cared enough to message her every day. It seems like it’s not a big deal to some but for Aya who had a desperate need for connection, this was enough to establish a bond.

Yeah I would get that if she absolutely had no one else. Let's say someone like Kaoru from MUL who really doesn't have anyone else.
What's very contradictory is how we've seen Haruki trying to approach her and Aya was rejecting her. It's not like she had no other person in the world to talk to, she was just very aloof and distant with them on her own. So I can't believe that she suddenly felt so familiar with someone she barely knows. And even if it was the teen hormones etc(I'm not saying she shouldn't feel anything at all), it's a great stretch that someone like her would go into these type of lengths for someone so fast. She reminds me of Mei from Citrus regarding her aloof side, but even if I have criticized it, I think it did a better job in depicting someone with this type of personality and the time it takes for them to feel strongly about someone.
I don't think it's impossible for someone to feel like she did, but you need a different personality for that. They have to be more open and company seeking in general. Not someone who avoids human interaction like Aya.

There is such a thing as whirlwind romance. People get married after meeting for just a week. People claiming love at first sight or knowing they were going to marry their significant other just after one date. There’s a dating show on Netflix called Love is Blind where people go on dates and have like 5 days to decide whether or not they propose to someone....

Oh yes there is, and then they divorce/break up just as fast as they fell for each other. Or in these shows that you mentioned. You honestly take them seriously? Most of them are staged, and the couples there barely last.

In this manga, someone might like them as a couple for various reasons. Their story is interesting and the art is pretty good. So it attracts readers and then you can bend the possibilities and go with the exception of the exception and believe this is a very strong love. It's not completely impossible. But I'm reading this with the most common and possible situation irl.
Although I'm sure there will be a happy ending.

Like I said, Aya established a friendship through their messaging. They were in daily contact before they met. Though it isn’t stated how long they were messaging before they met, the fact that Aya feels comfortable enough to mention her status as an outcast in school, that she goes to Sei after she threatens to cut her off because she doesn’t want to lose her, and that Sei feels comfortable enough to make that demand, means that there’s been enough time to establish an emotional connection.

"they were in daily contact" yeah for like a week? Maybe a month tops? It's easier to confide to a stranger on the internet sometimes rather than a person you know irl. You can't really count their brief internet interaction as a deep bonding. They were just getting to know each other. I've seen comments on the internet of people talking about their issues with strangers(like on YouTube comments). It really doesn't mean much. And learning about Sei's work doesn't need a lot of interaction either. She literally states her occupation in her dating profile, so it would be one of the first topics of conversation to come up.

I get if you like their "relationship". It's more subjective. But they don't know each other for a long time, especially long enough time for Aya to feel like her only purpose in life is Sei.

Aya had seen Sei as her friend prior to the sexual advances

Agh, that was for five seconds. And then Sei literally threw herself on Aya the first time they met.
I mean, it's not unbelievable why Aya likes her that much and so quick,but the phrase "she is my reason to be alive" is just ridiculous imo.

Also we see that Aya has a problem with socializing and opening up to people, so that makes it even weirder how she suddenly made that stranger her reason to live. I think this needed to be developed way slower, because even though there are reasons why she feels that way, they're not convincing and enough for me.

If she’s so concerned about her friend and wants Aya to stay away, why not tell her what she did and show Aya the picture Sei sent? Maybe she eventually will do it, but if she doesn’t then I’m inclined to believe it’s because doing so conflicts with Haruki’s ultimate desire; to ensure the version of Aya that she’s grown up with stays by her side.

Haruki tried approaching Aya a lot, but Aya keeps rejecting her. It's not easy to talk about the fact that she pried on her phone but then discovered a whole other mess. It started out as something smaller,but then she got caught up in a more complicated situation which made it harder to tell the truth. Still, I'm not saying what she did was right, but she is the most likable character of the three for me, so it sucks how the author is making her problematic on purpose so they make sure the readers ship the other two. A kind of logic like Sei is problematic, but Haruki is no angel either, so we might as well ship Aya with Sei since Sei is the main character and we are more familiar with her.

This is so funny. “I’d lose my only reason to be alive”, my ass. Where did the romance even come from? Like, there was a girl... She wanted some friends... She met a woman who harassed her online and offline, that pissed her off... Then they had huge amount of sex, just because Aya couldn’t and didn’t know how to refuse... That’s all, where’s love, where’s “reason to be alive”? Did I miss something?
The sujet is extremely forced with this romance thing. There was no development of it, it came out of nowhere. So far it’s just sophisticatedly drawn porn. Which would be okay if it wasn’t so pretentious.

That's exactly what I was thinking too. Maybe I'd be more lenient on the "extremely forced" part and simply call it too fast and baseless when you stop to think deeper about it (the bar for a normal paced development is really low for romance manga anyway) Like boo hoo, you know her for like a month?

It's weird because I'm super into this type of angsty relationships, but this one? I just don't care about rooting for them. I guess it really is because there is not much of development between them. There is no love, just Sei who desperately and sickly holds into her first love and Aya who is going to end up getting contaminated and becoming the same as Sei(although I would bet the author will flip it over in the end)
The sex scenes are actually intense and well drawn. The two characters are good looking. But it still doesn't make them appealing to me as a couple.

Also I like Haruki more despite she crossing the line of Aya's privacy (which is wrong). What Sei did with the nudes was creepy af and she deserved to be called out. Haruki's actions don't just come from jealousy, I think first and foremost she cares about Aya and the situation she is in. Imagine discovering your minor friend dating a pretty older adult who secretly takes naked pics of her and acts all smug and provocative to you.

last edited at Apr 25, 2020 4:54PM

[I emphasized some words in the quote and fixed a typo, but I can’t be much clearer that I was in the first place. So your question truly seems like you failed to read what I said

I don't think this forum has turned into a "let's have a war of who's the more morally superior one". It does happen in general, but I don't think it applies here.

This bizarre response is a prime example of the kind of projection that habitually plagues the "this character is a bad person"-centric discussions and turns them into personalized "more moralistic than thou" pissing contests.

The terms "weird" and "offensive" are imported into this conversation by you and have nothing to do with what I was talking about. At most, I implied that the single-minded focus on "correct behavior by imaginary persons" to the exclusion of everything else is reductive and often ends up with the discussion far removed from the story that's actually being told.

The way you worded it was as if someone shouldn't pass judgement of a character's behavior/morals. Not specifically about the people who only focus on this type of analysis.

A lot of the time judging a character's actions is very tightly connected with a great part of the story itself.
In here it would be completely different if the characters weren't the same regarding their morals and character. There are some stories that are heavily character driven. So you're gonna have people focusing even more in the characters' morals.
For example, this would be a completely different story if Sei was just a hurt woman who found love that helped her overcome a heartbreak without having that extra and important layer of being manipulative and shady.

last edited at Apr 24, 2020 5:13PM

Everyone reads stories differently. Some people completely detach the story from reality, others read it with real life on mind.
I don't see how the later should be frowned upon more. A lot of stories are trying to pass a morale in the end too. Some readers can even take example for their real life situations from stories. If you are not one of them, good. But that doesn't mean everyone shouldn't read it in the realistic way either.

In the wdtfs fandom, the love antagonist Seju was often criticized for her character. I liked her but I didn't get offended if someone else didn't. Everyone has the right to read a story differently. If you disagree, it's more productive to point out the reasons and arguments why rather than complaining about the ones who disagree.
And personally I'm just tired of having to excuse some characters' actions and certain situations because it's a fictional story.
Fifty shades was a shit story with a creepy love interest and people got to point that out. Why should it be different for mangas?

Speaking only for myself, I’ve been surprised to find that so many readers don’t seem to care very much about stories as stories, (i.e., the creation of narrative works of art) and basically see stories as more-or-less transparent containers for imaginary people, whose actions readers then get to pass moral judgments on.

You must never have seen any type of movie where there are the bad guys and you root for the good ones to win? Is it weird and offensive to judge the morale of the villains?

last edited at Apr 24, 2020 3:46PM

I'm currently on chapter 8, and I still need hours.to catch up with the latest chapter, so I'll just post my opinion now.

This is like MUL in the polygon unrequired love aspect but gross instead of depressing.
Mochida->Math Teacher->Kuro->Yuro
Haruki->Aya->Kuro

Also rule of Yuri pairing: You need one brunette and one blonde. Aya is brunette, Haruki is also a brunette, so this sets who the main ""love interest"" is supposed to be here.

Kuro is twisted. This manga shows extensively the stages of getting manipulated and falling into the pits of abuse. Aya is still underage and the teacher is literally a predator who takes advantage of her sexuality and slowly breaks her. Aya wants to erase her personality to be like Yuro. She is still very inexperienced with love and you know, first loves can be very intense even if they end up not meaning much. So her own feelings control her, and she is unable to stop it.
The teacher knows well what she's doing (like sending the nude pic of Aya to Haruki).I also suspect she might be calling Aya as Yuro on purpose. If they were the same age I'd say Aya is at fault too, but now there's this clear power dynamic.
Although I have to say I don't like Aya's character either.

The only character I like is Haruki (hope author doesn't mess her up), but at the same time I think she deserves better than Aya. So I don't ship them either.
Although in stories like this I wish for once we could get the love interest option who is not supposed to end up with the mc. This story could set a good example on how to move on and that intense love is not always the ultimate form of love, or healthy isn't boring because it may appear less intense.
I don't like how stories romanticize sick and abusive relationships, then the two mains end up together anyway, giving a false message that this is something normal or to be looked up to. I also think Kuro and Aya will end up together here anyway. Probably showing how Kuro just stopped being twisted after meeting the right girl, Aya, and getting cured. Becoming the best version possible for her, something like Shizuru from Mai Hime.

"and rei-kun... you love him and he's important to you, and that won't change, right?"
nods

The author has literally taken chapters upon chapters of showing Kaoru is not into Uta this way and really just loves Reiichi, but shows one chapter of desperation from Kaoru calling Uta because she has no one else to talk to but then you get surprised and disappointed.

Please use the lolicon tag next. Age gap doesn't necessarily mean a child and an adult.

Really? You think at this point it's just sisterly love?

I just think that it needs more than just a hand holding from Kaoru to outnumber all the chapters the author took to convince us Kaoru can't see Uta this way. And yes, it can be sisterly love too, because Uta is the only one Kaoru has left and she's desperate af for someone to support her.

But kudos to the author, this is literally the first time in a story I root for them to not get together, despite leaving some crumbs which can even work in yuribait stories for the shipping side.

last edited at Apr 20, 2020 10:20AM

^I don't see that tbh

And there is already an english translation on Mangadex butDynasty will wait the CT translation.

Cool, someone else must have translated already, since these sites don't have their own teams.

Also I just saw MUL promoted on twitter under the Anime category. Wonder if that means this story is getting more mainstream...
There barely has been any good yuri in anime and manga for ages, so if more people are picking this up besides the niche yuri fans it's a good thing.

But idk, some people just see the fact that Aya broke up with Risa to marry a man, and they don't really care about any type of context after that.

Yeah, because these facts dont seem to register with people like you.

First, we cant see her crying. Risa only said that Aya was crying, her tears werent worthy of the ink.

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/lily_marble_ch30#3

The tears are right next to the coffee, second panel on the top. Lmao

Yes, she did come crawling back to work at the same exact place as Risa.

We don't know how they got the same job. Aya "crawling back at the same place" is an absolute asspull.

Despite denying Risas attempts to get back together Aya still slept with her over and over again. Aya dragged Risa along and used her for sex while denying Risa the relationship she actually wanted.

Risa is a top waifu, but the truth is she was the one who manipulated Aya to sleep with her in the first place. She tricked her into saying the other girls from work would hang out with them, but it was a lie. Then Aya got drunk and Risa took her in a hotel.

She absolutely got permission from her mother. She even asks about her father and her mother tells her she will deal with that.

Why is it bad that she worries about how her dad will react to it? Some people do love their parents and it's not black and white. Even in some super religious folks who disown their kids, there still is the need to reconnect, both from the kids side as well as the parents.

She would have never started dating Risa again without her mothers approval.

I answered that above.

and Risa deserves better

Y'all keep repeating this without even a hint as to what that "better" would or should be...

How about someone who doesn't throw her away like trash to marry a man because of what she believes her parents might think and only to crawl back after the man leaves her. Literal trash that doesn't deserve to come back to open arms.

But good thing her mother gave her permission to be gay instead of making the decision herself.

I think you don't remember the story correctly.
She didn't throw her away like trash. We can see she was crying when she said they should break up.
She didn't crawl back to her when that man left her. It was Risa who was trying to get with her again after learning Aya divorced, and Aya was even trying to block these attempts. And we don't even know why that man left her, so it is very possible that he realized Aya didn't love him.
She was honest and wasn't trying to drag her along whenever it was convenient for her, aka staying married(yes that man left her but she could find someone else) but also mess around with Risa at the same time and use her for sex.
She didn't get permission from her mom. She came out on her own when she could have lied. If she didn't plan on choosing Risa, she wouldn't admit to her mom they were dating.
The fact that her mom was accepting just made her happy and easier to go back to Risa.

But idk, some people just see the fact that Aya broke up with Risa to marry a man, and they don't really care about any type of context after that.

Risa has a period, right?

Lol good observation. Guess we have to assume this chapter happened at least 7 days after their fight

So you can't have sex when you're menstruating? She might not be in pain anymore, so nothing wrong with that. I do it with my girlfriend all the time.

Yeah I guess some people do it. We can't really know what happened here for sure, but some days did pass, because Aya wears different clothes when she's looking at the pictures on her own, and then when she's with her mom.
Personally I'd like to think it was more than a week, but whatever floats your boat.

Risa has a period, right?

Lol good observation. Guess we have to assume this chapter happened at least 7 days after their fight

I mean, maybe? I felt like "it's time for me to put an end to this" sounded more like she was leaning towards cutting ties with Risa for good, giving them both a chance to move on. And the way she describes it to her mother - something in the past, before she got married, they broke up a long time ago - doesn't exactly contradict that. If she wanted to take this opportunity to come out for good, she could've said so. "We dated for a while, and I still have feelings for her" would be active, ongoing, motivated, but instead, she made it easy for her mother to interpret it as a phase she went through, before she got serious and married a guy.

Not that there isn't room to read this optimistically, but I don't think we're given the tools to suggest that Aya has that kind of resolve. She's a weak person, and that's fine, but I would've liked to see her become stronger before she jumped back into a relationship with the woman she's strung along for years. Maybe their story isn't over yet, and that's why this part was so easy - the author still intends to show her struggling with the relationship, but this time, she won't give up. I kinda hope that's the case. As it is, she doesn't inspire much confidence.

The first panel does look ambiguous of what she means by putting an end to this.
I guess someone could still think that she might admit it to her mom but also intend to end it anyway but I think that's more of a stretch because she clearly shows she was scarred of her mom finding out. Why would she go all through that fear/pain only to then end it?

Also when she visits Risa she says "I told my mom I'm in love with you". That doesn't fit with the narrative that she was just brushing her relationship with Risa off.
I think this was already a big step for Aya. If she went more strong about it, it would ruin her characterization.
I want to see more of their relationship now, so I hope the part you mentioned that Aya might still struggle be right lol. If that means we get more chapters with them. But that's not always a requirement for a lengthier story. It's a shame because about 90% of stories end a while after the main conflict is resolved. Idk, this author has proved to write in a very realistic way and I think is mature enough to know there are still things she can do with them. But maybe she didn't plan on making the story long either.

Mm... It's always a little meh, for me, when two characters who can't be together because of ~societal expectations~ get back together because someone else gives them permission to do so. Like, I'm a sucker for cool moms supporting their queer kids as much as anyone, but I feel like it's narratively stronger when characters find the resolve to be together no matter what, and then discover unexpected allies supporting their choice.

I understand that familial obligations can weigh very heavily on people, but my milquetoast anarchist heart yearns for characters who tell the system to go to heck, no matter what the gosh-darned consequences may be. I guess this is more realistic, though. Bleh.

I don't think that's what happened here. Aya's mom looked at the photo but wasn't sure what was going on (her face wasn't shocked but more like a question. And when Aya tells her, you can see that then it strikes her in that eye panel). Aya could have lied and come up with an excuse like they got matching friendship rings. Or that was for one of their presentations for college. But she took it upon her to say it.

Also Aya realized she messed up because she couldn't make a decision. So I think it is implied she would do it on her own at some time, had her mom not found that picture.
There still was room for some drama though lol.

I was shocked whet I saw the coming out chapter so early. I thought there was going to be more struggle before that. Anyway, one of the best chapters.

I wonder now though, does that mean the story is getting over soon and the other three pairings are going to get resolved fast as well? Are we going to get less from this couple? Or does the author intend to have them fully go through all the stages of coming out? Like Aya's mom was the supportive one, but then her dad is sick and wants grandkids. Also what about Risa's parents? It was mentioned that they have disowned her.
Wonder if all of this will appear or the story will be this short.

Btw thanks for the super fast translation!!

last edited at Apr 14, 2020 2:37AM

Next chapter is a B O M B

When Uta decided to give up her love and leave the house, that was a reversal of situation.

When Uta decides that she’s still in love, that again is a reversal, here accompanied by her action of returning to the house.

So are characters supposed to always stick to one decision for ever, in order for the story to not be "inconsistent"? You know, someone changing their approach or making an exception for some time is just a human thing, it's not an author's bad writing.
As long as their decisions and change of them make sense with their character development and the situation around them.

The title Chandelier immediately reminded me of Sia's song which talks about hanging herself from it.
So before reading this story, I thought it was possible it might be about suicide.
Rika didn't have to literally plan on hanging herself from it, but the word Chandelier could be used more metaphorically.