Odd question, but does anyone know what that "couch" she bought at the end would actually be called? I kind-of want one.

I never thought sneakerhead yuri was something i wanted until i had it! I love these weird girls. But wow, 20000 yen today is $135, i also wonder where she got the money for them.

She buys them while they're still affordable

That was the affordable price.

It does feel a bit odd though, since she also said that she used to wear nothing but hand-me-downs and her brother had to get a job to buy her her first new pair.

They're so funny. She's been in love with her for years. No wonder she's grumpy. She's been in love with a wall...a wall that's mistakenly taken her company and warmth for granted, while at the same time coming to depend on it.

"Warmth" may not be the right way to put it. It looks like she's always been to tsun to even get as far as an "it's not like I like you or anything."

I find it kind of funny that this is the chapter that caused a bunch of Dynasty commenters to turn on the manga when I think it's very much in line with chapter 1, which was also a relatively mediocre trope-fest that relied on the reader's knowledge of the villainess genre to paper over the rough edges. So far chapter 2 is the outlier, unfortunately (though of course with only three chapters there's still plenty of time for it to return to the quality of chapter 2).

I think, for me at least, part of the difference is that it was the first chapter. I can excuse a bit of brevity and overreliance on tropes, when setting the stage, if it helps an author get to the more interesting and unique bits more quickly, so they can focus on those. However, we're now seeing the payoff for some of that initial setup and they're treating it in the same way, so it's harder to say that this is just an introduction getting handwaved so they can get to the real story.

This chapter felt extremely unsatisfying. A bunch of things got set up and just did not have a payoff.

1. Lillian casually demolishes the palace guards, and we get no hint as to how nor is anything made of it.
2. A pair of noble girls decided it would be a good idea to harass the crown prince's fiancé, at a party thrown by the royal family, in front of the entire royal family.
3. The plot, such as it was, was foiled immediately. Nothing seems
4. We met the king and queen. They had a partial line each and that was it. They had no reaction to any of the above.
5. Lilian went through all the effort to put on her yandere act and was satisfied by Ciel doing one thing at one party. She then immediately left.
6. Lilian is incredibly yandere for Evris, but decides not to pursue her in any way, and goes back to mark, even after realizing Evris can be perfectly happy with another woman.

For bonus points, no one seems to really care about how Evris feels about any of this.

I was totally expecting more of a... yandere murder situation or something. Like, they literally find her surrounded by the bodies of guards. They were really pushing that angle. But nope. Resolved easily.

Felt a little weirdly paced and telegraphed I guess??

That's because this chapter was more about speed running well known tropes or copping other manga, rather than actually doing any thing with the story beats they were setting up.

is the bottom implying that they kiss or are my neurons too activated

I think the implication is they noticed the photographer and rushing to stop them.

For some reason, this reminds me of Witch Hunter Robin. I think it's the color pallet and maybe something to do with the texture, but I'm not sure.

So, ah, is anyone else starting to get REALLY bothered by how pushy Ren's being? There's a line between pursuing the person you like and just having no respect for their boundaries, which Ren doesn't seem to have. The fact that she's doing it right after Hua Fang had an issue with a stalking makes the whole thing even worse.

Doesn't her mother already know she has a girlfriend? The last time she showed up, her complaint was that Talia's the bottom in the relationship.

I'm not sure if the Meltryllis x Passionlip tag is appropriate here. It feels more like she wanted a hug from her sister.

I don't recall Suletta being that big in the show, though this isn't the first pick I've seen with her like that. Does she start working out or something, later in the series?

-Talia's mom is apparently a demon or something? She says she's not human

I missed that one. I just recall her being annoyed that Talia's a bottom.

Rather than constantly tempting her, why do I get the feeling that her tube foxes spend most of their time trying to talk her down?

The Dead Kennedys are American

The Bri'ish thing comes from the beach comic. Not sure why it's relevant here, though.

Every time I see those half-gloves, I always wonder how they would stay on. Would drive me nuts having to constantly pull them tight.

They look like they're made from pretty thin leather, or something similar, so friction around the fingers is probably enough. Think about how it feels to pull off medical gloves.

I am a bit peeved about how indigenous American aesthetics have been copped for the "savage, bad giants," but it seems that the author mostly just didn't even slightly think about optics. People who don't live in proximity to certain issues will fail to understand how subversion of the concept is an issue.

I'm a bit torn on this. On one hand, there definitely seems to be an issue where some of the ideas and design choices in the manga are ... not great. You brought up the use of indigenous aesthetics for "savage, bad giants", but there was also the line in chapter 11 where she says "Those who hold no beliefs, have no dogma or creed to follow, are in capable of treating other people as human beings!" which is incredibly similar to lines used by some religious groups to demonize atheists and agnostics in the real world.

On the other hand, there seems to be some suggestions that the main characters are unreliable narrators and that their views may not be correct. For example, with the giants, when they go to the giant settlement, and we see things from Elis's point of view, it looks like the giants are looking down on them. However, towards the end of the chapter it's revealed that Sonin actually holds a good amount of respect for Hinako and he was angry with Elis because she was the one effectively insulting Hinako.

Overall, the problematic portrayals are still the primary ones, while the counter points are conveyed via minor scenes and implications. So, I'm not really sure how to feel about that. There does seem to be a lot more going on in the background, which might change things, but these topics could probably have been handled more deftly.

The dog at the bottom of page 8 feels incredibly cursed.

What a misunderstanding, haha. I can see why they didn't consider the option of riding together though. Most likely, it's because they're both of lower standing than Michel (Elsa even more so than Yvonne), so if he invites them to ride with him, it's difficult to turn him down.

... At least, that's what I'm choosing to believe.

I think it's more that they thought the other [i]wanted[/i] to ride with him, Elsa because he's Evie's fiancée and they look like they go together, Evie because she's still stuck on the original story. Offering to ride together doesn't really solve that.

last edited at Jul 31, 2023 2:37AM

Utena/Baiser:
Standard horny lust magic booster ability= magic level/stars increase when turned on.
(La Verita= Night spider's web).

[...]

Nero Alice (Doll house, doll creation controll, minor reality warp| No La Verita yet)

That's actually something I've been meaning to comment on for a while now, because Baiser and Nero's are very much non-standard.

Pretty much every magical girl we've seen has had fairly static powers. That is, they do one thing, or a small set of closely related things. Kiwi creates bombs in her base form and is a lightning bruiser in her upgraded forms, Leber can wrap people up in shadows, Sulfer hits things real hard. You get the idea. Baiser and Nero's powers, on the other hand, are much broader than that, allowing them an incredibly wide range of effects, limited mostly by their own imaginations and available materials.

The thing that really highlights how odd their abilities are is the fact that we've seen two different, normal, takes on Baiser's powers, first in the form of Lorde's hoard and then in the form of Pesca's golems. Both of them summon minions, but those minions are directly created from their powers and fairly consistent in form and function. By contrast, Baiser and Nero transform things in their environment into minions and those minions can have wildly different abilities.

Aside from wondering why Baiser and Nero are so different from everyone else, this also raises a second question in my mind: Since their powers seem to function similarly, is it possible that Baiser also has broader reality warping powers? Her web in La Verita seems to suggest that yes, she does, though it's notable that the web goes back to the standard template of creating a fixed effect directly, rather than manipulating the world around her. Either way, I hope we get more information on how abilities work and why those two seem so different from everyone else.

And the costumes aren't supposed to change their personality, right? ^^;

they aren't but looking at Azul, it was her coming to terms with her masochism that unlocked her La Verita, and you can say she is a pretty different person than she was at the start. So this may just be Magenta's latent dom and/or latent sadist finally coming out into the open.

I'm not so sure about that. We saw Azul's masochistic side long before she unlocked La Verita. This seems closer to Baiser's first La Verita form, which was more her power going out of control and is implied to have been a trap set by the mascot.

So, the question is, why did she have the ring? Was she planning to propose to Jinn, specifically? Any sufficiently sexy genie? Was she originally planning to wish for a wife and offer it to whoever showed up?

The ... seaweed? Clearly I need a primer on Touhou lore.

That's less Touhou lore and more Japanese culture.

I've never seen a bus with 3 adjacent seats across like that, though I won't say they can't exist. OTOH it's the common economy seating for airlines.

Two to a side does seem to be the more common configuration, so you might be right.

Are we sure that's supposed to be a plane? I thought they were on a bus and stuff got thrown into the air by people scrambling to deal with, or get away from, Narita.

You'd think there'd be at least a few people trying to suck up to the reincarnated demon lord, or at least not actively antagonize her.