Hmm, Gehenna. That’s a biblical expression, isn’t it?
One Google search later…
Ah, it’s Hell. Lovely.

Yeah… I think I’ll wait for all the chapters to be uploaded before trying out this one.

To be exact, Gehenna is a valley in modern day Israel. Place was used to burn children that were sacrificed in religious rituals to deity Moloch.

Which sort of makes this even more creepy.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_of_Hinnom_(Gehenna))

The Hebrew Bible describes Gehenna as the place where King Ahaz of Judah sacrificed his children, though

Debate remains as to whether the phrase "cause his children to pass through the fire" referred to a religious ceremony in which the Moloch priest would walk the child between two lanes of fire, or to literal child sacrifice wherein the child is thrown into the fire.

In certain usage, the Christian Bible refers to it as a place where both soul and body could be destroyed in unquenchable fire.

Yikes.

To fill out this discussion, because it's relevant to the story.

First, lets clarify technical specifics:
Gehenna refers to the valley "Gai Ben Hinnom" between Mt. Zion and Abu Tor, and is split in half by the current day Israel/West Bank border. "Gai Ben Hinnom" roughly means "valley of the son of Hinnom". Many take this name to be a reference to child sacrifice and translate the name as "valley of the children/sons of Hinnom", but it likely predates this. In the middle ages both Jewish and Christian scholars started circulating a series of claims about Gehenna being a constantly burning trash dump, valley of slaughter, etc. as a substitute "Hell" on earth. This claim seems to have originated from a specific person (Rabbi David Kimchi) around 1200CE, and has been widely debunked.

Notable aspects of the religious entanglements:
Biblically Gehenna was a place of child sacrifice "to Moloch" and or Baʽal-Zephon (Baal), and makes claims about many non-Christians bringing children there (direct mention of "Jewish idolaters" even)... Except historically Moloch (also written Melek) wasn't a deity at all, but a reference to the practice of sacrifice (lit. destruction) by fire, and Baal doesn't refer to a single deity, but major deities like Hadad (��) from a variety of local religions including the ancient Ugaritic deity actually named Baal (���) (Baʽal-Zephon also just means "Lord"). All of this is somewhat clearer in Hebrew texts but completely lost in most post Greek translations, but it's important to remember that most descriptive language used in surviving texts from the region is heavily politically "colored", especially when used in reference to religious practices and deities.

After the wall of text how does this relate to the story?
For anyone who has made it through a few chapters it should be clear we are talking about child sacrifice on several levels. One being the birth/miscarriage and subsequent enshrinement. Another being the girl sacrificed to her father, but also the subtext of children being sacrificed to society with abandoned children given heavy performance expectations only growing up to treat their children the same way.

... well that was depressing, I hope you find this informative. (edit: apparently the forum hates cuneiform)

last edited at Jan 23, 2025 11:52PM

It's hard to accept Sena ending up with Kiku after that scene in the cherry blossoms. Overall, Sena x Kiku felt way too sudden. But I liked the pacing up until the last 2 chapters.

I really liked this part
https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/my_sisters_best_friend_my_lover_ch10#23

It was paced very well, how did you miss over 20 chapters of Sena's slow emotional growth?

Hmm I don't know. The cherry blossoms scene was very clearly a finalisation of Sena's feelings and a way for her to move forward. They're family and they'll always be family. It's not meant to be romantic. And the Sena x Kiku romance build up was the entire manga. Heck, I'd call this a slow burn with how it's paced.

It was meant to be romantic as well. It seems many don't understand this story (cultural misunderstandings?), which is a shame. This kind of melancholic feeling is deeply rooted in Japanese literature and this specific meeting finalised where all of the main characters stand. There is subtext here I suggest you go back and try to understand.

If 21 chapters of emotional and psychological build-up is "fast" or "sudden" idk anymore.

Maybe they binge shonen most of the time where 20 chapters of powering up doesn't actually change anything.

I have other comments though, "love triangle" is definitely an incorrect tag, the actual relationship doesn't resemble the common tropes for reasons that would spoil the storytelling to relate. If anything it deserves "Aaaaaangst" because that is the primary motivator for both the MC's depression, her sister's actions both past an present, and (though top a lesser degree) the lover's current actions.

Likewise "incest" is a rather extreme reading unless we are counting feelings that were never acted upon. But!, this tag should stay because it's potential serves as an important plot point and due to site rules.
tldr;

Many people here don't seem to have read the story or misunderstood extremely important aspects of it. That's understandable, it has subtleties that might be hard for some to recognize and doesn't fall into major common tropes. I can explain in more detail but spoiling this fragile story is something I'd rather not do.

Even aside from precocious puberty (treating this is one of the medical uses for hormone blockers by the way), normal variance means that there are 173cm (5'8") and even taller 2nd-3rd (5th-6th) graders. The closest elementary school has a 6th grader around 180cm (~5"11').

Medical resources for problematic cases:
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/precocious-puberty/symptoms-causes/syc-20351811

^ Damn, I'd swear I read story like that somewhere, but I can't remember where.

There's quite a few honestly, it very much falls into "known trope" territory. ... Not that this would stop me from reading another one.

On this general subject Yukiko Sensei's authorial style includes leaving out more intimate interactions between characters, this is pretty obvious from key interactions between both main characters and their friends.

In nearly all shown social contact even married couples are shown as playful or even a little sarcastic towards each other, much like real banter between those with long relationships. Personally I enjoy this style while also finding it a bit frustrating.

Any news about this supposed english release? I haven't seen it anywhere and the Gentosha listings don't seem to show it.

last edited at Dec 3, 2019 2:33PM

I honestly liked that attempt to adapt an accent, and I usually really hate that sort of thing. As far a putting some kind of blame on the translator, I simply can't go that far as they are offering a service for free. Would I prefer it if altered translations were noted as such by the translator themselves? Of course I would. In this case, however, a new translator attempts to have some fun and (collectively) we can categorize it right?

That said I probably shouldn't have chipped in to this derailment, so I apologize for that.

Sen's physical attributes are a bit more hm, saurian/lactarine? in general than the others. Unless I missed something we don't really have any information about the nature of these sprites in the first place, so it isn't surprising and we can essentially chalk it up to an ethnic difference.

I'd say the characters matter a lot, that's inherently why this curse is so tragic. This is basically a death trap for curious teens with the only upside being a single disappearance every 100 years.

It certainly isn't any more romantic than a venus fly trap.

Need more to really form much of an opinion. The art is decent though, and the characters are cute, such as they are.

It would have hit harder if Hiro hadn't been such a dick, and if it was actually possible to drown by falling asleep in a bath.

She was shown earlier being prescribed sleeping pills. So, there's that.

Also she's got a genuine sleeping disorder, she may not wake up autonomically.

I thought it was hilarious, especially how her friend stashes drinking snacks in her desk.

I thought this was very rough, but kind of amazing, really fertile story that could be expanded here.

Gotta say, those are the least threatening monsters I've seen in manga in a long time.

Not fast moving, vulnerable to physical attack, their only real defense is that they produce a creepy sound. So someone standing back with a sniper rifle could take them out no problem, or even regular troops with noise-cancelling headphones. It's honestly a surprise they haven't all been wiped out already.

Well, it was said that only a small amount of people are able to resist the debilitating effect the weird sound/vibration they make has, and being that they were allegedly created for purpose of releasing on the presumably-armed-enemy, I imagine that a majority of folks are just struck dumb/stunned/feared in place whilst the backwards walking goopmonsters chomp them.

Pretty sure they'd be rank useless against actual combat troops who'll just blast them into smithreens from way further away than their SAN Check inducing wail has any use. And can just murderize them with fairly simple combat drones in close terrain if need be, not like you could field the buggers alongside human troops anyway so they'll be completely unsupported against such tactics.

They have "terror weapon you introduce into the enemy rear areas to fuck up the civvies and sap morale" written all over them basically. Presumably made to be a real PITA to actually root out conclusively - no word yet how exactly they replenish their numbers but the mere fact they keep crawling out of the woodwork in places like Tokyo long after the war, despite specialist agencies dedicated to wiping them out posthaste, implies they rank somewhere around rats and cockroaches in terms of being hard to get rid of for good.

They barely explained the capabilities because it was out of scope for the manga. On the practicality side, however, this type of "munition" would be utilized the same as any other urban or metropolitan sphere bioweapon, insidious, difficult to purge, a constant hazard like leftover landmines, salted earth but not irradiated. There was probably a kill switch originally but I got the distinct impression several things went badly, maybe due to espionage.

Thought I'd toss in a comment. From what I can tell, most official translations ..... bear no resemblance to the original.

This drives me away from officially translated material. Any single one would be irritating, but combined it's a travesty. To be clear, regardless of the source language I don't want translators doing any of these things. To top it off, the tone and word choice in official translations I also often disagree with.

Scanlators in general have the objective of keeping the translation ..... at better quality translation than the official one.

Hella respect, this is why I read fan translations, even if when are less polished (which isn't always).

But that brings up another point. our skill in Japanese vary wildly. I myself am nowhere near fluent in Japanese ..... compare the official publications of Secret of the Princess and Hana & Hina After School with my translations of them.

It's always clear when you work on it, and inaccuracy due to inexperience is pretty excusable. Usually scanlators get tone better even if they are inaccurate. Having a comparison translation to grok is amazing though.

So which is better, the official or the scanlation? I think it depends as much on ..... staying truer to the original than most publishers.

While certain series get good or even excellent treatment it's far from consistent. This is similar to how awful dubbing is usually, but the occasional large title that happens to get good voice casting and a competent audio engineer can be watchable in the dubbed language. I'd rather watch a French movie subtitled in Japanese than a poor dub any day and have done so, and I wouldn't read translations if my Japanese was very good.

Ack, it's a small wall of text. Pardon me.

Thanks for your perspectives. (edited to cull paragraphs for thread sanity)

last edited at Oct 17, 2018 11:34PM

ZuljinRaynor posted:

Relevant I guess: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvNxgHTWIlo

I agree some of old fan subs used to overuse stuff like that, but now even they admit it's not way to go (I think at least most of them).

Anyway, I don't think money is really a main factor here. Some translators just aren't good at translating. .......... There is not that many people who actually get a feel for stuff like that.

About word for word vs localization, someone linked great article on discord about it. Anyone who wants to tl anything should read it. http://www.personaproblems.com/

ZuljinRaynor posted a link to a video that points out something out of context, showcasing what exactly? That manga dialog with editorial sounds ridiculous? How often do you read manga out loud? Good quality manga translations don't read well as they weren't designed for that, throwing out mixed language dialog in speech is nothing but clickbait. Try reading the subtitles from a native english animation out loud sometime?

The points made on that page are fair but are no defense of official translations that are commonly bad in all the same ways an amateur translation might be. The only difference is they have literal license to change material references for localization and abuse the hell out of it. Persona 5 itself is proof of that as it showcases an official (and awful) translation.

Honestly I'd take subtitles over dubbing any day, and don't care for heavily localized subtitles of any language. Machine translation is better than half-assed joke substitutions and I don't mind having to look something up if it's important.

last edited at Oct 18, 2018 4:01AM

I'm a might bit confused by the tag "sport" here. When did card games become a sport?

About the same time mahjongg did, I suppose.

Mahjongg has been competitive for over a thousand years, internationally for roughly 100 years and standardized in a modern fashion and internationally categorized as a sport for around 25 years so no, that is wrong.

MTG is only barely that old itself and had half-assedly standardized in order to try to start competitive matches in the US around 1997, but changed the rules slightly with every expansion until around 10 years ago. All of this seriously limited interest in large-scale competition because it's obviously a cash grab.

Since then MTG has stabilized a bit but is a looong way from being recognized by any country as a sport.

how does a student have this much money tho
Seriously

If reading manga has taught me anything, she probably has extremely rich and extremely neglectful parent(s) who compensate for their lack of involvement with her life with a ludicrous allowance.

This is more commonplace than you seem to think. Rich kids blowing huge amounts of money, meeting in fancy apartments to engage in whatever they feel like... source: The latest marriage in my family, and we aren't the rich ones (the wedding was insane).

note: It seems to be much easier to stumble into this sort of thing in places with distressing levels of inequality, like Bangkok.

In chapter 1 it says that she not only has a rich family, but has made her own money trading stocks, so she's most likely a day-trader or something like that and is quite good at it.

^ …Can a high-schooler even do that, legally? >.>

Yes, parents technically have signature control as they have to open the brokerage account ("custodial" or "guardian" accounts are designed for this), but children can trade stocks just fine.

That was fairly depressing. Poignant, but maybe overly packed with direct analogy and symbolism.

Very interesting and fits into a concept I've thought over time and time again where women, rather the generalized female, has been historically used to name the tools, conquests, pleasures and horrors of men from the general male perspective.

That's not all the story is of course, I found the element above in the text at the end, "My father told me a long time ago: Boats are women and women are the sea. All living creatures were born from it, a living soup, of blood, tears, and souls."
After reading the authors comments on Yuri-ism, the story is more about these naive young girls being thrown into complex world. A world that has pre-defined them.

Honestly, the first thought I had was of Kancolle where the ultimate tragic and depressive reality of the show hasn't been hidden behind moe and sex appeal.

I agree with your sentiments heartily, but don't forget the parallels of the standard child soldier. As for the foisting of emotional baggage onto female implements, much of that historically was simply due to the lack of presence on the battlefield or at sea for ling periods of time. That this defined(s) womanhood for many is a side effect of culture and that will take a long time to change for the better, however you define "better".

The art style of this very successfully doesn't hide the harshness of the setting, something that will make it difficult to digest and the writing style is hard for some to follow, as evidenced by quite a few comments.

Very enjoyable, a nice innovation on common themes, decent character interactions and a believable relationship.

What kind of sorcery is this? That translating speed is beyond human norm - they must have hired a Superman to do this in just a few days.

RESPECT :V

Clearly a back-burner project dump, I applaud the translator's hard work.

last edited at Oct 11, 2018 6:25PM

What the heck, I want a stone kiln microwave!

Honestly this is pretty good, except the possibility that cutting is being portrayed as an "in" thing as fashion. "menhera" literally comes from "mental health", as in you need mental health care. If she is still actively cutting in the fashion shown (complete with fresh bandages), she has not escaped the cause, mentally processed it, or obtained help to do these things and that is dismaying at best. Self-modification and menhera are not the same thing and treating it as a fashion statement is dangerous for those involved.

I have known people affected by this, and am familiar with similar other tendencies, so it's unnerving.

As a social statement however, this is spot on for the modern perspective in Japan (and many other places), as gender atypical behavior is treated as criminal or mentally disturbed in most cases.