I feel like my biggest problem is this is just going to drag on. I mean, the whole cheating thing and her getting injured was chapter 10. We've gone more than an entire volume with her just doing her best to ignore that, and nothing more being learned about it. Instead we got new conflict of the confession which again was largely ignored and not really confronted or dealt with. And now we're getting the mother and some reveals with the past that's been vaguely referenced before, but what's really going to happen with that? I'll bet on a whole bunch of nothing all over again.

This is like the Lost of yuri manga. Just instead of jumping from one mystery that never gets resolved to the next, it jumps from a bunch of drama that never actually gets dealt with to the next.

So...just absolutely unapologetic not even slightly veiled child predator. Alrighty then.

last edited at Jul 13, 2018 8:08PM

Well, while that explains the reaction for chapter 5, the doubling down on her bitchiness about it firmly put her into "fuck this cunt" territory of bitchdom. Slapping Honjo for something someone else did years ago that she just happened to remind her about? Yeah, no, fuck that.

That first panel on page 10; never before has a manga so perfectly captured my own feelings as I turn the page.

I just finished this manga, and I've got to say I really liked it. Even if I think some of the characters are kinda shitty people, especially Botan, because they're understandable even if they are shitty people. But I feel like a lot of people are mistaking understandable for justified or right. Which seems especially silly 'cause I can't help but imagine that even if you don't think her sisters' behavior was justified, you should at least be able to understand why they're worried and trying to figure out what's going on with their sister who doesn't tell them anything when she comes home late with a bruise she's clearly lying to them about.

It's understandable Botan is dissatisfied with her life and carrying serious emotional baggage. It's understandable that when the family she sacrificed so much for and worked so hard for ruins the one thing she found comfort in that she runs off and disappears. But her emotional baggage sure as hell doesn't justify her sleeping with a married man and knowingly doing something that would tear a family apart. "...I see you believe your family's love is free endless." she says as she sleeps with him. She knows damn well the repercussions of this. Not only that it can be seen as a confession of her love running out for her own family that she's tired of and sees as a burden. This feeling of betrayal also doesn't in anyway justify her abandoning Momiji leaving her with even more baggage and abandonment issues.

She's a horrible person, an understandable one who's been through more than her fair share of shit in life, but still a horrible person. The fact that horrible things have been done to someone doesn't justify them doing horrible things to other people, and she open admits to the fact that she didn't give a damn about what was right when sleeping with that married man. Perhaps if the manga was longer we could have seen a proper redemption for her (beyond a possible phone call at the end) but as it is she was a pretty terrible person. And even if she did get that eventual redemption, it wouldn't make what she did any less horrible.

Understandable doesn't mean justified, and certainly doesn't make right. And if you can understand that for her sisters who handled the affair thing horribly by suddenly revealing it like that when they acted out of concern for their sister, you should certainly understand that when it comes to Botan as well. Especially when you stop consider the fact that that affair put her at risk of getting fired and losing their livelihood if it was discovered, but she didn't care. Whether the sisters or anyone else did, the end result would have been the same. The sisters just make a convenient target for her because they happened to be the ones who revealed it and she's already fed up with them.

And you wanna know the biggest problem with Botan? She entirely missed Kashiwa's attempt at talking to her about stuff. That line Kashiwa said about how she considered transitioning and just disappearing? Well she didn't do that, and the entire point of that was "I almost locked things away without ever saying anything to my family, but I didn't, and I don't want you to either. I'm here to talk if you need it." But she didn't talk. She brooded on her own, she lied to her own family, yet felt completely betrayed because her brother wasn't going to tell her about the transitioning and just disappear. She was essentially doing the very same thing to the rest of her family that she considered so hurtful from Kashiwa, completely cutting them out of her life and hiding everything from them even while still living with them.

Edit: And that's the big theme of this manga, I feel. The most important part. It ends with the four sisters realizing that there's more to family than just being related to each other and living near other. Which is exactly what Botan's state was after Kashiwa left for college. Throughout the manga she's basically just like their dad providing money just while also being physically present, but she's emotionally gone already. Remember, the reason she's coming home late and not making food like she used to is because she's busy having casual sex with multiple people, including a married man. It's not that she's too busy to, she's emotionally checked out and moved on already.

The recurring theme of this work is people needing to be open and talking to others and trying to find solutions to problems together and supporting each other rather than doing crazy desperate things on their own. A lot of the conflict is from characters making poor decisions on how to handle their problems. Uozumi and Sakura's relationship is this way, with her being too tsun and not enough dere at the start and him picking a stupid way to try to get over her. Even Momiji's little bit with her fat friend is all about him finding someone to talk to about the otaku stuff instead of hiding it and trying to pretend to be something he's not (certainly an apt thing in a manga starring a transexual).

This is highlighted with Kashiwa and her girlfriend trying to work through the seemingly impossible problem of a straight girl and a MtF being in a relationship. Whether they're able to or not we'll never know, but they're at least making an attempt and that's only possible because they're being open and trying to work through it together. As well as her finding the bravery to open up to her family about it.

Things accumulate to the point with Botan leaving the house because of this. On both ends. If the sisters had spoken with Botan first the worst case scenario may have been avoided even if she still felt a bit betrayed by them butting into her business. If Botan had spoken about her frustrations rather than having an affair as an outlet for them, the whole thing may have been avoided entirely.

last edited at Apr 8, 2018 12:12PM

And this is why you should never give up everything else you have just for the sake of being with your so-called 'soul mate'. Like, I made it to the point of "we're undergoing crazy scientific experiment thing so we be together forever!" before going "Oh god no, stop that. Abort! Abort!"

So not only is it injecting drama right when they were having a breakthrough, it's a flashback to explain the drama. I think my original estimates of only a few months waiting for this to be resolved were too optimistic. I'll just check back in June...

...Oh who am I kidding, I don't have that sort of self-control.

My biggest problem with the Mo drama is it's proceeded by a chapter of Qiu Tong getting stood up. So it's clearly not just going to be "Mo gets shot down and that's it", and is building up for more drama when what I really want is more delicious fluff like this Christmas update. Maybe (hopefully) I'm wrong and it'll get cleared up quickly, but I feel like we're going to be dealing with drama for at least a couple months and the only fluff we'll see anytime soon is an extra valentines chapter.

It would have been great to see the reaction of a girl finally dumping her boyfriend for her instead of the reverse.

Except for Yamanaka to know she had dumped her boyfriend for her would go against the plot entirely. This clearly wasn't the sort of series you were looking for or expecting it to be. As much as people don't like Yamanaka for being a cheater and cold hearted, Taneda was manipulative from the very start. She basically toyed with her all but saying "I know you're gay" just to fluster/screw with her. She's also fully aware of what sort of cold and distant person Yamanaka is, so when it comes time for her to break up with her boyfriend (who she never talked about to Yamanaka in the first place until they were stumbled upon together) she doesn't just go running to tell her about it. She plays the game she outright says she did, waiting for Yamanaka to come to her. As to the "romantic development" between the two. That all happens in build up to, and is the reason for, Taneda leaving her boyfriend.

This wasn't some sugary-sweet, diabetes inducing, "yuri is the purest form of love" nonsense from the start. And quite frankly I'm happy. I'd rather just see the two of them come together despite their idiosyncrasies rather than have the power of "twue wove" suddenly "fix" Yamanaka. In fact, you can see how they work well together considering the fact Taneda is actively trying to get her to go on actual dates, and it's apparently just a thing she's never really done before in her past relationships. The first girl we see in the first chapter cheated on her because she didn't know how to deal with that part of Yamanaka, whereas Taneda successfully manages to get her to at least try, even if all she comes up with in the end is a bar.

last edited at Dec 24, 2017 7:39PM

No, not quite. 2 chapters, or 1 and an afterword left.

So uh, she was never pregnant then?

That was a character that I'm pretty sure only showed up in chapter 1.

One of the rare Yuri story where I feel bad for the guy

While I do feel kind of bad for the guy, at the same time I rather like the lack of indecisiveness. At least she's making a clean break of it. My ex just lied to me for months eventually building up to cheating when she started to fall for someone else. So at least he's not getting strung along and completely shit on.

Something to help those as confused as me with the new release, chronologically Blindfolded and Secret Love (currently chapters 4-6) take place between My actual Beloved and My Beloved (chapter 2 and 3). Was confused until I reread it all and figured that out.

And for all those curious, there are still 4 parts left from the Game tank which lines up with Divulge's site saying they have 4 chapters left from said tank to translate. So 4 more chapters yet to come for this love square by the sounds of it.

last edited at Dec 18, 2017 1:41PM