This manga is just beautiful to look at like it's such an artistic treat.

Sorry to be That Bitch a month after its release but chapter 31, page 11 typos "just desserts" in the third panel.

Shout out to Yadokawa for the serially lovely work and Rehashed for bringing it to us.

*reads four chapters* "Huh. Interesting premise; hope it's thoughtfully delivered."

*checks mangaka* "wait haha what the fuck"

If by whatever virtue this series gets VO at some point, I am going to need Romi Park as Frost.

okay sure angsty teen gays but ROBOT RIGHTS TODAY! AUTOMATE A PATH TO LEGAL SOVEREIGNTY!

I'm so fucking happy to see a new Sal Jiang serial. Also Sada is perfect I love her.

I can't fathom folks showing up to a new work from one of vanishingly few mangaka (or published authors in general) repping committed aro/ace relationships to say "gosh, I hope this one is more like everything else I read!"

I'll be eager to see how Usui develops the story either way, but that's because I trust her not to feel beholden to every romance trope.

The obvious next step in her training is cucking her husband with his mistress.

As a tall girl, meeting an even taller girl really is the dream.

(it's the part of the court romance plot where I'm expected to cheer for a disdained noble putting the haughty/conniving servants "in their place")

That aside, can anybody identify what they're eating on the last page?

Mooncakes, potentially?

last edited at Jun 14, 2024 11:19AM

I think the servant is assuming that the Princess will back her play and corroborate her story, and probably fake being more hurt than she actually is, to suit the Dowager's schemes. Still super risky to do without knowing that the Princess is actually on-board. Laying hands on a royal sounds like a good way to get brutally executed.

Based on the Empress Dowager's words, she may actually expect the exact opposite outcome. The plan is to turn the current Empress against the Princess by making it look as if the Princess planned this all along, so the Princess would be left having the Empress Dowager as her only ally in the palace and therefore having no choice but to play along with her schemes.

...And I was reading it as a third course wherein the aim is to convince the princess that Dingdang is jealously possessive and can't tolerate her continued "interference", forcing her into the shelter of the empress dowager's influence.

Not that any of these plots are mutually exclusive.

On the one hand, advertising's a slog. On the other, part of the reason is you rarely ever see an ad this beautiful.

The chapter didn't say that, though. Xiao Pei is shown being in a shitty position, but it wasn't framed as a "what to do". If anything, if we want to overinterpret it as a message, it would be a critique of how people in showbiz (or other jobs) acts toward help. The people overworking her weren't treated as being in the right.

She's in a shit job, perseveres, then gets rewarded for her perseverance by a lucky break. Insofar as this has any message it is definitely "stick with it" instead of "fuck this shit, go somewhere where people will treat you with respect before a mental breakdown will make that decision for you".

I definitely saw some of this. "Thank goodness someone showed me the respect necessary not to let my head crack open in a fall on the stairs. Now I have enough motivation to get back to the grind!" It's nice she found the opportunity when she did, but it would've been cool to be shown Xiao Pei considering other options.

help Lenka is hot

Too true it's fucked up.

you seems to be assuming things about me... XD

You made a vague insult about the intelligence of other posters so I mean yeah it checks out that replies would be short on patience.

Anyway, I hope Kosuzume doesn't feel too quickly pressured out of their break/rest. Falls like that can take a significant toll.

last edited at Jun 6, 2024 6:25PM

it just sits real weird for the Director to say that.

I don't think it's a Japanese culture thing so much as an entertainment industry thing. People use diminutive terms for young women in professional settings rather too often as it is, and in the context of idoldom and curating a "familial" environment for these girls it doesn't seem super unusual. Obviously I'm unaware what the original term used was, though.

So, Miyako can't tell that manager to take a hike, because ... ?

Because she's considering that the director's plan may be the best option. She doesn't want to create difficulties for her friends' careers and she doesn't want to risk exposing her partner to invasive media attention.

Hey could mods address the stilted attention-seeker?

Edit: Thank you!

last edited at Jun 1, 2024 12:42AM

Y'all she's referring to herself as a "service" robot, I think it's safe to assume they're being deployed as sex toys and have no actual authority over the prisoners.

"Aaahhh we can never be togetherrrr."

Okay but all that aside you can still tell the kid it's an awful idea to date someone because of feelings of obligation.

Nooo don't you do my girl like this she's grown so much.

Every single page here is just A Lot.

Just catching back up and: wow that's a lot of dog killing.

The time travel arc to detail more about the fundamental mechanics of the world and plot leading into a finale immediately struck me as a very "Chinese transmigration romance web novel type" of development. Which I'm sure makes zero sense to people who aren't as Mediocre Fiction-pilled.

last edited at Mar 14, 2023 1:36AM

Yeah mass shootings to set an edgy tone in your action manga isn't the most well-considered idea. Particularly when the manga is going out of its way to make the shooter's argument sympathetic in some goof way.

We've entered the Satsuki Zone so probably won't see progress on this for a while, but now that we've gotten info on his crush my endgame for this manga is seeing Rika date (not necessarily her, but).

Mod Note

Deleted a swath of comments with little relevance to the manga. Banned the obviously transphobic commenter. This thread is for the manga After School Mate. Manga threads generally aren't the most appropriate place for long discussions about the essence of transness. Thanks.

Oh wow it was even worse?

See the thing is, I've actually seen a few examples that don't fall into the "idealized, looks indistiguishable from any cis woman in the manga" version or the "transphobic stereotype that looks like someone's half-rememembered idea of buffalo-bill+a drag queen" and like.. IDK they still kind of felt off? They were giving the trans female characters subtle "masculine" features in a way that didn't feel like it was inspired by bad stereotypes sure, but those features were present in the trans female characters weren't necessarily present in any of the male characters. The fact of the matter is that for a lot of anime/manga character art-styles the only major differences between young men and women are breasts, haircut, and clothes. A lot of the other stuff that is used to distinguish character designs is highly variable (height, over-all body shape) stuff that doesn't have a direct analogy to real life physiology (the way that eyes are drawn, for example) or stuff that like a couple months of hrt or accomplished enough makeup skills would do away with.

Basically my feelings. Sometimes it's apparent a creator spent so much time thinking about how to be "taken seriously" that they ended up spending zero time thinking about the lazy/uninformed expectations they're making such an appeal to.