I'm not getting an onee-loli impression from their interactions so far, I think it's just because Fujiyama gets sexualized and stripped all the time even while interacting with Mamu that some people might be reading into it.

That said, I don't think the manga is defined enough yet that we can really say one way or the other if it's gonna go down that road later, and personally I'm fine with whatever. Fujiyama is outrageously sexy in a disaster kind of way, which isn't super common to see so that's refreshing, and the art is fantastic.

Super glad to see Looking Up To Magical Girls is clearly inspiring similar works, "Mahou Shoujo Parody + BDSM" is a premise rife with potential and I'm curious to see if this one will ever use it to dive into deeper topics like self acceptance and sex-positivity like LUTMG does.

last edited at Apr 12, 2024 8:27AM

There's something about how Venalita still has long sleeves even though their hands are disconnected from their body that really tickled me for some reason.

Also, I just found out after googling them to see if they have a confirmed gender that their name means "bribability" which I'm sure is just a coincidence!

It's unlikely that the anime would deviate from the manga's portrayal of Magia and Azul. It would be very misleading. We'll definitely get more of Sayo's "love" though, that's for sure. So if that's what you mean, I agree. But I don't think they'd add anime only scenes.

As for the fandom stuff: the early Azul fandom was largely based on her having the first prominent arc in the manga, but after these key moments, the series' direction becomes clearer. The upcoming episodes, including the Kiwi/Utena hotel scene and confession/promise, will solidify the direction of the relationships just like in the manga and the series never looks back after that:

That's what I meant though, because KiwiTena becomes more tangibly canon after that, IF they ever want to milk the Utena x Azul fanservice with extra scenes between them at all, now would be the last time to do it since afterwards the KiwiTena ship definitely sets sail and Azul falls into a more permanent "enthusiastic sub for anyone" role.

But for sure, since Kiwi managed to be endearing from the get-go in the anime, I don't think the anime-onlys will be as split on who Utena should be with as the manga readers were back at the start, so there may just not be much to milk there anyway.

Other characters have their own arcs, UtenaXKiwi develops and becomes a constant, Sayo molds into a leader (really only focused on supporting others and "love"), and Magenta and Sulfur become a pair, etc. They really can't mess with that, the rest of the series depends on these relationships. Plus Kiwi is very popular as well, as you said. It's been a long while since those early days.

Personally, I would love for them to add in some hints of Sulfur's feelings earlier than the manga did, because let's face it; it kinda came out of nowhere in the manga. I still like it and don't mind how it was done, but I think it would be better if they'd laid the groundwork earlier.

last edited at Mar 28, 2024 3:36PM

All in all, it was pretty satisfying. The Utena+Sayo moment was really sweet and I hope we get more of those in the manga. I kinda want Azul to be the first to figure out Baiser's identity and then keep it to herself for a long while.

Michiko already knows Utena's identity (and Utena knows hers). As rivals, they both agreed to keep their identities a secret from the others to maintain the balance. Sayo is too busy being touched by everyone she can get access to, to worry about anything else lol. She and the girl from Michiko's crew are in their own category at this point.

I'm looking forward to SulfurxMagenta figuring their feelings out, more LocoxLeber and Kiwi and Utena continuing their steady progress, as a couple and as stand-in "mothers" to Alice (their dynamic with Alice is one of my favorites). When the two of them team up to "play" with the magical girls it's always a fun time. They have too much synergy, its almost unfair. That ASMR play was just another hilarious example. Hope we get more seasons.

Enorme (Michiko) doesn't learn her identity until later, so it's not impossible to retcon that Azul learns it first and keeps it secret. (Not that I would put much stock in that happening, I'm just pointing out the possibility.)

That said, I could see them amping up some Utena x Azul goodness just for fanservice because it's one of the bigger ships and arguably the first one to take off in the fandom. (Utena x Kiwi, though canon, didn't really endear itself until later I feel, though the anime managed to make it endearing much sooner somehow.)

Final episode of the anime just dropped, and I was about to comment on how they obviously skimped on the animation at one point when they completely skipped showing Azul freezing that octopus, but then the big fight happened and I now understand where the whole season's budget went, good lord that was well done!

And as I had hoped, they finished the season with arguably the core character arc that represents the entire series in general; Baiser awakening Azul to her repressed desires, coaxing them out and helping her accept them as a part of herself regardless of cultural and social norms, steering her away from getting carried away with it when she delves too deep while still too inexperienced to do it safely, and eventually culminating in Azul figuring out a healthy outlet for it that ends up making her happier and healthier than ever before.

Wish they'd refined some of the checkpoints on that journey, but all in all the road was there. Here's hoping against all odds for a next season!

last edited at Mar 28, 2024 1:00PM

This is the best adaptation we could have gotten from the studio. Even with the obvious lack of budget, you can clearly see they put a lot of effort into it. But it seems most people here just like nitpicking and expect a 1:1 perfect adaptation.

"Nitpicking"
We're literally saying it has two notable issues that hold it back but is otherwise fantastic, everything else has literally been praise. Ditch the smug sarcasm please, there's no reason to be so confrontational.

The manga got across pretty well that Enorme was never really in Utena's league and it was always just a matter of Utena getting into her groove, but the anime put it across as more akin to a power-up than an "I am not left handed" moment.

What I feel is most missing in the anime here is just power in her voice. Sure, she does sound confident enough, but still barely breathing the words out. While the manga's thick lines on the speech bubbles, even more so in the second part, made Baiser just sound very, very powerful, with extra emphasis put on her words to truly drive her point home.

I actually don't think it's the voice acting that's the problem necessarily, it's the presentation and pacing of it.
There's no emphasize on the moment at all, it just kinda passes by as just another thing that happened.

They needed to slow down the pace and focus more attention and build-up on her speaking moments, not just zoom past them like they have been. Overall, I'm finding that the directing and pacing has been the real issue of the anime in general, which leads me to believe the problem is specifically the director not feeling the project, or at least not understanding what moments need emphasize and attention.

The two major moments that arguably define the entire series (Azul's fall and Utena disciplining Enorme) have both been very underwhelming.

? Slightly different wording from the translation team aside, the explanation was the same in both versions.

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/looking_up_to_magical_girls_ch20#12

O_O

Have I gaslit myself? Mandela effect? @_@

Baiser's big lines were kind of disappointing though. The delivery didn't feel powerful enough, imo

Have to agree, sadly. :(

I thought it was better than expected but still not as good as it should've been.
I think my expectations were lowered by how underwhelmingly they did the delivery of Utena's disgust at Azul falling. I love the anime in general, but it seems to struggle a lot with the delivery on the big umph moments like Azul's falling and Utena's reversal against Enorme.

The manga got across pretty well that Enorme was never really in Utena's league and it was always just a matter of Utena getting into her groove, but the anime put it across as more akin to a power-up than an "I am not left handed" moment.

last edited at Mar 14, 2024 6:33PM

Episode 11 dropped and aside from, again, some questionable pacing and presentation issues, I thought it was fantastic.
Although, I either watched a bad translation of they changed the context of Lord Enorme's lolification slightly but notably.

In the manga, Utena transformed her to better match her appearance with the character that Enorme had just proven herself to be; a shallow one-note villain who's unrealistically clinging to childish and vague goals like "world domination" because she's just THAT childish and immature as a person.

The anime I watched just said Utena just did it because it would be easier to bully her... Which, honestly, kinda robs the whole event of it's point. It's meta-commentary of villains like her in general pop-culture, wrapped in character development for both her and Utena, progression of the plot and cementation of the greater tone and point of the series' essence; Utena is a Big Bad who exists to facilitate Magical Girls, playing the bad guy and doing "bad" and taboo things exclusively because it brings out the best in everyone around her.

Unless the translation team did a fucky-wucky, I'm not sure how I feel about the change.

last edited at Mar 14, 2024 2:33PM

The hottest chapter in the manga, chapter 10, is already on air, the studio also has the heart to make a story that is not in the manga for this episode alone. Explain why Utena likes mahou shoujo so much, let Kiwi go on a trip, add Azul's mental struggle, and the fight scene also has more tricks than the manga. I think the stage on panda is a bit quick, but I understand that if I concentrate more, it will become 18+. But when Azul begged, it was beyond expectations, her voice acting was extremely excellent, it sounded extremely sexy.
Oh and the villain of ss1 is already on air, uhm, we should call it the villain of the villain, right? Along with that is the debut of the second OTP pair in this series: the bottom couple Loco x Leber. Now all I need to do is wait to hear Loco's ridiculous song :V :V :V

I both agree and disagree about the anime; I think the voice acting is fantastic but the pacing and directing is severely lacking. Azul's begging was acted amazingly but the scene was completely devoid of omph and flow in presentation, looking and feeling more like just any other scene flying by rather than the arguable APEX of the entire series that it actually is.

I remember the early 2000's animes, when the big important scenes had intentionally slower pacing, musical crescendos, creative angles to frame events with the gravitas they deserved and it made them stand out as major memorable happenings, but modern anime to me have this persistent issue of everything just kinda zooming by at the same pace, more like they're just stating that these things happened and moving on than really telling the events with emotion or weight.

Remember in Naruto, the first time he uses the Fox's chakra against Haku and we get like solid MINUTES of just different shots slowly building up his transformation and the changes his body's going through before he revs up and explodes with violence? A modern anime would've just shown him with red eyes and then gone right into the action, and I feel like that's the same approach this manga's anime has.

last edited at Feb 21, 2024 7:43AM

At this point it seems obvious to me that Kopeko has subconsciously already rejected the idea of actually eating the other girl. If she wanted to do it then she could, but she keeps making up nonsensical excuses to not do it like "having to figure out how to break her neck" when that's not even an obstacle to doing it in the first place.

The idealist in me wants to think the setup of their circumstances is simply that she's an obvious dangerous monster that they're trying to rehabilitate into being able to coexist with humans and the girl is a trial run of sorts, but I wouldn't be shocked if it turns out the facility is much more insidious than that.

There's nothing wrong with being needy so long as you accept when that trait makes you incompatible with someone without holding a grudge and allow them to part ways with you.

You're allowed to set whatever boundaries you want or need in a relationship, as long as you extend the same courtesy to your partner and accept it when someone isn't suited to be with you because they can't accommodate your boundary and that they're not "at fault" for that.

Ayooo that hand going down at the end of page 3 kinda spicy!!

This is another universe Kase san

Page 1 of "chapter" 1 is literally her saying she's a bottom and gets really horny. xD

"Yo, I know you ain't gay, and I ain't get either, but let's do gay stuff together so we blend in better with the gays, okay?"

1. I don't like the guy character. I don't really think he need to be there anymore and is sort of just third wheeling the main two

2. I can't beleive we're still in the "totally don't even recognize our relationship as ever being possibly romantic" and "getting overly blushy over an indirect compliment" stage. Plus, the whole "I don't actually have a crush on her, I just admire her because she looks cool and I think she's brave" bs. I thought we were over those sort of stereotypes in yuri, but I guess this author wanted to do a period piece.

This chapter title got me all excited for finally some sort of development away from the usual sterotypes of the last 20-30 chapters, but it ended up just being gross. I don't care that the token straight guy thinks the girls are cute. Who gives a shit.

Tropes are not stereotypes and stereotypes are not tropes.
One is "preconceived notions or expectations about a particular subject without proper basis to actually make such assumptions" the other is "commonly used narrative scenarios regardless of accuracy; the defining criteria is simply that they are commonly used."

IE stereotypes are bad, tropes are not inherently good OR bad, they merely are.
The examples you "list" in this manga are tropes, not stereotypes, there's a world of difference and there's nothing wrong with them in themselves.

Guess I'll repost this since people are still asking.

Wtf is hatesex

Having sex with someone you hate and/or while being angry at them, the line can be blurry.
Typically the logic is that the intense emotions translate to passionate sex and a fight for dominance in the bedroom, with the outcome acting as fuel for future encounters; where whoever ended up on the bottom last time fights more passionately to get on top next time while whoever was on top fights to stay there.

Can be a toxic relationship but as this particular oneshot demonstrates; does not actually have to involve a toxic relationship inherently.

last edited at Jun 11, 2023 8:04AM

Wtf is hatesex

Having sex with someone you hate and/or while being angry at them, the line can be blurry.
Typically the logic is that the intense emotions translate to passionate sex and a fight for dominance in the bedroom, with the outcome acting as fuel for future encounters; where whoever ended up on the bottom last time fights more passionately to get on top next time while whoever was on top fights to stay there.

Can be a toxic relationship but as this particular oneshot demonstrates; does not actually have to involve a toxic relationship inherently.

It's a little rude of them to play our their kink foreplay in public like that though.

I don't think it was intentional foreplay, I think they just got too wrapped up in bickering to realize they worked each other up and said too much in front of other people until it was too late and they'd already done it.

...At which point, since they've already worked each other up anyway, may as well go bang. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

last edited at Jun 10, 2023 10:21AM

Um excuse you, these are not horns they are yuri sensory devices.
They are not weapons, they simply let me know when I'm feeling extraordinarily lesbian thankyouverymuch.

"Shut up dad, the close-ups of bare-assed 13-year-olds are artistically necessary!"

Nice strawman, jackass. This is why cultural evolution is so slow, because people like you take issue with anything that they don't immediately agree with and try to strawman-ridicule it for shits and giggles rather than engage it seriously, because you're just that confident in your obviously "correct" bullshit and ignorant of the fact that you are literally stagnating the human condition.

In other words; you're the reason the dark ages lasted for so long, and why we can't have nice things.

You are arguing something fundamentally different than I am, and it's very frustrating. You're being obtuse.
This story could. 100%. Be written differently. Your argument that it cannot is nonsensical. You can parody magical girls by making them into BDSM, but woe to you if you parody magical girls by ... making them older?

You're also very angry that anyone would question your thought process, which is infuriating. I already said that it is okay this exists, but you keep approaching me from the angle that I'm saying it's not, and that's very disingenuous of you, which makes it a pointless discussion. I was only making a point that people can question why this exists, and you are not in a position to hypocritically take some kind of opposite moral high ground that no one is allowed to object to this based on the character ages and themes.

That is all. I was trying to say. End of my trying to make a rational discussion about this. If you try to argue a point further that I'm not making (including ridiculous notions that this is indeed the "only way" this story could ever possibly be writen), then I'm not going to engage with you on it any further.

The one being needlessly obtuse and besides-the-point here is you, not me. It was I who made and initial statement that you then responded to with arguments that had no actual bearing on it.

I have never said or claimed that people aren't allowed to question why or how this exists, and the fact that you still think that's what you need to defend and argue just means that you still haven't realized as much.

What I did say is that it's supremely ironic that this manga is suffering adverse consequences as a result of people trying to do to it exactly what the moral of the story is that you shouldn't cave to, demonstrating that a chunk of it's readers clearly don't get the point it's making and the behaviour they're engaging in.

It's like reading a book about how book burnings don't work, only to then have a bunch of people who read it try to arrange a book burning of it. It's absolutely comical.

I then also accused you of engaging in that behaviour, but it was technically besides the point and I just got too carried away to notice. I still stand by my assessment that that's very much what you're doing, but arguing about it really is besides the point unless you would like to continue discussing it.

last edited at May 30, 2023 2:24PM

But nah, kids and sexuality? That's gross, author's clearly pedo-pandering, 0/10 shovel-ware manga.

Just this statement here makes your whole argument fall apart.

Is this for kids? Or is it for adults?
Why does there have to be adult media about kids and their sexual awakenings?
It's an important question to ask, but you refuse to ask it. What kind of audience is is manga looking for? What kind of people are going to read it?

Again, I'm okay with that. You can't say things shouldn't exist just because some people are awful. But it should be criticised, along with any other media that deals with questionable content. It doesn't mean there isn't anything to be admired in it, it means that we should question and allow to be criticised everything we consume, regardless of how innocent you find it yourself.

Those are absolutely absurd questions, and the fact that you're asking them and using them as any kind of basis for why the story is "questionable" betrays the incredibly biased and flawed angle you're coming at the issue from fundamentally. Obviously the story is not for young children. No one was ever arguing that this work could not be criticized, the issue is that a lot of the critique aimed at it is simply pre-judged nonsense, ignorant assumptions about the author's intent or sheer refusal to accept it as "good" in any capacity due to the subject matter.

Why does there "have" to be a story like this? That is a ridiculous question.
No story "has" to exist, and the implication you're making that "creating a story" could be at any point in any way unethical in itself in a vacuum is utterly ridiculous.
Whatever reasons the author has for writing something is utterly irrelevant in regards to the quality of the work itself. NO piece of fiction should EVER be judged or censored purely on the basis of why it was written, it is a complete and total non-factor in the work's actual qualities.

What is relevant is the intentional message it's pushing, what "information" it proports to be true and the sheer objective grammatical and writing quality of the text regardless of contents. And more subjectively, the actual subjective contents such as (for example) "the ways in which the story uses particular concepts to reference- and tie things into the greater theme in a cohesive narrative," but even those things are simply YMMV and cannot be called unethical in themselves. They are techniques of writing.

What you're doing wrong is that you're not actually interested in evaluating this piece of fiction. You've already decided that it makes you uncomfortable and is dubious, and now you're simply looking for reasons to justify that feeling objectively by looking to an aspect of it which is sufficiently ambiguous for you to fill in your own bias into it; in this case "the clearly dubious intentions of the author for making this work at all."

You're in a loop of "This story makes me uncomfortable" --> "Who would write this?" --> "Author must have dubious intent" --> Back to square one.

No one's saying that a piece of fiction can't or shouldn't be criticized, the issue here is that your "criticisms" and questions are irrelevant, biased and illogical to ask; they will always point to the work being ethically dubious because that's the answer they're looking for, and so the questions in themselves are pointless and misguided.

---

And just because I really want to point this out even though it's technically besides the point:
Why write a story about young teens discovering their sexuality?

Because A) the issue of one's circumstances pressuring them into denial about themselves and being people they are not at heart actually is relevant to a lot of people even in adulthood, and in fact a lot of people struggling with it will likely emphasize with the characters struggling with it through their youths. If anything, it's cathartic to read a story about characters learning to be who they are in spite of society's pressures while young rather than when they're older.

B) Because like I mentioned earlier, both the genre and the themes of the story work naturally into taking place at the age in life when people really would go through these phases of their lives. Early teens really is when most people begin discovering and exploring their identity and sexuality, and face the problems of feeling ashamed of what they find and consequently trying to hide or bury it out of fear of being judged by others. There is no age more appropriate for this story to take place during than this, and the notion that it shouldn't because some people would rather not read about it is utterly ridiculous.

C) Arguably the most important reason of all; Because teenagers discovering and exploring their sexuality is a subject matter that we culturally as a species have developed an almost dogmatic practice of not evaluating or approaching simply because we feel icky about the subject matter and even going so far as to make ill assumptions about any people who try to. "That guy wrote a novel about a teenager going through puberty! What a DEVIANT! What sort of debased freak would even want to write about such things!?"
This despite it being something that literally all of us go through, how extremely formative it is and how much it goes into shaping who we are both as individuals and as a species in total. It's is a HUGELY important part of practically all human life, and yet we pull away from evaluating or discussing it properly because we're ashamed and afraid of any possible implications or associations that may come from it.
Why SHOULDN'T we be willing to read and write about teenagers developing through puberty? Isn't that definitely important enough that we should explore it? How can we ever get to a point as a society where teenagers aren't pressured into being people they're not for as long as we continue to treat the process as disgusting and immoral to even approach or acknowledge?

last edited at May 30, 2023 6:36AM

But I did understand what you were saying.
People are allowed to judge a story on its one questionable thing when it's done on purpose. The fact of the matter is, the creator chose the ages of these characters. Could have done just as much of an off-the-wall story with women who had been magical girls for a long time and were now adults, maybe dealing with some repression of their feelings due to having to appear "pure" to be a magical girl all those years. But they ... did not.
It's not like there's just one questionable scene in this story, it's the whole basis of the characters. People are allowed to judge it based on that factor alone. And yes, they will never be able to see the genius of the way the story unfolds just because that character basis is something they find distasteful, even in fiction.

If the writer really wanted to have their work shine and be appreciated by many, they would have made the story differently, but they wanted young girls in their story. They deserve every criticism for that choice regardless of how well-written the rest of the story is.

That's preposterous.
The ages of the characters it not something you could just remove and that would be that, it's so intrinsically relevant to the narrative that aging them up to adults would rip out an entire dimension of the narrative just so some people can read it without feeling uncomfortable.

The characters are young teenagers for multiple valid and important reasons, the main ones being:
A) It's a Magical Girl story and them being a particular age is a genre-staple. It's only appropriate for a parody to feature a cast at that age, and deviating from that expectation is what would require further meta-justifications; not the other way around.
B) It works intentionally (and beautifully) into the story's overarching message/narrative of accepting oneself, one's sexuality and one's flaws no matter what society, other people and even your own notions are trying to shame or threaten you into believing and accepting. The cast are at an age where they would be having their sexual awakenings, when they would be struggling to define themselves and sifting through all sorts of outside factors trying to tell them what is and isn't "right" to be. ESPECIALLY when it comes to sexuality, there is SO much pressure on every single one of us to conform and not be a deviant, with arbitrary and completely nonsensical definitions of "deviant" getting pushed threateningly at us from all angles at all times through life. The age of the cast is the point in time when this pressure is the greatest, it's THE most relevant time of their lives for the story to take place in and for them as characters to learn the important message that they are not "wrong" just because they have certain eccentricities.

(Said "eccentricities" being their kinks and fetishes, because this IS a parody after all, but the principle is just as applicable to any other facet of a person. The fundamental logic is the same for, for example, realizing-exploring-and-accepting one's sexual orientation no matter what one's surrounding family and society may be trying to tell you to conform as. Looking Up To Magical Girls is simply using its exaggerated premise and subject matter for a combination of comedic effect and to emphasize the point of the message with the an outrageous context that stands out.)

It is supremely ironic that this manga is facing issues with people judging it for what they assume it to be without understanding or reading it and for "choosing" to not be something else more palatable to the average person, when the entire moral of the story is to not let anything force you to conform to what it wants you to be rather than accept what you are and living true to it; hardships and hissy-fits from the naysayers be damned.

Anyone judging the story negatively for involving minors exploring their sexualities alone is literally missing the entire point of it, and in the most ironic way possible.

But nah, kids and sexuality? That's gross, author's clearly pedo-pandering, 0/10 shovel-ware manga.

last edited at May 29, 2023 6:28PM

Imagine if the creator was brave enough to ... not make a sezualised manga about children.
Like, I'm having no problems with it morally because fiction, but you can't complain about this not getting recognition when they have purposely buried their great story in questionable content.

i mostly agree with @Ehhhhhhh, i love this manga but i can't blame anyone who's turned off by the premise

Oh I didn't meant to imply I have any issues with the people who simply don't enjoy the premise and can't get into it because of the contents, all that is totally fair and understandable; I'd never fault someone for not liking or reading something that they simply didn't enjoy.

I was referring more to the dickweasels who don't understand that "refusing to analyze, research and explore something" also means you have no right to judge it. Since, you know, you literally don't know what the hell you're talking about. You're literally refusing to read it or even consider the notion that any of it has any substance or narrative purpose, and take offense at the notion that it could have.

People accusing it of being mere fetish-fuel and pedo-pandering are either malicious moral fanatics or plain ignorant of what they're talking about, and the ignorant are always the least qualified people to speak about anything, much less take an aggressive stance on something and throwing around outrageously severe accusations.

I am already certain that the anime is gonna kick up a shitstorm from lots of people who'll simply assume that CP and porn is what this work simply is, and they won't hear anything else. Trying to discuss it with them will just get them screaming that you're a proverbial witch who needs burning.

To reiterate what I said before; The fact that a story this well written and actually quite heartwarming in it's messages evokes such sheer hatred from a lot of people on principle is simply tragic.

Am I the only one that feels like you guys are taking this a bit too seriously? I thought the vibe was just comedic for the most part, especially considering the Undertale references

Simply pointing out that this was super dark and that fucks with some people so there should be a fair warning about it is not taking anything "too" seriously. This is a manga hosting site, not someone's private Discord. There is no good reason to sucker in readers who wouldn't want to read something into reading something they definitely won't enjoy, whether they're just being "too sensitive" or not is actually besides the point because it benefits no one to do it in the first place. It's like sending people a jumpscare video; totally fine to do with your friends but if you put a jumpscare video hidden in a book frame at a library then you're just an asshole for no good reason.

It's disrespectful and at best, wasting other people's time without giving them a choice in the matter.
Books should be labeled properly, end of story.

We've seen Randa's various body-mods sticking into her actual skin before, they don't seem connected to her magical girl transformation... well, at all. Rather, they seem to be self-mutilation that she just does to herself in general, we just don't see them beneath her clothes because she's placed them strategically to not show them if she doesn't want to.

(Which actually makes perfect sense now that I think about it... why would a presumably "goodness" fueled transformation involve self-mutilation even if it's in-character of the person undergoing it?)

I remember it stood out to me in particular how in the last panel of this page: https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/looking_up_to_magical_girls_ch48#9 we see her partway through transforming and it seems the extensive stichings and piercings littering her body are actually just there under her clothes normally.

Personally, I'm impressed at the author's willingness to portray this particular aspect of a self-loating character in such a visceral and realistic way. Most "edgelord" characters whose whole schtick is how much they don't care about things in general including themselves are typically still never shown to habitually practice any form of self-harm other than outright suicide attempts. Randa, despite being an exaggerated character in an obviously parody-narrative, honestly comes across to me as fairly realistic in essence. Which should speak VOLUMES about the quality of this writing.

...Man, remembering how many people have written this manga off as just fetish-pandering (or worse, BEING cp) is kinda depressing. Literally every time I look into something in this story, there's a red thread to find and a deeper motivation to piece together.