"Squeaky Toy" is the perfect description for her expressions

Funny how she still seems to think that having been the queen of an enemy country would be harder for people to swallow than pretending to be the literal witch who supernaturally cursed them and directly caused pretty much every misfortune they've ever suffered in general. (While not entirely true, it's what people believe about her.)

I feel pretty confident in saying that her true identity would probably be less hated than the person whose identity she's borrowing is.
If for no other reason than the fact that the witch's actions have hurt these people directly and extensively compared to "the queen of an enemy country" whom the commoners may or may not even recognize the name of.

last edited at Sep 28, 2025 11:48AM

The more I think about this the more I'm convinced she was at least having suicidal thoughts.

Coworker skipped work to travel to the sea, seemingly on impulse but very much an intentional and strange choice that specifically takes her far away from anyone whom she expects might recognize her.
She talks about how she feels misunderstood and like nothing she does helps or changes anything and how it's lead to her recently losing her girlfriend in what's implied to have been a rough breakup; basically her life sucks and she has no one who can understand her or help her cope with her negative feelings building up and no outlets for how she's feeling.

More abstractly, the large panel on page 16 as she talks about it is portraying the ocean not as something beautiful to admire but rather, a pitch black void that the character is walking towards alone, seemingly to be swallowed up by and disappear into as she talks about her life in the past tense.

Then she says it feels funny to be there "with someone" and how she wishes she'd met them sooner as if their relationship is only temporary and they don't both work in the same office on Monday morning.

Then she looks taken aback by Protag Lady confiding that she's glad to have skipped work and that meeting and spending time with coworker girl was worth it.

It's all "just" a bunch of vague implications that may just be imaginary adding up, but to me it reads very much like Coworker was depressed and seriously considering walking into the sea until she just so happened to run into Protag Lady who listens to her problems and unwittingly fills in the negative space in her life where she was spiraling from by caring about her and relating to her troubles.

last edited at Sep 18, 2025 5:44PM

Was I the only one getting the vague impression that coworker was originally planning on walking into the sea before finding a new girlfriend?

Looks like the blond bully may not be a bully so much as influenced by his friend who is, judging by the subtle "this again?" reaction he has to said friend trying to pick on toll grill.

I may be reading too much into it, but he may just have a crush on her that he doesn't know how to express, seeing as it's suggested his "bully friend" isn't particularly into the bullying, implying it's the dark haired boy going out of his way to pick on her for some personal reason.

last edited at Sep 7, 2025 9:12AM

I'm probably going to get hated for this, but...

As much as I appreciate Mitsuki's character growth to becoming assertive and confident (and as much as Aya clearly appreciated that little move as well), Mitsuki is still showing facets of jealousy, control, and lack of trust. In real life, these things are huge red flags.

If someone had come up to Mitsuki and asked her about Western music, she would have gone into full "geek mode" and chatted them up non-stop; if said person had done that under the pretense of flirting with her, Mitsuki would not have noticed; she would have been ass-deep in gushing about Eric Clapton and George Harrison 0.38 seconds upon hearing the song playing on his phone. So, for her assume Aya couldn't deal with this shows a rather meaningful lack of trust, and maybe even a bit of projection.

And, considering the meaning of the song... Patti Boyd made her choice, and George Harrison respected it. Mitsuki would know that.

So yeah... I love this comic, I've loved it since the moment I first laid eyes on it, but I can't say I like this particular entry, and I hope it isn't the start of a dark path for Mitsuki.

You're not entirely wrong, but also, consider:
They're teenagers, and teenagers don't know what the hell they're doing. Insecurity is perfectly normal at this point.

It's not like she ripped her away from him or manipulated her or anything.

last edited at Aug 24, 2025 9:45AM

^ Quantum stuff is nondeterministic and changes based on the observer, non-binary is constantly non-male and non-female no matter the observer (or if there is an observer or not). I don't think quantum stuff is a good analogy for non-binary as a gender.

An objective reality and quantum physics are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
It's entirely possible for there to be an objective "truth" that we can't perceive because us perceiving it changes it, but it's still nevertheless objectively true.

It's also debatable whether being non-binary means actually being neither male nor female or if it's still simply being "male and female" in different ratios but rejecting the conventional associations of the terms.

What is "female"? What is "male"? Having a penis? Brain chemistry? What specific brain chemistry is "male" and where does it begin and end? Is it a preference? An inclination? An emotion? An emotion only motivated by something specific but not if motivated by something else?

Who's to say that the things we equate to being "male" is actually "being male" and not just arbitrary or illusionary?
After all, it's not like people who are non-binary are biologically alien compared to other humans, they just don't identify with the binary gender terms we've historically developed but they're the same species and DNA as the rest of us.

The hypothetical scenario posed earlier, that of a person who's male in one dimension, female in one dimension and non-binary in our dimension where the other two are superimposed over one another; is actually only flawed in the sense that it treats being "male" and "female" as the two end points of the spectrum and equates being "non-binary" to existing somewhere in-between or on top of.

To be more accurate, the two "points" that exist in different universes that overlap to become non-binary would need to be the literal and proverbial end points of human gender definition, which we simply don't have any terms or definitions readily available for. (That's assuming the human gender definition only has- or could be broken into- 2 points and isn't more of a wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey... thing.)

"Male" and "female" are simply too subjective and ever-changing terms to reliably call the end points, should they exist.

If I were to define the premise suggested above with the Schroedinger's gender plot, I'd do as follows:
The protagonist is someone who can see one reality in one eye and another reality in the other; in one reality people are one gender and in the other they are the other. When she looks at someone with both her eyes, she sees "her" reality, the "superimposed" one where people are whatever they identify as. (Don't know how to phrase that better.)

Then she meets a person who's non-binary and discovers that they only exist in the superimposed reality and not in either of the component realities at all, and she can only see them with both her eyes and not if she closes one.

Que plot stuff, few dozen chapters of UST, a beach episode, kiss at the fireworks festival, the end.

last edited at Aug 1, 2025 6:05AM

So uhh about having giant freaking cat suits just laying around the house?

Funnily enough, I thought the same at first when the girl showed up in it but the mom also wearing one at the end kinda clears it up for me. They're just cute pajamas and they got a matching pair as mother and daughter.

last edited at Jul 31, 2025 4:02AM

Oh cool, lady actually got consent kinda, honestly didn't expect that at this stage.

SOOOOO many red flags if this was real life.
...But it's not, so into the guilty pleasure pile it goes!

Is... is that a god damn cloud-penis on page 15??

...I kinda hope this leads to her helping Aya trim her nails for the symbolism of it.

I can actually see a reasonable explanation for the food being left out; Both of them missed dinner and the school has a responsibility that their students eat so they probably keep tabs on if everyone shows up for the meals, so they left their food out assuming/hoping they would eventually come back and find them. The fact that they're placed together isn't necessarily an expectation that they will "eat together" so much as... well, it's the cafeteria. They probably just put the meals for the students who missed them in the same spot because why not?

As for who keeps tabs on it, I think after some consideration that the answer is the same as for who might've "spied" on them eating it to confirm they passed their tests; the dorm manager. The cafeteria is technically a spot she could plausibly be checking on in general even after hours.

Still, if I was them, I'd absolutely be getting creeped out after finding out the school somehow knows what they did together at night in private. They didn't see a single soul around them, and that close to the deadline is one heck of a coincidence for someone to just happen to be around to pass them without being noticed unless they were already spying on them to begin with.

last edited at Jun 1, 2025 3:25AM

At the risk of pulling on a string not meant to be taken too seriously, but how did the school know about them "passing" their tests together late at night essentially in private? That has some worrying implications.

Prince is obviously set up to be gender ambiguous so far, and while I have a feeling they're going to be female in the end, it's worth noting that "witch" is actually a gender neutral word and (at minimum) a fourth of accused witches in history (both accused and executed) were male.

...Huh, I swear she's definitely been drawn to be taller than 214cm, especially since the main source on making her look huge is how tall she is next to Ten who is apparently also gigantic for a japanese woman. (175 is FAR above average)

If I had guessed her height before the 214cm statement, I'd have guessed a minimum of around 240cm+.
Her size varies between shots, but I would rarely but her less than 50% taller than Ten yet apparently she's just about 22% taller.

THE NUMBERS, MASON! THEY DON'T ADD UP!

Cute and fluffy as always, but I kind-of wish the makeup didn't completely hide her scar and she learned to accept it, but because it would have differentiated further shown the differences between her and the witch and because it raises questions about why the witch didn't just use some makeup, if the scar bothered her so much.

The original Witch seems to have been deeply traumatized and driven primarily by spite and anger at past grievances, so the scar probably bothered her for mostly embodying said trauma moreso than for being unattractive.

She obviously didn't socialize with anyone, so she probably didn't care about it "being seen" as much as she just obsessed over it being there at all, hidden or not.

On a characterization level, I think their different ways of handling the scar illustrate the major differences in character between Maria and the original Witch.

The original Witch did nothing to change herself or face her problems and instead forced her surroundings to conform to her, covering the mirrors in the house and scaring people away rather than try to compromise "herself."

Maria does the opposite, covers the scar so "it won't bother anyone" and tries to find a middle ground between her and other people to make peace wherever there's friction even at her own expense and even though she's not actually the one at fault. She "compromises herself" to adapt and make peace whereas the original Witch clung to the past and obsessed over herself at the expense of being able to co-exist with others.

...Though yes, I do agree it would be nice if she comes to accept the scar without hiding it.

On that same note, the old Witch became so miserable she eventually rejected her life entirely and assumed someone else's, while Maria does the opposite and wholeheartedly accepts a new one that was forced upon her.

last edited at Apr 25, 2025 4:55AM

I'm still a tad confused about the ending, because it either means they're kidnapping her younger brother, taking him with them and lying about their circumstances after the sister has already proven she's willing to murder him in cold blood OR they leave him behind to validate the idea that it was a burglary gone wrong but also dumping the motherload of all traumas on him when he wakes up alone (or in police custody) and finds out what's happened.

Both implications have serious issues that go entirely unaddressed.
Scenario 1: The little brother should have serious questions about why they're suddenly running away, where their parents are, why none of the other siblings are with them, why they can't go back home, why they suddenly need to avoid the police, don't have a home or school etc etc.

Scenario 2: The little brother saw the the sister's "new friend" and will be able to identify her to the police, even if he doesn't connect that she's supposed to be the "robber" who broke in; the police will ask him what happened and he'll tell them about the "friend" and she'll become suspect number 1 regardless of his ignorance.

Both scenarios pretty much have the robber girl decide to become complicit in murder for not much reason (and potentially framed for it in place of the actual murderer rather than simply being complicit), and are likely to get them caught very quickly regardless of anything.

last edited at Feb 14, 2025 8:40AM

I'm still not sure what her situation was.

Was she the only one taking care of the grandmother, and after she died because she didn't get her medicine on time, she basically snapped after realizing no one else in the family even noticed?

...Mission Successful.

Lesbian Sheep Syndrome

Sheep are literally useless lesbians? That's actually kind of poetic...

Surely they're in garden they cannot leave unless they have sex.

I see I'm not the only one who thought exactly this!

In all fairness to the PC, his "slave" was literally just a bot when he got her, it's not his fault she's now magically become a real person bound to the constraints of a bot.

As far as Isekais go, this one looks pretty fine so far. Nothing revolutionary but nothing atrocious.

Hoping for Yuri beyond just fanservice though, even if he's technically still a guy in a woman's body.

last edited at Jan 14, 2025 1:22PM

I don't really want to get involved in this whole argument, but I do want to address this part. These are monsters that the prince was fighting on his own (with knights to watch out for him) at the age of 12. He is currently 15. Presumably, it would be like a trained hunter being faced with a boar, but also he's not alone. He has his knights, and Almelia is there who he knows has killed one by herself before.

We're not talking monsters in the way they would be treated in a much darker manga, and the prince isn't powerless. His magic is really strong. If it's something he could done at the age of 12, then it stands to reason that he vastly overreacted not 3 years later. If it is panic, panic from insecurity seems much more likely than panic from fear.

Yes, that's totally fair. No one's denied that he acted wrongly.
The fighting is essentially about what this whole incident tells us about him rather than if that thing he did was wrong, because even he himself admits he did wrong.

The conflict here is about how some people think this solidifies him as a complete scumbag and I don't agree that it does at this point, for various reasons elaborated on in previous posts.

If you really want to approach it with this logic, how does it make any sense whatsoever that Serina would reveal that she wasn't injured at all and that he doesn't need to do anything for her (she literally says this) if she was trying to deceive him for status or money? She would obviously maintain the charade if that was her goal.

Because acting like something wasn't a big deal and saying "you owe me nothing" only to then make "requests" that you "totally" don't have any pressure to accept (but remember that time you hurt me and I didn't make a big deal out of it?) is literally politics 101?
If anything, if he truly suspects she's the sort of person that would fake an injury to indebt a member of the royal family to her, that's absolutely something he could accept she'd do.

Think about the event that forms the entire basis of his character. He is someone who is ultimately middling in talent and continuously gets upstaged by his social interiors which brings constant frustration to him. My statements line up perfectly with his character. Yours does not and ignores some very crucial circumstantial evidence like the following which I will repeat again:

Just because your deduction makes theoretical sense enough to be possible doesn't make it proven.
Yes I agree that he has inferiority issues; No I don't agree that it entirely defines his character so far.
It's an issue he has, but it's not defining his every decision and I don't believe it's the drive behind his outburst towards Serina in this chapter just because it also contributed to it.

He did not once talk about Serina's well being. It's why he is shocked by her recovery. You might say that he was busy. Let's have a thought experiment. If you shot someone by accident, would you never bother to check up on their well being because you're "busy"?

...I honestly don't see how this is enough to make any kind of assumption. Why would he check in on her? If something happened, he'd be notified, and he knows she's being taken care of and has no reason to doubt the quality of the care considering her benefactor.

While I'd totally understand feeling compelled to check in on her, I don't think it's a universal thing that just everyone with a shred of decency in their body would do and consequently, I don't think it really proves or supports emotional callousness.

Oh, and also, you keep claiming that my take is "charitable" but you have yet to provide any kind of justification for why his disbelief in her magical healing would not be genuine.

last edited at Jan 8, 2025 3:56PM