Liz's PowerPoint style is a nostalgia trip.

So this is Food Wars style foodgasm but gay and with ready-to-eat stuff?

...

OK then.

Confession time:

The first thing that came to my mind when I saw the title and the NTR tag was that dreadful Ariana Grande song.

Why is Marisa using one Fate's magic circles?

That's Kanon (neck-length orange hair + purple eyes), not Sumire (long blonde hair + green eyes)

"Wait, am I really that happy after being sexed up?"

"Yes!"

"... (dafuq)"

This chapter in a nutshell.

Harem tag incoming?

I just came back from a reddit discussion on this series and the consensus was, this twist is so good and someone even mentioned it made the first part now understandable. What am I missing??

As I see it, the point of this arc is to explain Elsa becoming infatuated with Yvonne, to the point she thinks of Yvie as her "special person" as opposed to one of the male leads the game initially had destined for her.

It is hinted at by the cloaked woman that Yvonne had forgotten about the time she and Elsa spent together as children, though the mechanics of that are as of yet unclear - my suspicion is that what has so far been referred to as the "villainess system" is a high-tier Mare that can seal off certain memories and command its "vessel" but isn't able to manifest like the Mare possessing Elsa way back when did.

Drinking the succubus potion possibly awakened a power said Mare is unable to control since it's goal is to "keep the villain parameters in check" - and while it is highly powerful, it is not all-powerful, as we've seen in the scene where the cloaked woman (who I suspect to be another incarnation of Elsa) is able to break it.

"You did this"
"No, honey, you're just gay."

Yeah, probably this backstory should've been narrated earlier since pretty much all of us hate Hiroko and have made up our mind on the "she only rejected Ayaka to protect her public persona" plot line

I disagree. Partly, because it has left people wondering why Hiroko goes to such lengths to dismiss Ayaka's very open pursuit of her, and partly, well... the manga is called "Ayaka is in Love with Hiroko", i.e. Ayaka is the pov character for most of the series and it's mainly about her struggle to get Hiroko to like her back.

Though it would be a neat idea to see a romantic comedy play out from the perspective of the love interest and not the one who fell for them first.

EDIT: I also wonder how many people would see Ayaka as "pushy" and claim "she's not respecting boundaries", if the story was from Hiroko's pov and we were introduced to her emotional baggage first.

last edited at Jun 22, 2023 12:30PM

Ah, flat hunting. The current manifestation of my existential nightmares.

Drinking age in Japan is 20, and US is 21, so if we're measuring how reasonable and responsible a country's laws are by that the US wins.

(ok so actually legal drinking age in the US can vary by state, though all states still restrict drinking to 21, but some with exceptions, and you need to be 21 to buy alcohol in the entire country except Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands)

My old driving instructor used to say, if you can't get boozed up before you can drive, you will absolutely underestimate the effect alcohol has on your mental faculties.

With the US driving age being 16 compared to a drinking age of 21, I'd argue the laws here in Germany (ICYMI on the last page, drinking in accompaniment can start as young as 14, driving age is somewhere between 14 and 18 depending on the type of vehicle) are more reasonable and responsible than the US's.

Maybe I’m weird for wanting it, but there’s nothing like the thrill of digging into the twisted psychology of a screwed up villainess. Most of these villainess stories are cute, but I abandon them ‘cuz they’re just tsunderes in fantasy settings. Not much real villainy.

tbf, most "villainesses" aren't really die-hard villains but more on-the-ground antagonists or (romantic) rivals without any special powers.

And in this case, it just uses the "villainess start" template to get the plot moving, she isn't even "evil", she just has powers that are rare and come from an odd source and is just married off for the purpose of a convenient political union when she can't inherit the family name due to being a product of her father not being able to control his loins.

Theatricalities of this chapter aside... the thing Yuni said at the end at least has a point.

Even if Nanase ended up lying about it, saying her GF was the most important thing to her would've felt reassuring to Yuni to some degree, but she didn't.

Are you serious? She just discovered that her girlfriend is cheating, and she is still cheating right in front of her and you expect her to reassure Yuni? That ship has sailed long ago.

Yup. Even if shit is falling apart right in front of her, even if it will ultimately fix nothing at all and they're still going to split apart, she could at least fucking TRY. Instead, she plays defense again and that what makes me so fucking frustrated at her.

LOL at the idea that someone is “in the right” in this series.

This.

Theatricalities of this chapter aside... the thing Yuni said at the end at least has a point.

Even if Nanase ended up lying about it, saying her GF was the most important thing to her would've felt reassuring to Yuni to some degree, but she didn't.

I've read multiple works of this author and I say without a hint of irony... this might've been her best in a while.

"oblivious, straight women"...

Uh, Hiroko-san, not to be that person, but...

These stories are built on the proposition that the characters the main duo got transmogrified into are, per se, fictional characters with no agency of their own because they're, again, fictional characters, who are usually static because they exist only at the stroke of a pen of the author and have no inherent agency in and of themselves. The dynamic that these stories have in common would be comparable to say, someone from our world being transmogrified into, say, Prequel-era Anakin Skywalker and using their knowledge of the universe to stop everything that happens at the end of Revenge of the Sith.

That's pretty much the opposite of every isekai I've read?

It's unique to these isekai that reincarnate their protagonist as characters in works of fiction, but all of them work on the principle that there is a character that has no agency until the interference from "our" world happens at which the "other" world shifts from "fiction" (i.e., static,choices can be inferred by the reader but are not acted on, immovable unless an outside force wills it) to "reality" (i.e. dynamic, choices are not externally inferred but actually present, events can be shifted by people within the world).

"Villainness Isekai" is very much the poster child for that, the idea is always "I am now this character who is destined to die because of how the story plays out but now that the story is no longer a story I am able to shape it at will".

I don't really see what the isekai element adds.

I mean, if this plays out like various other isekai manhua (and even some manga like The fed-up OL wants to serve the Villainness), it's going to be about them using their knowledge of the work they're in to find a way to evade the fate the work has placed upon them, in this case likely social ostracization for the villainness and death for the Demon Lord.

But you don't need isekai for that. The villainess already faces ostracization if anyone finds out she's faking her magic; the demon lord already risks a lot because she's a street urchin going to an elite magic school that presumably will contain a bunch of classists. There's plenty of conflict already without adding in a "fate itself is against our protagonists" element.

These stories are built on the proposition that the characters the main duo got transmogrified into are, per se, fictional characters with no agency of their own because they're, again, fictional characters, who are usually static because they exist only at the stroke of a pen of the author and have no inherent agency in and of themselves. The dynamic that these stories have in common would be comparable to say, someone from our world being transmogrified into, say, Prequel-era Anakin Skywalker and using their knowledge of the universe to stop everything that happens at the end of Revenge of the Sith.

But if you want to stick to strictly in-universe logic, I guess you could argue that, because they have a connection they did not have in the original novel from their previous lives (we don't know if there's any relationship between the demon lord and villainness outside of them being antagonists), them being isekai'd gives them the ability to recognize each other as their previous selves and use that connection to find a new forward.

last edited at May 2, 2023 12:24AM

I don't really see what the isekai element adds.

I mean, if this plays out like various other isekai manhua (and even some manga like The fed-up OL wants to serve the Villainness), it's going to be about them using their knowledge of the work they're in to find a way to evade the fate the work has placed upon them, in this case likely social ostracization for the villainness and death for the Demon Lord.

last edited at May 1, 2023 11:23PM

^who is which though - I'd argue that both aren't lacking in either trait.

I mean, they can acknowledge it, whether they can actually also act on it is probably another matter, due to the age gap and their professional relationship...

but when has a romance manga ever given a flying fuck about either?

Hello, FBI? It's that tanned girl over there.

It was only a kiss... it was only a kiss.

I wonder if Diana has a last name. The duel in chapter 2 was announced as "Diana vs Tenebrae", and in chapter 3 the teacher addressed them as Diana and Lady Tenebrae. What's up with that?

It varies from culture to culture, but many pre-modern societies didn't have surnames for the general populace and some fictional works tend to use that as a shorthand to delineate the character's standing in the general social hierarchy. Diana, coming from a common background, doesn't have a surname as a result, while Lapis is referred to by the name of her noble house.

It may be possible for either our heroine or Diana to gain a last name if they become nobility, depending on the setting.