is there a reason Eizoken! seems to be having a little resurgence? not that im complaining we've just been seeing a spike in it lately

you're overthinking this it's all Left to Right. Blonde girl is rummaging through her purse and hands brunette her lollipop, brunette absent-mindedly puts the lollipop in her mouth, she looks down in confusion like "wait why do I have this", blonde takes her stuff back, brunette is embarrassed because its an indirect kiss with a pretty girl. Left to Right.

last edited at Sep 16, 2024 11:24AM

the trans bocchi reading emerged from her resonating with a lot of trans women's particular experiences with loneliness, alienation and social awkwardness. Her retreating into the internet from anxiety/shame and her social skills atrophying. Crucially this is combined with her wearing that unflattering tracksuit all the time to hide her body, which is extremely common and can be read as Bocchi's gender dysphoria as well as body dysmorphia. So there you go.

If I may interject something: I've seen the interview re: Falin Marcille spread as "She said she didn't intend for Falin/Marcille." But she doesn't say that. She's asked about the fan reaction to Falin Marcille, and her response is, "If I care too much about how fans react to my work I think the story becomes less fun or interesting. So I try not to think too much about how readers will react. In general, I'll just leave the reader's imagination." A safe answer to a safe question perhaps, something could be lost in translation, but unlike the question about Laios being written as autistic where she does outright refute it, she isn't saying No, I Did Not Think About Queerness Writing This At All.

This is ultimately a distinction without much difference, I don't mean to initiate some kind of pointless speculation or anything. Dunmeshi is not a manga about romance and making meaningful/fun interpretations without being a cop is the right way to go about it. Thats outright what she says in the interview! I just think that its sorta doing the same thing as before right, centering the conversation around her Authorial Intent on something she didn't even say--we're all so used to writers going "i didnt write this character as intentionally gay but its a fun interpretation" for decades we just assumed she did too--when I think really we should just take her at her word that she wrote a good story and fun character dynamics with the purpose that a lot of people would end up interpreting them differently, including ways she didn't anticipate like Laios's autism, and let the author die like she wants.

Again not a pushback against anyone here, the conversation's already there basically, Ive just started seeing reddit and twitter start using that idea as a cudgel against shippers now, and I wanted to curb the misinformation a little

those are just the same thing as this except shes a redhead, I dont think thats what they meant

call me a buzzkill i am so bored of this arc

oh god lets not even think about SEED

Gundams always been gay, I hope we get a thousand more and more explicitly gay series going forward.

last edited at Jul 6, 2023 8:47PM

"And if you walk away from Ep 17 thinking, "Ah these 2 are just platonic" I have no idea what to say to you."

Are people saying this?

thats a different issue

^^^ The show really did fall to pieces in the last couple episodes, having so many plots but no time at all to follow through on them (and then dedicating way too much time for a really bad Lauda arc, Fuck Lauda) Before the finale almost everyone watching was certain they'd announce another season, like they did with IBO, so there was some pretty massive whiplash when they just wrapped everything up the way they did. Unfortunately, Suletta and Miorine's relationship was the biggest victim of that pacing. I love the messy politics and themes of the older series, but I would have even forgiven them dropping the ball on all that and its characters if they really focused on their relationship, and sadly they just didnt allocate enough time. Even a few more minutes for them instead of everyone in meetings relaying things we already know would go a long way. Between the horrible production conditions and Okouchi dropping the ball every show he writes, I'm not surprised.

I'll also push back on the narrative that Gundam doesn't and has never done explicit romance or kissing. Turn A, IBO, thunderbolt, 00, 08th MS Team, even the worst hetero nightmare show SEED, theyve all done explicit romance and kissing. IBO in a roundabout way ends with a lesbian domestic partnership executed extremely similarly to Suletta and Miorine. Turn A in its own way is extremely queer in themes and coding, the main character Loran can very easily be read as trans or nonbinary, etc. Now, the scene of them floating in space is evoking a very romantic scene from F91, but like the sword fight a couple episodes prior it kind of ends up using the reference to scaffold all the meaning and weight into that scene, rather than doing the work itself.

All that said for all my problems with the end of the show, I don't mind the ending these two got itself all that much. It's cute it's nice i'm glad they got married and i'm happy for everyone who's happy. Personally I just really wish they put the time and effort to give it the weight it deserved.

last edited at Jul 4, 2023 11:47AM

ceo x country bumpkin getting offscreen married and finding small happiness on a farm while the rest of the world is still kinda fucked.

Am I talking about Miorine and Suletta in GWitch, or Kudelia and Atra in IBO?

i must be a masochist to keep reading these comments. the salt!

Tbh the only really extremely dark Gundam series are IBO, Thunderbolt and maybe Narrative, and Thunderbolt's the only one I'd call outright torture porn. Sure Victory was dark but it had a really hopeful ending, most of Uso's friends survived I'd hardly call it a bloodbath ending. If G-Witch ends up going into super grim nihilism by the end I'd chalk that to the writers misunderstanding the series rather than some inevitability about the series itself.

panty shots are so old hat, if you cant understand the eroticism of the gym shorts i have nothing to say to you

Who said anything about panties?

i said what i said

panty shots are so old hat, if you cant understand the eroticism of the gym shorts i have nothing to say to you

Did she actually call her a chad? I'm super curious what the translation there is

lmao we're entering the point where folks just interpret everything Hiroko does as oblivious and unreasonable. This chapter's been the most reasonable Hiroko by far, even seeing both the oppressiveness of office gossip and the kind of incredibly stock romance guy Yuuya is that supported the misunderstanding.

Is it bad that I skimmed those spoilers and just got even more interested? Idk, I'm enjoying the trainwreck, don't quite get why people are so up in arms. Again, may just be personal experience talking, but this feels like a "reality is unrealistic" sort of thing.

yeah me too i'm way more interested reading all that.

Even before that though just reading the dialogue of this chapter, I get the feeling all the haters are kinda misreading the character and reinforcing their own bias. "Why is she so oblivious? How could a supposed womanizer be so blind?" But here we see it isn't just that Hiroko's too damn dense to see Ayaka's crush; rather as her work superior she's so in her head suppressing her instincts to go after this cute girl (because of gossip? workplace dynamics? is she afraid of losing her job? of Ayaka losing her job because of her? Is the combination of being her superior and a lesbian too scandalous?) that she second guesses and rationalizes all the obvious signs. Its not like this stereotype emerges in a vacuum. Under the perfect senpai veneer she's incredibly, tragically, high strung. So to me its less of the usual generic dense lesbian yuri parody and more an exaggeration of how homophobic workplace dynamics create this kind of eternal misunderstanding.

Anyway, Ayaka's sad faces are funny I don't see the problem. Definitely gonna stick around

this isnt really all that much of an Opposite

two characters i need to see fuck savagely Yesterday. What a gorgeous art style and what a dynamic!

they really went through that whole vacation arc and they didnt have a single orgy are you kidding me? no imagination whatsoever.

last edited at Mar 5, 2023 4:33PM

really stretching out to the inevitable orgy

why did you link a jojo edit when the original is billy and mandy

I mean, there are very obviously potential power dynamic issues here, but that was true before they found out the age gap. Business owner v Part Time worker is obviously a big difference in wealth, and Mu Xiaoen is one of the most influential people in that whole town. So the power dynamics problems present in an age gap story are already here. And that wasn't enough to make people worried before. I think it really comes down to how the two interact in this case, and Mu Xiaoen doesn't seem to be the person who will abuse her power, especially when she's already so conscious of the age issue.

Yeah I second. I sometimes get the feeling people learned what a "power dynamic" is and turned it polemical when the reality is every relationship is going to have, to varying degrees, A Power Dynamic. That doesn't make it unreasonable for someone like mu xiaoen to have some discomfort about it, but it's also meant to be, yknow, a comedic overblowing of a situation because by any metric shi xingyuan is an adult who has autonomy over her own actions and her desires. you don't just avoid every potential encounter out of a fear of power dynamics, you gotta take it case by case and just, yknow, learn how to be good to each other.