Another one bites the dust. It was a great manga but like so many, it was very rushed. It's a shame because it places it in the same category of manga that started well but ended a bit disappointingly instead of being remembered for having a very interesting concept and unique storyline. The characters were great and memorable and art was pleasant. The ending is so important and the last thing people remember about something so it needs to be done right...it sucks because it was pretty mid.
Also dat early yuri tag got me shipping :( I was hoping for Satsuki Komachi. On to the next manga to fill my dark and deep void I suppose

You're so right. I mean just look at Game of Thrones and how much it's bad ending soured people's opinions on the show.

For 7 years it maintained a huge following and positive reception thanks to it's truly phenomenal writing. But now, now all that anyone can talk about is the mess they made out of the end and all the good feeling the show grew over the years is gone in a puff of smoke.

You have my sympathy.

On the bright side, I feel validated for dropping the manga dozens of chapters ago. (Checked back solely because I saw the [End] and wanted to know if I should give it a second chance.)

Not that I'm saying anyone shouldn't like the manga; if you like it, glad you enjoyed it. Just saying I'd have been one of the disappointed readers, too, had I stuck it out the end.

You know it's interesting but i considered dropping this a few times myself. The story really was not my kind of thing, and the moral ambiguity the mangaka was trying to go for with the Stu-co President just did not work. His position was abhorrent and so easily argued against it was frustrating to see Satsuki flounder in front of him.

But what kept me going was the characters. I just love both Satsuki and Akira, i think they're both so well written and interesting that i stuck with it. Really i would love to see the two in another work far more focused upon them, their dynamic and their relationship.

So, yeah this end hits double hard for me. ;)

last edited at Apr 19, 2024 5:05PM

It's really kinda crap that THE relationship that has been built throughout the whole manga, Satsuki and Akira, just does not get any showing not just at the very end but for the last 5 chapters.

I wasn't expecting a confession but there really should've been some sort of acknowledgement to just how valuable that relationship has been to Satsuki.

Instead we get all the focus put on Komachi for 5 chapters, who's presence has been more of a background thing for much of the manga, and an end entirely focused on her.

It's a real shame.

That was beautiful. I have no other words.

Oh jeez, a soul-crushing job. She shoulda taken it and toughen up just like everyone else.

I think you need to rethink your phrasing there cause that's the exact kind of line people throw at people who suffer from genuine mental health issues along with such stupidity as "It's all in your head" and "Just get over it".

There's the added issue that in Japan, you are NOT expected to change your career except under very extreme circumstances. There's a huge cultural stigma to changing your job; the vast majority of people get hired by a company and then work there until they retire/become a housewife/die. If Neeko takes that job and it's as awful as that interview was...that's it. Neeko's life is now being yelled at by older men until those older men retire.

And it's not just that. Mental Health is a taboo and Stigmatic issue over there as well. Something you're expected NOT to talk about, or even admit to struggling with.

People in Japan in these situations are completely trapped and without ANY kind of support base. It's no wonder their suicide rate is so high.

last edited at Mar 22, 2022 12:33PM

Oh jeez, a soul-crushing job. She shoulda taken it and toughen up just like everyone else.

I think you need to rethink your phrasing there cause that's the exact kind of line people throw at people who suffer from genuine mental health issues along with such stupidity as "It's all in your head" and "Just get over it".

We all have our breaking points and some of us are more prone to stress and anxiety than others. If you were actually paying attention you could see that Neeko was trying her best and pushing herself hard and yet she was crumbling under the pressure way before that final horrible interview (an experience i could see making even the best of us wanting to just shut ourselves away from the world for some time).

People in such circumstances, and who clearly suffer from some form of mental health issue, need our support and not to be told to "just get on with it and toughen up"!

Such a shame, i had such affection for this manga and it's characters and this was no way to say goodbye to them.

I really can't put a finger on why i love this manga so much, and yet love it i do!

I think this was more art than story tbh but i still feel like it was a powerful experience and so not a waste of time.

Still i would've preferred a more conclusive ending.

What i really love about reading this manga on this site is when you read a really nice chapter about a couple (which, let's face it, is any of them!), you can click on their tag and go back and read all their staring chapters on their own.

I do this a lot and it always makes my heart swell.

An issue introduced in a rushed manner then resolved so easily, quickly and neatly leaves me feeling rather unsatisfied by this resolution in a manga i was, up until the last two chapters, enjoying.

Seriously, if the mother was so understanding why the heck didn't she have a frank and open conversation with her daughter about moving before this was an issue? In fact why is her daughter so afraid of speaking out in front of her?

You can't paint their relationship one way and then have it quickly and easily go another.

last edited at Apr 21, 2021 6:46PM

Personally i have no problem with this trope being used, except that here it's sudden appearance makes it seem more like a contrivance to help rush this story to it's end than to actually explore the issues related to it.

If it had been better established leading up to this event then probably it wouldn't have been rejected so much by so many.

I loved this! I loved this sooooo much and yet it's over?! Why? Why is it over?! I mean there was still so much to explore, so many things that had just been set up and suddenly "they're engaged!" and it's over. :'(

I've read a lot of mangas with bad endings so i know this isn't bad bad, but it's doesn't exactly work either. Just jumping suddenly to them living together with no connection to what we had previously saw was the status of their relationship (still thinking fondly of each other and yet not having spoken in a long time) is just confusing.

Frankly this ending says absolutely nothing, it would've been better to have left them going their separate ways rather than to just spring them living together with no explanation as to how they reconnected, how they came to live together or what their current relationship actually is.

It's fine to be ambiguous as long as there is something for the reader to be able to draw conclusions from, here tho... well, like i said it's just too confusing.

last edited at Oct 19, 2020 4:04PM

Feels like these days all the stories i'm getting into are ending rather abruptly.

What an absolute trash fire lmao.

I am a trans woman dating a nonbinary afab person and I thought this story would go in that direction since Hime always seemed pretty disillusioned with being perceived as a girl. Instead we got after school special-quality vignettes about the lives of random characters who are never relevant to the plot again, and a main character whose entire emotional journey leads her to... being comfortable with being a straight woman?

I guess the message of this series is that it’s okay to be LGBT as long as you’re an accessory to a generic het romance. I can’t believe I used to look forward to new chapters of this. 2/10 because I at least enjoyed the bits of lesbian content at the beginning

I've too had been enjoying this a lot because it seemed to carry such a strong LGBTQ+ message and i felt it taught me so much about lifestyles outside of my own. And yet you're point seems to be incredibly valid. Despite the claims of this manga being about Akira's struggles with being perceived as a man ultimately this has been very much Hime's story and when the end goes straight down the het road it does seem to undermine itself by making all alternate lifestyles seem peripheral in significance.

What's more, as you had said, Hime too struggled a lot with being perceived as a woman, especially sexually by a man (to the point where she said such a thing sickened her), and yet that whole thing too has been swept to one side. Seemingly they were happy to explore this issue in some detail but not actually commit to it.

It's a shame that this is such a unsatisfying ending. As i said i had enjoyed this a lot, felt that it had opened my eyes to many things and yet this... i just feel wrong inside about this. I had felt that this would've been a manga i would've re-read and re-read and yet now it's finished in this way... i just don't know if i'll ever return to it.

This was at times a hard thing to read, and yet ultimately fulfilling. And that final chapter was truly a thing of beauty.

Every chapter i just feel so uplifted by the simplistic and wonderful nature of this manga. = )

I do like the interpretation of this being about love and sacrifice. That sometime being in a relationship can mean giving up one dream or job. Some basically having their love one make the decision, and the guilt one can have over ruining someone dreams for their own relationship. But despite the negative in those relationship, there is still lots of love to go around.

I think that's kind of a forced interpretation tho. I mean while what you said is very true, your sacrifice is something you give up of your own volition. To have it taken from/sacrificed for you without your consent (such as it is in this case) it's an attack, a theft, an assault and in such a case it wouldn't just be guilt that would hang over the relationship but resentment as well (tho in this fiction we are told that's not the case). Not that i am suggesting that is what this story is about either.

The closest thing i can come to an interpretation is that this shows how love is a volatile emotion. That is is possible to love someone or something to the point of destruction. She was so in love with her, so afraid of losing her that she destroyed her wings, an act that (as the end suggests) can never be taken back, can never be undone and yet despite this their relationship continues. Perhaps this suggests that even tho love can take us to such dark places that it is also the light that can lead us back out again, that it can inspire such great kindness and forgiveness that it can save us all.

Well i'm trying my best to be optimistic about this. I found this story both beautiful and horrifying, touching and unsettling, and i'm really trying to figure out just how i'm going to take it all in.

last edited at Jul 25, 2020 9:01PM

Also, for me, the afterword is kind of unsettling as it feels to have a somewhat flippant tone about it.

I mean this story has an act of absolutely horrendous violence in it and the afterword sort of shrugs and says "Oh well, they ain't on the best track but i'm sure everything will turn out fine".

last edited at Jul 25, 2020 8:21PM

something about this ending makes me deeply uncomfortable and i can't exactly pinpoint what that is

Maybe the fact that one could interpret this in the manner of an abusive relationship (i mean i'm trying not to but the signs are there) in that she's had something horrifically cruel and violent done to her and yet because she's told "I love you" she stays and believes in the future her partner will change.

I really thought this could've been a long running thing on par with Virgin Empire, it had that sort of feel to it's narrative, a drawn out in-depth development of it's characters and their relationships. But to be ending so suddenly now, this is such a shame.

last edited at Jul 9, 2020 10:13AM

ARGHH!! Too good and too short!!!

"And no anxiety or uneasiness can beat this feeling of love."

Every now and again you just come across an absolutely perfect line. :)

It's not an abrupt or rushed ending, nor is it something that i would call unsatisfying, and yet it certainly does feel like it's missing something.