Oh, dear! Too much lip cream? No, no, just leave it on your lips, I'll transfer it to mine directly.

Purple Library Guy posted:

Shouldn't the doll-like German loli who just wanted to do karate from one of the author's previous series have tipped you off?

Good lord. This whole time I had never made the connection with Sasameki Koto, despite having been amazingly fond of it back in the day. Realizing it's that mangaka feels weird.
I must say, rather clever of Ikeda Takashi to write something that neatly sidesteps her main weakness as a writer. That is, Sasameki Koto was fundamentally a manga with standard romance plot arcs, except she tended to kind of lose control and have them meander off into nothing much going on while people got impatient waiting for her to pick up the threads again. With "The Two of Them Are Pretty Much Like This" she has a total slice-of-life where the main pair are already an established couple with no major conflicts, so she doesn't have to try to maintain control of any plot arcs--there aren't any. She can concentrate on characters, art, and great little "bits".

Holy cow! PLG disappears for over two years then suddenly pops back in and starts posting again like nothings happened?? Missed you, man! Hope all is well. Welcome back!

Well, thanks. Doing fine. Recently celebrated 25th marriage anniversary. Just got my vaccination.
To be perfectly honest, I was mostly hanging at Mangadex, but it's currently toast, so . . .

"Publish and be damned!"

As I read it, I was uncertain if that kiss actually happened . . . it was like she imagined being kissed and then a moment later we were back in laughing-off-the-question territory.

Shouldn't the doll-like German loli who just wanted to do karate from one of the author's previous series have tipped you off?

Good lord. This whole time I had never made the connection with Sasameki Koto, despite having been amazingly fond of it back in the day. Realizing it's that mangaka feels weird.
I must say, rather clever of Ikeda Takashi to write something that neatly sidesteps her main weakness as a writer. That is, Sasameki Koto was fundamentally a manga with standard romance plot arcs, except she tended to kind of lose control and have them meander off into nothing much going on while people got impatient waiting for her to pick up the threads again. With "The Two of Them Are Pretty Much Like This" she has a total slice-of-life where the main pair are already an established couple with no major conflicts, so she doesn't have to try to maintain control of any plot arcs--there aren't any. She can concentrate on characters, art, and great little "bits".

last edited at Apr 29, 2021 1:46AM

Yo where the FUCK is my marxist tokusatsu tv show seriously let me move to this world, I would die to have a bunch of sentai merch with stuff about anti-imperialism and marxism on them

You'd have to move to that world all right, 'cause it ain't gonna happen in this one. Contrary to one of Marx's comments, I think that is one sort of rope to hang them that the bourgeoisie would actually refuse to sell us.

But yeah, I would so totally watch this show.

You know, I can see why people find the MC kind of annoying, but you gotta give her props. Consider how this would be working out with a lot of MCs, whether from yuri or het romances: They'd be afraid to tell the first person they'd been hanging out with the new person, so they'd keep on doing it on the quiet and tell themselves that pretty soon they'd say something about it, but then it would get found out and lead to Huge Dramaaa which everyone would have seen coming ten chapters ahead.
This one, despite all her fears and worries, just goes in and says "I've been hanging out with the girl you hate that you told me not to and she seems nice." So, can we at least give her a shoutout for refusing to fall for the Romance Secrecy Trap?

Hang on a minute, if they're mock-battling each other, doesn't that mean our heroine loses either way? If she loses, she loses the bet and has to leave. If she wins, Lady Claire doesn't make the cut, whereas Rei DOES have to make the cut in order to win the bet. . . . wouldn't that mean they'd be separated?
Unless it's a round robin of some sort . . . I'm kind of assuming two rounds of fights, each eliminating half so that from 20 you go down to 5.

Heaven? You were exaggerating!
. . . NOW it's heaven.

So I hadn't seen this until now, came in and just looked over the most recent . . . uh, it looks like after 82 chapters there has been exactly zero progress for any of the characters. Um, not that there's anything WRONG with that . . . but is that basically where we're at here?

Whatever happened or didn't in/after the last panel, it's still more overt than they've ever been. The subtext in this relationship is rapidly becoming . . . text.

For someone who seems all plain, four-eyes is rocking rather nice garter belt, stockings and battle underwear.

That was lovely, but I absolutely don't believe in the mom acting like that. That said, I haven't really dealt with such people.

Huh. I totally had that cat pegged as a guy, but now that I think about it of course that's impossible--this is not the kind of manga where there are going to be male major characters.

As a cat owner, the one thing I find utterly unrealistic about this whole thing is the notion that a cat maid would ever get any work done.

So Nekozaki's position seems to be something like "Love is scary and I don't deserve it anyway--couldn't we just be passionate sex friends who care about each other more than about anyone else in the whole world, forever and ever, but not love?"

One thing, looks like she not only didn't go to school, she did that extreme Japanese manga thing of never leaving her room. OK, that's bad, but it implies she was totally dependent for food on whatever her parents shoved in her door. So she couldn't just eat crap--she'd have to actually walk to a convenience store if she wanted junk food. Likely they fed her a fairly healthy balanced diet . . . which she then didn't eat that much of because she was ignoring food in her depression, but it's plausible that what little she did eat was healthy food. So it might not work out as badly as one would expect.
That said, while weight loss isn't implausible, I'd expect, I dunno, a bit of slackness in her skin and a kind of flabby look.

An interracial Yuri couple... Judge me as you like, but this hits almost all my fetish buttons.

I'll judge you. You are a person of culture as well.
Either way, this series seems interesting. Never watched/read anything else from the author, though. Should I?

Sankarea is garbage, don't read it.

Hm... The "Concerto" thing was really good, but then again... It´s the only work from the artist I know. Is there something wrong with his other works?

IMO they vary a lot. Early ones tend to be sort of fun and silly and fluffy but with miles of filler (Umisho, I'm looking at you). Sankarea is darker and weird, which can be good or bad; for me it started pretty good but gradually the mangaka lost control, threw too many complications, annoying characters and plot curves to keep juggling successfully, much less resolve in a satisfying way. I dropped it towards the end. I have a weird fondness for "Otogi no Machi no Rena" because how can you not like a story revolving around sex hamsters? (they're, like, mysterious spirit hamster things which smite girls with massive lust and then use their sex energy to make more sex hamsters, or something; the MC is an attractive, energetic girl who is particularly important to the sex hamsters, which as you can imagine is quite inconvenient) But, like other early stuff by this mangaka, it's funny and energetic but kind of lazily written.
Kirei ni Shitemoraemasuka is I think much newer and you wouldn't think it was by the same person; the art is much cleaner, less sketchy, more professional and the story is much more naturalistic, simple, and paced well. I kind of miss a certain breezy cheerfulness in the early art, but overall I like it quite a bit.
Just for the record, all these are het.
Concerto is the only Yuri I'm aware of him doing, although I wasn't surprised to see one because a lot of his stuff is dominated by female characters.

I don't think I'm going to be into this, just because it takes something pretty compelling for me to sit still for being depressed. This isn't quite good enough to make up for being outside of my strike zone.

But I do find some of the objections weird. As some have pointed out, it's really not particularly unrealistic--sure, maybe a bit if set in the present minute of Japan, but the time period is vague--there are cars, but I haven't seen any cell phones. Very slightly before the present moment, this is pretty normal except for the lack of euphemisms, and not just in Japan. As politics drifts rightward in various places (half-random example: Hungary) I wouldn't be surprised to see this kind of thing make a comeback. Heck, Saudi Arabia is worse than this now.

I also think people are mistaken in thinking the virginity test thing is unrealistic. Sure, it doesn't work, but so what? It's the kind of thing authoritarians are going to convince themselves does work because they want to do something like that. And it's not just that they're sadistic bastards, although why else would they work there? It's because they're exerting control, intimidating, preparing the inmates for the big rape with little ones. It is, in short, exactly what a place like that would do; whether it accomplishes the stated purpose is almost beside the point.

So this chapter is "Gonna have blood sucked by a vampire and die in a year in a doomed tragic love affair . . . Swimsuit edition!!!"
Oookay.

ugh, fellas, this story is an unfortunate turn-off for me. right off the bat, using your pointer finger to finger someone? middle works best

Really, that's entirely a matter of individual style. Yeah, yeah, middle finger is longer, but I for one find I have significantly better control and sensitivity with my index finger. I've tried working with middle, but for me personally it is not the best primary approach. So, you know, different strokes for different digits.

The sleeping scene was just sweet!

The sleeping scene was extremely sweet.

I’m not completely convinced it was just sweet, however.

Clasped tightly in master's embrace on the bed inhaling her scent, breathing hard and moaning "I like it!" . . . no, I'm not convinced it was just sweet, either.

I loved, loved, loved the Scottish accent. Really, I like almost every other accent better than Southern US ones (apologies to Southern US people), so a change from that was nice. And I'm personally particularly fond of Scottish accents. I've just been revelling in it.

I've really been wondering when are we going to get the big blowup surrounding the overseas sabbatical.

L for Loser... that's what she is, 'cause she didnt bet on love and went to marry and be unhappy

It could actually be for a lot of things:

Beloved Lady...

Or maybe it's Beloved Lu. Doctor x Doctor is the inevitable end game?!

Quite evitable, I think.