Somehow it completely went over my head for 10 years that the aunt is a pervert, it's so funny now to consider this when reading the chapters focused on her

I think the question is "Do we really WANT to claim this trashfire as trans rep?"
There are other things we can claim instead! Ansatsu Kyoshitsu! Zombieland Saga! Pandora in the Crimson Shell!
Y'know, things that don't suck.

I must admit that I don't really understand what the concept of "rep" is, because it sounds like centering a character around a trait? But reading Lara as transfem just makes sense and I don't think whether somebody thinks or not that the story is good erases those parallels? Especially because Leo and Kota are characters there, too, and Kota in specific had its gender hidden by a finger in its document. Trans (coded or otherwise) characters should also exist in works that may be considered mediocre by others.

I don't know, I just like seeing transness in things and discuss their portrayal.

Also, learning that the writer for Lara also wrote the live-action adaptation for Young Ladies Don't Play Fighting Games (which had a brand-new ending where the main characters split up and never meet again for some reason) doesn't really help my feelings with Lara.

Ohh... that's kind of funny then. I don't mind them being separated forever (though I still don't think this is what really happens?), just wish it had a better set up for that if that was indeed the intention, because I enjoy the feelings that come with a farewell and the characters' own yearning.

PlazEmf's post does bring up an interesting point regarding the mermaids beyond their portrayal as the conservative presence controlling Lara, so it all goes back to how this really needed more episodes... but I can't dislike something with so much fish (for. reasons) and awesome visual storytelling, so ultimately I'm still fine with this because it remains true to how she didn't need to find "true love" and can now love on her own terms, and I have fun thinking about how aspects of it could have been better.

I think is a valid question, one reason that everyone says is homophobia but another reason that most people don’t want to admit is that yuri fans like that more than-less than and that is why a lot of yuri is like that.
I don’t think Sayonara Lala is that different to other series of the same vein, I don’t think it didn’t commit, I just think is what a portion of yuri fans don’t want to see nowadays.

I do not disagree that there are many of us who enjoy those relationships that seem to be stuck in a vague state (I sure do lol especially when it's because of reasons beyond the characters' control), where neither of the characters put clearly into words just what they are, or they never cross a line, but this still doesn't really make yuribait real. I say this because Yuri is a genre that focuses on the relationship between women, and yes, often that relationship is romantic in nature, with terms, structures and desires many are already familiar with, but it's natural that there would be works where what the characters have can be considered nebulous, or even something that is considered questionable and against all social norms.

And sometimes that nebulousness comes from homophobia, and that homophobia sometimes comes from being a direct victim of it and/or its perpetrator. The way that homophobia is used will vary from story to story, and it could come in the form of a tragedy where neither character gets to be happy with the other, comphet, anything really. But sometimes, that nebulousness comes from loving or wanting to be loved in an atypical way, from not wanting to be labeled or fitting into existent labels, from wanting to create something of your own.

But to affirm that something can be yuribait is to affirm that there is a real model of a relationship, only one way of women loving the other, and it then comes the question of who decides the criteria to make it count as real, what is that criteria, and why is it being enforced on a genre focused exactly on a gender minority (both cis and trans, even if not necessarily binary women) that feels even more the pressure to bend themselves into a type of romantic partner for men and end up bringing that trauma into their own dynamics. And while this may not have been what you meant, because I'm not trying to put words into anyone's mouth, it is what many others mean.

Like, TCR is my favorite yuri novel, and if I'm not misremembering as usual, the two main characters never declare their love to the other in dialogue by using words typical to that context, like "I love you", except in this one scene where the conflict gives a completely different weight to those words, one where it is not even about their love itself but what they are to the other, it uses other means to show what kind of relationship the two have through the setting itself and their explicit attraction to the other. So I thought that was interesting.
Another that I like that I has the discussion of relationship and labels themselves is Urasekai Picnic, but I think this interview with the author does this discussion much more justice than I ever could.

But there are many other yuri works that aren't so bold with the discussion around sexuality, that don't use words that denote a specific concept, that display those deep feelings, romantic or otherwise, through the character's actions instead or as something inherent to the other themes it deals with. The homophobia makes people deny the meaning behind those actions and choices. But that's still yuri, even if an author or the audience tries to deny it, like how there are authors who try to deny trans parallels out of transphobia. Sayonara Lara is yuri regardless of the characters getting together or not, and this is true to all the other works where the girls don't get a happy ending. We got to see what Lara and Mari felt for the other, and the story concluded with both alive because their love for the other saved them, and this is why I do understand the frustration of those who did want romance, because those vague things are more present in the genre, it comes with the misogyny that haunts us, but still, it isn't entirely about romance with clear features.

I don't know, maybe how I feel about it is different as someone who, for multiple reasons, feels they are defective in a way and is minimally interested in having a relationship with or any interest in others, and mostly enjoys seeing those things through yuri works instead. But I think both those types of stories should exist, they're both queer, and it's not really always going to be out of a desire to yet again shut down the sexuality of women, it's just another part of it, how some people love. This ambiguity is something I have experienced myself at some point, so it's not something that only exists in fiction, and it stings a bit to see it defined as something that solely exists to censor lesbian relationships.

she really said "excuse me i have to have a two hour fuckathon about this very stressfull situation my wife was just in, see ya"

English is such a wonderful language sometimes.

I think we just have two very different perspectives of the series. I'm glad that the series is incredible for you and that the ending didn't damage it. For me however the ending was awful for the reasons I stated, and as I said in the entirety of my full comment I think there are examples of doing independence and love better. To me this series half-assed both of those things, and in a way that genuinely sucks with queer love and the entire history of it, along with how others have said this doesn't exist in a vacuum. I don't think I have anymore to add really, I don't want to change your mind, and I'm firm in my own views. So ultimately we probably have to agree to disagree and that's fine, again while I hated the ending I'm happy you loved the series so much.

I'm not trying to change yours either (I only quoted that bit because I tend to write relatively long posts but I was trying to reply to it as a whole. I can't tell if you're being ironic about me liking it, but I hope I wasn't rude or hurtful in my reply? It's not my intention) or trying to impose my thoughts on anyone else. I understand there are people who don't deal well with this for reasons that may be fair (though I do not agree with the existence of yuribait, and how people in other spaces want them to kiss for it to be real), I just wanted to add my own thoughts into the discussion too since it was mostly people who didn't like it talking, and some even portraying points of the story in inaccurate ways.

Yeah I feel like people strongly focusing on Lara's independence here are handing the creatives a "Get Out of Jail Free" card, by basically saying it's okay for the creators to not commit to the relationship and to only give us a maybe they'll be together in the future non committal ending. When as the title you mentioned, The Lovers, gives us BOTH a much stronger narrative of independence and sapphic love in a far shorter amount of time. Lara wanting her independence is good in theory but the creatives in this case ultimately use it as an excuse to not commit to any emotional or physical intimacy between Lara and Mari in the end, when they could have done both in meaningful ways like the spoiler tagged title did. As others have said even a hug would have been lovely, but I feel like the creatives were cowards.

I think that it is within their right not to commit to it if that's the kind of story they want to write, because it's their work, not ours, and they don't necessarily owe anything to the audience, but it's also the audience's right to complain about the aspects of it they didn't like and analyze them and the reasons behind, their tendencies. And yes, a lot of the time this is happening to fictional girls, I am not denying that at all because there is a very clear pattern of not taking them seriously, stripping girls of their sexuality or attraction as a whole so we can't deny the homophobia and misogyny present behind those choices. I understand where everyone who disliked it is coming from, it's a complex discussion for sure.

But at the same time, I also do enjoy something that's more nebulous, that's special to the characters themselves (like in Urasekai Picnic), that may have been born out of the settings' suffering on them or even the author's. Some are comparing this to the story choices in Utena, but I've never watched it (flashing lights...) so I can't say how accurate this comparison is, so I wonder if anyone has anything to say about that. Though now that we are getting works that are explicit lesbian romances, I don't really think the choice here is as bad as people treat it, because of the themes of being pressured into romance like life (literally) depends on it, and the fact that a girl was even considered as another to love, and is loved, is really good.

My reading of it may be considerably different from most people's, because I definitely do not feel that negative about it and have already rewatched each episode at least twice, so no I do not think the discussion over Lara's independence is sudden—or, at the very least, it isn't for me when I've been very interested from the start in the patriarchal and amatonormativity aspect of the story's themes. I just didn't want to participate in the discussion before because of how different my interpretation of the story is (Example: I didn't see the train scene as Lara being cold, but holding herself back instead not to change her mind) and many people seem to be considerably frustrated. I'm not trying to think of what would be the realistic choice for the character's to make, either, but thinking about what's presented and was previously presented that could have led to that outcome, and those things are there and they make sense to me, they just lacked the details that would make it as strong as it could have been (Though Luca's ambiguous line was very ??? I'd say, and the one thing in it that actually doesn't make sense to me if we interpret it as them actually dating and breaking up considering Lara's previous realization).

Which is why, as I said in my other post, I wish they had developed Mari's character more, explored her issues, explored her relation to christianity and romance itself, and there were little hints of it when she was clearly jealous of Lara advancing on her relationship with Luca, but that imo wasn't enough to really establish that connection between her and Lara.
Regardless of all that, it's still a romantic story about how a girl was saved by another girl's love and her own love for her, made that love explicit to the other, and now can finally be a person whose love belongs to her only as it should have from the start. It is called Sayonara Lara so there was going to be some sort of departure at some point, even if it temporary.

I watched it in JP while many watched it with subtitles that were clearly MTL, so I wonder how much of that affected the tone of the story for some. Apparently, the dub's translation is a lot better than the subtitles', but I can't confirm that because I can't understand english well.

But I liked Sayonara Lara a lot. I just wish people didn't disregard the whole story and all of the work's other qualities because of an ending they didn't like, I guess. Lara and Mari love the other and I don't think it erased any of that.

@girlswhokiss:

Your comment is long so I won't quote it to make this forum easier to scroll lol, but I also share your same frustrations. I had my own criticisms of how they handled the ending, but some people on Twitter (yeah yeah, Twitter being Twitter) will make you think they retconned everything in the epilogue. I am seriously concerned at the large amount of people who continue to want Mari to be Lara's true love, as if the entire point wasn't that the pressure on young women to find "true love" to save their kingdom was unsustainable and the root cause of a lot of the female mermaid's suffering. It's like being frustrated that Utena wasn't the prince that saved Anthy.

Isn't it better that Lara still chooses to love Mari, even if it isn't "true" love?

Yeah, I think it's clear what they were trying to go for when you consider everything else the story was touching on, even if it didn't work the way they wanted it to exactly because there were many bits of the story left unexplored, that more episodes were needed for. But it's simply wrong to try and analyze it as a story that was solely focused on romance and judge it solely on how it handled it, when so much of it was about a girl who couldn't bend herself into fitting an oppressive system that literally took the light out of their women, and even had the existence of another woman like her hidden away from her so she wouldn't be influenced even further by her deviance.
And this is like, where my own personal complaints come regarding how we didn't also
see this angle from Mari herself, who comes from a christian family and even has christian reasons on why she is named Mari. Had this aspect of her character been explored more, the scene where her cross necklace is broken wouldn't just signify her letting go of her grief thanks to Lara coming into her life, but also the heterosexual violence imposed over women by christianity and her determination to go against it.
The story was already dealing with comphet and amatonormativity, so it would have been interesting to see this through Mari, especially with how much she had in common with Lara, and how it could have contributed to Lara's choice to become independent and Mari's decision to respect that.

So again, I do get the frustration of it not being romantic the way some wanted, that there are many yuri stories where the relationship is ambigous (even though I don't think that's a problem) and many don't like that, but this wasn't a story just about how love doesn't mean being with a man, but also about autonomy and their love being their own, not what everyone wants out of them and I'm not very happy about the general disregard of an aroace but still lesbian angle. I like bittersweet endings, so I really don't mind them being separated before they can be together again (this is an explicitly stated desire and I personally see the white fade-out as putting an end to the fairy tale, not their connection), but in my opinion, what was really necessary for it to really land was more development on Mari's character and what this separation meant to her.

I think that, in the story's attempt at showing that being with Luca wasn't the right choice for Lara, it did end up focusing too much on her relationship with him and didn't leave time for more with her and Mari. There was still so much to explore on her character.

I think the issue I have with comments like from girlswhokiss is this undercurrent that these things were mutually exclusive; for her independence, she needed this separation from Mari. I know the director wants that to be the case but it doesn't follow. I also don't see enough discussion again of where this leaves Mari's character.

I'm not really trying to say those things are mutually exclusive, but I think the points we wanted to have gone differently may be... different lol. I like the idea of the separation so they can exist together without their love being about others, but again, it's Mari that needed more focus on her character so that, if we consider the two as the focus of the story, this involved both characters with more significance, because for Lara it does make sense.

The trans reading is also very dear to me. Watching her father strike Lara's legs from her was sickening. It's also why I grew to like the ending as I let myself think about it. She's still stumbling and her legs are still painful but she wants to keep walking. I can't hate that, good for her.

The scene where Lara's father forcefully took her legs away was probably one of the most gut-wrenching moments in the whole work, he was literally stripping away her humanity from her as the last display of his power over her life. And if Lara wanted to regain not just that form, but her autonomy as a whole and control over how her own feelings are used, she had to drag herself through maws that only grew that powerful due to how much she loathed what she was. They handed out the trans reading for free

I liked the ending a lot and I think it does fit really well thematically (the opening's lyrics hit different now knowing what happens... Idk if there's an english translation but they're really cool with the anime's story), but I don't like how the majority of the criticism isn't taking the context of the work itself in consideration, but what the audience wanted it to be like to the point of distorting the characters to be vile versions of themselves (Those are two fictional teenager girls who have had their own struggles made explicitly throughout the work... no need to distort that.) The train scene for example, many ignore that the plan is for them to live together and that even for Lara herself, that wasn't an easy choice, and when she notices Mari is crying, there's clear hesitation on her part. What Sayonara Lara really needed was a few more episodes to further flesh out the relationship between the two girls and Mari's character itself.

Lara's desire for independence to make own choices is something that has been hinted throughout the episodes and it goes together with the themes of patriarchy. The way the princess' light is used not for her own benefit, but for others', how she can't escape from the pressure of marrying a man, and even when she found out that it didn't have to be a man, the other mermaids wanted to take that love away from her and make it for them, without considering what Lara herself wanted, because Lara only existed to provide her light, her body, her feelings... all of these are part of it, and now, she can have her love for Mari to herself, the urgency is gone.

This is one of my favorite animated works so it sucks that all discussion online about it is so extreme with one side even going as far as calling it "yuribait" (this doesn't exist and if you insist on saying there wasn't anything really going on between Lara and Mari you're just homophobic. Leaving aside that this comes from people thinking lesbian relationships need to be a certain way, I sure wish I lived in an universe yuri is so lucrative you can trick people into it to get money) and the other ignoring that there was indeed some pacing issues, so really if there had been just a few more episodes, I don't think the reaction would have been so negative, and maybe more impactful than them just staying together without facing reality following the fairy-tale model Lara was trying to escape from the start. My interpretation of this scene is that she is taking her life into her hands and building a reality where she can love as she wants, without the pressure of others choosing how she needs to express it, and become whoever she wants. I don't like labeling things, but their relationship was still queer, could even be described as aroace, and the text itself has established just how valuable they are to the other.

And personally? I'm a lot more interested in the transgender themes present in the work rather than the romance itself. It just comes with Lara being a mermaid, so there are clear physical differences between her and a human girl that make it easy to other her, who is interested in something that's forbidden to her, punished for tainting herself with what her conservative family considered inferior and hideous, fighting to be able to remain a human. Same goes for Grace, especially the scene of her affirming that she is a human, a woman. They're like two different results of a transfeminine struggle. Grace couldn't save herself, and didn't even think it was possible to reach a different outcome, but she could save Lara, and Lara was then seen for what she really was, a human girl. So if you read this story through trans lens, it's like a metaphor for a trans girl who was saved by another trans woman and could finally get what she wanted, and now that she found somewhere to belong, someone who saw her for what she is, she can be free and a person of her own, and I really like this reading. A story of two girls healing the other.
Plus, Kota can be easily interpreted as a transmasc fish and Leo is so obviously transfem, the way she was looking at Luca's finalized painting... something clicked in her head lol

So what I mean to say is that I don't like that people are classifying this story as not being queer. I think it's fine to be frustrated that you wanted something that's more allosexual/romantic in nature and to see more of the two girls (I did want to see more too!) but you can do that without making it so that the amatonormativity Lara was running away from was the only way to make their relationship real in the story. It's yuri no matter what anyone says.

I am generally speaking, but this is not the first time Nya-Chan has been aggressive towards trans users for seeing their own experiences in a work (where they even compared trans people to the bigots harassing a fictional character) that deals exactly with gender and the pressure that comes from not fitting into a binary or cis label. Sorry but I find it plainly offensive to deny or act like it's oppressive or invalidating to suggest that the character here could at the very least be non-binary by trying to distance any sort of Gender Non-Conformity or even cross dressing from transness itself.

Yes, there is a lot of complexity in this discussion especially regarding cross dressing, but that's off-topic. My point is, why does Homare have to be a GNC boy, why can't he be non-binary and transfem, why does this character need to be strictly aligned to the social position of a man? What's the problem in a transfem reading of him? In what way does this hurt a GNC reading if not out of transphobia? (because they happen to share an experience with trans people, and somehow that's 'invalidating'?) Why is the concept of a GNC cis character being prioritized over that of a transfem non-binary (or even a woman) character like it's being shut down by it?

Every time there's this discussion, people have a tendency to put everyone above transfems, like transfems somehow have way more power over them (and no, I am not denying that users who are more in favor of a GNC reading couldn't also be transfem, but they still end up sharing the opinion of the majority), and even if it was not directly stated, I am talking about the implication that trans people are "stealing characters" or "hoarding experiences". I get the feeling sometimes that this forum hates non-binary people and don't even bother to consider that non-binary transfems (who may not consider themselves women at all!) exist.
Do we really need to keep drawing some clear line that'll only hurt others by keeping them stuck as something they aren't happy as and not even spare characters from it in the process?

Like, what does this do other than frame transness as bad and something even fictional characters need to be protected from?

The concept of "transfeminized" does not exist outside of queer circles, only a spiteful "different, therefore bad" mindset. Yup, I get shit, but there's not really a point in differentiating flavours of queerphobia.

Disagree. There is a point in differentiating them. People who were camab are violently banned from femininity (and will punish others who were forced into the same classification if they dare to "taint" themselves with femininity and imply "masculinity" isn't as firm and biological as they want it to be). The existence of transfems is a threat to the status of "man" as a dominating social power and the bioessentialism surrounding it, and those things will manifestate not just in how we navigate through our lives, but in works of art and how transfeminized characters are portrayed and often forced into staying as the role of a "man" and/or their inherent transfemininity denied both by the author and their audience.

People may not know there is a name for this unique kind of oppression, but we all have our biases and act on them even unknowingly.

This is the case for any other sort of social dynamics such as racism and xenophobia, and there will be more specific manifestations of it depending on who the target is, such as racial minorities or disabled folks. It's why there are so many characters who are a clear portrayal of the "delusional transfem" stereotype, why Black people are portrayed as aggressive, why South America is portrayed as a jungle with uncivilized natives, why bisexual people are portrayed as cheaters, etc. Those all have things with common, but they aren't expressed the same way.

I think it's pretty clear the translator translated this one exactly because of those trans undertones.

Transfemininity is inherent to the genre of the cross dressing boy, because trans itself is the denial of one's cagab (and while for some it is also an identity label, it's ultimately a social class that includes even those who are non-binary but prefer not to label themselves as trans because they are under the same oppressive system of being forced into a cis state) and many of the expectations that come with it, and a lot of characters in this genre express a clear desire not to be a man, and sometimes even explicitly wish to be women.

I'm just so done with people acting like they're allies but will then use one of the things that impacts us the most to mock us. If you care about trans people you need to learn about how they're hurt, be aware of dogwhistles and stop denying something being transphobic simply because you have no experience with it.

I'm trying to be as respectful as possible with what I'm saying and not being ironic. I'm not a native english speaker and have trouble phrasing my thoughts. But I'm not so dumb I don't sense the transphobia in the background. Bye.

Being able to identify a transphobic joke isn't being "chronically online" and I'm sick and tired of people implying that trans people, a demographic that tends to suffer exactly from isolation (and this applies even more to transfems), are somehow lesser for caring about the discrimination against them that manifests online and eventually spreads to physical places because we don't live in an era where the internet isn't as accessible to the general public anymore. This joke was and still is so prevalent it's spread to my country in certain spaces.
Too many instead of thinking about why they're being called transphobic, immediately get defensive because they consider being called bigoted the Actual Real Offense and don't really care about possibly being bigoted. I have been called misogynistic here before and instead of losing it and calling oppressed people, who often only have the internet to be themselves, "chronically online" I reflected on why I was being called that and put in the effort to do better because I WAS being misogynistic.
If you're frequently being called transphobic there may be an actual reason for that, and it's not trans users trying to "erase" GNC cis characters. (Weird to imply trans characters are portrayed more than GNC cis characters, all while forgetting that GNC trans people do exist and have their genders under a much bigger pressure than that of their cis counterparts. Stop forgetting cis people are the dominant class when it comes to gender independently of the other ways they are queer.)

It's really cool that we get our social isolation and dependence on the internet to find others like us, escape the constant misgendering and abuse in our lives or even our physical bodies used against us whenever we point out ways which we are discriminated.

Blatant transphobia going on in this discussion with repeated degendering of a fellow translator on the site.

Yay they get to be perverted and happy together!

Hi everyone, just wanted to apologize for the slowness again... last month/the last few weeks have been kind of rough at home and I'm also having to take care of a bunch of baby animals on top of a disabled bird in an ambient that's not fit for that, so I haven't been able to concentrate on anything much. Things have settled down a bit so I'm trying to pick up the rhythm again.

I really, really like this volume even if it can be a bit difficult to get used to the change in the scale of things, and it was also the one that finished making me go absolutely crazy about TCR and want to translate it. What happens is one of those things you can't really talk about without giving 10 spoiler warnings, so I'm looking forward to what others have to say about the story :D

Sucks how this kind of work tends to attract some unpleasant people, including many yuri fans who are way too quick to deny there being anything between the girls because it's not romantic in the way they want it to be, so they end up doing almost the same thing as the homophobic fans. I wish they'd read Urasekai Picnic and use that as motivation to learn about non-conventional but still deep queer relationships.
It's specially upsetting for Sayonara Lara because love is exactly what the story wants to explore, the protagonist is a girl who strays from her family's (conservative) principles and from the start it's shown that the conventional doesn't work for her and she's always drawn to what's considered forbidden... and yet people were like, "she's definitely going to end with that boy!" or calling it "yuribait" (a concept that doesn't exist but that's a whole other discussion) and it's just so sad to see people not try to think about just what's the intent behind all those scenes, the colors used, the framing, why a certain character shows up when Lara thinks of certain things, the themes themselves! So all the stuff that's part of art... and only accept that it is indeed a yuri story when it's explicitly told in a way they deem acceptable.

It's kind of disappointing and I wish we lived in an era we didn't need something to be necessarily romantic, following very specific criteria that won't work for everyone, for people to consider their relationship real and not just "friends". ; _;

Anyway I love the height gap here :3 average height and slightly short is awesome too

They're on our website for now! And yeah we're alive, sorry for the inactivity here. I've finished translating vol 3's prologue so it only needs editing now and am starting on the next chapter tomorrow :> really excited to work on this volume

hello looking for a oneshot i read a while ago.

its about a girl who's got a crush on a girl working at a clothes store and they bond and the lady makes clothes for her and stuff and then it turns out she's actually got issues with spending and keeps buying too much cloth.

thats basically all i remembesorry and thanks in advance if anyone knows it, i'd be very happy to read it again

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/picnic_1

I know it's been a while since this finished, but honestly, I really liked how the kiss wasn't shown, it made that scene a lot more romantic imo. The moment was for them only, and we the readers only get a little peek at it

What Toriko Urasekai Picnic said about "an axe makes a woman look beautiful" but wormgirls and hammers

I love how Takahashi is so drooly as a worm, girl just needs an answer to her question before she can go peacefully bury herself in a hole again. I like how she's drawn a lot cuter than even the other human girls while Niehara looks like a fucking ao oni in that page

Yeah haha, I've missed seeing your Erikaposting to be honest. Thanks for sharing the extras

I miss those three so much...

Just this book, there still are two volumes left to translate! And both are around the same length as volume 2
This is the point where things really start for them, and the story gets kinda crazy later on, it's awesome. I'm very excited to get started on volume 3... but after I'm done sorting the TL notes and a little break :P

I loved the art in this one

It's just transphobia, but they think we can't notice what's quietly being said behind the guise of "protecting" the comfort of non-binary people—people who had and still have the idea that they aren't trans like the others used to keep them from being able to access community, HRT and surgeries, and you'll also see specifically non-binary transfems often shoving themselves into a strict woman category so they aren't treated as men-lite, but still have their status as non-binary denied by other trans people—possibly being associated with transness, like they aren't included inside it by default.
But no matter how much you state what the work itself already makes explicitly clear, there'll always be someone doing a disservice to non-binary people as a whole by arguing about what it could mean to people on an individual level (and no questioning of why the discomfort with being associated with trans as a concept) when it's a social group-level category that says nothing about your identity on a personal level.

If people still keep trying to deny Ren being trans after what they see happening later on, the only way to describe that reaction is transphobia through the purposeful denial of the trans themes.

And if anyone wants to be spoiled and know the scene that makes it absolutely explicit, for context yes, Ren wears a binder, so at that point it's clear they have chest dysphoria, and Matsuri says something (it's been months since I read it so I won't be able to say what exactly, sorry, but iirc she does notice the difference in volume) that makes Ren uncomfortable, so they end up running away, showering somewhere else and start punching their chest and also later they're misgendered by Matsuri's ex-husband, who was also being misogynistic, and is visibly uncomfortable, but she stands up for them.

Yay! I was looking forward to seeing this part adapted

...Huh, so did they reproduce or are they capable of handling two bodies at the same time...? I thought that it was some sort of digestive enzyme being vomited into her mouth, but if eating the body was necessary to mimic it, then they wouldn't have been able to mimic the original Niehara since it was Takahashi who ate him. Or is this just some temporary body control...?