it's extremely rare that i read an age gap romance and think "oh, this same age side couple are actually more interesting". shouko is just a way better match for him, in personality and chemistry, so that backpedaling at the end was actually pretty disappointing. to the point i wish the manga had just been about them instead :/ oh well. only so much you can do with a spinoff i guess

Could someone please explain what she's talking about on page 26?

Editor here… had a rough time with that one lmao. We concluded it’s not supposed to make sense.

It makes little sense when talking about hair, of course, but it does use an actual Japanese expression

damn, thank you for this. that explains a lot. hadn't even thought to search it as an idiom

Could someone please explain what she's talking about on page 26?

i kind of figured by nails etc she meant "cuticles" and it just came out funny. and the silly but totally in love sentiment of "i would take on all the bad parts for both of us so you can be your best and most beautiful self".

sweet as always, ty for the tl!

so, i don't really get the critiques here. the artist was trying to convey an emotionally charged concept, not worldbuild. those are two separate purposes. logical holes don't matter as long as the heart of the work lands. that's subjective of course, and it's fine if it doesn't for you, but don't judge it by a rubric it never intended to fill.

anyway! my personal take is, this hits very acutely as a longtime shut-in NEET with brain issues(tm). it might be the autism specifically? but the first half is very clear in setting kei up as this freak outsider who's rejected by everyone around her and can't understand why. that's why she built marie in the first place. BUT, and here's the really fun part: what if you look at both of them as very unreliable, flawed narrators? i'm pretty sure that was the intent. everyone here talking about what love is and isn't, and that's the point. kei never had the emotional maturity or experience to know what love is. she could only piece together the idea of it from fiction, ideals, etc, and the end is her getting trapped within that forever. it's definitely dark.

i get the feeling kei has a much longer history of isolation from other humans than we get to see here. she's not really sure what humanity itself is/means, and so her sense of ethics is incompatible with most people. it's funny. you see her in the latter half finally learning to connect with other people, but she was missing that last bit of emotional maturity and empathy to understand what marie was going through. she's very self-centered, i guess is the right word? but it's still a tragedy, even if she brought it all on herself.

all in all, i really liked this. artist is awesome in general but this work is definitely a standout, and im glad i read it. i hope they get serialized at some point ngl

this is insanely hot. i don't even watch vtubers

@Gamer40000 i assumed they meant elichika, her nickname. sunshine just made that a lot more confusing lol

check out that autism on display! really enjoying this lmao, artist never misses. well paced, drama never feels shoehorned in, and it's compelling and entertaining. excited to see more chapters as they're translated, huge props to the people working on it

woohoo!!!! my love live otp! super cute :)

that was really interesting! pacing could have used some work, but i liked the plot and setting a lot. ending honestly just felt like how nanoha always ended its seasons: central conflict tied up, antagonists befriended or neutralized/allied... it's a very neat way of wrapping things up, but in exchange it doesn't leave much impact. i think all in all it works though, at least for me. solid 7/10

i haven't checked also, but im guessing this was a web manga? the art is rough in places, so im guessing this was an indie project and story the artist just really wanted to share. kinda inspiring tbh, i need to follow their example

this is pretty high quality, both in art and writing. definitely gonna be keeping up. age gap yuri truly never misses, huh

binged this in one night and i'm glad i did. also pleasantly surprised at the direction it's gone, because i initially dropped it early on for the childhood friend setup, but it did a total 180 on my expectations. nanao has been a fun detour, and i get the feeling it won't last long? since the core fun of this is in the sexy prostitute antics and how much it's changed asumi herself. she's way more confidently horny now too, i'm proud of her. also senpai IS kind of scummy (affectionate) and that's what makes her a fun character here, she's the foil to asumi's earnest good girl thing. if i wish anything, it's that once she and nanao break up, nanao finds a new (eventual) gf. ena would be cute tbh

(also, next time i go to japan, i might be looking into trying one of these....)

yeah this translation is beyond bad. can windyfall slow down their releases in favor of like, QC? or getting somebody better with jp/eng? there's literally no point in pushing out a TL this bad when it's impossible to follow.

"You Still Rely on MAGIC?" deserves this tag imo. hell of an ending

humiliation kink is great, definitely agree with the sentiment to make a tag for it. this particular manga was a little weak in execution, and honestly the exaggerated sex faces killed it for me, but the setup wasn't bad imo. also i wish nsfw artists like this drew pubes more often :(

(off topic but FWIW, if you look at the etymology of "groom" in that sense (sexual), the earliest documented use is in the 1980s when homophobia was really, really bad. make of that what you will)

other people have mentioned it, but boundaries are interesting. with misa, io wants her to press them, and they have a mutual agreement (based in trust) that she can. also, their relationship has developed a lot up until this point, and io has been obviously into it and seeking misa out every time. which, then take hase completely ignoring all of io's human boundaries. she takes away io's privacy, agency over her life, and now even her body itself. io never got a say in the first place, so it's no wonder she's terrified.

the almost slap was extremely telling too. like, the way her hand trembled because she had to force herself not to hit this girl? and only because it would damage io as property. i'm excited to see when and how she gets what's coming to her, and io frees herself. misa being protective is great, but for io's sake, i hope she's the one who draws the line in the end.

Soooo...this must be a pure coincidence but...

Am I the only one who thinks Lady Lapis and Diana vaguely, possibly, maybe resemble Shizuma and Nagisa from Strawberry Panic?

Or are my rose tinted glasses needing to be cleaned?

this is funny because i was thinking the exact same thing reading it. fortunately this story is way more skillfully written than strawpani lol

some really interesting theories in here, though. i'm not sure where the plot is leading rn but i'm along for the ride. diana is a good girl and i want her to be happy, but i'm a total sucker for lapis/natori. rooting for them 100%

read the whole comment thread after the manga itself, and it's pretty funny. i'm a cis lesbian reading it because i like the way the main couple are written, it's genuinely really sweet! and i also agree with it being at least subtextually strong on the trans interpretation.

see, there are different kinds of genderbend manga. i've been on dynasty a very long time (account is just new because i never cared about posting), and while i don't go out of my way to read them, once in a while i do. and most of those take the "oh no im a girl now" in either a horny direction or a super heterosexual one (or both). like, super masculine man gets turned into a hot girl and then all of a sudden is submissively fawning over a male character. those are written for cis straight people with a kink.

genderbend manga like this, however, are often an easy hook for closeted trans people (who do very much exist in japan, btw). and the writing of the protagonist does feel like it's leaning in that direction. his life was empty and meaningless before, he's a total weirdo to the other guys and doesn't fit in, and the key point people keep bringing up: he's totally fine with being a girl. i'm cis. i can say with total confidence that if being with someone i loved required me to become a man, i would bail. the idea makes me extremely uncomfortable! but i have close trans friends who feel the opposite, that if there were an easy "instant sex change" button, they'd press it.

like, this isn't to say i know For Sure that's where the story is headed, and i'm along for the ride as much as anybody else here. but it's a valid reading of the story, and i'm curious to see where it'll play out from here. it really does help that the main couple are so cute. i'm surprised i got attached as much as i have

i love rokuroichi's yuri. they were a huge art inspiration for me for years and years, and i own a physical copy of this specific manga too. i think their main thing was het unfortunately, and their yuri career was pretty short lived... but they have this incredible knack for evocative paneling and making all the touches and kisses feel real and intimate. i hope one day i can draw makeouts as well as they did

tsubame became mega compelling at the end there. was that her mother? she and sakura are both isolated and detached from other people, and it's easier to see in sakura with her anxiety, but there's this clear thread of tsubame not connecting on an emotional (vulnerable?) level. she has this strong admiration for art and creation, and the humanity in that? the peek into a person's world you get through their work. i totally understand that too. i feel like it's easy to love art by others, but much harder to bare your own soul in the same way, and without that nothing you create will really leave an impact. it's the awkward, messy, ugly parts of ourselves that make us human (real), after all

i was worried going in when i saw it was windyfall again, but this TL was surprisingly well done! enough that it didn't hinder my enjoyment of the story at all, which was a relief. super cute art, super cute premise. i definitely hope we'll get to see more of these two, i'm sold on the dynamic

asuka/kumiko otp! so cuuuuuuute

everything about this feels like maika just, like, lost. not just her literal life but the two leads are way more concerned with each other too? and she just completely loses any relevance and becomes a plot device. and i could go for that if the writing showed any empathy toward her, like... Sad Yearning stuff, i enjoy that! but it's presented like the problem is fixed(tm) and she's fine with just being a ghost now. it winds up feeling, funnily, really egocentric for the main girl. the world still revolves around her and no one else has feelings that matter. i wonder how old the author is?

i was here for it too up til the final chapter but wow that was extremely messy, i can't defend any of that lol. unfortunate

the most frustrating thing about this manga is how the title is translated. うたかた is written in hiragana and typically means like, seafoam, things ephemeral (like the ending of (original) the little mermaid). i agree that reading it as "how to sing", the method of improving, makes a lot of sense too. but then you really have to read it as a play on words. as-is, literally all of that is lost. it's a fun story though, and my only complaint there would be that maika isn't the love interest, but that's just personal taste

I enjoy the anime so I'm definitely interested, I just worry how they'll handle the 3 year gap with the game. As an FGO player I'm pretty exhausted by server gaps at this point, that one is 2 years lol

this also concerns me a little. one of my top favorite girls doesn't get added til months after 2nd anniversary, so unless they change the pacing that will be brutal for a lot of people. i hope the quality balances it out, at least. especially in cases like tamamo cross (another fav of mine) where she speaks in osakaben, because there are so many ways that can go wrong...

new official site: https://umamusume.com/

as a longtime player of jp now, i'm super hyped. for anyone who hasn't played, you can make the protagonist female and the romantic subtext (or text in many cases) remains or gets stronger. it's attracted a big following of yumejoshi for that reason, all for the girls! not to mention horse girls are a female only species and we've gotten bits and pieces of lore re: that, like there's a specific gesture that's romantic and pretty intimate and can only be done between them. it's extremely yuri friendly.

the translation seems to be in-house by cygames as well, and i'm hoping it's solid. it'd be really nice to see it be successful in the west too, now that people will be able to appreciate the story :)