if anyone has any idea on this piece of info, that'd be great.

https://note.com/haaaaasmd/
Husky and Medley are indeed still together, with Medley continuing activities on twitter/note. Their new account is above.

They did hold a marriage ceremony sometime in 2018 (they delayed reporting it until 2019 for privacy purposes), and a few years ago moved away from Tokyo for Medley's job. (There was some unrest at the time with Medley wavering as to whether she should take the transfer/opportunity since it'd mean she'd have to be away from Husky, but somehow they seem to have managed to arrange it so that Husky was able to go with her. Both Medley and Husky are successful careerwomen.)

The period when they were on their previous note account was pretty great as Medley also put up youtube broadcasts (with Husky fairly frequently participating) answering messages from their twitter followers. They scaled down their activities after the aforementioned harassment, going dark on twitter for over a year. Their twitter account is currently locked to pre-existing followers, and they're sticking to paywalled posts on their new note account.

(Their content on their old note account was also mostly paywalled, but honestly incredibly interesting. Husky and Medley both wrote long series of retrospective blog posts about their interactions/relationship from the start of high school, more than a year before the events of the 2ch thread, as well as details of later events such as Medley coming out to her family (younger brother, older sister, mother, then father. Also grandma). I still have access to most of their articles from the time as even though the old account was deleted, note retains access to content users have paid for. The free articles are unfortunately lost, but I imagine the weibo group mentioned above might have access to more complete archives.)

Going further back in time, if you're interested in followups to Husky and Medley's story past the events of the manga but before they moved to twitter/blogging platforms, this page is a comprehensive archive of their 2ch activities:
https://w.atwiki.jp/yuri_memo/pages/13.html

It's okay, you guys are still 6 chapters behind the raws. With 2 more serialization chapters to go plus volume-exclusive content, you might not see the end of the series for almost a year.

The anime ending corresponds to the end of Volume 3 (out of 6) of the LN and Part 1 (out of 2) of the WN. The WN is finished, but the LN series is continuing with Volume 7 announced in Japan.

Since the anime ends with Anis and Euphie only just getting together, the LN volumes afterwards should definitely be worth it for yuri fans (not only do Anis/Euphie get development, but Ilia/Lainie do too). I'd encourage anybody who enjoyed the anime to check out the novels.

last edited at Mar 29, 2023 7:10PM

Volume 7 came out in June. At minimum at least one more volume is needed to conclude the story arc which started in Volume 6, and there are no particular indications that they intend on stopping.

As for the manga, the story arc which everybody said 'felt like an ending' was the conclusion of the LN's Volume 1. It looks like the remainder of the manga chapters will cover part of Volume 2.

The ending is disappointing, yes.

In volume 4, Aoi becomes impatient about not being able to spend time with Sahoko due to her other friends, so she confesses to Sahoko with a kiss. Sahoko is overjoyed, believing they've become a couple.
When Sahoko goes to Anna's house alone to ask Anna about dating advice (not knowing about Anna's feelings for her), Anna tries to forcibly kiss Sahoko with the excuse that such physical contact is what "romance between girls really means". Sahoko is repulsed by Anna's touch and pushes her away -- Anna plays off her actions as a joke, but Sahoko is shaken, questioning if her feelings for Aoi are really physical/romantic love
Aoi continues to try to escalate her physical connection with Sahoko out of jealousy towards her other friends. Sahoko initially tries to suppress her discomfort, but has an outburst and finally refuses Aoi as well. Sahoko concludes that her feelings towards Aoi are not romantic, which then leads to Aoi breaking off their relationship, because Aoi can't bear just being friends. This sets up the lack of contact between them for the rest of/after highschool, leading to the class reunion scene which gradually progressed throughout the story.
In the "present" time years in the future, during the class reunion, Sahoko is trying to get ahold of Aoi because she wants to "confirm her feelings". Despite their separation, Sahoko has been thinking of Aoi this whole time.
Aoi initially refuses to contact Sahoko until she hears that Sahoko will soon be leaving on a student exchange program to America. She has also been thinking about Sahoko all this time, so she rushes to meet Sahoko.
Sahoko reveals that her exchange program is only for a month, so it's not a permanent separation. However, when Aoi then tries to take off, Sahoko invites Aoi to a love hotel.
Sahoko and Aoi have sex in order to "confirm their feelings". Sahoko is depicted as enjoying it, finding it deeply emotionally fulfilling.
However, in the morning, Sahoko wakes up to find Aoi gone, with just a note left behind. In the note, Aoi admits that she was mistaken in forcing Sahoko to choose between love and friendship/admiration. After so many years had passed, she could no longer find meaning in waiting to hear Sahoko's decision on her feelings. Rather, she was simply glad for having met her and grateful that Sahoko tried seriously facing Aoi's feelings.
The note concludes with "Be well; thank you for everything" so Sahoko runs out of the hotel and yells the same words into the sky as well.
Afterwards, the story fastforwards to Sahoko's last year of university where she's shown voicecalling with Anna. Sahoko and Aoi are implied to still be always thinking of each other but never to actually meet. In particular, back during the class reunion Sahoko had already been shown as having cut her hair short like Aoi's in highschool, while Aoi had grown hers out like Sahoko's.
The "message" is that, although the emotion Aoi and Sahoko felt for each other was both admiration and love, in the end admiration won out, so that -- with Aoi and Sahoko having become different people during their separation -- their distance is "necessary" for them to continue holding on to the connection they had in highschool.

But despite me not reading this manga, its existence is pissing me off. The premise of the manga is that a homophobe is shown that girls can love each other, and yet the gay character turns out to be a rapist?

WTF. Yeah that'll convince her. Like what's with the fucking disconnect between the title and the actual manga?? It's about her "falling" in love but everything has been forced on her. Is this a troll manga or is the author just stupid? This shit is just perpetuating stereotypes at this point.

"Absolutely no info" mate I read pretty much the entirety of volume 1.

For your information, the rape occurs at a point in the story when the heroine (Marika) has already fallen for Aya, and is feeling insecure and jealous about whether Aya really loves her. The remaining conflict in the story is no longer about whether Marika will come to love Aya or accept homosexual relationships -- rather, it is about whether the two will be able to become a happy couple.

In the end, shows the author's limitation: Marika learns about Aya's (weird) past; Marika is still digesting the information, and says she is not in the mood for hentai stuff, as Rosalía would say; Aya and Marika end up discussing about their relationship; Aya is forceful (rape), Aya who explicitly said would never be forceful to Marika. The chapter was focused on getting empathy towards Aya. And here we all are talking about: rape. Rape or rapey, as you wish to say it. Overall, the set of actions felt off, to me that is bad writting.

On the intentions of the writing -- without getting into spoilers, the rape scene in this chapter is actually one of the major emotional climaxes of the story because it represents the first moment where Marika realizes her feelings for Aya.

Marika's reluctance to have sex is not because she is digesting Aya's background -- recall in the previous chapter, Marika caught Aya meeting Astarotte in front of Aya's house just after Aya called, for the first time, to cancel one of their meetings.

Hearing about Aya's middle school experiences makes Marika feel more sympathetic to/interested in Aya. However, at the same time, Marika had just confirmed that Aya lied to her, and is overwhelmed by Aya's confidence and sexual skills into thinking that Aya has tons of experience with girls and is just playing with her.

Marika's resistance to having sex with Aya in this chapter stems from JEALOUSY, and being unable to bring herself to believe Aya's sweet words professing her devotion to her. However, it's precisely this jealousy and insecurity which makes Marika respond powerfully when Aya finally makes her move, because, as Marika notes "In this moment, she really is looking only at me".

Aya, for her part, found herself unable to resist Marika precisely because she was perceiving Marika's insecurity and neediness. Yes, it was still rape. The scene nonetheless works as one of the highlights of the novel because it was for both Aya and Marika an amazing clash between their emotions and their rationality.

Between this and "There's no way I could have a lover!" I increasingly get the sense that Teren Mikami has kind of a sketchy idea of what makes a good romance. I would still say I prefer this one to the other, since even if that one lacked the more explicit scenes, just the overall relationship dynamic there felt uncomfortably predatory and manipulative. Here, there's at least the understanding that Marika is interested in Aya, and deep in denial about her own sexuality, that makes the relationship work for me. I really liked the first half of the chapter!

About Watanare ("There's no way I could have a lover!"), that series is actually an explicit, fully committed harem/polyamory series. Mai is the heroine of the first novel, whose role is to awaken Renako to the idea of loving women/lesbianism. She is by no means intended to be perceived as perfectly desirable or an idealized romantic partner. On the contrary, Mai's overconfidence and self-assuredness is often made the butt of the comedy in the series, as the second volume, featuring Satsuki as Renako's contract two-week girlfriend, is explicitly about Satsuki's quest to get revenge on Mai in response to Mai humiliating her at the end of the first volume (and Renako's attempts to get them to reconcile). Recall that part of the climax of Watanare's first arc involved Mai asking Satsuki to have sex with her, saying "You love me, don't you?", specifically because Mai was looking to have sex with someone she DIDN'T love to punish herself after Renako slapped Mai after Mai nearly raped her.

The most popular heroine in Watanare is in fact, by a ridiculous measure, Ajisai, to the point that it is almost pitiful how few people were rooting for Mai by comparison (although few actively dislike her after she helped push Ajisai to confess in volume 3). Nonetheless, the series resolved the love triangle between Mai, Ajisai, and Renako by making Renako commit explicitly to polyamory, so for as long as Mikami Teren can continue writing the series compellingly, there's no reason for conflict.

https://imgur.io/a/qAirEjG
Illustrations for the Lycoris Recoil spinoff novel

For the record, this series was in fact axed. Mikami Teren is quite well-known for creating poly yuri -- in fact, both of his very first two yuri doujin novels ended in poly, and his most successful series (Watanare) has also explicitly committed to poly as of the end of "Season 1" (volume 4 of the LN, with more to come).

(His first two doujin novels):
https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/B075CW11WT/
https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/B079DRMPGY/

This series, Moshikoi, was cross-promoted with Watanare's manga adaptation on Niconico.
https://seiga.nicovideo.jp/watch/mg472312 (Watanare chapter 1)
https://seiga.nicovideo.jp/watch/mg479226 (Moshikoi chapter 1)
https://seiga.nicovideo.jp/watch/mg625852 (Moshikoi chapter 15)
You can see signs of why the series was axed in the view counts. Moshikoi started off well, with 90k views, a bit more than 1/3 of Watanare. By chapter 15, Moshikoi only had 15k views, 1/6 of how it started.

For all the posters who are upset by a rare series with clear poly development not delivering, consider voting with your wallet then next time you encounter such a series. Incidentally, Watanare is still ongoing.

Mikami Teren's second most popular series, and his original breakout doujin LN that got him publishing offers to start doing commercial yuri, is Arioto, which isn't poly. Personally, for this series, I was routing for Sayo more than Rinna, so accepting that it had to be axed, I'm satisfied with the ending. Of course, I did buy all the volumes.

As an incidental piece of trivia, this series is famous for having been featured on Japanese national television for being the winning entry in a highschool Bibliobattle competition.
https://twitter.com/teren_mikami/status/1148944441643638784

last edited at Jul 15, 2022 5:50PM

OK, I'm going to do it. I'm going to start discourse. I won't attempt to prolong it in any way however; please feel free to ignore this post (in fact, do if it's going to start paragraphs of back and forth).
Genuinely confused what the appeal of this is. I mean the art's nice but I dunno, I fail to care about anything depicted in this, and the fact that this chick is getting her rocks off on random classmates without anything approaching consent while the manga is drawn by Some Guy puts me, personally, off.
Like, damn, how hard is it to just make another brothel manga.

I wasn't super compelled by this series at first either, but raws are currently out for up to chapter 6 and as of chapter 4 we're in a long story arc about a girl who switched from team to solo sports (basketball -> track and field) because she's self-conscious about her body odour.

Aside from that the artistic depictions of Kaori's excitement get increasingly over the top with each chapter which certainly does provide some humour.

To people on the fence about this series, I'd recommend giving it a chance and sticking it out for at least a bit even if you don't follow it all the way to the end. (If Kaori's objectification of the girls around her is actively offensive to you however feel free to ignore this however; that stuff doesn't stop.)

Glad to see this translated; you guys are about 6 months late, lol.

They're finally bringing this up, and it's in a special chapter rather than an actual numbered canonical chapter????

Special/Side chapter merely refers to chapters that are not in the standard 4koma format; they're part of the regular narrative progression in every other way.

Honestly, this right here is why this hasn't been a particular favorite of mine. Sakurako has made her feelings clear like 100 times in the past, and the fact that she's only making a deal of it now is so weird to me. If they're ambiguously dating, then they probably aren't being physical either besides those occasional kisses. And Sakurako has made herself clear that she wants to be physical with Kasumi, so she's been holding back this entire time.

This is peak Heisei era nonsense.

As the poster above you mentioned, Kasumi has consistently been portrayed as mostly aromantic and/or asexual. She has made/permitted romantic gestures with Sakurako many times despite this. The explanation is, as Sakurako described in this chapter, that they have built their relationship on multiple implicit understandings -- Kasumi understands that Sakurako is in love with her, while Sakurako understands that Kasumi is not interested in sex/romantic relationships.

Sakurako's question/confession in this chapter does not really introduce anything new; both she and Kasumi are and have been aware of the differences in their physical drives/desires, and explicitly verbalizing the issue won't automatically resolve it. However, it does represent a more proactive approach than they have taken until now.

Regarding what triggered Sakurako to ask such questions now -- in the conversation regarding love and cheating, Kasumi made statements which appeared to dismiss the concept of (passionate) love entirely. In particular, on page 00117, Kasumi criticized "love at first sight" (the idea of confessing to somebody you hadn't even talked to; as Kae mentioned on the previous discussion page, the TL could certainly be improved on that page/bubble). Although Kasumi was only talking from her own perspective, stating that she didn't understand and had never experienced such passion, from Sakurako's point of view she likely felt that Kasumi was criticizing her because Kasumi's words also described Sakurako's immediate attraction to Kasumi herself.

Such criticism would seem to defy the unspoken understandings their relationship had been built on up until this point -- Kasumi's acceptance and occasional reciprocation of Sakurako's romantic feelings, so long as Sakurako respected Kasumi's boundaries -- which is why she was driven to explicitly bring it up.

Ultimately, the fact that Sakurako and Kasumi have different levels of physical desire is actually COMPLETELY FINE and an excellent foundation for a compelling yuri story. The fluffy 4koma format more or less guarantees a happy ending, while the initial developments made it clear early on that the story was indeed about romantic feelings. In the same way that Sakurako's chat with Moka about being happy with an unlabelled relationship made perfect sense at the time, the present developments are also a completely natural extension of Sakurako and Kasumi's romantic dynamic/relationship.

last edited at Jun 26, 2022 10:12PM

As for that part, I have to admit, I was a bit stumped too! I guessed maybe she only said that because she and Koharu are so far apart in age and manner of speech. There is possibly the way Koharu said her sentence too though, because it was kind of hard to translate, and it could have also been translated to "Is Onee-san also a strange person from the company?" MAYBE that's what she really meant, but I thought it was so rude to say this that I chose the alternative "different person" instead of "strange person".

https://jisho.org/word/%E5%A4%89%E3%82%8F%E3%81%A3%E3%81%9F

"Strange person" was indeed the correct meaning for this case. The key to this panel is that the "onee-san" in Koharu's question refers to Ayase, not Mizushima.

In other words, Koharu asks:

Does onee-san (Ayase) also act like a weird person at work?"

Causing Ayase to panic because this indicates that Koharu thinks she is a "weird person".

Ayase yells "Generation gap!" to excuse Koharu's perception of her as merely something resulting from their difference in age, rather than because she is doing inappropriate things in front of her.

last edited at May 2, 2022 5:50AM

Chapter 1 has been voiced in celebration of the release of Volume 1.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqpwYE4JXAY

Why even bother translating a series that was axed

Here's the author's blog post about vol 3 (the last)
https://kanalinapictures.wordpress.com/2021/07/17/3巻カバーデザイン/

Here she states that her contract was originally for 2 volumes and that she got it extended to 3 by persistent badgering of the editorial department. Continuing further might've been possible with more sales/popularity, but the story was composed from the start to wrap up in 3 volumes.

Amazon reviews for the series are mixed.
https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/B09BN5RNHH/#customerReviews
One reader claims that it's a happy yuri end. Another says that while the end is uncertain, it provides hope.

In any case it is a shoujo work published under a non-yuri shoujo imprint. In other words, yuri for straight(?) girls. That understandably limits its audience, but I appreciate it.

Feels like the "Sato" bonus chapter was written specifically to rebuff the "maternal love" interpretation of Sato's feelings for Shio, which I guess I appreciate. Happy Sugar Life is explicit yuri.

Coming back to the series after 2-3 years though, it has a lot of unnecessary het while Kitanai Kimi ga Ichiban Kawaii has superceded it as the better tragedy. Even if Satou and Shio couldn't have a happy (sugar) life, there would've been nothing wrong with giving them a happy (sugar) death. I don't exactly dislike the actual ending but Kitakawa's just looks better in comparison.

If you liked this, check out another longer subtext work by the same author with similar themes:
https://mangadex.org/title/f48398c1-264f-4b42-82b8-9bb979cf8a7b/kimi-ga-niku-ni-nattemo

As somebody who's been reading the LNs from when vol1 was first released, it's good to see people enjoying this series.

Spoilers up to vol. 5 with regards to the levels of explicit romance:
As seen in the manga, Yumiko and Chika bathe together and Chika gropes Yumiko's breasts. These are recurring events: bathing together has happened 4 times, while breast groping is more frequent.
Not captured as well in the manga are Yumiko's monologues about how cute/pretty she finds Chika. The LN often features descriptive scenes where e.g. Yumiko bumps into a cute girl in the hallway, going into great detail about the girl's appearance, only for her to turn out to be Chika.
There have been no explicit lesbian couples in the series, nor romantic acts such as kissing. Numerous other seiyuu pairs are introduced who could be seen as subtext pairings (rivals like Yumiko and Chika, or long-term radio partners who live in adjacent apartment units), as well as characters who could be seen as explicitly gay (a seiyuu/seiyuu otaku who reacts extremely strongly to her oshis, or a kouhai who demonstrates fanaticism towards Chika to stalker/obsessive levels). However, as of vol. 5, Yumiko + Chika still seem to be the pair closest to making the jump to a romantic relationship.
Yumiko and Chika's relationship as tsundere seiyuu rivals who elevate each other continues to be developed. Although there have been great scenes where they admit how much they mean to each other, their dominant mode of interaction still leans extremely tsun.
I agree with the assessment of the series as yuri and fully recommend it to yuri fans. However, it should be acknowledged that there is a strong chance the series will never feature an explicitly romantic lesbian relationship.

last edited at Nov 12, 2021 9:01PM

It may be a bit of a meme, but "all of the emotions a woman throws at another" remains the best definition of yuri I have ever heard (source: irua, but I've also seen it elsewhere in the JP community). In that sense I'd call this series both absolutely yuri and a love story.

Tsukiko is a tsundere who fundamentally stops herself from reaching out to others due to a childhood of disappointment. She's fiercely independent and refuses to hold expectations towards others. Despite this, her encounter with Aya ended up completely transforming her life. Aya is completely responsible for Tsukiko's interest in marine biology (see ch. 1 where she first picks up a reference book) and the first proactive steps she took to define her own life (choosing to stay with Aya throughout highschool, and choosing a career path that would allow her to be together with her). Despite Tsukiko's refusal to show any outward sign of their connection, her relationship with Aya is completely mutual.

On Aya's part, the series was about her journey of coming to understand and accept her connection with Tsukiko -- to see through the tsun and percieve the dere hidden like the moon behind the clouds at night. By the end of the story, Aya arrives at sufficient faith in Tsukiko that she'll no longer push her away herself out of frustration at Tsukiko's lack of (apparent) reaction. This is a consummate form of their relationship and in this state Aya is basically invincible. While unnecessary, it is completely possible to extrapolate the emotional consummation of the relationship in the climax into some form of physical consummation in the future.

In any case, no regrest throwing my money at the Kindle raws of this series. Really hope the author will continue writing (and drawing!) for the genre.

last edited at Jun 24, 2021 2:30AM

https://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/B08T96XRSR/
^ The aforementioned anthology. In terms of new stuff, it includes 2 unscanlated doujins from 2013-2014 plus a oneshot written for the tankoubon.

The re-serialization is being written differently because the original series already has two volumes published which set up Mikoto and Nekozaki's relationship. Even if the series is being re-serialized, there's no point in treading over the same ground. Arata Iri stated in the afterword of vol 2 that she'd be reworking the series so that it'd still be interesting for readers of the original, and based on this chapter that seems to mean she will be fast-forwarding the romance somewhat in order to get to new material.

It's not really a matter of 'which is better'. The original series is not obsolete. Although obviously Arata-sensei has taken the opportunity to refine the first chapter for the re-serialization, I expect that the plot/development of the new series will diverge/go past the first series fairly quickly once the basic setup is out of the way.

This is a shit translation btw. For chapter 4 you'd get closer to the actual script by assuming the opposite meaning of every line of dialogue.

This is my Yuyushiki OTP. Instant fave.

not yuri anymore

Kumiko going out with Shuuichi in the source material was known since S1. I don't know that the anime was ever explicit enough to override that and call it actual yuri.

On the other hand, per this tweet from the anime thread a while back:
https://twitter.com/ultimatemegax/status/1115692715772141576
In the latest volume of the novels, Kumiko and Shuuichi break up. So it's still up in the air whether Kumiko's really hetero.

Although I do agree with the notion that the series (Kyoani in general) isn't really worth getting invested in. Even Liz and the Blue Bird wasn't particularly interesting on the characterization front, it's only noteworthy yuri-wise due to the production values. Basically, I'd say keep expectations low but wait for stuff to actually come out before deciding if Kyoani shit is "yuri"/"not yuri".

So I apparently forgot Sarazanmai was previously announced as an Ikuhara show, but it exists and you should watch it. The focus is on BL rather than yuri this time around but that blemish honestly pales in the face of sheer entertainment value; given the yuri drought this season, do yourselves a favour and check it out.