Typo/error report

Thank you for the continued typo reports, these should be corrected on the Dynasty and website versions.

Is there a good way to donate to or otherwise support the translation effort?

I think the best support is just building buzz for the series in the West. Both of us really just want to have more people we can talk about this series with.

Meika is a really interesting character to me. Her dynamic with Diode and the contrast in how they deal with comphet reads a bit like a modern twist on a Class S story. She's compelling because you can kind of see the tragedy to her character, since this chapter does a really nice job of illustrating how her acceptance of the inevitability of marriage is destroying her and her relationships. On the flip side, this chapter does a nice job of establishing how her acceptance is bending around to reinforce patriarchal structures, given her expectation of Diode to support her through it and the lengths she'll go to make sure that expectation is met. The paragraph showing how Diode is just totally worn out from dealing with her relationship with Meika was heartbreaking, it's really effective at illustrating how toxic and abusive that relationship must have been beyond the glimpse of the dynamic we got here. Fascinated to see where this goes.

last edited at May 14, 2025 2:19PM

I think there's a big difference between someone speculating/analysing how a series handles gender identity via their own personal interpretation of a character's identity and someone nagging a real person about the same topic.

100% this. These pages are in the story because the artist wanted to make it clear that Ren has a difficult relationship with her own gender, either personally or socially. Reader speculation about that, especially trans posters highlighting Ren as going through an experience they recognize, is not causing anyone harm.

I would also argue that the harm being done in story isn't that Ren's gender is being questioned. We don't live in a world where the vast majority of reactions to expressing discomfort with gender is the entire weight of culture saying "holy shit go get HRT and SRS immediately." The actual harm from questioning someone's gender is when it's framed in a way that makes it clear to that person they don't fit in and never will. Ren is suicidal specifically because she "doesn't fit in", and these pages make it clear a lot of that feeling is based in her relationship to her body and how people talk about not meeting whatever gendered standard they expect of her. She's not suicidal because someone suggested she's trans a little too insistently, she's suicidal from an adulthood being treated like an outsider.

This whole line of discussion is functionally the "polite" way of erasing trans experiences from the conversation. Violent cisheteronormative enforcement of gender standards, good-faith questions to someone who might be struggling with gender identity, and reader speculation about a character's gender identity in a story with gender themes are not equally harmful. Treating them like they are creates the perception that pointing out a trans or trans-adjacent experience is rude and potentially damaging to a person. Isolating those experiences from transness and then reframing them as something else entirely is how cisheteronormativity operates.

Yeah, sorry, that's as far as the manga goes. I hope you all have enjoyed reading it as much as we enjoyed working on it. It's made me happy to see it find a small cult following over the last couple of years.

I think this series probably got word of the axe around ch12/13, since it really starts cutting large chunks of material to make a mad dash to the finish starting there. If any of the worldbuilding choices seem like leaps, or Terra and Diode's relationship development feels rushed, definitely go check out the novel. It's really good.

A crashing ship with a dying pilot is invisible, while a decompa in emotional crisis is a screaming alarm beacon in the sea of clouds.

That was my impression as well. It's not that Eda/Iron Ball are ignoring the twisters, it's that they're not in a state to synchronize with it. She's aware that twisters and decompas often fall as a pair because she is able to talk to the decompas, but the twisters are still more or less invisible.

I like how this setup is a commentary on the bioessentialism of "men are rational and use language; women are irrational and use emotion." The setting signals that this really is a social construct - the first human (besides Eda) to decompress was actually Papa Henri back in the prologue, but over time it's become a social role that the Circs justify as having a biological basis. It seems like their mechanism to preserve social stability despite the economic necessity of decompression (and transformative thinking it involves)... make men a closed book to decompression, force women into the role, and then control them with patriarchal structures. The whole concept and power structure around it hang together really well.

Also, what a start to vol 2. I adore how Diode has been paying attention to Terra's history with groping and both makes sure she's okay with moving forward, then moving it in a direction that lets Terra discover her boundaries in their own relationship. I love how attentive and considerate they are of one another.

Finally, as a housekeeping note, we're slowly working through the last batch of TL edits chapter by chapter. I have gone ahead and replaced the prologue through ch5 with the finalized versions (typo reports welcome!) and will be posting subsequent chapters as we finish. The newer version is a little shorter after some fixes and wordsmithing, so there will be a gap in the page numbers until we get to chapter 11.

Once we're finished, we're going to take a short break before we continue with vol 2. We just wanted to make sure the manga-only readers were aware there was more to the series once that wraps up next week.

last edited at Apr 26, 2025 1:39PM

Well done completing the translation of the first volume!

Chapter 11 was an amazing closer for the book. Diode refusing to leave without Terra and their mutual confession destroyed me, then the kisses on the way back revived me.

The meeting with Eda was so good too! The prologue shows Magiri taking one last dive into the depths 10 years after Eda's disappearance in a desperate attempt to reunite with her.

Also lol that Diode knew exactly what her mother meant with the invitation for Terra to join them upstairs:

I didn't even think of that, but after her mom basically proposed to Terra I get why Diode was worried. I hope we see Rock and Linia again at some point; they're very funny.

Rock and Linia are such an interesting pair! I wish we'd gotten a little more of them, I feel like using an abandoned weather facility as a(n implied lesbian) hangout was the most punk thing in the album. I hope they're still able to have fun operating the instrumentation in the observatory.

I thought Terra and Diode's argument in ch11 is very silly (in a good way) but the way it gels at the end with the comphet discussion in ch9 and the topic of leaving FBB in ch10 is super satisfying. The build-up to being ride-or-die for one another across the novel is so good.

It's also neat to see the subtle mismatch between what we're told in the prologue, what Eda says, and what Terra guesses about Circ history. Eda is either lying about Magiri, or she doesn't know, and I'm sure the next novels will get around to that.

Finally, thank you for the typo reports. We're in the midst of doing final wordsmithing and translation checks, so we'll be sure get them fixed while we do that.

Typos in ch. 8?

Okay, I've fixed these in the source docs and website. Thanks again for the typo/mistake reports!

This is the last of the novel-only chapters in volume 1. I'm sad this chapter got skipped by the adaptation, it would have been nice to meet Rock and Linia, see a little bit more of the world, and get a better sense of who Diode is as a person.

Also lol that Diode knew exactly what her mother meant with the invitation for Terra to join them upstairs:

No, you can't go. Uhh, the meteorological observatory is full of control panels for strange and complex measurement devices, and I worry about what might happen to the body of a complete novice like you, Terra-san. Leave it for those two and stay here, please.

I think the doll makes sense when you consider Sorawo's most recent major life event was a cult kidnapping, near execution, and then seeing Toriko almost leave her for someone else. The kidnapping forcibly dragged up a ton of unpleasant memories from her life on the run, especially her family relationships. We don't knlw much about her mom, other than that Sorawo mentally confuses it for her mom. The Otherside has also been connecting through her fear of her dad, grandma, and the cult they were a part of, to the point she has to corner Kozakura to complain about it. Meanwhile, Toriko is also trying her hardest to make Sorawo into her girlfriend, which is sort of the first rung on the ladder to becoming family.

There's a lot of traumatic imagery being laid out in front of her in this scene! The textual reading of it is the Otherside is going to take Toriko (or Sorawo) away, and that takes the form of Sorawo's dad and grandma discussing whether to give the doll to her, and with the reader's explicit understanding that Sorawo is projecting the Red Person/her mom's actions onto her dad and grandma. It speaks to one level of her fears - reexperiencing family abuse after their death, and Toriko being taken away by the Otherside. Toriko saves the day, has her first kiss with Sorawo, and does an engagement by knife on Christmas morning. Everything's coming up Toriko!

EXCEPT Sorawo's narration while she's going crazy hints at a symbolic reading of that scene. There's a fundamental incompatibility between how Sorawo conceptualizes family and how she conceptualizes a happy life with Toriko. Family and accomplice are mutually exclusive to her. She prefers the latter (even telling Toriko as much), and treats the former as a hostile presence. So Toriko being very up front about wanting to Sorawo's girlfriend is her choosing "family" over "accomplice". Sorawo watching this scene play out while through a window of a home, the very symbol of family, is expressing a more abstract fear that Toriko will be "taken away" from her because of Toriko's desire to start a family.

She has A LOT to process, except she's actively trying not to because that gives her the brain willies.

"Next issue, the climax!"... Wait, does that mean next chapter is the last??

That's my read of it, the next chapter would put us right around 160 p, which iirc is the size of the last two volumes.

Seems like the manga is winding down in the next couple of chapters, which will put us at the end of the first volume of the novel. Next chapter drops on April 19.

It was nice to see them see they're on the wavelength with their relationship, shame about that whole freefall thing.

Super excited to get this chapter posted! I wish this part of the story had gotten more time in the manga, especially for as much characterization as Diode gets here. The scene where she talks to Terra about marriage is especially sweet, my brain felt a bit melty at how fast Terra's gay awakening seems to be moving in this.

Thanks for catching those typos! I've updated the website to correct those. I think only the one in chapter 4 is present in the version posted on Dynasty, so I'll reupload that chapter once we get around to posting chapter 8.

Misa had no idea who Io was and Io is famous, albeit more recently. We've also never seen Misa show any interest in celebrities. It seems like the kind of thing Misa wouldn't know. Speaking as someone who has no idea who the vast majority of celebrities (especially actors) are, for me it's a believable level of ignorance.

Or in her own words, women she can't have sex with are boring. Misa has her priorities and it's not pop culture. She even claims to only sleep and eat in her apartment. That could be an exaggeration, but it's not clear how much media she consumes in the first place.

Edit: Also, she hasn't seen this person in around a decade, so not recognizing her while googling would also be believable for me. People look different after that long while memory gets foggy.

I'm on the fence about that woman being Marei, but to add to these reasons, Misa was visiting that woman in a very different context than you would associate with a film star. Seeing someone waiting wistfully in a run-down apartment does not scream "about to be/is famous". The only picture Misa's seen of Marei is also a promotional shot, with all sorts of reasons (lighting, makeup, aging) that she wouldn't recognize her. Same way she had trouble initially had trouble recognizing Io as "Ai" from a photo, but instantly figured it out the moment she saw her in person.

Looks like it's Misa's turn to become a stalker. It was nice getting a little bit of her backstory, it sort of makes sense that she's as emotionally distant as she is if she got her heart crushed back in high school. I can't help but wonder if the woman she was hooking up with is Io's mom (Marei and this mystery woman are the only ones with eyes drawn like this). Wouldn't totally put it past Flowerchild to pull a twist like this, especially since there's already that scene of Io calling out Hase for using her as a replacement for Marei.

The conversation in the W.E.B. in chapter 4 was so good! Here, Terra gets almost completely looped into Diode's misadventures before they met, so I wonder when that will happen in the manga version. Knowing more about what Diode has been through makes the argument and fishing duel with Xeon feel even more important.

And wow, Terra hugging Diode when she was crying, and later before their second trip noting that even climbing into the boat with Diode feels so much better than it has with anyone else? I suspect Diode fancies Terra too and is aware of it, but if only she knew how Terra sees her...

I think my favorite little thing with the hug in the W.E.B. scene was the little callback to Sivi and Magiri in the prologue section, where they sort of echo the "sorry about this" "it's okay" way of providing consolation. Terra's casually able to take the step that Sivi was never able to bring herself to take, and I think it gives Diode a little bit of confidence to lean into her strengths going forward. It's such a lovely, intimate moment.

Apologies for the delay on getting this out, I had a fall a few weeks ago and hurt my hip and tailbone badly enough that I've had a hard time sitting long enough to do the SFX cleaning on this. On the mend now, so hopefully we'll have chapter 13 out in a couple of weeks.

Anyway, this chapter did a great job building a sense of dread for the coming story arc...

Good god, get it together Iori

Congratulations to Terra for realize that lesbian couples are a thing!

It does beg the question: What exactly happened in the past that seemingly erased their existence and installed a strict patriarchy?

I'm hoping the story gets more into it, but I'm not sure there needs to be a single event for things to get this way. It's been three centuries since the Circs arrived at FBB, and there are a couple of points that suggest the strict patriarchy is the result of steady backsliding over generations.

One factor is probably the relatively limited population, since the clans are only about 20,000 strong (and probably smaller in the past). There are going to be the same small town pressures towards conformity in play, and the severe isolation only strengthens that power. Given that the Circs were highly multicultural to begin with, gender/sexual minorities would probably be the most visibly non-conforming parties, and be among the first nail in need of a hammer.

Chief Xeon also says some stuff hinting that gender relations are generally constructed to facilitate population/capital growth. This might be related to the Circs' resource curse, in that any AMC clay obtained beyond meeting the Circs' needs is a valuable export. This economic structure would incentivize overdevelopment of the fishing industry, while other sectors of the economy become underinvested. In a lot of places, this gives industrial representatives a lot of power, and their response to obtaining that power is to crack down on civil liberties, education, and public funding to make it difficult to organize opposition.

At Endeavor clan, this structure seems to have evolved to a point where it has semi-independently invented something resembling Umberto Eco's description of an ur-fascist ideology. Xeon's monologue in chapter 8 explicitly touches on that since it mentions will-to-power, the cult of motherhood, and a subtle disdain towards cultural production over economic production.

At any rate, a necessary component of generating productive labor worldview is compelling women to bear children, and to do so requires reducing/stripping them of their agency to refuse. This structure is definitely baked into the twister/decompa dynamic — comphet only, strict gendered division of labor, framing it nominally as a partnership but making the Twister the voice of authority, and loosely treating women/decomping as an irrational force to be controlled. Given fishing is a prestige job among the Circs, it is likely that this worldview filters down to the rest of society as an ideal to emulate.

Both of these factors alone would probably gravitate towards a cisheteronormative worldview over a few generations, regardless of how progressive the initial founders may have been. Whatever upheaval scrambled the Idaho's fan media repository and resulted in the collapse/destruction of eight clans probably just accelerated (or marked accelerations of) those trends.

Sorry to make this post even longer, but a couple of extra tidbits from the novel's prologue (it's good, read it!) but the fact that Magiri essentially performed a lovers' suicide, followed by the implication her subordinate Sivi Endeavor (a woman) subsequently received credit for Eda and Magiri's accomplishments under the less obviously gendered name C.B. probably speaks to how lesbianism might have been viewed following that event. The fact that Magiri and Eda also led a revolution against more conservative/less visionary leadership likely further complicates things.

The prologue also notes that the Circ society has been in a state of cultural stagnation/economic recession since the invention of the pillar boat shortly after Magiri's death. This probably has to do with the resource curse mentioned above, the lack of incentive for further innovation once basic needs are easily met, and an extremely strong desire to maintain social stability. Circs are often described as "unimaginative", and Terra's active imagination is treated as really freaky by everyone around her (including Diode, at first).

At any rate, the setting sucks as a place to live. Back when we first started scanlating this, I recall coming across some Ogawa tweets about feminist theory he had been reading back when developing the series, and I'm really impressed by how seamlessly he seems to have integrated it into the work.

last edited at Dec 26, 2024 11:28AM

Terra thought some gay thoughts, pulled out a shotgun, and upgraded the close relationship of roommates to the even closer relationship of accomplices.

Volume 2 of the manga came out on the 6th, we've updated the QR code link in the credits in case you'd like to support Tanaka-sensei. The next chapter is due to release on Jan 17. And in case you're following the novels in Japanese, the 4th and final volume in the series will be releasing on Jan 22.

It's been a little busy here, but I am hoping to have chapters 3 and 4 up here in the next couple of days. Our output is getting a little more polished with practice, so not quite as many formatting bugs to track down and squash from here.

By the way, I think I've successfully gotten an RSS feed up and running on the dedicated website, so subscribe if you want an automatic update when we post a new chapter there! There will be a short delay before we post here just to make sure we've gotten any big mistakes ironed out.

Little weird to not want to be thought less of, then spill out that you're a masochistic bottom right after. Way to go luxi lol.

It's a little odd but I feel like the two concepts are disconnected from each other. Like she wants to be degraded and controlled for sex, but day to day she doesn't want to be thought less of for having a past as a complete pushover dog.

Yeah, it's this. Two different contexts. A bedroom scene where she's a masochistic dog has the security of knowing it's part of the emotional intimacy of the relationship. Revealing she's been a masochistic dog to get someone to look her way and asking for it in the bedroom are both things that have the risk of destroying that intimacy.

man... i never liked that whole "i'm kind of rejecting you right now but please keep loving me in case i change my mind" shebang. after so much buildup just for that... i think it would be easier to stomach if this wasn't a bi-monthly release.
regardless, it was a really sweet scene and i'm glad to see them back together

The "please keep loving me" thing doesn't read like a rejection here at all to me. Instead it feels like a response to Michiru's "this is hurting us both" comment - Kiki is trying to tell Michiru that her feelings aren't a burden.

Her struggles with self-esteem and ability to receive affection come off as being behind the mumbled "maybe something like that". When you're down on yourself that hard, it's very easy to view your own affection as something that can make another person happy, or whether you're giving enough in return. But at the very least, Kiki seems to be taking pains here to make it clear she considers Michiru to be a special presence in her life, the person she wants to be with most.

So I guess my read of it is more like "please don't feel like your love is a burden, I want to be someone who doesn't become a burden to you because you're special to me." It's less that Kiki has to change her mind on Michiru, so much as she has to find the confidence to match her lead.

woah, lesbian pontypool

I also like how everyone's fetishistic hangups seem to revolve around obsession and possession. I assumed the title just referred to having weird fetishes, but maybe it's referring to the toxic possessive "love" that these characters have for each other? It makes the choice to have fetishes centered around malleable clay figurines all the more thematically resonant.

The clay figurine thing is a good point. These characters are so hung up on their "ideal" love that they're unable to see the real people in front of them, to the point of making selfish, shitty decisions. They're all attempting to mold other people into what they want them to be: Meguru into Azuki's lover, Azuki into Yakou's figurine maker, Yakou into Niji's fanfic girlfriend, and everyone into a safe, non-sexual plush for Meguru to cuddle.

The first chapter doesn't have a whole lot more than the manga, but the details of the pillar boat are absolutely wild. Flying around with a 360 degree view and multiwavelength video being beamed directly into your visual cortex has gotta be disorienting as hell.

Nah, she's chickening out because she's a softie. She knows what her GF is thinking and she's not ready to spend the night alone with her lol

Makes Shizuku telling Iori that she's already slept together with Saori a few chapters back even funnier. Just saying shit to get a rise out of her.