Huge thanks to girlswhokiss, who has been busting ass to translate this novel! I am still working out the fine details of uploading the translation as images, so please lmk if there are any issues with readability with the current formatting before I get around to uploading ch 1-4. Those should be forthcoming in the next few days. We will also have a "bonus" chapter to handle a setting glossary and TL notes.

Chapters here probably won't be updated much unless we uncover major translation errors - the most up to date versions will be found on the neocities page we've set up.

Hope you enjoy reading this as much as I have been!

At the rate her grades keep falling she's bound to find success with an underflow error

Bummer, no chapter this month - the next release date was punted until 12/20.

If you're having fishing yuri withdrawals, definitely be sure to check out the novel translation girlswhokiss is putting together! IMO the yuri aspects land even harder in the narration. We just posted chapter 2 this evening.

Not just that, she's an unreliable narrator for narrating any feeling. A lot of the time she seems trustworthy but then even for basic stuff like fear, her ability to describe the degree of feelings or any sort of nuance is very shaky. For example, she describes the beach at the end of the world in a way that sounds relatively "standard" for Otherside encounters, but they ended up so traumatized that they stayed in Okinawa until they stopped having very literal PTSD attacks. She explicitly claims to have no real problem with shooting threats that look and act completely like real humans, and then goes on to have nightmares about them for a week.

My favorite subtle thing about this story is the Otherside appearing whenever Sorawo starts to get intense feelings. There's the Otherside appearing the moment Toriko drops the bombshell in this chapter, but there's stuff like wandering into the interstitial space when Toriko leaves, or attacked by a Self-blinding monster right after wondering whether she told Toriko about her history, or having the ghosts of her dad and grandma appear right after she has an emotional moment about her future with Toriko. The Otherside seems very much related to Sorawo's terror at encountering normal parts of life she doesn't have a script for. It's almost like she's generally un-selfaware, with anti-cult mode being a comforting state where she's purely acting in self-preservation, and Otherside mode being slammed with too much information about herself at once. Cringe is also a form of continuous attachment.

The mannequins here are a nice symbolic thing. What better to complement the feeling of your body being objectified than a tool to sell clothes. What better way to highlight being kinda okay with Toriko being the one to ogle her than contrasting her against a faceless crowd doing the same?

I really liked this chapter, excellent combo of cohabitation and lore dump. The visual gag of "Diode is literally a stray cat" at the bottom of page 9 was wonderful. The next chapter is scheduled for release on November 15. The volume 2 tankobon is also scheduled for release on December 6, so if you've got a bit of money to kick towards supporting the serialization, please do!

I think that this page way back on chapter 1 has a small mistranslation, Terra isn't saying that the besshu are in "the backs of four female spot-billed ducks" but that they were "on the back of the fourth (female) duckling"

カルガモの四女の背中

Thanks! I've updated the chapter.

last edited at Oct 19, 2024 11:22PM

I'll admit I'm a little puzzled by Misa's reaction in this chapter, but I don't think it's totally OOC for her. Re-reading the chapter I'm not entirely sure Misa grasps the extent of what happened. I think she suspects Io of cheating as soon as the phone hangs up ("Or is something else going on behind the scenes"), and seeing two hickeys (implying Io didn't push Hase away after the first one) on Io's neck just confirms that suspicion to her.

From that point Misa's having a full-on jealous reaction to the situation and she's interpreting everything Io says through that lens. It's maybe not the smoothest execution, but I think that's how we got from here to there.

What I've appreciated about this story is that it's sort of looking at the gray space between abusive relationships and informal bdsm relationships (Misa's not a dom or otherwise involved in the scene, Io struggles to set boundaries), and what distinguishes one from the other. So far Io has gone along with Misa's shittier behavior, and seems to have found some form of personal liberation and empowerment from it. Chapters like this are signalling that allowing things to continue as they have been might just end up with Io trading one abuser for another. I'm content to let Flowrchild keep cooking with this for a bit.

Why does this author only write unlikeable characters that have no redeeming qualities? The issue with doing that is the ending always acts like it's romantic and ok to be this messed up. Sure people can be crazy and toxic in real life but fiction shouldn't glorify it. Imagine someone that was assaulted reads this. Their biggest take away is if you get assaulted and tell your lover they'll just see you as a cheater. This story feels toxic just for the sake of it.

I mean, this is a work of fiction exploring abusive relationship dynamics, not a manual for understanding the correct way to handle an assault. Fiction can be an avenue for processing a traumatic experience, but that doesn't mean all stories have to adapt themselves to that purpose. Also, Misa being a protagonist is not an authorial endorsement or glorification of her behavior.

Misa having a normal and well-adjusted reaction to sexual assault this chapter...

thanks for not projecting your personal opinion as objective fact, kuran. i know it must have been hard

That row of panels with Adachi getting flustered is sooo good

My read on it is that Misa wants to take Io to a swingers club less for partner swapping and more for the threat of it for some exhibitionist/humiliation play. You sorta see the seed of that idea get planted when Misa was fingering Io at the bar a few chapters back. Io says Misa saw the "real" her while that was happening, so I can see Misa wanting to push Io even harder in their next hookup.

It's quite nice seeing Terra make the effort to pull Diode closer. Die-san is going to have to get a UHaul-like UHaul at this rate.

In case you're wondering why the previous chapter summary is actually the summary of this chapter, you'll have to take it up with the Bushiroad editorial staff. I have no idea why they did that.

Yeah, I kinda mentally categorize Flowerchild as a horror author who writes erotic thrillers. Her stories tend to have this underlying theme of lust being this uncontrollable force that pulls people into abusive situations. Characters in her works have no real ability to escape their libido, only finding maladaptive ways to accomodate their lives to it. The chemistry gets weird and grimy, but the characterization work makes the subject matter super compelling.

Takemiya Jin's works generally fall under this category. Most of her lead characters are lesbian and never question it. I think Fragments of Love is the only one of her serials I can think of offhand that deals with a leading character who doesn't explicitly self-define as lesbian at the start, and even then she's sharing the spotlight with another character who does.

Suimasen decided to pick this up after several factors led Rehashed+Thousand Lillies to abandon the series. I'd like to get caught up to the current release (chapter 10) in relatively short order - ch 7 and 8 are essentially cleaned and ready to typeset whenever I receive a script. I don't think we'll manage to get current before the next issue of YH is out, but hopefully the bulk of catching up will be behind us.

I personally really enjoy reading this series, and we'd like to maintain the level of quality you've come to expect from Rehashed and Thousand Lillies in their work on this series. Those are some big shoes to fill, but we're gonna try our best. Hope y'all enjoy.

last edited at Sep 1, 2024 2:58AM

I feel bad for these girls. Everyone in this manga strikes me as having been scared off of healthy exploration and finding outlets for their kink. So they're all just stuck wallowing in shame over those feelings while not actually being able to resolve the source of the shame. Repression is a motherfucker

I hope to god that this manga adpatation gets popular enough to warrant an official or unofficial novel translation. Sci fi and yuri is seriously such a good combo

Yeah! I advocated picking this up with our translator because I would LOVE to be able to read the novels in English someday.

So, can anyone tell me which specific novel(s) this series is retold from? I'd like to try to hunt down a translation, or maybe even use it as an excuse to try to learn Japanese again. I can already tell this is going to update too slowly for me xwx

This is from the novel series of the same name. The manga serialization is currently around halfway through the first novel.

I'm so starved of sci-fi yuri that anytime it comes up it doesn't matter how trite or cliche it is I will lap it up every time.

Also there's something very romantic about this manga, more romantic than the soppiest yuri rom coms. I can't pinpoint what it is. Maybe it's been a long time since I saw such unquestioned teamwork between the leads. Usually the drama comes from one angstily second guessing the other but either they've skipped all that or it's not the main focus right now, the main focus being fighting against societal bigot baddies.

I think the unquestioned teamwork is a big part of why the romance hits so hard, but I also think it's the commitment to push forward through serious disagreement. Although Diode was absolutely right to challenge the Clan Chief to the fishing competition, it very clearly put Terra way out of her comfort zone and led to a fairly serious argument between them. But they both realize that they're in this together, and whatever differences they have are less important than the sense of fulfillment they provide one another.

Thanks so much to Suimasen Scans for sharing this with us!

Happy to finally get this up over here! We've been pleased to see people enjoying it, and I'm personally hoping we keep building the momentum to get a translation for the novels. Can't wait to see more of Terra and Diode's relationship and to have more of the setting's details painted in.

Loved this - their personalities are dead on. Vol 8 was great for seeing Sorawo and Toriko figure out how to truly love one another, and this read as a really nice follow on to that. I hope Kumama decides to write more of them in the future!

I think it's neat how well the art shows how conscious Takamine and Sakura are of one another even when they're not directly interacting. Like yeah, there's the obvious bit with Takamine hallucinating her crush in the library, but some of the more subtle paneling decisions really help create the sense that they're always thinking of one another.

The pair of pages with Sakura reading on a park bench and Takamine picking a book in the library are a good example. Sakura is shown on the park bench from an angle that makes it look like there's a big open space in Takamine's usual spot to her right. There's not a big open space to Takamine's left in the panel where Sakura usually stands, but the way the bookshelf extends across the bottom of the page creates the sense someone is missing.

I get the feeling this is symbolizing their feelings being slightly out of sync with one another [like in the last page of ch.5]. Sakura has realized her feelings for Takamine are romantic, but Takamine hasn't quite realized the same. There's another bit later on in this chapter in the park where Takamine is thinking about Sakura, but mostly in the context of how her encouragement makes the world feel less intimidating. Again, in that panel, the open space is to her right.

I thought Hatori was going to go in a completely different direction with, "Why'd you choose Takamine?"

I think it's definitely meant in that way, since Hatori makes the point of saying she has the same build as Takamine. She's just cloaking it behind her usual veil of aloofness. And since Hirose mentions Hatori seeming disinterested as a reason she didn't ask, I think it's why Hatori says it's not a bad thing that she's the one who has changed the most.