Would be an interesting twist though; her yuri-sense picking up the residual yuri-tragedy in the place she's living and then her going to try and figure out what happened to the surviving one ... and then there was age-gap romance.

last edited at Mar 11, 2018 5:08AM

Imo 2 options:

Either black haired girl found the arranged marriage file, that belonged to her girlfriend and thus commited suicide.

Or its jtt's theory, where black haired girl was forced to marry, couldnt bring it up and killed her self in the end.

Still, repressed memeories is a bit lame, if its the case.

Either black haired girl found the arranged marriage file, that belonged to her girlfriend and thus commited suicide.

The paneling implies Kuniko was struggling over whether to tell Mihoko something related to the miai stuff and the conflict from pressure to marry would explain her suicide. Why would you come up with a more complicated version of events, where the miai stuff was Mihoko's, when there's nothing to imply it over the simpler version that fits everything the mangaka gave the audience?

last edited at Mar 11, 2018 5:23AM

Oh, I think I messed up the name of black haired woman.
きめこ means Kimeko, Kinuko or Kuniko?

Oh, I think I messed up the name of black haired woman.
きめこ means Kimeko, Kinuko or Kuniko?

It's Kinuko. 絹子 read きぬこ.

Oh, I think I messed up the name of black haired woman.
きめこ means Kimeko, Kinuko or Kuniko?

It's Kinuko. 絹子 read きぬこ.

Okay. So I need to fix page 7.

Okay. So I need to fix page 7.

And maybe change "me and her" to "she and I" while you're at it. In retrospect that was not good English on my part.

As others have said I can't see it being repressed memories due to the lack of aging of "not" Mihoko whilst the focus on the TV sets indicates quite some time difference.

Also "not" Mihoko says "I've never lived in that place" but yet the house on page 7 where she wakes herself up shouting Kinuko's name looks like the same house as shown on page 1 when she is Mihoko (though shown from a slightly different angle).

It would be good for a follow up to make things a little clearer - as trying work out what's going on makes my head hurt!

Astraea Hill posted:

Also "not" Mihoko says "I've never lived in that place" but yet the house on page 7 where she wakes herself up shouting Kinuko's name looks like the same house as shown on page 1 when she is Mihoko (though shown from a slightly different angle).

There's no indication that the shouting happens in the present.

I took it like the original Mihoko shouts Kinuko's name when she discovers her hanging, then it switches to present time in the next panel, with the not Mihoko waking up.

Also, maybe this manga is a statement about how things were in the 80s (marry a man or die), compared to now.

The way I see it:

1. reincarnation or body possession(something to do with point 2)
2. other than suicide, it could be murder.
3. same place, different era

I don't want to go into details but what struck me was the happy disposition of Kuniko before she died which imprinted into Mihoko's memory, consequently, triggering Mihoko's confusion as to the circumstances behind the death.

Murder? I don't see where that could be murder here.

And it's not the same place. She clearly says she never lived there. Or the apartment complex got destroyed and others were rebuilt on the same spot. So, maybe she's haunted.

But we are grasping at straws at this point, because this lacks tons of context.

It calls for a continuation.

last edited at Mar 11, 2018 8:56AM

Let’s face it, none of this makes sense if this story is a standalone one-shot—it’s just some person’s disturbing and confusing recurring dream. Full stop.

We have a few potential clues that might point in one or more possible directions, and the story could be made to make sense if we had even a little bit more information of certain kinds, but at this point we don’t, and unless “Fin” means something other than what it usually does, we’re not going to get any more information.

This just feels so much like a “Chapter 1” that to me the “Fin” is really the main thing that doesn’t make sense.

EDIT: To put it a slightly different way: Nya-chan types faster than I do.

last edited at Mar 11, 2018 9:02AM

A young woman in the modern day has a recurring dream in which she is a young woman called Mihoko in a previous decade. Mihoko lives in an apartment with her lover Kinuko. Mihoko thinks they're happy together, but Kinuko is being urged to marry and can't bring herself to tell Mihoko. Kinuko hangs herself and Mihoko screaming her name after finding her is how the dream ends. The dreamer knows she isn't called Mihoko, she knows she has never lived in a place like that and she doesn't know who Kinuko is, however Kinuko's face feels familiar.

The ending (which is clearly supposed to be significant) seems to be suggestive of past life memories and everything else the mangaka has put in fits well with that. We don't really need any more information for this to work as a good short story.

All other interpretations seem to be people overlooking things or adding complexities that the mangaka has done nothing to suggest.

last edited at Mar 11, 2018 9:22AM

Murder? I don't see where that could be murder here.

Well, the "husband" could have figured out that there was something good going on, and, outraged, made it look like a suicide. A word or two to the police - clearly she was disturbed, sleeping with another woman - and he totally got away with it.

Now the outraged yuri-spirit haunts the heroine so she finally brings justice to the perpetrators.

And thus this kicks-off the adventures of the hard-boiled yuri PI ...

No offense to the translators (depending on the answer to my question), but is the original Japanese title intentionally ungrammatical (or idiomatic)? Because the proper English syntax is “She and I are lovers.”

(I say “idiomatic,” because casual English speakers might well say it the other way—i.e., the way it is the story—more often than not.)

I'm with you on this one 110%. I see this grammatical error constantly in scanlations and it drives me nuts. There's another point in this particular one-shot where a similar mistake is made. I think a lot of scanlators don't seem to understand the difference between rote translation and localization. I always say to go with the localization. Use proper grammar even if the direct translation doesn't. A good example of this... "Dear My Teacher." I hate that title. Even if it's in Engrish, it looks horribly stupid. Wouldn't it be better to switch it to "My Dear Teacher?" Again, this is a taste thing.

At the very least if we're talking about content in a manga and not the title, get the grammar right. I'm tired of "Me and Midori are going to the amusement park." It needs to be "Midori and I are going to the amusement park." Sheesh.

This is just me speculating partly based on my own experiences, but perhaps some of those scanlators have been burned one too many times by official translations erring on the side of "localization" in an excessive manner (see Pokemon and its nonsensical ways of translating onigiri as anything other than "rice balls"), to the point that they developed a deep hatred of the concept in itself.

We don't really need any more information for this to work as a good short story.

We don’t need anything other than “it’s past life memories” to make it work as a coherent story—“good” is a rather different matter. So she’s remembering something tragic from a past incarnation—what of it? We don’t know enough about her present life to think that the dream matters for anything except disturbing her sleep patterns.

If what you say is true—and it definitely is the interpretation that’s most fully supported by the text—I think the author has rushed to the twist ending without giving enough context to make that ending pay off as anything but a simple narrative trick.

We don't really need any more information for this to work as a good short story.

We don’t need anything other than “it’s past life memories” to make it work as a coherent story—“good” is a rather different matter. So she’s remembering something tragic from a past incarnation—what of it? We don’t know enough about her present life to think that the dream matters for anything except disturbing her sleep patterns.

It's almost weird that your reaction would be "what of it?" You don't need to know anything about her present life for the experience depicted to have significance and emotional resonance and be a good, interesting short story. Maybe try imagining what it would be like for you to be haunted by such an experience.

^Thank you for your kind advice.

shieeeeet , i bet Natsuki is her favorite doki doki character

It's feels like as if we are seeing just a fragment of a bigger story.

But Nice art at least.

A young woman in the modern day has a recurring dream in which she is a young woman called Mihoko in a previous decade. Mihoko lives in an apartment with her lover Kinuko. Mihoko thinks they're happy together, but Kinuko is being urged to marry and can't bring herself to tell Mihoko. Kinuko hangs herself and Mihoko screaming her name after finding her is how the dream ends. The dreamer knows she isn't called Mihoko, she knows she has never lived in a place like that and she doesn't know who Kinuko is, however Kinuko's face feels familiar.

The ending (which is clearly supposed to be significant) seems to be suggestive of past life memories and everything else the mangaka has put in fits well with that. We don't really need any more information for this to work as a good short story.

All other interpretations seem to be people overlooking things or adding complexities that the mangaka has done nothing to suggest.

Thank you. Reading everyone else's comments and seeing them not get something so obvious has been so frustrating.

Fin???? Wtf I need more

It definitely needed to be longer. The gut punch occurs too soon and we don't know any of the characters long enough to be invested in their tragedy and whatever supernatural things are occurring are too vague and doesn't work with just how few pages there are.

Maybe it's a supernatural story where she's somehow got memories of someone else's life.

Had an hypothesis, looked closer at the end, realized it was wrong. If it's a reincarnation thing it's pretty dumb to end it there--really, what does that add to the story? It just makes it totally unresolved.

last edited at Mar 11, 2018 3:22PM

I'm on team reincarnation. It seems pretty obvious that an arranged marriage was demanded and she picked dying over doing that. Would have been a very realistic choice back in the 70's.