I can't help but feel a lot of these "I hate Kaoru", "She's annoying", "I don't understand" comments are from persons with little experience or patience for adult concerns. Perhaps more background into Kaoru's life would help us better understand why she entered this marriage in the first place but people all over the world marry for convincing reason, under influential circumstances that look less solid later on, and it's not because they're all stupid and pathetic.
Marriage is a huge emotional investment. You've dedicated so much of your life to keep it together as a unit. Part of Kaoru already knows the answer to her question and she, quite understandably, fears the consequences. Nevermind the swirl of messed up feelings Uta's confession inspired. Idk what I'd do with myself if my spouse's teenage sibling, with whom I had such a wonderful relationship, confessed such feelings to me. *Worse* if even the tiniest part of me reciprocated it. Hello therapy lololol.
That baby move is, for sure, a bad idea and I hope it doesn't happen. But she grew up in a society that expects and even pressures women into making just that kind of bad decision so I don't find it particularly pathetic of her any more than I do of society in general.
I read this whole manga differently, tho, since I never wanted nor expected she and Kaoru and Uta to get together. How could Kaoru getting together with her high school sister-in-law be *any* better a decision than the things some of you find annoying and pathetic now? LOL. People are weird. (I include myself in that judgement.)
Some of us might think it like that tho
I feel u..u not alone.( ´◡‿ゝ◡`)
I agree with you in most things but I do think it's possible for them to get together at some point, Kaoru isn't that much older than Uta and I don't think any of the characters are really in an emotional, maturity space to make a relationship work, so I guess it would be possible with a passage of time.
The thing I really want it's just for Kaoru to grow and realize that her relationship and the mindset she has in it isn't really healthy, even if in the end she is by herself and also for her to cut ties with Risako because she's a toxic friend.
Thank you. That helps <3.
Goodness knows I can be bitchy on here but potatosan you did the *best* you could on a title no other scanlation group is doing and for that most of us, including myself, are extremely grateful. I know how a bad comment can stand out among a sea of good but try not to let it get to you too much. Do what you have to do, upload your work to whichever site you feel most comfortable with, and supportive readers will find you. We know you'll keep working hard!
Besides that, I find BL with HS delinquents so cute, esp when they're a bottom.
Am I high or was that one of the best closing chapters I've read in a long time?
AGREED
What a treasure this is, to get an extra with these two in Yoneda Kou's more recent style. The art on these pages look soooooo good. They're still sooo sweet! Thanks so much to Stevescans for translating this.
This update reminded me that we haven't seen anything from Canis in months and months. I hope it becomes active again, it's one of my favourite scanlation teams.
The one who drugged him? It's not, right? Because how could that be waved off with an apology and a "Let's work hard together"?
I hate BL sometimes.
(It's not that cousin, right? It's someone else? I would really be pleased to be wrong on this.)
I think it's him. I'm a little confused too.
He's supposed to be in jail for that, not working with him. Sometimes in BL they treat those topics as nothing. It makes me too angry
I wish he would. It's time for Alex to grovel and work for it. DG, you owe him nothing else after your very mature and reasonable apology. You don't owe Alex, shit! He owes you and until he recognises that, make him suffer. Ride newer and nicer dicks: they are out there! Let someone spoil you rotten! Leave Alex to cry in bed rubbing his own dick dreaming of what could have been!
*sigh*
Is how I want it to go but I have no hope.
Is it just me or did the creator draw the tomboyish roughen the character design for the tomboyish character? (I forgot her name.) In the beginning both girls were drawn as equally cute and feminine, it was just that one wore more pants. But it's as if, now that the romance is acknowledged between them, she accentuates the masculinity of one over the other...?
Idk. But another reader actually asked if one was a guy now lol! And I totally get the reasons behind that question even if it was awkwardly expressed.
I also think the same. It's like her character design has change. Back then she looks more feminine but now, it's just guy with long hair. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying this in a bad way. I just want to state that her looks has definitely change.
If she was drawn like that from the beginning, or if it was all a part of a general evolution in the creator's art style I would have zero issues. But it looks like yet another person who can't envision a lesbian romance outside of a boy-girl paradigm. It's disappointing.
Maybe it’s how you perceive it since the author’s art style changed, but to me she still looks very feminine^^
Completely agree.
I feel like it's the clothing and the partial style change. I used to do the same thing when I had crushes or was trying to attract someone. I went kinda tomboyish and tried to be more handsome rather than cute. I'd say it's more of a preference thing + tomboyish-slightly-bigger-and-loose clothing can really make you look rough even if you aren't
I think it's more the author has fallen into the uke seme trap. A the series has gone on, the blonde haired character is portrayed as the smaller, more girly, naive woman whereas the dark haired character is very "tomboyish" and dominant, rather than showing two average women as opposed to having to make one butch and the other femme.
There's a youtube music video where they use a picture from this webtoon, and everyone, including the uploader thought the dark haired woman was a man. The gist of the song, was "I kissed a girl" song in a man's voice. So people do think the dark haired woman is too masculine, rather than just a woman who is gay.
The "uke-seme trap" is exactly the same thing as the "boy-girl paradigm". It's a refusal to see romantic relationships outside of a heterosexual formula. Even in BL bara stories most of the ones I've read do not feature "reversible" as readers call it in the face of reality and common sense.
My complaint wasn't really about the tomboyish issue. Again I don't mind that. Nothing wrong with being tomboyish. Nothing wrong with drawing a masculine looking female character either. My issue is that artist's character design for the tomboyish character has become even more masculine, the lines have become rougher, seemingly *in response* to the developing romance. And it betrays her prejudices.
What style change? She has always worn pants and slightly loose clothing. In any case, that is not what I noticed. I'm referring to the actual line drawing in her character design, of her actual *physical features* including her face and arms.
I also kind of feel like it's her clothes cuz in the latest chapters she really does look like a dude but for the most part she only looks slightly broader and taller than before so yeah she's changed but not drastically I think (=・ω・=)
True, the way the author draw her definitely has change.
Agree.
? she was drawn like that from the beginning. go back to the first part, ch. 1-13. pgs. 14-31 contain some of tan jiu's concept art. it does look like sun jing was more feminine in the earliest drawings but became more androgynous before the series even began.
specifically, pgs. 19/31, 20/31, 22/31, 24/31, 25/31, 26/31, 27/31, 29/31...
in fact I have 29/31 saved and was looking at it one time when my sister saw and assumed sun jing was a boy.
also looks like older sun jing's style is more ""masculine,"" more leather, pants, and shirts make her seem flat-chested. it makes sense that sun jing now is gradually changing her style.
*shirts that make her seem flat-chested
While I do recognize your point of basing a lesbian relationship on a guy-girl paradigm being negative as it paints an heteronormative view on a a girl-girl couple, a lot of her early designs (as mentioned in the comments above) showed her as being butchy, aint nothing wrong with that.
Yesssss, I support & love my butch daughter
If you look at the early side arts you can tell she was always intended to be the more masculine of the two. Also I think she looks plenty like a girl rather people think she looks like a guy because anime/manga/etc got people so desensitized to those girly boy bishies that they don't realize it's the other way around.
Yup agree with past few comments. Shes always been more tomboyish which isn't a problem - there are plenty of stories with two femmes etc so why not have some with a more butch character and a femme? Idk I just think you're looking into this too deeply - art styles develop and change, and his includes exaggeration of features etc, there's nothing wrong with this!
I don't know how many times I'll be able to explain that I meant the line art in relation to specific parts of her physique and not the fashion. (Her essential fashion style has not changed much and I for sure don't associate leather with being masculine anyway for crying out loud.) The lines in the 29/31 design are far more elegant and the face far more delicate than anything we're getting for that character now. Ergo it's the *complete opposite* of what my post addressed.
If you don't view the change as I do or think that it's a response to anything (or that it even happened at all), no problem. But it takes more than baggy pants and shirts to make a character butch, and I'm over people in the thread thinking *that's* what I'm referring to. Or constantly defending her right to be tomboyish when I already stated *that* wasn't my issue either. I ain't about to link to Youtube drawing videos for clarification and I probably don't have the vocabulary to explain my critique (I don't draw) clearly so I'll end it here. Agree to disagree.
Oh my gosh, some people just don't get what your post means when it's so simple to understand. When I read your post, I understood it right away because that's what I'm also thinking. Having read this long ago up to now, there's really something different with how the characters are drawn now especially Sun Jing. I also have a similar post way back that maybe there's a different illustrator now. It's not because of how the way she dresses because that's how Sun Jing dresses from the very start, it's just there's something different with texture and angles of the MCs face. Oh and just to add, I'm a lesbian btw.
well it seems like i misunderstood you. maybe i got you confused with the other people in this thread. however, i actually do draw, but i really don't see what you're talking about, the lines being more masculine in terms of her physique. i can see that the lines are thicker, but they're the same thickness on qiu tong. what you're describing sounds like a typical change in art style to me. same-face syndrome isn't a good thing, and it's common for artists to slowly change the design of their characters to differentiate them more. i've heard teachers criticizing designs like this: "your characters all have the same face." even to designs with different heights, fashion, hair color and other distinctions. this is especially a problem w/anime-esque art style. it's more believable to me that tan jiu spotted this as a problem and changed it, rather than that they're unconsciously prejudiced.
take for example this webcomic, "always raining here," with a pretty significant artist evolution.
on the first page, http://alwaysraininghere.com/index.php/arh/cover-2/, the two male MCs look almost the same. hairstyle, face shape, eye shape, etc. by the end, http://alwaysraininghere.com/index.php/arh/page-219/, they've changed drastically. one has much softer and feminine features, while the other is more angular w/defined jawline, etc. once again, an extreme example, but i wouldn't say the artist couldn't portray a gay relationship w/o falling to hetero tropes. it's clear this is what the artist always had intended, but simply wasn't at that level in their art yet.
recently, i showed a friend of mine a few of those early drawings and he too thought sun jing was a guy. it seems to me from the concept designs that sun jing was intended to be less feminine than qiu tong. sn't it feasible, then, than tan jiu has simply gotten better at portraying it?
(This comment was a while ago but oh well) As a butch lesbian reading this shit show of a thread I just have to say that even implying that the butch/femme relationship is imitating het relationships in any way is incredibly shitty?? (and homophobic for a thousand reasons) and I can't believe I'm writing this much on this haha but let me say that the author has actually done an amazing job, in my opinion, at portraying an actual lesbian couple that I actually enjoy reading about (aS A LESBIAN WOW) + when I saw that the artist had started drawing her rougher and more masculine I genuinely got really excited and happy because 99.99% of lesbian rep (in various media) are two feminine women (not saying there's anything wrong with femme/femme relationships because that's not what's shown)
I can definitely see where you're coming from, but I don't think it's the author envisioning them in a boy-girl relationship. Some women do become more masculine throughout their relationship, both style-wise and physically (more muscle growth, etc). My (now ex) girlfriend definitely did that. I actually quite like that the author made her a little more masculine since almost every other GL manga has two femme girls (no hate to femme girls, they're great too). That might just be my love for masculine women talking, though. That's just my opinion, though.
I haven't been this excited about a series in a long time. I love the way the creator builds tension in the scenes. That tie moment...! *bites fist*