Rottcodd

Yeah - I figured that was about the way things were going to work out for Lulu, and that she’d be okay. She really is strong.

And as a bonus, she called An out about Shunpei.

Lulu was a genius addition to this. It was already good when it was just An and Shunpei growing closer, but adding Lulu to the cast definitely improved it.

Yeah - I suspect that’s going to be the overarching theme - she really is getting better. Sort of. By a very broad and very relative measure of “better.”

Like when she ran through the list of her “accomplishments” in her head - going shopping for clothes (and hiding in the bathroom), going to karaoke (and shouting gibberish into the mic), getting a part-time job (and being infantilized by her crazy boss) - in spite of it all, that really did work to boost her confidence.

For a similar, and similarly laugh-out-loud funny experience, I very strongly recommend Number Girl. It’s by Nico Tanigawa - the authors of WataMote - and it’s terrific and hilarious. It follows a group of identical clones, who are already amusingly emotionless and ignorant, as they’re tasked with developing individual personalities. And they really do, but not in any way that one would expect. Like Iori, their conception of the world is so skewed that the ways in which they fit into it are also skewed, but somehow they work. Sort of.

Whoa - that’s a big moment for them.

Hm.

The multiple possible pairings was part of the problem for me, because this one also includes characters with a laser focus on one specific desired partner, so (unless things change), somebody’s going to end up painfully losing. I don’t like to see that.

I dunno… maybe I’ll just dive back in and see. It’s near certain that it’s at least improved from the point at which I dropped it.

Or… hey! That’s right - this was an adaptation announcement…

You are enjoying it? Does that mean it got better or that your tolerance for NTR-bait built on contrived failures to communicate, contrived single-mindedness and contrived failures to draw painfully obvious conclusions is higher than mine?

Hopefully the former. I had a lot of hope for it early on, but it just kept getting under my skin and I had to drop it.

It’s like she needs a support group. She recognizes the problem but she just can’t resist.

Just started catching up with this, and I’m already totally sold - chapter 1, with Iori standing on the rim of the bath proclaiming that she’s going to go to Tokyo, while Ena in the bath tries to convince her not to. Then Iori, fully determined, rushes off to buy what she’ll need, while Ena calls after her, “Onee-chaaaaan! Those are my clothes!”

I’m still laughing…

How was that so impossibly cute?

Ah - she admitted it.

And she apparently has some sort of childhood friend scheme cooked up relating to confessing to him.

This is going to be great.

What a great chapter.

I loved those two silent panels at the top of the page after she said, “I wonder if being in love is so fun that it makes someone become completely consumed by it.”

I’m really liking Lulu too. She was introduced like she was just going to be a stock genki girl, to contrast with An’s quiet calm, but she’s really growing into an interesting character in her own right. And difficult though this might be, I think she’s going to be fine, and I even tend to think that, in a way, she’s made the right choice, not because that’s a romance she should pursue but specifically because it’s not, and Izumi seems to be a good guy who’ll hopefully take the opportunity to kindly nudge her in a better direction.

And it’s neat how comfortable they’ve gotten with each other - there was just something really heartwarming about seeing An sitting in the seat behind him, sort of draped over the back of his seat, just relaxed and chatting.

And yes - caught up.

I think uni guy called it - they’re going to hold hands at the festival.

And I’m not going to be surprised if Harima does tag along, so we can get that thing sort of like progress that we get from her and Kirishima. There’s definitely something there, but they’re so mutually antagonistic that they’re actually likely going to move even more slowly than Nayu and Hikiochi.

Nayu and Hikiochi is a strange thing. Because that’s what they learned first, they still refer to each other by their given names inside of their own heads, but they had to work so hard just to be able to call each other by their family names out loud without being crippled by embarrassment. It just makes for such an odd contrast.

And speaking of odd contrast, though they aren’t relevant, I really want to mention Mase and Okute, who might just be the most interesting characters in the entire series. I have no idea what possessed the author to introduce a pair of cynical, world-weary elementary schoolers to inadvertently provide the mains with love advice, but it was brilliant, and just that much more so because it doesn’t seem like there’s any way it could work, but it does. And it’s just that much more interesting because even with only a few appearances, they’re already multilayered characters. Mase comes across as so cynical and so jaded, but then she lets down her guard a bit and you can see that she’s actually a romantic. And meanwhile Okute tries to act as the proper voice of reason, but then we get these little flashes of a cunning maneater underneath that innocent facade. That’s masterful writing.

And broadly, that’s speaks to the real secret behind this series. It is a great concept - basically we get literal audience surrogates (and not just in the main three - like on their cafe date, pretty much the entire cafe was watching them) - but the thing that really sells this is that it’s just extraordinarily well-written. I mean - it took them 21 chapters just to actually work up the courage to talk to each other, and the moment it happened felt like one of the biggest romantic events I’ve ever seen. That’s masterful writing again.

This festival is going to be so good…

I still haven’t quite caught up to this - I just read the fireworks chapters about an hour ago, then had to take a break to get my blood sugar levels back down.

This is such an amazing series.

They are Still Being Shaken This Morning

Halfway through chapter 1 and I already adore this series.

Sort of an overt version of the busdriver in Bus For Two - he’s extremely subtle, but you can tell he knows exactly what’s happening.

It reminds me of an anecdote - one of those perfect little fleeting experiences. I was walking down a mall on a Saturday afternoon, on a break from my job, when I noticed a boy and girl - both about 14 or so - sitting side by side on a bench. And she was radiating “kiss me” so strongly that I swear I could feel it from halfway across the mall. And meanwhile he was just sitting there with his hands clenched between his knees and a panicky look on his face, peering around everywhere but at her. And I sort of chuckled to myself and walked on. And then this guy fell into step beside me, and when I looked at him, he gestured back at them and said, “I remember when I was that stupid too.” I laughed and said, “Yeah - you and me both,” and we went our separate ways.

I’m looking forward to lots of that - thanks for the link. And I haven’t even checked out any of the others yet…