Thoughts on this manga? I just finished reading Mysterious Girlfriend X and I thought it was good! I've seen a lot of hate for the ending, and while I totally understand why, I still thought it was very sweet. I mean, considering how some romance manga go, that could have been a LOT worse. Thank you for reading my blog.
Shit like this was far too common back in the day. I'm glad manga has more kissing and sex now, it always felt contrived that you'd have 200 chapter manga that were a nearly asexual portrayal of romance aside from nosebleeds and blushing.
>>287118855Didn't feel very asexual to me. She and the other girls get naked all the time. I dunno, different preferences I guess.
>>287119251Different degrees of obsession with sex compared to back then.
>>287119251>>287118855I think it’s less that there wasn’t “sex” and more that the lines were drawn in strange places. There was plenty of nudity and exchange of bodily fluids but not even a kiss in the final chapter.
>>287119251>>287119352I mean that a lot of manga, especially back then (or so it felt), refused to tackle (or ignored the existance of) sex and sexuality as a component of the relationship; even down to kissing. Sure there were pantyshots and steam covering nipples and jokes about porn stashes and nosebleeds but that was all aimed at the reader and not about the character, it was just manga 'tropes'. If fel and still feels rare for the manga to develop the sexual aspect of a relationship as evenly, or at all, as it developed the 'non sexual' emotional aspects of it. To me it just felt extremely stale and tiresome, you got these manga where they were just stock characters in different setting, written to be recognizable as manga characters rather than people, and it was almost customary to ignore a the serious and emotionally important sexual aspect of the characters' relationship.
>>287118780This panel remindes me that I didn't finish reading this back when it was still being translated. This and Nana & Kaoru.
>>287119428>>287119754Yeah, that's fair. I will say it was pretty lame of him to lead with sex in the first (or was it second?) chapter and then not even have them kiss by the end. I think the reasons he gives in the omake after the last chapter are understandable, but I think if nothing else it probably should have been acknowledged in the story itself at some point.
>>287119935That bullshit in the second panel makes no sense to me, maybe I am not Japanese enough to understand.
>>287119935I think he's trying to say everything that happens in your youth feels new and exciting because you have no life experience to compare it to.
>>287119935Always saw it as "the kiss should happen at an important moment and not just cause" but the author should had made an epilogue showing it, either way i really enjoyed it and gave me a good nostalgic feeling of my hs days.>imagine the feedback loop
>>287119754Recently read through Horimiya and was really annoyed at how the family dynamic and relationship between the protags was displayed with how little intimacy there was between them.
>>287119994I fucked up the reply lol >>287120017
I was here almost from the time it started getting scanlated in the ~17 years ago and I'm still mad. And I'm not one of those "he shoulda fucked that bitch in every hole" kind of readers. The manga went from having a developing plot/character arc, to years of filler sidequests, to literally nothing happening, and an ending that was a middle finger to the audience. You have a story about emotions being conveyed by bodily fluids and a girl saying she's gonna fuck to the dude in the first chapter, and there isn't even any progress towards those goals. The last 80-100 chapters are just going in circles. They didn't need to turn it into an eromanga but there was so much room for maintaining an extremely high level of tension as they slowly explored their relationship with each other. You can basically pinpoint where the story stopped--it was sometime after he kissed her ear during the blackout. Coincidentally, the anime team must have noticed this so that's about where the show stops for good. The whole manga was just wasted potential and mistreating a really good concept.One other thing that jumps out at you is that the author's surrealistic creativity goes downhill about the same time. This guy was known in the industry for absolutely insane panels (pic related) with all kinds of shit going on. He abandoned that around the time MGX started going to shit. My pet theory is he either started taking psych meds that killed his Louis Wain streak, or he stopped taking psychedelics that were banned in Japan in the 2000s.Oh yeah, about the anime: It's great. The art and animation is a very heavily shaded '80s style, the music is some Danny Elfman shit, and Urabe's VA is a one-and-done actress who sounds nothing like an anime character. The fact it stops at the right time is even better.Fucking shit this still makes me angry. I don't know what's worse, seeing your favorite manga get ruined or the author getting abducted by aliens like the guy who did Torima Minshuku.
>>287118780Didn't read/watch it, so it's a yuri ending despite a boy meets girl start?
>how it started
>>287120480>how it's going
>>287120405You emit a faint miasma of modern /a/ brainrot anon. Also no.
>>287120509>92 chapters for this bullshitat what point does it become hatereading and sunkcost
>>287120718If you bounce after about ch30 you won't miss anything of substance.
>>287120774I strongly disagree.
>>287120774Damn, that's a pretty bad ratio. I thought Himaten going to shit at the start of the 40th chapter was pretty bad
>>287121102Explain. It's been over a decade since I've read some of this but I remember the first third being actual advancing plot, the next third being the idol arc or stuff related to it, and then the last third being wordswordswords with nothing happening.
>>287121203You remember wrong, is what I'll say. Read it again.
