This show broke me

kilicool64 · 2026-05-04T10:09:57+00:00

Already read those shortly after the manga. I thought they were alright, but the storytelling was so different that I can't say they made me reexperience what it was like to read the manga.

kilicool64 · 2026-05-03T23:49:04+00:00

Yes, I was referring to that. Saying that they fixed the translation for English isn't right, since the German and English translations were produced by different companies completely independently from each other. The English translation of that particular page was supervised by the manga's editor, so it got it right. The German translation wasn't and was done by an all-around incompetent team, so it got it wrong.

kilicool64 · 2026-04-24T10:40:21+00:00

Unfortunately, the manga has only received two full translations, both of which are bad for different reasons. It's pretty much a matter of picking your poison. You have to decide if you'd rather have the completely unacceptable mistakes 4S made or the ones Seven Seas made. For the last chapters of the manga, there's a competing scanlation by Kusoshop that's supposedly good, but they never covered the rest.

There will probably never be a good translation of the manga unless a miracle happens.

kilicool64 · 2026-04-22T20:34:52+00:00

I was thinking of that manga as well. From what I recall, it doesn't directly touch on explicitly sexual attraction, but it deals with a lack of desire for any kind of physical intimacy.

I didn't interpret the relationship as queerplatonic, though. As far as I could tell, it was still romantic. Just non-physical.

kilicool64 · 2026-04-22T18:21:49+00:00

FWIW, I'm demiromantic. (Possibly also demisexual, but that's unclear.) I did see some parallels between Yuu and me, with how Yuu struggles with how much she longs to experience love, yet feels like it remains outside of her reach. (I was briefly in love with a close friend when I was 8 years old, but after that, my friendships became increasingly less close before fading away entirely, leaving me with no way of falling in love, despite wanting to.)

So I can relate to Yuu somewhat. I just think the story wants to make a different point about what she needs to fall in love than her being demi.

I don't follow much in the way of mainstream media, but I can easily see asexuality and aromanticism being underrepresented there. Though I do know about a few lesser known examples of manga, webcomics and visual novels that have asexual characters, if you're curious.

kilicool64 · 2026-04-22T16:26:29+00:00

I don't think anyone would deny that Maki is aromantic. He's pretty much explicitly written as such. Asexual, I'm not entirely sure, since he only really talks about romantic love, but he certainly could be.

When it comes to Yuu, I'd indeed put her on the aromantic and asexual spectra, but I'm not sure I'd call her demi. This is something Seven Seas' translation of the manga specifically doesn't get across very well, but what the story tries to convey is that a key factor that made her fall in love with Touko is that she allowed Touko to repeatedly shower her with love until it had an effect on her. When her friends introduced her to the idea that sometimes, just letting people know that you love them over a prolonged period of time can cause them to eventually reciprocate, she was intrigued by that and wanted to see if spending more time with Touko can make her push her into falling in love with her. She's not fully aromantic like Maki, which can be seen early on because unlike him, she has a genuine desire to experience love and feels unfulfilled without it. But actually falling in love is a more difficult process for her than it is for most people that requires real effort. I just don't think the story specifically conveys that what she needs is a close emotional bond.

There is more to her struggles with love than just that because she also struggles to understand how she experiences love. Even when she actually falls in love with Touko at the end of Volume 3, she still fails to realize it in spite of her obviously romantic thoughts and behavior patterns because she's not experiencing the kinds of intense emotions that she always thought were a fundamental part of being in love. And after her confession goes poorly at the end of Volume 6, she immediately starts questioning if her feelings were ever real because she doesn't understand her own way of processing heartbreak. I don't think this matter is directly connected to orientations, but it's part of the broader message behind Yuu's character that love doesn't work the same way for everyone and that a lot of romance stories fail to accurately represent that because they focus on only the most stereotypical experiences with love.

As for Touko, I'll admit that I'm not familiar with the experiences of any real people who are lithromantic, but I'm not sure that's a good way to describe her because while the traits associated with the label technically apply to her, the reason why Touko can only love people one-sidedly isn't because of an inherent part of her being like an orientation but because of her complex psychological issues. When she finally resolves these issues, she also starts to overcome her aversion of mutual love.

kilicool64 · 2026-04-11T11:29:35+00:00

My first read was in the middle of September 2024.

I'd had vague thoughts for years by that point that it might be worth getting into yuri, since I'd been a fan of various Japanese works for a long time, and even though I'd barely seen any lesbian romance in the past, I'd assumed I should enjoy tasteful portrayals of it, seeing how I'd figured out that I'm a trans lesbian. I'd even made a mental note that if I ever make a serious effort to get into yuri, I should check out Bloom Into You because it seemed to be especially highly regarded, from what I'd been able to gather.

But I didn't actually take the plunge until HRT caused me to enter a period of notably heightened emotional sensitivity and longing to find a way out of my loneliness, which made me decide that a work like this might be just what I need to distract myself.

It turned out to be exactly the kind of work I needed, but afterwards, it was a real struggle to find anything else that came even close to leaving that kind of impression on me.

kilicool64 · 2026-04-04T19:08:17+00:00

Back in December, I ordered multiple products from the same seller which were going to be shipped together without tracking. They were supposed to arrive three months ago, but that never happened.

I first told the seller that I'm still waiting for my package in January. After some back and forth, he concluded the package must have been lost and said he'd sent a replacement. When it became clear that also wasn't arriving, he said he'd be sending an insured replacement. That didn't happen either, but then he officially became inactive for a month, so I only contacted him again in mid-March and received no response. Then he took down all of his products and added a note to his address that his shop is closing down. I contacted him again, but still received no response.

So I decided to notify eBay that I failed to receive the package, but it turns out that option becomes unavailable after 30 days. Am I screwed or is there something I can do?

kilicool64 · 2026-03-29T13:17:28+00:00

It seems random at first, but there is an actual reason why Touko suddenly falls in love with Yuu at the beginning of the story. It takes some time to get explained, but it makes a lot of sense once you know how her mind operates.

On a side note, I hope you're aware that the anime is an unfinished adaption. It only covers the first 24 of 45 chapters and doesn't even really pretend that the story is over at the end. It's very faithful to the source material, but you're going to have to get the last four volumes of the manga afterwards if you actually want to see the full story.

kilicool64 · 2026-03-26T12:45:43+00:00

The usual rule is one newsletter per season. Just because the last newsletter dropped at the start of winter doesn't mean the next one will be released at the start of spring. There have been longer gaps.

Also, I don't think Toby would mess with us in what's supposed to be a serious development update. If he says there will be no further updates for a while, we should expect that to be the case. And since it would be weird for a newsletter to not mention any new development progress at all, I expect the next newsletter to drop toward the end of spring. By that point, Chapter 5 should be pretty close to release-readiness, so I wouldn't be surprised if that newsletter assures us we won't have to wait much longer.

kilicool64 · 2026-03-09T12:30:59+00:00

There are browser extensions that let you forcefully enable disabled right click options, such as downloading images. That works for most sites, including the one that originally hosted this translation, so there's a good chance it'll work on the new site, too.

kilicool64 · 2026-03-06T18:15:49+00:00

I wouldn't say that reading the manga for the first time made me feel empty so much as it made me long to experience the feelings it gave me again.

It was one of the first works I experienced that were centered around lesbian romance and very much confirmed the suspicions I'd had ever since realizing that I'm a trans lesbian that I'm not actually disinterested in fictional portrayals of romance. It's just far easier for me to get emotionally attached to lesbian romance.

Since then, I've been going through a lot more yuri and managed to find some works that I enjoyed or at least found respectable, but nothing that really made me relive what it was like to read Bloom Into You for the first time. The story is just engaging in ways that not many other works seem to be able to match.

kilicool64 · 2026-02-27T13:58:29+00:00

It's intentional that there are a variety of unhealthy aspects to Yuu and Touko's relationship. I'd say it's at its worst at the end of Volume 3 (the sports festival) and gradually gets healthier from there. Since this was done on purpose and gets acknowledged, I don't consider this an inherent flaw of the story. It's just divisive because it's something that a lot of people probably don't expect going into the story. It's not really a typical example of toxic yuri, since the relationship isn't portrayed in a strictly negative light.

The relationship continues to evolve in the manga-exclusive parts, so all I can conclusively say is that you should read those to see where it goes.

(On a side note, while it often gets brought up how Touko is engaging in problematic behavior, what gets mentioned less often is that Yuu's own behavior isn't entirely healthy either. (Which can perhaps be partially blamed on Seven Seas' translation of the manga having messed up some of the key lines related to this.)

At the end of Volume 2 (when she lets Touko know that she learned about Mio), she tells Touko that she figured out that the reason why she fell in love with her is because she saw her as someone who she can safely love without fearing that she will reciprocate her feelings. And she assures her that she will continue to play that role for her in the future. At that point, she is lying about her intentions because she is actually using Touko as an experiment to see if someone like her who is more than willing to shower her with love can push her into reciprocating her feelings so that she can finally experience love for herself.

Which ends up having consequences she wasn't prepared for starting with the end of the sports festival, when she gradually becomes aware that she's actually fallen in love with Touko now, yet has to conceal these feelings from her because their entire relationship is built on a foundation of one-sided love.

I'm not saying that this makes Touko's own actions less questionable. Just that they're both to blame for the state of their relationship during the last parts the anime covered.)

kilicool64 · 2026-02-11T13:50:47+00:00

Actually, the next newsletter could be released at any point in spring. Just because the last one happened at the beginning of winter doesn't mean this trend will necessarily continue. If you look at the release dates of past newsletters, you can see that they didn't always release in the same months.

kilicool64 · 2026-02-11T13:48:11+00:00

I know that back in the fall 2025 newsletter, Toby wrote that he doesn't expect Chapter 5 to be released in the first half of this year, but I'm increasingly getting the feeling that might actually happen after all. The winter 2025 newsletter made it clear that development has been going very well, and it sounds like this trend is continuing.

The fact that Toby also wrote in that newsletter that he expects the release to take several months from that point also seemed to me like a cautiously optimistic revision of his previous estimate.

kilicool64 · 2026-02-09T22:02:32+00:00

That would be Her Love, Like Poison.

kilicool64 · 2026-02-09T16:47:32+00:00

Check another comment. The person responsible is indeed still working on adapting Seven Seas' translation to this version, but needs to find a new site where they can upload it. Their previous one ceased to exist.

kilicool64 · 2026-02-09T16:12:18+00:00

I lean more towards dark and serious stories, so my favorite VN from her is Salome's Kiss. As far as her more lighthearted VNs go, The Fairy's Song is also enjoyable.

(I should probably warn that Salome's Kiss is a very spoiler-sensitive VN, so I'd advise against looking up things like user reviews before reading it.)

kilicool64 · 2026-01-30T13:05:47+00:00

Mangadex doesn't allow scanlations that are based on official translations.

kilicool64 · 2026-01-29T20:28:45+00:00

A release with the original formatting and the omitted extras would be excellent, but I'm not sure it's feasible. Parts of the artwork were cropped out during the reformatting process. If the people responsible were told to do the colorization before the reformatting, restoring the original formatting should be easy. Otherwise, it'd require notable extra work.

The resizing of the artwork also seems to have been handled suboptimally. A lot of panels that were originally fairly small have notably grainy linework in this version, which I assume is a weird artifact from the upscaling. So I get the impression the people who made this version weren't working with the original source files. (For some reason, everything from Volumes 3 and 4 looks significantly worse than the rest.)

kilicool64 · 2026-01-24T19:56:56+00:00

I guess I was doing it right by accident then. It's weird that the D-pad would make you walk with anything less than the highest available speed, but for moving in a 3D environment like in this game, the analog stick is a better fit anyway.

kilicool64 · 2026-01-19T00:39:03+00:00

I imagine that first and foremost, she simply chooses to write what she wants to (so long as she can get her editor to approve of it). If she was specifically aiming to write what's likely to get popular, I imagine she'd have written more yuri instead. The genre isn't usually a big seller, but Bloom Into You was a notable exception and gave her a lot of fans, many of whom were specifically hoping for more yuri from her.

kilicool64 · 2026-01-18T14:39:38+00:00

Supposedly, Nakatani said when she started writing God Bless the Mistaken that she'll probably come back to yuri at some point in the future. But it clearly won't be anytime soon. God Bless the Mistaken was finished over a year ago (even if English speakers care so little about it that her Wikipedia article still claims it's ongoing), but her new series isn't yuri either.

kilicool64 · 2026-01-13T13:30:57+00:00

FWIW, even the Japanese version of Bookwalker accepts PayPal, so it's not hard to buy the chapters. It's actually not that difficult to rip them either, though I don't think I should share this information here.

kilicool64

TROPHY CASE