Almost Friends

[MangaDex]

 

[Peintresse]

Working on this, Ch 0 and Ch 1 almost done!

 

[Asiankarebear]

can't wait to see more!! thank youuu

 

[yashirogeek]

thank you for picking this up! grateful for your hard work❤

 

[Steamedtoast]

Sorry, but what kind of shit parents would not just get their child the needed surgery to save them from a life of mental hardship? Don't have the money? Don't get a kid.

"Surgery to repair a cleft lip [...] is recommended within the first 12 months of life."

 

[Machineheart]

Thank you for the beautiful work translator. I know its hard and a lot of work. Thank you too to the redrawer and quality checker.
Its just chapter 1 but im already going nuts about the manga. Pls dont abandon translating this manga.

 

[FollowTheBeast]

Thanks! This is so good! 😍

 

[ramendemonster]

This's so good! Im waiting for moreee

 

[Aichuuwon]

Those guys are like a bunch of uneducated kids

 

[Machineheart]

Ty to rose mist scans for updating pretty quick.

 

[Rdite]

this is starting off really good, I'll be here to support chu

 

[Amadama]

Hell yeah! This is great! Seems really interesting so far. Thanks for the translations!

 

[Kingcol]

Thanks for the translation and this looks very interesting! Keep it up!

 

[Kokoro-chan]

This kind of yuri is gold! Thanks you translators and authors!

 

[ilikeyuri]

Chapter 3 - "I did know she was actually sick" she says looking all worried... as if her picking on her before was completely acceptable. Because in her eyes her being clefflipt is her own fault and the horrible words others say is totally okay because she won't do anything. But now that she faints in front of everyone it's "oh no she fainted? I didn't know, otherwise I wouldn't have said anything" ... this girl is so disrespectful of people with actual physical (disability) and pretends her maliciousness is completely fine and not vile :/

If you make fun of someone who was born with a body part that is different and not normal, that person has no control over it. It's a horrible thing to do to make fun of someone. They can never change that part of them. They're stuck like this forever, they were born this way.

I really don't like that girl character (the one with the 2 pigtails), she's two faced and actually messed up in the head to think it's okay to bully others and act like no we're such good girls, she's the bad one for being born with her lip like that, who told her to be born that way. Literally that's what her characters looks like it's screaming this. Unfortunately, I'm sure there are messed up people like this in irl :/

 

[conditionercat]

seems really good so far! i like their dynamic and how they didn't instantly click and their relationship is still gonna develop. i've never read a yuri where they didn't immediately make out (which is fine but it's nice for a change.) excited to see how the story progresses

 

[Machineheart]

Where is chapter 5? Been waiting all day lol. But thats okay take yur tine translators

 

[Aceisanegg]

Romance and yuri tags disappeared?

 

[ilyuri]

Thank you for translating this! I love everything about it so far

 

[Peintresse]

Romance and yuri tags disappeared?

Responding before any other comments come in, clearing things up (I translated the first few chapters and was involved in the scanlation of all of them, I’ve been holding on to some of these thoughts for a year and a half lol.)

1. Almost Friends has never had the Yuri tag (check on any aggregator, it was only ever tagged shoujo ai and romance)
2. I tagged it romance mistakenly because I was working on another series at the time and mixed up the tags I saw on the original site. This was not meant to queerbait anyone.
3. While Almost Friends was indeed tagged as 百合 (Shoujo Ai) on the original Chinese site (Kuaikan), Kuaikan tags are both not set by the actual comic creators (that is to say a random editor could’ve seen it, been like yeah seems like it’s GL), and also Kuaikan is more loose with its definition of shoujo ai and Almost Friends was later removed from the 百合 tag
3.5 Shoujo ai, to me, mean outright sapphic romance or queer subtext. Especially when shoujo ai and Yuri were seperate tags, this made me more content with just tagging it with the one when the story had just started and nothing was yet confirmed
4. As soon as the story appeared not to be an actual romance between the two leads, I removed all mention of shoujo ai, romance, GL etc from both Mangadex and mangaupdates pages, though this was around chapter 20 and understandably people probably weren’t checking the tags at that point.
5. I also tried very hard to inform people through pages at the start of chapters that Qingchuan and Lin Zhen probably weren’t going to be endgame by around chapter 30. That was two months before the finale.
6. I kind of think the author just doesn’t know how to write a close friendship between girls without making it shippy lol. This was an issue in their past series also.
7. But yeah to some extent the author was queer baiting for more attention, the Chinese readers were very upset around the mid 30 chapters and their comment section is still a hot mess.

I hope anyone reading this series enjoyed it in spite of any explicit romance. Thank you for reading our scanlation.

Almost Friends is not a GL series. If you are reading this later than June 2021, don’t go in expecting a confirmed romance between the leads. If you read the series before June 2021, I’m sorry if you felt queerbaited.