Imasara desu ga, Osananajimi wo Suki ni Natte Shimaimashita - Ch. 28 - As The Short Journey Ends (First Half)

[Dingo777]

Have people never heard of Limited POV before? The first arc is entirely in Hikari's Point of view. We are not privy to everyone thoughts but Hikari during those chapters. Which is I believe the entire point, because much like Hikari, we're blind to what's happening in the background and with other characters until the reveal. There were hints, the web novel makes that much clearer, but like Hikari, we assume them to be romance flags instead of other possibilities, because again, we were seeing them in Hikari's point of view. Only to realize there's more going on that we initially thought. This second arc is also limited to Yami's, and if we ever get Yuu's POV, which I almost fear, will be also exclusive to his thoughts.


Sort of disingenuous since these chapters serve as a building block to Yami and Yuu's relationship and how they got in a shouting matching with one another in chapter 21, before kissing one another.

i have, but it’s used incredibly poorly here. If you’re gonna use a limited POV then you should organically feed the character, and by extension the audience, the information the character needs. Hard cutting to a flashback just to fill in the missing info is lazy and cheap. This whole thing should have been a conversation between the characters. Instead the author chickened out right before the important scene.

We don’t need that context RIGHT NOW. We needed to address the huge fucking thing that happened while there was still momentum. With each chapter we put off the confrontation the context matters less and less because Hikari doesn’t know any of this, so she’ll need to be told AGAIN so why would you not tell us, the reader, when you tell her? That way the climax can actually begin.

It’s the gaming equivalent of using an Unskippable text dump in a journal entry to explain who the final boss is and why they’re important, while you’re fighting them.

There’s a fundamental lack of understanding for how a narrative arc works. You don’t stop right before the climax to reset back to 0.

 

[b-no]

Yuu and Yami can end up together given that they are both red flags.

Hikari can go find a better man.

Problem solved.

 

[Dingo777]

Why? Why can't she get her spotlight now? Was chapter 21 not enough for readers to understand that she is an important character?

She got two chapters basically dedicated to her, one is a glimpse of her personality, and one is of her backstory. The other two friends got nothing.

She's getting an "info dump" because she is not a minor character. She's getting the "info dump" just as Hikari had her own "info dump" during the first 21 chapters because she's the main character, or one of the main characters at least.

Chapter 22 - her circumstances and how she met Yuu
Chapter 23 - their second meeting, and how she tried to corrupt him
Chapter 24 - their attempt to have sex, her opening up to him and them bonding
Chapter 25 - Yami actually falling in love with Yuu, him reciprocating, them proceeding to have sex and entering a relationship
Chapter 26 - ok, this one arguably does not have anything tangible
Chapter 27 - Yami taking proactive steps to resolve her family situation
Chapter 28 - in the same bin as chapter 26 I guess
Unless you consider anything that does not involve Hikari as unimportant, which I am starting to believe may be the case, there are at least 5 chapters of content and important plot details.

I see this comparison as disingenuous. A "hero" and a "villager" have intrinsic difference in power levels and power dynamic, you wouldn't expect a "villager" to do things a "hero" would. Hikari and Yami are classmates, basically on the same "power" level, equally capable of getting romantically involved with a boy their age, except Hikari is a sheltered girl who mostly lives in her own dream world, romantically at least, meanwhile Yami has seen some shit, and thus has more qualification to be a "hero" of this story.

Why? The last seven chapters did not make me care any less about what's gonna happen next, it's just that now there are more questions I want to see answered.

Because the second volume establishes that the hero is a fool on a pointless quest, and the "evil wizard" is actually doing something much more important, and the hero is way out of his depth and is about to ruin everything.

Why? Why do you bring up 3 months like you're anxiously sitting and waiting for this manga to move on with the plot for their whole duration?

Because she was not an important character until the second the author needed her to be. Shit we got more information about the girl who forced Yuu to have a date with her. We didn’t get “chapters” dedicated to her, we got a few lines.

People are frustrated because the twist wasn’t earned and it wasn’t delivered well at all. They wanted to pull a sixth sense but they landed somewhere in M Night Shamalan.

You know what info we need to immediately before we start dealing with the Festival Scene? None of it. Maybe a chapter or two going roughly over how and when they met, everything else should be delivered in the present, as it becomes pertinent. So that characters can actively react to it. Nothing we’ve been shown in the flashbacks has been relayed in the present, so for all intents and purposes it DOES NOT MATTER right now. Yuu and Yami being lovey dovey in the past will matter going forward, but it can not matter until we catch up and these things can begin effective the active narrative. That’s why flashbacks are generally* regarded as a poor literary device.

*there can exist well done flashbacks, this is not one of them

 

[jojoka]

Don't be, it gives more details that the manga misses.


Really agree. The manga leaves out too many details and the chapters are too short.

Insane that we have had months of this boring flashback and we didn't even get the full story. Wtf is this pacing.

 

[Geardofwario]

Y'all can't really blame MC.
Any TEENAGE boy would fold to Ayami, even of they had a crush on someone else.

 

[Alzu]

Insane that we have had months of this boring flashback and we didn't even get the full story. Wtf is this pacing.

This goes way back even before the flashback. I'm talking about from the very beginning of the story, take this exchange, which was not included in the manga version, of chapter 1 and then realize what Yuu did in chapter 12.

I mean, even the manga I'm reading I've already reread about ten times now. I have completely exhausted everything to pass time in this room.

And that's why I change up my time-wasting ways, ever so slightly.
I close the book I was reading, I change position to sitting and with my back turned to him, I jab him lightly.

"There's gotta be something, no? Nothing fun happened in school today? Maybe a classmate confessed her love to you but you turned her down with I already have someone I like."
"Sorry, but if someone did confess their love to me, I'd never use that rejection."

Well, it's only because we are childhood friends with no romantic feelings for eachother that we can talk about more risqué topics.

It's clear we're only getting one part of a puzzle, and the web novel makes this abundantly clear.

 

[mgRdr]

Because she was not an important character until the second the author needed her to be

I have zero reasons to believe the story was not written with this twist in mind from the very beginning.

We didn’t get “chapters” dedicated to her, we got a few lines.

We got a chapter where she tried to corrupt Hikari by stealing her first kiss, and we got a chapter set in her house (kinda) where she divulges into some of her backstory. You're comparing her, one of Hikari's closest friends, i.e. a recurring character, to a girl who was written to act out a single scene and be never seen again.

People are frustrated because the twist wasn’t earned

This sounds to me like those folks who believe that murder mysteries need to have every clue as to the identiy of the murderer avaliable from the very beginning, so that the readers can feel the gratification of solving the mystery by themselves. That's not a sudoku to be solved, that's a story to be told, and emotions to be felt. Now people feel frustrated because the manga blindsided them, the geniuses, by not following the rules that were not there in the first place.
And we had clues, we knew that Hikari does not know much about what's going on around Yuu, we knew that Yuu is secretive about certain things, that he was going on dates without her knowing. And if Hikari, whose POV we were inhabiting and who's as blind as a bat, didn't see whom Yuu had been involved with, neither should've we, the readers, seen this coming, and that it was someone we could not guess, never mind that she was the third most developed character in the story by that point.

None of it

All of it. Most of what's about to happen will be decided by Yuu, and when he inevitably (or not, idk) chooses Yami over Hikari, I would rather prefer to know the context of his decision. Otherwise, without the context of the second volume, it'd be a "beat down for future Hikari" for the sake of it. I mean, Hikari stands there and watches as Yuu and Yami ride of into the sunset, well that sounds needlessly cruel to her, like they conspired against her, and not because they had legitimate feelings for one another. That would be quite a bit different narrative compared to what we're gonna get now that we have more context.

Nothing we’ve been shown in the flashbacks has been relayed in the present, so for all intents and purposes it DOES NOT MATTER right now. Yuu and Yami being lovey dovey in the past will matter going forward, but it can not matter until we catch up and these things can begin effective the active narrative

It is effecting the narrative of the first twenty chapters, it is directly effecting the narrative of chapter 21, otherwise events in that chapter wouldn't have occurred. You're disregarding the events of the past 7 chapters, the events which were the cause of most of what we could see in the first 21 chapters, because they are in the past, and as such, they don't matter. Let's assume we got chapter 22 where we see the fallout of the previous chapter, and maybe 23, 24 and so forth - and then we get Yami's backstory - guess what, it does not matter, because it is all in the past and it does not effect the active narrative.

 

[Apep23]

Rah, I’m actually felt bad for yami now, fallen for this scumbag

 

[schmackinthedack]

ykw fine im switching teams
yami ftw 🗣🔥🔥

 

[Joseki]

\>Start reading a manga from an author that exclusively writes childhood friends lose
\>The childhood friend gets heartbroken pretty fast
\>Get mad at the author

I think that's on you if you are now mad because the story changed.

 

[Deadlybat]

\>Start reading a manga from an author that exclusively writes childhood friends lose
\>The childhood friend gets heartbroken pretty fast
\>Get mad at the author

I think that's on you if you are now mad because the story changed.

This is such a ridiculous argument. You're making it sound like readers have to do extensive research on an author's entire body of work before starting a new manga. Not everyone comes into a story expecting it to follow the same pattern as the author's previous works. If the story takes an unexpected turn, it's completely reasonable for readers to feel frustrated. It's not their fault for having certain expectations based on the story they've been given so far.

 

[fuckface]

I’m taking a shit right now and nobody will know.

 

[noleafclover75]

This is such a ridiculous argument. You're making it sound like readers have to do extensive research on an author's entire body of work before starting a new manga. Not everyone comes into a story expecting it to follow the same pattern as the author's previous works. If the story takes an unexpected turn, it's completely reasonable for readers to feel frustrated. It's not their fault for having certain expectations based on the story they've been given so far.

Agreed, the same duo that made Death Note created Bakuman. Two very different mangas with very different flows.

 

[Trevoga]

Any bets on what the next girl to do some cucking will look like?

 

[habla]

I recently catched up with this series and I really don't understand why so many people are upset when the real heroine and clearly superior girl won

frankly I'm most upset at how the author bait-and-switched her into a schoolgirl prostitute who was also a virgin
can't be too subversive I guess

 

[outinthegardener]

Feeling like the POV switch was too sudden makes me think ya'll haven't watched Roshomon. Put another way, if Hikari was full of shoujo brainrot and her best attempt at getting with her crush was to giggle and blush like an idiot, THEN suddenly found out her crush was more complicated and sexual than she thought... She might feel like the readers did. Like their expectations and foundation just fell out from under them. The tone shift, which has upset many people, did exactly what the author wanted.

This is a story about how teenagers suck at romance, but they still get laid and get their hearts broken.

 

[outinthegardener]

Stopping the story mid-climax for a protracted flashback is generally regarded as poor writing. Which I agree with, the author got lost in the sauce and lost sight of what his story was about and what drew his readers in.

Is it poor writing? Or why should it be? I worry that this is making the critic's mistake of judging instead of describing the story. What we have is a story suddenly switching gears and changing tone. Our expectations get subverted, we feel some chaos and uncertainty, the rug gets pulled from under us. To say this is either "Good or Bad" flattens our ability to describe the experience.

It's analogous to when Miles Davis talks about wrong notes. It doesn't matter if you hit a note in the wrong key, because you resolve the tension with the next note. The entire idea that there are "bad" notes is a false narrative.

When you say "lost sight of what his story was and what drew his readers in," it assumes every reader has the same values and expectations for the story.

 

[noleafclover75]

Feeling like the POV switch was too sudden makes me think ya'll haven't watched Roshomon. Put another way, if Hikari was full of shoujo brainrot and her best attempt at getting with her crush was to giggle and blush like an idiot, THEN suddenly found out her crush was more complicated and sexual than she thought... She might feel like the readers did. Like their expectations and foundation just fell out from under them. The tone shift, which has upset many people, did exactly what the author wanted.

This is a story about how teenagers suck at romance, but they still get laid and get their hearts broken.

I agree, but I just don't think this story was told we'll enough for people to be excited about the shift.

The tone shift should of had your audience grabbing popcorn and waiting to read the next chapter with anticipation. While I have no doubt that may have resonated with a lot of people here, it definitely did not with a lot of people as well.

It's a shame because i think the story if told better is something good there. However, the first arc transitioned so poorly into the current one and it became too jarring and not in a good way.

Noone is perfect and I really do believe the release schedule of the first arc and only drip feeding 4 page shorts was bad. To me this did a few things.

First, it took 8 months and 21 chapters to fill a full volume for the first arc. Now it's taken them only 3 months to fill up a second volume with a story, with what looks like is going to be 8 chapters, that has much more depth.

That first volume needed to be more condensed and have more exposition leading into the second.

It's very jarring reading something drip fed for 8 months thinking it's one thing and then to all of a sudden being thrust into a completely different genre.

That's just how I see it personally.

 

[TheRebel]

You know how this is going to end.

This new girl is a mess and is going to end badly for her once we get back to the present.

Also, dogshit manga that stinks of self insert.

 

[eviljackspicer]

So.......how is this relationship going to be undone, resulting in him going to the other girl?