Jinrouki Winvurga Hangyaku-hen

[VRaptorX]

I’m sorry. I’m getting too worked up over this.

Edit: this is me with inuyasha all over again. I noticed like…10 years before that manga ended that it was never going to actually have growth. And I stuck with it out of hope that it would one day stop sucking. It did not.

Argh. I’m gonna keep watching just to see the end. But I am no longer invested in the characters of this series.

 

[VRaptorX]

So… I think doing the time jump and main character switch ultimately was a mistake. I think it’s become obvious that the old characters are the ones the audience and the author care about, as they do all these flashbacks.

We should have stayed with Mashiro and opened with her rape. Then made her rape become motivation for her to escape and fight. That’s the heart of the series. That’s rebelling against all odds.

and honestly, I’m half expecting Mashiro, Zane, Yomi, etc all escape before Win even arrives to save them at this point. It’s been five years and win still hasn’t actually done anything in this manga.

 

[TaurusRex]

I think I'll save my own review of Win's character development after we're done with the flashbacks. I checked the release date just now. It was October 2016. Some of us have been here reading this manga for over 10 years? I can tank another year of the author just connecting the dots via flashbacks at this point! And there's a new Gundam series coming so I have bigger fish to look forward to.

...
I already replied about this part in a thread of a specific chapter, but for the convenience of people only reading the main thread, I'll just copy paste my observation of the "Zane loves Hibana?" here:

This Zane stuff was too damn slow, and included character revelations that just come out of nowhere and don’t feel earned. The Yomi stuff is starting off just as slow…and also has a revelation out of nowhere that doesn’t feel earned.

After reading the translated chapter here, I think our machine translators just didn't do the whole part justice and we misinterpreted what Zane meant.

He didn't mean he secretly loved Hibana all along since the OG series in the natural romantic sense. He was phrasing his words based on Dolman's own words, so it might sound weird without knowing the context properly.

To translate what Dolman said using different words without letting the fluff cloud the meaning:
"Don't lump me in w/ those Dominators who only seek their own pleasure! Whenever I have sex w/ women, I show them respect and affection."
And we already know since the OG that Dolman makes an effort to make sure his partner is also enjoying the act.

With that in mind, here's Zane's thought process in response, which he told Hibana in the current scene:
"Since the moment I remembered what Dolman told me, I decided to love have sex with you respectfully and affectionately."

 

[VRaptorX]

Eh… there’s been more flashbacks than actual forward time since Gloria. That’s not connecting the dots at that point. That’s excessive.

And the excessive didn’t start with the flashbacks.

Oh winvurga is 56 chapters, and in those 56 chapters, I can think of at least ten arcs off the top of my head.

The opening arc of finding Winvurga,
vs Gloria,
vs Zane,
two different nemuro fights,
dad being mind controlled,
the crazy girl with glasses making a misandrist world,
Yomi’s story
falka’s story
Hibana
Going back to save gloria after she changed sides

And that’s not including the overarching story of Mashiro and dark Mashiro, or the other little things that didn’t have dedicated arcs.

And that’s also not including battles I know happened but names I forgot

The OG series juggled a LOT of stuff at a pretty fast pace.

Now, the new series… in 41 issues (which isnt that much less and should be comparable for pacing) win has…. Fought 2 people, and then had a draw with Zane and Hibana’s child. And the rest has been flashbacks.

Win and the new cast have done practically nothing.

And that’s not just a flashback issue; that’s a pace issue. It should not have taken 3 chapters to see Zane and Hibana have sex. That was 1 chapter worth of content stretched over 3 months. Gloria, same thing. Mashiro, same thing.

Compare the battles and sex in the OG series. It didn’t take a whole chapter for someone to tease putting their penis in Yomi once she blew up. She blew up, had one panel to establish her landing, then people were inside her and she gave her speech. Straight, simple, to the point (no pun intended).

The sex scenes now are “spend 26 pages teasing the head going in”, wait a month, “spent 28 pages having characters describe the thing they’re already doing (my penis is inside you. Don’t you see my penis is inside you. Ha ha ha. Your vagina is wrapped around my penis. Feel the ribbed insides of your vagina tighten around my penis.)”, then wait another month, and then have a creampie.

This isn’t paced like a monthly manga anymore. This is paced like a weekly manga.

This issue isn’t something that just occurred. This has been happening since the relaunch of the series. I just haven’t been able to figure out the reason why everything seems underdeveloped until recently.

 

[TaurusRex]

Eh… there’s been more flashbacks than actual forward time since Gloria. That’s not connecting the dots at that point. That’s excessive.

And the excessive didn’t start with the flashbacks.

Oh winvurga is 56 chapters, and in those 56 chapters, I can think of at least ten arcs off the top of my head.

The opening arc of finding Winvurga,
vs Gloria,
vs Zane,
two different nemuro fights,
dad being mind controlled,
the crazy girl with glasses making a misandrist world,
Yomi’s story
falka’s story
Hibana
Going back to save gloria after she changed sides

And that’s not including the overarching story of Mashiro and dark Mashiro, or the other little things that didn’t have dedicated arcs.

And that’s also not including battles I know happened but names I forgot

The OG series juggled a LOT of stuff at a pretty fast pace.

Now, the new series… in 41 issues (which isnt that much less and should be comparable for pacing) win has…. Fought 2 people, and then had a draw with Zane and Hibana’s child. And the rest has been flashbacks.

Win and the new cast have done practically nothing.

And that’s not just a flashback issue; that’s a pace issue. It should not have taken 3 chapters to see Zane and Hibana have sex. That was 1 chapter worth of content stretched over 3 months. Gloria, same thing. Mashiro, same thing.

Compare the battles and sex in the OG series. It didn’t take a whole chapter for someone to tease putting their penis in Yomi once she blew up. She blew up, had one panel to establish her landing, then people were inside her and she gave her speech. Straight, simple, to the point (no pun intended).

The sex scenes now are “spend 26 pages teasing the head going in”, wait a month, “spent 28 pages having characters describe the thing they’re already doing (my penis is inside you. Don’t you see my penis is inside you. Ha ha ha. Your vagina is wrapped around my penis. Feel the ribbed insides of your vagina tighten around my penis.)”, then wait another month, and then have a creampie.

This isn’t paced like a monthly manga anymore. This is paced like a weekly manga.

This issue isn’t something that just occurred. This has been happening since the relaunch of the series. I just haven’t been able to figure out the reason why everything seems underdeveloped until recently.

Wow, uh... That's a lot over a short phrase I said that rubbed you the wrong way...

 

[VRaptorX]

Oh no, I just over explain everything. You didn’t upset me. That’s just a “can’t tell tone in text” thing.

I understand that you are willing to give the author a chance. I’m saying, based on the last couple years, I think the author has proven they aren’t going to magically change back to their previous pace/style/quality of writing.

It’s like tekken. Tekken 1-4 had a very distinct style in its storytelling. Then tekken 5-8 had a very different style. Now, 5 was good so no one cared/noticed…but by the time 8 came around, it was obvious the tone was nowhere close to the originals.

Like, I no longer expect there to be a deep drama or pathos for characters. These people exist just to be bodies in the background now.

I don't expect a big build up to whenever win loses a fight and gets raped. I don’t expect a dozen close calls getting us closer and closer, and each time win has to pull out a new trick or learn something new about themselves, or have someone they interacted with have a change of heart to griw their side story and save her. If win just loses a fight she’s getting raped and that’s it. There is no development to this.

What I do expect, whenever win gets raped, is that it’ll be most likely because win’s stalker betrayed her in a “you want Mashiro, then take her” kind of way. And then maybe there’s an overly long scene of Mashiro and win getting raped side by side, crying that they found each other, and fail together. And that’ll be the hottest scene since Gloria and Mashiro because those are the only two scenes anyone talks about. But that’ll also be very indicative of what this series lost along the way.

Then maybe some bs time travel gets pulled, or we switch to a new main character again. Don’t know at that point. The point is that the character development is no longer a point in the series. Much like tekken, which stopped moving forward with character’s plots back in 2005.

The point is not to care for the characters anymore. The point is to just come up with a design/excuse to rape them. It’s all sex with no foreplay.

And if I look at it like that, okay. It’s pretty well drawn despair porn. It’s not Dinaranger level of quality. That really went into the despair of the leads (and I hate that I’m never getting an ending). It’s not Dawn of the silver dragon….which was also great up until the obviously rushed ending. But, if all I expect out of this is just another excuse to see a censored penis go into a censored vagina, I’ve read worse.

It’s just a shame because the original used to be more than just that. It was something better than just porn. And we lost that when the author switched editors.

 

[VRaptorX]

Okay thought up another parallel. Game of thrones makes you care about the characters before they die. Martin routinely has a character basically go “hey, here’s my awesome backstory and the 27 different unresolved plot threads that I’m making progress towards” so that readers get invested in them. That way, when they die, it hurts because of all the unresolved plots people wanted to see to completion.

Now, take away the 27 different plots and backstories…and you just have a nameless knight dying. It loses its power as a plot device. Its the sex without the foreplay.

The characters with all the plot and build up are still the OG characters. They got multi-faceted development.

41 chapters with Win, and all we know about her as a person is that she’s a simp for Mashiro. And win’s side characters, we know even less. Nigou is dying. What’s her name is the daughter of Zane and Humana. And…that’s it. Everyone else we met along the way is just somebody we saw once, got raped, and now exists in the background not doing anything or developing anything. Win doesn’t have a cast of side characters; she has a cast of one-dimensional characters.

 

[TaurusRex]

Oh no, I just over explain everything. You didn’t upset me. That’s just a “can’t tell tone in text” thing.

I understand that you are willing to give the author a chance. I’m saying, based on the last couple years, I think the author has proven they aren’t going to magically change back to their previous pace/style/quality of writing.

It’s like tekken. Tekken 1-4 had a very distinct style in its storytelling. Then tekken 5-8 had a very different style. Now, 5 was good so no one cared/noticed…but by the time 8 came around, it was obvious the tone was nowhere close to the originals.

Like, I no longer expect there to be a deep drama or pathos for characters. These people exist just to be bodies in the background now.

I don't expect a big build up to whenever win loses a fight and gets raped. I don’t expect a dozen close calls getting us closer and closer, and each time win has to pull out a new trick or learn something new about themselves, or have someone they interacted with have a change of heart to griw their side story and save her. If win just loses a fight she’s getting raped and that’s it. There is no development to this.

What I do expect, whenever win gets raped, is that it’ll be most likely because win’s stalker betrayed her in a “you want Mashiro, then take her” kind of way. And then maybe there’s an overly long scene of Mashiro and win getting raped side by side, crying that they found each other, and fail together. And that’ll be the hottest scene since Gloria and Mashiro because those are the only two scenes anyone talks about. But that’ll also be very indicative of what this series lost along the way.

Then maybe some bs time travel gets pulled, or we switch to a new main character again. Don’t know at that point. The point is that the character development is no longer a point in the series. Much like tekken, which stopped moving forward with character’s plots back in 2005.

The point is not to care for the characters anymore. The point is to just come up with a design/excuse to rape them. It’s all sex with no foreplay.

And if I look at it like that, okay. It’s pretty well drawn despair porn. It’s not Dinaranger level of quality. That really went into the despair of the leads (and I hate that I’m never getting an ending). It’s not Dawn of the silver dragon….which was also great up until the obviously rushed ending. But, if all I expect out of this is just another excuse to see a censored penis go into a censored vagina, I’ve read worse.

It’s just a shame because the original used to be more than just that. It was something better than just porn. And we lost that when the author switched editors.

Yeah, we're probably not going back to the era you prefer on this manga.

Let's look at this from another POV. The author's main tool for connecting with his fans is Twitter. If you go through his Twitter account, most of the fans he's able to interact with are the ones who asked for things we're seeing now. These numbers are just random guesses I pulled out of thin air based on the times I checked his posts, but maybe he's got around 100-200 users interacting with him on Twitter and only around 3-5 of them are expressing the same opinion/criticism as you, and they never give him an entire paragraph about it; just a sentence or three. The rest of them are asking him to keep doing what he's doing now, with a few profiles easy to recognize because they're in every other post.

He's only seeing that portion of the fanbase. Therefore, they're the representative of the fanbase's will as far as he's concerned. Some of these fans are the same ones buying three copies of the physical magazine. They're the ones he knows for sure are putting food on his table and the ones he knows are enjoying what he's doing.

 

[TaurusRex]

I finally felt like putting chapter 41 through a translator... It's mostly things we can understand by just making a quick look at the images. But one thing caught my attention. It's the text at the top left of page 1. The ones not inside a speech bubble.

My translator is telling me Amatsu no Yomi has fallen. Does it say the same thing for other translators?

 

[VRaptorX]

Yeah, and that’s the problem with social media in general. It’s a bubble/hive mind. Every piece of crap movie has nothing but 90% good audience reviews. Every terrible album has nothing but 90% “it was a misunderstood classic” discourse. Etc.

And I don’t know the sales figures. And porn always sells well. And I’m sure at this point the author doesn’t need much convincing; he wants to write porn.

I just wish he made better porn. Blue is the Warmest Color is amazing, both in print and as a movie. You care for those characters.

what I really want to know is, how the heck these fans can buy like 5+ copies of the same book. Where are you getting this disposable income from?

it’s like wrestling fans buying 20k tickets to wrestlemania. Yeah sure… wwe will always make money off of the most obsessive fans. But don’t you have something better to do with that money? lol.

 

[VRaptorX]

Oh actually better comparison: comics gate comics. People will waste hundreds of thousands of dollars just to read one issue of a scantily clad woman comic that always winds up being mediocre and 4 years late, if it ever comes out. Why? To see hair barely obscured nipples and a thong? You can see raunchier stuff in actual comics from real studios.

So off of 400 fans they make a million dollars. But the comic comes and goes without a splash because the mainstream doesn’t care about it. They still got Spider-Man and Batman.

I predict this series is going to go the way of parallel paradise. It’ll be a zombie franchise that never actually ends, but never moves forward either.

 

[VRaptorX]

I finally felt like putting chapter 41 through a translator... It's mostly things we can understand by just making a quick look at the images. But one thing caught my attention. It's the text at the top left of page 1. The ones not inside a speech bubble.

My translator is telling me Amatsu no Yomi has fallen. Does it say the same thing for other translators?

I haven’t gone through image translator, however I’m not shocked if the amatsu no Yomi fell. Just because no matter what the writing style, it has to.

If you’re writing just porn: then you need more bodies for porn.

If you’re writing better: then any safe place can’t stay safe forever. Characters need to move forward until the dominators are defeated once and for all.

Either way, amatsu no Yomi falls.

Same thing with the void Win lives in. It has to fall for her to get out there either do something, or fail. Either way, we can’t stay in the bubble forever.

 

[VRaptorX]

I will say though, we do have a very funny/interesting conundrum that’s happening with the fandom though.

The in text dialogue of this series claims the dominators are terrible. That you should not treat women like objects.

But then the fans, and author, are like “please more rape scenes. Rape this one next. Then this one. Then this one.”

Its own audience/creator are acting counterintuitive to the themes of the the product they consume/create.

Now, I’m not saying you can’t write a horrible scene for the sake of a better story. Berserk is the obvious example of this.

But it’s obvious that for this manga, the horrible scenes are the selling point/reason people come back and that flies in the face of the message it claims to espouse. People don’t read berserk just to jerk off at the 87th attempt to rape Casca or Guts.

 

[TaurusRex]

what I really want to know is, how the heck these fans can buy like 5+ copies of the same book. Where are you getting this disposable income from?

If they don't have high-paying jobs, the money comes from sacrificing a portion of the food budget and rejecting all other non-essential expenses. I've done the same for Gunpla and gadgets that I really want, but I still make budget plans before spending. Some of them can probably go to extremes I would never dare just to afford a limited Gunpla, or a gadget I actually need to have.

There was a show on NHK long ago where they showed the daily life of a guy working at an anime figure company. His main diet was cheap cup noodles from convenience stores. That's a guy just trying to get by. We're talking about JW fans on a mission. Because they're not just buying multiple copies to simply support the author. Each bookstore has a different freebie bundled with the magazine; tapestries and posters with different limited edition images.

Latest example being three different tapestries of Mashiro from different bookstores.

 

[VRaptorX]

If they don't have high-paying jobs, the money comes from sacrificing a portion of the food budget and rejecting all other non-essential expenses. I've done the same for Gunpla and gadgets that I really want, but I still make budget plans before spending. Some of them can probably go to extremes I would never dare just to afford a limited Gunpla, or a gadget I actually need to have.

There was a show on NHK long ago where they showed the daily life of a guy working at an anime figure company. His main diet was cheap cup noodles from convenience stores. That's a guy just trying to get by. We're talking about JW fans on a mission. Because they're not just buying multiple copies to simply support the author. Each bookstore has a different freebie bundled with the magazine; tapestries and posters with different limited edition images.

Latest example being three different tapestries of Mashiro from different bookstores.

So. I can’t necessarily say that this is unusual. I mean comic book companies and game companies do that all the time as well. There dozens of variant covers, special editions, etc.

I still find be a crummy thing to do to your consumers. I also believe it is a way to really fake popularity with something.

Like, okay. Hypothetical situation time. You used to get 1 million people to buy something for ten bucks. Now, you only get 250k people to buy the same product for fifty bucks.

Sure, you made more money. But that’s only because less people paid way more. You tricked a bunch of suckers. You took advantage of them. You are t making a popular product. You just made money off of being scummy.

I just feel sad for these people. They’re being taken advantage of.

 

[TaurusRex]

So. I can’t necessarily say that this is unusual. I mean comic book companies and game companies do that all the time as well. There dozens of variant covers, special editions, etc.

I still find be a crummy thing to do to your consumers. I also believe it is a way to really fake popularity with something.

Like, okay. Hypothetical situation time. You used to get 1 million people to buy something for ten bucks. Now, you only get 250k people to buy the same product for fifty bucks.

Sure, you made more money. But that’s only because less people paid way more. You tricked a bunch of suckers. You took advantage of them. You are t making a popular product. You just made money off of being scummy.

I just feel sad for these people. They’re being taken advantage of.

For the bookstores, it's also a way for them to compete against the other bookstores selling the same magazine. All three bookstore companies in this case would be praying their bundled goods are the ones more customers want over others'. Some fans have said they're travelling far to reach certain bookstores because they prefer the bundled items there over ones from nearby stores. (I got that from Twitter posts of some JP fans.) If not for this setup, most customers would just go to the one bookstore in Japan that's most famous out of the three involved, while the remaining two would be hoping the #1 store can't cater to all the demand so they can get leftover sales.

Same situation in my country with bookstores over just normal items. There's one bookstore brand that's already a household name. Most people go there, no questions asked. Every other bookstore is an afterthought when the big one doesn't have the items people need.

As for the people buying three copies to collect them all... I don't think you need to feel sad for them... They're adults and they know exactly what they're getting into. If they're not keeping the extra magazine copies as backup, then they're probably reselling them anyway after removing the bundled items.