Otoyomegatari - Vol. 12 Ch. 86 - Knowing Someone for a Long Time

[petra]

man anis is so strange looking

 

[procrastinatorthedeadliner]

I love fatima. Her hair is exceptionally shiny.

 

[InfiniteVerisimilitude]

This is so heartwarming.

I love how it shows the growth of the characters.

 

[Shymra]

I had to smile the whole chapter. This was so wholesome and lovely. I feel like Maafe.

 

[lazyoldman]

I've been binging Otoyomegatari and the Persian characters and story arc are easily the most pleasant and comfy part. Also it's nice of the author to give us one last chapter of halal bathhouse fanservice as a sendoff, since this may have been the last we see of Anis and Shirin.

 

[SotiCoto]

"But then any man could see her ENTIRE face."
... says the fictional muslim woman whose free-flapping tiddies are being oogled by all the men reading this manga.

And apparently even having a man seeing their faces bothers them... but they hang around loads of other women naked.
Am I a freak in that I'd be more bothered by being seen nude by members of the same gender than the opposite?
I wonder if I had a female body, whether I'd be as bothered by hanging around a naked clam-fest as I currently would be in a naked sausage-fest...

Well whatever.
I doubt the thorough cultural brain-bleaching they've received would do them any harm if they never leave said culture. Can't miss what you've never had, afterall.


@miyako19 : Just how much of a stick do you have up your arse? ... Metaphorically speaking, though literal would be amusing too. The village in Uzbekistan is definitely a more entertaining focus than the burqa-brides on the whole... Shirin's amazing figure aside, every time these women get the focus they're just lounging around doing fuck-all.

 

[SuperOniichan]

Heck. Either I've become utterly paranoid, or Mori-sensei can write some of the most ambiguous dialogues I've read in my life. Compared to her, any Class S is rough lesbian porn lol.

 

[akirialy]

How beautiful.

and @SotiCoto, it is normal to bathe naked with other women in that culture. Just like Russian baths or Japanese onsens. That's why they are called public baths.

Your boundaries are not the same as others. Author made effort to keep it historically and culturally accurate while making it floofy, warm and a nice slice-of-life

 

[SotiCoto]

@akirialy : "Normal" isn't a justification for anything. Just because it is "normal" doesn't mean it isn't retarded, and conversely I'd say doing things just because they're "normal" is 100% retarded.
I'm not criticising the author here, I'm criticising their culture. They're overly concerned about even their faces being seen by men, but they're communally naked with a ton of other women... even though the only basic difference between the two are the primary and secondary sexual characteristics. Well who knows? Maybe it is a self-fulfilling prophecy.... I mean if their entire culture is conditioned to regard men as rapists just waiting for a victim, and the men are conditioned to regard any centimetre of female skin as overwhelmingly lewd... maybe they would totally get their rape on at the sight of a girl's face like the disgusting, uncontrolled beasts they are treated as.
Speaking personally, I don't exactly the relish the idea of anyone looking at me unclothed, so I'd never engage in communal bathing... But honestly if one or other gender had to see me undressed, I'd prefer females to males as... well... I'd rather be seen as an outsider than as a competitor.

 

[SuperOniichan]

@akirialy As a Russian, I can say that our baths have a slightly different experience than the Japanese ones, not to mention that the oriental baths have a strong homoerotic reputation. Especially Turkish. But I have not heard that it would concern the female. World culture has always been quite tolerant of female interaction.

@SotiCoto You completely missed what they wanted to tell you. It's not that their culture should justify them, but that you are trying to evaluate someone else's culture from your own. Persian culture does not imply bisexuality, especially in the modern Western sense. For them a bathtub full of naked women is completely innocent and asexual from the point of view of other women.

 

[zabent]

@SotiCoto Shirin is doing fuck-all cause she is a princess, she has a literal maid and her husband is a rich aristocrat. It also looks like she was raised a sheltered girl - she doesn't know how to use the market or other common sense things like finding a wife for her son. Just fucking chill, a historical slice-of-life needs to be historical. Uzbekistan, China, Bulgaria, Ghana, India, Brazil - none of these were cultures that share Western and liberal/sensibilities. Hell even England was different in the past, read Mori Senseis other work - it would not have been odd for a woman to mention the same thing about her legs as Shirin says about her face - female modesty was valued. What makes a person happy in one historical context is vastly different from another - so a slice of life would also look *very* different. Besides there is a lot of pretty weird things (by my Western eyes) that happen in Japanese and especially Chinese manhua - I don't even give it a second thought an just accept that people were and still are different. What is wrong with you mate?

 

[ViEmlleSzDias]

@zabent
Very true.
Also, I think you meant Anis. Shirin is the second wife.

 

[DanYHKim]

Your boundaries are not the same as others. Author made effort to keep it historically and culturally accurate while making it floofy, warm and a nice slice-of-life

This is particularly addressed in this issue of the manga, where the women are comparing their practices of being veiled outside with that of the nomadic herders whose women expose their faces. They find it very uncomfortable, and wonder at the cultural differences.

The comfort with the veil is something I had heard on a news program, in which am Iranian woman talked about the security she feels when veiled outside. At the time, I thought that she had to have 'internalized the teachings of her oppressors' to express such a preference, but I was much younger then.

The society of women shown in this issue is a fully-realized one, not a reserved corner away from the "real" world occupied by men. As such, they are satisfied and even prefer the arrangement. Certainly many women, when asked, will say that the company and conversation of women, especially when the focus is not on their interactions with men, is an essential.

 

[sf7pakistan]

Dude not again with this orientalist bullshit idea of women being bare chested and naked in a bathhouse. This is not how they work, not to mention that Mori has already said that this is for fanservice. Seriously dude, other cultures and their women are not something for you to gawk it. It's crazy how so many mangas have magic steam in an onsen or in a Japanese bathhouse but if it's Persia and the women are Muslim then the titties are out in full force for rabid down bad fucks to gawk and howl at

 

[sf7pakistan]

At first I thought, "oh no, more boring 'filler', because for me their volume was the "least good", but in the end this was a good chapter.

By the way, they really had these public baths there? So akin to japanese baths?

Public baths, yes. Public baths with bare chests and naked ladies, no. Unless there were individual and private baths, the women would be wearing clothes

 

[sf7pakistan]

I really appreciate when authors like Kaoru Mori do their homework and show us things from other cultures accurately. Me being an arab, I can tell 'cause a lot of people get it wrong and write scribbles that LOOKS like arabic and/or arrange the letters from left to right (when it should be the other way around). Sure, google translate can help but it really shows when you use that (that's not even including the culture norms and traditions)

The thing about them being half-naked in the bath isn't remotely true though

 

[sf7pakistan]

How beautiful.

and @SotiCoto, it is normal to bathe naked with other women in that culture. Just like Russian baths or Japanese onsens. That's why they are called public baths.

Your boundaries are not the same as others. Author made effort to keep it historically and culturally accurate while making it floofy, warm and a nice slice-of-life

Women wouldn't be naked like this in a Persian bath, they'd still be covered. The only thing closest to this I could find was Post-Ataturk Turkish women in a bath which is what I guess Mori used as reference