@Zerio said in Otome Heroine's Fight for Survival (Manga) Vol 1 Discussion:

Ch 1 pg 4: it seems like we're missing the other half of the color page?

You're not wrong title page spread

Ch 2: I'm really confused where she got her supplies. She said white bread was rare, so where did she get them?

The manga skipped it, but as well as taking The Woman's supplies she also took some clothes and food etc from the orphanage (and specifically good food the old woman had kept to herself)

@Zerio They are classmates that haven't been shown.

What a great ending. Perfect for this story.

v.2 ch. 3 p.10 - “Go on, don’t be shy**”**” extra end quotation mark here

Interesting chapter. Definitely like the whole discrimination plot the series is hinting at. Mr. Pig should really assume that every girl he meets can read minds, because otherwise hoo boy

It’s not specific to this volume, but ANN put up a story this morning saying that the manga’s pausing due to Ononaka Akihiro’s health:

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2024-03-17/gushing-over-magical-girls-manga-goes-on-hiatus-due-to-author-poor-health/.208846

@jpwong Given that his job is textiles, I think it's safe to presume he can tell when cloth itself has shrunk. Maybe the seems are a bit stretched from trying to contain the same amount of stuffing, or the fabric is too taut.

The manga has such a nice style. Clean and simple but very pretty. I especially like the backgrounds, often kinda half-done with lines just hinted at, but still very evocative.

I must say, I thought anime Ange was cute, but she's perhaps even more so in the manga. And everybody's faces are great, they're so expressive...

I love how much of the story is not adventuring, but people just being people, doing normal stuff, having human connections.

The chapter with Ashcroft's duel was also great. So many people, each living in their own little world most of the time...

Cuteness is Justice!

...leveling up as a result of being squozed up against...
What kind of work is this again?

There is no defense against Otto's puppy dog eyes.
None.
A privileged attack that slips past all defenses and deals max subjugation damage.

@pcj said in Forget Being the Villainess, I Want to Be an Adventurer! (Manga): Vol 2 Discussion:

@Zerio do you mean Seraphi or Maribelle?

They digressed into a discussion of a different work.
A really different work, given Bookworm being the normative "digression into a discussion of" work.

@Ingraman

This has been fixed.

@TheGrimLich What's the connection to Heale's crest? was she the prior cave king queen? Is Nona an automaton or was she just in some sort of suspended animation? She's got that emotionless loli act down.

I wonder how they are going to convince her to go up to the library. She has the language knowledge they are needing. Or will there be some development to overcome the language barrier without Nona?

Alpha's realistic damage is so their enemy doesn't realize Alpha is virtual.
If she isn't aware the 'map' she's using shows virtual as well as physical...or doesn't know how to distinguish between them, then playing 'real' feeds her false information.
At this point anything that puts a false bias in her calculations is for the good.

This is a strange one. It's some time after the end of humanity, and a war robot who shouldn't cooperate with humans is accompanying a human child who shouldn't exist, as they tour the desolate wartorn landscape of Earth in search of more surviving people.

The first volume was mostly setting up the characters and the mood, without getting far into the plot. There's a couple of episodes from their lives, including how the two first met; there are some really beautiful landscape shots which tell you a lot about the state of the world; there's just enough mystery there to make me intrigued; and by the end of the volume, there's even a third character.

The mood is a strange mix of very wholesome relationship between two completely different, well, people, juxtaposed with a world that feels anything but wholesome. The feeling of tragedy hangs in the air, but it never gets explained quite how it happened. The world itself feels broken down; as though the war against humans was what gave the others meaning, and now that it was won, there's nowhere to go anymore, just an eternal war over the remains of Earth.

I like it. I'm not sure how much I should steel myself against getting hit in the feels, though.

We meet Dion, with whom Mia has a heck of a history. Mia gets into a fight with a tree (it's a draw). Weaponized selfishness saves the day. And Mia doesn't get shot by an arrow, not even once. And despite what the narrator would have us believe, in the end it's Mia's past kindnesses that really turn things around.

Love the art style. Mia's faces in this volume have definitely reached Anya Forger levels.

Dion always surprises me by looking so young. His actions and general outlook always make me think of him as a grizzled veteran, not a super-talented youngster.

This being the first manga I'm reading since the anime, it's really hard not to hear Mia's line in the voice of her VA. (: It was really such a great fit.

The afterword mentions a spinoff manga centered on the maids and other side characters, which I didn't know existed until now. Alas, no official translation. (Yet?)

Endo and Kobayashi decide to muster as many forces as they can against the Witch, we learn about several more characters' dramatic backstories, one extremely cute ally is recruited, and we start delving into even deeper levels of the backstory, the myth of creation.

I think this volume is the first time we see Sieg being jealous (of Fabian, who turns out to get along really well with Liese). Sieg usually is a lot more grounded, compared to Lieselotte's inner struggles and her tsundere swings, but this is a nice reversal that really shows how far he's fallen for her. Also, Fabian is super cute here, both when he's wary and when he's relaxed.

Love how well the mangaka adapts the story for the medium here, for example in parts that in the novel were almost pure exposition, the manga illustrates them with examples and what-if scenarios and makes them lively and funny. And I cannot leave without giving them high praise for the faces; both those silly and those full of emotions are done so well!

I think my favourite part was Fiene beating up both Marquis Riefenstahl and Baldur when they start fighting over who decides who she's going to marry, while wearing a frilly dress, and then dressing them both down for not respecting that it's her and only her decision to make. <3 A close second would be the first meeting between Fabian and Cecilie, and the way she gets him, both his strength and his kindness. That was a really touching moment, and one I believe might have been expanded from the novel. The third would be Sieg asking Liese's family about what would make a good gift for her, and getting very Riefenstahl answers.

This time, there's not even a trace of the overall plot, no weird supernatural happenings, and even Kei/the director is there mostly for commentary. But it doesn't matter because (together with the last volume) this is one of the most fun fiction tournaments I've read, ever. There's straight fights, and dramatic fights, and fights with twists, and all of them are over before you know it and there's no shounen-style stalling while people prepare their best techniques. There's personal backstories, and drama, and motivation issues, and people fighting straight and people going far into the gray area and cheaters, and likeable characters losing and likeable characters hanging there by the thread and the one fighter who loves to throw in an "accidental" headbutt gets beat by somebody with a stronger headbutt and it's all glorious!

In this volume of "what if Pokemon but completely serious, and with family drama too", things keep getting worse. Saika's siblings keep getting weirder, Nagumi's sickness is worsening, we see what fate eventually awaits godeaters, and the government agent asking Saika to trust him and cooperate is throwing up red flags all around, too.

I feel like the strength of this volume were the flashbacks: Nagumi's past, and the relationship between Saika's mom and her adoptive dad. All the mystery's nice, but the past scenes had by far the most impact.