I don’t believe she’s lying about doing the things up to when he decided to cut ties because she loves him however the reason why her behaviour is so warped is probably because of her own insecurities about herself and was projecting them onto him, consciously or not. Regardless of intent, it is not other peoples’ responsibilities to deal with your internal issues and what she has done is objectively wrong even if there were times malice was not the motivating factor. Even if she wakes up and makes an effort to change, it doesn’t change the fact she hurt him and he has every right to distance himself. Personally I’d hate to see them become friends again but from a general perspective it should be his choice to give her a second chance and be on good terms but not because he feels bad for her circumstances (if they give her a sad backstory) but because he’s seen she truly tried to change and is a genuinely likeable person now. But considering how long she’s been hurting him and how badly, I don’t think it’s worth the effort for him to stick out and hope she’ll change and I don’t think it would do her any good either if she knows there’s someone who’ll never give up on her regardless of whether she changes or not
While I’m glad everyone lived in the end it felt a little unusually perfect world scenario because it’s not clear how the two of them travelling back together can prevent every little thing that instigated conflict esp when it doesn’t seem like they told anyone else. Preventing shinichiro from meeting the old man and gaining time travel powers would definitely solve a lot of issues but what about the tragedies that happened to other characters in their childhood? I also feel it waters down the meaning of some sacrifices, especially when someone learns something or wakes up thanks to it. If there was just a little more info on how the two made it to the perfect ending I think it be fine
Also I wish there was more info on where the time travel power originated, why it started changing , and where it went after the last travel to the past. For a series that emphasizes on fighting fairly and weapons are heavily seen as cheating, isn’t this power the biggest cheat of all? Maybe it’s just me being into the occult aspect of it but if was explained better maybe it’ll feel more fair
Like the sudden jump from talking to the shop owner to detaining nine, when did she get there??? There was another part around when they were planning the final battle where there was a brief flashback of when I think ms nat showed elli the orb thing before and while it wasn’t necessary to understand what the orb was, it makes the fact there was a flashback not make sense because it’s showing a scene we have never seen before
I definitely liked that there were multiple endings so as the reader we don’t really know which one is the “true” one but because there are also multiple endings it does make me curious as to what if hinase stayed without sex but it’s just a curiosity. A big part of the story and their character development is about challenging gender stereotypes set by society and how your sex doesn’t define who you are as a person. It would not really make sense for them to stay sexless because change not being a bad or scary thing is also a core theme in the story as they are also growing up into adults so if hinase stayed the way they had always been it would contradict their conviction on how they feel about gender and their identity on top of the health issues they’d have to deal with for the rest of their life if they stayed sexless. Change is inevitable and we already saw a POV of someone who didn’t want to pick a binary through Lisa who couldn’t accept the change and chose to end their life before they changed too much. I personally think hinase making a choice was to show despite becoming part of the binary, they were able to remain themselves because their identity is not tied to whether they’re male or female.
ch2 p37 - very clever to consider it a Johnny's reference but i don't think it's that deep.
since the reference is not a name of an idol and rather lingo within fans, the likelihood of hoshi being a fan and knowing is very slim. i think he just thought it was cute because "fuku" is a common pet name and adding "tan" at the end is a cutesy way to address someone
I did a quick search because the ending wasn't quite satisfying for me and it looks like the series may have been axed. the author didn't literally use the term "axed" or anything similar but they mention the "serialization would end" after vol 4 (now playing used to be serialized in the magazine gangan online) and that it would be hard to continue the story after that in this blog post by the author (in JP). in the blog they talk about "shortcomings" in regards of the series so i believe it might have ended because of lack of popularity
http://number1of2lumbers3.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-83.html
im not an expert on how publishing works so i didnt quite understand what the serialization part had to do with the inability to keep going (since there are series aren't in magazines and publish tankoubons volumes only), but i guess this manga was the kind that only got tankoubons after enough chapters were published in the magazine.
in terms of whether or not it's worth reading, knowing the fact, i think its decent. as with all axed series, it won't an award winning level, but i think it's still enjoyable despite the goals left unfinished
while we were just recently introduced to a number of new characters, the main group had their personalities and back stories fully fleshed out to a satisfying level. also with the new characters, it's not like they're there and then it ends; there is enough screen time for them to get a decent idea of what kind of people they are. it's also at the timing of the story it ends at, they haven't reached a level where you've become so invested in the story that it's frustrating that they don't see it through. Now playing ended at a time where their dreams may now not be just dreams but there's still a long ride ahead of them. i feel like it would have been more satisfying if the ending was clearer
sorry for the lack of proper title but im not a fan of how they brushed off the assault like that....even though (thankfully) the alpha dude didn't get to go all the way, it's still assault and honestly i was expecting yoji to be a little more affected by it. not saying it's bad that he was able to get over it so quickly and this isn't based off of a true story so it doesn't have to be realistic, but it does feel a little...odd? that he was able to pop back without any kind of ptsd (for the lack of a better wording) after a few days. not everyone reacts the same way after being assaulted so if he's able to move on easily then good for him but it's definitely not the usual for someone to be back on their feet like that so quickly and it kinda bothered me.
there's a total of 6 chapters for this book and i hope in one of the remaining 3 chapters that alpha and the dad get karma
Note that the chapters done by the person named "Denise" are not well done (which is expected since they used google translate) so please don't take any complaints you have about the sudden drop in quality and legibility to any of the two scan groups that did the chapters before theirs (it starts around ch 22 or so)
Putting aside the sudden change to chinese names, there are * in random speech bubbles that were really annoying because it didn't lead anywhere like side notes or end of chapter notes. if anyone know's whether the chapters they did were originally uploaded here or wherever they were originally uploaded by Denise, please let me know because I want to ask them. No hate or anything, it just confused me a lot while trying to read the story and i wanted clarification
it was vague but i think it's not as vague as people think it was. you can see in the last few pages he unlocks a chain that was on the doors. that means that between the few years since we saw him in the second last chapter and in the final, no one was there. but on p20 and 21 you see that smoke-like stuff around him and there's a rattle sound when he's suppose to be the only one there so I think it's likely to assume she is there. how is a ghost suppose to come back when they're suppose to have moved on idk, and you could argue the rattle could me a rat or smth, but the smoke where there's no natural reason to be heavily implies that she's back. hope that gives a little piece of mind to people
it was translated as badminton but the sport they played is called hanetsuki which is similar to badminton and its a tradition to play at new years; hence why the blond guy brought up new years. people play actual badminton in japan normally and year round, which is why i wanted to make that clarification.
about the confusion with "imadoki", it's a slang that refers to things that are hot or trending right now. i don't have the raws so i can't give an alternative translation of the line, but since the activities that mikoto said he did with kouichi are very old fashioned (makes sense since he's an ancient urban legend) and nowadays you'd often only see old people playing those, kouichi's friends are probably surprised mikoto knows nothing about what popular pastimes high school boys (which he's pretending to be) enjoy in modern times.
kind of wish the translator included the jp word for each password because the information that it has to be "5 characters long" is kind of useless otherwise. also there are many different words that more or less have the same meaning, but have different implications depending on the word choice. for something as simple as "justice" as it says shiho said, there are absolutely multiple choices she could have chosen and her confidence may have made more sense if we were given the original word and what that particular version of the word "justice" means compared to the others.
one example off the top of my mind is the word "truth". there are many words in JP that get translated commonly as truth, including but not limited to 真実、and 事実 . now in JP these 2 words are very distinct from each other. 真実 is a subjective truth, it may or may not be wrong or it could be different between two people's responses. for example, someone driving in the opposite direction of a car on a highway may say the car is driving fast, while someone driving in the same direction could say the car is driving slowly or even not moving. both of them are correct, because that is the "truth" relative to their positions. 事実 is an ultimate truth. there can only be one correct answer. for example, things like mathematical or scientific constants or theories (which although are technically 真実 because they're just proposals or numbers scientists and mathematicians have come up with after years of study and repeated results to help understand concepts in the world and it may or may not be truly correct. if someone one day is able to disprove any of them, then they'd be deemed incorrect or a 真実 if both can exist)
The scanlation team posted this about the series. It has been on indefinite hiatus since 2018.
Tldr the initial magazine it was being published in was discontinued in 2017 and in early 2018 the magazine the series was transferred to was also discontinued. The author has expressed interest in continuing the series but it has been difficult for her to find a new publisher.
https://hachimitsu-scans.blogspot.com/2019/05/there-will-always-be-way.html
In addition she's picked up a lot of more ongoing work projects like KareIrai, Vtubers Caname&Haruky and ImSora Project. The Bproject franchise that she's been a major illustrator for is releasing a new game very soon as well. She also recently had an art gallery and published an art book for her 12 year anniversary. And so as you can imagine, she's very busy. However it's not like she's given up on the series! just don't expect it's going to return soon
not sure if p2 "lets watch sumapura" and p9 "lets play sumapura" is actually what it said because i don't have the raws but if it is the latter one what came to my mind was that its a knockoff of "sumabura" which is short for smash bro(s) as in the game super smash brothers. its a game thats pretty popular with boys but there isn't any show based off of the game so it wouldn't make sense if "play" and "watch" are both what the raws said.
just wanted to give my insight since the scanlator said they had no ideas on what sumapura could be
the title and cover page are meant to be misleading as a joke.
there's no nsfw or any type of sexualization of either characters (unless you consider indirect kissing by sharing drinks as nsfw and in that case im a little concerned for you)
unless you can't stomach them even having implied feelings and blushing at each other sometimes, then its completely safe to read. tbh if it wasn't for the cover page it pretty much would look like a manga about neighborhood kids being bros.
also the author's name is nakayama kou. their twitter is @Okmgmk but Okmgmk isnt their name. if anyone knows how to contact mangago to fix this please let me know.
just a warning for people interested in following the author's twitter, do not look through their side account listed in their bio if you can't stomach fictional inc*st because they draw questionable nsfw fanart that includes that content. the ship name is in the bio but unless you know the franchise its of and can read JP, it's easy to click unknowingly.
a kind reminder please don't reply, qrt etc. in any other non-JP language because the comic isn't licensed in any other language. Non-JP replies, qrts etc. are big red flags that their works are being stolen and illegally translated and it would be awful if the author tries to take legal actions or worse, decide to stop working on the series because of it. machine translations are 100x better if you feel you must show your support in words.
There's nothing in the raws that indicate whether the doctor is male/female/other. The way they speak is very gender neutral, as to their name. This doesn't mean they are automatically nb or trans etc.; we simply don't know yet. it's completely natural for them to speak this way, especially given their distant personality and minus the occasional cuss word (which I saw like once), it's just professional.
However, in ch 9 Shizuma says "this is the men's [changing room]" which implies he thinks the doctor is a woman. Their response however was just "huh? yeah..." which doesn't give us any further clarification because it could be they were fully aware and there's nothing wrong with them going in, or they didn't know before but it doesn't affect them very much (the doctor isn't very expressive afterall).
This is just my own speculation but I think the story will go in the the "oh no, shizuma is getting close to a beautiful woman and since he's straight he's going to fall in love. plot twist that beautiful woman is actually a man so you have nothing to worry about, minato!" direction because of that scene that specifically shows shizuma thinks dr.onodera is a woman, and the last page of ch 11 where minato is very shocked (although he could be shocked for other reasons such as the possibility he knows dr.onodera).
Overall i think the safest way to refer to the doctor is using they/them until we are given more information because it's gender neutral; however since it isn't confirmed please don't fight with other people in the comments if they use he/him or she/her. there are no "correct" pronouns because nothing is confirmed so any pronoun is a valid theory.
Edit: someone reminded me that in the first chapter it is mentioned that the clinic was run by all-women staff so it is more likely the doctor is a woman.
thank you for sharing the raws.
i appreciate the time and effort the group put into translating the chapter too, but the translated chapter was really messy. there were a bunch of pages out of order so i'll address those first. the translation quality is definitely on the lower side, but im only going to clarify parts that felt especially wonky to me or the group had confusions on. i apologize in advance if anything i say sounds aggressive and i assure you that was not my intention.
pages
- p8 from the raws is missing. the speech bubble says "ah...sorry, i was mistaken" (mistook ikushima for someone/something else).
-p14 in the translation is nowhere to be found in the raws for this chapter
-p13 in the raws was mistakenly put as p22 in the translated chapter
-p23 in the raws was mistakenly put as p29 in the translated chapter
translation issues
-p17 (p16 of raws)
-- "the hospital work is long" was actually "the head doctor is always like this" (since head doctor is 院長 where 長 can mean long, this is evident of machine translation getting confused. someone who's translating themselves would have recognized 院 and 長 as being one word)
--everything in the bottom left corner is wrong. from right to left the 3 speech bubbles say "even though newcomers are taken in (hired), he doesn't train them at all.", "it's a pattern where all the vetrinarians under the head doctor's supervision are left to their own devices", "and so they gradually get fed up and quit."
-pg 18 "it looks like you're trying to crush a young man" -> "it seems as if he's trying to
crush your weaknesses". i see people use "crush your weakness" to describe tackling things you have difficulty with so that you don't have difficulties anymore, but it wouldn't make sense here so my assumption is that they're saying the doctor is putting pressure on places that they're already weak in so they do worse than they already are
-p19 "minato is way easier to understand" -> "while they are both difficult to please, minato is many times more easier to understand"
-p20, middle left side
-- "what are you saying micchan!? don't say weird things about people!" (tbh this line was a little confusing to me as well so i don't blame you for being confused, but "what's wrong now micchan?!" is definitely not right)
--"are you kidding me!? it's been 3 days and you guys haven't decided on your makeup and costume.", "any more than this and i'm gonna charge an additional fee"
-p21
-- "at the moment (what he thinks would be helpful), it would be useful if (the assistant) could come quickly without hesitation (when he calls) without being nervous/freaking out"
--"guigui huh" -> "quickly without hesitation huh". if you had looked at the words
-p27
--top right, you completely erased a whole line in the background that said "i've made a mistake"
--panel right under is completely wrong. it says "but he (minato) has worried about (the situation with) the head doctor...", "rather than telling him (the situation) partially over the phone, its better to talk with him face to face the next time we meet"
--bottom bubble "is it ok now" -> "head doctor are you free right now?"
there are a lot more translation errors but i don't want to go through all of them and explain it all because that's not my job. some of these errors are are because machine translations are unreliable but some are straight out making things up because even machine translators like deepl would have picked it up and got it correct. thank you for trying and if you shared the raws, but this level of jp knowledge or even just the effort to double check machine translations sound right at least isn't enough and it would be more helpful to have just left the raws for someone who has better understanding to pick up. there's nothing wrong with wanting to learn and contribute, but please ask for help or look up things you don't know instead of winging it.
feel free to reply with other things you were unsure of and i'll do my best to answer your questions though