miseryxcompany's manga / #Bad Translation(4)

Who do they have translating this man, there’s no way this is the official release. If you can look past the poor translation quality, Nineteen Over is… surprisingly cute, with smooth pacing and seamless transitions into its flashback sequences. I would’ve preferred more time spent on Henry’s sadistic treatment of Noah when he was young but that’s a personal nitpick. Despite his attempts to come off as mean and domineering, I enjoyed that Henry was likened to a child throwing a tantrum. He has this deep rooted obsession with Noah that manifests as a need to control him, and seeing Noah endure pain in his stead solidified the idea that Noah belonged to him in his mind. He forces himself on Noah, which itself is an act that exercises extreme control and objectification over another, but can’t even properly veil his childish motives— “Why did you leave me?” “I told you not to leave me”— ultimately he’s upset that the illusion of Noah being his property was broken, and Noah could see right through him. You can really sense that they’re equally obsessed with each other and it’s so cute how Henry reverts to his more vulnerable, childish self and allows himself to be scolded by Noah.

They’re all simultaneously attracted to the idea of each other holding Yuka and the idea of themselves— mainly Orie— as Yuka being held by one another. Yuka cherished all three of them, supposedly, and her love for each of them complicates their feelings for each other in the midst of her death. An interesting premise on paper, obscured by its unwillingness to let Yuka be more than a memory and limiting the boys’ memories of her to her body. Their sexual encounters with each other are all fueled by a desire to embrace Yuka again, Orie has this prolonged interest in how Yuka had been held by the other boys, Tatsumi has photos of each of them being intimate with her, Suguru fucks Orie in his jealous rage over his relationship with her, which is accompanied by images of Yuka appearing in Orie’s place. It actively makes Yuka’s impact on their lives seem uncompelling. We know next to nothing about her or the kind of relationship she had with each of the boys beyond that it was sexual, so we have no reason to recognize these things as borne of a deep connection to her because that’s not something we’re actually shown. A brief conflict faced by Orie is whether or not he was really in love with Yuka or if he just liked the sex, and you might expect for the story to recount some of Orie and Yuka’s more emotionally intimate experiences, but the realization of his feelings is instead marked by his need to cum inside of her. She is the crux of this manga and yet she dies in the first 3 chapters and is nothing but a sex symbol in the memories of who are supposed to be the lovers she left behind. Without exploring their relationships with Yuka beyond sexuality, their behavior following her death comes off as obsessive at best. It also suffers from not exploring the boys’ feelings for each other unrelated to Yuka. tl;dr — grief induced homoflexibility

You couldn’t even begin to make sense of this manga even if the translation wasn’t so shit. In a way I respect the dedication to setting every twink up to be raped but it reads like the story was constructed around those noncon fantasies along the way. Takaya’s pedophilic, incestuous mother vanishes from the story entirely after the first chapter and is never mentioned in relation to Nagisa again. A new character is introduced entirely for the purpose of forcing himself onto Nagisa in what is essentially a repeat of the first chapter and ends in much the same way— vanished and making episodic what is an otherwise a continuous narrative. Nagisa’s father is introduced and you might be thinking this has something to do with Takaya’s pedophile mom going missing, but actually he just wants custody of Nagisa and bribes Takaya with sex if he wants Nagisa to stay. Takaya has this brief bout of internalized homophobia after being called a queer by Nagisa’s father— who strips down and has sex with his assistant in front of him— but gets over it after Nagisa fucks it out of him. And the dad is actually insane by the way. He only married his ex-wife so he could have a child and doesn’t care that she killed herself or anything, and that’s not even getting into the forced antagonization of the only two women mentioned in this manga. And I just wish there was more angsting over the fact that they’re cousins. You’re writing incest and just doing nothing with it, what’s the point?! I’m almost mad that nothing in this manga is taken seriously because it’s just so absurd.

Very boring, manufactured drama between Haruhiko and Kenichi, the entire premise is abandoned after the first chapter and why is their Senpai acting like he doesn't know why the kid is being stalked by gang members if he was there when Haruhiko and Kenichi saved him the first time? Turning 17 was supposed to give them some arcane power by virtue of being on the cusps of adulthood yet still technically being kids but all they do is run around getting into fights which isn't any different from whatever they were doing before.