Thanks for the chapter!
Why is it whenever an ancient family that can trace their ancestry in the double digits in manga/anime always treat their children and family members like chess pieces rather than human beings? Like that grandmother. Acts like Koyuki and her brother's personal feelings are irrelevant, expects answers and blind obedience, and the only thing that matters is the main family's appearance and desires irregardless of how corrupt it is or whether a member is in trouble and needs help. Always drove me crazy how consider this or that person to be special and will raise family into greater prominence yet shoot themselves in the foot by either spoiling them beyond rotten or somehow expecting them to lead family higher yet suppose to obey unquestioningly arrogant members of the family who obviously only want power and prestige for themselves. Then again this explains how she could have a bad cold in V5 ch21 with nobody else in the house. After all, expect at least one parent (adopted?) to have stayed behind or at least arrange someone to look after her. Yet despite being a posh house that's too big for three people to take care of, especially if two are always working, there wasn't even one servant around doing anything.
In any case, the way that brother disappeared seems odd. Also, might have simply walked off frame but didn't someone else near him disappear too? Be interesting to see his reaction to meeting that Spartan grandmother.

Hmm, I'm not sure granny was bitchy enough there. She should have at least beaten Koyuki a bit and spat on her before leaving, just to drive the point home.

@Ashandai Oh, yeah, it totally makes sense that that's why you have you opinion. I disagree in a couple cases (I already said my disagreement on this brother/sister arc, and I would also disagree on the Rei arc for various reasons), but yeah, it makes sense that you would feel like the author's skill compensates for what you see as shallowness in parts of the story, even if I disagree.

@givemersspls

Sorry for the late response. It was meant for the mini arc with the brother and sister, but honestly the same sentiment about it feeling shallow at the start but satisfied at the end could apply to the Rei arc as well.

I just feel everything after the Iris Hunter arc feels tacked on, but the skill of the one doing the tacking on means i can still enjoy it as part of the whole. Does that make sense?

For those of you complaining of hiatuses... Did you see the dates in this chapter? It's quite obvious this is an old raw and the most recent delay was imposed on us by the scanlators, not the author or artist.

@RhoninFire Thanks for clarifying the omake bit, it's been a while since I read it, so I wasn't quite sure of the implications. That being said, when I talked about a disconnect with the beginning of the story, it was more about this new development with the brother and the authoritarian grandmother, aspects that were not alluded in the least at the beginning, which causes this discomfort we're feeling right now.

Long story short, the storylines as a whole and the character developments that ocurred after the core group of characters was introduced were organic and well thought-out, but this new development isn't, or at least doesn't feel like it, because it doesn't tie to Koyuki's introduction at the beginning of the manga.

@Me While what you said is all certainly possible, I "like" to think otherwise. Like as in I would prefer for the sake of a good story, but not necessarily for Toru's own sake. When Toru's sister met the "gang" (for lack of better term) at the park, she could very clearly see their friends lists. She would know whether it contained Toru or not. The full extent of her iris' ability is not known, but I would have to conjecture that it's possible that she could tell whether they truly considered themselves friends of Toru or not. That's kind of speculation on my part, but she does straight up ask them why they hang out with her brother. She then says straight to their faces oh, so you just keep my brother around because he has a useful ability. They don't even try to deny it.

My feeling is that not even they consider themselves to be true friends of Toru, that they haven't even given him a "friend request" or whatever. Now, maybe that is for a similar reason to what you said. Maybe they know that Toru keeps his distance from others, so they don't even try to intrude it by making that friend request in the first place. Maybe it's for a completely different reason. I definitely would not say that they are malicious in their "use" of Toru, as evidenced by their varying degrees of care for him, but using him is almost certainly what they're doing.

Anyways, I do still stand by what I said about it being shallow. Yeah, I get it, and I understood it when I wrote my earlier comment. The whole point of the separated brother and sister arc was to develop Toru's relationship with his own sister. That was pretty clear. The problem is that at that point, the "main" story becomes the side story and readily forgotten/discarded. I mean, couldn't the author just as easily have done that in a different way that didn't involve creating and then immediately discarding characters? Even here, it feels like there's that thread of sibling relationships. The brother and sister were separated. Then we have Toru's sister coming in and coming to terms with her brother's loneliness. Then there's Koyuki with her hitherto completely freaking unknown brother of enough importance to send her to the damn hospital (I said my piece above how this is shallow to just introduce him out of nowhere). I get that the author was trying to thread it all together like that. I think that thread wasn't very well done.

Unless the brother and sister (the one in focus in chapters 41-42) reappear in some decently important way, I will have to continue to say that their arc was shallow. Just as one alternative, maybe Toru's sister could've seen Rei and Koyuki trying to advance their relationships with Toru and then she asks what the hell, you're not even his friend(s) (it could include the gang too). That would've avoided pretty much all of chapters 41-42 while maintaining the momentum from the previous arc of their dual confessions and accomplished pretty much the same stuff. That's just off the top of my head, but that's how I feel.

@givemersspls "The reason that the arc even stands out is not because of brother and separated sister but instead because of Toru and his sister, the interactions between two established characters barely at all related to the "main events" of the arc. "

I think you've hit upon the real thrust here. The point of this mini-arc was to turn the spotlight on to Toru and his sister. The "main events" feel shallow because they aren't really the main events.



The "friend list" thing is actually really interesting. To me, it hints at Toru's mindset, and the psychological baggage he carries that we don't see from the outside. We know he's lost all his friends before when he was outed as an Iris Zero, and suffered at the hands of people he once considered friends. We know he intentionally tries to not stand out to avoid a bullying problem that's abated over the last decade, but never really STOPPED.

I suspect he's intentionally keeping his not-friends at arm's length as a defense mechanism.
If he doesn't have any friends, he can't lose his friends again. He can't be betrayed by his friends again. He can't be hurt by his friends again. It won't matter when (not if) they turn on him.

From Toru's perspective, he can't afford to consider them as anything more than some people he hangs out with sometimes.
From another perspective, he simply isn't capable of trusting another person enough to call them a friend.

Basically, Toru's sister knows he doesn't have friends because she's seen his friend list and she knows it is empty But what she doesn't see is that he has a bunch of friend requests he hasn't accepted yet.



If you ask me, this is setting up for a series finale. Toru's helped everyone else, now it is time for everyone else to help Toru.

@RhoninFire This is a semi-random comparison, but I guess it's like the Great Saiyaman Saga of Dragon Ball Z, which was only 10 chapters in the manga and the same number of episodes in the anime. It was just so short that it's kind of hard to think of it as a "saga", similar to how it's kind of hard to think of two chapters as an "arc", but eh, that's just my opinion. I also wouldn't really include chapter 40 because there was nothing about the brother/sister thing there, and that seemed to be the main thrust of the arc.

Completely side note, but I just noticed that in chapter 40, Rei talks about a "clique" of "camaraderie". I don't know what words she actually uses in the original, but it's interesting how she trails off and doesn't explain it "on screen" while Toru's sister very clearly reveals that the "gang" are not Toru's friends. I still highly dislike any ideas of "oh, it's a wordplay" or some weak thing like "they are friends but they just don't call each other friends" because that seems ridiculous given the setting, but the discussion with Rei in 40 is interesting nonetheless.

I'm just rambling here, so my apologies, but this is my main point. I honestly didn't really like the brother/sister (the mistaken-for-pedophile guy and his sister) arc that just happened. I did think it was shallow. I'm not saying I disliked it per se, but it was just like an episode of Full House, where everything is wrapped up in 30 minutes. I felt no urgency, no importance from the storyline when Toru swoops in, tells his sister to chill the F out, and then he tells the guy bro, get a GF. I felt no attachment to almost anything that happened there. The reason that the arc even stands out is not because of brother and separated sister but instead because of Toru and his sister, the interactions between two established characters barely at all related to the "main events" of the arc. In that way, the "main events" of the guy being mistaken for a pedophile and him connecting with his lost sister are basically side events, and that's what makes it seem shallow to me.

I get it from an outside perspective; the author had just come back from so many hiatuses, so they probably felt the need to put out a story and wrap it up quickly. But I do still think it was shallow, and I am afraid that it'll be something similar here with Koyuki.

@givemersspls - The part @MagiciansBlack is referring to the Chapter 20.5 Omake. On page 11, the author reveals it was only suppose to be a 5 chapter, 1 volume series. One-shot chapters from the perspective of each main character (the original 5) but promoted to be a full series. The author joked the storyline is complete is thus completed at chapter 20, but it's suppose to be a joke. And yeah, the pacing and story-lines continued smoothly well after.

Which leads to what @Ashandai is talking about. Which is the short 3 chapter arc of 40-42 with the sister investigating that "boyfriend". Remember, it was kinda sudden that chapter 39 look like it still have at least a few more pages of story but instead chp 40 switch to an entirely different story. At that time, it did gave a similar bad taste we are getting right now. But somehow he manage to tie it all together. So it's not what MagiciansBlack was thinking, it's dozens of chapters - and it wasn't quite what MagiciansBlack said anyway.

That said, currently, the reveal of the brother is also giving me a bad taste. It screams implications of the characterization of Koyuki and in a way that takes away a major element of what made her likeable plus part of the foil between Koyuki and Rei. I hope - like the last arc - the author will manage to surprise me again.

As a fan of HiatusxHiatus:
This is nothing.

@Ashandai Which did you consider the last arc? Was it Rei and the ensuing dual confessions from her and Koyuki? Or was it the two chapter long part about the brother finding his separated sister? I ask because I don't know if the latter would qualify as an arc just because of how short it was.

I agree with the shallow thing, but I thought the same at the start of the last arc - ended up enjoying that more than i thought. Hopefully this goes the same way?

@givemersspls If I remember reading it right in one of those extras from the author, this manga was supposed to be only the first five arcs, each one focusing on a character from the cast. However the reception was good and the editor pushed for more chapters, so any element after the iris stealer arc probably wasn't fleshed out enough to feel organic with the beginning of the manga.

I agree that it feels shallow, but considering how this manga was on hiatus for a long time and how it is a monthly release, I guess the author had to push for drama in an unexpected direction to draw attention from readers. At least that's how it felt to me.

I heard that it's the translation group that lost interest/didn't have enough staff to actually publish the chapter earlier. That's just what I heard, though, that the author is doing okay and publishing normally and that it's the translation group that hasn't translated.

Anyways, is this the direction it's going to go? That Koyuki has been burdened by this family responsibility of some kind and that has had a huge effect on forming her personality, even though we have had NOTHING to indicate that EVER? That seems shallow. I bet you that's going to be some explanation for why she's so caring and non-judgmental about people, especially iris zeroes like Toru.

One of the things I liked about how Koyuki's character was done is that her motivations and intentions were fairly clearly laid out. She wasn't judgmental because unlike the VAST majority of irises, hers relied upon a conscious decision to judge someone. Therefore, she didn't automatically judge them. She could, if she so chose, not use her iris on people, unlike Hijiri with his butterflies of death, for example. Just because she was clear didn't mean that her character lacked depth, either. She seemed like a fairly realistic (given the setting) character. And then this happens, where a HUGELY formative part of her identity (at the very least, being adopted into an apparently hostile family) has been left out. That leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Well, honestly I thought another language's chapter was updated. Kinda losing hope on seeing the continuation of this manga.
Short as H*ll, but good to see the series is still going.

so short

need moar

@phoenixir Hiatus Zero implies no hiatuses, so Hiriatus

@phoenixir You can always rip and stick the images of the characters on your own to make a new arc.
lol

Holy crap, I don't remember this at all.

OK, let's put it "On hold" until I've re-read everything ?