Biyaku Café

I started this manga when inflicted with manga fever. now that that has cooled down (after some years) reading the last chapter makes me see it as a favour to the world since there won't be more increasingly silly chapters of it. I think it was original for first half.

Wait, why's the extra the same as the final chapter?

I often wonder why I'm still reading this, but every once in a while, there's a good chapter – like chp33.

thx Decadence~

The last of Kagetsu and Kaoru's story? The mangaka is such a teaser for that ending. Built up the excitement only to cut it at the best part. I hope I'm wrong but I read the mangaka's comments at the end and it sounds like it's the ending for this couple.

Wish there was a safe space for the PC crowd here to complain. It would be nice to enjoy and talk about the manga without them ruining it for the rest of us. Maybe they could just move to reddit where that kind of egotistical pontificating is encouraged.

Well there's no reason for PC not to be discussed in relation to manga but it seemed to get a bit excessively heavy here. There is the obvious choice to just ignore as PLG said but I would think the forum threads would be most ideal. One of the unique things about batoto is that it has both a comments and forum. The forum would be a great space for serious discussions but since the comments section is so readily available, the forum doesn't get as much use on this website for manga discussion. Or at least that's my observation.

Edit: there's something wrong about this comment being more about the comments section than is it about the manga. :/

Wish there was a safe space for the PC crowd here to complain. It would be nice to enjoy and talk about the manga without them ruining it for the rest of us. Maybe they could just move to reddit where that kind of egotistical pontificating is encouraged.

So who's more egotistical--the people arguing about stuff they find interesting, or the person bitching them out for finding it interesting instead of just fucking skipping over the comments they find boring?

Haha, so that was a thinly veiled... Ahh, go read it. I'm not spoiling it!

Wish there was a safe space for the PC crowd here to complain. It would be nice to enjoy and talk about the manga without them ruining it for the rest of us. Maybe they could just move to reddit where that kind of egotistical pontificating is encouraged.

Finally a good chapter, I was getting tired of all the sidekicks.

I'll just say that Yuna is annoying as heck, but she and Kuni do make a good idiot couple.

they certainly complete each other. I'd like for us to move on but it seems we'll get at least one more chapter on them. I hope we get to see more from Kaoru's sister though. She's proven herself to be a great character. 

On another note... It's strange to suddenly read "Saudi Arabia" in the comments section for a manga hosting site...I hope we lighten up after all it's just a comments section, not a PC thread. 

I'll just say that Yuna is annoying as heck, but she and Kuni do make a good idiot couple.

Saying North America doesn't have a problem because Saudi Arabia is worse is like saying you don't have a drug problem because Jim Morrison was worse or you don't have a homelessness problem because Syria is worse.  

As to Biyaku Cafe--of course it's sexist, that's hardly at issue.  Nearly all romance manga is sexist, whether it's shoujo, shounen, seinen or josei.  Japanese culture is pretty damn sexist, manga reflect that, go figure.  I kind of set that aside when I'm reading most manga, but that doesn't make it not be that way.  And Biyaku Cafe is probably more so than average for shoujo.  It's pretty obvious if you stop and look at it for just a few seconds.  I can still enjoy it for various reasons, but it's silly to pretend there is "none of it" (sexism) there.  

Rape?  Well, that's arguable.  We've been arguing it.  Sue us.

/scrolls down to comment section

...

/scrolls back up immediately

maintain your sanity, friends.

(also thank you decadence, this manga is my guilty pleasure <3)

Saudi princes importing Indian maids with promises of good working conditions and decent wage only to be used as sex slaves is rape culture. What is happening in the US campuses is not as demonstrated by rape scandals like the Rolling Stone story which ended up to be fake. Same with many others.

There was also a really good video with a feminist speaker proving that there's no such thing as rape culture in the West with clear statistical data, unfortunately the video is deleted from Youtube. I will try to find it once again.

I might have worded my previous comment the wrong way but I'm tired of politics being involved in my hobbies. Got enough of that bullshit in video games. It's usually far left people who come in and take offence for some self invented reason or by out of context cherry-picking as demonstrated in previous comments about rape and sexism while there is none of it in Biyaku Café.

EDIT: Found the video: 

Ugh... Bato.to would be an even nicer place without all this far-left PC bullshit and their fictional rape culture. 

Aww, that was so nice.  So of course I can see how much nicer bato.to would be with only your opinions in it.  Oh, and Theoderich's!

By the way, in case you didn't catch that it was sarcasm.  You can take your red-baiting and shove it.

Ugh... Bato.to would be an even nicer place without all this far-left PC bullshit and their fictional rape culture. Yes, rape is a problem but there is no such culture for it in the West. People should spend less time inventing problems instead of actually fixing things that need to be fixed.

You're kidding right? This is a famous swedish female feminist author who did this with the funding of a state grant.

Ah...I didn't see that reflected in the comics so no I wasn't kidding. I suppose it's one of those things where if you don't know the background, you won't see the intended message. i don't know how effective that'd be

Really.  Assuming that's true, how very clever and ironic of her, I'm sure.  Not to mention stupid--I don't see the point in "satire" that's indistinguishable from what's being satirized.

Mind you, the funding of a state grant doesn't mean much.  I mean, I'm in favour of state funding for the arts, but you have to accept a certain proportion of misses.  Here in Canada, back when we funded the arts, I remember when this famous poet got a Canada Council grant for a poem that consisted of the words "a warm place to shit" repeated 39 times.

All I am saying is that this is Swedish comics. And yes she is a renowned swedish author, Lina Neidestam. Wiki Homepage (both in swedish)

She did release a book called "Zelda vs the Patriarchy":

You're kidding right? This is a famous swedish female feminist author who did this with the funding of a state grant.

Really.  Assuming that's true, how very clever and ironic of her, I'm sure.  Not to mention stupid--I don't see the point in "satire" that's indistinguishable from what's being satirized.

Mind you, the funding of a state grant doesn't mean much.  I mean, I'm in favour of state funding for the arts, but you have to accept a certain proportion of misses.  Here in Canada, back when we funded the arts, I remember when this famous poet got a Canada Council grant for a poem that consisted of the words "a warm place to shit" repeated 39 times.

@Teriguu, those are some really offensive and sexist comics there. 

You're kidding right? This is a famous swedish female feminist author who did this with the funding of a state grant.

Well, I disagree. (shrug)

OTOH, if you'd started off by arguing that that sequence is sexist, patronizing, the guy seems to think he can "hijack a woman's life and assume control of her emotional well-being after talking to her for a few minutes" and so on, I probably wouldn't have been arguing with you.  I just don't think he drugged and raped her.  Those are two quite different claims.

Hm. Well, going chronologically rather than by page, how it goes is roughly:

Spoiler

She breaks his window. He treats her harshly, under the impression she's a guy. When she says she's a girl, he rudely checks. This is certainly harassment.
Finding she's a girl, he makes her the tea as an apology (and, no doubt, as a flirtation--but he says as an apology). His manner mellows considerably, and he listens to her story.  I got the impression he was actually the first person in some time who had listened to her.  The core of her story was that she's serially unemployed and it has to do with a trend of women mistaking her for a guy and falling for her, something that bothers her quite a bit; there's a feeling that being seen as a boy makes her feel unwomanly.
Then he flirts with her and seduces her.  He tells her she has a beautiful face and reads her blushes like a book and offers her another cup of tea, which she accepts, they have sex, she sleeps.
When she wakes up, he blackmails her into working there, ostensibly to pay the cost of the window and some of the tea.  This is really the part that fits best for me with the "harassment and blackmail" feel you get from the whole thing.  But what I got from it was . . . she'd just been fired from multiple jobs in a row, was depressed, unwanted (both professionally and, at least by men, romantically).  He was in a very rough way saying to her "You are wanted; I am so far from sacking you like the others that I insist you stay".  She could have walked (and he knew it), in fact on the first day she shows up to work she asks herself why she came.  The answer is that she felt wanted (and she had the hots for him).  It's a bad tactic from a guy with a domineering personality--but it is also giving her what she needed, and in a way that just saying "You can work here if you want" wouldn't.  That changes the impact for me.
Through the remainder of the chapter, he comes on to her aggressively, giving her to understand in no uncertain terms that he finds her very desirable as a woman.  His manner is rough and his speech is sometimes indirect, but everything he says is actually complimentary in its thrust.  If anything, he pushes hard to shake her out of an attitude that men wouldn't want someone like her.

Overall, I don't see quite the mire you're seeing.  Some questionable things, but the unrelieved negativity, no.
And while doubtless there are some personal things somewhere behind some of what I say, I really feel, to go English Major for a moment, that my reading is supported by the text.