Yumekuri

One day, dogs will take over the awesomeness, then we'll be like 'Mr. Doggy, you so cool'!

Mr. Kitty. :3

Lol, that shop owner

dude shut the hell up don't go bashing To Love-ru like that just cuz you are jealous of its popularity and the fact that you can't draw anything. Be glad someone translates these manga otherwise you wouldn't be able to read them and would need to learn japanese to understand it.

The noble Derek and Purple Library Guy already responded, but this is too good for me to pass up.

1) I wasn't bashing To Love-ru. It's episodic, which isn't a BAD thing, but is a pretty clear genre-marking quality. It fits for an ecchi rom-com since it allows for perpetuity. I was saying that trying to do the exact same thing as the [already wildly successful] TLR franchise is a bad choice for a writer/marketer/editor of any manga...at least until TLR ends for good.

2) What facet of popularity, exactly, am I jealous of? I have no part in the publishing of Yumekuri in Japan, so sales can't be it. Hell, TLR is a guilty pleasure of mine.

3) Um, I'm the one who translates this and several other series, many of which are in the same vein of ecchi style. Had you read the previous posts I've made here more closely (or bothered to look at the credits page, so there's a good show of your own appreciation) you'd have noticed that. In short, no; I don't really have to be glad/thankful that someone else translates it; why go out of my way to thank myself for my own work done at no benefit to me?

4) Well, you're right that I can't draw worth crap. Otherwise I might have taken up drawing manga before translating, I suppose.

I'm cool with it, though. Are you? I could try to draw an abstract of you with MSPaint on commission if you like. Payment up front preferred. 

Thanks for the scans, Renzokusei!

dude shut the hell up don't go bashing To Love-ru like that just cuz you are jealous of its popularity and the fact that you can't draw anything. Be glad someone translates these manga otherwise you wouldn't be able to read them and would need to learn japanese to understand it.

[sarcasm]Well, that was substantive.[/sarcasm]

Look, there's not that much wrong with being a shallow fanboy.  But when the adults are talking, like when someone like Demo lays down some solid criticism, you should have the awareness to pipe down.  You may not understand it but you should at least be able to tell when it's happening, OK?

It's like tea ceremony.  I don't understand tea ceremony.  The fine points are lost on me.  But I have the brains not to stomp into one and knock over the teapot.  If tea ceremony started happening around me I would watch quietly and learn to appreciate.

dude shut the hell up don't go bashing To Love-ru like that just cuz you are jealous of its popularity and the fact that you can't draw anything. Be glad someone translates these manga otherwise you wouldn't be able to read them and would need to learn japanese to understand it.

Demo is the translator for Yumekuri, as well as several other mangas we do at Renzokusei.

:|

Whenever I'm disappointed in a manga, it always has more to do with missed potential than with seeing any specific ideas/tropes that I don't like. If an author can work a trope right, there's little problem in using that trope to its fullest potential. As the TV Tropes adage goes [paraphrasing it here]: There is little wrong with the use of a trope, but everything wrong with the poor execution of one. Much of the problem, of course, lies in an entire series being based on that (as I've mentioned before: In Bura did this, and badly, with its only perk being copious amounts of gargantuan mammary collision).

 

Starting with a trope gives us a sense of which direction the characters' growth will take, but doesn't define the character beyond a surface-level identification. Who's the adorable loli? The motherly well-endowed big-sister? Instantly identifiable here, but there's clearly more to it than that.

 

Character development begins to really take off following this chapter (number 7), especially as far as Makoto and the younger half of the other girls are concerned. It has been slow mostly because the author has made the (correct) choice of not setting the pace at [each chapter has instant drama to be resolved asap] mode, which feels episodic to the extent that To-Love-Ru or any other such rom com would be a more effective clone of this. Definitely not a good goal to set. Instead, our understanding of the characters unfolds a bit at a time, with a decent dramatic flair every now and then. Until those flair moments, drama is at a more-or-less everyday level, which is totally fine with me.

dude shut the hell up don't go bashing To Love-ru like that just cuz you are jealous of its popularity and the fact that you can't draw anything. Be glad someone translates these manga otherwise you wouldn't be able to read them and would need to learn japanese to understand it.

goddess is moe

Just haul ass. What a man.

After forever, I can round out my thoughts in a cohesive manner:

Makoto to me is such a breath of fresh air, such an interesting character, and such a stretch from the norm that would be seen in Archetype-bound works of this demographic that I set my standards a little too high.

 

I wanted the rest of this manga to be as interesting and new as I thought Makoto was (and is, he's a cool guy), but when I see perverted photography club, bratty self-absorbed little girls, and other such commonly seen mechanics...well, it comes as a bit of a let-down.

 

But I figured it out: it's more positive, helpful, and less toxic to oneself and others to be thankful for the good things instead of focusing on the the bad. This manga might not be perfect, but it's certainly a fun and lively change from the norm and i can enjoy it for what it is. And what's more, it's still quite young - there very much room to grow! So I'll see where it goes and have high hopes for some fun...and Character development. Need that for sure!

Whenever I'm disappointed in a manga, it always has more to do with missed potential than with seeing any specific ideas/tropes that I don't like. If an author can work a trope right, there's little problem in using that trope to its fullest potential. As the TV Tropes adage goes [paraphrasing it here]: There is little wrong with the use of a trope, but everything wrong with the poor execution of one. Much of the problem, of course, lies in an entire series being based on that (as I've mentioned before: In Bura did this, and badly, with its only perk being copious amounts of gargantuan mammary collision).

Starting with a trope gives us a sense of which direction the characters' growth will take, but doesn't define the character beyond a surface-level identification. Who's the adorable loli? The motherly well-endowed big-sister? Instantly identifiable here, but there's clearly more to it than that.

Character development begins to really take off following this chapter (number 7), especially as far as Makoto and the younger half of the other girls are concerned. It has been slow mostly because the author has made the (correct) choice of not setting the pace at [each chapter has instant drama to be resolved asap] mode, which feels episodic to the extent that To-Love-Ru or any other such rom com would be a more effective clone of this. Definitely not a good goal to set. Instead, our understanding of the characters unfolds a bit at a time, with a decent dramatic flair every now and then. Until those flair moments, drama is at a more-or-less everyday level, which is totally fine with me.

it was interesting at first but after a few chapters it has gotten a bit boring, the characters seem 1 dimensional to even care about them

Spoiler

After forever, I can round out my thoughts in a cohesive manner:

Makoto to me is such a breath of fresh air, such an interesting character, and such a stretch from the norm that would be seen in Archetype-bound works of this demographic that I set my standards a little too high.

I wanted the rest of this manga to be as interesting and new as I thought Makoto was (and is, he's a cool guy), but when I see perverted photography club, bratty self-absorbed little girls, and other such commonly seen mechanics...well, it comes as a bit of a let-down.

But I figured it out: it's more positive, helpful, and less toxic to oneself and others to be thankful for the good things instead of focusing on the the bad. This manga might not be perfect, but it's certainly a fun and lively change from the norm and i can enjoy it for what it is. And what's more, it's still quite young - there very much room to grow! So I'll see where it goes and have high hopes for some fun...and Character development. Need that for sure!

Also, kinda sorry for spewing disappointment-fueled bile everywhere, no one likes biting into a bit of sourpuss negativity lol. 

All past aside, still thanks for the scanlation guys. Appreciate the hard work.

Go get that lovely goddess!!!

Boy!!

As for Demo's assertion, the fault lies not in Makoto's legitimate usage of the bath he was permitted to, his equally legitimate curiosity in the fact that he found hair in the bath, or even his delay from the shock of seeing an attractive female in the bath that was supposed to be reserved for males at the time (as far as he was informed). He didn't ruin their lives, they ruined their lives. He just happened to be the method they inadvertently used to do so.

That was the only problem I had with that comment. I agree that we know too little about any of the side characters to judge at this point, regardless of however familiar we are with tropes.

I don't consider concluding one's interest in a person at the very moment one meets them to be a positive trait. It's superficial. That's not to say nobody should be physically attracted to anybody, ever. The idea that not needing anything more than that is the problem.

I also find Makoto to have the least outstanding character among the lot of them. He's not particularly bright, nor is he a complete idiot. He's not heroic (thus far) nor is he a coward. He's not apathetic nor is he a disgusting nosefountain. He's just... meh. Just a self-proclaimed hot spring enthusiast with no outstanding personality traits, thus far.

I do like that he and the yuri couple get along well enough. That's refreshing. I just don't see anything special about him, yet. Nothing interesting. I'm hopeful, though.

Maybe how quickly he seems to get along with people without trying particularly hard could be seen as a quirk, but still meh.

Fuckers,MC is great fun, Goddess is kawaii as fuck, Lesbianism is pure love, Tokura is a goddess and Loli is the best.

Just fucking go with it

So kinda like i have to re read this to remember what the hell is going on:S

BAMF. No "omg what can I do", but simply a man of action.

The goddess is a typical heroine of the "sweet, naive" school.  Which is fine by me; not a lot of individual character there, but damn she's cute.

The guy is definitely refreshing as MCs for this sort of shounen/seinen manga--neither an idiot, nor a complete wimp, nor weirdly detached and unemotional, and capable of positive decisions/opinions about girls.  Basically, just the ability to look at a group of girls and conclude that he's interested in one of them in particular puts him head and shoulders above a lot of such characters.

A. Fucking. Men. When I moved on from In Bura to this, you have no idea how I felt--it was like being reborn. This actually has substance in its character designs, especially for the male lead. Can you believe it?

When I TL'd In Bura 13, there was a moment when I wondered what the hell I was seeing--this guy managed to wordlessly slide his way without hearing any objections into an epic porn scenario--and was proceeding--in public. And then he starts crying and asking for help from the 3rd wheel who is out of sight. That's not how "factory preset average" 16-year-olds (or whatever his age is) work. Not even in Japan. It's like they're expected to be afraid of T & A or something.

I do feel that the Goddess still has been slow to develop in terms of being a functional character. Coupled with the fact that she is theoretically older than all of the other main characters combined and therefore has little potential for dynamic character growth, this ultimately makes her the weakest of the important female characters to me. We do finally start to see some growth from 6 onward, FINALLY, but otherwise we learned very little about her with each chapter, even though she's the romantic lead. What's worse, in chapter 6 we learn a bunch about her current divine background through none other than...exposition-style dialogue. Yaaaaay.

In case anyone else was wondering, the Prez's odd, seemingly-out-of-place exclamation on the last page was a weird one that no Japanese person ever writes. It's "na" but with a dakuten ( な゛), meaning that there's apparently extra vocalization in the syllable (as if that were possible in an N syllable). In this case it's his tanuki side poking out.

Mixing into the Demo/Kaixe-Rho conversation here...

The goddess is a typical heroine of the "sweet, naive" school.  Which is fine by me; not a lot of individual character there, but damn she's cute.

The guy is definitely refreshing as MCs for this sort of shounen/seinen manga--neither an idiot, nor a complete wimp, nor weirdly detached and unemotional, and capable of positive decisions/opinions about girls.  Basically, just the ability to look at a group of girls and conclude that he's interested in one of them in particular puts him head and shoulders above a lot of such characters.

As to the situation . . . well, substantively, yes he did take the goddess' power.  But that was due to the girls' mistake, not his.  One might argue their approach to recruiting him to the cause could have been more apologetic.  But, well, it's not like they were nasty about things either; maybe they tried to wrong-foot him and hustle him into it a bit, but they were desperate.  In any case he's a massive hot springs connoisseur, so being asked to help out at a hot springs with a goddess' power keeping it perfect is hardly a terrible fate for him even if he hadn't fallen for her.  More like, the event he's been looking for to give his life meaning.

I like the yuri girls . . . but then I would.  The girl characters overall seem less there to radiate individual personalities than to invoke a wide range of ultimate cute, and in this they are very successful in my book.  Basically, for me this manga is succeeding on its own terms and I'm not going to raise my expectations too much higher than that before giving it a thumbs up.

Overall, what I'm seeing here is all the cute girls of a typical harem shounen/seinen, but with most of the annoying character and plot features of such a harem removed.  That's a win.  Thanks Demo and Renzokusei!

I'm strangely touched by the presentation of that last photo.

The loli was really adorable during the tour chapter

Oh great, he befriends perverts who will constantly talk about "the 3 sizes", assign ratings to the girls as well as trying to make being a creep a form of art. *deep sigh*

I hope i'm wrong.