Asexuality in Manga 5: Aromantic (love) story & And Another Lovely Day

Transcript Transcribed by Laura M.

Courtney: Hello everyone and welcome back! My name is Courtney, I am here with my spouse Royce, and together we are The Ace Couple. Take it away, Royce!

Royce: And today we’re finally finishing up this little stint on comics with And Another Lovely Day and Aromantic (Love) Story. And then that’s it, no more comics for another 2 years.

Courtney: A romantic love story?

Royce: Aromantic love story…? What did I say?

Courtney: No, I’m just— I’m doing that thing that people do with– when you say you’re asexual and they’re like, “You’re a sexual?”

Royce: The alternative title, or potentially more literal title— I don’t actually know where Aromantic (Love) Story came from as a title. It’s just the one that I’ve seen more prominently in English media. The other title is Miss Ki— this is why I didn’t lead with this. I can’t say the dragon word.

Courtney: The dragon word?!

Royce: Yeah. Ryuu. R-Y-U-U.

Courtney: That didn’t sound awful.

Royce: It didn’t.

Courtney: Let’s go with that.

Royce: But apparently when I put a Ki- in front of it, I can’t do it. But I did have someone who was actually learning how to speak Japanese at one point tell me that their instructor made them say the word for dragon over and over and over again until they could pronounce it properly.

Courtney: So we’re gonna do that with you right now.

Royce: No.

Courtney: Let’s go. [chuckles]

Royce: But the more literal translation of the title of this manga is “The main character’s name doesn’t know what love is.“.

Courtney: Sounds about right. But do they want to know what love is?

Royce: Sort of.

Courtney: Oh no.

Royce: But we’ll get to that.

Courtney: I was really hoping you weren’t gonna make me sing the song. I’m– I’m not gonna do it.

Royce: So this is an episode of not committing to the bit.

Courtney: I know, I really hate myself for not committing to the bit, but I don’t sing for people if I can avoid it. Plus we’ll probably get a copyright strike, which will really hurt our wallet on our videos that make, what, $2?

Royce: So compared to some of the other pieces of media that we’ve talked about, both of these are a little bit lengthier. They do have some overlap just with, I guess, the interests of the characters in there. The first one I’m going to talk about And Another Lovely Day is a bit lighter. Not necessarily simpler, but it is a— I guess first of all, it is a webtoon versus a manga, which is a little bit different, like, release style, artistic style. Overall there’s, like, less conflict. It’s a bit lighter and happier most of the time. I think it sticks out to me because a lot of the conversations between the characters feel very ordinary and real, whereas the other one very intentionally goes off the rails a lot of times due to the protagonist’s imagination.

Courtney: You’re saying that as if that’s not real and doesn’t happen in real life.

Royce: Just that it’s not spoken out loud as often. So our protagonist in And Another Lovely Day are Nora and Elliot. They are both described as a person who does not fall in love.

Courtney: Okay, that’s pretty—

Royce: Very, very early on in the opening.

Courtney: Pretty on the nose. Got it.

Royce: Nora is pretty extroverted, Elliot pretty introverted. They meet at a movie theater and an anime is being shown. It’s based off of a comic series about paired table tennis where a lot of the friend drama/romance drama comes from the team pairings of the characters. They’re doing an event on Valentine’s Day where they’re releasing special limited merchandise based off of the characters. And so Nora and Elliot both go there independently. They haven’t met each other. But they bump into each other, spill all their things in the traditional, like, meet-cute style meeting, realize that they both have merch from the same show, and they’re getting into the same line to get their tickets. The theater is doing a little prize lottery where if you come paired up, you get an extra gift, so you get 3 instead of 2.

Courtney: Ah, so they are full-on, like, sham relationship. [laughs]

Royce: Exactly. Yeah, there’s actually—

Courtney: Do it for the benefits!

Royce: There’s actually a point where they– for the extra anime merch.

Courtney: Love it.

Royce: There’s actually a point as they’re leaving the theater where they ask each other their names and a bunch of other people around just like give these confused looks because everyone assumed they were a couple because that’s how they entered the raffle.

Courtney: [chuckles] It’s perfect.

Royce: There’s a point in time before they decide to pair up where Nora is contemplating getting a boyfriend just to get a better chance at merch raffles, but— and then figures she’d get immediately dumped if he found out that that was the reason why they were dating.

Courtney: That’s the only valid reason to have a boyfriend.

Royce: But they pair up. They do manage to get each of their favorite characters’ merch because of that third lottery ticket.

Courtney: Oh, I’m so happy for them.

Royce: But then they start to panic over the idea that one of them tricked the other into a date and the other was too excited about the merch to notice. ’Cause apparently getting tricked out onto— onto— getting tricked on to dates is something that happens to both of them.

Courtney: I mean…

Royce: Usually ends poorly.

Courtney: I’ve been tricked into dates before, so I understand.

Royce: But it turns out both of them are relatively young teachers at the same school. They work in different departments, they hadn’t crossed paths up to that point, but they start doing so very soon. Nora is a history teacher and Elliot is an English teacher. Once they start seeing each other around work more frequently, Elliot’s work friends start going up to him really excited that he’s friends with Nora because Nora is apparently known for being a great matchmaker. What actually happens in practice is that Nora is just a very friendly extroverted person, and as soon as she feels someone getting the wrong idea about her, she like quickly pairs them off with another woman around her.

Courtney: Oh, that’s hilarious. That is the only valid reason to be a matchmaker. I am obsessed with these two.

Royce: So once the two of them both start to panic that they’re either being led on or unintentionally leading the other one on, they both consult romance manga that they’re currently reading for tips on how to avoid, like, this perceived growing romance plot that they’re in. So they see the common themes in the manga that they’re reading, and they just go, “Okay, well, I’m going to do the opposite of that.” So Nora reads that people start to get attracted to one another because they feel they’re getting special attention. So she says, “Okay, I’m gonna treat everyone evenly, no special attention.” But her even is, again, very extroverted, very talkative. Elliot decides that being around one another can create, you know, some warm feelings, and so he goes for a complete, like, cold shoulder approach, like complete avoidance.

Courtney: Oh no.

Royce: And so they end up having a number of awkward meeting points around the office because their in– completely incompatible plans collide. That goes on for a little while, just for comedic effect. Eventually one of Elliot’s closest friends gets involved. It’s mentioned that he is bi and that Elliot and him are at the complete opposite ends of the ‘gender doesn’t matter’ spectrum. And before long, there’s this chapter called “Confession.” Elliot thinks this is going to be a romantic confession from Nora, but it’s actually a coming out.

Courtney: Mm.

Royce: Nora pulls him aside and tells him that she’s not interested in romance at all, and she gets really into it throwing out all these caveats. She’s like, “I mean, not just with you, but like any romantic relationships in general.” And he’s like, “Yeah, me too.” And she says, “I don’t mean just now, but ever.” He’s like, “Yeah, me too.” [Courtney laughs] “And it’s not because of some promise or decision I’ve made or a health problem or a bad experience. It’s just how I’ve always been.” [both] Yeah, me too!

Royce: This goes on for a little bit more. Nora explains that she has a twin sister who is allo. With her sister and with their friend groups, she felt like she was falling behind by not dating in high school. She did go out with someone for a bit because she felt like she needed to, and it was meh.

Courtney: Question: you said the word allo. Does the comic say the word allo, or are you just saying that because, you know, our listener base knows what that means?

Royce: Let me reference that chapter. That’s just what I wrote down.

Courtney: I kind of assume as a baseline it doesn’t say that, just because the, like, coming out wasn’t like, “I am aromantic and here is what that means.” It was more like, “I don’t want this, I don’t feel this, it’s not temporary.” Sort of a layman’s explanation, I suppose.

Royce: The way this went down in the comic. Nora said that a guy in high school asked her out, and she said she only said yes, “Because my twin sister was on her second relationship and I was about to finish high school without even having my first kiss.” So no, the word allo was not stated. They were just allo things afoot.

Courtney: Allo things afoot…? That sounds like a threat, and from her own twin sister.

Royce: Anyway, Nora thought that romance depictions that she had seen in comics were just exaggerated, and it wasn’t until she started talking to her sister, like, in detail, that she realized that’s actually how other people felt.

Courtney: That’s a fairly common experience, actually. Like, both aces and aros, I would say disproportionately, at some point in their lives go, “Wait, you actually mean all those things you say? This isn’t just— we’re not all just exaggerating when we talk about having these types of attractions?”

Royce: So Nora goes on talking a little bit more. She dated some men, that didn’t work. She tried dating a woman, and the woman very quickly thought that Nora was straight because she didn’t feel any romantic or physical attraction from her. And this finally clicks for Nora when she’s telling this girl she’s dating that she finds her just as attractive as her ex-boyfriends. Trying to argue against the comment, “Oh, you’re just— you’re straight, like, why are we dating?” And it’s her girlfriend that says, “Oh well, your level of attraction for men and women seems the same because it’s nothing. Like, are you asexual?”

Courtney: Ah, the old “I thought I was bisexual because I was equally unattracted to both sides.” Also a fairly common experience.

Royce: So with that, Nora and Elliot finally realized that both of them are ace and they’re each other’s first ace encounters. And that is about halfway through the comic. The comic’s a little— the release is a little weird because there are release numbers, but each release number has like a couple of story segments into it. So there are like 40 of what I would normally call chapters, but there are like 103 parts. So that was— Confession was chapter 16, which is, I guess, it was– was release 16, or post 16, which was chapters 50 through 53. So that’s about halfway through what is out there. I’m going to take a moment to call attention to something I pointed out that I thought was interesting. The artist used colors for everyone’s names, and the color palettes of the main two characters makes up the aroace flag. Nora and Elliot’s color palettes. And there was another thing I called attention to here–

Courtney: Now when you say aroace flag, you mean like the orange and blue sort of gradient one?

Royce: The one that has five bars, yeah.

Courtney: Yeah, that one is most commonly agreed upon as the combined aroace flag, but I know there are some people who prefer the, like, 4-line asexual flag with, like, an aro-colored heart in the middle because they just prefer the, like, purple and green colors and don’t necessarily want the color separation from the Ace and Aro Communities respectively and sort of want to honor both. So it’s all personal preference. We’ve talked about flags to death, but I just wanted to clarify.

Royce: Makes sense. Before getting back to the story, I just wanted to point out another artistic decision that the author pointed out, how it’s not uncommon in this kind of media for there to be, like, something drawn in the background that is indicating the mood, like hearts drawn when something romantic is happening. They put stars in the background for non-romantic love in scenes. And the example posted while describing this was a scene of Nora and Elliot getting really excited talking about their favorite comic together.

Courtney: That’s cute. I like that.

Royce: But moving on a little bit, Nora and Elliot wanted to discuss things more, but it takes them a little bit of time to actually get together. There are just too many people around. And one thing that is brought up is that just as an ace person, sometimes being around groups of people, depending on what the vibe is, can feel very uncomfortable. And Nora says here, “There’s always a part of me that’s bracing for a wrong assumption or a misunderstanding.” And such a misunderstanding happens at work very soon thereafter. The vice principal mentions that Nora will be burning the candle at both ends once she has kids because [Courtney groans] she’s getting really— she’s been showing up a lot for work, and she just kind of shrugs it off because things need to get done and it like wasn’t worth the time or energy to try to fight that right now. [Courtney groans] A little bit later, there’s a big house party at one of Nora’s friends’ houses. Nora at first realizes that she’s the fifth wheel because two couples show up, and then two more couples show up and she realizes she’s the ninth wheel.

Courtney: Oh no, how many wheels deep can we get?

Royce: And she’s waiting for one other group, but a couple of other friends end up showing up and they appear to be paired. So she goes, “Wait a minute, am I like the 11th wheel? That’s like a whole new–”

Courtney: Level of wheel…

Royce: Level of singleness.

Courtney: Oh no. Not the 11th wheel!

Royce: And it goes back to that sort of wrong assumption or misunderstanding. She’s saying that it’s just embarrassing to be the odd one out in a big group like this.

Courtney: See, that I don’t get so much. I find that I am always the odd one out in any given group I am in, regardless of the circumstances. One way or another, I have– have become the odd one out.

Royce: Well, this was somewhat unexpected to the party, but Elliot ends up getting invited by a friend, a mutual friend. He wasn’t intending on coming to this event, parties aren’t really his thing, but he ends up showing up here and there’s very quickly a misunderstanding amongst the friend groups that the two of them are dating. And to add to her discomfort, she says that she feels the inescapable crosshairs of old friends sensing new gossip material.

Courtney: Oh, that’s a great line.

Royce: A few of her friends kind of pull her away, or like, in another area of the house to try to ask about what’s going on. And they actually drop that they’ve been waiting, worried for Nora to find someone. And she tries to come out in that moment but, like, can’t find her voice. And while that’s going on— and a big part of that was because she didn’t know, like, her friends saw her as, like, beneath them or more immature or not, like, far along in life. Like, she thought they were all fine, but then when that comes out, it changes things.

Courtney: Boo these friends. Boo them! I’m gonna— I’m, I’m just gonna go out on a limb here, and I’m– I’m speaking to the allos amongst us. I’m just gonna say, even if a single friend is completely alloromantic, allosexual, even if they are actively seeking a partner and don’t have one yet, maybe let’s not project immaturity onto them or worry. Maybe let’s just meet people where they’re at and let them live their lives. Groundbreaking, I know.

Royce: So while that uncomfortable situation is happening, Elliot’s social battery is rapidly draining around strangers, and he ends up getting up to leave to go somewhere else, and one of the friends, like, escorts him to the bathroom because he’s never been in this house before. They end up running directly into the gossip group in the back of the house and revealing the truth of their relationship awkwardly.

Courtney: The truth is we are anime merch partners.

Royce: Yes.

Courtney: Only.

Royce: There’s a flurry of apologies, no coming out, but Nora does say, “I don’t want to date anyone, especially not a coworker.” But I think that little added part sort of diffused the actual, like, coming out as aroace part of it.

Courtney: Because of course, if you say I don’t want to date every— anybody, people aren’t going to believe you. But if you say I don’t want to date a coworker, everyone’s going to be like, “Okay, yeah, that makes sense. I can– can see that.”

Royce: So a little bit of time passes. Nora and Elliot try to— I believe they go to a park to have a little private conversation. And one thing, there are two– two other pretty prominent characters. One of them is Elliot’s bi friend, another one is an accomplished author that Nora knows.

Courtney: That– that was really funny because you started this with, “Oh, a bisexual friend and a really accomplished–” and my brain was fully prepared for you to give another sexual orientation. And I was like, “I can’t wait to find out what you consider to be like a very accomplished gay friend.” [laughs] We did have a gay friend recently who was— we were talking about, you know, D&D and nerd shit, and he was like, “My gayness level is really high.” He is a very accomplished gay. So not gay at all. Author.

Royce: Author.

Courtney: Not even a gay author?

Royce: Actually, yes.

Courtney: [gasps] It is a gay author!

Royce: I don’t know specifically gay, but at least attracted to the bi person, so. [Courtney gasps] But very shy. The author likes the other friend. The other friend is oblivious to it. That ended a bit awkwardly. So Nora and Elliot are sort of discussing what to do about it, and Elliot’s very much in the mindset of just staying out of others’ love lives. He doesn’t like when people try to set him up, doesn’t want attention, and sort of low-key avoids friendships. And Nora’s like, “But if we cleared up the confusion, this might be good for both of them, so why don’t we do that?” And we get a bit of her thought process about relationships in general, and she says that she has a solid friendship from childhood but has said that they’ve drifted as they’ve gotten older. And the one common point that they can always come back to and talk about is their love lives. Because like, school has changed, college has changed, work life, all of those things are different.

Royce: But that’s the one thing that they tend to come back to is this, this common sort of gossip circle. And Nora really likes being a part of that even though it isn’t something that she experiences. So there’s this conflict here. It’s a point of isolation, but it’s also a major factor that is helping her, like, maintain her most consistent, closest, like, friendships. And she laments some aspects of that. It’s definitely a mix of positive and negative. And that’s where it does sort of come up that she’s felt like she had— has had a good life and has accomplished a lot. So that thing the other day at the party where she saw that her friends were kind of looking down on her, like, that hit particularly hard. And Elliot asked the tough question: why are you still friends with them?

Courtney: Oof.

Royce: He continues on just saying, “If they make you feel excluded at best and hurt you at worst, if you don’t want to tell them and you don’t have anything left in common with them, then why are you still friends?”

Courtney: Oof.

Royce: He goes on to say that maybe they’ve all just go— outgrown the friendship. That happens. And Elliot’s pretty quick and cold about that. Nora feels pretty distressed by it and says that she, you know, can’t think about her friendships that coldly, which strikes a nerve with Elliot because his whole persona is often read as cold.

Courtney: [gasps] Frigid, even. I take that back, I meant it as a joke, but even joking about a fictional character, I feel bad. I’m sorry!

Royce: And so we’re nearing the end of what is currently written. This is ongoing. I believe it’s on brief hiatus. I’ll get to that in a moment. But Nora and Elliot separate. They still have some talking to do there, but Nora goes to talk to the author. Partially to get a contact for an editor, I believe, but also to try to talk through this and patch some things over. The author is down. Gloominess is a big part of their personality. They say that they haven’t ever prioritized their love life. They aren’t against a relationship, but they aren’t sure if one will ever happen. And that they are okay with being single. Isaac, the other person, was the first person that they’ve liked in a while. And in this moment, they compare themselves to Nora, and Nora takes that opportunity to come out, saying that it’s not actually the same. And the author gets it immediately. They have a friend in an author circle who is aromantic, and there’s a little bit where they are talking with each other, and the friend that we’re familiar with says, like, “The dialogue in your romance scenes is always so moving.” And aromantic author just says, “Thanks, it’s not like I get what they’re talking about. So, I always think it sounds kind of stupid when I’m writing it, but.”

Courtney: You know, the allos, they’re easy. You can learn their ways if you study them.

Royce: Just reverse engineering. But that ends with Nora leaving and the author sending Nora’s contact information to their editor, who seems to be a new character. We see them a bit off screen. And that is the end of the published material so far. Apparently the comic is getting a promotion to— seems like it’s a bigger deal financially, like instead of just being something that was sort of freely hosted, it’s something that’s being done in partnership. But they’re doing a few months break to kind of get everything in order for that.

Courtney: Oh, good for them.

Royce: So more coming.

Courtney: You know, I adore the original concept of just pretending to be in a relationship to get the perks that come with that. Love it. Very, very good. I fully guess— I mean, we actually did get married, but since we didn’t do the wedding/fiancé thing, none of that, I fully did pretend to be a fiancé at some, like, bridal conventions just to get free shit. [laughs] So we are in favor of all sham relationships around here. It doesn’t have to be a sham marriage. It can be a sham, uh, engagement, a sham relationship. Find your platonic buds and milk the allonormative system for every drop it’s got. [laughs] So I, I love that concept. But sometimes coming out narratives can be— can almost feel like they’re not enough for me to just like really, really enjoy it. But what I like about this, as you have described it, is that it portrays a very realistic form of coming out that you don’t always see in coming out fiction.

Courtney: In the sense that you don’t just, like, come out once and then you’re out, everyone knows what your deal is. It’s usually a series of coming out and a very different vibe depending on who it is you’re coming out to. With how well it’s received, how easy it is for you to get it out. Sometimes when you’re coming out to different people, you explain the situation in a completely different way just because you kind of know your audience or you’re anticipating what questions they might have or concerns or how it’ll land to them. So, I like a portrayal of coming out with aspec identity where I think there were at least 3 different instances that you mentioned in different circumstances. Which is very realistic. I think that’s what bothers me most about the average coming out narratives in fiction, where you come out and great, did that, everyone’s happy for you.

Royce: Okay, on to Aromantic (Love) Story.

Courtney: A romantic love story…?

Royce: There was a tagline at one point I saw somewhere that was: two men, one woman, zero possibilities.

Courtney: [laughs] Okay, I adore it already.

Royce: So the manga opens up with this cool kid in school polishing their skills as a loner so they can live the rest of their days in peace. They’re approached by a girl who, quote, “seems to be afflicted with a bad case of tsundere syndrome.”

Courtney: Oh no.

Royce: “A strange, strange condition that childhood friends seem to be prone to having.”

Courtney: Oh dear.

Royce: And the following series of pages seem to be— seem more and more out of place as a commentary of high school tropes, of trope characters, until you realize that what you’re actually seeing is a preview of an in-universe anime adaption of a manga titled A Loner Like Me’s Got a Lot to Say About You Normies Out There.

Courtney: Not the normies. [chuckles]

Royce: And our protagonist Futaba is a– is the mangaka. It turns out she’s the author of this big successful series that everyone is talking about, and this story was just her putting everything she hated or didn’t understand about rom-coms into a single story. She basically researched her least favorite genre, deconstructed the reason for mass appeal, and wrote something that fit the pattern. And she thinks it’s trash.

Courtney: Well, just like I was saying, but I bet it’s really popular.

Royce: Yeah, now she’s stuck with the success of it.

Courtney: I– Yeah, I told— yes, I told you the allos are easy. Can we start calling them normies again? It’s been a long time since I’ve heard someone say normies unironically. But I think we should bring it back. And I think that’s allos, the normies. The normies are easy.

Royce: So she actually wants to talk about social problems, but her earlier works that did that were deemed too heavy and like didn’t sell well. That’s why she ended up writing this.

Courtney: Yes, it is a curse, the curse of mass appeal.

Royce: So she sort of got baited into this at work with people around the office saying like, “All women like romance, right?” And is being pushed to write this manga, which is a rom-com with a like single male protagonist harem element to it.

Courtney: Ah.

Royce: Baited into it somewhat with, “Well, any good author could write about things they don’t personally experience.” She has never had any desire for romance in her whole life, doesn’t get it. She did have a friend who was bi that throws out the word non-sexual as a possibility, which there’s— there are a couple points where the terms asexual and non-sexual both come up at different parts in this manga, and I don’t know. Sometimes the way that it’s defined changes a little bit, and I don’t know if that is a translation error or if it was the author learning more along the way. Sometimes it’s hard to say because there’s a point I’ll get to a little bit later on where those two words are thrown out and actually defined, but then they’re used many chapters later and the definition seems to have changed.

Courtney: Oh yeah, that’s a hard thing when it’s translated from another language.

Royce: Mm-hmm. So she started questioning her sexuality in adolescence and came across asexuality, is still questioning the micro labels, essentially the specifics of it. She majored in psychology because she wanted to analyze feelings of love to verify that it wasn’t strange to not experience them. And the way that the story ends up going— I mean, judging from the tagline there (two men, one woman, zero possibilities) most of the story is a sort of a love triangle. It’s her, one of her assistants, and the scriptwriter for the anime. And I mentioned that a lot of the situations in here are a bit over the top, where And Another Lovely Day was very realistic. The author here tends— has a tendency to spiral and fantasize about manga or anime versions of what’s actually happening. A lot of these characters have nicknames, like the assistant of hers that likes her is dubbed Assassin because he is kind of quiet and frequently walks around with a hoodie with the hood up. And just—

Courtney: As all good assassins do.

Royce: In her mind, she kind of sees him in situations where he’s, like, just getting back from doing a hit, or like someone’s gonna burst in at any moment and start a gunfight or something like that. The other character, the scriptwriter, is referred to as the Tactician, both by her and other people. And that’s— those are the terms that I’m going to be using and what is used for them for most of the show. The love triangle sort of forms when the Tactician originally invites our protagonist out, like, for coffee or for a meal, and she sort of gets the feeling that, “Wait a minute, this wasn’t entirely about work, this is a sort of a date,” sort of thing. The two of them start talking more. The Tactician says that he doesn’t understand love either. He also says he doesn’t understand a lot of emotions, that he sort of tests the people around him in order to learn how people react to things.

Royce: In his mind, he blames this on the home that he grew up in. He had an abusive father, and he sort of just learned to tone everything down to cope. But he’s still in the process of trying to figure it out, figure out, like, why he is the way he is and, and all of that. On the other side of things, Assassin’s favorite manga is the one that our protagonist wrote and worked on. He’s been basically looking up to her or following her works for a long time, and it was kind of his dream first to work on something with her and then to try to become a published author himself and, like, see his works alongside hers in an actual store. During a bit of a confession, he says that he has always been chasing after her. Basically, it’s been a number of years since he first, like, read her works. And she decides that – as an answer to the feelings of people who are in love with her – she’s going to try to embody some sort of idealized version of herself. She says that adoration and love are said to be very similar, and while she can’t do one of them, maybe the other one suffices.

Royce: She does find herself thinking as she spends more time with Assassin that she sees some of his sides as cute or lovable, as she puts it, but then also thinks that finding someone lovable is different than being— than actually loving someone. And also that most people experience lust while they are in love and that that is impossible for her. As the story goes on, the protagonist at one point in time consoles the Tactician about the waning health and passing of his father. And he’s very cold to this situation as his father is in the hospital almost dying and then actually dies. The two of them didn’t have a very good relationship, but it does clearly— like, the change does clearly weigh on him. And in one moment when they are together, he kisses her, and we see a very abrupt panel of her delivering a sharp headbutt right to his face, but then followed by, “But wait, I actually didn’t do that. Maybe I should have though.”

Courtney: Mmm.

Royce: But she’s pissed about the whole situation. He starts avoiding her because he doesn’t know what else to do. And she finally confronts him and is like, “Tell me why that happened so I can make notes about it for my writing.” A big part of her actually entertaining these romantic situations is to try to become a better writer, to try to figure out how to– to try to figure out what love and romance actually are so she can depict them better.

Courtney: Research. It’s like method acting.

Royce: He can’t help her. He says he doesn’t know what there is, but that there is a thump of some kind, and she hates how vague of a comment that is.

Courtney: Okay, but that’s like how all the normies explain feelings of love. And even sexual attraction sometimes. It’s, it’s all so vague. And yet they say it so matter-of-factly, as if everyone’s just going to understand what they’re saying. But only fellow normies ever do. And you thought I wouldn’t commit to a bit this episode.

Royce: It just took a little bit.

Courtney: [chuckles] I had to find the one that felt right.

Royce: But they keep conversing, they keep exploring things. Consent becomes a very forward point of the conversation. I believe she tells the Tactician, “If you want to kiss me, tell me. If I want to as well, we can.” Even though she wonders in her head if that would ever happen, there would ever be a situation where she would feel okay with that. But I bring up consent because that’s going to be a continual part of like the mid of this plot. Our protagonist starts thinking through those recent events and compares them in scenes in anime and manga to where, like, one figure is aggressive or forceful, like kabedon. That’s the whole, like, you approach someone and put your hand on the wall behind them sort of thing. You know what I’m talking about?

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: And there are other tropes like that that are definitely, you know, not okay in real life. She’s sort of dissecting those. The fact that the kiss happened is awkwardly blurted out in front of the whole group. And this really throws off Assassin, who is in love with her, and he tries to confront her about it and, like, gets very emotional and tries to kiss her as well. And she ends up executing like a full-on judo throw before telling him off.

Courtney: Is this one real this time?

Royce: It’s real this time.

Courtney: Yes!

Royce: But she— I believe she said it was like a perfectly executed judo throw, like one that would have scored top marks in a competition.

Courtney: Hell yeah. Good for her.

Royce: And when he’s on the ground, she just says that he should reflect on that and they’ll talk about it later, and then storms off. [Courtney laughs] Storms off while thinking, “Love is no good, there’s only trouble.” And part of this sequence is something that I want to point out is a bit different than some other things, because– Because of the characters are so close to manga and anime, and oftentimes the protagonist’s, like, envisioning of reality sometimes transitions into that, we do see some of these things that are depicted in shows that are not okay in real life. And she’s sort of going between thinking about those things, characterizing some of the things that have happened recently as sexual assault, and like how to deal with them and—

Courtney: Judo throws.

Royce: How to characterize them.

Courtney: That’s how you deal with them in real life and in fiction.

Royce: I mean, fair. [Courtney laughs] But we do see her and other characters remarking on this behavior, and that’s not always seen, you know, in media. Where these sorts of things happen.

Courtney: Right. Which I like that as a– as a meta commentary in general, I like the point of view being this completely aromantic author. Asexual too? Yeah, there was the lust comment, about being impossible.

Royce: Yeah, so the story continues. Assassin gets weird. He knows that he overstepped, but he tries to suggest a more concrete relationship between the two of them. He says they should just be, for the time being, master and apprentice, because he’s trying to learn to be a better mangaka. And he says that once he becomes a professional, he’ll try confessing again and see where they stand. And she agrees, like, “Okay, we’ll revisit this later.” Our protagonist, after talking with some friends, does declare that her goal right now is to try to understand the feeling of love and will try to get closer to straight men. I believe that’s something— that was the quote. “I’m going to try to get closer to straight men,” because her work is getting stagnant and she feels like she needs to understand relationships better.

Courtney: That sounds miserable.

Royce: Yeah. She is suddenly extremely motivated about researching love. The other two characters are sort of coming at this hoping that she’ll actually come upon some sort of romantic feeling for one of them. That does not happen. But that is something that I’m kind of worried about sometimes when we do ace rep stuff, like particularly if someone’s orientation is somewhat ambiguous, because in this instance it’s not, but I mentioned in some of the other ones it’s never outwardly spoken.

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: You wonder what is the trajectory. And is this going to be one where it ends with like, oops, you were actually gay and just hadn’t figured it out yet, or you just hadn’t met the right person?

Courtney: You just hadn’t met the right person. That’s the bane of my existence. Just because— and I need authors of all media to understand this, that that is like an extremely bigoted thing that we in the Ace and Aro Communities are, like, told to our faces often. And early and often. And so to see that widespread misguided societal notion validated so often in fictional media? Don’t love it. I personally would prefer more judo throws.

Royce: So moving on, I’m going to try to hit some of the highlights of conversations here. There’s a point where the protagonist and the Tactician decide to actually date, and on this first date they sort of both discuss what a date is actually supposed to entail because this is kind of foreign to both of them. And when it’s decided that, like, what do the normies do on dates? Is it sexy conversation?

Courtney: Did you just commit to my bit? Oh, I love you so much. [laughs] [claps]

Royce: Futaba straight up asks, “Do you desire sexual relations?” Causing the Tactician to, like, spit take for a moment.

Courtney: Oh yes, love a good spit take.

Royce: Uh, it’s awkward. The whole time the waiter keeps butting in at the wrong moment. Futaba does say that she has never desired sex and is extremely unwilling to try, and she says it’s not an aversion per se, but the quote I read was she describes the passive acceptance of the act as degrading. And they talk a little bit more about passive and active roles, which includes things like pregnancy. A little bit— they don’t talk about this thoroughly, but a little bit of like S&M, just, you know, switching who is in control of the situation. Futaba speculates that that might be why some women get into BL, because it’s– it’s the– the act of something being done to them that they don’t like.

Courtney: Mm-mm. I mean, there’s all kinds of theories about that. That is one that I have heard before.

Royce: During this whole process, she does make a comment that she has never felt like she has wanted to possess someone else. So just a bit of a comment on, like, a monogamous relationship. And on another date, she states that she is still questioning her own orientation and that she might be asexual. And this is the first time that some of these terms were broken down, which I mentioned earlier. In this instance, the word asexual is used with the definition that we know of as aroace, whereas nonsexual is used to mean asexual but not aromantic.

Courtney: Interesting.

Royce: And that does not stand with future instances where they use words like that. So I couldn’t tell if it was, again, a translation issue–

Courtney: That sounds like it.

Royce: Or the author changing stuff.

Courtney: If it changes, that sounds like— well.

Royce: This– this one conversation didn’t get— it didn’t get repeated earlier. They just stopped using the word nonsexual and started using the word asexual with a different definition, I think.

Courtney: Hmm, curious.

Royce: But I wrote that down because I thought it was interesting, because it— the crux of this is: “I might be aroace, or I might be only aro or only asexual. Not quite sure yet.”

Courtney: Aside from the fact that the definitions change and it may or may not be a translation issue, did it still feel to you reading it like it was good ace rep in the sense that, well, clearly it’s very obvious, but also in the sense that, like, a reader who isn’t familiar with these themes isn’t going to be misled? They’ll still come away with some amount of good information?

Royce: Yeah, I think so. I think she’s explicit enough, particularly since she is very frequently thinking about these things in her mind between the weird situations with these two or with other people at work, or, you know, trying to write things. She talks about it often enough. There are a couple of bits that are— if that wasn’t grounded so well, might make this hard to recommend because the other two love interests are just hoping, like, “But maybe me though,” you know?

Courtney: Yeah, but people do that in real life.

Royce: And the Tactician was originally introduced as someone who might be aroace himself, and then he feels something towards her, something he can’t describe. He’s— the Tactician is shown as being someone who is incredibly adept at reading other people but who has zero self-awareness.

Courtney: Yeah, because I know there are lots of folks in our community who will get all in a twist at definitions being wrong, even if it’s a partially correct definition, or even if it’s something that could be correct situationally. And at least in terms of like individual people talking about their own experience, like that’s been a major issue on social media, like people just nitpicking definitions to death, to the fact that people are like fighting and cannibalizing each other. And I do think by and large that a published piece of media has a little more responsibility than the average ace and/or aro person who’s just sharing their own experience online. But I tend to care a lot more about depicting experiences than getting the verbiage correct. As long as the experience is well presented and the verbiage is able to back up a good depiction, as opposed to contradicting it. And, and as you said, as long as they don’t, like, pull the rug out from under you and say, “Oh, never mind, this isn’t a thing for this character.” So having not read it myself, I can’t give a full and final verdict on it. But I like that it does seem extremely obvious where this character sits on, you know, the various spectrums.

Royce: Yeah, and she doesn’t waver for that. She is trying to figure things out, and that is clear. But there’s nothing that comes from her mind or mouth that contradicts it.

Courtney: Mm-hmm.

Royce: But moving on, we start to get a timeline towards the end of the series. She and the Tactician agree that they’re going to date on a trial run. They’re going to set a time limit on it, and they’re going to reassess their relationship at that point to see if they actually have any feelings about being together. And shortly thereafter, Assassin gets his first short published. It does very well. Although it is about a high schooler falling in love with a distant senpai who isn’t interested in love.

Courtney: Huh, I wonder where he got that idea from! Oh, we hate him.

Royce: Yeah.

Courtney: We hate Assassin, which is so unfortunate because he’s got such a cool name.

Royce: And there’s a shake-up at the office. A new editor comes on. The anime is about to end, and he decides to cancel the manga to line up with the end of the anime, and sets an ending date on it. That ending date is end of the year, which is also when the relationship with Tactician is set to end. The new editor-in-chief says basically the manga is formulaic and it seems like the author doesn’t even like it, that there’s no passion in it, which is correct. But Futaba has mixed feelings about it. She felt like the industry that she’s in forced her to make this work in the first place, that what she had to do was make something like this to get people to listen so that she could say things that she actually wanted to say.

Courtney: Oof.

Royce: But she still feels like it’s still hers. She spent all this time and effort on it and, you know, has bonded with the characters that she created. And at the same time, there is a bit of relief that, one, she doesn’t have to continue that, and that because she doesn’t have to continue that manga, she doesn’t have to try to figure out and understand love. Because that was the point. She also feels complicated emotions over Assassin’s debut series, which hits first in the popularity polls for, like, brand new series.

Courtney: Ugh.

Royce: Because she feels like— she feels the frustration of being a minority because she’s not able to write reliable– relatable material for the majority because she isn’t a part of that group.

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: And so someone who’s come along and just wrote something from their own experience and it was immediately well received.

Courtney: The experience that was negative for her!

Royce: And this is where her self-discovery really, like, hits her for the first time. I believe it’s the first word— first the time that the word defective came out.

Courtney: Aw.

Royce: She went through all this to make a series, to pander to readers, to get into a position to be able to say something meaningful, and feels like she can’t even, like, pander properly. And a few more months pass. They are closing in on this end date. Assassin’s career is going well enough. That he has a date for quitting and going off on its own. It is around the same time of the anime ending and the manga ending and the relationship with Tactician ending. So all of the loose threads are sort of piling on at once. Her and Assassin do have a good chat. He spent some time researching asexuality between their last chat and this one and comes at it with a much better mindset than the last time they talked about relationship stuff. The one that ended with a judo throw. At the end of their relationship, Tactician does end up proposing. He says that he knows that she doesn’t love him but asks anyway.

Courtney: Oh my God, I hate this so much.

Royce: And a friend of the protagonist says that she knows a straight and a gay person who got married and have kids.

Courtney: Yeah, good for them.

Royce: That friend herself says that she’s going to get married and have kids but says at the same time that she “can’t escape the values society forced on me,” in sort of a resigned, like, reluctantly resigned tone. The conversation between their friends steers into things like IVF, population issues.

Courtney: No!

Royce: Morality.

Courtney: Boo.

Royce: No, they’re all speaking— it’s things that we— I’ve jotted this down because it’s all things we’ve been talking about recently.

Courtney: Oh, so they’re on the right side of the conversation.

Royce: They’re ranting about it.

Courtney: Good, good, good.

Royce: Feeling like they’re stuck in it.

Courtney: Can we judo throw the system?

Royce: You’d need a really strong foundation and lock, I would assume.

Courtney: Done. I’ve been training. Don’t know how to judo throw though. It would have to be a tai chi throw.

Royce: So we’re nearing the end here. Our protagonist is trying to figure things out, how to finally end the series, and she shares some past struggles she’s had as a writer. People sent in mail asking for more sexy scenes, saying that the characters are boring. Criticized figures who didn’t understand love, thought the women she wrote were unfeminine and thus unlovable. And also didn’t like depicted characters whose gender was ambiguous. And getting angry about receiving mail like that is what pushed her to write her big series. It’s mentioned that under the guise of a simple rom-com, it’s actually a scathing satire of society’s obsession with love. And she got fan mail from people who legitimately enjoyed it, and that feeling was complicated. Because it was basically like gaining upset— acceptance through masking.

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: And so she starts feeling a bit down. A lot of things in her world are changing. She has some good friends with this current job, but because the manga is getting canceled, that is ending. The people that she spoke— been speaking to most frequently, Tactician and Assassin, those relationships are falling.

Courtney: I’m so mad he proposed. Oh, I’m so mad. Hey, a tip for all men out there: if you are in love with a woman who, A, doesn’t ever want to get married, or B, is already married: don’t propose to her. Just don’t. Move on with your life.

Royce: So in the final couple of chapters, our protagonist has been pushed by some of her friends to write what she wants again. Her passion for writing had been down. She’s been in a slump. She gets into it. Writes the final chapter, everyone likes it, it ends in a success. She puts that down to continue or to move on to the next thing. I skipped ahead a little bit, but the Tactician proposes, as I said.

Courtney: Boo.

Royce: When I mentioned it earlier, it was just him thinking about it.

Courtney: Boo!

Royce: He is turned down. She says that she wants to be alone and to live without compromise. And part of this realization for her, she says, comes from getting her writing groove back and deciding that to feel okay with things and to feel passionate about things, she needs to struggle a bit, not just make a compromise to basically, again, mask into the majority. The Tactician asked that if they were on more equal footing, if he hadn’t developed romantic feelings and if they had remained platonic the whole time, if she would have said yes just for social convenience. The, you know, the social convenience of marriage. Which he says, “No, I don’t think so.” But I– I noted that down because, you know, we’ve been talking about platonic marriages recently.

Courtney: Yeah, I mean, platonic marriages can be great and we love them if it’s still an enjoyable net positive for both parties, which it can be. So, for as often as we have happy platonic marriages being depicted, we also need an equal number of people completely opting out of that system altogether. Because both are wonderful ways to exist. And you can judo throw anyone who tells you otherwise.

Royce: After the plotline with Tactician is concluded, the one with Assassin is rounded up. They meet once more and he asks her if she’s found her answer about love. She says that she vaguely understands what romantic love is but hasn’t experienced it and is fine with that. And that she wants to find a clear label of where she fits on the spectrum and thinks that she might end up searching for that answer for a long time before she finds something that is, like, precise or definitive. He thanks her for their time together and says goodbye without going through the second confession. And in the final chapter, a little bit of time has passed. Our protagonist has released her new manga. It’s an exploration about sexuality and romance told from the view of a house cat.

Courtney: Oh!

Royce: The cat lives in an apartment with a gay man and a woman who is in the middle of questioning her sexuality and gender, and it is published in a magazine meant for an older demographic than her previous one, so she’s able to be more explicit with her writing.

Courtney: Amazing. What a happy ending.

Royce: The end ending: Assassin is also doing well, his new series is a hit.

Courtney: Oh boo.

Royce: The two of them keep in touch as friends.

Courtney: Boo. Uh, okay. Still don’t like it. Still don’t like him.

Royce: The group meets up at an event and old colleagues all come together, and they have another little love triangle refrain callback with just people getting spicy with each other in the last few panels as the protagonist expresses how bizarre and complicated romantic love is.

Courtney: So true.

Royce: That’s that. I mentioned that was a longer one. It was 54 chapters, and they were fairly long chapters. But that’s it. Both of those series were enjoyable reads for different reasons. I thought that they both did take time to sit down and talk about smaller details in orientations and identities and social things, social problems.

Courtney: Out of all of the ace rep manga and webcomics that you have read to date, do you have a favorite? I think in the first round we did, you really liked Is Love The Answer— or no, I Want to Be a Wall was one you really liked.

Royce: I Want to Be a Wall might be the one that I had the most fun reading. They all had their interesting bits, but they’re also not genres that I tend to read for fun.

Courtney: Right.

Royce: Like, none of them were. Is Love the Answer was an interesting one. I think it got more into discussions of sexuality than some of the other ones did. I think one major part of my enjoyment of some of these is just how dense the writing is or how deep they go into complicated topics. Because one of my critiques about a lot of these, like, entire genres is that they just feel too fluffy.

Courtney: Yeah.

Royce: But comedy and drama and trauma help that.

Courtney: Comedy, drama, and trauma! Coms drams and trams, as I always say.

Royce: Always?

Courtney: Yeah, you know, that thing I always say. Well, I think that is going to do it for today. So as per the usual, I am going to leave you off with this week’s featured MarketplACE vendor: Hecho Por Sam, where you can find illustration commissions and comics/animations by an ace Mexican artist. You can, of course, commission this artist in English or Spanish. Or, if you don’t have any commission needs right now at the moment, you can still pop over to the gallery and read all sorts of little webcomics. If you listened to this episode all the way through, I imagine that webcomics are up your alley. They are completely free to read, but of course, as always, I’m going to highly recommend that if you enjoy them, you toss a little tip over on their Ko-fi. Links, as always, are going to be in the show notes on our website as well as the description box if you are listening on YouTube. Let us know which manga or webcomics you’d like to hear from next when Royce once again emerges from their shell to give us another episode in, what’d you say, two years?

Royce: Something like that.

Courtney: So we’ve got two whole years. We need recs. Drop ’em! As always, thank you all so much for being here, and we’ll talk to you next time.