>>4298524 The artstyle reminds me of Alien Nine so much. I was so happy I thought the mangaka made another manga, but turns out it's a different person. Still liked it though.
Funny how the series went from zero fanart to having enough to fill a thread with in the span of a few days. 99% of it western, but there's a lot of great stuff regardlessly.
>>4298524 >>4298686 If Activision/EA wanted to make money, they'd make a game adaptation where instead of shooting terrorists you shoot random lesbians to hook them up
>>4298742 The whole situation surrounding this manga is incredibly fascinating. The author turning out to be American is some top-tier irony on top of being a rare oddity.
>>4298745 it's funny because in this thread from a few days ago there were actually quite a few Japanese readers who thought the art looked like it was done by a foreigner. >https://tsumanne.net/si/data/2024/09/26/9581775/
Honestly the biggest tell should have her doing a comic about Hololive EN girls. >https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/what_shall_we_have_for_dinner
>>4298847 There's probably hundreds of manga out there written by foreigners/non-Japanese residents who don't say anything about it and no one blinks an eye because they don't know yet (much like this manga before the interview came out). I don't think this case has anything to do with whether or not Western-published media should be allowed on /u/.
>>4299475 >>4299539 Did you really drop it over the loser guy in the love triangle between one-shot characters in the first chapter? Report back once you reach the current point, you'll understand why western yuri fans are championing it.
>>4299440 Its been yuri sofar, but not by the premise. It could have a non-yuri pairings in the future. I wouldn't be surprised by more bislut brainworms cropping up in the future.
>>4299961 Obviously. They didn't keep bringing up the possibility for nothing. Its clear the author doesn't see it as "girls loving girls". Its girls could love any number of people of any gender and the cupids settle it down to one among the most compatible ones. Its not a yuri story premise from the start. Its even a step down from "its okay if its you" stories.
>>4300026 Thats a problem people already pointed out when the chapters were released, long before the author doomposted on twitter. Let alone before it became "popular".
Why even bother? Why not just stop consuming yuri altogether? Why does board even exist if apparently all high potential /u/ is doomed to hetfaggotry and bisluts?
I reject your doomposting and raise you just pretending the men don't exist
>>4300250 >consuming yuri No one who whines like that actually consumes yuri, they're all trolls who come here solely to deny yuri while acting concerned with fake good faith. It's not a coincidence that we get a surge of posts like these at the same time there's a surge of posts in the general and game threads trying to deny yuri in series like Hina Logi. These people are all from /a/.
>>4300279 basically this. It reminds me of when in a general thread I gave the true bases of yuri in Hina Logi, which go beyond the kiss (which is the only thing that some recognize) and basically nobody answered me.
The sad thing is that stupid people actually believe what they say and don't question anything.
>>4300250 >>4300279 I was just looking for something new to read why are you people so mad? if you just told me to fuck off after I posted >>4299440 I wouldn't be here again
>>4300286 It's because you're poisoning discussion by asserting something this board rejects (hetshipping) that hasn't been confirmed yet in the source material.
We aren't mad at you, but this is /u/, and complaining about things that would make the subject of this thread fall outside /u/'s threshold of acceptability when it hasn't happened yet is retarted.
>>4300286 My bad, I overestimated your ability to handle the existence of male characters in the background while yuri is happening. You can fuck off now, as you wish.
>>4300250 >why consume yuri when slop that isn't yuri exists What makes someone retarded enough to u ironically post this? Especially now, where there is more firmly as yuri marketed and declared stories, with solidly yuri premises on the market than most people can read? No one has any need to read something in the vague hope it stays yuri, when its from the start not presented as a yuri premise to begin with. Come back when the author says its a yuri manga and stays one, rather rhan limply baiting with "it has yuri in it" and begging people to write about how it hopefully stays yuri like the yuri navi article.
>manga is failing due to publisher not promoting it >Tell mangaka it's gonna get cancelled if volume 1 doesn't meet certain sale numbers >Mangaka turns to Twitter and screams into the void >Void actually answers and starts buying the manga >People start wondering why publisher wasn't promoting manga in the first place >Turns out mangaka is a foreigner and was getting the classic japanese treatment Japanese work culture strikes again.
>>4300620 >try to let a manga get quietly axed because the author is an icky foreigner >it backfires spectacularly and causes droves of foreign yuri fans to buy up as much stock as possible making it sell out across numerous storefronts >sales are now too good to justify canning it >japanese boomer aneurysm.jpg
>>4300640 >>4300620 I mean, her interview says she was contacted by the editor first. The editor was surprised to learn she's american but offered her the opportunity anyways.
>>4298847 Why is no one pointing out that this woman has written the manuscript in english and its being translated into japanese and scanlators are translating it back to english? Its translation inception.
>>4300640 >>4300727 The publisher's behavior does seem rather odd, going through the trouble of contacting and serializing a western artist only to basically throw her to the wolves without backup. I'm not saying she should be given preferential treatment due to being a foreigner, but it seems like a lot of extra work to set up constant translation for communication, editing and publishing if they weren't going to believe in her work. I guess they were just hoping it would blow up through word of mouth and in a way it did, but ironically with a western audience that only exists thanks to English scans. The funniest part is that people just casually reply to the author's tweets by attaching panels from the scans, which makes me wonder how close the retranslated dialogue is to what she'd originally written.
>>4300735 What so odd? Most publishers are opening contests recently to scout for gaijin talents. It’s just the usual case of the work not selling/underperforming.
>>4300735 The publisher's behavior is pretty standard, all things considered. Flapper isn't a well-renowned magazine and they only generally only give love to the manga that are adaptations of anime/LNs. With how quitely the zodiac yuri Canno was serializing there got canned despite it having some fans and her having a lot of followers, I don't think the treatment Love Bullet got was much worse or better than the usual Flapper newcomer. It's just that there's no brand recognition to being serialized in Flapper and it's in a weird spot where it's sort of trying to run some yuri but they don't have any standout/long-running yuri titles yet so they're not known for having some yuri like Dengeki is now.
So, is this cupid system a cosmological scam? 1) Cupids are born when someone dies while never being in romantic love. 2) Only source of romantic love are cupids 3) In order to produce cupids you need to choose not to shoot someone.
They deliberately fucking up someone's romantic life in order to get free labour force.
Alternative reading: A group of entities who found a way to cheat death are fucking up this opportunity for everyone else in order to farm second life.
Amazon JP is sold out again. Since the author said these were the leftover copies from the publisher's warehouse, the print run may be completely sold out.
>>4303471 >everyone around the world is supporting LB except for nips themselves In general East Asia's been slower to get on the bandwagon for Love Bullet. Koreans are just starting to ask around for scanlations while China and Taiwan are just starting to break out the fanart. Japan's getting increasingly interested and the physical book is reportedly hard for them to find in urban areas of Japan, it's just a question of whether nips will join in fast enough to translate to enough sales for this volume/volume 2.
I don't understand the coming back to life thing. They come back to life, but in their young body from when they died X years ago. How can they continue their life? They have legally died and everyone has moved on and they have no legal documents.
Unless the cupids have some sort of cherubic witness protection program?
>>4303628 >cherubic witness protection program We already saw that the Cupids can use persuasive magic through Charm, it wouldn't surprise me if the Goddess could just scramble memories to make friends/family think the returned Cupids either survived their deaths or never got in their accidents in the first place. Making that time desync cause less memory scrambling or just generally wanting to return to loved ones faster would be a good additional incentive for Cupids to not loaf around. There would also be extra angst potential for "older" Cupids like Chiyo who have outlived everyone they used to know. Or it could be something a lot goofier where the Goddess can split herself up and moonlight as foster moms for all the Cupids who've come back to life.
>>4303628 >>4303663 They're fucking magic, so personally I just assumed that said magic will basically rewrite the world upon revival such that the revived Cupid has always been where she is in time. Perhaps even recontextualizing existing relationships. Like, maybe Aki comes to view her relationship with Koharu as more of a "Big Sister" thing. Imagine how awkward it would be if still remembered her, now ~6 years younger than her, as the girl she was in love with at one point in time?
>>4303635 Or this. I've also got a whole crazy theory about Kanna specifically being much shadier than she lets on.
>>4303628 >>4303663 it'd be really fucked up if the twist is that the cupids are able to come back but with all the memories of their previous life wiped
>>4303628 The twist is that this series will crossover with "How to break a Triangle," revealing that the girl who disappeared was actually working as a cupid.
I saw a half joking theory earlier that kanna has an american idiot motif going on with her using heart shaped grenades and her birthday being october 1st (wake me up when september ends) >>4304670 It could genuinely just be bad happenstance with a lack of promotion, but based on a 2chan thread i saw i suspect nips had a feeling inee was a foreigner from the way her art looked (before she admitted it in that interview) and chose to reject the manga as a way of saying they won't support foreigners because of stupid nationalism
>>4304670 >Why is this series so unpopular in Japan and needed twitter to save it? It had no audience. No one knew it was supposed to be yuri I suspect originally it wasn't and romcoms are a unbelievably saturated market. Its cute and all, but it has no real nieche.
>>4305061 People who find it on the website, who are most of the people randomly exposed to it at first, aren't gonna check that. And its not exactly unheard of for people to tone down the yuri for the serialised works to chase broader appeal.
The fact the author doesn't seem to advertise it as such, wherever I looked, doesn't help either.
>>4304670 >Why is this series so unpopular in Japan and needed twitter to save it? Most manga need Twitter if it's not from a well known publication or a favorite of the higher ups, period. >>4304713 >2chan thread i saw 2chan nips were throwing that around as a possible justification because the thread itself was talking about the sudden increase in international buzz after her Twitter blowup. It's not much different than them saying the same about Kagurabachi when that started blowing up in the West (calling it a foreigner's imitation of Naruto). >>4305059 You're probably the same anon as the first text but it was tagged as yuri on her pixiv as early as late 2023, so it was likely the publisher's influence on the tags in the beginning. Beyond the tags it's a case of mismarketing overall, but by the way Comic Flapper tags/runs their yuri, it seems to be a common occurance with them.
>>4308973 Genuinely think this manga could end up being proof that there's a bigger market for the type of "genre yurI" that anons here have been asking for. It has an uphill battle since a bunch of Japanese yurifags won't buy early yuri stock unless instant yuri gratification is confirmed in the first couple volumes so I hope it ends up gathering more of the general manga audience like it has in the West.
>>4310479 Maybe the author understands that western productions will never be real yuri and her desire to make it was so strong she managed to get serialized in a Japanese magazine.
>>4310881 >manga book Who's gonna take one for the team and debind/scan it? Comitia/Comiket doujin are usually limited edition and a bitch to find afterwards so I'm hoping either the scan team's got someone in Japan to go to the con or some other fan'll be willing the scanning.
>>4311494 According to the Discord Shirahama followed inee back before the American reveal but I would wager that Shirahama's more than deep enough in Western twitter that all the Love Bullet tweets made it onto her feed when it started going viral.
The booklet that will be sold here >>4310881 will include a Q&A, you can send questions at: https://marshmallow-qa.com/vqa8ek8gnwln3ij pertaining to the topic of "The Cupids' daily life", so no plot-related questions. English is fine.
If it's an actual reprint I guess it will be announced by the author/publisher around the time it comes out. Either way it's good to see it continuing to be in demand.
>>4317054 This is easily the most successful fan campaign to save a manga from cancellation right? Wonder what repercussions this'll have on how mangaka and publishers engage with overseas audiences
>>4299094 >>4300727 >before the interview came out What interview was that? I vaguely remember one where inee talked about the manga's process but I don't remember anything about her(?) being American.
>>4304713 I like the nostalgia value in that theory. It would also be kinda funny if she did have that album as a motif and IF >nips had a feeling inee was a foreigner from the way her art looked (before she admitted it in that interview) and chose to reject the manga as a way of saying they won't support foreigners because of stupid nationalism was also true (I have no idea and don't know shit about the Japanese really so I wouldn't care to form an opinion on the matter).
>>4317294 Thanks, but not available in my shithole. >Please be informed that from Wednesday, April 6, 2022, Yahoo! JAPAN’s services are no longer available to our users in the EEA (European Economic Area) and the United Kingdom
>>4317054 Fuck yeah, finally a situation where we're in the correct timeline. >>4317223 I would say so, besides Kagurabachi. But that one actually had a legal simulpub and Jump manga (even those low on the magazine ranking) have literally the highest visibility of all manga. I've already seen scanlators discussing that this was a lightning in a bottle situation so it'll be hard to replicate such good results (especially in terms of creating an international fandom overnight alongside the actual sales). But on the publisher side I could see this spurring Kadokawa to make a non shit simulpub service.
>>4317306 >it'll be hard to replicate such good results (especially in terms of creating an international fandom overnight alongside the actual sales). Helps that it has a novel idea with good execution and a strong personality, I doubt your regular creatively bankrupt isekai or romcom slop could pull out such a feat
>>4317410 This makes me want to see a setting + outfit swap where the Love Bullet girls are butai shoujo and the RevStar girls are a gang of tacticool Cupids.
>>4317823 Only by western redditors on pixiv and xitter, lets not get big headed about this. It's still a smalltime manga in a smalltime publication, however good it might be (and I really like it).
>>4317846 Most manga don't even get meme'd in Japan until they get anime adaptations. Manga have to have Jump-level branding to get the same level of memeing in Japan. A recent example would be Girl Meets Rock after it won the Next Manga Awards alongside Kagurabachi (and even then, it's a Jump+ manga). For a manga with no anime it's getting an unusual amount of engagement and both sincere and meme fanart made about it. Even if Love Bullet catches on in Japan as much as it has internationally we can't expect nips to suddenly start making a bunch of fanart for it when they don't even for 100k+ yuri sellers without anime adaptations like the green yuri.
>>4318236 Probably. Something along those lines, it might help explain Kanna seemingly going out of her way to take Kohaku under her wing, and her general protectiveness of Kohaku. If I remember correctly, Chiyo did comment about how unusual it was for Kanna to not be working alone.
>>4325855 Costs money, so no one's probably going to upload it anywhere before scans come out. The raw uploader on the Yuri Manga Raws thread threw a hissy fit earlier this year and stopped uploading Flapper so we can't expect early raw drops.
>>4330580 This isn't a competition where the winning titles will get an anime or anything so Love Bullet is the perfect type of series to be nominated for the ranking. Making it onto the ranking would be great exposure not only for new readers, but for anime execs and professional as well.
>>4330580 I guess it'd be good for the mangka if it got adapted to anime but personally I never want manga I like to be adapted. The anime is almost always inferior and any threads of 4chan about it typically turn to shit.
>>4331168 I'd only want an adaptation if the studio doing it was good. With Sony in talks of acquiring Kadokawa, Cloverworks would be a top contender for Love Bullet's hypothetical adaptation. Get a team from Cloverworks that's a mix of those who worked on Wonder Egg, Bocchi, and Spy Family, and there's a foundation for a strong anime. I don't give a shit about a terrible fanbase if it means there's a shitload of merch, extra content, and guaranteed sales and advertisement for the manga.
I wonder how Koharu not getting shot for like 5 years is going to be explained, there's obviously something to that. In this chapter we see a woman who has had cupids work on her multiple times before as evidenced by the notes.
>>4332515 You have the timeline wrong. Chapter 0 doesn't take place that far in the future after Koharu became a Cupid. The 5 years was between her death and her resurrection as a Cupid. For all we know Chapter 0 could take place less than a month after the most recent one.
>>4332520 I mean Aki liked her since they were like 11 or so and Koharu dies at 16ish(?). Cupids done fucked up there, or else something was at play. And Kanna possibly being present alongside her in her class...
>>4332564 Cupids don't seem to be usually tasked with matchmaking two people at once, they seem to be given a target when a person is ready to fall in love. Even the office lady in this chapter was the only target and the crush they created won't necessarily be requited. Koharu was a relatively late bloomer so she went years without a cupid trying to matchmake her with Aki, who was already in love with her, or anyone else, though I'm fairly sure Kanna was in the middle of doing that when Koharu suddenly died.
>>4332572 My theory is that Kanna was supposed to shoot Koharu, but felt Koharu wouldn't be ready unless Aki confessed, unfotunately a freak accident got in the way
>>4332739 Or Kanna had somehow fallen in love with Koharu and was hesitating. But then Kanna's reaction to getting hit in chapter 1 or whatever, where she flails about like the others, would need some explaining.
>>4332572 >>4332739 My theory is Kanna was using Koharu to karma farm and actively preventing her from falling in love to prolong her easy karma, since a maiden in love has no time to matchmake. I don't subscribe to the theory that cupids can actually fall in love because that's directly contradicting the narration in the beginning of the manga and would convolute the lore. If we're getting any of the main cast in love it'll be after Koharu graduates and Kanna realizes that she can fulfill her promise to Koharu by joining her in the human world where they can be happy lesbians together.
My theory is that Kanna fell in love with another Cupid so she figured she'd use her Karma to help other Cupids since she had no desire to revive herself
If both parties need to be shot by a cupid to fall in love it sort of makes all the shooting we've seen up until this point feel a bit pointless since they only ever shoot one person.
>>4334097 Only one person needs to be shot to fall in love. Both parties need to be shot at some point for the love to be reciprocated, if that's what you meant. 2 of the 3 "featured" humans so far have gotten what was reciprocated love thanks to the cupids so I think you need to read a little slower.
>>4331970 Well yeah, they went out of their way to not call this yuri in the first place. This thread only exists because a small number of people were very very delusional.
>>4333027 Interesting but impossible based on what's been explained. Cupids can not fall in love all the feel when the love bullets hit them is empty void that causes them to react with maddened longing. Some have theorized she feels guilty, like she was in charge of shooting Koharu but failed to do it in time.
>>4336196 Not that (shitposting) anon, but the yuri tag was only added on comic walker a bit after volume 1 came out and so was the sponsored article on yurinavi made. They were trying to better focus on one potential audience.
>>4336015 I find the whole premise of "actual lesbians don't exist, they could all just as easily fall for a guy if the cupids decide it" rather questionable for a "yuri" story, since the author makes sure to always have male love interests involved each time. But in this specific case the catalogue of prior boyfriends and how its all set up makes me assume its going to have them get "revenge" next chapter by finding a more permanent partner that is a woman next chapter or the one after that.
>>4336788 >I find the whole premise of "actual lesbians don't exist, they could all just as easily fall for a guy if the cupids decide it" rather questionable for a "yuri" story, since the author makes sure to always have male love interests involved each time. I don't think this is how it works. They mentioned the cupid shot has no effect if the subject is incompatible with the target. Those guys being in love with Aki after they were previously hit by cupids doesn't automatically mean Aki would've reciprocated if she was looking at one of them when hit.
>>4336794 Thats explicitly how it works, since we saw the potential targets (for seeing when getting hit) each time and they were always mixed. What the pic is talking about is if the attraction "sticks" longterm, hence the worry about an additional love interest being added. And also why I think the most recent chapters case will turn to the OL also not staying with the guy, because the manga pretty much shoved into our face all those flings/relationships she had before were based on cupids being biased and trying to essentially force her on smaller guys, who she probably only likes in a maternal way and not romantically.
The cupids very clearly never worry about gender of the love interests one way or the other.
>>4336801 Sounds a lot like bullets can just whiff if there is no fuel at all. The additional love interest would be the other girl. The manga is very much on a sexuality isn't real trip, and just focuses on personality and treats every girl as bisexual for that purpose. Honestly, my bigger problem is doubling down on the incredibly unromantic idea of there being no falling in love, its all cupids making decisions for you.
>>4336801 >Thats explicitly how it works That's explicitly NOT how it works. Kanna mentions that what makes a person, their taste and personality makes up the fuel that love, sparked from the bullet of a cupid, burns on. So if we consider sexuality as a facet of one's personality, that obviously factors in the success of a bullet
>>4336816 >So if we consider sexuality as a facet of one's personality The manga clearly doesn't as it exclusively shows situations were both guys and girls are viable solutions. Except for the most recent one, where only guys are viable of course, unless hopium nee-san here ends up being right >>4336788
>>4336805 >Honestly, my bigger problem is doubling down on the incredibly unromantic idea of there being no falling in love, its all cupids making decisions for you. I disagree, and the evidence is that the cupid's relationships sometimes fail. All it suggests is that true love is something that has to be build up by two compatible people after they get together (the getting together part only requires basic compatibility, a moment of awareness of the other person and, critically, a cupid)
It is anti love at first sight. But it never says that getting shot by a cupid means you have 'true love' just the 'start of love'. Aki is a good example, both her and the other girl were compatible and the other girl already had a strong crush. Aki gets shot and is said also to have the beginnings of a crush now. There ends the cupid's involvement. In this case they can go on to develop love that can come to an end some day or else true love where they remain together; but that's entirely on them. I like it because it fits my personal idea that love is something very strong but requires a lot of building.
>>4336818 How would the cupids know in advance that guys are viable for Aki when she only ever loved Koharu? They never state all the people already in love with a target are viable solutions, that's why they stake them out to figure out who to pick.
>>4336818 >The manga clearly doesn't Just because you state it so confidently doesn't mean it's true, if you want to acyually dispute this, make the case that you can separate sexuality from taste or personality
>it exclusively shows situations were both guys and girls are viable solutions. Aki's case disproves you
>>4336821 They have some sense that tells them who they've ever loved so I wouldn't find it farfetched that they have some sense to see if someone is straight/gay/bi or if it's a case where they go "I don't love you because you're a X, I love you because you're you"
Does anyone know when the publisher's account changed its banner to include Love Bullet? https://x.com/kd_globalcomic I don't remember seeing it before but it's probably been a few months since I last checked.
>>4516028 There hasn't been a new chapter since October. Combination of work on volume 2, promotion of the US release and the author moving. Looks like it skipped this month too.