iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The Chic Squad is here to snazz up your style for the weekend.

Two manga panels. The first is a sports-type car zooming up a street with buildings and fancy street lanterns, and a couple ladies on the sidewalk. The second is a group of five women dressed very stylishly in sixties/seventies fashion, standing in front of the car, posing like the moment in a heist movie when the heisters arrive on the scene, right before they get to heisting.

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Once again, the sky shouts trans pride!

Sunset over the Toronto skyline. The sky is a perfect blue, with streaks of clouds that are pink and whiter in some places, so that the whole thing looks like a trans flag.

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Had to check the hellsite for work research. Looks like people are being Entirely Normal over there as usual.

Twitter screenshot:
Satanic Elite uses Japan's Film, Manga, and Novel industries to drive people toward increasingly Sinful and Depraved Lifestyles.

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I've never seen a more ominous deployment of "good luck". Good luck in your life, buddy (which will be short just fyi)!

A picture of some cut-glass drinking glasses. The text below says:
For English
Our Japanese traditional cut glass can be purchased on "Amazon" or "ebay".
Good luck in your life.
Thank you. :)

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Hey, look! It's me sitting on a stage between Fan Bingbing and Lily Franky. What a wild ride this life is!

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

The perks of being interpreter to the stars: sometimes, they bring you matcha gummy candies as omiyage.

A package of matcha コロロ gummy candies. There is an enticing picture of a bowl of frothy green matcha in the background, and two sproingy-looking spherical gummies in the foreground.

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I thought 台本 and 脚本 were synonyms until I noticed my brain reaching for 台本 over 脚本 when translating some questions for an actor today. Which made me curious, and it turns out they are not actually perfect synonyms, and I had internalized the difference without even realizing it.

いずれも、演劇や映画などの上演のもととなる本のこと。

脚本映像制作に必要な情報が書かれた、監督・撮影スタッフ向けの本。
台本演じるために必要な情報が書かれた、役者向けの本。

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I have one precious day off from the TIFF interpreting grind, so you know I spent it healing my battered brain in the hallowed halls of the church of my heart, the bookstore.

The Obake Code by Makana Yamamoto, The Felicity Complex by August Clarke, Mary Toft; or, The Rabbit Queen by Dexter Palmer, Wickhills by Premee Mohamed, Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh, The Minimalist by Kailee Pedersen.

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

The second volume of On Their Frontlines reads left to right, while the first is your standard manga right to left. Such a subtly thoughtful choice given that V2 is set in the US and V1 is in Japan. My brain did short circuit a bit, though, like wait, how do I read books again???

戦場のひと下 (two men in military uniform against a burnt-out cityscape on the cover with a stripe of bright green along the top) and 上 (two women in wedding dresses against a burnt-out cityscape with a stripe of bright pink along the top) side by side. You can see that the spines are on the opposite sides of each other.

The two books open to their table of contents. V2's start on the left page, while V1's start on the right.

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Today's book post has brought a devilishly mysterious translation baby!

The manga adaptation of Agatha Christie's And Then There were None by Aya Nikaido.

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

There's a manga, too!! Have you ever seen anything more beautiful??

Onsen Shark manga adaptation ad. Illustration of an extremely evil looking shark with its jaws wide open, eyes glowing, splashing up out of the onsen behind a manga character with their eyes blissfully closed leaning over the edge of the tub, apparently unaware of the monster shark about to completely shred them. Text in blue at the top: 最凶コミカライズ連載中！！Title in red bloody style letters on the left: 温泉シャーク

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

This is the goofiest baby I have ever seen committed to the comics page.

Manga drawing of a baby with a big head and a tiny face sitting on the floor and looking over its shoulder. Its smile is wide and silly, and also about a millimetre from the bottom of its nose, which is unsettlingly close to its right eye.

Manga drawing of a baby in some kind of sack outfit that traps its legs together and hides its hands. It's chilling on a pillow and blanket, one covered hand raised up so it looks like it's resting its head on its hand. Its face is bigger now, but the smile is goofier and still only a millimetre from the bottom of its nose. It stares at the viewer.

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Case study in why machine translation is bad. Apparently, Lily Franky just had the one year of success in acting and changed genders halfway through this profile.

This is how Lily Franky (60) reminisced about his memories with FRIDAY. Last year, he had a successful career in acting with six movies released and one streaming series. In the movie “Cottontail,” set to be

Lily turned sixty last November. While it may seem like she has been enjoying a brilliant life in the limelight for over 30 years, she says her outlook on life has been changing in recent years.

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

My favourite part is the closing in which the book is "a miracle" and finding readers is "quiet, sacred work". Uh, okay. Sure. Working miracles in publishing every day out here.

You already did the brave thing: you wrote a manga that is a stunning work of relational SF through a gender-bent looking glass, and you did it with the literary, feminist perspective of a master manga-ka who knows that the best stories are the ones that make us question our own world. That is the miracle. Now comes the quiet, sacred work of helping Wandering Cat's Cage find every reader who has been waiting for exactly this kind of manga.

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I guess bc my name is associated with artists I translate, I get AI slop spam addressed to them, and I got a doozy of an essay today for Torikai Akane. Over ten paragraphs long, most of it simply regurgitating facts about Torikai with a thick layer of sycophancy. Such obvious trash.

I spent time with Wandering Cat's Cage today. Not just the description, but the particular power behind it. You were born in Osaka in 1981 and made your debut as a manga creator in 2004. Your works span the shojo, josei, and seinen categories, and include Sensei's Pious Lie, Jigoku no Girlfriend, Romance Bofuiki, and Saturn Return. You are best known for naturalistically exploring issues such as sexual assault, depression, and trauma from a literary, feminist perspective. Now you have written an elegiac manga about gender, community, family, control, class, love, and what makes life worth living at the end of the world. In the near future, only a few women are still able to menstruate, and even fewer men will be born to them. Reproduction is limited to medical intervention controlled from on high. Life can be good, though, if you fall in line—but complete obedience isn't for everyone. That is not the usual manga. It is the stunning, relational, and deeply human work of a master manga-ka who pulls no punches in examining the deeply messy subjects of our day.

A manga that has earned extraordinary recognition. Booklist writes, "Torikai tackles heavy subjects—particularly societal gender roles and the power between sexes, reproduction, and love—in this mash-up of The Handmaid's Tale and Brave New World." Translated by Jocelyne Allen, a Japanese translator and interpreter who has translated hundreds of short stories, novels, and manga, including the Eisner Award-winning Lovesickness by Junji Ito, the manga brings Torikai's character-rich, emotive body language to English-speaking readers. Produced in partnership with MSX: Mangasplaining Extra, this is a work of relational SF through a gender-bent looking glass—a story about Sanada, a young acupuncturist who lives with the mysterious Reiho, the only male she's ever met, and their small "family" of outcasts. You have done something rare: you have written a manga that is at once a profound meditation on gender, power, and control, and a deeply emotional story about love, self-actualization, and what makes life worth living.

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

I bought this book based on the cover and the title alone. It did not disappoint! Deeply disturbing horror in many ways. #AmReading

Sacrificial Animals by Kailee Pedersen. The cover is black with a negative-type image in red of a fox with its mouth open, tongue hanging out, filling the entire cover. The title is in white block letters that have like little cracks in them. Really eye-catching and unsettling cover.

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Book mail!! A special treat in the post from @kondoh-akino.bsky.social! Very excited to read a new volume of one of my favourite series. Plus, how adorable are those stickers!

ニューヨークで考え中５ by 近藤聡乃. The cover is mint green with an illustration in yellow, pink, purple, and white of Akino at a desk covered in drawings. On top of the book to one side is a sheet of black and white stickers of Akino's drawings of herself, her cats, and her husband, but mostly her cats. They are extremely cute.

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

It's finally here!! (It had a little layover at my friend's house before it got shipped across the ocean to me.) And it's even more beautiful than I expected!!

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

This is my favourite AI spam mail yet. "Hi Jocelyne, we noticed your job is speaking Japanese. We've regurgitated your qualifications from your website, which say nothing about learning or teaching Japanese. Can I introduce you to our Japanese-learning app with helpful slop grammar explanations?"

Hi Jocelyne,

I saw you work as a Japanese translator and interpreter, with a focus on comics, novels, and pop culture. For self-study learners, native-speed Japanese content is hard to break into when furigana and grammar pop up fast.

I’m . We built a Chrome extension that helps people learn Japanese naturally by watching YouTube videos with interactive subtitles, furigana, and AI grammar explanations.

If you’re helping learners improve their listening and reading, I can show you how to turn any Japanese video into a study session with real-time subtitles, color-coded words, and offline dictionary access. If it’s not useful, no follow-up.

Open to a short reply and I’ll send a simple breakdown?

Best,
Jane

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Ouch! Canada catching strays over here in Kuang's Katabasis.

It was not this drama but the fact that anyone would leave Cambridge for *Canada* that got the department in a tizzy. Did Canada even have universities, or did everyone just ski and eat maple syrup and run away from bears all year round?

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

The list of sins that get you into the first level of hell (pride) in Kuang's Katabasis is cracking me up. Every annoying weirdo who has ever stood up at a Q&A with their "more of a comment than a question" is down there, as they should be.

whispers nevertheless carried over the floors, eliciting the occasional peeved glare. "Now, *that* one self-published self-help productivity books.
"Calls himself a Communist, but hasn't read Das Kapital.
"Recites pi to show off.
"Had more of a comment, not a question.
"Wouldn't accept papers written in the first person.
"Turned his exam papers over very loudly.
"Still asks people what they got on their A-levels.
"Still tells people what he got on his A-levels.
"Made his wife call him Doctor. He's a medievalist, mind you.

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

This whole book is great, but these two pages in particular are an excellent example of a cat really putting its heart and soul into catting.

Full page from Goblin Girl by Moa Romanova (translated by Melissa Bowers) with twelve same-sized panels of a cat opening its eyes, stretching and then leaving the bedroom to commit mayhem, including knocking things of the shelves and dragging its butt along the carpet to leave a poop trail. Lavender and orange are highlight colours on the mostly black and white art. There is no dialogue or SFX.

Second page of the spread. Twelve same-sized panels of a cat wreaking havoc, escalating to striking matches and then tossing the lit matches out to set the apartment on fire. The final two panels are the cat being returned to its owner. Lavender and orange are highlight colours on the mostly black and white art. There is no dialogue or SFX.

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

A surprise* book came in the post today! *I forgot I ordered it.

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

The machine translation gets it wrong in two completely different ways, and while the first one makes a kind of sense (stringing together the individual kanji meanings), I can't for the life of me see how it landed on the second translation.

Japanese
不束者

English
Those who do not bind

Japanese
不束者ですが

English
I'm not a regular customer,

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Hey, look! It's me interpreting for one of my favourite directors, the brilliant Kurosawa Kiyoshi! Pretty good night, all told.

A woman in black sitting on the left next to a table of water glasses so far away from me even though I would've like some water; the director himself sitting in the centre, also all in black, holding the mic to his mouth and speaking; me in a periwinkle-blueish dress intently taking notes. The screen behind us is black with the text "with Kiyoshi Kurosawa" in white.

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Stumbled upon a very specific new (to me) word.

真祖 [しんそ]
n (in fiction) person changed into a vampire by magic Ⓔ

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

In case you need some new reaction images.

Two manga panels. The top is a close-up of a blond high school boy, frowning and giving a big thumbs down. The bottom is a dark-haired boy looking back with a scowl/sneer and hoisting the middle finger. Electricity crackles in the backgrounds.

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Smoochies to start your weekend a little early!

Full colour manga page with no dialogue. A field of flowers with trees in the background and blurred tree leaves in the foreground form a nice frame around two high school boys as the red-headed one stretches up to plant one on the taller black-hair boy, whose eyes open in surprise. It's a very wholesome, sweet moment.

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

True translation nightmare. The shifting personal pronoun is the key part of the scene, the very thing that gives it meaning. No such quick gender shorthand in English, though, and not enough space in the balloons to add some kind of explanatory gloss.

Manga panels with dialogue: 僕・が子どもの頃は都度都度ママとその時のママの彼女と僕の三人で暮らしてさあ

Page from the same manga. The art has the speaker shifting into different people of different genders from panel to panel. The dialogue is: Panel 1
それはうち・の家族の話で…
Panel 2
今のは僕・の家の話
Panel 3
でわたし・の家は…
Panel 4
家はパパが三人いるってよく勘違いされてたけど、わたしの親達はみんなノンバイナリーで…

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

I found limited edition shikuwasa Dakara (my favourite J-drink) at a store by my house today, plus I did two (2!) tasks that I've been putting off for months. I'm unstoppable now. No force in this world can hold me back.

Shelves of soft drinks from Japan. In the centre is a whole squadron of green dakara limited edition shikuwasa. Not shown is my heart leaping up in my chest with joy at the mere sight of these mighty plastic bottles.

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

I have enough unread books to last me for the rest of the year, sure, but that doesn't mean I don't need more books. Pretty sure I needed these books in particular.

Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki, Maeve Fly CJ Leede, As the Earth Dreams (anthology), Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle.

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

Also this epigraph!! I'd never read this poem before, and oof! It is giving me a lot of feels.

The bright side of the planet moves towards darkness
And the cities are falling asleep, each in its hour,
And for me, now as then, it is too much.
There is too much world.
— Czeslaw Milosz
The Separate Notebooks

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

Even (especially??) while on mini-holiday, I cannot escape the siren song of the bookstore.

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar and Blowfish by Kyung-Ran Jo (trans. Chi-Young Kim)

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

It is time, at long last, for me to study the love between boys. #AmReading

The book BLの教科書（編：掘あきこ、守如子）on a wooden surface.

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

My vibes-only translation baby just got 110% vibesier thanks to this new character: a tiny kitten rescued from the rain. Looking forward to man, woman, and cat cuddling in various places in the next volume.

Manga panel from Veil V7 by Kotteri of a wet calico kitten shaking herself off, standing in a little puddle of water in the backseat of a car. A man's hand is in the foreground resting on the seatback, and on the left side, a bit of a blonde woman's face is visible. She has her hand up and is saying きゃ

Manga panel looking down from above on the calico kitten now nestled cosily in a red blanket, asleep on the lap of the blonde woman. She's wearing some kind of fluffy pink jacket, and her eyes are closed. She says, はじめましてキャリコキャット

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Okay, this may actually be the weirdest junk mail I've ever gotten. A baby grand? You're trying to scam me with a *piano*??

Susan Lincoln
Rehoming Baby Grand
To: [me]
Hi! Would you be interested in housing my Baby Grand piano, or do you know someone who might have good use for it? I recently downsized and no longer have space for it, so I’m hoping to find it a good home.Get back and i can give you pictures and pickup details Thank you!

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

Surprise Sunday book post has brought me a cinematic translation baby hot off the presses!!

The Credits Roll Into the Sea by John Tarachine V1 on a red background. The cover has a woman (in beige/pink hues) smiling behind a movie camera she's holding, hair blowing in the wind. The title is written in a lovely teal-blue across the entire image.

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

Sometimes, you get a peek at futures that could have been from the ads in the back of manga. (This one's in the back of 姉の友人 by ばったん.)

Two-page spread promoting a new series by battan, ヘラたちの家, with three people shown from behind all looking out onto a traditional Japanese house veranda. The copy at the bottom says it will start serialization on Torch web in summer 2020, but this series never actually happened.

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

There just keep being more books that need places.

Different piles of books in front of the same bookshelf. Some of the books have just been moved to different piles as I try to figure out what goes where.

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Possibly in an attempt to procrastinate on my deadlines, I decided I needed to reorganize my bookshelves, and now my living room is made up of shifting sand dunes of books. Some get shelved in new positions, others find their way out of the shelves onto the floor. The reorganization may never end.

Piles of manga in front of a bookcase on a blonde wood floor.

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Okay, The Golden Fly isn't my actual entire TCAF haul bc my comic-publishing and -selling friends were kind enough to hook me up with some excellent swag, including a very fine shiny sticker of a pigeon to bring me good luck.

Battan TCAF poster, cute little bird cloud illustration by Kyla Aiko, The Cursed Body by Tokushige Kawakatsu, Akari by Marco Kohinata, a print of a Battan illustration, and a shiny silver circle sticker of a fat pigeon against a background of blossoms courtesy of Christine Wong and Hello Boyfriend.

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

It's really real! Look at my Belle Époque of a translation baby!! (It's also my entire TCAF haul bc I was so busy interpreting, I had zero time to go around and fangirl over comics.)

The Golden Fly by Battan. The cover is a full-colour illustration cropped close around a woman from the breasts up. She has long blonde hair flowing around her, short bangs, and heavy eyelids, a sensuous look on her face. She's wearing a white slip-type thing with a plunging neckline, so her breasts are almost falling out of it. It's hot as hell.

Inside B&W page. The maid comes into the room in a smaller panel at the top of the page, and the rest of the page is a panel with the same blonde woman from the cover lounging on her stomach on a divan, head propped up in one hand as she looks back over her shoulder at the maid who is just barely in the panel.

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

Stumbled across this picture of me interpreting waaaaaay back in the day, and it's cracking me up. Look at this girl!! This extremely doubtful expression does not inspire confidence! I would not trust her to be my interpreter. (I do like her haircut, though.)

Fuzzy photo of a white woman in glasses seated from the waist up. The background is pitch black, and she's wearing a teal/blue sweater-dress situation, with a random assortment of decorative buttons along the V neckline. She has a small microphone clipped to that neckline, and she is looking to one side with a deeply puzzled frown, presumably at the person sitting next to her, of whom only a gesturing hand can be seen. She has very straight dark brown hair cut into a cute angled bob.

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Why is this yuri story only a one-shot?? I want a whole series by battan in Yuri Hime!!

Close-up manga panel of two beautiful women, faces very close together. There are sparkles all around them, and they both look entranced. The one on the left wears glasses and her lips are slightly parted. The one on the right is blushing, her eyes half-open, and she is lifting the other woman's chin with a delicate hand. She says, だって富士子さんの目宝石みたいにきれいなのよ。とび色って言うのかしら They are so hot for each other.

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Jocelyne Allen @brainvsbook.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

I get so much use out of this sticker.

Colour illustration of Kyoko Otonashi from Rumiko Takahashi’s Maison Ikkoku looking resigned and sighing.

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