Otherside Picnic, Vol. 8: Accomplices No More ★★★★☆
Sorawo-chan, are you engaging with first contact with Toriko properly?
Once again these characters spend so long avoiding talking about relationships that when they do it is shocking how open and frank they end up being, not just casually acknowledging the idea of lesbian relationships, but of asexuality and aromanticism and how many people’s wants and needs fit outside of societal norms. And this ends up mirroring the exploration of the Otherside in a way that I didn’t expect, though maybe should have been obvious. The alien consciousness on the other side of the Otherside is unknowable, but so are people. To grow to understand someone else requires you to both understand yourself and inevitably to by changed by them.
I also love Sorawo using 鵼, a chimeric monster whose name can be written as a compound of the first character of both of their names, as a name of their relationship. Seems like the kind of dorky shit I would do.