Peeling back romance layers (an extensive analysis of Otherside Picnic's main relationship)
Or in longer form, "The incredible way in which volume 8 of Otherside Picnic peels back the layers of its main characters and their relationship, and paves the way toward a wider, queerer definition of yuri"
When Otherside Picnic starts, it seems to rely at least to some extent on some common elements of the yuri genre. Not only that, of course - it is also immediately genre fiction (eldritch horror survival adventure), with a focus on college students, and that would be enough for it to be something rather unique. But it still has some of it: aloof brunette Sorawo and outgoing beautiful blonde Toriko, inner monologues on how pretty Toriko is that are left unaddressed, meaningful handholding, and insistence on a word ("accomplices") that at first sounds like a stand-in for untold romantic love.
As it grows, the series slowly but surely peels back this outer layer, and several others, in subtle and intricate ways. In some sense which is thematically similar to how the Otherside itself works, all of them are purposefully misleading, shifting aspects that slowly lead us closer and closer to what Otherside Picnic really is.
With volume 8, I feel like the story reaches what it wants to tell. It's incredible, and complex to describe aptly; but I think it's also mindblowing because of how the series gets us, the readership, to that point.
This is a (very, very) longform analysis of what my mind and possibly yours have been meant to perceive throughout the volumes: how the romantic aspects of Otherside Picnic went through several twists and turns, and how they make volume 8 all the more striking by upending our expectations one last time - or, well, maybe until volume 9.
Spoilers for Otherside Picnic volumes 1-8 in all that follows.
Volumes 1 and 2
As I said above, Otherside Picnic starts at least to some extent with some typical yuri tropes. This is important because somehow, it sets our expectations. Yuri is a broader and broader genre [citation needed] but a sizable portion of yuri works are still subtext - fictions where it is never clearly a romance between the leads, or maybe not until the very end, and even then maybe not in a clearly explicit fashion. In this framework, we as readers are somewhat trained to interpret any purposefully framed gesture or sentence, and sometimes even more, as proof of (untold) romantic love. This dynamic historically grew for a variety of reasons that could make for several essays and that I am ill-equipped to tackle.
Still, it is there. Said extremely prosaically: because of a deep craving for girls loving girls, we are trained to ship from any romantic-coded bone thrown at us. And Otherside Picnic sure does that - there are even broader romance manga tropes in there, like an unadressed kabedon right off the bat in File 2.
Throughout the first two volumes, because of these tropes and the resulting expectations we project onto this particular yuri subgenre (and also because of Miyazawa's great use of ethereal empty sceneries that reinforce this aesthetic), we see Sorawo and Toriko at least to some extent through a stereotypical yuri lens. They may never actually get together in the fiction, but they already are in our hearts. After all, both of them seem to operate on some kind of "yuri logic" with each other - of implicit, symbolic gestures and elements, of gay-coded sentences that are left up in the air, of emotions we identify but the protagonist doesn't yet(?). If you've watched the anime version in spite of its flaws, this is also the vibe I'm talking about.
But neither of the leads actually operates on that logic: it is only our presumption induced by the story so far. And as we see the books move beyond the first two volumes, the story slowly and wonderfully makes this presumption crumble.
The first way it does so is simply because Toriko is a lesbian.
Toriko's backstory is, through numerous little things, grounded in Japan's (and Canada's) current perception of lesbianism. This is something we discover slowly, stroke by stroke, as the two protagonists get closer (since Sorawo does not ask about it in direct ways, being who she is, and since she is our point-of-view character). It does become front and center in volume 8 in realistic ways I could gush about for hours and maybe will in another essay, but it starts unraveling precisely as we leave the first two volumes: in File 9.
Volume 3
File 9, as understandably overshadowed by File 8 as it is, has always been one of my favorites Files. It has some very memorable atmosphere, a titular Otherside picnic, Sorawo's second telling of her traumatic past (more on that later), and two gut punches in quick succession: the discovery that Sorawo has been an unreliable narrator throughout the File, by hiding Satsuki's presence from the narration; and the quietly dropped bombshell that Toriko had two moms.
Of course, the latter was already hinted at earlier if you were particularly attentive to the way Toriko referred to her mothers; but putting this information under the spotlight does something important: it suddenly grounds Otherside Picnic in something that is not just ethereal yuri vibes anymore. Both the way Toriko mentions it, and the way Sorawo reacts to it, tell us that the series does happen in Japan's current sociocultural context, where having two mothers, and more broadly sapphic relationships, are not seen as part of the norm; and though Sorawo does not pick up on that directly, it is evidently a great sign of trust from Toriko, and a way for her to test the waters about Sorawo's preconceptions on lesbianism without exposing herself too directly.
Indirectly, this reveal grounds not just the series, but also Toriko as a person, suddenly putting her at the same level as the readership (if only with less inner Sorawo monologues to work with) in terms of collecting gay-coded clues. With this knowledge about her, it becomes obvious that her increasingly romantic-coded interactions with Sorawo cannot escape her notice, just like they couldn't escape ours.
And indeed, she is quick to interpret that Sorawo is interested in her (more on that later, too). And to realize she loves her.
There is a bit of a muddier timeframe on when these feelings develop on Toriko's end. I do think her reveal in File 9 is not only a way of checking Sorawo is an ally, but also to some extent a way of saying to Sorawo that she has her chances if she wants to confess; that somehow, Toriko is at least kinda interested back (see also her overall behavior in File 6, and her cat-like flirting in File 7). In any case, these feelings are slowly growing until File 11 without a real outlet, as the persistent shadow of Satsuki Uruma keeps looming over this possibility both in the story and in Toriko's head.
With File 11, two things of note happen: Sorawo gets kidnapped; and then Toriko realizes the Satsuki she knows is gone. The first event, at least in the way I read it, helps cementing in Toriko's head that she is terrified of losing Sorawo (additionally playing into her fear and heavy background of losing the people she cares about), and conscientizing that she really is attracted to her. The second event allows her to let go of her old manipulative crush, even though Sorawo will keep worrying about that for a while.
And so, after this whole underground process carefully hinted at narratively through her interactions with Sorawo, Toriko starts acting on it - rocking Sorawo's world, and propulsing Otherside Picnic into another kind of read: a romance where the romantic undertones are expected to be addressed.
To dive into how this clashes in volume 4 and beyond, we need to talk about Sorawo, as we are led to understand her then.
Sorawo has never been operating on the aforementioned subtextual yuri logic either. But it really looks like it at first glance: her over-the-top flustered descriptions of Toriko's beauty; her struggles to understand her own feelings; all these are to all appearances common elements of a "classic" yuri protagonist wondering what suddenly makes her heart beat so fast, while the audience tries to guess in how many chapters she may or may not put the word (romantic) love on it.
Following that logic, her first few uses of "accomplices" feel like this is both her way and the fiction's way not to directly speak of love, in some old yuri fashion. Maybe at some point, near the end of the fiction, the two protagonists will confess that this is romantic love. Maybe it will always be left unsaid, but evidently there.
It could've kept going like that for a long while with Sorawo alone. We would have misinterpreted her all along, but it could have.
But Toriko acts.
By being (extremely) forward with how she feels about Sorawo, she forces us to reconsider how their dynamic operates - and she forces Sorawo to do so, too.
Volume 4
Toriko has been reading her interactions with Sorawo as romantic for a while, now - enough for her to outright try confessing as early as File 12. In Toriko's defence, she has witnessed an increasing amount of Sorawo telling her that the Otherside is their world and their world only - which is clearly Sorawo's love language. From where she stands, it is obvious how she interprets romantically how impossibly important Sorawo considers their bond, and keeps being puzzled by the gap between the weight of Sorawo's words and her intentions.
As Toriko's actions start changing the tone of the story and our expectations, and as her hints can less and less be ignored (yet still go over Sorawo's head for a few Files), we are tempted to cast Sorawo into a new trope: clueless lesbian.
But, you know, this is kind of unfair, I think. First, because it only really lasts for Files 12 and 13, before that oh so memorable File 14. Second, because it is rather clear that Sorawo barely even knew gay people existed before File 9, three months earlier - which would help explaining how she doesn't exactly put 2 and 2 together when she ponders why Toriko would act like her boyfriend(?), for instance.
(as a brief aside, just like there are already subtle elements rousing suspicion about Toriko's moms or Sorawo's trauma planted in early Files, until they are unavoidably put under direct scrutiny and end up changing how we perceive the story, there are elements planted in File 13 regarding Toriko's awkwardness regarding her own space/home. This will also contribute to a shift in the way we see Toriko in due time. Anyway, this is really layered and intricate, I love it.)
Files 14 and 15, though, make it all rather clear.
File 15 steals the show, of course, because it interweaves wonderfully a (first) relationship climax with the exploration of Sorawo's past and trauma, which has been volume 4's growing theme. But I have always been deeply impressed by File 14 for how right its atmosphere is: Miyazawa simply nails that diffuse feeling, that both Sorawo and Toriko perceive, that their relationship is on the verge of something; and the palpable sensation of a turning point is incredible. That moment of giddy joy followed by the "I love you"s getting out of them definitely altering their dynamic captures something truly realistic and beautiful... just as it is a new knot in the story.
Because it is made clear, then, that Toriko is confessing. And that there is some kind of misunderstanding in the ways the two of them have read the room: Sorawo describes that moment until then as them being "total children", and the playfulness is really well conveyed in the text; but Toriko's obvious, stated physical attraction, and how momentous that instant is for her (enough for Sorawo to notice! and reemphasized in vol. 8) makes apparent a marked dissonance in their vision of that bath together; and more generally, of what they perceive and expect of their bond.
As volume 4 comes to a close, "clueless lesbian" is not a description of Sorawo that holds water anymore: she cannot escape the fact that Toriko's feelings are romantic and sexual, and she does not deny Toriko's interest - she remains, in all that follows, awkwardly aware of it. She just doesn't know what to do with that.
And so she simply tries her best to skirt around the topic, and fails repeatedly.
Volumes 5 and 6
In this new dynamic, Toriko's forwardness and expectations set a new question: will Sorawo answer in kind?
No, that's not exactly it. At that point, with everything that has happened so far, and with how grounded the series has become in its exploration of trauma and lesbian attraction, the story is now perceived through the lens of messy, unequivocal lesbian romance. And in this model, at that point, the narrative has clearly left "will-they won't-they" territory by most trope standards: it has become a "when will they". Toriko has confessed; and we are left with Sorawo, now fully conscious that "Toriko likes [her] that way" (File 16), of whom we have witnessed volumes of a priori romantic-coded thoughts.
And so: when will Sorawo answer in kind?
And yet... and yet no shift happens in any of the next few Files, or volumes. This creates a big narrative dissonance: we have begun our read thinking "accomplices" was a stand-in for her unnamed romantic love, and we are now forced to consider why Sorawo clings to it as Toriko is more and more (and more) explicit with her. Why she maintains this statu quo.
Quick aside: you may have had different expectations at that point, depending on your relationship with love story tropes and romantic love in general. I will continue with this one for the sake of this essay; but I'd be very interested in hearing from you!
At that point, we pin this behavior on two main stated reasons.
The first is that "accomplices" has literally been a life raft for Sorawo to escape from the dichotomy of victim and abuser left from her traumatic past. That word has healed her; it has shown her another accessible dynamic of relationship, and she doesn't want to let it go.
The other is that she doesn't "have the knowledge, or the experience" (her words, File 15) about romantic and sexual relationships; and so relying on that "closest relationship in the world" is more and more used as a way to postpone any other answer to Toriko (as one particular instance, the way she tries to brush off and accept Toriko's confession at the same time in File 15 is incredible in retrospect).
This second reason, however, feeds into two purposefully constructed premises: that Sorawo is in love with Toriko; and that she will realize it at some point. These premises both stem from the inherent amatonormativity of the romance genre, and we will detail that concept later; but they are also carefully maintained by the narrative itself.
The first trick used to do so is Sorawo's trauma response; more particularly, her general inability to identify and process her own emotions.
Sorawo's deeply traumatic past, which has been mostly unearthed by that point, informs her blurry reaction to a lot of her own thoughts. She repeatedly, realistically downplays the topic as something uninteresting; but it is the logical element we suspect is responsible for her not reciprocating Toriko's feelings, considering how gay her inner monologues feel (more on that, once again, later).
And the catch is that there is some truth to it: for instance, she takes a very long time to understand her own jealousy toward Toriko's relationship with Satsuki. Jealousy is her most tangible, identifyiable commonplace emotion she feels around Toriko, and an emotional weak point the Otherside will exploit time and again, as directly pointed out by Kozakura in File 14. This feeling is right there on File 2, but she finally identifies it only after some growth and reexploration of the same place in File 19. In-universe, almost an entire year has passed.
And this is the trick: by doing so with jealousy, a feeling that has been obvious to the readership for a long time AND that is significant regarding Toriko's importance in Sorawo's eyes, the narrative lets us think we always identify Sorawo's emotions better than she does, most notably in her relationship with Toriko. We will get back to it in due time, but this is explicitly mentioned by Toriko in File 26; and that scene carries a lot of weight because it exposes once again that Toriko always got the same clues we had, and has read Sorawo until now just like we have.
Toriko thinks she's figured out Sorawo's attraction better than Sorawo herself, and the readers do just as much.
I will stress it again, because it feels particularly important: Otherside Picnic traps us into thinking we understand Sorawo better than herself.
The second premise, the idea that Sorawo will change, is created in a very organic way too. It is set up, through both her inner thoughts and her behavior, by Sorawo herself. In repeatedly describing herself as "a child" (Files 15 and 16, and also an echo to File 14) when it comes to romance and sex, and notably framing this as a lack of experience and maturity, Sorawo makes it look like she doesn't get it yet while somehow berating herself for it. In File 18, similarly, she says she isn't sure of her own feelings yet, emphasis mine. All this builds up toward this false certainty of eventual romantic "realization" as she grows, while also echoing some realistic stigmatization that exists around people who are uninterested in or deeply uncomfortable around romance and/or sex.
Sorawo's position is actually already clear in File 16, when she comments on how Kozakura's question about Toriko and her dating "forces their relationship into a box". Then, she already questions if the two love each other the same way. But as stated above, she undermines her own answer, and sets herself the expectation of growing out of it eventually.
By doing so, and with the romance framing of the previous volumes, we are mistakenly led to believe that she is going to "realize it" and put romantic words on how she feels eventually. She gives us all the leeway to think that her blurry feelings will change, most notably as she heals from abuse.
All this is directly addressed by volume 8 in brilliant ways. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.
Sorawo does grow, and she does heal. Volumes 5 and 6 in particular represent more than four months when Sorawo keeps undergoing a slow, general process of opening up, of trusting people, of (sometimes literally) seeing herself through other people's eyes, begrudgingly. Of accepting she can be loved as she is, in the broadest sense of the word love. And of slowly letting people in (before she starts seeking people out with volumes 7 and 8).
And yet, romance-wise, nothing really changes. She does become more accepting of Toriko's obvious attraction - this is clearer with volume 7, but it is already an element of volume 6, as she accepts to bath together again - but it is a very slow process, at odds with what one could have expected from the aftermath of volume 4, and from all the elements underlined above.
Volume 7
Sorawo's growth as a character - as a person? - is evident, and remarkably showcased in volume 7. That volume is mainly Satsuki-centered, as it closes in impressive ways one of the main threads of the whole story; but it still contains elements of note regarding Sorawo herself and what we read of her.
But let us take a small detour and talk about Satsuki, first.
Many words could be and have been written on Satsuki, and notably the general narrative of Otherside Picnic about overcoming abuse. Here, I only want to point out how the way she is addressed changes with the volumes. It is indeed fascinating how Satsuki before volume 7 is always described as "Toriko's missing friend" - sometimes explicitly written "friend" with quotes, or sometimes "important/precious person". It has always been clear that Toriko was crushing on her, but the way we read that has changed with the volumes and the tone of the story: what felt like some old yuri-coded way of not saying romantic love at first, has turned into a very natural dynamic of unadressing this between Sorawo and Toriko, because of the former's obvious jealousy about Satsuki and lack of skills to talk about romantic attachments in the first place.
When this volume makes it adamant, several times, that Toriko really has always been in love with Satsuki, it's unsurprising, but also a momentous explicit confirmation. It mirrors both the way the book series has changed in its way of talking about lesbian attraction, and the way Sorawo has become less avoidant of the topic entirely.
Even earlier than that, File 16's side remark of Kozakura about Akari and Natsumi possibly dating(??) was already proof of how wlw relationships had become somewhat normalized to address in the narrative. This is notable, because it makes it clear that characters other than Sorawo have always functioned with a high capability of reading, or at least trying to the sapphic relationships around them, and Sorawo is slowly forced not to skirt around that herself.
All this cements a core element of Otherside Picnic: all these ambiguous dynamics left uncommented by Sorawo, that the readership once considered under a traditional yuri lens, are actually a clear byproduct of Sorawo's point of view on the matter. In some sense, the way they are addressed merely shifts as Sorawo grows. Narratively speaking, this allows the story to expose its queer elements bit by bit, in extremely organic ways.
With this important statement in mind, let us go back to the important parts about Sorawo in volume 7.
The main one is, very obviously, the date on May 14th.
Sorawo's feelings are still blurry, but it is obvious to her that her encounter with Toriko has had a tremendous impact on her life, as she is the one to suggest celebrating the occasion. When it happens, she does not run from Toriko's affection anymore - to some extent, she even enjoys seeing her this happy, even if she has a hard time keeping up with it. She picks up on the romantic connotation of the event; she braces herself for Toriko to broach the topic of love; and she even asks about it herself (granted, it is also a way for her to be sure Toriko is on board with killing exorcising Satsuki). More than ever, she is clearly aware that Toriko wants to have a romantic and sexual kind of relationship with her, and by now, she does not try to entirely dodge the topic as it comes up. She does not confront it exactly, but that will come.
In any case, this could be - and it is then! - interpreted as a step forward romantically speaking. This is a date. This is something particularly significant in the bigger romantic narrative.
With this, Sorawo's overall growth keeps feeding into the expectation that she inconsciously has, and that we definitely have, of her someday "realizing" she is in love with Toriko. Of this to "click" in some way.
This is also supported by an additional fact Toriko brings up in the conversation during the date: Sorawo's doppelganger has been in her room. Though it is more accurately an avatar of Sorawo's guilt regarding a lot of topics, it is extremely easy to read it as an expression of her repressed desire. After all, her doppelganger has several times already been a reflection of Sorawo's hidden, "ugly" emotions - mainly envy and jealousy. Once again, this is used here as leverage to build up in the readers' heads an image of Sorawo as someone repressing some will for general physical intimacy, and to reinforce our expectations.
Before this culminates in volume 8, I want to mention a few things still about volume 7 that directly inform how the next one unfolds.
One of them is how Sorawo has slowly learned to ask for help. This is evidenced by her talking to Akari then recruiting both Kozakura and Runa in her plan to defeat Satsuki - all this is a necessity, sure, but also something she could not have done a few volumes before.
Another is how she has gained in confidence, for instance in the way she bargains with Runa, and in that small follow-up scene of her flirting with Toriko at DS Research (that scene, as a small digression, is at least a very clear sign of Sorawo's long-standing interest in sometimes flustering Toriko, and I am curious about seeing it come into play more in future volumes). Maybe the most striking part is how she leads the aforementioned plan, and particularly her last words to Satsuki: "I'm gonna look after all the girls you messed with.".
Now that is character growth.
Finally, one element I regard as unexpectedly important is the small talk by Migiwa about pseudo-familial relationships in criminal organizations. When I read volume 7, I felt like this notion of creating one's own structure of outcasts - sometimes mirroring socially conventional ones, sometimes not - also had a lot of queer reading potential. Sorawo is understandably opposed to the concept of family, even found family, a topic that will crop up again in volume 8; and in retrospect I feel like this particular conversation is a very clear seed of her more general will of creating uncommon relationship understandings from the ground up, instead of them being based on any kind of socially accepted expectation or structure - or at the very least, name.
Anyway. We have gotten a bit sidetracked from the topic of romance, because so has the general narrative at that point. Let us get back to it and see how all the little elements of the previous volumes that have been analyzed in all the paragraphs above fit into that.
The awaited romantic climax - born from us identifying Sorawo's emotions in her stead, and expecting her to realize as she goes through some necessary growth - has definitely been building up momentum by now. We see her deflect Toriko's affection less and less, but her inner thoughts are stuck in place. Narratively, this creates some kind of pent-up frustration, which is once again experienced by Toriko at least as much as the readers.
And so, it is extremely coherent to now witness Toriko forcing this knot to untie, one way or another, by giving Sorawo one week to answer.
Volume 8
In File 17, Sorawo was talking about "putting more serious thought into this" as if that could yield an answer. As volume 8 starts, it has been on the back of her mind all the time without ever reaching something different from what she thinks then: "I love you too, but... Well, no, do I? I think this is a kind of love... Yeah, I love you, no doubt about that...". With any further attempt, her thought process has come to a halt as soon as romance or sex were directly involved.
Still, she has been trying her best to keep up with Toriko's forwardness, in her own way. She promised herself to do so in File 17; and in subsequent Files she really tries not to hurt Toriko anymore. But even with all this, she cannot escape utter paralysis when planning Toriko's birthday in File 24. While she expressed at first that she was "scared of not knowing how to respond to Toriko" but explicitly not of Toriko (File 15), it is fascinating to see how File 24 echoes and twists this thought: then, the fear has gained momentum, and she has actually become scared of Toriko herself.
Sorawo has somehow been awaiting for something to change all this time, possibly within herself, and us readers have done so alongside her. Once again, I must stress that she has not been avoiding the fact that Toriko loves her per se; but her own impossibility to answer when pressured into romance by all parties - including us, and Toriko, and herself.
Even other characters have been reading this as a romance for a long while, or outright considering them going out already: Natsumi does at least since a big misunderstanding in File 16; Runa, as is clear in her dialogue, has never questioned the fact that the two were partners (though we will probably get more of that in volume 9). And Kozakura, of course, has been low-key awaiting this since forever, in spite of her own hinted-at attraction to Sorawo. Perhaps most strikingly, this is even how amnesiac Sorawo in early volume 6 has read the situation.
Because it is the easy interpretation, right? The two are in love, considering how close they are. Sorawo is in love, even if she is unable to realize it. They are going to end up together, as the entire narrative structure so far has let us thought.
In spite of our constructed eagerness for a change in Sorawo and Toriko's relationship from volume 5 onward, Sorawo's growth throughout these volumes was actually the only healthy way to untie this narrative knot. Without it, she could never have asked other people for help. And without that, she would not have gotten the tools to understand and express herself - and I really fear what would have happened to her relationship with Toriko in that situation.
But she does.
She does ask for help, and it gets her to her own truth: her feelings for Toriko are indeed far more blurry than any clear-cut reading we or the characters may have projected onto her so far; and that is overall not something that will change. She slowly learns to embrace how she feels and start a conversation with that as a given, while giving leeway for Toriko to express her needs too.
And frankly, it is a true gift to see the story upend volumes of romantic expectations, and explore this realization so thoroughly.
Still, it takes some winding turns to truly get there, which feel important to address, as remaining layers.
Benimori
Volume 8 as a whole is a wonderful spiral of thoughts on relationships, and notably on "the difference between friends and lovers", going inward from people who know Sorawo the least, to people who know her (and Toriko) the most. Fascinatingly, though all of the conversations have thought-provoking elements, the closer the people, the less adapted to Sorawo the answer.
Let us linger on the question itself for a bit. As Sorawo asks it, we may understand at first: "are my feelings enough of an indication to reciprocate Toriko's love?". However, the more it goes, the more it is apparent (to us, and to herself too) that she instead means something closer to: "what can I be to Toriko if I am not interested in being her lover?".
The words of Sorawo's classmate Benimori are, by far, the ones that answer this most accurately, though Sorawo is still only starting to figure herself out then.
Overall, Benimori's talk is a masterclass in love advice. I could write entire essays on her conversation only. I will try to restrain myself here, but I must say that her scene was enough to blow me away entirely.
This is not just big in terms of what it brings to Sorawo, though it sure is. It is also big because right at the start of volume 8, it opens Otherside Picnic to a degree of subtlety on relationships I haven't really seen anywhere else, and both the characters and the fiction itself benefit from it. Simply by happening, this conversation creates the space for aromantism, asexuality or queerplatonic relationships to exist in the fiction without being concepts the readership brings from the outside to some more ethereal narrative, in ways very similar to how Toriko's reveal that she has two moms suddenly makes lesbianism something much more real than the yuri undertones that have been going on before. And this is momentous.
Sorawo goes to ask Benimori for advice. Anything could have happened. It could have been shallow, as lots of love advice, notably in romance fiction, can be; it could have been an important but shorter "people love each other in different ways, and you can also call what you feel love even if it expresses itself differently, and pursue a romantic relationship together" as some other yuri have done.
It is, instead, not exactly an answer. It is more questions, to help Sorawo figure out what she wants.
Benimori is an impressive character because she appears for a brief moment as "a typical love-obsessed busybody", to quote Sorawo; and then she immediately subverts and transcends that trope at the same time, by being the most self-aware and caring and genuinely great love advisor I have ever read.
Her answer to Sorawo is just as impressive, because it is what the readers and what Sorawo needed to hear at that point of the story, without knowing it. It is the fulfillment of a need for nuance that has been carefully hidden by the way the narrative played into the romance genre until then, but that has also been a possible answer to Sorawo's anguish all that time, suddenly acknowledged. It is masterful.
Among other things, Benimori checks beforehand that it is ok for her to be enthusiastic about Sorawo's love life; she asks straightforwardly whether Sorawo feels sexual attraction, and examplifies how it feels (more on that later); she talks about what is often known as the split attraction model, which differentiates romantic and sexual attraction, and more generally about dismantling the "romance package deal", also called the relationship escalator. She also tries to defuse Sorawo's vision of herself being a child when it comes to this, making legitimate her lack of interest, whether that would change or not.
This is-- I do not know about you, but to me, this is mostly unheard of in fiction - at least in romance fiction that does not make it its front theme, and even then. These are tools I have been integrating slowly to my own life and relationships, and I feel like they should be shared with many; but I have not seen them in fiction, never so openly. And so, to see them readily given to Sorawo in the story in such an earnest, organic way is absolutely incredible.
Additionally, Benimori has a level of lucidity, of self-consciousness, that immediately makes her feel like a person more than a character. She talks of how she has thought a lot about how the advice she has given to people around her before may have reinforced social expectations. She mentions importantly that these tools to take apart relationships may not fit some people, and that is ok. And of course, her giddiness about Sorawo's love life is a wonderful mirror of the invested readers'.
The cherry on top is probably this: none of her talk sounds preachy or contrived. This happens for several reasons: the idea of a love impossible to describe through conventional forms echoes the way Otherside horrors function, joining queer love and horror as two sides of the same thematic coin in a satisfying resonance; this simply feels like some natural way of giving food for thought for Sorawo; and finally, Benimori and Sorawo are cultural anthropology students. Benimori gives Sorawo these tools while grounding them in her student background, both in quoting one of their teachers and making anthropology jokes. It simply makes perfect sense for her to have this perspective on relationships, all the more with her initial interest in the matter.
And so, suddenly with this conversation, we are not really reading a romance novel anymore. We are reading characters pondering about relationships in ways that feel particularly real. And by File 26, we are reading eventually two people discussing their relationship, no preexisting label attached.
As Benimori says, because this may be her most important piece of advice among a plethora of outstanding one: "There may not even be a difference between friends and lovers. Personally, I think you should start by thinking about what precisely you want things to be like between the two of you. What will you accept, and where will you draw lines? Then talk it over together."
Natsumi and Kozakura
Two other long conversations await Sorawo before File 26 (apart from a bait to make us think we may get one with Runa. Maybe next volume.).
The first is with Natsumi.
Perhaps the most important aspect of that conversation is the fact that Natsumi explicitly uses the word "lesbian". This had not happened before, and it has two important effects on the story.
The first is that it reinforces even more how the sapphic relationships of the series evolve in a specific, present-day context. It feels particularly important to read here, as a lot of current LGBTQ+ fictions avoid explicit words for various reasons, including a fear of censorship and the will to not ground the fiction's space into something with historical weight, something that is often controversial within the community.
The second effect is the other side of the same coin: by making the socially grounded label of "lesbian" enter the fiction, the narrative opens in some way a broader discussion on labels, and the social significance they may carry. It allows the possibility for Sorawo to distance herself from them, because of her own background and her general unwillingness to put what she feels into properly defined or commonly understood words. I do not know how this will fare regarding the term "lesbian" in future volumes, and interpolate mostly from Sorawo's relationship to the word "lovers" later in this one; but all this feels, in some way, like an advocacy for people to self-determine first and foremost - like a statement that they know themselves best, and that pushing words on them without them reclaiming these may feel like a simplification of a more complex, messy reality.
In a similar way, Natsumi tries hard to define Sorawo in relationship to Toriko, as "Toriko's woman". This is a vision of a relationship that is completely at odds with Sorawo's, however blurry that still is. Sorawo, then, tells her a sentence that will echo later in File 26: "Don't just decide things for me.".
Overall, as far as love advice goes, Natsumi is... biased. There is something satisfying to finally having details on her relationship with Akari, which has been intradiagetically debated before, and it fits within the way the series addresses more and more its romantic readings head-on. However, it is quickly obvious that Natsumi's suggestions are too straightforward and simple for Sorawo, and twisted by the fact that she is entangled in a situation that makes her relate to Toriko only.
The conversation still gets some interesting elements out of her, though. She mentions aromanticism and asexuality once again, for instance, which are yet to fully infuse as topics, but will indirectly inform Sorawo's questions about herself in the second half of the volume. She notably criticizes Sorawo about how unfair postponing indefinitely an answer would be to Toriko, and puts into perspective the courage and vulnerability Toriko has shown by confessing (a vulnerability we will see more of in File 26). She makes apparent Sorawo's jealousy about Toriko possibly building a romantic relationship with someone else and/or drifting away from her.
However, she only offers Sorawo two options: dating Toriko or rejecting her.
Being faced with only these two choices again when talking to Kozakura is what starts to really make Sorawo snap.
Kozakura has the most pragmatic vision about this: she just want the two big children she watches over to have a relationship she can grasp. She is adamant about the sociological aspect of relationships - about how the limited array of defined relationship packages and shape are made for people around to know what to expect. This is exactly what Sorawo doesn't want to hear, and it finally clicks perfectly with her clear rejection of common social structures, as already hinted at most notably in volume 7.
When Sorawo goes back from Kozakura's, she finally puts some words on her thoughts: the shape she does want their relationship to have is the one they have always had. Accomplices. The rest feels extraneous, weakening of something that was in its initial form already the closest relationship in the world to her.
She also digs out her main need embodied in that name: sharing a secret no one else can know, forming an unbreakable relationship as long as the secret is kept. Later, she will dig out one more: having a relationship that feels unique, in its name and form; something that is purposefully unconventional.
This sheds some particularly revealing light on her attempts to keep the statu quo until then: she truly never wanted her dynamic with Toriko to change. It was easy to get swept up in all the previously misleading romantic climax that had been set up, but Sorawo never wanted anything else than what they already had.
So, how can we interpret all the things that made us think she did, and that she was hiding that from herself? Have we, too, been deciding things for her?
This is a particularly, purposefully dissonant part of the book. It is obvious how Sorawo cares about Toriko, in her own way - how she misses her trusty partner, that night in the Mayoiga in File 25, for instance. It is also obvious that Sorawo's vision, however clear it has started to become, is going to crash against Toriko's more and more apparent want for romantic and sexual stuff. And how much leeway Sorawo actually has around all that has become oddly blurry, now.
We have yet to reach the exact turning point, but amatonormativity - the normative pressure of the expectations that are traditionally considered part of romantic relationships, and the way this package is usually seen as the closest kind of relationship there is - is already thoroughly rejected both by the narrative and by Sorawo herself at this point. We have started to truly go off rails from the romantic expectations we had from before, and from romance novels in general.
The exact repercussions are still up in the air, but it is already clear that the upcoming confrontation that awaits Sorawo and Toriko has no script anymore... at least on Sorawo's side. On Toriko's, we still don't know yet - but we will soon.
In any case, Sorawo now has to face the situation herself. No: they have to face it together.
With her newfound resolve at the end of File 25, it is fascinating to look back on File 1 or the anime and see, feel, how different a person Sorawo is now. Sorawo has gained in confidence, and in spite of her inner thoughts, in capability to take steps toward Toriko while standing her own ground. With this last chapter, she builds up the courage, and just as she would the Otherside, she enters Toriko's territory.
File 26, part 1: I want you to learn about me too
I cannot help but think that the beginning of File 26 tries to play with our expectations one last time, to deceptively feed into a worn-out pattern.
It may have been on me, but so many elements before volume 8 have been converging toward a "realization" on Sorawo's end, and have been framing Sorawo's inner monologues as romantic/sexual attraction, that in spite of everything I wrote before I was still half-expecting Toriko to truly be missing with this last chapter. The title "Accomplices No More", and the way the setup echoes back to File 4, looping back to Toriko's place, felt like one last hypothetical narrative played straight (ha!): Toriko would disappear, or transform; Sorawo would find her, help her, and would name her repressed feelings along the way; and this would circumvent any kind of in-depth dialogue between the leads. After all, how many romance novels do such a thing?
All the conversations before would have been just that: conversations. Idle curiosities to brush a bigger painting of the variety of relationships.
Luckily, absolutely none of this happens.
Instead, Toriko is here. And the conversation they need to have unfolds. Even better: there is not a single Otherside interference to wreck it; nothing to derail the protagonists from having it. Both of them want it; both of them sorely need it; and the narrative gives them in full the roughly 80 pages they need to do so.
This is incredible. This is unseen. I cannot praise this enough.
A proper analysis of File 26 would probably require quoting all of it and annotating each line. I will try not to do that for length and readability reasons (which are already severely damaged, I'm afraid), and will instead proceed through broad themes of that long conversation.
The first theme, explored at various point of the File, is Toriko's vulnerability; and notably her difficulty in letting Sorawo - in letting anyone - enter her house. This is a surprise: we have never seen her like this, because Sorawo has never shown enough interest before to truly enter Toriko's life and dig into her past and traumas. Even then, Sorawo is not entirely interested in past Toriko, as she herself points out; but it is a significant step toward her. This is fundamental to the cultural exchange of sorts that will take place in the rest of the File. It could not have happened earlier, as already highlighted by Kozakura who reproached Sorawo of "not engaging in first contact properly", because Sorawo made proper efforts to meet Toriko where she stands.
But now, Sorawo does, at least to some extent.
Toriko letting Sorawo in is both physical and metaphorical. It is litteral consent. It is, for once, not being on the offensive. As she says "I want you to learn about me too", and as she tells Sorawo of various heavy topics in the next few hours and dozen pages, Toriko finally becomes not just that pretty, goofy, pushy love interest; but the person beneath that layer, that had been hinted at until then - with all her flaws, her traumas, her fears and her wants laid bare.
Toriko cares.
The extent of this truly surprised me on my first read. She had been pushing Sorawo's boundaries and kissing her without consent in ways that were low-key problematic and not really acknowledged by the narrative; and I had been wary of this encounter as a consequence. The topic is still a bit rough around the edges even in some places of File 26, but it is still much more apparent that Toriko cares. Sure, she rushes into things and could do better; but now, this feels more like genuine character flaws than narrative blind spot.
Toriko cares. She lends Sorawo clothes the latter will feel comfortable in. She tries to make sure, even if long after the fact, that the kisses she initiated were consensual. She studies to try and understand Sorawo's past, or what she grasps of it, better.
Sorawo cares, too, in spite of their difference in intensity. She worries about Toriko. She wants to be more proactive and make her happy. She is afraid of hurting her, and has been for some time now.
But what may be the most significant is that it is the first time we truly see that Toriko is afraid too.
Toriko is scared in ways she's never shown. She's scared of triggering Sorawo inadvertently. She's scared of asking about Sorawo's past. She's vulnerable when talking about her Mom's job. When showing her graveyard home. Even when expressing her sexual needs.
She's never been this close to anyone.
This utter vulnerability, this mutual care, this reactualization of how we perceive Toriko - this is finally a situation where the two of them can build something together that may fit them both. A bridge. An interface.
File 26, part 2: A special kind of love
It is precisely Toriko's care that makes Sorawo conscientize her loving feelings toward her.
This is a fascinating moment, because although it may feel close to that on a first approximation, it is not the expected sudden "click" that Sorawo loves Toriko in a romantic way. It is instead a simple yet profound realization that, yes, Sorawo loves Toriko. This word fits in its own way to describe her feelings - which have coalesced into a certainty, into an enormous emotion that embodies the importance of Toriko in Sorawo's world.
But Sorawo never qualifies this of romantic love. Instead, she descibes it as "a special kind of love", and she reiterates several times how indifferent she is to romance or romantic elements - how she clearly places these below "accomplices". Romantic love is all too common, uninteresting, compared to the strongest relationship in the world.
Sorawo also says some extremely revealing sentences regarding the way Toriko melts when she expresses her love, notably through any kind of light physical affection: "Does romance do this to everyone?", and then: "I felt left behind. It wasn't like that for me...".
And all this? It matters immensely.
Toriko is, to some extent, puzzled; a puzzlement that mirrors the readers' cognitive dissonance between volumes of a priori gay-coded thoughts from Sorawo, and her statements. Indeed, Toriko has read Sorawo as romantically attracted to her (sexually, too; we will come back to that) right from their first encounter, as always noticing the same clues as the readership did. And now, suddenly seeing Sorawo being adamant that no, this is misreading her, is eye-opening. By interpreting and naming her feelings in her stead all this time, we have been reducing her agency. Even when being able to access her thoughts, we have seen Sorawo from the outside in some sense - reading romantic and sexual attraction in what may have been only, or mostly, aesthetic attraction instead. We have been fooled by the lens of romance and all the misleading expectations set up along the way.
And so, this experience - this complete turnaround in understanding Sorawo, which will only get starker as we talk about sexual attraction - is the precise reason I am writing this essay. I have never read other book series that have always been presented as romance novels, and that have played the part for so long, until the protagonist, after enough growth and understanding of her own self, is able to muster enough courage to look us (and Toriko) dead in the eye, and say this: "I do not want to be 'lovers'."
File 26, part 3: Don't try to force something I'm not aware of onto me
This statement of Sorawo is part of a wider reflection on words, on labels, and on naming her relationship with Toriko. As the theme reappears later and quite literally closes the book, we will postpone that topic to a later part.
Until then, we need to talk about the elephant in the room: sex.
The wonderful way in which sex is suddenly treated in this File as a topic like any other echoes the way so many other things before have been. It had definitely been hinted at before - with Toriko's attraction in File 14, first (and one misunderstanding about "private activity in bed", in the same File, that Sorawo misses completely); but also the entire File 16 built around the never-exactly-stated sexual tension of the love hotel. It had also been mentioned a few times in volume 8 by other characters, and in Sorawo's understanding of the implications of the date on May 14th and of Toriko's birthday planning, too. There is this fear within her, notably when she remembers Toriko's words to Satsuki ("If I don't want to touch you, [...] then... We're through, right?"), that evokes her general anxiety about physical intimacy.
But these were half-mentions, on which the text didn't dwell. No: on which Sorawo didn't dwell. Couldn't dwell.
Sex has always been a very real topic for the other characters. And now, it is unavoidably A Topic throughout half a volume. It is the main knot of the latest part of the story, and addressed head-on through a long talk. And then it is absolutely explicit once depicted. All this, (almost?) without ever being painted in a way that feels like fanservice. It simply exists.
There is something striking to this, as always, just like the way the narrative suddenly grounded sapphic relationships or aroace elements as very real things that were always there, and that Sorawo simply wasn't aware of or receptive to. It is discovering that yes, the author has leeway to talk about these topics directly, is very much aware of their existence, and will not shy away from them. And of course, it is striking in its own specific way regarding sex: I didn't know what would be allowed in a light novel, and how ok Miyazawa would be with actually facing that topic.
As it turns out, all this is absolutely possible. And he makes it bloom into the narrative in the most natural and realistic way. It is never gratuitous; it is a relationship element they have to discuss and unpack among others.
Well, it does hit us like a freight train at first, to be honest. Which is exactly the point: just like before, it suddenly shatters what we had been led to accept and expect of the potentialities of the story, seen through Sorawo's eyes.
It is not immediately obvious to her, but it is to us as soon as Sorawo sees the first book on Toriko's table: the latter truly believes Sorawo has sex trauma, and also she really wants to have sex.
There is a lot that is beautifully interwoven here.
There is Toriko's care, of course, that we mentioned earlier - blended into her fear of asking directly about Sorawo's past (and her feeling it may not lead anywhere as Sorawo always dodges the topic anyway). There is something incredibly important in seeing Toriko think Sorawo may both be sexually attracted to her, and have a lot of hang-ups about sex at the same time; and to see her accepting of that, and trying to help in her own way.
There is Toriko's overall interest in sex, and the way she tries very hard, very realistically, to not be too awkward about it.
There is also a striking realness to her suspecting Sorawo suffered CSA. Reading this suddenly jolted my memory, and it made me remember something: the first time I heard about Sorawo's backstory, I worried the Red Person might be a stand-in for exactly that. As it became more and more prominently some eldritch horror and a narrative tool for some other topics, I forgot about that reading of it entirely; but seeing Toriko having the exact same reaction makes perfect sense with the information she had, and once again elevates her to someone with the same level of guesses as the readers.
And finally, there is that broader theme that Toriko may be overreading Sorawo. Just like us.
Sure, Sorawo's past is traumatic. Her extremely realistic denial of that trauma, along with her having developped dissociation (File 11) and derealization (File 22, when she talks about her doppelganger), and brushing all that off without understanding Toriko's worry about it, is a running theme of the series. But seeing Toriko confront this exact premise we had, that Sorawo consequently lacked self-awareness regarding feelings of her that were painfully obvious, and being retorted "Don't try to force something I'm not aware of onto me"... is a direct punch to the expectations the narrative had carefully maintained until then.
This turnaround was touched upon in the previous part of this essay already, but I need to come back to it because the sexual aspect of it has its own layers.
The first time Sorawo is directly asked about sexual attraction by Benimori, she does categorize her thoughts regarding Toriko as such. And so, as File 26 starts, Toriko's reading as her being sexually repressed makes sense. Yet the more her conversation with Toriko goes, the less clear this seems: Sorawo had said she was unable to talk about sex out of lack of ever doing so, but at some point it becomes evident that she is not merely intimidated - she is also simply uninterested.
She plainly states this disinterest herself. She objects to Toriko's interpretation of her numerous glances at her. She carefully examines her own reactions to Toriko kissing her, and realizes she doesn't dislike this, but that is all. She even second-guesses her own thoughts, past and present, and ends up being categorical that they are nonsexual. That she doesn't particularly want this intimacy to be sexual; that she doesn't "get into that sort of mood". And it contrasts oh so much with Toriko's obvious interest in it.
This is fascinating. There is so much realness in this.
As Sorawo stands by all this, it enables us to reframe a lot of her thoughts into something different. Rereading for instance her descriptions of Toriko naked in File 14 as "a work of art" with fresh eyes, this is neither over-the-top yuri or repressed gayness anymore: it is aesthetic attraction. It makes a lot of sense in hindsight. And this shift in perspective, rid of the expectations that influenced our perception before, is brilliant.
Of course, there are several twists and turns to this whole topic. There is still Sorawo's gut answer to Benimori; or how her general embarrassment and panic around sex as a topic could play into this, even if a little. There is how, when faced with Toriko's genuine bundle of romantic and sexual attraction directed at her, both awkwardly sat on Toriko's bed, she welcomes it and ends up reframing her "I don't dislike this" into some interest, but with a blatant difference in intensity. And of course, there is her unexpected find of a turn-on of hers related to Toriko all of a sudden.
One could probably argue about the details, and put some specific label of the aroace spectrum on her. But what should be the main focus here, I think, is that she clearly, strongly is on that spectrum. I would describe her as at least very grayaroace myself; but it depends on how you interpret those terms, and what you want to convey with them, and there are so many discussions to have on this topic. I feel like trying to put a precise label on her, though it gives a way to provide some broad insight about her character to other readers, may also simplify her, and misses the point of letting her describe and unpack her own complexity first (to the extent where you can do that with a fictional character). Of course, at the same time, it isn't trite at all to acknowledge that she really isn't alloromantic or allosexual - there is strength and joy to find in that representation. But with this degree of nuance, it feels more like something you should witness than something you should try to describe in a few words.
What I mean, in the end, is that it is momentous first and foremost to see Sorawo understand herself more. To witness her question her needs, question her wants, and form all these thoughts about herself - and as Benimori says, figure out what she accepts, and where she draws lines. To see her analyze her own sensations as she feels them ( (see her "Did I just look at Toriko in a pervy way?" or "Oh, so I don't hate this. Seriously? But I'm still not that aroused. Is that okay?"). There is something so real and, at least to me, incredibly relatable to these self-questions, blurry as the answer can sometimes be.
And it is ok for it to be blurry. Maybe this is the most important thing to get out of the narrative.
It is ok for these feelings to be blurry, and changing, and sometimes impossible to categorize into clearly defined boxes without losing something in the process.
File 26, part 4: Not settling for something easy to understand
No matter how you name it, what Sorawo wants to build as a relationship is explicitly outside of anything socially common. It's the first time I see a character in fiction express this directly their will to not "settle for something easy to understand", and it is incredible to see: it shatters our 7-volume long preconception that this was, in some sense at least, a slow burn.
Sorawo herself never lived in a romance novel.
She is afraid, of course, of talking to Toriko about this dissatisfaction. She has been trying for so long not to face the difficult truth that whatever that was going on between them was not working anymore - neither as it used to and she would have wanted it, nor in this push-and-pull situation of the previous volumes. And she is still figuring out what she can accept and what she cannot.
But as it turns out, becoming lovers would not have worked, and this has become clear even to Toriko. This revelation that the latter went through during volume 6, and that we suddenly discover in this conversation, is salutary: after all, we had clearly been building up this image of Toriko as being extremely attached to the "romance package deal", as Benimori phrases it. Seeing Toriko actually conscientize how not herself Sorawo would be if she were to accept such a relationship, and rewriting her own expectations because she loves her as she is, is absolutely incredible to witness. Because then, Toriko has this exact realization that "lovers" is a term she uses to get her point across - feeding into the larger reflection on how putting things into commonly-understood words can be useful and simplifying at the same time - but not the be-all end-all of their relationship. To the extent of what her own needs allow, she wants to accomodate Sorawo, and for the latter to be the person she is.
And all this goes a long way toward making their relationship work.
I lack words to express how important it is to see the two leads search for a relationship name only for themselves. Something to crystallize their bond in a way that is alien to anyone else, unexplainable, impossible to describe from the outside without losing something. This echoes, all at the same time, the way the Otherside functions, the way eldritch horrors are depicted, intrinsically queer/marginalized relationships, the notion of communication as finding an interface or a common channel, the sex and overall experience of physical intimacy the leads just had, and the importance of endogenous descriptions and understanding as we witnessed with Sorawo shaking off the expectations set on her, and-- I don't have words anymore. Just like a nue, there are so many themes here that merge into one single idea that it is dizzying.
Seeing Sorawo and Toriko encapsulate all this within the word "nue" feels both like a cute kanji quirk and something truly special.
I suspect Miyazawa to have planned this trick right from the very beginning, when naming the two characters, which makes it feel all the more like this volume finally reaches what the story wanted to tell. I cannot help but wonder how much of these thoughts on relationships are drawn from his personal life and/or own anthropology courses; and I can only marvel at how his (sometimes memetically) famous interview "Yuri Made Me Human" foretells so many of the elements one can find deeply embedded into Otherside Picnic, and particularly this eighth volume.
Ultimately, this volume addresses clearly that the protagonists are not, cannot be and will not be in a traditional romantic relationship. And more impressively still, the way it does that, the awkward and vulnerable and detailed way it does it, shows how this is something not detached from reality at all - it is, instead, completely available to the readers. It finds echoes in a lot of my own close relationships, and it may in yours, too.
It may simply show you that this is possible.
File 26, closure
There is so much more I could and want to write about Otherside Picnic, particularly with this specific File. It is the climax of so many themes at the same time that it is difficult to pick one without all of them coming together, and so I am stopping here before that happens more than it already did. It has, notably, a depiction of sex that is particularly realistic and surrealist at the same time. It is beautiful in many ways, and I will definitely come back to it at some point.
For now, it is probably enough to say that seeing the protagonists literally peeling away each other's layers in the end feels absurdly fitting to this story's structure. After so many volumes of intricate (de)construction, we finally get to the characters' core, as they accept each other with all their fear of hurting each other, their needs, their wants and their traumas.
What may deserve a last minute honorable mention in the general context of romance novels, is the way the ending hits us with an incredible moment that is both pleasurable and literally mind-bending for the two protagonists; and yet, Sorawo is happy about it, sure, but... that's it. Sentences like "two who were one" have a nasty tendency to frame sex as the pinnacle of something. Here, this sentence happened quite literally, and is definitely a narrative acme; but having Sorawo explicitly be "not that particular about it", while recognizing how life-affirming it has been to Toriko, feels... impressively right. Sorawo stays true to herself, and the narration reiterates the legitimacy of both her general disinterest and Toriko's need for sex without opposing them or downplaying any of them, where other stories could have tripped over that.
The glee that inhabits Sorawo in the end is due precisely to that exhilarating feeling that her relationship with Toriko has finally found a form that suits them both - some interface that doesn't require any of them to compromise herself. That glee carries over to the ending of the novel in a strikingly poetic way, and it is truly contagious.
File 26, overall, borrows what could be seen as classic "relationship canonization" elements, and yet it does its best to be clear that this is not a "they are together" moment in the traditional sense, and that it is not something we should expect.
Instead, asking "are they together in the end?" feels like a false dichotomy; something that can only be answered by another question: "what do you mean by 'together'?".
And I think that's beautiful.
Conclusion
A general fascinating feature of Otherside Picnic is how it repeatedly broadens its scope and topics, sometimes with emphasis and sometimes through seemingly innocuous sentences, in ways that shatter the boundaries it had previously seemed to set for itself.
Romance-wise in particular, it feels like the series is purposefully built as a trap: it cleverly uses both its protagonist's characterization and the usual amatonormativity of yuri and romance novels to make us project expectations onto Sorawo and the narrative. On many occasions throughout its course, it subverts and upends these expectations, and makes us question the apparent limits of what these genres can tell.
With volume 8 particularly, it addresses explicitly how these projections are divorced from reality, as both Toriko and Sorawo dig into the latter's emotions and wants.
Throughout most of the books, it is easy to read Sorawo as saying "we're accomplices" instead of """acknowledging""" the leads are girlfriends/lovers. But as it grows, the story acknowledges, time and again, sapphic couples as something real, something existing in society at large and facing its own set of heteronormative pressure and assumptions. By doing so, it grounds more and more its romance elements, instead of making them an ethereal love that dares not speak its name. Even more impressively, it takes another step back on that notion by framing romantic and sexual relationships, and overall notions on being a couple, as its own set of expected norms. By confronting this complexity head-on, Otherside Picnic allows Sorawo to make her own decisions and forge her own path, purposefully rejecting these norms - without ever criticizing relationship needs that may fit within them, but targeting very clearly the pressure to uphold them.
A lot of relationship depictions in yuri at large have some ambiguity that leads people to read what they want into them. This may create enthusiastic prolific readings, but it may also foster disappointment when missing something "canon" and clear, particularly for a sapphic audience in need of being seen. The ever-possible, sometimes blurry notion of "bait", and the broader ethereal brush-off of "it's just like that between girls", thus often push fans into holding some "canonization standard" of clear romantic elements - which may still be absurdly officially denied by rights holders!. That struggle about being unequivocally represented also marginalizes, paradoxically, a broader spectrum of queer relationships.
And so, how do you write something where traditional romance is not exactly the story you want to tell, without betraying your audience's hopes? Otherside Picnic, by addressing its romantic and sexual tension and reading directly (instead of leaving it hanging as an ever-unreached possibility), leaves the door open for the characters to purposefully state that this is not what they want. It carves a one-of-a-kind story where the leads have all the room they need to explore and stand by relationship nuances - and I can't wait to see how it keeps unfolding as the two protagonists try to talk about it with the rest of the cast.
Admittedly, this is not entirely unheard of in the general landscape of LGBT+ fiction. Still, it is done with a particular flair here, with seven books of purposeful setup that make the payoff shine even more. Furthermore, the result has LGBT+ - notably lesbian, aromantic and asexual - elements; but it is also profoundly queer fiction in a literal sense.
Indeed, by the end, its themes all coalesce into a single statement, a single entity: a relationship that is purposefully, unapologetically inaccessible to outside expectations, description and understanding.
And that is something I have almost never seen, done in ways so detailed that I can only hope it paves the way for more.