Still Enjoying Manga

Title: 相方システム Aikata System
Creator: 袴田めら Hakamada Mera

This is set in an all girls' high school which uses the titular aikata (partner) system. At the start of each year the school has the pupils do a questionnaire and pairs them up. The series has a subtitle of "destined girl the academy chose," which makes it sound like the school is doing romantic matchmaking, but the school just intends it as a form of buddy system.

Normally the partners are girls in the same school year, but this story is about 2 pairs where a 1st year has been paired with a 2nd year. Those 2nd years, Ibuki and Yuka, were previously a pair. There's a good reason they're not paired this year, but now they're each going to cause heartbreak for their new partners, Nao and Kairo.

Saigo no Seifuku was about residents of a dorm of a girls' school. But there were 2 other recurring characters, Asagi and Tama, and they go to an aquarium in a chapter titled Anata no Iro (Your Color).

Title: 最後の制服 Saigo no Seifuku
Creator: 袴田めら Hakamada Mera
Books: 3 volumes, Jun 2005 - Dec 2006, Manga Time Kirara Comics, Houbunsha
Re-published: 2 volumes, Apr 2011, Manga Time KR Tsubomi series, Houbunsha
It was published in English by Seven Seas as The Last Uniform but they didn't finish it

This was a love comedy series about a dorm at an all girls' high school. It started in 2004, when the popularity of Maria-sama ga Miteru had given publishers the impetus to start trying to target yuri fans as an audience. So it was part of the commercial (as opposed to doujin) yuri genre taking shape as the recognizable presence that continues now.

It doesn't hold up, in fact it wasn't a high tier work even in its day, but I re-read it recently because there happens to be a chapter where 2 girls go to an aquarium and I realized I couldn't remember what role those characters had in the story. It seemed worth a separate post about the manga itself.

I guess because the previous issue of Galette announced this as being the last chapter, the next chapter couldn't simply be chapter 21?

Aikata System is a series by Hakamada Mera that was original running for label Lilie comics, but that label died with Aikata System unfinished at chapter 17. So the series got revived in crowdfunded yuri magazine Galette, starting over from chapter 1, and contributing quite a large portion of the page count of some Galette issues. Once it got to the new chapters, there's a literally random, unpleasant incident that has dominated the conclusion to the story. It's got so little to do with what the story had been about that it makes me suspect Hakamada just wanted to be done with the series. But she hasn't quite managed to get it done yet.