there's only one other guy talking about the manga on Cohost. it's mostly negative, talking about how trash it is. they're not wrong, but I don't think they gave it enough credit.

when you read gender manga you usually prepare for the worst - fetishization, internalised homophobia+transphobic, making fun of people who don't pass, fatshaming, etc. you wouldn't trust the author to actually advocate for trans rights. ​this is the key difference between Tensei Pandemic and everything else. Tensei Pandemic is proud to be a LGBTQ manga, and it's super up-front about it.

don't get me wrong, Tensei Pandemic is still ecchi trash. everyone gets naked nearly every chapter. if you're looking for any serious deep dive into gender, this is Not It. BUT, the combination of sexualisation and the pride of being trans and yuri reminds me of... horny internet transbians. if that sounds like you, you'll definitely like this.

if you are looking for any serious deep dive into gender, maybe check out The Choice Is His & Hers? it surprised me by how serious it takes TS issues. the scans are pretty slow tho.

the trash / annoying troupes that still remain

• forcefem
  • the readers are here for the transfem, you have to give them the transfem. the choice is determined from the very beginning. anything else will be betraying the audience, just like how coming out in real life is a betrayal of everyone who has ever known you. on an semi-related note, Tatsuki Fujimoto's trans characters are so compelling for the very same reason. I think I've written a post about it somewhere.
• transmasc "erasure"
  • I mean, there are transmasc/ftm characters, but they're written like transfems. ​one of them is an analogy for real life trans women. the other one acts like nothing has changed and dresses fem in front of their family (I think it's great that transmasc femboys got represented, but let's be real, this isn't the intention).
• intersex erasure
  • to be fair i have never seen a single ts manga mention the concept of intersex at all. I just wanted a place to mention this observation.
  • which is super weird. it's hyper relevant. like, ​what if you get stuck halfway? what if it fails? why has no none handled that yet?

what makes it different?

• yuri
  • ts trash are usually painfully heterosexual
    • scenario A
      • "b-but we're both guys"
      • "it's fine, you look like a girl, and I'm a man, therefore making it heterosexual and fine™️"
    • scenario B
      • "b-but we're both girls"
      • "actually, I'm an ex guy. therefore making it heterosexual and fine™️"
    • watching queer people be in denial is entertaining, but turns into sad when it's never resolved. the entire genre is filled with unresolved internalised homophobia.
  • Tensei Pandemic is 100% a yuri manga, and it's very upfront about it
• TODO it's hard to continue cause it's been a while since I read the manga. i just wanted to post this before Cohost ends. I may or may not finish it in the future on my blog ™️.

the scans

there are like, 3 groups scanning it, so the quality fluctuates

• the first group
  • you'll sometimes see some awkward sentences
• Kurisu took over in the middle. shoutout to her.
• the last couple of chapters are scanlated because someone had to. meaning: it's not good

conclusion

Maybe this is what it's like to be an Onimai defender going "hey this trash is actually good i swear".

that reminds me of a review I wrote based on Onimai's first episode, that I intent to post on Cohost but never finished. ARRRRGGGHHHHH.

some notes on the ending (spoilers obviously)

Arena of Valor is the worst idea ever. imagine taking one of the most iconic games in china, and then removing everything iconic about it. what's the point? do they think the rest of the world hates Asian characters or something?

when i first downloaded it i though "it's fine, they just turned them white and gave new character designs, right...?"

"they're still using Hou Yi as the tutorial character? neat-"

"what the fuck"

to even get speeds matching chatgpt during peak hours, my (admittedly underpowered) laptop has to run ~7b models... quantized to like, 4 bits¹. AND gpt-3.5-turbo is clearly much bigger than 7b.

AND now gpt-4o is available to free users (albiet with a usage limit).

i highly doubt what they earn is enough to cover all of that. i remember chatgpt's free plan used to be temporary thing. they probably decided the optimum way to grow is to be unsustainable, so they kept it free in order to stay relevant.

and it has a ripple effect too. the standards for free LLM services has been significantly raised. sorry to "back in my day", but back in MY day before techbros discovered LLMs, all we have is AI Dungeon's gpt-2 based model (1.5b)².

i don't understand big tech.

1. tbh the main limitation is my vram. the layers have to be split ~50/50 between ram+cpu and vram+gpu.

2. you could run gpt-neox or gpt-j based models through KoboldAI on google colab, but i'm referring to what companies has to offer.

just checked again and they made even more Plus features free:

• uploading csv/json files
• running python code
• "custom GPTs"

things that still require Plus:

• creating "custom GPTs"
• access to DALL-E for image generation stuff
• GPT-4

tangents on "custom GPTs"

• it's unfortunately yet another case of companies taking an actual term with definitions and making a new marketing term around it.

• most of them always makes me laugh. their system prompt is prolly smth like "write a python script that connects to our company's api". it's so goofy.