Yuma and Hotaru
NTR: Netsuzou Trap is a yuri shoujo manga series by Kodama Naoko. The story centers around two high school girls named Yuma Okazaki, and Hotaru Mizushina. Yuma and Hotaru have been best friends since childhood; Yuma would protect Hotaru from bullies, and made it her job to look after her. Now the two are second year high school students, and Hotaru is anything but innocent. Yuma gets her first boyfriend but is nervous about it, so a more experienced Hotaru suggests a "dress rehearsal" to help her out. The helping out later on leads to a deep kiss with Hotaru, who says that Yuma now knows how to kiss a guy. This leaves her thinking though about how much better this kiss was then the one she had shared with her boyfriend. As time goes on, Yuma worries that her boyfriend will find out what is going on between her and Hotaru, and cannot explain these "strange" feelings she has when she is with her.
The series started in November 2014, and appears as an ongoing serial in the monthly manga magazine Comic Yuri-Hime. An anime television series adaptation by Creators in Pack aired in Summer 2017 (with 10-minute episodes) and was simulcast with subtitles by Crunchyroll. Outside of Japan, the series is published in North America by Seven Seas Entertainment.
In 2017, the series received a male-centric spinoff in Gateau, titled Takeda and Fujiwara. This spinoff follows the main series girls' boyfriends with some Homoerotic Subtext here and there.
Tropes presented in the work include:
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: When asked why she is dating a Jerkass like Fujiwara, Hotaru gives an answer that amounts to “I’m a bad girl so I want to be with a bad boy”. It’s Metaphorically True. Hotaru and Fujiwara aren’t really dating, they made a deal to “fulfill each other's needs” while pretending to be dating so they won’t be bothered by their many admirers anymore. If Fujiwara was nicer he probably wouldn’t agree with it.
- Amicable Exes: At least in the anime, Yuma and Takeda. When their "break" from their relationship becomes permanent, Takeda remains on speaking terms with Yuma, and helps her work things out with Hotaru.
- Armored Closet Gay: Yuma refuses to admit that she finds Hotaru more attractive than Takeda. Heck, even after admitting she was in love with Hotaru, she slapped both Fujiwara and Hotaru for calling her a lesbian.
- The anime doesn't do this, as Yuma more or less accepts that she's a lesbian by the end of the show.
- Bait-and-Switch Lesbians: Deconstructed with Yuma’s characterization early in the manga. Despite her constant make out sessions with Hotaru, she manages to convince herself that she isn’t cheating on her boyfriend because “it doesn’t count if it’s between two girls” and that her relationship with Hotaru will go back to normal once she convinces her to stop the sexual harassment. After reality slaps her face a couple of times she is forced to admit that yes, she has been cheating and no, she can’t press a reset button in her relationship with Hotaru after everything that happened.
- Childhood Friend Romance: Yuma and Hotaru, although their relationship is seriously complicated.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Yuma is a subtle version, but she hates all of Hotaru's boyfriends and any thought that the two may be drifting apart causes her to go to drastic measures to fix it.
- Cuckold: Yuma and Hotaru both have boyfriends, but it pretty clear that both are more attracted to each other than their boyfriends. In fact, NTR is internet slang for Netorare which is basically the Japanese word for Cuckold.
- Domestic Abuser: Fujiwara, who is heavily implied to abuse Hotaru both physically and mentally. He is also willing to passive-aggressively attack both Yuma and Takeda.
- Fanservice: The anime is filled with lingering shots of decolletage, thighs (with and without Zettai Ryouiki) and lingering kisses between Yuma and Hotaru.
- Gayngst: Yuma gets a bit of this after coming into terms with the fact that she is in love with Hotaru, but gets over it surprisingly fast for someone who spend so much time in denial over her own sexuality. Mostly averted in the anime due to the Gecko Ending, although Yuma does express some insecurity about how a relationship between two girls might be received.
- Gay Romantic Phase: Like Bait-and-Switch Lesbians, this is deconstructed, for similar reasons. In a nutshell, Yuma's forced to realize that her "practice" with Hotaru (similar to how girls view such friendships as practice for having a boyfriend) ended up becoming serious.
- Gecko Ending: The anime is a pretty faithful adaptation of the manga until episode 10. After that it drifts into an original route so that it can have a closed ending despite the source material not being finished yet.
- Hypocrite: Yuma is a pretty big one - she constantly complains that Hotaru keeps stuff from her or won't be truthful, despite the fact that Yuma also tends not to tell people the truth. She calls Fujiwara out on cheating and gets incredibly upset when she finds out Hotaru was still going out with him, despite the fact that her only reason that she's not cheating is because she refuses to admit she and Hotaru have a real relationship.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Fujiwara may be the biggest jerk around, but he wasn't wrong when he said that Yuma doesn't have any right to call him out for cheating on Hotaru when she is doing the same thing to Takeda. Granted, Yuma was in denial about the cheating while Fujiwara is very much aware of the consequences of his actions, but that doesn't change the fact that what she did to her boyfriend wasn't nice.
- Last-Name Basis: Both the guys are almost exclusively referred to by their last names, including by their girlfriends.
- Nice Guy: Takeda is, for the most part, a kind and understanding person who accepts that his girlfriend may have some hang-ups.
- Oblivious to Love: Yuma could be in the running for densest character in all of anime; she not only doesn't realize Hotaru is in love with her, she doesn't even realize her own feelings.
- Parental Abandonment: Hotaru's mother passed away when she was little, and her father remarried another woman, leaving Hotaru alone for most of her childhood, making her feel like she was a burden. That mindset carried on to her future relationship with Yuma, driving nearly the entire drama of their relationship.
- Poor Communication Kills: The vast majority of the manga's drama comes from neither Hotaru or Yuma actually saying what they feel and why.
- In a later chapter, Yuma decides, on her own, that she and Hotaru are now dating. Her way of telling Hotaru this is to tell her she wants to continue "practicing" (which basically equates to kissing and further).
- Pun-Based Title: NTR officially stands for Netsuzou Trap, a mix of Japanese and Gratuitous English that translates to “Fabricated Trap”. It’s also the abbreviation for Netorare, the Japanese equivalent for Cuckold. Either one describes the plot of the manga pretty well.
- Sliding Scale of Plot Versus Characters: Very character-driven. The interactions between the four main characters, as well as the changes their relationships go through as they discover more about themselves and each other, are what forms the core of the story.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Yuma doesn’t mean harm to anyone, but by refusing to admit her mistakes and trying to keep the status quo even while it is clearly crumbling down, she hurts both Hotaru and Takeda a lot.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Yuma notes that Hotaru used to be a bit of a Shrinking Violet who was an easy target for bullies. Hotaru becoming her current self isn't a recent development, but Yuma still notices how drastic the change is.
- Will They or Won't They?: A very round about way of wondering if Yuma and Hotaru will ever admit their feelings for each other, the end of the anime is yes, they do. In chapter 24 of the manga they do as well and even have sex.
- Yandere: Hotaru is a downplayed example; she is not slaughtering her competition, but she certainly makes Yuma's life difficult at times.
