Momo hasn’t been a bitch so far, she’s just socially awkward, stern, and unable to hide her feelings. And she is jealous of and competitive with Aoba, but she also simultaneously admires her and her talent for drawing, as we’ve seen time and time again, and you’ll remember when Kou was apologizing for Aoba being so enthusiastic about finally having newbies under her, Momo responded by saying that she thinks Aoba is a nice person. I think Momo is a nice girl, and actually wants to be friends with Aoba, she’s just socially awkward and also sees Aoba as a rival. I have no problem with her.
The way Naru behaved in that chapter though…that was something else entirely…I don’t know if she’s just tremendously jealous and it overcame her, or if that is part of her actual personality depending on the situation, but either way, she was being a total bitch…
No matter how anyone may try to defend her (and I’ve seen some people try), the reality is that Narumi is acting extremely unprofessional by picking fights with coworkers. People in the work place have a variety of motivations and goals, so picking a fight with someone just because you perceive them as not working as seriously toward the same dream as you is really immature.
Besides, in the workplace all that matters is how well you are able to work with others and the results of your work. Not what your dreams for the future are.
So the irony is that Nene, whom Narumi is being so critical of for being laidback, is actually acting much more professional in the workplace than Narumi herself, despite intending to be much more serious about it.
Well said. It’s been really hard to gauge this two characters as a whole since they kind of disrupted the dynamic of the office, but interestingly enough I expected Momo to be the troublemaker, since she outright declared herself Aoba’s rival. Never expected Narumi to be the one to stir the pot.
I’m flabbergasted how people are thinking Narumi is jealous of Nene. Look at her backstory. She trained to be a programmer since her youth and has a passion for it, to the point she along with Momo made a 3D game on their own.
Meanwhile, Nene did some debugging as a part-time job to check on her friend Aoba and through her least than professional antics became friends with key people at eagle jump (including the head of the programming team), then learned just enough programming to make a 2D game, showed it to her friends (the above mentioned head programmer and lead character designer of the latest game of the company Nene eventually joined) and through that, got herself an internship.
It’s not a matter of jealousy. It’s a matter of Narumi having to take a far tougher road just to get where Nene got mostly through connections, with far more passion than Nene has. Nene might not have meant it but her lax attitude is spitting on Narumi’s face. It’s unfair.
Narumi doesn’t know Nene well enough not to overlook this and she takes herself seriously enough to be unable to stop it from getting to her. She’s being a bitch to Nene, sure, but so far from what we’re shown she isn’t directly sabotaging her work or involving other people in her feud.
Narumi and Momo’s history and career paths are far more realistic than both Nene’s and Aoba’s. Basically, we have two Shirobako characters in a moe manga where you’re not supposed to use the full extent of your brain to think about these things.
How would you react if your co-worker had a better standing in your office for being miss congeniality rather than for being a competent worker?
She doesn’t have a better standing than her, Nene is doing practice work, while Narumi, despite being an intern, is already getting to do actual work on account of her skill being as good as it is. And you said it yourself:
“It’s a matter of Narumi having to take a far tougher road just to get where Nene got mostly through connections, with far more passion than Nene has.”
That’s what we’re referring to when we say she seems jealous when she acts the way she did. We’re not suggesting she’s jealous of Nene’s clearly inferior skills (that wouldn’t make any sense), we’re saying she might be jealous of how Nene got to her position partly through connection and much less effort and work than she herself did. It’s quite apparent, and the most obvious theory/reason as for why she would be so rude and say the things she did to Nene like that, so I don’t know why you would be flabbergasted about it.
Also, more importantly, as to your question of how I would react if it was me? I would suck it up and deal with it, because I’m an adult and a working professional, which Naru is supposed to be as well. I sure as hell wouldn’t snap and go out on a rude verbal attack on Nene like that. Like mogu said, it’s immature and unprofessional, and more importantly, it disrupts the working environment and team cooperation, which is obviously pretty important here, in a small game company. You can defend her all you want, the truth is her actions aren’t justifiable, and in real life, if you got caught behaving like that you would probably first get a warning, and be told to grow up and cut it out, and if it persisted after more warnings you would most likely eventually get sacked.
Literally the only difference between their career paths is that Narumi and Momo went to a vocational school. Which they have barely studied at for a year. Which shouldn’t be nearly enough time to both learn technique and put together the kind of student project they did as a two-person team. Calling that more realistic would be inaccurate.
Literally the only difference in their histories is that Narumi found her goal earlier than Nene. And there being a fairly large portion of people who graduate high school without any idea what they want to do with their lives, calling that less realistic is disingenuous.
Aoba and Momo literally share the exact same dream. Or used to, until Aoba grew and matured from having a far off dream to having a definite set of goals.
Narumi’s goal is nothing more than “Make games with Momo”. Which is not a very serious career goal. Meanwhile, she is making assumptions about coworkers and picking fights and even outright insulting her direct supervisor. On her first day on the job. As a temporary intern. That is not professional behavior, no matter what circumstances she might imagine. If she is going to react like that anytime she meets someone she perceives as having had an easier time than she has, she is not going to last long in any workplace.
And they’ve worked together for a single day, and had two brief conversations. Judging someone so completely with such a small basis is every bit as silly as coming up with all these interpretations and assumptions about a character’s backstory, circumstances, and goals after a single 8-page chapter lightly touches on them.
I’m sorry, but calling them more realistic (thus implying that the other characters are somehow extremely unrealistic), or Shirobako characters in a moe manga that isn’t supposed to require thought, is not only delusional, but outright disrespectful to a series that has shown a staggering amount of character growth and development for a genre popularly considered to have nothing of the sort.
If anything, as presented in the few pages they’ve appeared in so far, they’re both less complex than existing characters. But the existing characters have all had time to develop, so it’s only natural that it will take the new ones some time.
My issue with Narumi is her assumption of Nene getting the internship plainly on the back of knowing the Umiko during her working as a debugger.
She never asked how she managed to get the position, just assumed she got in and started throwing allegations, and she knows she was in the wrong as she made up a lie when Umiko asked Nene if there was something wrong. This is immature and unprofessional, and this also insinuates she doesn’t have any respect for her superior as she believe Umiko to be Bias herself. They are not even rivals, they are both co-workers, it’s not like there is only one contract that will be renewed by the end of the trial period.
I personally don’t like either Momo or Narumi so far as they feel generic and unoriginal, though this weeks episode of New Game had me warm up to Momo a little bit, and atleast you can understand her reasons to be jealous, and instead of throwing allegations she’s taken it as a challenge and see’s Aoba as a Rival.
They don’t really say anything interesting, they’re just small comments related to what the characters in those pictures are doing. mogu or someone who actually knows Japanese can probably give you a proper answer if mine are totally wrong, but here’s what I got, using what I know plus Google translate (very direct translations):
Volume 1: “Yagami-san’s attack!”
Volume 2: “Nene is fidgeting!”
Volume 3: “Rin is taking care (of Kou)!”
Volume 4: “Shizuku is secretly filming!”/”Shizuku is doing secret filming!”
Volume 5 (Spinoff): “Hotaru has taken 100 damage!”
As for volume 6, I won’t have any idea until I see the back page for the volume, the image of which I won’t see until the day Doki releases the last chapter of the volume.
Volume 6’s back cover is on Kirara’s twitter on 06/27/17. It features Christina and Mozuku and says “Yamato to Mozuku ha nakayoku natta! <3" in Romanji – albeit in all caps so I may have some emphasis wrong.
Sunday 20th August 2017 
10:06 PM 
Thank you for the chapters!
Not just one but two! Thanks!
Wew, thanks for the chapter(s)!
Thanks for the chapters!
Wow, that really was pretty bitchy…
Thanks for the chapters!
Thanks for the chapters 🙂
Looks like Narumi-san is jealous of Nennechi and how close she is to Umiko although Nennechi doesn’t help matters.
Can’t decide whether Momo is going to be a massive bitch though towards Aoba, again, through obvious jealousy.
Yup. Can only hope for some major character development before the end of the volume…:-/
Momo hasn’t been a bitch so far, she’s just socially awkward, stern, and unable to hide her feelings. And she is jealous of and competitive with Aoba, but she also simultaneously admires her and her talent for drawing, as we’ve seen time and time again, and you’ll remember when Kou was apologizing for Aoba being so enthusiastic about finally having newbies under her, Momo responded by saying that she thinks Aoba is a nice person. I think Momo is a nice girl, and actually wants to be friends with Aoba, she’s just socially awkward and also sees Aoba as a rival. I have no problem with her.
The way Naru behaved in that chapter though…that was something else entirely…I don’t know if she’s just tremendously jealous and it overcame her, or if that is part of her actual personality depending on the situation, but either way, she was being a total bitch…
No matter how anyone may try to defend her (and I’ve seen some people try), the reality is that Narumi is acting extremely unprofessional by picking fights with coworkers. People in the work place have a variety of motivations and goals, so picking a fight with someone just because you perceive them as not working as seriously toward the same dream as you is really immature.
Besides, in the workplace all that matters is how well you are able to work with others and the results of your work. Not what your dreams for the future are.
So the irony is that Nene, whom Narumi is being so critical of for being laidback, is actually acting much more professional in the workplace than Narumi herself, despite intending to be much more serious about it.
Well said. It’s been really hard to gauge this two characters as a whole since they kind of disrupted the dynamic of the office, but interestingly enough I expected Momo to be the troublemaker, since she outright declared herself Aoba’s rival. Never expected Narumi to be the one to stir the pot.
This. So much this.
Word.
I’m flabbergasted how people are thinking Narumi is jealous of Nene. Look at her backstory. She trained to be a programmer since her youth and has a passion for it, to the point she along with Momo made a 3D game on their own.
Meanwhile, Nene did some debugging as a part-time job to check on her friend Aoba and through her least than professional antics became friends with key people at eagle jump (including the head of the programming team), then learned just enough programming to make a 2D game, showed it to her friends (the above mentioned head programmer and lead character designer of the latest game of the company Nene eventually joined) and through that, got herself an internship.
It’s not a matter of jealousy. It’s a matter of Narumi having to take a far tougher road just to get where Nene got mostly through connections, with far more passion than Nene has. Nene might not have meant it but her lax attitude is spitting on Narumi’s face. It’s unfair.
Narumi doesn’t know Nene well enough not to overlook this and she takes herself seriously enough to be unable to stop it from getting to her. She’s being a bitch to Nene, sure, but so far from what we’re shown she isn’t directly sabotaging her work or involving other people in her feud.
Narumi and Momo’s history and career paths are far more realistic than both Nene’s and Aoba’s. Basically, we have two Shirobako characters in a moe manga where you’re not supposed to use the full extent of your brain to think about these things.
How would you react if your co-worker had a better standing in your office for being miss congeniality rather than for being a competent worker?
She doesn’t have a better standing than her, Nene is doing practice work, while Narumi, despite being an intern, is already getting to do actual work on account of her skill being as good as it is. And you said it yourself:
“It’s a matter of Narumi having to take a far tougher road just to get where Nene got mostly through connections, with far more passion than Nene has.”
That’s what we’re referring to when we say she seems jealous when she acts the way she did. We’re not suggesting she’s jealous of Nene’s clearly inferior skills (that wouldn’t make any sense), we’re saying she might be jealous of how Nene got to her position partly through connection and much less effort and work than she herself did. It’s quite apparent, and the most obvious theory/reason as for why she would be so rude and say the things she did to Nene like that, so I don’t know why you would be flabbergasted about it.
Also, more importantly, as to your question of how I would react if it was me? I would suck it up and deal with it, because I’m an adult and a working professional, which Naru is supposed to be as well. I sure as hell wouldn’t snap and go out on a rude verbal attack on Nene like that. Like mogu said, it’s immature and unprofessional, and more importantly, it disrupts the working environment and team cooperation, which is obviously pretty important here, in a small game company. You can defend her all you want, the truth is her actions aren’t justifiable, and in real life, if you got caught behaving like that you would probably first get a warning, and be told to grow up and cut it out, and if it persisted after more warnings you would most likely eventually get sacked.
Literally the only difference between their career paths is that Narumi and Momo went to a vocational school. Which they have barely studied at for a year. Which shouldn’t be nearly enough time to both learn technique and put together the kind of student project they did as a two-person team. Calling that more realistic would be inaccurate.
Literally the only difference in their histories is that Narumi found her goal earlier than Nene. And there being a fairly large portion of people who graduate high school without any idea what they want to do with their lives, calling that less realistic is disingenuous.
Aoba and Momo literally share the exact same dream. Or used to, until Aoba grew and matured from having a far off dream to having a definite set of goals.
Narumi’s goal is nothing more than “Make games with Momo”. Which is not a very serious career goal. Meanwhile, she is making assumptions about coworkers and picking fights and even outright insulting her direct supervisor. On her first day on the job. As a temporary intern. That is not professional behavior, no matter what circumstances she might imagine. If she is going to react like that anytime she meets someone she perceives as having had an easier time than she has, she is not going to last long in any workplace.
And they’ve worked together for a single day, and had two brief conversations. Judging someone so completely with such a small basis is every bit as silly as coming up with all these interpretations and assumptions about a character’s backstory, circumstances, and goals after a single 8-page chapter lightly touches on them.
I’m sorry, but calling them more realistic (thus implying that the other characters are somehow extremely unrealistic), or Shirobako characters in a moe manga that isn’t supposed to require thought, is not only delusional, but outright disrespectful to a series that has shown a staggering amount of character growth and development for a genre popularly considered to have nothing of the sort.
If anything, as presented in the few pages they’ve appeared in so far, they’re both less complex than existing characters. But the existing characters have all had time to develop, so it’s only natural that it will take the new ones some time.
My issue with Narumi is her assumption of Nene getting the internship plainly on the back of knowing the Umiko during her working as a debugger.
She never asked how she managed to get the position, just assumed she got in and started throwing allegations, and she knows she was in the wrong as she made up a lie when Umiko asked Nene if there was something wrong. This is immature and unprofessional, and this also insinuates she doesn’t have any respect for her superior as she believe Umiko to be Bias herself. They are not even rivals, they are both co-workers, it’s not like there is only one contract that will be renewed by the end of the trial period.
I personally don’t like either Momo or Narumi so far as they feel generic and unoriginal, though this weeks episode of New Game had me warm up to Momo a little bit, and atleast you can understand her reasons to be jealous, and instead of throwing allegations she’s taken it as a challenge and see’s Aoba as a Rival.
Oh, so that was a cat all along! 😀
Thanks for the chapters!
Thank you for the chapter!! The cat was an anime-only chara that was brought into the manga~
I remember reading that the author loved it so much so he put it in the manga 🙂
Quick question, the back of each volume has 2 characters with one of them saying something. Could someone tell me what is being said in them?
They are all basically just self-narrating what they are doing in the images.
They don’t really say anything interesting, they’re just small comments related to what the characters in those pictures are doing. mogu or someone who actually knows Japanese can probably give you a proper answer if mine are totally wrong, but here’s what I got, using what I know plus Google translate (very direct translations):
Volume 1: “Yagami-san’s attack!”
Volume 2: “Nene is fidgeting!”
Volume 3: “Rin is taking care (of Kou)!”
Volume 4: “Shizuku is secretly filming!”/”Shizuku is doing secret filming!”
Volume 5 (Spinoff): “Hotaru has taken 100 damage!”
As for volume 6, I won’t have any idea until I see the back page for the volume, the image of which I won’t see until the day Doki releases the last chapter of the volume.
Many thanks for this 🙂
Volume 6’s back cover is on Kirara’s twitter on 06/27/17. It features Christina and Mozuku and says “Yamato to Mozuku ha nakayoku natta! <3" in Romanji – albeit in all caps so I may have some emphasis wrong.
Okay. Hmm. “Yamato and Mozuku became close/friends”, maybe? Or “Yamato and Mozuku are getting along well”? I’m not sure.
Thanks for New Game! o/