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2n2n · 9 months

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a stinky post! smelly…. it's a little rough lately with, IRL stresses and you know whats a good distraction in specifically this circumstance ... being fake mad at fake things that are unimportant ... !

It's fun to think about the manga in any way.... (:

I feel like some dumb takes really live inside of you forever (which is why I do not look at much), as just so pants on head stupid … During the Hakubo/Sumire arc there were 100000 dumb takes, but among them was someone trying to assert the manga's theme was … abuse … (and you know in what way this was meant, in the same hamfisted way any young person talks right now) ... using benchmarks like, Mitsuba was bullied, Teru is abused, Amane was abused, Sumire is abused… but it's like, it didn't think whatsoever about every SINGLE instance of which there is 'abuse' and how characters feel about it, actually … if it was 'about abuse', it would do such a laughable job of it, and it would, half the time, be saying… the worst thing possible, which would be something like: true love forgives everything, including abuse; or, staying through abuse is something you can do to prove your devotion, or to endure in honor of someone else, or a virtue you stand for. There is a lot of suffering in JSHK, but people aren't typically surviving it and then applying it in a way you'd want to replicate. It's romantic in the more symbolic and extreme vein. I mean. Romantic in the vein of… a shinjuu… stay with me, here!

More BROADLY, individuals suffer from STRICTURES, and this is actually what harms Amane, Sumire/Hakubo, Teru, Mitsuba ... (and what harmed in Snow White and MDLD! the INSTITUTIONS of the church, and the royal families; tradition and virtues perpetuated on trapped people) RULES, collectivism, keeping your head down and behaving, serving a greater purpose (as a sacrifice, as a son of a legacy, as a mystery); often individuals hurting each other is forgiven and understood, or even appreciated... ? The things you endure in honor of some capital, in the idea of 'goodness', those are the sufferings ... the things you tell yourself to endure in honor of who you love, might be foolish, might be tied up in that, but they are presented in contrast. Teru does not do what he does, for the town. He loves his family brocon.

There is more to be said about love, endurance, devotion, loyalty, and in fact, all of those in the face of abuse; literally the opposite to what someone was trying to get at … Amane will forgive everything that is done to him, even if it makes no sense, if it's not justified, if it is something nobody else would or could or should forgive. He isn't STUPID for that, he's NOBLE! You couldn't get more poignant than Aoi STABBING AKANE, and him enduring it, swearing to still love her, even at her worst. Continuing to crawl towards her, refusing to let her get away. Amane can KNOCK NENE OUT, gaslight her, he can kill her friend-- under any definition, he is abusive to her, isn't he? She'll chase him down, every time. Even on a good day, he's touching her without consent, her verbally telling him to stop or shoving him off of her. But Nene-chan's role is to understand why, to forgive his transgressions upon her, and deep down, to like how he treats her. You just can't impose an anti-harm virtue in that, it prioritizes love.

For all the weardown methods in this manga (HanaNene, NatsuSaku, HakuMire, AkaneAoi....), you'd be insane to assert it has an anti-abuse message… or even really cares about that as a cautionary tale ... you can't keep looking at major long-built-up-to events as flops or mistakes or sudden, predictable creepiness out of left field, in contrast to your idea of virtue as if it otherwise maintains it.

Even with Mitsuba, you'd be crazy to think we're trying to 'say something about abuse', when Kou himself bullies Mitsuba… Kou's even quite rough, throwing rocks at him, and so recently, violently wrestling him. He'll call him stupid while doing it all! He'll call Mitsuba's suicidal urges STUPID! In what way isn't that 'abuse', if we compare it to anyone else arbitrarily held up to scrutiny? Where do we draw the line, you know? Shouldn't it never be a gag or bit or silly, if we want to coherently deliver a message of some artistic import to the author? Are AidaIro wanton?

It's like people notice "people get hurt", relationships are twisted, and then automatically assume "so the message probably is one that moralizes upon that".

What of how Sakura dehumanizes Natsuhiko, and how much he loves her anyway? She hits him, she declares he deserves no recognition. Does he 'deserve' it, for being a pest to her? I guess the argument is often that Tsukasa 'deserved' to die … does , Mitsuba 'deserve it' when he is bullied by Kou? ? Does Nene-chan 'deserve it' when Amane removes her autonomy ? if we start thinking about 'deserving misery', why doesn't Amane deserve the agony he's been trapped in? He definitely feels he deserves it. I suppose Hakubo deserved his end for his life of slavery, due to how he didn't fight it hard enough, or feel bad enough ?

You have everything from severe situations where characters, in pure love, endure anything, and you have comedic situations where you're not meant to take the slapstick seriously, and you have people sortof wantonly deciding that, well, the way Tsukasa acts, is abusive, but, then, Kou, isn't, for arbitrary reasons, not even following the guideline of how something is framed. Nene-chan can like, hit Amane. He can knock her out. Whether or not that's a problem to a rube is a toss-up (and usually, just if they like Amane, or like Nene. and usually, Nene's flaw to people is being boring, really :p).

But if you get hooked on the idea of the 'theme' being something like this, this relationship harm abuse thing, the story looks haphazard and meaningless and renegade. And then people get frustrated by headers where Tsukasa is a funny little mascot blowing bubbles and painting Mokke in chocolate … because it's disorienting, in THAT context. In the context of a story trying to unpack abuse, and take it seriously, Tsukasa's depiction becomes backwards, annoying, confusing. It's like AidaIro-sensei aren't taking their own story seriously! It's like they just want to pander to fans (what, on an unpaid for completely by her own volition banner, a thing with Aida-sensei used to playfully do for her and Iro-sensei's blog when they were teens together? Before even being employed at all?)

but you know,

In the context, "Tsukasa is someone still worth loving", all that depiction makes sense. Of course, you're meant to find him precious. You're waiting to understand why he is Amane's yorishiro. You're waiting to understand why he looks at him like this… even after everything.

Thinking about love, first and foremost, we understand why someone should adore Sakura, even as she threatens to destroy the world. Someone who would let her hurt them, any day, every day, and still see her as cute, caring, shy, lonely. What she really is.

We can understand why, even if Kou is stupid and violent, even if he can't express anything well, even if he lashes out with insults, someone should still want to give him a chance to help them.

We can understand why Akane can be rejected by Aoi over and over and over again, why he would forgive being stabbed through the body, why he would still want to kiss Aoi, even after she insists he stop loving her already.

We can understand why Sumire was never afraid of Hakubo's Oni nature, and could never hate him; not even after 100 years of quiet, imprisoned abandonment.

Characters really do feel devotion in… DANGEROUS excess, to BAD FOR THEM or BAD FOR OTHERS extremes (which sometimes, others comment on as absurd!!), maybe, most relevantly, this is true for our TITLE CHARACTER, who PARTOOK OF A LOVER'S SUICIDE. Perhaps it is DANGEROUS to love and be loved by Amane, perhaps it was DANGEROUS to love Tsukasa! Perhaps it is more dangerous than anything, for Nene-chan to dig deeper and deeper, when Amane wants to hide it all from her!

Should all of these people still love eachother? Should they wrestle themselves away, with some sense? It's too bad ... they simply will. Is it tragic that they stay, or is it beautiful? What does the story think?

All things told, just your boyfriend refusing to give you the details of his criminal record is not good….

Amane is surely scared he could not have Nene-chan's love any longer if she saw him fully.

But should we want her to run away from the full weight of it? Of course not … however bad it is, we can have faith Nene-chan could, and would, still love him. Even if it was stupid to. Even if nobody else would love him. Even if there's no sane way to justify loving him.

It is a little wild to me the situations of institutions and legacies of power, tradition, is just not perceived, either. Even though I think that is far more socially relevant and engaging a message even for the western audience ... More often these romanticized individual relationships are niggled and nitpicked to hell and back, as the Big Nasty Thing, but the greater shape of the Minamoto family, the institution trapping the Mysteries, the belief systems about Kaii and Human, the very conceit of social credit represented in rumors perpetuating expectations of harm and changing people into monsters, is just not seen as the actual 'Big Bad'. What hurts anyone? What forces someone to make a bad decision? All these trapped animals, poked in their cages ... what a misnomer, to watch the animals hurt eachother, and say, "that one is bad, and deserves to be killed to make the other animals safe". It's sweet that for all the biting and clawing eachother, the animals lick eachother's wounds.

I heard there is someone out here trying to break cages...

Anyway... as I mentioned a couple times ... It's not as if I think the writing is without a meaningful message, or as if it's only jerkoff fodder yandere soup for the SIMP's soul. You can think of rumors as representing expectations, stereotypes, prejudice-- perpetuation of belief, superstition creating paranoia, hysteria, harm… the Minamoto+Nagisa families as expressing how history is obfuscated and rewritten towards a chosen narrative, how something as noble as seeking control and safety can justify individual harm, how individual lives and freedom become nothing but collateral or fodder in pursuit of collective security (fascism, if you wanna go there... or just anti-collectivism if you wanna be less intense). The broader concept that seeking to protect something may provoke the destruction of autonomy. "You can't do anything, so it's better to forget, and be happy" is repeated constantly (and argued AGAINST!) too...

It's just never going to be a narrative in support of punishment, banishment, 'bad people do bad things' ... or else our title character would not be an imprisoned criminal, who hates himself.

#avvy's JSHK

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