Hige wo Soru. Soshite Joshikousei wo Hirou.

[Ryllharu]

Thing is...I don't believe Gotou at all. Not about a single thing she said in the restaurant.

This is exactly the type of series that emphasizes how women lie for effect and power. Sayu's self-worth is damaged by how she's lived since she ran away. We know she's got along by sleeping with various men until they kick her out, then moves south onto the next one. They've emphasized multiple times that Sayu's smiles are an act. The convenience store girl even outright told him that all her smiles are different, implying many are lies, after confirming that he is genuine and isn't sleeping with Sayu (I got the feeling she would have reported him if he was).

Gotou's lied to him before. She's lied about taking him out for dinner so she could ask if he had a girlfriend (and assumed it was Mishima) after he obviously lost interest in her. I have little doubt she's lying about being a virgin. She watches him at work extensively, and intervened with the dinner invitation because he was getting close to Mishima.

Sayu is a very good manipulator, I assume she's played the "Um...I'm a virgin, if that's okay," card herself. But she has nothing on Gotou.

The only woman I believe is Mishima, but only partially. She's not incompetent, and can fix her own work. Wouldn't be surprised if she is deliberately fucking up to spend more time with Yoshida. Long nights, walks to the last few trains of the night, etc. But at least she isn't lying about her feelings, and wasn't lying to Sayu.

Mishima is the 'genuine' one, Sayu is in the middle, and Gotou is master class and the fakest.

edit:
If it wasn't clear that Gotou played him twice...

- She took him out to dinner, for the sole purpose of asking if he was dating someone, specifically Mashima. In exchange, he learned her cup size. It was a question-for-a-question exchange. Big prying question answered in exchange for a personal, but not exactly secret answer (which doubled as an seduction tease).

- They repeated the same same exercise this time. She leads him into the same exchange, she implies there's a reason he changed, specifically recalling their last dinner together, same table and everything. In doing so, she goaded him into asking the first question. He asks why, she gives him the 'explanation' and then she counters with a question that forces him to bring up Sayu specifically.
He gives away a huge secret, while there's absolutely no way to know if she was telling the truth.

[Kraco]

Yeah, I agree with Ryll on Gotou, though I believe I've already said as much before. I wouldn't believe anything she says. Too bad Yoshida apparently likes her for real, so he's going to keep swallowing the hook, line, and sinker, and ask for a second dose afterwards. Dude has absolutely no alarms in his mind. But maybe being like that is why he could help Sayu in the first place.

It's a giant pity that under the Japanese bullshit system Yoshida can't actually refuse those bar/dinner invitations from a boss. It seemed like even he found it strange she kept asking him out after rejecting his proposal, but there's nothing he can do about it. I'm actually somewhat satisfied he asked the rude questions, because, honestly, that's the only sort of return fire he could aim at Gotou.

[MFauli]

Episode 5:

If a guy followed a woman like that he'd be branded creepy stalker forever.

Edit: Aaand there comes the superfluous rape-subplot, ugh. :/ I hate that guy already.

[Ryllharu]

Gotou's speech was a weird mix of the anime trope, "You can only be a high school girl once!" (which is BS, uniform cosplay is a fetish there for a reason) and also saying that she has the special label of "high school girl" and that's all she'll ever been viewed as, with all that entails both positive and negative.

She made it sound like the same argument, but it is actually two different ones, both used to get Sayu out of Yoshida's apartment (and out of his life).

First she made it clear that a high school girl (the label) will make others view the current situation negatively no matter how Sayu and Yoshida act. While that's true, everyone else they've explained it to so far has figured out there's really nothing going on. Then Gotou followed up putting Sayu down by praising her, saying she can only be a high school girl once, and needs to use that status to go back home and be one.

To summarize, "You're only causing trouble here, get the fuck out, and go back home to be where you're supposed to since you're just a child."

Which is a really strange argument coming from a woman who just claimed she was still a virgin, to a girl who just admitted to her that she's been through some tough times, and had to become a prostitute to get away from the unspecified thing that she's fleeing from. Then she followed it up with, "go back home to your nightmare."

The open eyes while hugging her is also a stark contrast from Mishima, who actually comforted her on the park bench, by not lecturing her, but just letting her be, and talk at her own pace.

Then she tosses on the anime romance grenade, "Will you support me?" which is always shady high school bullshit that only gets asked when one person already knows there's a triangle and tries to fend off one side of it.

At least Mishima called herself a stalker, but the way it came off felt more like she was watching out for him, because Gotou is shady as hell when it comes to him. Mishima would know he's acting odd around Gotou, and she's also know how many other coworkers Gotou takes out to ask them stupid questions over dinner. They all work together, and they've established that Mishima is observant well before she went full-stalker.

Mishima gets right to the point and asks him what his priorities are, where Gotou goes after the weak link who is already wracked with guilt and has very few options to begin with. Further, all the advice Mishima is giving to him, she's also telling herself.

I can safely say the only truth Gotou said the entire episode was, "There's no telling what feelings she has that might suddenly burst out." Her posture and delivery changed for a second there before she plastered the smile back on. She said it as a warning to herself.

Pretty sure the store clerk guy is the one she was having sex with in the flashback-dream from the cold opening in episode 3.
Of course, he knew her as "Miyuki."

[neflight86]

Did not make the connection with pretty boy.

I have a habit of giving the characters in this show the benefit of the doubt that they are all generally 'good' with varying circumstances, but the way Ryll is interpreting things is making this much more interesting. Please continue.

Mishima is a fun kind of busybody. She inserts herself into other's business and causes friction that advances the plot forward without surrendering too much attention from herself.

Edit: Aaand there comes the superfluous rape-subplot, ugh. :/ I hate that guy already.

That escalated quickly.

[Kraco]

I wouldn't go as far as Ryll when evaluating Gotou, but it's certainly an intriguing way to view her. If she really wanted Sayu gone, she could have done things much differently. She also didn't, after meeting Sayu, try to pressure Yoshida anymore. Though naturally there's a chance she simply views this situation as exceedingly interesting and wants to play with it. You can't be a manipulator if you haven't got anyone to manipulate.

I feel like Mishima doesn't quite understand what she wants, herself. Perhaps it's her impatience and fear of losing Yoshida (to someone else) speaking. She must like Yoshida largely because of how and what he is, but that same thing also made Yoshida help Sayu. So, if she wants Yoshida to get rid of Sayu, it also means Yoshida can't anymore be what made her fall for him.

[David75]

Art quality wasn't high to begin with, it's not even really important for that kind of show... unless character faces/proportions start getting quite awful. Am I the only one noticing it ? I understand we're entering the middle eps and every shows tend to lower budget and QC for middle season/cour eps. But I felt like it was going down quite a bit here.

[KrayZ33]

Art quality wasn't high to begin with, it's not even really important for that kind of show... unless character faces/proportions start getting quite awful. Am I the only one noticing it ? I understand we're entering the middle eps and every shows tend to lower budget and QC for middle season/cour eps. But I felt like it was going down quite a bit here.

Oh, the faces were quite funny from the beginning. Female MC looks like she has downs from time to time.

[David75]

For some reason I felt it was way worse. Might be because I had no other interrest than finding art problems

[Ryllharu]

Episode 6


--------------


This episode made me remember that the last anime I've seen that deals with the complications of exes and sex in a realistic way without getting self-righteous, melodramatic, or "basically first high school romance regardless of age" is NANA.

I couldn't roll my eyes hard enough.

It escalated too quickly (directly to extortion attempted rape!), resolved just as quickly and cleanly (the guy leaves despite having a power position over the both of them and Yoshida is already comforting Sayu minutes later), and he calmly apologizes the next day because Asami told him to?! Worse, it gets all saccharine with Asami in the park at the end. Overall, a serious low point for the series.

Honestly, the only good parts about this week's episode were the aftermath. Asami displays a level of contempt for Sayu and the fakeness of her internal suppression and submissiveness. Alluded to before, now she's starting to call her out on it. Given her background, it makes sense why she dislikes that false front so much.

I almost even appreciate that Yaguchi accused Yoshida of grooming her into a yamato nadesico, and he's kinda right. We know there's no ill intent, but that's precisely what's happening.

[MFauli]

WTF

Just watched the latest episode.

This was the WORST way of handling attempted rape/sexual assault I've ever seen in fictional media. Every scene after the attempt was stopped was one moment of disbelief chained to the other. WTF. I'm still in shock at how bad that was. Just ... wtf!

Fuck anyone trying to say "this was a realistic depiction", no it was not. I'll say it out aloud now: Shit like this makes real women hesitate to go to the police. After all, .... let's just get along with the rapist again, laugh together, and boys will be boys, amirite?! :/

Man, fuck this anime.

There was only one correct line in the whole episode. When rapist-san told the hero guy "you feel good, like youre saving her. We're both criminals". Exactly. Not that Rapist-san isnt a lot worse, but hero-san is an idiot, too, and he's not helping the girl by letting her stay with him.

Anyway. Fuck this shit. Attempted rape and THAT is all the consequences? Guess rape isn't so bad after all, we better let all the rapists out of prison and join together for some beers and have a good time.

Fuck ...

[Ryllharu]

This was the WORST way of handling attempted rape/sexual assault I've ever seen in fictional media. Every scene after the attempt was stopped was one moment of disbelief chained to the other. WTF. I'm still in shock at how bad that was. Just ... wtf!

Fuck anyone trying to say "this was a realistic depiction", no it was not. I'll say it out aloud now: Shit like this makes real women hesitate to go to the police. After all, .... let's just get along with the rapist again, laugh together, and boys will be boys, amirite?! :/

I'll take the hit for this one.

What I meant to say but failed to convey correctly was the last time any sort of shit like this was handled in a realistic way (less rape, but more about relationships between young adults that treat sex like it is a normal thing) without melodrama or being self-righteous was NANA, a series that aired 15 years ago. That's the last anime I'm aware of that even comes close to getting it right.

This was the worst episode of this series, by far, felt like it was written and directed by children. In no way was this realistic, it was retarded.

In short: The absolute shittiness of this episode made me nostalgic for NANA.

[MFauli]

I'll take the hit for this one.

I wasn't attacking you, Ryll. I was halfway through the episode and wanted to make my above rant. Kept watching to see if it gets better - no, got even worse.

[neflight86]

Small world... that was handled... oddly. Yes, this is an insulated fictional story where characters and scenarios exist to facilitate the coupling of the main two characters, but it is done so half-heartedly. The closest anime to doing this I can think of from recent memory was actually Happy Sugar Life, an(other) airy, flowery, psychological horror piece where 'horror/fiction logic' prevented characters from making rational decisions because the plot was written to require it.

I get the depiction of Japanese as being largely docile and subservient in anime media, but this was a bit hard to swallow. There may have been some room for interpretation if the escalation/extortion had left something to the imagination. Forcing himself on her in someone else's apartment? Setting him up for hatred, and giving him some token redemption later feels like status quo check boxing at this point. This story is clearly more interested in being idyllic than realistic; I'm still interested in seeing where this goes.

I think the actual draw here is the adult romance side of this story with MC and his office cohorts; not the teenager runaway's runaway drama, so this episode was a bit weaker for focusing on that, too.

[MFauli]

. This story is clearly more interested in being idyllic than realistic.

That's why scenes like this shouldn't even be in this story. We always knew that, yes, she had sex with guys before meeting Yoshida. But we didn't need to *see* that, right? And now this attempted rape scene that even the author himself didnw know how to fit into this otherwise saccharine story. He couldn't and therefore it turned into an outrageous mess.

Honestly, putting this into the anime gives me the feeling that I'm actually watching this season's Redo of Healer in disguise. Meaning: this is actually some 'edgy' anime that relies on shock factor to sell. There just wasn't any need for this to happen and WHEN it needs to happen, then please show us the proper consequences, too.

Ugh ...

[Ryllharu]

That's why scenes like this shouldn't even be in this story. We always knew that, yes, she had sex with guys before meeting Yoshida. But we didn't need to *see* that, right? And now this attempted rape scene that even the author himself didnw know how to fit into this otherwise saccharine story. He couldn't and therefore it turned into an outrageous mess.

The rationale for Yaguchi knowing he could get away with it is that Sayu couldn't go to the police and Yoshida couldn't do anything about it either.

- She couldn't claim he was stalking her home by going to the police, they would have figured out she's missing person from Hokkaido.
- Neither she or Yoshida could report him sexually assaulting her for the same reasons. It would get all three of them in court.

I can see why the author and director thought this worked, it just didn't, and the execution in the anime at least was horrible in terms of pacing and tone. It's a whole crisis invented and resolved in half an episode. If they had dragged it out more across several episodes and weeks before Yaguchi decided to call her out, maybe it wouldn't be as shitty.

[MFauli]

The rationale for Yaguchi knowing he could get away with it is that Sayu couldn't go to the police and Yoshida couldn't do anything about it either.

- She couldn't claim he was stalking her home by going to the police, they would have figured out she's missing person from Hokkaido.
- Neither she or Yoshida could report him sexually assaulting her for the same reasons. It would get all three of them in court.

I can see why the author and director thought this worked, it just didn't, and the execution in the anime at least was horrible in terms of pacing and tone. It's a whole crisis invented and resolved in half an episode. If they had dragged it out more across several episodes and weeks before Yaguchi decided to call her out, maybe it wouldn't be as shitty.

See, that's the thing, and you said it yourself: I fully understand the contruction the author wrote up for all of this. He thought "if A does B, then B will do C and to counter that A must do D, and ..... and then Y leads to Z. Perfect, I solved the puzzle!" - except attempted rape is not a puzzle, not something you can dismiss easily like that.

Ugh, I'm still in disbelief. I admit that I'm anti-censorship and think everything should be allowed in fiction. So I won't say "this shouldn't be allowed". But I will say, nonetheless: This anime reflects poorly on Japan's concept of justice and equality. Not that that's new. Basically every shounen anime or jrpg where a villain that murdered other people is later invited into the hero party is showing the poor concept of justice in Japanese entertainment media.

[Ryllharu]

Let's ignore anime for a second and focus on the reality of Japan:

It is a very sexist and unjust society.

- 99% conviction rate. Almost entirely reliant on confessions. Which their police and prosecutors work at tirelessly to get, rather than do any investigative work. Their death row makes America's look like Europe's justice system, and America is a revenge-based justice system.

- Culturally, women are second class citizens in almost every way possible. After decades of promising to do better, they are globally ranked in the mid 100s for gender equality on multiple fronts. It's so deeply ingrained. Sexual assault is commonplace, and effectively ignored. It's only recently started to drop as reporting went up and separate public transportation has increased.


Back to the anime...it's not censorship it needed, it was just serious editing. Cut the entire segment out because it added nothing, and it was a wasted conflict to open and shut within a single day.

[Kraco]

It took me a week to finally manage to watch the episode because I knew the contents from the manga. It was so annoying with that fuckboy, but it was ten times more annoying with the fuckboy actually shutting Yoshida up with his fuckboy logic. You'd think the older Yoshida in the white collar society would have enough life experience to come up with answers when talking with a younger dude, but apparently no. It was so disappointing.

Yaguchi behavior isn't particularly strange. He's only interested in having sex with many girls, he's not interested in making the girls' lives harder. Apparently he genuinely missed Sayu (as a sex doll), so he pushed her to get what he wanted, but there's nothing for him in trying to expose her or anything. It won't help him to get sex. This is good to keep in mind if you think his behavior was goofy and didn't represent rapists.

This anime reflects poorly on Japan's concept of justice and equality. Not that that's new. Basically every shounen anime or jrpg where a villain that murdered other people is later invited into the hero party is showing the poor concept of justice in Japanese entertainment media.

That's universal justice, not Japanese justice. Stalin had as many people murdered as Hitler, but still Stalin was most welcome to the same table with Churchill and Roosevelt, to smoke cigars and drink whisky. Just because by opposing Hitler Stalin was suddenly a great hero, despite being guilty of seeing millions of people to their deaths. Can you even have a more extreme example demonstrating why it's global justice? You can argue against it all you want, but that's just how the world works. Nothing wrong about having a bit of bitter realism in shounen every now and then.

[Kraco]

Episode 7

Finally stuff that's new to me, having passed what I've read of the manga.



- --- -



Interesting. When the new dude appeared, I immediately thought he didn't look like the kind of lowlife Sayu would have lived with for a time, in exchange for sexual services. After all, the dude has obviously hired a private detective to hunt down Sayu. That's not cheap business. If it wasn't a private detective but an actual employee, that's even more expensive! Such a dude, it's kind of hard to imagine how he would have even met Sayu in the first place, let alone hapzardly risked his obvious station to mess with her. Although I guess it does happen. That being said, I didn't expect his identity to be her brother. He might be the biggest risk ever for Yoshida, especially if the fuckboy's analysis of him is correct: That he's someone who enjoys using his power. Wouldn't that mean he would enjoy ruining Yoshda's life, regardless of what Sayu has got to say? The only thing stopping him could be if making Sayu's own past public would actually hurt the dude more. If he's a young, famous CEO, there are plenty of rags in Japan that would absolutely love to make a scandalous article about the CEO's sister being an underage prostitute.

Mishima was actually pretty funny in this episode. She sure loves giving people lectures. No wonder Gotou called her cute.