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Mangas and Abusive Families

Daemon August 31, 2026 9:23 pm

I'm still enjoying the manga but it is really something to observe in almost all the manga I've read how abusive families, especially abusive parents are always pushed to be understood and reconciled with. It's actually quite common in Asian societies to tolerate abusive family structures and normalize them. It's quite funny to see the West and East attack each other over nuclear vs joint family structures when both structures abet, protect and pass down quite abusive dynamics. It's also a pretty common thread in a lot of these Mangas to constantly talk about not communicating clearly enough with your abusers which is a pretty fantastical and naive approach. Especially when this communication depends entirely on the victim to either forego all their hurt entirely or focus instead of their abusers emotions in order to make the relationship work. It's very much a case of rather dragging a dead thing around than cutting it off. Also immense pressure on the victims to respond in the only, correct respectable way that is attempting to constantly win over abusers. These dynamics on a familial level also tell a lot about society on a larger, macro level, where victims are often harassed, punished and reprimanded for breaking the norm and sticking out, foregoing authority and tradition, and dragging private business into the public by attempting to confront abuse. Similar dynamics can be seen in literally every facet of society from work to private life. There remains that thread that children have to be up with this abuse because these are their parents who gave birth to them which they should be grateful for, rather than all this care being the parents responsibility for bringing a life into this world without their will. A society like Japan (S. Korea is worse) with such rigid hierarchies also contributes to normalizing such abusive dynamics. I don't think this manga is the harshest example of this, but it's really something how childhood abuse eventually gets repackaged into funny gag moments with the abuser. Works like this are quite different from more complicated works that actually tackle complex, hostile, possibly abusive dynamics by actually calling them out for what they are and treating them with the seriousness and weight they deserve with the victim often taking more complicated actions regarding their relationship with the abuser rather than constantly trying to 'talk' and 'express' themselves as though somehow the failure on the relationship was that the victim attempted to stop trying to placate their abuser. I guess this is the obvious result in a culture which like many others doesn't believe in emotional abuse, certainly not from parents.
All this to say I'm tired of the dad and how he's being handled with kids gloves and the adults around him apparently never stopping and protecting kids from his abuse and then pretending all is hunky-dory and now its just a matter of 2 people having a conversation directly to stop the abuse. I'm gonna skip whenever his face comes on.
Anywho, my thoughts regarding family structures are far more radical for this simple yaoi manga so I'll leave it here.
PS. Before someone tries me, yes I'm Asian, yes my culture regarding this is far more similar to the Japanese than you want to think so don't try me, yes I've lived in nuclear and joint families with many elderly relatives, and no my family didn't tolerate or protect abusive family structures.

Responses
    sueha September 1, 2026 9:33 am

    As someone who cut off my emotionally abusive father and will not reconcile despite urgings and persuasions from relatives (who i then cut off for pestering me) I completely and wholeheartedly agree with you