rosethorn

The only way to possibly redeem this dumpster fire is if Takano is made to realize that he is, indeed abusive and is wrong in his ways. If we had a chapter where Takano saw the monster that he has become and apologizes to Ritsu, the story would be way more realistic and interesting. We didn't need Nao's character at all to be honest. What we need is something challenging that would bring Takano and Ritsu together romantically. This story lacks depth and realism. A few chapters of Onodera learning to stand up for himself and showing Takano his gentle side would have 100x more interesting than 20 chapters of Nao drama and rape.

I don't know what Nakamura is doing to this pairing to be honest. Out of all of her characters (even Usagi and Misaki), this is by far the most abusive of them all.

I completely agree with you on everything. Like I understand this is a manga and isn't always supposed to be realistic or is going to be, but so much yaoi manga has some sort of rape involved, so whenever there's a consensual sex manga, it's always a breath of fresh air. And usually mangas without rape feel so much deeper and we can focus on things like the characters developing real feelings rather than being forced both physically and feeling wise. Like you said with Onodera learning to stand up for himself and such, that would have been such great character development because, over all the chapters that have been released, there hasn't been really much character development with either Takano or Onodera. They're still very much so stuck with who we met at the beginning of the series. Nakamura's art has improved, but not their storytelling sadly. Part of me sometimes thinks that Nakamura kind of gave up, maybe doesn't have as much ambition for this series anymore and is just doing what they were doing for all the previous chapters, which is v sad. If, and when, Nakamura start a new series, I really do hope that they go a different route and do something completely different from their previous series.

Exactly. I hate that people condone the author's behavior with excuses. Part of being a writer of any sort, even a mangaka, is learning basic storytelling. If you can't write a story worth your salt, then she should have probably let other writers write the story and she illustrate them. She's been working in comics for over a decade and she's still making the same amateur writing mistakes that a beginner would make starting out. Using the same cliche's and not even giving the characters any kind of growth or character arc. Again, this isn't rocket science. This is basic storytelling 101. I always had a soft spot for this author which is why I am in such disbelief with the direction that she has taken for this story. As you said, it feels like the author gave up on Takano and Ritsu a long time ago and is almost writing this badly on purpose. It's just such an anomaly at this point.

All I can say is this: If she really has given up on these characters, at least give an editor or different writer the opportunity to fix them. This is just painful to read at this point. So repetitive and uneventful. There are plenty of amateur webcomic artists who can write better stories than this.

The readers expect and deserve better storytelling at this point in the mangaka's career. I think there's a difference between amateur webcomic artists and Nakamura because maybe the webcomic artists are younger and have a different view of rape in storytelling than Nakamura. They might realize how lazy it is to write a rape story vs a character developing story so they stay away from rape and they are obviously getting far with their storytelling since they're able to sustain their series for some time. That's probably why their stories are better.
It's gonna be a huge task trying to fix the story at this point in time by the mangaka themselves, also for the ending whenever that's gonna be, so Nakamura really get their editor to help them or another writer like you said.