wait I’m a bit confused on what they’re relationship is supposed to be by the end - Toshio seems to think they’re a romantic couple, but Shindoh hasn’t really confirmed or denied that. I feel like he’s just appeasing Toshio by not saying they’re not dating - basically preventing him from feeling sad or hurting his feelings. I know Shindoh cares about Toshio in his own way, but I don’t think it’s romantic at all let alone sexual. A part of me thinks it a bit cruel to let Toshio live in a sort of false fantasy, but mostly I want to know why the author made their relationship like that in the first place. Honestly I would have preferred if their relationship ended up being parent-child rather than them being lovers - it would be much more heartwarming as a slice of life manga rather than a BL
I think this manga is a prime example of how the omegaverse was made to explore gender and sex dynamics in a way where no actual females are directly involved - it near-perfectly replicates and deconstructs patriarchical, sexist society and emphasizes these fundamental issues to the point where it’s impossible to ignore while simultaneously exploring queer and I think trans(?) identities
the new chapters provide even more evidence for Asuhi’s “potential” autism from his sensory sensitivities to his need for the completion of a promise - not sure how the author made him so relatable without doing research, my guess is that they know/knew someone with autism and they didn’t know they had it or the author has it and doesn’t know.. anyway I wonder if there’s any autistic-coded BL character who isn’t a bottom?
I was thinking the same, the way he's portrayed it seems like the author just took the traits from someone they know. In many cultures they assure everyone autism doesnt exist but they all know a relative who's "particularly quirky"
Anyway here's my fav autistic coded character who tops
https://www.mangago.me/read-manga/motomete_yamanai/
you left me thinking. Like i deff have read autistic coded tops but cant remember rn
what first comes to mind is the ML from "cat choice" he could be autistic coded
ayyy tysm
isnt it a little rude to assume that the author did no research for this? unless they publicly denied having the intention to represent ND, autism, ((and aro)) with this series, then i think we can put some faith that they did do their diligence to put this story out there with as much care as they could!
i just cant imagine everything shown here to be accidental representation personally, since everything feels very purposeful and intentional ^^
Thank you. I was looking for this. The only thing I remembered in the story was that they got permission to date because ML can open any tight container.
I didn’t mean it to be rude at all - I always just assume the neurodivergent representation is accidental unless publicly stated because as of now people’s awareness and understanding of the neurodevelopmental disorder is very limited, especially in Asian countries. Autistic-coded characters are actually pretty common in media and they’re usually not intentionally created to be neurodivergent representation - and even if the author actually did do research on ASD and were aware that their character was neurodivergent, it doesn’t disregard the fact that this manga still lacks the autism label that so many autistic-coded characters lack today (and this does have negative consequences)
I guess I just found it a little sad that it originally came off as having so little faith in an author's intention but I get what you mean now, thanks for explaining! I hope this story gets greenlit for a second volume that could include them exploring his autism explicitly, but if it doesn't get the chance then I hope someone out there still felt validated by this story and Ritsu's character.
I enjoy these delicate, poignant, and ["actions rather than words"] type of works a lot so it's probably not my place to talk on labels [i love a good QPR BL] but my assumption with the lack of it in the Japanese BL industry, whether it's the characters' specific sexuality or ASD or mental illness, is it's probably because of publishers who want things to be unlabeled to keep the reader's suspension of disbelief, since most of them still look at BL as fictional fantasy and not as "queer/ lgbt media". So my brain just kind of copes by default lol and just accepts fanon labels as the canon at some point naturally. My bad for moving the goalposts just then (to be about sexuality rather than ASD), but in general I do hope we get more works and writers that subverts this system so we don't always have to navigate the grey area. :]
Exactly! Likewise. Thanks for your thoughts on this topic
Saw some other comments mentioning how Asuhi’s need for repetition is likely due to trauma-based OCD and not ASD (autism) but my argument for him having ASD is that he also seems to struggle with social cues/rules (ex. How he told his uncle he and Ichigo were kissing with a complete straight face) and his default is to be straightforward even if it comes across as rude (ex. When he got invited to that party thing by Ichigo’s female friend and he immediately said no when given the option to). People with ASD rely on repetition to soothe, which could also be interpreted to mean that his repetitiveness could have been emphasized due to his trauma, but I don’t think it’s enough to say that it’s caused by OCD since we aren’t really shown that Asuhi has obsessive compulsive thoughts - which is why I don’t think he has both ASD and OCD simultaneously. To conclude I wanna say that’s enough symptoms to gather for readers to assume he’s on the spectrum but either way the author probably didn’t intend to make him so and that’s unfortunate since it means all of it could be plausibly denied just like for Semantic Error :/ so at most he’s autistic-coded
I have ASD. I legit thought he was ASD coded as I was reading this. But I thought this a while ago. His behavior reminds me a lot of myself and just in general the criteria for asd
Was there any news about Semantic Error? I thought it was one of comic with a very obvious rep of autistic coded char.. Did the author just intend to make a 'robotic' char afterall?
Yup, the author never officially stated that the character was autistic - I haven’t been keeping up but I did when it first came out, got to the end of season one and pretty sure in the afterword for that season the author mentioned the at they acknowledged fans speculations of how one of the main characters was autistic-coded but denied intentionally making him that way - source: my memory so don’t rely on that too much .. I tried looking for the season 1 afterword and I couldn’t find it available anymore? Maybe I hallucinated it all idk
Ok I also thought the incest scene was super weird and unnecessary at first but the other comments are right about it being fully intentional. This entire work could have been longer as well - it’s really making readers read between the lines (panels?) here but here’s what I’m sort of putting together: the contrast between Arisa and Nakajou is supposed to parallel Kiyomi and her mother - Arisa and Kiyomi similar not only in appearance and temperance but also their shallow values, Nakajou and the mother being similar in their more traditional yet grounded values as well as their general humility and authenticity. Going back to the incest scene that people can’t help but focus on (I mean it is the climax of the story); I agree with the other commenter that said that they saw it as Arisa’s final attempt to “win” something over him, but I don’t agree that him giving in was him “winning”. I think she was trying to prove/proved in that scene that he too was also a victim to shallow desires. By laying a hand on her, he’s accepting this (like the same commenter said, but i don’t think either of them really won in this scene), and, in a way, her (perhaps out of pity?). (It’s also worth pointing out clearly that the depiction really isn’t glamorizing incest in any way - you can tell by how it’s barely even shown and the panel itself is very dark. Definitely supposed to be symbolic rather than provoking.) Anyway, very very simply put, overall message seems to be that having shallow values and glamorizing people with shallow values is delusional and bad. But that’s boring without all the layers the mangaka intentionally created obviously.
Some more things to note are:
- How his childhood was probably very bad and he was likely abused/neglected by his mother
- Imagine how this manga would feel completely different if it took place through his eyes - meeting your cousin who’s basically a younger version of his dead mother
- His words “Don’t let it break you” seems like his last gift to her - he doesn’t want her to turn out like his mother, and he knows that she’s just been misled and feels sorry for her
- In the end, Arisa pushing over the vase might seem like it came out of nowhere but I think that was her reaching out and trying to confirm her mother’s love for her (very childish method but we knew she was immature already) which I think she had been unable to see all this time (and might explain why she gravitated so much toward a different woman to be her role model) - so this is also about the complicated relationship between a mother and her daughter
buff bottom x twink top, yum my favorite
i accidentally pressed down button but yess