Bloom Into You - Vol. 7 Ch. 38 - Direction

[altereggo]

@elefantine97 I know it may sound empty from a stranger on the internet but 3 months can still be considered short. Everybody heals at different paces I have felt similarly before and my biggest heartbreak took a year and some soul searching to heal. Don't lose hope of love and stay strong.

 

[elefantine97]

@altereggo thanks, friend! I thought I successfully got rid of my fear of intimacy during my last relationship, which lasted almost 2 years - the longest I've had so far. Turns out, it's still there, and after that one, it's become even stronger, and I have no idea how to fight it.
-
Oh well, it's not like we need love to live, right? There are plenty of aromantic people out here.

 

[Pachka84]

As usual, what should have been a very emotional scene ended up as a complete dud because light-haired girls are not allowed to be more emotional than dark-haired girls in fiction. Instead of this scene being a painful but liberating climax for Sayaka it ends up as yet another boring scene wherein Touko is portrayed as a failure as a human being and Sayaka just brushes of the open rejection by the person with whom she has had the most meaningful bond in her entire life.
Everyone in the literary world really has to shake off this weird obsession with making all dark-haired female characters look weak and helpless and all light-haired female characters like they are unfazed by everything and are always in control so we don't ever have to read such terrible writing as this again.

 

[pretzelsss]

Has it not been Yuu being taken advantage of in the beginning, Touko wouldnt even consider having romantic relationship with anyone, including Sayaka. Touko becomes the way she is now with the help of Yuu’s. Whereas Sayaka sees nothing’s wrong with the way Touko is from the beginning, doesnt really now what kind of self inflicted battle Touko has with herself, and thus that’s how she came to look up to Touko as she is the reliable, smart, pretty President Council.

Has Sayaka known, how it’s all just a facadè that Touko put up, unreliable and fragile Touko; would she still think Touko is her ideals?

 

[TheNamekianClown]

Am I the only one that paid attention to Sayaka's answer to why she fell in love? It was entirely superficial. She fell for her face, then her smarts (which, yes, is also superficial) then when questioned if she would still love her if she lost those things replies with "I'm sure that wouldn't happen." which is basically avoiding the question and admitting that her love is based only on superficial things. Don't get where all the love for her is coming from.

 

[B0undarybreaker]

Bloom Into You is back baby. It's good again. Awoouu (wolf Howl)

 

[Pachka84]

Where do Yuu and Sayaka even come from claiming they love Touko?
The are constantly plotting behind her back and against her wishes, which isn't something you do to a person you love or respect. They are so pathetic only Sayaka manages to squeeze a few tears from her eyes with much effort when Touko rejects her, while Yuu cringes a little and that's it. Compare that too Touko who is overwhelmed with grief because she (or so Nio claims at least) breaks Sayaka's heart. That's real love. When Touko claims she is weak and all Sayaka doesn't even say (what Nio doesn't care to acknowledge, because all she cares about is to make Touko look weak and melancholy) that in reality Touko has actually become the person she has always worked so hard to become (Which is an amazing accomplishment, consider the handicaps Nio burdened her with). The way Nio portrays them it really doesn't look like Yuu or Sayaka love Touko at all, and that's all because she is so preoccupied with making Touko look weak instead of writing her as a person and with making Yuu and Sayaka look like they are above all life throws at them.

 

[pretzelsss]

Against Touko wishes that clearly not actually herself but just following her sister’s steps and in the end making herself lost, and then later being uncomfortable and betrayed with how she has been when she found out that her sister is actually nothing like what she saw all along? Yeah, sure, a close friend or a lover would see Touko is suffering through that, but fortunately she only shows her weak side to Yuu.
The author made Touko look helpless because that’s how she currently is, exactly like the drama that student council performed. Only showing certain people a piece of herself. Not wholly.

 

[Pachka84]

Another instance of Sayaka's utter lack of love and respect for Touko is when she assumes Yuu stepped in and took Touko from her while she was hesitant to tell her how she felt.
It makes it seem like Touko is something to be owned to Sayaka. She doesn't even consider that the difference between her and Yuu is not that Yuu was faster, but that Yuu is the one that was actively CHOSEN by Touko. As in the deliberate action undertaken by a person. That monologue makes it seem like Sayaka can't see touko as a person but only as a direction- and powerless object that must be taken.

Nio once had Koyomi say that a flawless character is boring.
That is certainly true of Yuu and Sayaka, who are so flawless, unemotional, confident and in control that it is impossible to find anything engaging in or anything to identify with.
It is very peculiar that Nio had her writer say such a thing when she expressly portrays her own two main characters as two completely perfect characters.
Yuu and Sayaka are so together and flawless that they are extremely boring.

But the reverse is true as well:
Touko's backstory was so ridiculous it defied all possibility to identify with her from the start, but she has been portrayed so flawed and weak that it has now become impossible to even see her as a character (which is obviously tainting Nio's portrayal of how the other characters see her).
Touko has officially become another Mei Aihara, a beautiful plotpoint without a voice of her own (except for when Nio wants her to put herself down) in whom the author has lost all interest except as a tool to show us how perfect her main characters are.
Touko too has become extremely boring. Not because she is unrealistically flawless like Yuu and Sayaka, but she is unrealistically and extremely flawed.
As the last page of this translation shows Nio has already managed to make people hate Touko (I wouldn't be surprised if some of the translators sent some of those rumored death threats of late to themselves. As the picture on the last page evidences some of them are certainly fucked up in the head to the level that they would do such a thing) and if she keeps portraying Touko like this much longer she'll only alienate her readers more from the character.

Another thing that mangaka need to learn is that there is a point at which your readers want the main character to be together her love intrest and be happy together and that the story has to continue with its focus on something else. Past that point, dragging the drama on will only become increasingly tiresome. Yagate Kimi Ni Naru is well past that point and now the love triangle is getting drawn out far too long. It is time to accomplish the relation and create a new plot.

 

[Pachka84]

Then there is the absurd magical ability Yuu and Sayaka have to just know every little thing that goes on in everyone's mind, but we are supposed to believe that in more than a year Touko never even had a hunch that the girl who is constantly making googly eyes at her, craving her attention and following her like a dog might be in love with her.
That is a ridiculous level of thick headedness Nio is asking us to accept considering the superhuman levels of insight into other people's feelings and thoughts she wants us to accept from her two mc's.

 

[Oeconomist]

When the narration is by a character within a story (as opposed to being without such personality), one must be aware that the narration may be unreliable. Examples of unreliable narrators are found in Poe's “The Tell-Tale Heart” and Nabakov's Lolita, and in each case many readers fail to recognize that the narration is unreliable. When an author reveals the thoughts of a character in a way that seems to hand the narration to that character, that doesn't mean that the thoughts are a reliable report of anything but the character's interpretation of things. The fact that it looks like narration and perhaps is narration doesn't make it reliable.

 

[yuzhyuzh]

Sayaka knows almost everything about Touko but she was afraid.
It was Yuu who stepped in and tried to wake up Touko from her nightmares.
Sayaka blindly put a faith in Touko that someday, she will change in her own will.
Thing is, it didnt happened not until Yuu stepped in and initiated the changes.
Well, everything's falling into places.

 

[Pegasus1751]

So many paragraphs...

 

[Remedil]

What a load of shit, Yuu just came in out of nowhere and Touka fell for her day one, Sayaka spent years getting to know her just to get NTR by some random kid, LN is way better than this Manga

 

[Kitsune_115]

This is like my fifth read for this series and every single time I read this chapter is a mixture of relief and pain.

So well written.