Boku no Kokoro no Yabai Yatsu - Vol. 4 Ch. 57 - I Want Her to Know Me

[MangaDex]

 

[Psychronia]

Hnngh! Another step closer. This time, on his part.

 

[Faryshta]

I was just complaining on reddit that although I like this male lead, he lacks any individual personality. He is never shown to have any particular hobby he spends time with, he doesn't exhibit any passion or life goal, he doesn't have anything interesting about him good or bad. As of chapter 56 the male lead is just a male moe blob.

This chapter shows him actually active about a peculiar hobby which can give him some individuality but still just the first step, we don't know anything he particulary likes, dislikes or makes him passionate about.

 

[Macrosis2020]

I actually like this version much more. Boredom’s translations can be hard to follow sometimes

 

[Ferry]

Thanks anon

 

[bramhistory]

Some parts of Boredom quite confusing but this one is easier to understand, weird that in earlier chapters it is boredom that have easier to understand words.

 

[Grallis]

Yo, WTF, this is way easier to read.

 

[deCarabasHJ]

"I want you to want me
I need you to need me
I'd love for you to love me"

 

[finnikarma2431]

Fuck yeah

The development goes on!

 

[neiT720]

@Faryshta What have you been reading? Dude like crime gore stuffs from chap one, and that has been consistently shown through out the manga. The manga is oozed with individual personality with not just mc but every single character. He was an edgy teen, is an introvert but surprisingly social aware, like black color, low self-esteem,....... and the list goes on.

Seriously, Please take your time to actually read and look at the drawing before you start judging.

 

[Shareazu]

@deCarabasHJ do you think the protagonist is being selfish?

I think it's normal. . It's not like he treats yamada poorly, too. Several times through the chapters he has shown care, not only for her and her feelings, doing what he could to try to help, but to other characters, too. What makes this story so nice is that they are both helping each other, in their own way. Yamada has also helped him a great ton. Look how he was on the first chapters, and how he is now!

 

[Faryshta]

@neiT720 mentioning it and showing it are different things. The chapter one could have also mentioned that he is a world class chessmaster but since we have never seen him talk about chess, crimes, see him go to any expo about those topics or actually being shown anything that he is actively doing thats just 'tell' which is meaningless in narrative.

Being an "edgy teen" doesn't mean he is unique, actually quite the opposite. Its like saying "she is unique because she is tsundere"

 

[Dagger]

Based anon this makes way more sense.

 

[mgRdr]

@Faryshta

mentioning it and showing it are different things. The chapter one could have also mentioned that he is a world class chessmaster but since we have never seen him talk about chess, crimes, see him go to any expo about those topics or actually being shown anything that he is actively doing thats just 'tell' which is meaningless in narrative.

The very first panel of this manga is him reading a murderbook. What kind of other confirmation do you need about his interests, and what does your "show don't tell" rant has to do with anything?

Being an "edgy teen" doesn't mean he is unique, actually quite the opposite. Its like saying "she is unique because she is tsundere"

We're talking about him having a personality, not about him being unique

 

[Faryshta]

The very first panel of this manga is him reading a murderbook.

Thats still tell since we don't know how much is he reading it, he just turns some pages and thats all we actually see. We don't know if he is passionate about it, if he actually reads it or if he is just and edgy teen.

What kind of other confirmation do you need about his interests

Him talking about them or having any active participation on his hobby like for example assisting to an expo, learning some skill or simply fucking mentioning it.

Lets put Yamada into perspective. Instead of having the first page saying "Yamada is an actress" we see her actually appearing on TV, actually practicing skills related to her passion, we see her being depressed about not being able to assist to a photography session, we seee her acting a famous trope scene of "your loved one turned into zombie".

And since the very first message I specified I am talking about his individual personality aka what makes him unique.

 

[Shareazu]

@Faryshta i mean, the focus of the manga is not the character itself, but the interactions between him, his love interest, and the world around him. The audience gets to know bits about him as the story goes; we learn from the start that he likes murder stories; From that, we can also gather that e most likely likes to read. Later on, we learn that he also likes to write, having won some prizes and awards from the stuff he has written so far. We also learn that he likes vydia, and so on and so forth. In short, as the story progresses, we are still learning about the characters, as they learn more about each other, too.

 

[Faryshta]

@Shareazu those are all 'tell' information. We never see him participate on a contest, we never see him writting, we never see him feeling depressed or happy about a participating in a contest.

Again putting Yamada into perspective it would be as if the first page of the manga she is shown reading a "model magazine" and later we learn she has won some modeling contests because we see prizes she has won and so we also deduce that she mostlikely likes reading about models.

 

[mgRdr]

@Faryshta

Thats still tell since we don't know how much is he reading it, he just turns some pages and thats all we actually see. We don't know if he is passionate about it, if he actually reads it or if he is just and edgy teen.

When you see someone reading a book, a normal thing to assume is that he reads it because he likes it. If he was reading it just for show, it would have been established early on, and even then his choice of a book would have been quite telling.

Him talking about them

That's quite a major point that he has no friends with whom he could talk about it. Another major point, reinforced in this chapter, is that this hobby is not exactly a popular discussion topic.

having any active participation on his hobby like for example assisting to an expo, learning some skill

Does anyone who, say, likes Tolkien books, have to attend conventions or roleplay as Gandalf? Must they learn swordplay or magic to prove the world that they truly like Tolkien books?
And it's not like we see that his hobby influences him enough to make him misuse a paper knife twice or misinterprete his feelings towards Yamada as "murder intent lol".

or simply fucking mentioning it

And into the bin goes your "show don't tell" rant.

Lets put Yamada into perspective. Instead of having the first page saying "Yamada is an actress" we see her actually appearing on TV, actually practicing skills related to her passion, we see her being depressed about not being able to assist to a photography session, we seee her acting a famous trope scene of "your loved one turned into zombie".

If it was a manga about a struggling writer and a novice actress, it would have made more sense to dwelve deeper into what Ichi does when Yamada is not around. As it stands, this is a manga about growing relationship between two teenage dorks, so whatever are Ichi's hobbies, they are at most secondary to the primary plot.

And since the very first message I specified I am talking about his individual personality aka what makes him unique.

Oh, then there's no point in arguing about your personal definitions of things. I will say though that I would rather have BokuYaba be about humanlike characters rather than about characters made deliberately quirky so that they qualify as "unique"

 

[deCarabasHJ]

@Shareazu I was actually just quoting a song, "I Want You to Want Me" by Cheap Trick. The title of the chapter reminded me of that song.

I love this manga, exactly because it shows his development from a gloomy (and adorable) little edgelord to someone who is perhaps finally able to reach out and let somebody get to know him. He is not being selfish, he is repeatedly shown to care about others. The fact that he keeps avoiding Yamada around other people, for example, is because he thinks that associating with him will reflect badly on her. That is of course wrong, or rather, not something she cares about, but it is still a caring behaviour.

Yamada has also developed as a character, although perhaps in less obvious ways. That can mostly be seen in how she seems to know him better now than before, but I think there is also a great deal of realism in the instances when she misunderstands him.

 

[Cmiitjinze]

To add to one of the first comments in this whole debate, maybe the expression that "he didn't exhibit any passions or life goals" is partly the point? Like, the dude for sure has his passions. Explains largely his interest in the more violent side of criminology (perhaps initially a result of his more edgy side?). And then, not having any life goals in middle school years, sounds very on point for a kid who struggles with his own feelings from a personal perspective. And, hell, perhaps that starting to come up would be an area of development for him?

In a way, too, this segmented viewing of his life is an interesting way of displaying him gradually opening up to Yamada from the reader's point of view. I feel like we almost know as much about his own past as Yamada does, in a way, although I can't say for sure that's how it's been. I still meant to reread this series a bit father in.

Maybe I'm also projecting a bit from my past since Ichikawa's character development feels similar to my own adolescence, but hey, subtext can be unintentional I guess?