Boy's Abyss - Ch. 167 - The Girl and the Kid

[kanoreads]

I never understood how many people seemed to genuinely like sensei/keep rooting for her but this chapter made me realize that she probably could have been a very, very good teacher... IF she wasn't stuck in that town, with all her family and all her own trauma. She goes to incredible lengths to try to save people she thinks are in danger. She's fiercely protective. She refuses to back down even when the situation seems hopeless. But being stuck in that place, in that situation, is going to destroy he, too. I actually felt sorry for her.

Part of me wonders whether the manga is gearing up for some kind of Our Town kind of ending, like this whole town wasn't just a metaphorical abyss but actually some purgatory or something.

 

[Anon94]

I'm rooting for a sensei win

 

[Absent666]

I'm rooting for a sensei win

don't watch ch. 168 if you expect a Shiba-chan route

 

[huavanly]

I know i already said this but fuck this teacher bitch man

 

[WanRa]

Man, I still hate how the author turned Sensei this way just to make Nagi win.
What about saving Kazumasa and Gen's father? All the good deeds went poof and now she's a psycho lol.

Thanks a lot for the update!

All the good deeds she did were to impress Reiji, not out of kindness.

 

[Tomibiki]

It's like, that Trapped In The Closet episode of South Park, but more annoying.

 

[F3mb0I69]

Kid named Reiji:

 

[BrowardJit]

i'm rooting for sensei, nagi, and choko, as well as his mother. after reiji tames the harem, he will build a raft of them with gen as his deckhand, they'll float downstream the lover's abyss and into the ocean never to be seen again

 

[Makenai]

Man, I still hate how the author turned Sensei this way just to make Nagi win.
What about saving Kazumasa and Gen's father? All the good deeds went poof and now she's a psycho lol.

Thanks a lot for the update!

Didn't you understand she only did these things to "redeem" herself and get Reijis trust back?

 

[shin66]

I will not fix her, she's perfect 😳

 

[Ghost-0]

To be honest, at the current development and the grace to freely see how things back then, with the whole picture in mind........

Its pretty obvious that the only ship properly sail for Reiji at present is Nagi.

Spoiler: Opinion time

• Chako used to be in the lead as the other guidepost for Reiji, but the town and her own abyss ruined it pretty bad. Not to beyond repair, but it is struggling.
• Yuko's sank ages ago. Not like it was ever properly sail anyway.
• Gen's slowly sail, but not to the way everyone envisioned. Reiji tries to understand Gen's abyss, and honestly Gen is walking out from the abyss, one step at a time.
• Yuki's ship is pretty much a confusing Theseus' paradox of one giant blob consist of Reiji's abyss, her (at this point little and misguided) teacher's responsibility, her own abyss, and the downward spiral of her heavy love toward Reiji. Nobody could truly say where does her genuine love end and her dark abyss begin. Or it was never separated in the first place?

Nagi, however.......they truly are for each other. Always the flicker ray of hope to each other, the guidepost for their action; even though both always realized it way too late. Still the most healthy ship from the remaining 'harem' ship

 

[finickydesert]

place your bets on what happens next
the mom makes a killdozer
nagi leaves abruptly
reiji watches his first ever live show

I hope the killdozer but nagi one might be the most possible

 

[Absent666]

I hope the killdozer but nagi one might be the most possible

No one of the options happened

 

[sutululu]

This series is never gonna end, is it.

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/ne...nami-boy-abyss-manga-to-end-this-year/.206113

 

[Lustrist]

its not boys abyss without a set of characters chillin in a 1 room for a little bit

 

[AngelusDaeva]

I seriously don’t get this dude’s obsession with Nagi.

Nagi is the same as Reiji. They both have lived lives where others were dictating how they should live, like fish in a bowl.

Reiji's life has been dictated by his mother's trauma/abyss, and Nagi has been constantly abused since she was a child after surviving that earthquake until she "married" Esemori.

With Esemori at death's door, his dying wish is for Reiji to protect Nagi from falling back into the abyss she was swimming in.

The alternative is for Reiji to let Nagi fall back into the abyss and become a JAV and be trapped in an abyss with zero chance of escaping.

--
Edit - not related to quote: I had to go back a couple of chapters, but, Shibasawa is an awful person. She effectively mind%^&*ed Nagi into submission and forced a learned helplessness response from Nagi. It's why Nagi hasn't left that room...It's her new fishbowl.

 

[Ghost-0]

Edit - not related to quote: I had to go back a couple of chapters, but, Shibasawa is an awful person. She effectively mind%^&*ed Nagi into submission and forced a learned helplessness response from Nagi. It's why Nagi hasn't left that room...It's her new fishbowl.

Adding on to this, author used the same double page format of 'invitation to abyss'....which fully cements Shibasawa as the new Yuko to Reiji's life.

Other interesting thing I have noticed, is that Shibasawa have this 'abyss spread' twice (one with Reiji and one with Nagi).........and more than twice its shown that she never really want to get Reiji out from his abyss, but want to lock Reiji together with her in their abyss

 

[HoneyPopper]

All the good deeds she did were to impress Reiji, not out of kindness.

Agreed. It's never out of good deed. She's never sincere. She NEVER cared for anyone except for herself and how she could get into Reiji's good grace. She wanted to "save" Reiji because she wanted him to be grateful for her. She's a manipulator and an abuser.

 

[Chuoch]

LETSGO

 

[risotoo]

she probably could have been a very, very good teacher... IF she wasn't stuck in that town, with all her family and all her own trauma. She goes to incredible lengths to try to save people she thinks are in danger. She's fiercely protective. She refuses to back down even when the situation seems hopeless. But being stuck in that place, in that situation, is going to destroy he, too

This is probably the biggest point of appeal to her, for me! Her design is cute and I love a good (bad) teacher/student relationship, but what makes her compelling and not just charming is that the longer the series goes the more it's underlined that this place and the way she learned to deal with her trauma and baggage as a citizen of it ruined her before she even really had a chance. A lot of the cast on the more antagonistic side (comparatively; I don't feel like it's a series with a hardline human antagonist so much as a hardline conceptual antagonist and humans with antagonistic behaviors, which is different in my head somehow) are people failed by the systems that should have existed to protect and nurture them and a lot of the conflicts are the fallout of that.

That's why it's important for it to be a boy's (age indicator) abyss, and why we're coming up on endgame as Reiji's 18th birthday approaches - understatement of the century, but Reiji has been failed too. He has likewise never really had a chance to come into himself, and that is just something that happens in life, but you don't actually have to give yourself over to the abyss. And if you do end up doing so, you can always reach the surface. It might not be an easy journey, but you can. He's just like Shiba and he's just like his mother and so on, but he can still grow and he can still swim - he can still become whoever he wants to be, just like Shiba told him from the start. And so could she, and so could Yuko and so on, but... well. Here we are.

Anyway, good chapter imo. Really loved Reiji pointing out Shiba's hypocrisy in treating him like a kid just when it's convenient for her - they're just a man and a woman and nothing else, unless she doesn't like what he's doing, and then they're a student and teacher again. I'm calling it hypocrisy but I think it's very cute of her. She's a good character.

Thanks for the tl as always!