This chapter left a strong impression on me.
Aside from the iconic spreads where she digs into him, Shinba imagining how Hizumi was as a high school student was intriguingly framed-- there's the accents of cinema (with the film border at the start of the sequence), and it doesn't have an exaggerated energy (as I would expect from cutaways like these).
He technically follows the prompt Hizumi gave him, but there's still a self-centeredness reflected by it becoming something of a self-indulgent fantasy that just happened to also indicate that he can't imagine her as any different than how she's been presenting thus far. Despite that, it took effort for me to maintain the understanding that he was off the mark, because it still felt so true. It was kind of fun.
Hizumi's character has a really interesting premise: she comes off as "a woman who makes men useless"* (男をダメにする女 seems to be a specific Japanese concept-- translate
this page for a basic rundown, watch
this video for a fun demonstration, and look at
this page of a manga as another interesting demonstration), since she's enthusiastically dating this man who the reader is encouraged to view as useless to begin with.
Such a personality both contrasted
and complemented with her regular barrages of scathing critiques of Shinba. They're all observations that would be expected as a preamble to a break-up, and yet... she doesn't break up with him. On the contrary, she follows up with something like praise or salvage (this also existed in the pre-serialized version, but 1) it was far more subtle, 2) her verbiage was far more crude, 3) her words were less critiques and more unmitigated shit-talking, and 4) the praise/salvage felt more backhanded). Furthermore, she's genuinely happy about their encounters after they end their meetings.
But
what is she happy about? That's at the heart of my intrigue in this story as it is. Is she interested in his improvement, or would she prefer that he continue to be useless as to maintain the dynamic they now have? Does she enjoy viewing how his earnest efforts and attitude contrast with his lack of success and poise? Does she see him as taking well to correction? What, exactly, are her reasons for doting on this barely pitiable "failure"?
I'm moderately interested in seeing how this develops.
*Seriously, I don't think women can adequately appreciate the danger this kind of woman poses for a man, and possibly society as a whole-- holy crap.
I kind of hope they pull this the direction of Nagatoro... the first few chapters were pretty rough until the writer leveled her out a bit.
you wouldn't be saying this if you read the Nagatoro CGs
Yeah I don't want some weird redemption story for her. I just want to see the psycho lady being herself. All manipulative and malignant, with dude none the wiser.
If there's a way to maintain her same kind of character over a long period of time in a narrative that isn't nearly as comedic as it is dramatic, I'm not creative enough to figure it out.
