She has not appeared for an entire volume and she’s been mentioned liked twice
Why would she? Yami does not know her chronologically.
This isn’t a case of “the author is writing a complex narrative from multiple perspectives” they are trying to pull a bait and switch and pretend it’s not a bait and switch
They are not. I mean, it's your assumption against mine until we see the events of chapter 21 followed up from, but I have no reasons to believe that we will not get back to Hikari's POV and get a proper resolution for her.
That’s why pacing and momentum are important
I ask you again, what is "pacing and momentum"? Until you describe these buzzwords and the meaning you attribute to them, they will remain just that - buzzwords.
Yes we all remember what happened at the end of volume 1, the issue is author is now completely incapable of playing off the emotions they built up, there can not be a proper emotional payoff to Hikari’s arc it’s been way too long and way too much has been told to us, she can just get a new one
If we were told too much to us and the outcome we expect now is different from what we expected prior to this arc, then maybe there was a point to telling us all of this?
Also if you can’t understand the difference between a history book and a story, you’re beyond help.
And what's the difference? If you're so prissy about history not being fiction, replace "history book" with "historical fiction" or "biography" or whatever, the point remains the same - stories with foregone conclusions not effecting the ongoing narrative.
If you have multiple dishes on a plate that are supposed to compliment eachother (in this metaphor: having multiple POV’s) you don’t each all of one, then all of the other
You don't put them in a blender and make a smoothie.
Also you do realize the vast majority of non-linear fiction jumps back and forth right.
Like this manga, eh? The fiction I've read/watched had chunks big enough to be self-contained, and this arc can fit in a chapter or two of a regular novel, or 20-30 minutes of a movie. Some movies might chose to switch the POV or timeline more often, but they have advantage over manga or books in that they have more tools which allow them to establish enough surrounding context in a fraction of second; manga would have to waste no less than a textbox to establish a switch.
Yes the events of Yami’s backstory are hard to digest, it’s been an entire volume of nearly unbroken walls of text, she’s gotten more backstory than Hikari has at this point and people still fucking hate her because her backstory was delivered as a sloppy text dump during a CRUCIAL SCENE in the character we had been following’s arc.
Finally, no Yuu DOESNT know this stuff because he is privy to neither her thoughts nor incidents occurring around the time they’re actively interacting
Again, how is that any different to how the story was during the first arc? Hikari was monologuing to herself with no less of a character count than Yami was during her arc. Yuu was privy to what was happening with Yami to the extent he could see, and while he could not see evertything, he could see a lot. A lot more than during Hikari's arc where he was only shown the facade of a childhood friend.
And if what you say is true and Hikari never confronts them and pulls back, why is she in the story?
Because her pulling back is also a story with a lot to tell about how she copes with this outcome and moves on.
Also if you can’t understand the difference between a history book and a story, you’re beyond help.
Actually, I think our conversation is heated enough that I can stop pulling this particular punch:
People LIKE Hikari, so we want to see what happens to her, we can’t do that when the author refuses to let anything happen with her for an entire volume.
Yeah, that seems to be the reason. People are reading this manga to see more of their chosen waifu, they want to see resolution for they waifu, and at best tolerate anything that is not directly about her. Yami? She's just an unimportant skank who dared to bare teeth at our waifu and steal her spotlight, in actuality our waifu and our waifu alone deserves to have the story be told about her, everything else is just an unimportant context for a side character with whom we don't need to attempt to empathize because she's not our waifu. If it is not about our waifu, it is not an effective narrative, at best it's a "sloppy text dump", nevermind that our waifu had 20 chapters of her own "sloppy text dump". Our third wheel of a waifu is not important in this arc where she has no reasons to be in the first place? That's, uh, bad pacing, and the story needs to be restructured in such a way where our waifu is always important, and it will all be about her, that would be good pacing! Now let's get back to our waifu, because I've been containing my climax for 6 months and cannot hold it anymore!
Pacing, momentum, climax - all buzzwords meant to be excuses for misreading this story. This complete dismissal of Yami and her story is nothing but waifuwars and reading the wrong manga. And I am saying this as someone whose waifu is Hikari, I couldn't care less about what happens to Yami after the story ends. Doesn't mean I wouldn't recognize the story that is being told, and the reasons it is being told the way it is.
