Literally made an account to finally comment on this. Just, wow.
This is such a fascinating and harrowing psychological exploration of CSA that isn’t afraid to explore how truly fucked up it can make you. Also the trauma bonding between Airi and Hiro is so interesting and uncomfortable, I truly have no idea where the fuck the mangaka is going to go with it and I’m low key dreading finding out but a little part of me hopes, what with the latest chapter, that Airi can try help Hiro just as therapy has helped her. Not that I think he deserves to receive that help from her, the whole thing is obviously well beyond unhealthy, but fuck if I don’t want the poor boy that he was to got professional help and support.
I love the development of Airi’s relationship with her husband too; how he’s learned and changed to support her and also seeing the work she’s doing in therapy, the way the therapist is challenging her ingrained beliefs that so negatively impact her is wonderful to see. It reflect my own experience in therapy and it’s the first time I’ve seen that in a manga.
I don’t know if Hiro can be “saved”. He has to want to get help, to have enough love and care for himself to do so and I sadly don’t think that’s possible (even outside of the fact that he’s a quadruple amputee being kept secretly as a pet, like how they gonna explain that to a therapist??). I feel like Airi and Hiro’s journey have always been about processing CSA and the opposite ends of the spectrum of coping and recovering enough to live healthily. Airi is achieving that and Hiro is not.
Also, just reading through previous comments over the years, particularly the controversy of this being tagged josei: I’m a woman in my 30s and I absolutely love this series and I have several female friends my age who enjoy it too. I love psychological works, in particular those that explore sexual abuse, and this series scratches an itch similar to that of ‘Bradherley no Basha’. It is grim, horrific and brutal but also a rich story of the horrors faced by several women that, whilst likely is a fetish work, is not gratuitously so. The things depicted are horrors real women and people have faced, their reactions are real and horrific and it is heartbreaking and painful and reads to me - as this series does - as written to explore these horrors psychologically rather than just to get some guy off.
Anyway, 10/10 fucked up manga for the girlies ✌️