Kimi no Kami ga Ki ni Narunda - Ch. 5

[Esgar]

what I'm liking a lot about this, is how he started developing an interest in her for something normal that now is growing into a common interest. Just a bit worried how persistent the topic of exes is so far and what it'll lead to.

Thanks for the chapter!

No shade to the author, but this really is a woman's fantasy through and through xD. I've seen it a lot in female gaze content. The characters always have a lot of exes, often talk about it. Some people called this a hair fetish manga, but I dont think they necessarily thought of it as a woman's hair fetish manga, which I think is a bit different. Applying the hobby of cosmetics and hair styling onto a boyfriend who will go along with all of it is the basic fantasy here. Having a guy to do your hair and having him as a dress up doll, basically, taking him to buy cosmetics etc. I guess in a way it's simply applying your hobby onto the opposite sex, so it's not a concept that is unique to women.

Nothing wrong with that, but as I mentioned in a previous chapter discussion, I went through something similar when I was a teenager and I strongly disliked a lot of those aspects. If I were the MC in this I would probably already feel quite put off by her and I was especially reminded of that when she was condescending towards him about his studies. I dont know why so many women think that this is attractive. I guess many guys do like that? But I've also noticed that this is something a lot of women seem to enjoy being done to them, but only if the guy is hot enough. So perhaps that's where that's coming from? Or maybe I'm just a weirdo who never liked teasing.

I've noticed that a lot of these little things are not entirely unique to the person I was seeing back then, but that it is something that a lot of women seem to think is attractive. Being condescending (aka "teasing"), talking about exes, forcing a guy to take part in cosmetics or doing their hair etc. It's OK as a one-off, but I feel like many don't realize that these are indulgences for when you are farther into the relationship and that they are generally not super appealing to guys. Starting a relationship like this is honestly a fumble in my view. But I guess most guys would not be so picky and this is clearly a fantasy, with him being conveniently interested in hairstyling and only her being able to help him (despite men's hair styling typically being quite different from women's but whatever).

Rant over, hope yall dont take my views too seriously

 

[greensteve972]

Ball is in an open court my guy. Shoot your three.

 

[Umbrum]

I really hope this won't turn out to be a "I gotta have a cooler hair and fashion sense than her ex's so that I can feel confident about myself!" story. Not much against that but I prefer stuff much more centered around progression on itself, as slow as said progression might be, like Futari Bus.

I'm just no good with stories about self improvement through some arbitrary discipline or sport.

 

[Elfteiroh]

She used his given name, he used her family name.
She carefully consider which product she needs to buy, he just picked the closest one on the shelf.
He vainly made a point of pointing out she brought him here before the MC…
All of that, and it’s very probable that he was the “boyfriend that never commented about her hair”.

yeah… I think that while she was serious in that relationship, Shuta was definitely not, and he was probably the one that broke up, maybe even just over that specific issue.

 

[asspussy]

The exes could as well don't exist.

 

[gletto]

What? Also that "escape route" thing is literally fake lol

Imagine gatekeeping a hairstyle, or even worse, being gatekept out of a good manga bcs of it.

Relevant img:

I see what they're saying kinda. Cornrows are a protective hairstyle, and they don't really work on thinner, non-kinky hair styles. It can lead to breakage because the hair is so close to the scalp and pulled so many times. MC is kind of trying to do the impossible with his hair. I understand that they (JP) don't really know the same history with the hairstyle. It is just weird to me that they specifically chose one of the most prominent black/african hair types.

 

[gletto]

as much as you can obviously have any reason to want to stop reading anything, I think it's kinda dumb to call the manga slightly racist for not going out of its way to explain the cultural significance behind a particular hairstyle, when the focus for every hairstyle shown so far has constantly been on the aesthetic rather than the cultural side.

It's one thing to say that you didn't like it being referred to as "street style", which is fair (even though I think it's a reasonable way to refer to it for someone who doesn't know anything about the history behind it, which I don't think you need to know to be able to talk about or to use that hairstyle), but calling it racist (even "slightly") is going way too far, it's not disrespecting the history of it in any way, it's not even really talking about it at all

I do not think the intention was racism... it just doesn't really make sense as a hairstyle for him in my humble opinion.

 

[robopiplup07]

Still absolutely do not like the constant fixation on their exes. Actually, it's not even the MC really, all he did was ask her who the guy was, it's the FeMC who keeps bringing up the topic of their exes over and over and over again. I really do not like her.

 

[erintesden]

Happens a lot with teen relationships tbh. When you date someone from your school, there's a decent amount of it that's just about status and social dynamics more than it is about love and relationships. Clearly, in his ex's case, she was attracted to the idea of dating someone good at baseball and whatever that did for her perception about herself than actually being interested in dating him as a person.
I don't really think there should a value judgement there, this is just how teens navigate these kinds of social dynamics, true teen romance is rarer in real life than fiction, so this depiction here feels very true to life in many ways.

Reminder that explanation doesn't applies here. Because their relationship was secret. They dated for apparently 3 years or so from what I understood but at least he never told anybody. And I'm not sure if she did either because... Frankly, if she had, then the class would probably already know.
We know how noisy girls that age can be. They would all be speaking about how MC got dumped... But no. That's not happening because nobody knew they dated.
And my main point, is that it feels weird that someone with the egocentric/narcissistic point of view you describe would keep the relationship a secret...
So Im frankly not sure what was the deal with MC Girlfriend

 

[AzrefReza]

I’ll never understand the urge to strongly deny an attractive girl is your girlfriend, except if maybe you are dating another girl…


Also, normal touching between friends? In MY East Asian comics?!

Dude that's so fake. Unless she is some kind of spirit/symbolic stuff (author mentioning nobody ever noticed her wild hair changes).
It's just such a fake character, no personality just a proxy for the author to go with overused tropes. I know you like me & I'm teasing you, please do my hair nothing weird about it, oh we just bumped into my ex, no biggie haha, seems like you care lol.

https://vocaroo.com/15Q1duJyWmg1

Blah blah blabitty blah

This here is exactly why I despise American woke shit.
First, you don’t get to copyright hairstyles. If someone finds a hairstyle cool, it’s perfectly OK to adopt it without caring about whatever history some people might attach to it. It’s profoundly racist to deem someone “not [color] enough” to be allowed to wear a specific hairstyle.
Second, what specific “cultural significance” is there behind a hairstyle that has been used for at least 5000 years across an entire continent? Emphasis on “specific”. Or do you just think that all black people have had the same culture for millennia? Or maybe just that black American culture is somehow more relevant than black African culture? Please enlighten me.
Third, even though the aren’t strictly cornrows because these need very curly hair to be “perfect”, white women on the northern part of the Mediterranean were using a hairstyle very close to cornrows 2500 years ago, so where do you draw the line? How thin is a white/yellow/green person allowed to wear their close-to-the-skull braids?