Kimi no Tame ni Sekai wa Aru - Ch. 6 - Jewel of You

[MangaDex]

 

[jak]

So did the friend reject her? or did they get together? What a vague ending.

 

[AddictedWeeaboo]

ouch

 

[Lynkaster]

Unrequited love but won't let her go, pretty good torture there...

 

[JKTV]

The vague-ish ending is killing me.. it’s lesning more towards the end I don’t want cuz oooof my heart

 

[Syapaaye]

So it's still unrequited in the end. That's fun.

 

[Sem]

Maybe not fun, but a touch of bitterness every once in a while isn't so bad

 

[Oeconomist]

I don't think that the story is intended to be read as having a vague ending. When Fuwako mistakenly thought that Arisa wanted Date, Fuwako acted as if prepared to step aside, because her greater attachment was to Arisa. Learning that Arisa was in love with her, Fuwako returned to be with Arisa. The statement “I knew that my love wouldn't come true.” on page 31 uses “knew” ironically; attention should be paid to “seemed” in “When it seemed like Fuwako was going away.” And that the reason that there is no need for a key to the jewelry box to be acquired is that it is part of a metaphor in which the jewel of Fuwako will not be taken from Arisa.

 

[Oeconomist]

If you'll look at the other two stories on this site by this author, a theme in each is the triumph of love over the expectation that loss is a foregone conclusion.

 

[Kiraidesu]

@Oeconomist thank you for making the connection with the author's other oneshots. I'll use that as my mental justification that Fuwako is actually bi, that the Date guy is just not that important, and that Arisa is her true love.

I can't deal with the alternative lol.

For other readers, the author's oneshots seem to consistently follow this pattern: one-sided, desperately suppressed longing -> conflict and misunderstanding -> giving up -> but WAIT, there's more -> actually it's not one-sided after all -> love.

 

[totallynotmike]

I'll use that as my mental justification that Fuwako is actually bi, that the Date guy is just not that important, and that Arisa is her true love.

I can't deal with the alternative lol.

Hahahaha.

 

[darkmaster006]

From reading "Cast a Spell" I could guess where this would go, being from the same author. What an awesome pair of characters, though! Author needs to get a serialisation...

 

[Pokari]

I do dislike it when shoujo-ai gets ambiguous like this. "Decide for yourself if they're properly in love or not at the end, or just friends"...

Like, neither shounen-ai nor regular shounen/romances have this problem to this degree.

 

[Hollow7F]

i for once think they didnt end up together, she was clearly in love with the dude, she just didnt want to lose her friend, and the other girl was afraid of 'losing' her, but she didnt, she's still her friend at least

 

[119811]

my heart T^T

 

[Xaelath]

Good but if this actually serialised,
We'll probably ended up only seeing these two break up...

 

[darkmaster006]

I come back to this one every know and then. When Fuwako came back crying, I can imagine she just re-imagined every time that Arisa had told her 'I love you' or had become really close to her and re-interpreted with her new-found knowledge, and I can imagine she remembered how she had reacted, ignoring Arisa's real feelings.

 

[JohnJRenns]

holy shit i started hyperventilating while reading this, what a frustrating but oddly perfect story. in my mind i wanted to hate Fuwako and how she seemed to be leading on, but really it's Arisa's fault for never confessing to her until it was late. always be honest with your feelings to the people most important to you, folks

(also, ah yes, getting matching ear rings, just totally "friend" things)

 

[SuperOniichan]

Sometimes it worries me how queer manga is handling bisexuality when it comes to a character who has gone from gay crush to straight crush. If it were the other way around, the manga and audience would celebrate the bisexual message that it is okay to love both girls and boys. But if this is a case like here, then it is immediately perceived as an agnsty drama about repressed homosexuality and denial of true self, while the audience immediately begins to scream about the erasure of gay people. As if fandom sees bisexuality not as a real identity, but just a loophole to make the initially straight character gay.

@JohnJRenns It is perfectly normal in Asia for friends to wear matching rings as a symbol of their "eternal friendship". Especially girls. If Western culture does not understand this, then this does not mean that one has to be culturally insensitive here.

@Xaelath Why? The yuri is full of works that ignore bisexuality and treat it solely as internal homophobia. This cliché is even more popular than "a girl thinks she is a lesbian because she hates men."

@Pokari I don't think this chapter was very ambiguous, but in relation to your question, yes, yuri is much more queerbaiting-filled than any BL. Partly due to wider appeal, partly due to greater commercial success, but overall, if it's not Shonen Jump Bishonen Syndrome, then fujoshi's staff are usually much more honest with their audience.

 

[Pokari]

@SuperOniichan: Yeah, I can't really say what I was thinking at the time regarding this particular story since it was over a year ago and I'd all but forgotten it. XD

Re: People getting upset over bisexual gay-to-straight romance plots... I mean, I hope and assume we'll get over that eventually once being gay is a bit more normalized and unremarkable (which is the direction we continue to trend in, thankfully—well, where I live anyway).

But the reasons for the reflexive dislike seem obvious to me. The harmful media tropes of a non-gay-accepting or half-accepting society still feel raw, or in other cases are still ongoing. There's the reminiscence to the old "you just needed to find the right [straight partner]" bull-poo, of course. There's the "bury-your-gays" and other variations on "it's socially acceptable only if it's tragedy demonstrating their hubris". Or more recently there's been the jaded queer-baiting: "We know half of the audience wants some of this to be gay, but the other half would be revolted, so let's just compromise by writing hints of gay romance but making it clear, if questioned, that everyone's actually straight". With so much "nothing can end well for gay couples" stuff still hanging in the air in mainstream stuff, of course everyone's grumpy to get another case of "straight relationship wins, gay relationship loses" in a world that's already sickeningly over-saturated with that scenario.

^{There's probably a certain amount of "rooting for the underdog" going on here, too. But nonetheless.}

Which is all totally a disservice to authors who are addressing such scenarios legitimately and without prejudice. Logically, "The first person I liked was my gender, the second was the other" should be an unquestionably valid plot progression for multiple romances from a bisexual character. But hackles will be raised.

Spoiler

To be clear, there's certainly other, more negative aspects to it too—just as you've said—there is indeed some solid bi-erasure going on frequently with the "coming-out-of-the-closet" narrative being twisted to imply that anyone who discovers they like anyone of their own gender is basically just gay now and was all along and just didn't know it yet (which totally happens to a lot of people! ...but irregardless of that, discovering you like someone of your own gender does not just automatically negate any feelings you've ever had for the other gender—which should be obvious?—and yet that often seems to be the implicit message). This strikes me as really ironic: "I thought I liked [the other gender] but it turns out I just hadn't found the right person [of my gender]!"—no, switching which gender comes first in that ****ing misbegotten paradigm does not fix it!

...But, like: At the end of the day, I'm bisexual myself and I still look at "straight romance wins over gay romance" plots with a certain amount of initial skepticism. And like, I'm really unimpressed with (nearly) all the "but she's going to go marry a guy now for tragedy's sake" yuri and so forth...