Kusunoki-san wa Koukou Debut ni Shippai Shite Iru - Ch. 39 - I just... I don’t want to deny who I am

[Tinker_OwO]

Damn, Hebikawa's insecurity is gonna be the death of us all loll

 

[GetRekdm8]

It's literally impossible to sympathize with this bitch if you have even half a brain

 

[hx9620]

Suddenly the tone of "am i evil" sounds in my head... 🤟 Love this Hebikawa character

 

[Lunkli]

Imagine Hebikawa ascends to godhood and forces everyone to be like her. That'd be the most awesome direction this story could go in, I think.

 

[exxp]

I predict that the "snake" girl is just about to do things that she will only regret.

 

[freedomseekr]

I'm beginning to think the snake eyed woman may be the bad guy in this series.

Nah, she's the mid-boss at most.

 

[xerather]

Damn.. Love Hebi development, as long as she did not cross the line, I think her line of thoughts is very valid. Highschooler can be a trainwreck

 

[Dark1400]

MC is about to be jumpscared by snake girl again

 

[se4ring]

I'll say it again. Snake is more of a main character than out actual MCs. Almost everything that happens in this story lately is related to her in some way. I think the author liker her character more than the straight forward MCs.

 

[kaijuwega]

I guess I'd call it "having her character sacrificed on the altar of the story every so often" because I think you nail it when you say "villainess role." Right now she's not doing evil for the sake of doing evil, or for personal gain, or malice, or through negligence. If the point is to protect her psyche, she's clearly smart enough to rationalize her way out of the problem. So we're left at "become the evil you're afraid exists in the world, to justify hardening your heart." And the result is "scenery-chewing villainess" instead of "realistically awful person."

It's very much the kind of motivation that's easy to arrive at in an armchair psychoanalysis fashion, and convince yourself it's true because it tells a complete story... but it's absolutely not the kind of thing a real person thinks to themselves ahead of time as their motivation to act. That's bananas.

When she isn't behaving like this, I think her characterization as a pragmatic not-that-mean Mean Girl is actually really well done, and it's so close to another possible version of her role in the story that I have to assume the author is avoiding it deliberately for some reason:

A version of Hebikawa that's naturally cynical and callous, and has fully accepted that nice girls finish last would see her younger self in Kusunoki and want to make her more snek-like to protect her from a world she knows is too harsh to accept that kind of defenseless naivete. One that would love to go through life like Kusunoki does, but has been burned way too many times. I'm not really sure yet why this path wasn't chosen, because it doesn't even need a radical change to come back around to the light side - apply one Magic of Friendship directly to the forehead and she'd be strong enough to not have to be afraid anymore.

It's a real weird choice.
Hebikawa totally has a Danzig poster in her room, though.

Great, I'm now imagining Hebikawa with a band T-shirt and a half dozen studded bracelets on her arms.

 

[74HC595]

I think we’re going through Snake’s layers of grief. First she denied anything was wrong at all. Now she’s getting angry, and trying to use brute force to twist the world. When that fails she’ll be vulnerably bargaining.

I guess the grief is with respect to how she views other people and herself. About the innate goodness of people, she wants to believe everyone else is as broken as her. It’s pretty clear that she doesn’t actually believe in the core of a morality, but just carries out a surface level morality to not be a pariah. I was like that, my advice is to stop having a shitty personality, and derive a core of morality from first principles, from mutualism or game theory. “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you” drops right out of selfish self-preservation so long as your time-preference is low enough, and that serves as a solid basis for everything else. And high time-preference pretty obviously leads to self-destruction.

 

[Kababman]

Stay away, snake bitch!

 

[Doomroar]

Yeah i started speed reading a bit ago, and was completely lost about just who the hell the girl in the toilet was, and then...

I read the ending of the chapter with edge-lord girl once again doubling down on trying to be an absolute bitch about things

And remembered why i started speed reading this thing

 

[Elrufi]

What did bro do to you woman. Leave him alone.

 

[Elhao]

Oh no! Poisonous Adder-chan is gonna rape or MMC-kun, run MMC-kun, save yourself!

Let's see if either one is still willing and able once he starts vomiting all over her.

 

[rayce]

Where the Ririsa defenders at now ?

I mean it's not hard. She said it herself, that she's shaken at the possibility that her entire lifes choices were a mistake. She's afraid. Not as much malice as it is denial that she herself is one huge fuck up. I'd she's pretty close to accepting that, just will need to get smacked down once more.

Not rooting for anyone honestly just wanna see how it all plays out.

 

[Memoflora]

Everything was going fine until page 28... I hate Hebikawa just as much as everyone else but was really looking forward to how her character was going to develop. She became manipulative and cynical to cope with her own weaknesses and seeing Kusunoki accentuates the flaws she's been struggling to embody. The chapter title "I just... I don’t want to deny who I am" perfectly illustrates this, but the execution in reality is terrible. Instead of falling into self loathing as you would expect her to, she just powers up into an evil mastermind to take it all out on Kusunoki. From that perspective, why isn't she equally as hateful towards Shizuki considering he's shown her the same qualities she hates? Having an inferiority complex isn't one dimensional, and considering the establishment of her character thus far I wouldn't expect her to dive into action. Up to this point Hebikawa has been fairly calculative and passive, and while she can be meddlesome at times it isn't to the point where she would actively instigate conflict on the scale she seems to plan to. It feels more like the author took a concept they don't know enough about and haven't properly thought through and are now trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Instead of exploring the complex emotions Hebikawa ought to be feeling the author just defaulted to "be angry" and called it a day. I probably shouldn't expect much from a simple shoujo manga like this, but the author should've thought of that before rashly throwing in a complicated topic and treating it with zero delicacy. Now Hebikawa's inner turmoil is going to be used as a plot device rather than adding valid character depth and development as it should've. Overall a very lazy decision.

 

[RealEffinNoob]

Leave him alone, you bitch.

 

[kngpjn]

Well, it's too late if Ririsa want to see Shizuka's dark side. I think Shizuka's dark phase is when she transitioning from elementary school to junior high. You know, at first she isn't introverted but when at junior high she become introverted. The transition is her dark phase and she already overcome it. So yeah, too bad Ririsa. I think she will never see what she want to see. And Shizuki isn't a guy that stirred up easily.

 

[Grye]

"I can ruin her" yasss girl queen