Noa-senpai wa Tomodachi. - Vol. 3 Ch. 25 - Noa-Senpai and Her Account Leak

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Anime and manga consumers regularly fail to engage with stories and their characters on even the surface level, even when they make critiques.
I don't see "she'd be someone annoying to deal with IRL" as a critique, but as the highest level of engagement. If people are projecting the characters into real life - or themselves into the manga - this means the writing is engaging enough for people to do so.
You're still here after 25 chapters. You know what this work is about.
And I am all in for it.
He's not asserting that the story should only be engaged with on the surface level, but that it should be engaged with for what it is.
He says (or rather, was saying) that the story should be engaged with as one about "a cute anime girl doing cute anime things", which is a reductive way of looking at this manga. If it was all this manga is about, I wouldn't have bothered continuing past chapter 1. The manga was written to have the main character who, besides being "a cute anime girl doing cute anime things", is also a real pain in the ass to deal with. Ergo, the assertion that the story is about a cute girl etc etc is an invitation to ignore an undeniable level of this manga, and is not fully representatinve of what the story is.
 
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I've always just been lurking in chat and decided to say nothing about the absurd discussions about whether or not Noa is insufferable and is forcing her friendship on Rihito which always just baffled me. I can't believe some people don't understand the fact that Noa, Rihito, Toyotake, every character in this series and this story itself was cooked up by some middle-aged woman (cuz the mangaka is a woman i think, not sure, don't quote me on that) in her room, the laws of our society and world just do not apply here, I noticed this somewhere else as well when I was watching "Science fell in love, so we tried to prove it" where people would call a character a manipulate little bitch and that they hate her, when in reality she's just the side character loli messing with her childhood friend.

Take situations like where the main character of a romance anime does something stupid and gets the shit slapped out of him, that just romance stuff, take Kaga Kouko from golden time who was absolutely obsessed with the main character when she was in love with him, thats just romance stuff, take jinshi from apothecary diaries who messes with maomao, thats jut romance stuff (i hope, author please), take Iwanaga from In/Spectre who goes against the mc's wishes and is just over friendly with him, thats just romance stuff, I just don't understand why the same principle doesnt apply to noa and rihito everything noa's doing to rihito might be annoying in our world and maybe in theirs but Rihito himself has no problem with it, and he's the one having these things done to him and he isn't complaining or resenting her or anything of the sort

Though, everyone can have their own opinion on a subject, so feel free to call noa whatever you want, I just find this whole discussion dumb

(i suck at explaining my point, but this should get it across better)
Why's the age and gender of the author matter w.r.t. whether
the laws of our society and world
apply or not? Should all discussion or comparisons between fiction and reality cease if the author of said fiction is middle-aged and female? Are we only allowed to discuss the work of fiction superficially in that case? That seems kind of arbitrary and unfair.

If, with the second paragraph, you're trying to say that people are inconsistent by not calling out slapstick humor in romcoms, when people are calling out toxic behaviour in this comic, then you have to first confirm that these are the same people. FWIW, I think the whole girl-turns-violent-over-the-smallest-of-infractions trope is pretty garbage and I feel we're still missing an explanation as to why Rihito puts up with Noa when he's monologued in the first chapter how he wishes to balance his social life healthily. Just because I haven't gone and commented anything on Golden Time, doesn't mean I've got no opinions on how it presents romance.
 
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we're still missing an explanation as to why Rihito puts up with Noa when he's monologued in the first chapter how he wishes to balance his social life healthily
He puts up with Noa because he enjoys spending time with her https://mangadex.org/chapter/bb57b872-3c73-4dd0-a744-23c989d97ad0/13.
We might try rationalizing our behaviours and come up with some strict guidelines on how we should socialize with others, but those rationalizations end up being secondaty compared to how we actually feel. And Rihito just so happens to like Noa enough (as a friend) that he's willing to put up with her quirks at the expense of what he deems healthy and balanced social life.
 
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Why's the age and gender of the author matter w.r.t. whether

apply or not? Should all discussion or comparisons between fiction and reality cease if the author of said fiction is middle-aged and female? Are we only allowed to discuss the work of fiction superficially in that case? That seems kind of arbitrary and unfair.

If, with the second paragraph, you're trying to say that people are inconsistent by not calling out slapstick humor in romcoms, when people are calling out toxic behaviour in this comic, then you have to first confirm that these are the same people. FWIW, I think the whole girl-turns-violent-over-the-smallest-of-infractions trope is pretty garbage and I feel we're still missing an explanation as to why Rihito puts up with Noa when he's monologued in the first chapter how he wishes to balance his social life healthily. Just because I haven't gone and commented anything on Golden Time, doesn't mean I've got no opinions on how it presents romance.
This chapter basically confirms what I've been saying for a while on past chapters.

Rihito clearly likes the time he spends with Noa. If he didnt like her back as a good, all be it annoying, friend he never wouldve gone out of his way to invite her to go out to eat together. Especially AFTER he got her to back off today that they werent gonna hang out later and she got dragged away by work duties. If he really didnt like her he wouldve just left without ever letting her see him.


There is no need for "a reason he puts up with her", most friendships arent based around what you can get from the other person, just enjoying their company is more than enough of a reason.

She straight up says that just having him around calms her down now, something she desperately needed. She also brings him some energy to his usually dull life and is a good conversation partner that will go above and beyond to share hobbies with you. She clearly isnt perfect and neither is he but they make each other better.
 
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That's a matter of intensity, not what she's actually doing. If she does something wrong, it will still be wrong whether it's cranked up to 11 or just a 1.
Exactly. When someone knowingly crosses another's boundaries, it doesn't matter if it's done in an exaggerated anime way or in a realistic way, it's still something we can criticize irl or in a story
 

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