I don't even know why he wants to redeem her in the first place ! All he's doing is just proving that as long a girl got a pretty enough face, some people will forgive and forget the worst crimes... like all those who actually feel bad for her, despite the fact that everything happening to her are just consequences of HER OWN actions ! Sigh...
If this author had at least used a more shocking form of blackmail, maybe I wouldn't be so outraged, but because of a video of a child urinating, she had to prostitute herself, like, why? I can think of different solutions she could have used to avoid all this, but no, the author underestimates our intelligence with such a trashy plot. This manga should have ended at the camp arc; at least that would have been a satisfying ending.
If this author had at least used a more shocking form of blackmail, maybe I wouldn't be so outraged, but because of a video of a child urinating, she had to prostitute herself, like, why? I can think of different solutions she could have used to avoid all this, but no, the author underestimates our intelligence with such a trashy plot. This manga should have ended at the camp arc; at least that would have been a satisfying ending.
Again, it’s a video of a child wetting himself and then stripping off the wet clothes. That’s a lot more extreme than just wet pants.
Also, you can easily say "there were so many ways she could have gotten out of this" but that really ignores the situation entirely. We're not talking about a healthy girl in a healthy, stable state of mind who's confident in her own self-worth, we're dealing with a girl who's been completely broken and is still crushed under the weight of everything she'd done to oppress Souma for the last decade. She already feels worthless and deserving of any kind of suffering, and then this guy comes up to her with a reminder of an exceptionally cruel thing she'd done, something she'd cherished and kept and then gave away to someone else with no concern about the risks of what amounts to borderline pornographic images of him as a grade-schooler getting out. In her existing state of mind, she feels like she deserves what she's getting and doesn't have the composure to even consider trying to get out of it even if she felt like she had a right to escape.
I mean, yeah this is a crappy story compared to the Adorable Daughter one (I honestly love that series), but it's not as nonsensical as you make it out to be.
So uhhh, what about fmc's phone?
I'd hope he is getting another punishment for that, bc he stole that shit and they didn't mention it this part.
Lets hope the author didn't forget that part.
I don't even know why he wants to redeem her in the first place ! All he's doing is just proving that as long a girl got a pretty enough face, some people will forgive and forget the worst crimes... like all those who actually feel bad for her, despite the fact that everything happening to her are just consequences of HER OWN actions ! Sigh...
I don't think it's really about redemption the way you're understanding it. It's more about contrition and change. I love redemption stories, but if you ask me "redemption" isn't "explained away why these things shouldn't be held against her because they're really not that bad" or anything. For me redemption is reaching a point where one recognizes one's wrongdoing and the magnitude thereof, truly repents, and seeks to atone, become someone who wouldn't do such things, and create a situation where they can demonstrate that they never will/never could do it again. Part of the reason I've thought "redemption" might be one good place for fantasy stories to include slavery: consenting to a spell/curse where the subject is completely under another's control and held under absolute restrictions that prevent any kind of harm or betrayal would be a good form of punishment as well as a good way to demonstrate one's repentance.
So in short, I don't think the author's trying to say "you should love this cute girl despite what she's done!" but rather just wants to give us the satisfaction of not just seeing her suffer but seeing her regret her actions. I know for some this is pointless as they only want to see people who did bad things suffer in agony while still feeling bad for themselves, but for me what I love to see is bad people reaching a point where they are earnestly horrified by the things they did in the past and personally invite that suffering with a firm conviction that they deserve it all and more. And yeah, if someone has shown conviction I'm at times willing to consider eventual forgiveness and inclusion as a protagonist, as long as enough time is given to convince me that the change is genuine. But what matters most to me is that contrition, thus why I like this as well as "Ore Igai", another series with a similar situation that also ends with the female antagonist reaching a point where she hates her past self for the things she did to the MC (and in that one, concerning "redemption", she becomes a "hero" who works to help people around the world, but it's made pretty clear that this title is more of a form of enslavement to a cause, cursing her to continue traveling far away from the MC and working to protect people to her own detriment, her only happiness coming from the results of that work).
I don't think it's really about redemption the way you're understanding it. It's more about contrition and change. I love redemption stories, but if you ask me "redemption" isn't "explained away why these things shouldn't be held against her because they're really not that bad" or anything. For me redemption is reaching a point where one recognizes one's wrongdoing and the magnitude thereof, truly repents, and seeks to atone, become someone who wouldn't do such things, and create a situation where they can demonstrate that they never will/never could do it again. Part of the reason I've thought "redemption" might be one good place for fantasy stories to include slavery: consenting to a spell/curse where the subject is completely under another's control and held under absolute restrictions that prevent any kind of harm or betrayal would be a good form of punishment as well as a good way to demonstrate one's repentance.
So in short, I don't think the author's trying to say "you should love this cute girl despite what she's done!" but rather just wants to give us the satisfaction of not just seeing her suffer but seeing her regret her actions. I know for some this is pointless as they only want to see people who did bad things suffer in agony while still feeling bad for themselves, but for me what I love to see is bad people reaching a point where they are earnestly horrified by the things they did in the past and personally invite that suffering with a firm conviction that they deserve it all and more. And yeah, if someone has shown conviction I'm at times willing to consider eventual forgiveness and inclusion as a protagonist, as long as enough time is given to convince me that the change is genuine. But what matters most to me is that contrition, thus why I like this as well as "Ore Igai", another series with a similar situation that also ends with the female antagonist reaching a point where she hates her past self for the things she did to the MC (and in that one, concerning "redemption", she becomes a "hero" who works to help people around the world, but it's made pretty clear that this title is more of a form of enslavement to a cause, cursing her to continue traveling far away from the MC and working to protect people to her own detriment, her only happiness coming from the results of that work).
More seriously : fair point...ironically, you're using another series where I feel like the villainess got away a bit too easily but yes, like you said, she at least has to work for her past crimes, I guess.
More seriously : fair point...ironically, you're using another series where I feel like the villainess got away a bit too easily but yes, like you said, she at least has to work for her past crimes, I guess.
Well, like I said, what matters to me isn't so much how much the character is punished, but how much the character feels she DESERVES to be punished. If I had to choose between a story where the character that wronged the hero suffers but constantly maintains that she did nothing wrong and this punishment is nothing more than cruel, sadistic abuse of an "innocent" and one where the character suffers no negative consequences at all but still bows and sincerely owns that she was a monster, and then welcomes any punishment or order imaginable without hesitation, I'd choose the latter. It's just a matter of preference I suppose. Some prefer seeing a person eternally screaming "what did I do to deserve this!?", I greatly prefer seeing someone whispering in horror "my God what have I done!?"
And no, I wouldn't include Hanabi in the list of cases where I'd consider returning her into the story as a side protagonist, whether as a romantic rival, a harem member (if it was a harem) or even a friend. I'd say her story is best done having the current situation fixed as it certainly is way too much, then her sincerely apologizing, acknowledging that no matter how she does or did feel about him it doesn't change what she did, and swearing that she won't bother him ever again, at which point he may accept that and set aside his grudge and wish her a happy life. And no, this isn't because she's "cute". No matter her looks or her gender, my wish would be for the MC to move on completely and for the abuser to move forward carrying the guilt.
I don't even know why he wants to redeem her in the first place ! All he's doing is just proving that as long a girl got a pretty enough face, some people will forgive and forget the worst crimes... like all those who actually feel bad for her, despite the fact that everything happening to her are just consequences of HER OWN actions ! Sigh...
I don't think it's really about redemption the way you're understanding it. It's more about contrition and change. I love redemption stories, but if you ask me "redemption" isn't "explained away why these things shouldn't be held against her because they're really not that bad" or anything. For me redemption is reaching a point where one recognizes one's wrongdoing and the magnitude thereof, truly repents, and seeks to atone, become someone who wouldn't do such things, and create a situation where they can demonstrate that they never will/never could do it again. Part of the reason I've thought "redemption" might be one good place for fantasy stories to include slavery: consenting to a spell/curse where the subject is completely under another's control and held under absolute restrictions that prevent any kind of harm or betrayal would be a good form of punishment as well as a good way to demonstrate one's repentance.
So in short, I don't think the author's trying to say "you should love this cute girl despite what she's done!" but rather just wants to give us the satisfaction of not just seeing her suffer but seeing her regret her actions. I know for some this is pointless as they only want to see people who did bad things suffer in agony while still feeling bad for themselves, but for me what I love to see is bad people reaching a point where they are earnestly horrified by the things they did in the past and personally invite that suffering with a firm conviction that they deserve it all and more. And yeah, if someone has shown conviction I'm at times willing to consider eventual forgiveness and inclusion as a protagonist, as long as enough time is given to convince me that the change is genuine. But what matters most to me is that contrition, thus why I like this as well as "Ore Igai", another series with a similar situation that also ends with the female antagonist reaching a point where she hates her past self for the things she did to the MC (and in that one, concerning "redemption", she becomes a "hero" who works to help people around the world, but it's made pretty clear that this title is more of a form of enslavement to a cause, cursing her to continue traveling far away from the MC and working to protect people to her own detriment, her only happiness coming from the results of that work).
Your definition of redemption is a good one. Your comment got me thinking about what else "redemption" and "justice" mean in manga, and reminded me just how much of a dialogue it is between the work and the reader.
I think for many people, whether we realize it or not, actual "objective" moral concerns are pretty far down on the list of priorities for what it takes to "redeem" a fictional character. And that's okay! Usually by the time you're really thinking critically about this stuff, it's a sign that your enjoyment of the work is somehow broken.
Here's an example of a factor we consider before morality: Why does the author appear to be turning the character around and what role will they have in the story going forward? It has a huge impact on what "redemption" even means. Based on our experience so far reading a work, reading other works in the genre, our life experience, etc., we look at the context of the situation and instinctively map out a predictive course of how this is going to go, and then react to THAT as well as what we've literally read.
It's going to be damn hard for a former love interest who hurt the main character to be "redeemed" in a romcom if readers expect "redemption" to only be reached when they regard her as just another heroine interacting romantically with the MC... because that's where they suspect the author's going with it based on what they've known and what they see.
To use your example of Ore Igai, Ruby hit a certain kind of redemption for me the moment her role shifted in chapter 10 from "cartoonishly evil abusive girlfriend villain" to "immature slapstick butt-monkey" by having that chapter's tension rise and rise and rise as she finally is confronted with the inescapable truth and meanwhile you get a tiny flashback showing the emotional basis for Ruby's motivation and personality being her feeling of powerlessness in the face of Lloyd's misery as a child, her fury at the unfairness of the world, and how her shame and disgust at her own weakness twist into contempt for Lloyd who reminds her of them. Just as you might be finding new sympathy for her, the very next panel has her shittily doubling down, this time falteringly, and right as you think her stubborn pride is going to get her killed, we get the very sudden payoff of a gag that's taken several pages to set up in the form of The Cookie Incident, which sets off her downfall.
The whole back half of the chapter is fucking brilliant in establishing her as a redeemable deuteragonist and at the same time SHOWING you how she'll get there and her role for the arc as a relatable and flawed source of comedy as her world falls apart stupidly.
That's "all" it took to make me look forward to her next appearance, and put her on the path toward "Someone I love despite her flaws, who I hope reforms and finds happiness, and in whom I recognize parts of myself."
Obviously we aren't dealing with that caliber of writing with Hanabi.
One thing I'd like to clarify is that for me, while it's okay if a character suffers necessarily during their attempts to make things right, I don't need punitive justice for its own sake: The other important distinction between justice in fiction and reality is obviously that in fiction we can know for certain what people are thinking, that their repentance and desire to change are real, that they're learned their lesson, and that they're going to be a net positive for the world going forward. So a character doesn't HAVE to suffer proportionally "just to make things even."
In fact, Hanabi's kind of an example of this: We know she learned her lesson, and if she simply got demoted to background character who wasn't part of the MC's life anymore and lived with no more ongoing punishment than the fading regret of ruining the relationship that meant the most to her, it'd be fine. Plenty of people seem to be reacting to this arc like "Nobody asked for her to be repeatedly raped and beaten while blaming herself. Where could you possibly be going with the story where this is required? I hate it. You're gross."
So yeah, I think even the simplest reaction to these stories is the product of a more nuanced and complex process than we often give it credit for.
Ah, now I see that most recent post of yours clarifies basically the same point.
When he'll find out about the vid in question, I bet he'll say "bruh whatever, i dun care" and let the cartoonish villain do his dirty work. Not like that'll help him when he'll get charged for pimping and blackmailing
Your definition of redemption is a good one. Your comment got me thinking about what else "redemption" and "justice" mean in manga, and reminded me just how much of a dialogue it is between the work and the reader.
I think for many people, whether we realize it or not, actual "objective" moral concerns are pretty far down on the list of priorities for what it takes to "redeem" a fictional character. And that's okay! Usually by the time you're really thinking critically about this stuff, it's a sign that your enjoyment of the work is somehow broken.
Here's an example of a factor we consider before morality: Why does the author appear to be turning the character around and what role will they have in the story going forward? It has a huge impact on what "redemption" even means. Based on our experience so far reading a work, reading other works in the genre, our life experience, etc., we look at the context of the situation and instinctively map out a predictive course of how this is going to go, and then react to THAT as well as what we've literally read.
It's going to be damn hard for a former love interest who hurt the main character to be "redeemed" in a romcom if readers expect "redemption" to only be reached when they regard her as just another heroine interacting romantically with the MC... because that's where they suspect the author's going with it based on what they've known and what they see.
To use your example of Ore Igai, Ruby hit a certain kind of redemption for me the moment her role shifted in chapter 10 from "cartoonishly evil abusive girlfriend villain" to "immature slapstick butt-monkey" by having that chapter's tension rise and rise and rise as she finally is confronted with the inescapable truth and meanwhile you get a tiny flashback showing the emotional basis for Ruby's motivation and personality being her feeling of powerlessness in the face of Lloyd's misery as a child, her fury at the unfairness of the world, and how her shame and disgust at her own weakness twist into contempt for Lloyd who reminds her of them. Just as you might be finding new sympathy for her, the very next panel has her shittily doubling down, this time falteringly, and right as you think her stubborn pride is going to get her killed, we get the very sudden payoff of a gag that's taken several pages to set up in the form of The Cookie Incident, which sets off her downfall.
The whole back half of the chapter is fucking brilliant in establishing her as a redeemable deuteragonist and at the same time SHOWING you how she'll get there and her role for the arc as a relatable and flawed source of comedy as her world falls apart stupidly.
That's "all" it took to make me look forward to her next appearance, and put her on the path toward "Someone I love despite her flaws, who I hope reforms and finds happiness, and in whom I recognize parts of myself."
Obviously we aren't dealing with that caliber of writing with Hanabi.
One thing I'd like to clarify is that for me, while it's okay if a character suffers necessarily during their attempts to make things right, I don't need punitive justice for its own sake: The other important distinction between justice in fiction and reality is obviously that in fiction we can know for certain what people are thinking, that their repentance and desire to change are real, that they're learned their lesson, and that they're going to be a net positive for the world going forward. So a character doesn't HAVE to suffer proportionally "just to make things even."
In fact, Hanabi's kind of an example of this: We know she learned her lesson, and if she simply got demoted to background character who wasn't part of the MC's life anymore and lived with no more ongoing punishment than the fading regret of ruining the relationship that meant the most to her, it'd be fine. Plenty of people seem to be reacting to this arc like "Nobody asked for her to be repeatedly raped and beaten while blaming herself. Where could you possibly be going with the story where this is required? I hate it. You're gross."
So yeah, I think even the simplest reaction to these stories is the product of a more nuanced and complex process than we often give it credit for.
Ah, now I see that most recent post of yours clarifies basically the same point.
Very well put, and I definitely agree. Including with Hanabi: if I'd written this story, I'd have simply had her hole herself up in her room, either come out on her own or someone go to get her out, and after she comes back one last time with a determined face to apologize to him, acknowledge that regardless of how she felt there is no excuse for the things she's done, and promise to stay out of his way from now on. That would be enough, as the pain she's experiencing losing something dear and knowing that it's all her fault is more than plenty. I'm not saying I hate this sort of story, honestly I enjoy stories that involve people being victimized physically, mentally, sexually, etc. as long as they're done well, and as such a story centered on a girl who'd done something in the past and was now willingly submitting to blackmail and prostitution because she "deserves" it or feels it's the only way to protect the person she hurt would be an interesting story to me, as long as it didn't come across as "punishment". Here it's not horrible, but it does feel punitive when I'd much prefer something about helping the victim feel she has the right to escape and then start healing.
On a different note, that part about expectations is something I'd thought for a while. Particularly with a subject that thankfully hasn't appeared here: NTR. It's one thing with one-shot 18+ materials, but even with stuff in the borderline "erotica" class and down into "suggestive" have this subject fairly often. That's all fine and good, but whenever I see something like that the first thing I think is "I want to see this story turn this around". Like someone said of Hanabi's situation here, there are tons of ways to turn around most NTR scenarios, or to at least make it satisfactory in some other way. But pretty much every long series with this kind of subject matter ends up with the girl with other men and the guy broken and depressed. After a lot of thought, I frankly think these expectations might play a role in the rarity of such plotlines: people that are into the NTR stuff keep reading hoping to see things go from bad to worse, and people that want happy endings look and say "I know where this is going" and dump the story. Even if there are a fair number of readers who would be happy to see a happy ending, the editors are likely to doubt this. The result is that a turnaround ending that finds a way for the characters to be happy together or for the male lead to gain some kind of vindication will likely be outright rejected as a betrayal of "reader expectations". And then the presence of even more stories crashing like that simply reinforces the certainty in those readers that would like turnaround that this kind of story won't have that, meaning that by the time a story even approaches such forms of drama the only people left reading are the people that can't "enjoy" it unless it's a soul-crushing NighTmaRe.
Very well put, and I definitely agree. Including with Hanabi: if I'd written this story, I'd have simply had her hole herself up in her room, either come out on her own or someone go to get her out, and after she comes back one last time with a determined face to apologize to him, acknowledge that regardless of how she felt there is no excuse for the things she's done, and promise to stay out of his way from now on. That would be enough, as the pain she's experiencing losing something dear and knowing that it's all her fault is more than plenty. I'm not saying I hate this sort of story, honestly I enjoy stories that involve people being victimized physically, mentally, sexually, etc. as long as they're done well, and as such a story centered on a girl who'd done something in the past and was now willingly submitting to blackmail and prostitution because she "deserves" it or feels it's the only way to protect the person she hurt would be an interesting story to me, as long as it didn't come across as "punishment". Here it's not horrible, but it does feel punitive when I'd much prefer something about helping the victim feel she has the right to escape and then start healing.
On a different note, that part about expectations is something I'd thought for a while. Particularly with a subject that thankfully hasn't appeared here: NTR. It's one thing with one-shot 18+ materials, but even with stuff in the borderline "erotica" class and down into "suggestive" have this subject fairly often. That's all fine and good, but whenever I see something like that the first thing I think is "I want to see this story turn this around". Like someone said of Hanabi's situation here, there are tons of ways to turn around most NTR scenarios, or to at least make it satisfactory in some other way. But pretty much every long series with this kind of subject matter ends up with the girl with other men and the guy broken and depressed. After a lot of thought, I frankly think these expectations might play a role in the rarity of such plotlines: people that are into the NTR stuff keep reading hoping to see things go from bad to worse, and people that want happy endings look and say "I know where this is going" and dump the story. Even if there are a fair number of readers who would be happy to see a happy ending, the editors are likely to doubt this. The result is that a turnaround ending that finds a way for the characters to be happy together or for the male lead to gain some kind of vindication will likely be outright rejected as a betrayal of "reader expectations". And then the presence of even more stories crashing like that simply reinforces the certainty in those readers that would like turnaround that this kind of story won't have that, meaning that by the time a story even approaches such forms of drama the only people left reading are the people that can't "enjoy" it unless it's a soul-crushing NighTmaRe.
100%. I've also thought about that, usually in the context of the bottom of Japan's "media escalator," the web novel, which I started paying attention to for the first time last year. Thanks to the extremely polarizing nature of the fetish, once it hit a certain critical mass in the popular consciousness, the reactive writing incubators that are e.g. Narou and Kakuyomu took that shit and iterated it until it fully speciated into two camps of reader expectations: Misery porn for people who LOVE netorare and netorase; and misery porn for people who HATE NTR and love zamaa. And the only thing the loudest parts of each audience seem to agree on is that they're real mad at women. Naturally, there's very little room left for anything that wants to take a more complicated and thoughtful position on a plot about infidelity.
I laughed out loud the first time I saw the tag/keyword "Happy Ending" on a web novel, but eventually it made sense in the same way that the absurdly-long-plot-summary titles did: They advertise the work by promising a type of experience the reader can have in the fast-paced "attention economy" of the platform. In exchange, readers get super invested in serials over the course of the work's lifetime. These two facts combine to turn the betrayal of reader expectations into the violation of some kind of sacred covenant, and people get PISSED in a way that's kinda similar to manga fandom.
Takes a lot of guts to try and stray from the worn paths in that environment, and try to tell a dramatic story that's neither titillation nor parody. For WNs, keywords like 再構築 exist, and there are some that go a different route and get weird with it. Can't see any of that getting adapted, honestly. I'm not aware of any manga off the top of my head that try to aim for both realism and "reconciliation" (if not reuniting as a couple) after actual infidelity, probably because I don't read enough josei. Maybe some of Tsuyatsuya's stuff takes a more nuanced view of the cheating and having people stay together or wind up better off separated, but it's a little porny and fetishistic for me to bother reading critically? I guess for anime there's Kimi ga Nozomu Eien but I wouldn't know anything modern.
I think the weirdest aspect of the "NTR and reader expectations" polarization phenomenon is its ability to reach into the past: Chisa x Pon was 25 years ago, tried to tackle a different difficult sexual situation in a mature and thoughtful way, and... has 6.51 stars in the modern day with almost twice as many (1)s as anything else. I'm sure you can guess what the biggest complaint is.
I think the weirdest aspect of the "NTR and reader expectations" polarization phenomenon is its ability to reach into the past: Chisa x Pon was 25 years ago, tried to tackle a different difficult sexual situation in a mature and thoughtful way, and... has 6.51 stars in the modern day with almost twice as many (1)s as anything else. I'm sure you can guess what the biggest complaint is.
Definitely. It was worse before I translated it as everyone was buying claims from one or two people who clearly didn't know much Japanese and misinterpreted it horribly. Honestly I could almost call that one a rage translation, I just couldn't stand it. At least I suspect a large portion of those 1s came before I continued the translation, as I think the count has gone up, if only slightly.
100%. I've also thought about that, usually in the context of the bottom of Japan's "media escalator," the web novel, which I started paying attention to for the first time last year. Thanks to the extremely polarizing nature of the fetish, once it hit a certain critical mass in the popular consciousness, the reactive writing incubators that are e.g. Narou and Kakuyomu took that shit and iterated it until it fully speciated into two camps of reader expectations: Misery porn for people who LOVE netorare and netorase; and misery porn for people who HATE NTR and love zamaa. And the only thing the loudest parts of each audience seem to agree on is that they're real mad at women. Naturally, there's very little room left for anything that wants to take a more complicated and thoughtful position on a plot about infidelity.
I laughed out loud the first time I saw the tag/keyword "Happy Ending" on a web novel, but eventually it made sense in the same way that the absurdly-long-plot-summary titles did: They advertise the work by promising a type of experience the reader can have in the fast-paced "attention economy" of the platform. In exchange, readers get super invested in serials over the course of the work's lifetime. These two facts combine to turn the betrayal of reader expectations into the violation of some kind of sacred covenant, and people get PISSED in a way that's kinda similar to manga fandom.
Takes a lot of guts to try and stray from the worn paths in that environment, and try to tell a dramatic story that's neither titillation nor parody. For WNs, keywords like 再構築 exist, and there are some that go a different route and get weird with it. Can't see any of that getting adapted, honestly. I'm not aware of any manga off the top of my head that try to aim for both realism and "reconciliation" (if not reuniting as a couple) after actual infidelity, probably because I don't read enough josei. Maybe some of Tsuyatsuya's stuff takes a more nuanced view of the cheating and having people stay together or wind up better off separated, but it's a little porny and fetishistic for me to bother reading critically? I guess for anime there's Kimi ga Nozomu Eien but I wouldn't know anything modern.
I think the weirdest aspect of the "NTR and reader expectations" polarization phenomenon is its ability to reach into the past: Chisa x Pon was 25 years ago, tried to tackle a different difficult sexual situation in a mature and thoughtful way, and... has 6.51 stars in the modern day with almost twice as many (1)s as anything else. I'm sure you can guess what the biggest complaint is.
Very well put, and I definitely agree. Including with Hanabi: if I'd written this story, I'd have simply had her hole herself up in her room, either come out on her own or someone go to get her out, and after she comes back one last time with a determined face to apologize to him, acknowledge that regardless of how she felt there is no excuse for the things she's done, and promise to stay out of his way from now on. That would be enough, as the pain she's experiencing losing something dear and knowing that it's all her fault is more than plenty. I'm not saying I hate this sort of story, honestly I enjoy stories that involve people being victimized physically, mentally, sexually, etc. as long as they're done well, and as such a story centered on a girl who'd done something in the past and was now willingly submitting to blackmail and prostitution because she "deserves" it or feels it's the only way to protect the person she hurt would be an interesting story to me, as long as it didn't come across as "punishment". Here it's not horrible, but it does feel punitive when I'd much prefer something about helping the victim feel she has the right to escape and then start healing.
On a different note, that part about expectations is something I'd thought for a while. Particularly with a subject that thankfully hasn't appeared here: NTR. It's one thing with one-shot 18+ materials, but even with stuff in the borderline "erotica" class and down into "suggestive" have this subject fairly often. That's all fine and good, but whenever I see something like that the first thing I think is "I want to see this story turn this around". Like someone said of Hanabi's situation here, there are tons of ways to turn around most NTR scenarios, or to at least make it satisfactory in some other way. But pretty much every long series with this kind of subject matter ends up with the girl with other men and the guy broken and depressed. After a lot of thought, I frankly think these expectations might play a role in the rarity of such plotlines: people that are into the NTR stuff keep reading hoping to see things go from bad to worse, and people that want happy endings look and say "I know where this is going" and dump the story. Even if there are a fair number of readers who would be happy to see a happy ending, the editors are likely to doubt this. The result is that a turnaround ending that finds a way for the characters to be happy together or for the male lead to gain some kind of vindication will likely be outright rejected as a betrayal of "reader expectations". And then the presence of even more stories crashing like that simply reinforces the certainty in those readers that would like turnaround that this kind of story won't have that, meaning that by the time a story even approaches such forms of drama the only people left reading are the people that can't "enjoy" it unless it's a soul-crushing NighTmaRe.
100%. I've also thought about that, usually in the context of the bottom of Japan's "media escalator," the web novel, which I started paying attention to for the first time last year. Thanks to the extremely polarizing nature of the fetish, once it hit a certain critical mass in the popular consciousness, the reactive writing incubators that are e.g. Narou and Kakuyomu took that shit and iterated it until it fully speciated into two camps of reader expectations: Misery porn for people who LOVE netorare and netorase; and misery porn for people who HATE NTR and love zamaa. And the only thing the loudest parts of each audience seem to agree on is that they're real mad at women. Naturally, there's very little room left for anything that wants to take a more complicated and thoughtful position on a plot about infidelity.
I laughed out loud the first time I saw the tag/keyword "Happy Ending" on a web novel, but eventually it made sense in the same way that the absurdly-long-plot-summary titles did: They advertise the work by promising a type of experience the reader can have in the fast-paced "attention economy" of the platform. In exchange, readers get super invested in serials over the course of the work's lifetime. These two facts combine to turn the betrayal of reader expectations into the violation of some kind of sacred covenant, and people get PISSED in a way that's kinda similar to manga fandom.
Takes a lot of guts to try and stray from the worn paths in that environment, and try to tell a dramatic story that's neither titillation nor parody. For WNs, keywords like 再構築 exist, and there are some that go a different route and get weird with it. Can't see any of that getting adapted, honestly. I'm not aware of any manga off the top of my head that try to aim for both realism and "reconciliation" (if not reuniting as a couple) after actual infidelity, probably because I don't read enough josei. Maybe some of Tsuyatsuya's stuff takes a more nuanced view of the cheating and having people stay together or wind up better off separated, but it's a little porny and fetishistic for me to bother reading critically? I guess for anime there's Kimi ga Nozomu Eien but I wouldn't know anything modern.
I think the weirdest aspect of the "NTR and reader expectations" polarization phenomenon is its ability to reach into the past: Chisa x Pon was 25 years ago, tried to tackle a different difficult sexual situation in a mature and thoughtful way, and... has 6.51 stars in the modern day with almost twice as many (1)s as anything else. I'm sure you can guess what the biggest complaint is.
The question is whether that's where the story ended. I haven't read it so I don't know, but as I said there are plenty of ways a story can have the MC be NTRed and then either 1: they get back together with a good and convincing level of reconciliation or 2: he finds someone else. Kind of depends on the nature of the NTR, as there are no limits to the ways the SO can be stolen.
Generally everyone insists on writing Chisa off as a "slut". The earliest interpretation prior to translation even insisted that Takigawa realized she was a virgin, stopped and untied her, and then she invited him to continue (as opposed to the actual content where Takigawa untied Chisa immediately after breaking her spirit enough that she lacked the mental energy to resist, and only noticed the blood afterward, leading to Chisa "joking" to her friend about how absurd it was when he turned white and apologized because he "didn't know she was a virgin" like it'd be ok to do that to a non-virgin).
I haven't checked in a couple years, but I felt like I could see a distinct pre-/post-NTR-popularity shift in the discourse in all languages. It basically went from "she's a dramatic idiot" and truly vile shit like "it wasn't rape if she enjoyed it" to "NTR" "she's for the streets" "he's a cuck" "he's simping for a whore." That embarassing moment when you realize you've been talking to the translator of a series you use as an example. Haha, sigh.
I meant seeing the tag on a WN generally for the first time, probably a vanilla romcom, and thinking "seriously?! spoilers in the title much?"
But it really does show up on the kind of stories that BEGIN with the MC at his lowest, having just been cheated on either before it starts or in the first couple chapters. It's a way of cheaply and easily establishing a villain couple. The cheating girl usually goes through hell and the MC goes through a blissful wish-fulfillment paradise of childhood friends waiting in the wings, the most beautifuls girl at school, women falling out of the sky... you know, the usual.
The tag can either be a way of saying "this is gonna be chill from the start" or "this is gonna be very un-chill, but know that no matter what happens, if you stick with me, you'll get a happy end."
