Picture of Tears - Vol. 1 Ch. 6

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@Serenata

because she is like that. She basically doesn't see anybody or any thing and doesn't know how to treat people. She "Loves" the main character, but that doesn't mean she knows how to act human. All she can do is imitate and ingratiate to try to get closer.

in retrospect the character makes sense. We get basically everything we need from the MC's description of her in the first chapter. The world revolves around Riko. Everything revolves around her, and she never had to try for anything.


It's sad, but I think its great how the final reveal of their characters come together.
 
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This feels like an issue that would be solved by graduating and then never seeing each other again.

It's a shame we couldn't see her break away on page, but it was a weird enough premise to be interesting by virtue of novelty if nothing else.
 
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@Korath In the end each wanted what the other had. Sae just wanted to be noticed by someone and feel special while Riko wanted someone who didn't treat her like she was special. Both of them felt lost in the crowd of unpopularity and popularity respectively and Sae being a loner who didn't get caught up in everyone else's stuff and didn't treat Riko special is what actually made both of them special. But Sae's crush on Koike basically ruined her. It made her realize what she actually wanted which irrevocably changed her relationship with Riko.

Riko was basically the archetypal popular girl and probably saw herself as completely vapid and shallow, hence her confusion over just what exactly it was that Koike liked about her. She was just this thing that other people held up to this certain role and not a person. Sae's indifference towards her in a sense made her feel like she was being treated as an actual person instead this abstract thing.

In the end Sae's freak out and picture destroyed them. At that point what made them unique, their relationship, was completely destroyed. Sae was just another faceless nobody in the crowd, Riko was just another empty popular girl. Hence why nobody, including Riko (whose face is hidden in the first and fifth panels) and Sae, is drawn with a face i.e. the universal sign in manga of a character just being part of the crowd, on the next to last page. Neither of them were unique any more. They were just like everyone else. They'd become background characters.

At least that's the way I look at it.
 
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@suben i agree with most everything, but Riko isn't an extra, like Sae. She wasn't in the beginning and she wasn't in the end. I wonder how that fits into your idea that they both become background characters. Maybe Riko is still the one getting all the attention, but its 100% hollow now. Sae was the last one that treated her normally. It seems to me that the author is saying that Riko is the main character, and Sae is an extra in her story.
 
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Uh 🤨

Well, I think they'll get over it. Or Sae, at least. If she becomes more mature.

I loved how Koike gave her some good advice and Sae's like: Right! I could self-destruct magnificently!

Thanks for bringing this manga to us! Treat yourself to something nice. 😊
 
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@rinrin Riko gets demoted to extra in the magazine, where the photo of her taken by Sae gets a bronze award.

No one is special anymore, including Riko's face.
 
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Uhm. The whole manga felt like a really long wtf moment.
 
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I'm probably the only one here who actually enjoyed the ending. Instead of a forced "happy" ending it felt more realistic considering they're all teenagers; Sae and Riko will get over this and grow up, but it won't be together. Such is life.

Even though it was too short for its own good, I really liked this manga overall, I think it touches down on how certain events in life put you to the test and make you reconsider who you really are and how you present yourself, like Koike who goes from pseudo-intellectual, calm guy to obsessively horny teenager as soon as Riko gives him a bit of attention.

Anyway, good stuff overall. Shoutout to the fansub for bringing this to light. Will be waiting for the author's next work.
 
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After some thoughts, I now realize what is bugging me with Riko's character. Its the discrepancy with her being super beautiful AND being hallow/sociopathic(?) at the same time, but still being the most popular girl.

It is like you play the most photorealistic PC game ever, e.g. like Sword Art Online realism (or whatever), but the rest just su*x a*s. Controls are on ET (80s) game level, the story is super boring and there is nothing to do. What I mean is, there must be something besides looks to be attracted to someone , so you want to keep playing/spending time together. What happend to Sae must have happend to the other friends as well, e.g. they told Riko about something that happened to them, but Riko skipped over it, ignored them and continued on elswhere. This would hit everyone and you would second guess to spend time with someone like that just to be in the "popular group". Maybe its an other thing, because Riko is just part of the group and basically something like a mascot, that rises the appeal of the group as a whole (probably bad English here ^^), so that the conversations with all the other members of the group are interesting enough to keep someone like Riko in it to raise their status.

Sae didnt have these options. She was alone the whole time and when she got someone who cared for her, he was stolen from her. So yeah, writing this I came to a conclusion, why Riko is being kept in the group, but she probably doesnt have any friend at all.
 
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@Korath I think what you're saying would make sense in an ideal world, but the reality the author is trying to paint is the one of a shallow group of people (see page 21); shallow people don't really care about what people really is, they just care about how they look and the status it brings to be close to one of those good looking people. It makes sense that they want to keep Riko close.
 
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I think what we see here is the contrast between someone who is extremely self-important in Riko and someone who has no self-worth in Sae. At a personal level, each is tragic because neither can really find happiness.
 

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