School Back - Vol. 2 Ch. 8 - The Type I Hate

[MangaDex]

 

[Foreus]

coming from home page, what the fuck is this mom of shit 😭😭

 

[l0ner]

Oh damn, shitty mum time… had to have it all about her, otherwise, she was being abused. Jeeeesus.

 

[Suben]

Outside of the actual criminals the mother has to be the shittiest person in the series so far. A complete narcissist who wants to be the center of everyone's attention and who wound up warping her own kid in the process.

 

[SuzuPazuzu]

I don't quite think it's as simple as the mother being the villain. Honestly, working on this chapter bummed me out a little. Rather than an out-and-out narcissist, to me, it reads as someone who's struggling with feeling neglected and unwanted, and resorting to the worst possible coping mechanism by trying to force the one person who unconditionally loves her (her kid) to always be on her side.
She's abusing her child but, rather than some two-dimensional villain parent, it's clearly borne from trauma and desperation. It's a very sad situation all around and there's not an easy solution. Which is why I like this manga for presenting troubling scenarios and not offering simple solutions, but instead showing how a little positive influence can start to point things in a better direction.

 

[ickdrasil]

man I feel bad for the girl, it must be tiring to constantly see & evaluate people and their reactions through this lense of hers

Thanks for the chapter!

 

[Suben]

I don't quite think it's as simple as the mother being the villain. Honestly, working on this chapter bummed me out a little. Rather than an out-and-out narcissist, to me, it reads as someone who's struggling with feeling neglected and unwanted, and resorting to the worst possible coping mechanism by trying to force the one person who unconditionally loves her (her kid) to always be on her side.
She's abusing her child but, rather than some two-dimensional villain parent, it's clearly borne from trauma and desperation. It's a very sad situation all around and there's not an easy solution. Which is why I like this manga for presenting troubling scenarios and not offering simple solutions, but instead showing how a little positive influence can start to point things in a better direction.

It sounds to me like you're falling for her bullshit. The first page of the flashback is her complaining that her husband got her daughter a present for Riho's birthday but couldn't get her anything while the husband is like "hey, sorry I forgot but I'll make it up to you by taking you out" which isn't good enough. So she's competing with her own kid who was, at the time, very young (going by everything I would assume kindergarten to very early elementary school age).

She wants to be the center of someone's attention and when she couldn't be her husband's (because he likely was focusing attention on his work and his kid) she decided to instead make sure that she was the center of her kid's world while turning her against him. Especially given how she acted in the pages before that (See, I get upset about you because I'm the only one who cares about you like that and nobody else ever will).

Riho's dad tried to protect her from having to see them fight and not show a bad side of himself but lost his cool when his wife was trying to twist their kid against him. And the sad part is that it worked because that was the first time that Riho saw him get angry.

Riho is cynical and distrustful of others, especially positive people, because they're all liars with ulterior motives and the only honest person, the only one she can rely on, is her mother. It's not going to stop here either, it'll continue as Riho grows older and tries to have her own life. Her mother will be demanding help, demanding this, demanding that, anything to make sure her daughter's attention is still on her and if Riho does somehow start refusing her, then she'll be condemned just like her father was. She doesn't care that she's screwed her daughter up (and probably doesn't even see that she did) because in the end she's made it so that she's the only person her daughter can trust and thus it's her victory.

People throw around the word toxic like it's going out of style but Riho's mother is about as pure an example of a toxic character as I've ever seen because I've known enough people like her IRL. Even on the off chance that there was something bad going on between her and her husband (and if there was I think the author would have shown something) it doesn't excuse the fact that the mother is still an awful person who's done a lot to ruin her daughter in ways Riho probably doesn't even know. This also isn't the first story the author's done that's involved a single mother who wants all of her daughter's attention on her, either.

 

[SuzuPazuzu]

It's not really "falling for her bullshit." People don't just end up that way for no reason, it tends to be a much more deep-seated and foundational issue that perpetuates that kind of abuse. Not once did I say she was right to act the way she did, even in the first flashback. Being self-centred is one thing, creating your own internal perspectives to justify viewing yourself as a victim is something else entirely. When you have loved ones who act in similar ways, it's important to both recognise their abuse for what it is plain and simple, but also to still recognise their humanity -- which is a separate thing which in no way makes their abuse okay.

 

[grrman]

The mother is a manipulative piece of shit, that's for sure.

 

[DesertStorm]

It's not really "falling for her bullshit." People don't just end up that way for no reason, it tends to be a much more deep-seated and foundational issue that perpetuates that kind of abuse. Not once did I say she was right to act the way she did, even in the first flashback. Being self-centred is one thing, creating your own internal perspectives to justify viewing yourself as a victim is something else entirely. When you have loved ones who act in similar ways, it's important to both recognise their abuse for what it is plain and simple, but also to still recognise their humanity -- which is a separate thing which in no way makes their abuse okay.

It may not even be an issue. It can also be how the mother was parented as a child. She could've been a massively spoiled brat who always gets what she wants, or she'll throw a tantrum and spew horrible words.

This can be applicable to both gender, and it gets tiring when you have to deal with that on a constant basis.

 

[Spinebunnies]

Thank you for the TL!! This one’s problems really hit home for me omg. It’s amazing how much the author can portray :]

 

[Soneca]

In regards to the issue of the mom's behaviour, and the influence she has on her kid I agree with both opinions @SuzuPazuzu and @Suban above, though not tit for tat. It's very clear Riho's mother has some deep seated issues, that are being a bad influence to her child, destroyed her marriage and make her a toxic person, but if you take her in consideration as a human being and not just a character with a narrative purpose (we can look at her as both, np with that), you have to take in consideration that this is a complicated matter full of nuances. The behaviour we see of her is obviously toxic, and of course it is as it's what comes to Riho's mind when she judges Fushimi as a person based on the way she acts, because it reminds her of her dad and consequently of what her mother says about him and people like him according to her. Unfortunately, we don't see the mom's perspective, backstory, or other situations with her, therefore it's easy to think of her as a villain, but that's shallow thinking.

If you take a look at what we can see of Riho's home and her room, we can see that she's a hardworking girl, and that she and her mom are doing well materialistically speaking. You can see that she has plushies, drawings on her wall, photos of her and her classmates (probb just graduation pictures), etc. You can take that as her mom being present (even if overbearing, verbally abusive, toxic, etc.), and hardworking to provide for her, as it looks like it's a single parent household and there's no way to know how much the father is contirbuting to their situation.

Of course, this is all my interpretation, and given the info we're given, there's only so far we can go. A bit of a shame that we didn't really get a conclusive positive turn for Riho in this chapter, though we can see Fushimi did give a bit of a positive influence to her. Maybe we'll see more of her in future chapters.

As always, thank you very much Good Try Scans for the scanlation. I really love this series.

 

[BuyVelomobiles]

People don't just end up that way for no reason, it tends to be a much more deep-seated and foundational issue that perpetuates that kind of abuse.

Sure they do. You think bad people don't exist?

 

[pedantiq]

Thanks for the update! I love this series.

 

[Lustrist]

this chapter hit the closest to home so far

 

[OisE]

A little frightful to realise that some people grew up with this kind of parents...

That's really sad, hope we will see more of Riho later in the story and that she will be better.

 

[wlftchtr82]

I don’t know the dad, but the mom is giving me some MAJOR redflags.

What he said to her was kinda true, those things stay with the child forever. And the mom wanting to isolate the daughter from the rest is extremely problematic, we might not even know if she’s okay with her daughter having friends who she trusts.

 

[BuyVelomobiles]

I don’t know the dad, but the mom is giving me some MAJOR redflags.

What he said to her was kinda true, those things stay with the child forever. And the mom wanting to isolate the daughter from the rest is extremely problematic, we might not even know if she’s okay with her daughter having friends who she trusts.

"Red flags" are things that warn of some greater issue. This isn't a warning, this is the danger.

 

[Radicool21]

I don't quite think it's as simple as the mother being the villain. Honestly, working on this chapter bummed me out a little. Rather than an out-and-out narcissist, to me, it reads as someone who's struggling with feeling neglected and unwanted, and resorting to the worst possible coping mechanism by trying to force the one person who unconditionally loves her (her kid) to always be on her side.
She's abusing her child but, rather than some two-dimensional villain parent, it's clearly borne from trauma and desperation. It's a very sad situation all around and there's not an easy solution. Which is why I like this manga for presenting troubling scenarios and not offering simple solutions, but instead showing how a little positive influence can start to point things in a better direction.

Yeah, abuse is a cycle and it always comes from somewhere. The mom unloads her burden onto her kid, just like she probably received it from others growing up. My own mom had similar issues, and only as an adult did I realize it was almost entirely because of how my grandmother raised her.

Hopefully the kid continues to meet proper adults who can be a positive influence and help break the chain.

 

[IrregularPerson]

A lot of discussion surrounding the mom! My two cents is the parent paradox. You have to put your family first, you cannot have time for yourself, you don't have a social group outside of your identity as a mom.
Everyone is different, there are some who are satisfied fitting into the role but there are many, especially those with a low self-esteem who compensate with a bigger ego. She could be dissatisfied that her husband is prioritizing the family instead of working on their relationship, that her husband isn't seeing her outside of her relationship to the family as a mother to his daughter.
I've seen other comments say that she's self-centered and selfish but her wants are justifiable, the two people (husband and mom) need to work on vulnerable communication. She's defensive because she feels neglected and alone. It can be said that the father doesn't get angry because he was raised to be better, but it also means that he didn't try empathizing with his wife who he swore vows to. He offered a solution, but doesn't understand why she's angry. I can assume that he agreed to the divorce that his wife proposed because he thinks nothing can be done about this dissolving relationship.

Now this doesn't justify the codependency with her child, especially now that the young girl is all alone in the house with her. The fact that mom takes the responsibility off by suggesting it's their role as parent-child to show concern by being angry, instead of 'I' statements is why I think she's obsessive about her role as a mother. A lot of parents make sacrifices, and it takes a burden off the mom if both people are available. I think the dad was unavailable because if she had a closer relationship with her dad, she wouldn't have been as startled to see how her dad got angry. She saw a a truth in the gaslighting her moms burdened her with.

It takes for a child to transition into an adult, and for them to understand that their parents are people too. Their flaws and devotion.
I like this manga because it's not black and white.