(I posted this in the Church of Potteto's version of this chapter as well, but I prefer Tonikaku Scans' translation, so I thought I might as well post it here as well. Broadly the same, with an addendum regarding further thoughts on this chapter at the bottom)
I've been ruminating on the last couple of chapters since they came out, and have kinda changed my mind about Marin and Gojou's relationship, especially after reading some of the comments people left. It has become increasingly clear that this honestly isn't healthy. For either of them. They're codependent, with Gojou enabling Marin's lack of responsibility and emotionally selfish nature. There's a lot of wailing about the drama and people wanting a return to wholesomeness but if you take a step back, this doesn't feel wholesome at all. A relationship, especially a romantic one, should be mutually beneficial. Is this that?
Ask yourself; what does Gojou do for Marin? He makes her costumes, forgoing sleep, study, and even his own ambitions to do so. He cooks for her. He acts as a social bond to another cosplayer that can't stand Marin herself. He spends what must at this point be hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of yen to make her as happy as she can possibly be in her hobby.
What does Marin do for Gojou?
...
No, honestly, what does Marin do for Gojou? What interest does she actually show in him, as opposed to what he can do for her? Because as far as I can recall, Chapter 103 - in volume fucking 14 - is the first time the two of them went out and did something purely related to Gojou's interests and desires. Everything else is a result of or preparation for something that Marin or her friends wanted to do. She's "nice" to Gojou in that she doesn't immediately make fun of him for having a slightly weird hobby, but that's not some amazing feat - that's table stakes for being a decent human being. She has about as right to be considered a good partner as those interminable harem protagonists who get the girl because they are the only males in their stories who treat the romantic interests with basic respect.
"Oh, but he's gotten better at making hina dolls since he started helping her." "Oh, he met that other friend as a result of his interest in prop-making." "Oh, the class has a better opinion of him since he helped do her makeup." If that's your response, you completely misread the question. I asked specifically what Marin actively chooses to do to for the purposes of helping Gojou out with his life.
See, a lot of people pointed out to this being a self-insert fic from the author, and I can see it. This story revolves around the interests of the female lead, and everything that the male lead wants or feels is sublimated to that. He wants to be a hina doll artist? Well, helping the female lead with her costumes makes him better at that! He wants to make friends and connect to the people around him? Well, joining the female lead's social group is how he does that! At no point does Marin actively reach out and try to aid him; she's a passive recipient to his efforts and the universe (read; the mangaka) rewards him for sacrificing everything to her.
You know you fucked up your romance when Nagatoro, the girl whose first encounter with her romantic partner ended with him in tears, ends up a healthier, more balanced, and more giving partner than your female lead. At least Nagatoro - who I remind everyone started out as NTR-bait emotional abuse porn on twitter - was aware of and concerned about the inner life of her partner!
You have to feel sorry for Gojou. He's been placed in a universe where he'll never win, will never find true happiness, except in subservience to anothers' whims. The manga even says so - Chapter 94. "Wakana, too... As long as he lives, I don't think he'll find satisfaction. So, Marin-chan, please make sure to praise the things that Wakana makes." Hell, even though during the last cosplaying arc with Haniel Gojou was actually into things for his own reasons, the way it got presented - with Gojou
on his knees begging Marin for forgiveness for being "selfish" enough to ask her to cosplay as a character she told him she wanted to cosplay as - positions him as a supplicant to Marin.
And taking that line, that this isn't a romcom centered around an ecchi gyaru with a love of cosplay but instead a dramedy about a toxic relationship with that gyaru, actually puts their earlier interactions in a new light. Marin's strongest character trait, from the very beginning, was that she didn't care what other people felt. She didn't care if they thought she was rude, or if she was weird for openly talking about porn, or anything. Remember all that kinda pervy stuff from those early volumes? How uncomfortable Gojou felt every time she gave him stuff to watch or he had to measure her for costumes? Remember how she never cared at all about trying to make him feel more comfortable (or, hell, maybe compromising in the smallest possible way so that he didn't feel that way)? How she didn't care that exposing his skill as a tailor or makeup artist might scare him or alienate him from the class (you might say "she knew it wouldn't result in anything bad - but we NEVER see her reassure him about that! That seems like a great moment of caring and friendship that this manga just... never bothers with)?
Marin never compromises on what she wants. Compromising your desires is for Gojou.
I mentioned Marin being akin to a Manic Pixie Dream Girl; you know the trope. Super-bubbly extroverted "quirky" girl who meets a shy, introverted, inexpressive loner and slowly breaks down his shell with irrepressible energy. It's a common enough male fantasy in media. Except this is more the flipped version of it, the female fantasy. She's a teenager with basically no self-control (she spent thousands of dollars on a DSLR camera because it's model name started with the same letter as her own!), no ability to manage her life (shown by her eating habits), no thought towards social norms or niceties (framed as her being straightforward, but that's not really consistent with her absolute reticence regarding Gojou. A more consistent explanation is that she just doesn't care about offending or discomforting others), and ends up dumping all of the emotional and physical labor of their relationship onto Gojou.
This is coming off as more mean-spirited than I intend. Sure, she's way too nonchalant about how much she asks or expects from her partner. She's 15, though. And an only child. The only real, deep relationship she would have at this point is that to her parents, where she would be the passive recipient of all of their love and attention. That's how she acts in this relationship too; she's more like Gojou's child than his girlfriend. Of course she doesn't have the emotional maturity to actually give equally to a partner. And no one would expect her to. I'm not making a value judgement of her - just pointing out how unfair this whole situation is to him.
The longer this goes on, frankly, the less I want this romance to continue. Gojou gives so much, so readily, desperate for any scrap of acceptance. He's still mentally that orphan, scared of the world and dependent on a calcified shell to protect him from it. Closed, afraid to reach out and ask for help, to let anyone know that it's too much for him. He deserves someone who'll reach over, who'll tell him it's okay to rely on her for a while, that his needs matter too. A person who can say "we" instead of "I".
Because Marin sure as shit won't.
Hell, at this point I think Non would make a better pairing. At least in this chapter she treats Gojou as someone whose feelings matter and that she has to talk to when they have problems, rather than Marin's fundamentally cowardly and self-centered solution of just walking the fuck away whenever the risk of being vulnerable rears up.
ADDENDUM: So this chapter's ending can kind of be seen as Marin compromising, giving up on her goals to support Gojou. But if that's the case, if that's how it's meant to be perceived, the problem is even worse than I originally thought. Even for teenagers, this is painful to watch. Imagine that this happened to you. Imagine you had a friend who introduced you to a hobby - say, rock climbing or something else you were nervous about doing publically because of self-image issues, and introduced you to a friend group through it, and you've spent a bunch of time and energy with them enjoying this hobby together.
Then you try to introduce your friend to something you're interested in and you're kind of shy about. Maybe you're a high-level esports player trying to go pro and mention how much time it takes to practice your skills. You know, the kind of thing that friends talk about; the situations in their lives and the struggles they're going through. This is the first time you've opened up like this, after like half a year of friendship.
And then that friend, immediately afterwards, straight up ghosts you. That's kind of weird, you think, so you go to their house to see what's up, and that friend, before you can even finish asking about plans to go rock climbing next weekend, says that they never want to go rock climbing with you again. And their excuse is that obviously you care so much about being a professional esports player that you have no time for the hobby they introduced you to.
Do you understand how shocked and hurt and betrayed you'd feel at that moment?
This is not a romance. I'm sorry, it just isn't. Neither of these characters treat the other as a romantic interest. Gojou definitely doesn't see Marin in a romantic light - he doesn't even see her in an erotic way any more! He spent the night at her house, hopped up on aphrodisiac energy drinks, and thought nothing of it. And Marin doesn't even treat Gojou as a friend, let alone a potential boyfriend. She treats him like a simp. Where other girls might have a guy like him saved as "Free Lunch" on their phones, he's "Cheap Costumes". AND HE ALSO MAKES HER LUNCH! The only hint that she sees him as anything greater was her promising herself she would confess to him three arcs and two years ago. And then... nothing.
