The Fragrant Flower Blooms with Dignity - Vol. 9 Ch. 66 - Ayumi Sawatari

[el_presidente_deromcom]

You may not like HIM, Kikyo. But you can't deny, RIZZtaro's got style

 

[Cheser]

Like i said in the previous chapters, this is all that shitty teacher's fault.

Thank you again for the chapter!

 

[amoraluvs6]

Oh my god i love rintaro so much 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
Tysm for the chapter 🥲🥲🫶🏻

 

[AngelVera]

I feel for her, so bad 😭

The cognitive dissonance of what she Knows (aka has been told/taught) versus the Reality that is totally contrary to that. Considering how she’s built up a part/s of herself on these false ideas- to have them shaken so roughly has thrown her totally off balance. That sort of conflict is rarely so easily overcome 🙃

BUT!!! The important part here is: She is now aware of how wrong her information and behavior is, and genuinely remorseful for it. It’s just that it might need a bit longer for her to process All of this. Or maybe someone (or some people) can help ease the way. I’m looking forward to seeing how she (and consequently, other school-related characters) will react and change as the story goes on 😊

Would not have been possible without the kind hearts of Rintaro and Kaoruko getting the ball rolling 🥺♥️✨

 

[TransparentJoker]

Rintaro goat mc

 

[coyote_vdb]

Don't see the point of this chapter. It painfully explains what was already pretty obvious from the previous one. The author would have been better moving the story forward.

 

[Shrimperor]

The black hair i still pissing me off ngl

 

[TNT261]

This Manga quickly becomes a tragedy when you realize the main cast will never be able to change the systems perpetuating the social and mental problems minors have to go through. It becomes even more heartbreaking when you realize this is unfortunately the normal environment a lot of kids have to go through (not just in Japan). I really hated being a kid because of the lack of agency. When I messed up it really felt like I was worth nothing because all I was ever told (and kids around me) by the systems in place were that we were basically nothing just balls of potential who haven't achieved any actual value yet, so it felt like my entire life's worth was determined by my school work and extracurriculars (all of which I'm now being told NEVER MATTERED; like the exact words I'm being told is that if you didn't do them for enjoyment there's no point because no one actually cares despite it being harmed into minors).

And I really can't imagine how it is actually growing up in a hyper competitive society that's somehow also really traditional and homogeneous (so you're both punished for standing out from the herd and punished for not standing out enough in constant competitions to judge societal worth (*punished on a societal level as well)).

And when you step away from the light hearted rom-com and slice of life this is just depressing. The Manga itself doesn't tackle grand ideas of "toppling oppressive regimes" and "rewriting harmful status quos and societal norms" it's at its heart a slice of life rom com (we don't even usually confront how messed up societal norms are here), so readers are made aware that all these minors can do is change the lives of individuals around them on a massively small scale. Which is a powerful statement in of itself but still such a defeated feeling.

Take the situation with Ayumi. We know at the end of the day she'll be brought over the main cast's side with everyone (probably mostly Rinataro with the good vibes) helping her confront her anxieties and feel more firm in her self worth. That's great but when you realize there HAS to be multitudes of other girls feeling like she does because their school is the type to see a kid doing poorly and say "git gud scrub" in a normal tone so everyone can hear (I don't imagine a spectacle being mad but I saw no steps taken to even pretend her results were private information) and they'll never have their anxieties addressed because the Manga can't go around giving every character the EXTENSIVE therapy they must need from this school's environment.

It's the same problem with Rintaro's hair. The problem isn't that it's a big deal. The problem is that it's a problem at all. No one should need a reason other than liking how it looks to color their hair (people can have whatever reason they want but they don't need to justify it to others). Rintaro even having to consider dying his hair black just to fit in and not cause trouble for the people he cares about is the problem. At the very least this shouldn't be societal prejudice that children have to deal with. The prejudice against hair styles in the workplace is bad enough but at least directed towards adults who have the agency to fight back and hold certain responsibilities. Literally the only good thing about being a minor is supposed to be not caring about images, just enjoying life, and growing up under adults who are willing to take responsibility for you and provide a safe environment.

It's just something that I can't help but get so frustrated over. What if Rintaro had natural blonde hair? He wouldn't even need a parent with blonde hair or grand parent. Hair color isn't exactly the most strict part of your DNA. Mutations have seen people born with bone white hair. Color itself isn't even something that really exists. It's just what objects reflect and how our brains interpret the reflected light waves (you could argue we aren't even seeing the actual colors of things because we only see the one frequency that's reflected not absorbed). This is very much a rambling rant (and I don't know how accurate because I haven't taken a biology class since like 9th or 10th grade) but all I'm really trying to say is it's disgusting the environment these kids have to contend with. If blonde was his natural hair color but everyone was still put off by it or no one believed him, would he still dye it back and we'd get the same speech about protecting what's important and we'd just have to accept that?

I guess it really isn't on the author or story itself (and maybe more of a testament to the writing), but this situation is just massively depressing and makes me so angry.

 

[ShayGuy]

She is now aware of how wrong her information and behavior is, and genuinely remorseful for it.

I almost feel like "remorse" is beside the point, because this is less about moral right and wrong and more about factual right and wrong: She's a girl in pain who did her best to ease that pain with a belief that she could at least be proud of one thing that set her apart. And now she's been shown that that belief, her one comfort, was a lie, and she has too much integrity to deny it even to herself, meaning she has no defense mechanism left -- just the pain.

 

[SpudWumper]

thanks for the TL

oddly relatable ayu... 🛌

 

[youkari]

PSA it's super easy to make an account with pocket shounen magazine. It's just email and password. Then you can start buying coins to read the latest chapter with visa/mastercard.
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[TejanoWeeb]

The black hair i still pissing me off ngl

Naaaah, he looks cooler and more manly and/or masculine with black hair. Idk how to explain it lol. I’m a str8 dude and Rintaro is making me flutter. He def gained a lot of RIZZ with his hair color change

 

[signingman241]

A lot of people don't realize how hard it can be to confront yourself like this. When there's something that you've believed was true for such a long period of time, it can be hard for people to change the way they think.

That's why you gotta be patient with people. Sometimes they just need a little time to ease into this kind of thing.

 

[Endominus]

This Manga quickly becomes a tragedy when [SNIP]

I want to push back on this a little. I agree with pretty much everything you said about the existential horror of childhood (if anything, I think the systems of childrearing and education are even worse than you state; to my mind, most education is ritualized, formalized child abuse), but disagree with your statements about this being a tragedy in the story. I've been reading a number of stories more aligned with your thinking here, with heroes that realize the magnitude of the injustice of their societies, and have always come away more depressed than anything else, simply because of the expectations that those stories have of their audience and the unrelenting anger and frustration of their characters (if you want to read a manga that delves into this territory, try Akumetsu).

The problem is that the war against injustice is an eternal one. Even the most optimistic media, past the utopian stories of childhood, doesn't end with "And then the heroes won and everyone lived happily ever after." There is no realistic way for these children to topple the systems that hurt them. In the face of that reality, simply existing - happily! - and refusing to break under the social pressure insisting that you are a monster and a freak constitutes victory. This is the best that a real person in this situation could hope to do (actually, probably better; in actual Japan, they are much less interested in people expressing uniqueness or individuality. With regards to your later question, I've read testimonies from people who do actually have natural blonde hair who were forced to dye it black in school there). It's something more aligned to Japanese cultural values, which I'm aware many people reading don't share, but exists in certain Western traditions as well - Stoicism, for example.

Insisting or expecting the characters to crusade against the social norms that cause their misery is unrealistic and veers into wish-fulfilment. It's the wrong lesson to teach people. And I know this sounds defeatist, as if I'm saying, "The world will never be better, so just give up and be happy with what you have," but that's not my point. Placing the responsibility to change the minds of adults and upturn societal conventions on these children is unfair, and it sends the wrong message to anyone reading the manga. The expectation that they should be part of that fight results in that "defeated feeling" you talk about. But that's not their fight! Saying "Even if society is unfair to you, you can still achieve happiness and still have deep and meaningful friendships!" is more valuable to kids in this situation than a polemic about their duty to tear down the system.

All that said, there are a number of manga that are much more in line with what you've said. A Quiet Voice, for example, is orders of magnitude worse than this one for making the reader feel depressed about what the characters are going through. And just like this manga, I get the strong impression that that's not what the mangaka wanted the reader to feel. One gets the impression that he or she thought the story was an optimistic, happy one (it absolutely isn't - literally no one gets their comeuppance and the worst character in that story never sees any consequences for the horrible shit she does, nor do any of the adults who exacerbated the problems of the main characters ever even realize their error).

 

[anyarysn]

damn was it ever that serious

 

[Doedoel]

Thank you for the translation! o7

 

[Flymonster0953]

I am currently waiting for new chapters on about 7 different manga's and this one is probably my favorite one

 

[mvryvm]

i hope she starts to feel better soon so we can get back to the saku x subaru ship already

 

[Quickshot76]

AGgh

 

[ThrystaVindr]

A lot of people don't realize how hard it can be to confront yourself like this. When there's something that you've believed was true for such a long period of time, it can be hard for people to change the way they think.

That's why you gotta be patient with people. Sometimes they just need a little time to ease into this kind of thing.

Yeah, especially here where she's used her view of Chidori as a coping mechanism to deal with her own self-worth issues. People do a lot irl even if they don't really think about it - and it's hard to make yourself accept that you unfairly thought that way

The fact that she's not denying any of the good things she sees in them is already a step in the right direction, I really liked how that happened on Subaru's initial introduction too. It would be all too easy to just assume the worst of people when you meet them instead of noticing the little things they do like making sure they can't be seen from the outside of the cafe