Yeah, sounds like real life. All they see is a hurt girl and a dude who wronger her. Women don't often get in "the dog house" so to speak.
if you want to be pedantic, it's set by their age and (lack of) experience. Which is derivedf from being high schoolers. Sure, they can maturely reason out everything, have foresight into their problems and properly apologize, but that sure isn't how my 15-16YO experience was. I was cringe AF (and still wold be for ~5 more years or so), so it lines up with the normal experience.
It is indeed a double standard. But I imagine that is the exact draw of the manga to people. We know exactly what tags this manga would have if the roles were reversed, and how people would treat Eguchi as a male lead. The reversal is wish furfillment, either for men who want to be dominated by a more aggressive woman, or women/non-dominate people who want to see the traditionally dominant gender get their just desserts.
It's gone in the background these past few chapters, but the first chapters portray Ikezawa as a more typical womanizer. He wasn't meant to simply be some shy guy in the corner that is getting picked on like Tagaki/Nagataro's male leads.
I guess it just frustrates me that this is basically just some dysfunctional femdom wish-fulfillment. There is no role reversal here, because the opposite would NOT be maledom.
We know exactly what tags this manga would have if the roles were reversed, and how people would treat Eguchi as a male lead.
What tags, exactly? Surely you're not saying that the opposite scenario would involve the guy dominating the girl or something?
I fail to see how this is in any way a role reversal when the roles largely remain the same, except that the girl simply gets to take advantage of the double standard even more, by overstepping boundaries, something that the guy would have been punished for in any other story.
Yes, I agree that there is a lot of unreasonable female behavior that has been completely normalized irl. And that there are massive double standards like the one shown in this series here. But that doesnt mean that all relationships are like that. I personally fail to see the appeal of having these irl double standards repeated in a fictional romance story that's meant for enjoyment. If it is femdom that someone wants (and I can understand the appeal), you'd want even MORE balance and reasonable behavior from the "domme," wouldnt you? Not some BPD girl that will suddenly ignore your consent and boundaries because she feels like it.
I honestly have even higher standards for BDSM manga. Nana to Kaoru was great because Kaoru was
extremely conscious of Nana's boundaries and respected her a lot. In contrast, I couldnt stand Tsumi to Kai because it was built on blackmail femdom and the girl was creepily sadistic, overstepping every boundary imaginable and not only hurting the guy, but also putting him in active danger, all while threatening to ruin his life. I can understand that in porn or in a hentai manga, where an isolated "scene" is being shown, but not in a long form romance. That just makes it seem disgusting to me. Am I supposed to immerse myself in these characters and understand their romance? Genuine abuse is very hard to enjoy in a long form story imo.
Coincidentally, Nana to Kaoru is maledom and Tsumi to Kai is femdom, so perhaps there is a difference in how these two genres as written. Maledom romance (at least Nana to Kaoru) has in my experience been sweet and tackles the subject matter of safe BDSM well. Femdom romance (like Tsumi to Kai) has in my experience always been unhinged and extreme, with complete disregard of safe and consensual BDSM. It may even be yet another reflection of the double standards between the sexes lmao. Or maybe it's the difference between shoujo/josei and shonen/seinen (because I think Nana to Kaoru is seinen while Tsumi to Kai is josei?).
Sorry for the BDSM tangent, but you got me thinking about that in your comment.
IDK man, this just doesnt scratch my itch for vanilla romance, nor any kind of kinky romance. Maybe it's just me, but I dont enjoy double standards and one-sided relationship dynamics in my romance.
