Unironically fine with this because this conversation was too important to be interrupted and from a meta perspective, obviously the author isn’t going to kill or injure the two of them. At least not permanently.
Games, manga, anime, theater, drama, movies...they are safe spaces to further push the narrative envelope because they are "not real" (no matter the lived experiences that may be behind them, sadly). Japan isn't as politically progressive as some of their pop culture can make some think, even less so with the recent election.
And isn't it perfect.
No, she 100% still liked him even when he was a boy. In the first chapter, she was blushing thinking about the "boy" she likes and in this chapter, you can see her fall into despair because of the two of them kissing, and other past chapters showed she clearly had something for him. She wished for him to be a girl because she didn't care about his gender romantically, but felt awkward trying to interact with him as a boy because of the dynamics of being a boy and girl in a friendly relationship, similar to how many boy-girl childhood friends grow apart in middle/high school because they don't wanna be seen as weird for being close to somebody of a different gender or seen as dating, even if they have strong feelings, and wished for him to be a girl to make it easier to interact with him in a way that feels more romantic, but also natural, which is implied in the first chapter when they talk about how girls are allowed to be affectionate towards each other without it feeling romantic or making the other part self conscious.I still can't feel any "romantic" affection coming from Noelle that isn't...strange?
She never romantically liked him (because he was a boy) from the beginning. I think she was confused and wished for him to be a girl instead because she did like him to some extent. She only started showing visible interest when he turned into a girl. Fundamentally, he's still a guy and HIM on the inside. But he's exploring how comfortable he is now being a girl.
Meanwhile, Eito, recognized him immediately and still likes him for him (regardless of gender).
Noel is clearly a lesbian or just plain confused. She needs to sort that shit out and not cause Kei any further confusion and heartache. She's too self-absorbed to realize his feelings. But at the end of this chapter, she is admitting to understanding a lot of what's going on with Eito. Maybe cause she had the same worries.
And if it wasn't abundantly clear, I am biased towards Eito.
They're kids struggling and still learning how to understand sexual orientation, gender and societal pressure. It makes perfect sense that they're talking this way. It's also a lack of hope and fear that things could never work out. They're each thinking about all the ways it won't work because they're afraid. It's anxiety and age that's making them speak this way.
I would agree with you more if this wasn't common language across the entire medium of manga as a whole. I believe there's actually been essays about this, that an outdated idea in Japan specifically that continues to endure is this idea that your gender identity informs your sexual orientation. It has gotten better over the years but is still pervasive enough to worm itself into a lot of works.
I just thought of that too. Like, can we get through this conversation quickly because apparently they were the only people in the water and there seems to be no safety net, like a life guard, on this beach 😭.
I don't want to disagree completely, but I think that gender identity does, on some level, inform sexual preference. At the very least, it influences self-perception of attraction. All the evidence I have is anecdotal, but in my case, I was always convinced I was 100% attracted to women. More accurately, I believed I was some shade of asexual, but imagining myself in a homosexual relationship with a man caused me noticeable distress where relationships with women did not. About a year into my transition, though, I found through some self introspection that I was not only no longer repulsed by the notion of being in a relationship with a man, but I actively held a preference towards men.
