Watashi no Musuko ga Isekai Tensei Shitappoi - Vol. 4 Ch. 30 - That's Wrong!

[Marenjii]

This is the most cynical take I've seen on this site in a while.

Same, feels like they were going for shock value.

 

[Baelgun]

The next step should be the hospital and the cops, after the beating he gave Doubara she probably can justify running away by saying he's a violent lunatic and she feared for her safety, but who am i kidding his family is influential and since this is Japan they're culturally conditioned to not go against their betters in life even if they're violent rapist.

 

[lolfacesayshi]

Isn't he straight up sleeping with other women? Big of him to immediately accuse the wife of shacking up with someone else.

 

[lolfacesayshi]

Haruji is a pos but someone really needs to stop feeding Mio's delusions. It is a serious issue that can lead to much pain.

A slow ramp to acceptance is also a thing, you know. Shock therapy isn't a cure-all.

 

[Mekiaa]

Isn't he straight up sleeping with other women? Big of him to immediately accuse the wife of shacking up with someone else.

Its standard serial adulterer behaviour. An adulterer will always immediately accuse their partner of behaviour that they themselves have committed.

 

[mangadexamc]

The next few chapters may not drop for a few days

Thanks and have all the time you need.

 

[brainman]

Yeah, what a piece of shit Mio is for not bouncing back from her devastating grief without any psychological or emotional support from the one person that should have been there for her most.

Not the point at all. Plus, he was there, she was the one shutting herself off from everyone, including her close and worried friends. It's a situation where neither of the two is right or wrong, because there is no right and wrong here, just two people handling their loss extremely poorly, and expressing their self-loathing in different ways. Mio is suicidal, delusional, and looking for enablers. Haruji drinks and smokes heavily, looks for distractions, and lashes out.

Her problem is her denial. Imagine how brutal it must be for the one person who truly shares your loss, and should be able to offer more than empty pity and platitudes, to first shut you entirely, and then go "no he's not dead, it's totally fine". How do you even handle that? Haruji isn't a smart or sensitive man, but in your own grief and impotent anger at nobody in particular, doesn't trying to make them face reality by any means strike you as a reasonable response? Framing that as abuse is just insane to me.

Shame if Haruji really doesn't show up anymore, other than Mio he's the only character with an interesting perspective. I thought his few PoV chapters made pretty clear that he mirrors Mio's suffering, and is looking for company in it, same as her.

 

[mug3n]

Not the point at all. Plus, he was there, she was the one shutting herself off from everyone, including her close and worried friends. It's a situation where neither of the two is right or wrong, because there is no right and wrong here, just two people handling their loss extremely poorly, and expressing their self-loathing in different ways. Mio is suicidal, delusional, and looking for enablers. Haruji drinks and smokes heavily, looks for distractions, and lashes out.

Her problem is her denial. Imagine how brutal it must be for the one person who truly shares your loss, and should be able to offer more than empty pity and platitudes, to first shut you entirely, and then go "no he's not dead, it's totally fine". How do you even handle that? Haruji isn't a smart or sensitive man, but in your own grief and impotent anger at nobody in particular, doesn't trying to make them face reality by any means strike you as a reasonable response? Framing that as abuse is just insane to me.

Shame if Haruji really doesn't show up anymore, other than Mio he's the only character with an interesting perspective. I thought his few PoV chapters made pretty clear that he mirrors Mio's suffering, and is looking for company in it, same as her.

Not knowing how to handle a situation and retorting to dominate her by talking down to her and implying it's her fault their son is dead because she decided to have him after she tried to kill herself IS abuse. And it's not a one off and feeling guilty, he clearly thinks that of her.

No one here denies his grief, but you did put their shortcomings on the same level when it's not even remotely close. And he clearly is not as damaged he can't function as her, he still can look for real solutions, how about looking for professional help for both of them instead of chasing skirts?

 

[PinkMage]

Easily one of the best TL notes I've ever seen.

 

[derodoron]

What grief? This guy clearly thinks it's more of an inconvenience and how much it's hurting his image than actually feeling sad about it. Anyone that can still sympathize with him is clearly in the same mindset as him.

 

[Steallet]

What grief? This guy clearly thinks it's more of an inconvenience and how much it's hurting his image than actually feeling sad about it. Anyone that can still sympathize with him is clearly in the same mindset as him.

Are we reading the same story? It's literally the point to see how Mio and Haruji react differently to grief.

She is denying and he is lashing out at everything. You know, like the different stages of grief.

 

[fight2live]

i'll say it again: haruji deserves to be locked behind bars. gdi i'm so mad i need to find something wholesome to read after this

 

[ninolover69]

Very good analysis at the end

 

[derodoron]

Are we reading the same story? It's literally the point to see how Mio and Haruji react differently to grief.

She is denying and he is lashing out at everything. You know, like the different stages of grief.

Clearly not, because he has obviously moved on. He has coped with his loss with... acceptance that the child is dead. From very early on. Doesn't even understand why everyone is making a big deal of it. Seems like he's over it to me. If we're considering his constant state of rage to still be grieving then sure, he is in grief. But he has shown to be more annoyed that everyone is taking pity on him, telling him what to do and not dropping the fact that his son has died than being sad about it. Which he's putting all the blame on Mio now because she left to deal with her own grief because he wouldn't acknowledge hers.

 

[brndndss]

that was just soul crushing to read, especially first thing in the morning glad to hear we prob wont see this POS again

 

[brainman]

Clearly not, because he has obviously moved on. He has coped with his loss with... acceptance that the child is dead. From very early on. Doesn't even understand why everyone is making a big deal of it.

So the many signs of depression permeating his scenes mean nothing to you? The dude's about as damaged as Mio, even if his machismo (likely fostered by his mother, judging by her callous dialogue) keeps him in denial - much like Mio.

I guess my point is that Haruji is a bad person, but a good character. His actions are terrible, but also very human and understandable. He's the reflection of Mio in that way. She denies his son's death to his face and leaves him on his own, an inadvertently cruel act, while his cruelties are more obvious and thus easier to hate. But neither of them are good people, both deal badly with their grief, both pull others into it, and both refuse to face their suffering and work through it properly.

 

[shubbby]

The thing about Haruji is that he is as irredeemable as they come and a lot of the character merits people assign to him are what they would expect of a normal, well-adjusted person but not applicable for him specifically. It makes for a very one dimensional character and while that is a bad thing from a literary perspective, it still doesn't make him a good, or even a relatable, person.

This chapter doesn't spring anything new about his character, but only takes it the next, and predictable if you're familiar with his psychosis, level. None of the previous panels featuring Haruji and Taiga do you see him even regarding his son with anything approaching warmth. I don't think he even looks at Taiga. And when he's gaslighting Mio, it becomes clear. Taiga is like a puppy Mio decided to bring home entirely on her volition. The speech he gave when Mio told him that she was pregnant was not a permission to have a child together. It was an abdication of his responsibility as a parent. He's telling her that she will be the one deciding the have a child and she's going to be the one solely responsible for him, for good or for bad. They probably had similar conversation all through Taiga's life, because obviously, it's difficult to entirely remove himself from Taiga's life, and every time Taiga happened to be a hinderance to how he wants to live, he would remind Mio that having him was her decision, and she should be the one responsible for him and not him. Otherwise, his line about how this is all her fault wouldn't work, as it didn't work with Doubara. So it has been a lifetime of conditioning Mio about her responsibility toward Taiga that made that line in this chapter work against her.

I can't find any evidence where he's expressing grief about Taiga's death. He's expressed annoyance at how people are treating him, expecting certain emotions that he's not capable of feeling. The admiration and respect he expects from other people, along with the lack of empathy, pretty much clinically diagnose him as a classic narcissist. The manga fills him in with some details. The encounter with his family shows that his family is one of some former renown, maybe a landholding family that has fallen on hard times, surrounded by families of former retainers who still pay them some measure of respect but are doing better than them. It's a common theme in Japanese drama that native readers would have picked up on immediately, but something not that familiar to Western readers. That decline of his family mirrors his employment situation. From his uniform, he works in some manufacturing job, which is perfectly respectable, but not to the level of an idle landowner that his previous generation was. Or not a professional occupation like a lawyer or a doctor. He's not even an owner or a manager. He could not be happy with his family or work situation, given the delusions of grandeur typical of a narcissists. He was probably satisfied when he was in school, but that has steadily declined after graduation, a pattern that should be familiar with the Western readers as well. He's like a former high school jock who still wears his varsity jacket to bars at 36 and hits on the waitress 15 years his junior.

So he can't handle the pity from people who he feels should be admiring him, and now one thing he feels he has that's (not who's, because I think he sees Mio as a possession) better than what others have, a beautiful and popular wife, has run away from him. All this he sees an an attack on his person and he can't take it.

People are assigning grief to Haruji based on how they might feel in that circumstance, but I don't think Haruji is most people. He did not and does not feel grief about Taiga's death. That I can say that with this much certainty because this manga is a made-up story and the ones involved in creating this manga specifically chose that narrative. Again, it makes for a bad and restrictive story, but it is how it is. Haruji is a bad, irredeemable person because he was written that way. I mean, no one said this was War and Peace.

 

[Ironclad]

You see the author had to make him act like total over the top jerk this chapter otherwise everything would have been resolved.

 

[Weoooo]

You see the author had to make him act like total over the top jerk this chapter otherwise everything would have been resolved.

He's been this way the whole time. He's been cheating on her, he's been angry and unable to come to terms with the idea that she's grieving, has been saying "yeah well what about me" this whole time we've seen him, and has just generally been a total sack of shit that she married out of high school because they were in a relationship.
Dude sucks. Has always sucked. His shittiness is most likely why she fell into such deep grief when her son was killed.
Because her son was her entire world. She did everything for him. She stood up to her husband for him, we see in this chapter that he literally never wanted a kid but didn't even take enough responsibility to wear a fuckin' condom. Her life with her husband was bleak and tense, but her son... just look at the flashback panels she has with him. She's such a bright, happy character there. We never see her like that in any other flashback. When she lost him, all she had left were friends in difficult places and an emotionally distant and resentful husband.
He's been a big reason for why things shook out the way they did, but he refuses to take any responsibility for anything, instead getting mad at everyone else and centering himself in every conversation. He even did it here.

I also really like how Dobura acted these past few chapters. He's trying to keep space, he's trying to do the right thing, and he's trying to stand up for Mio, but... he doesn't know how. I like that when her husband got violent, he was shocked and still tried to de-escalate.
Because dude's never been in a fight before. It'd be easy to write him doing something like taking a swing at her husband, or standing back up after the kick because he needs to protect Mio, or him reaching into his fantasies of being a hero in another world and saving a princess, like some of the first chapter art. But sudden violence is, for a person who isn't violent, shocking and disorienting. It's one of the ways assholes get away with everything, because they push past a line everyone else realizes is there cause its better for everyone if we all stay behind it.
Dobura's never been kicked before, so he has no idea how to react. It DOES hurt. Getting in a fight SUCKS. So this whole time he's just trying to think of a way to stop all this, and letting Mio's husband beat the shit out of him feels like his best option, and he can't think of much else that he even could do.
But still, he eventually realizes that he can't just let this happen, and pushes him down and runs away with Mio. It's... not glorious. It's kind of embarrassing. But a confrontation between an unstable and violent person, his wife, and a nerd-ass nerd isn't gonna end with that nerd suddenly summoning hidden strength to beat up the other guy, no matter how much every dude thinks any fight they get into will end.

 

[Panino]

Finally, it's here.
Many many many chapters ago I commented about this, "it's my fault Taiga died" is THE KEY to what's happening with Mio. In that moment Mio is not just confirming what Haruji said, she is also repeating something that herself believes.

Why Mio thinks Taiga's death is her fault?
Wait a bit more to discover, that's the TRUE REASON why Mio "went crazy".
I cried a bit reading that chapter.