Yofukashi no Uta - Ch. 166 - Running Away With the Win

[LadyTyche]

Wow, glad the author let us know he was going to kill his parents if he became a vampire, but lol also maybe not. What the actual fuck.

 

[Admmi]

I wasn't butthurt about you being a cunt to someone out of nowhere but I can quite confidently say, with your constant off-topic bitching, your newfound ability to not keep my name out your mouth and off the tips of your fingers, I am in fact now butthurt. get a life you fucking drama queen fuckbag

I didn't even read your name, that's how much I really cared about you, and you were the one acting off topic so don't cry now.

 

[Noble-6]

"So uuhhhhh, Fr no cap I may want to die n shiet cuz I love some hoe, but bein a vampire sounds kinda sick(lol), finna want to murder my parents lmaoooo"
What a bright friend he was, too bad in got recycled into photovoltaic energy

 

[Qanon01]

Why do I have this hunch Nazuna will try to use this annoying fuckboy as a way to distance herself from Kou.

In an attempt to "save" him from the same fate as Mahiru, she may purposely try to break Kou's heart so he stops wanting to be a vampire.

Why do you this may happen? They can still be together, but she will need just to not succ him anymore, same way her mother sustained from biting her lover.

If nazuna and her mother aren't the same person that is

 

[BadmanBlues]

The more I read these comments, the more I feel I was right before in discussions on earlier chapters. Most of the people raging about this past arc were totally blind to the darker undertones and commentary of this series that was there since the start, with a kid with obviously anti-social and even suicidal apathy. And only saw it as some yozakura quartet-esque slice of life that had some maybe shonen elements.

They feel blindsided now because they were willfully blind. And the more chapters go by capping off this arc, the more the same commenters (I went out of the way to check usernames) went from vaguely criticizing the arc, to outright blatantly stating they are here for the SoL, not any other themes, and certainly not any that isn't all rainbows and sunshine. Granted, its published in WSS, but that mag has always had a history of not shying away from such things.

I get that not everyone wants to read such almost-non-fiction. But I do feel like people should recognize that and get off the boat in that case. You probably got the wrong series. There's loads of manga out there, and just because you like some of what a manga is, doesn't mean you may like all of it. And it's not really the manga's fault.

You laid out what I've been thinking pretty succinctly.

Honestly I felt like this arc has been well constructed and has played out like a train-wreck in slow motion. It's an injection of tragedy that I don't really think was avoidable. Nobody can be anybody other than who they are. If Mahiru, Kiku, Kou, or Akira made any decision which could have avoided this fate, they would have been acting out of line with their character. People think it's out of place, but fundamentally it's a story about love, what love means or what love is, and a Romeo and Juliet plot is totally in line with the subject matter. It provides a useful foil for Kou and Nazuna's relationship while also raising the stakes: just what the hell will happen if they consummate it? How dangerous is falling in love? I suspect that the next part of the plot is going to look at other ugly aspects of love - envy and unrequited love.

 

[Lucky]

The more I read these comments, the more I feel I was right before in discussions on earlier chapters. Most of the people raging about this past arc were totally blind to the darker undertones and commentary of this series that was there since the start, with a kid with obviously anti-social and even suicidal apathy. And only saw it as some yozakura quartet-esque slice of life that had some maybe shonen elements.

They feel blindsided now because they were willfully blind. And the more chapters go by capping off this arc, the more the same commenters (I went out of the way to check usernames) went from vaguely criticizing the arc, to outright blatantly stating they are here for the SoL, not any other themes, and certainly not any that isn't all rainbows and sunshine. Granted, its published in WSS, but that mag has always had a history of not shying away from such things.

I get that not everyone wants to read such almost-non-fiction. But I do feel like people should recognize that and get off the boat in that case. You probably got the wrong series. There's loads of manga out there, and just because you like some of what a manga is, doesn't mean you may like all of it. And it's not really the manga's fault.

Instead of actually tackling someone's grievances head on you try and make a woeful overgeneralization about people's feelings. You then attempt establish yourself as a true fan who knows better than others, and tells them to read works so pitiful they barely count as written fiction. That's not discussion, that's thinly veiled grandstanding. I hope you consider actually talking to others in the future.

---

In my eyes past arc's main issues were not the deviation from slice of life, and people's worry about the next arc is not the deviation from slice of life. It's that that the interesting characters that had believable developments are pushed to the back when characters that are one-note, irredeemable, and drag down other characters with them are brought to forefront for the sake of drama. What we saw in the past arc is a group of people rightfully wanting to end a bitch vampire that makes life bad for literally hundreds and hundreds of people, including the MCs best friend, to slowly accepting the best friend's terrible decision and just sorrowfully letting that fly.

Now we have an oncoming arc about a vampire that date rapes women. Which we can also only assume will involve some wishy-washy redemption tone. I feel as if the author wants to recreate the tension of the detective arc by having flawed, unpredictable villains, but each time falls flat. Greeeeat.

 

[BadmanBlues]

people's worry about the next arc is not the deviation from slice of life. It's that that the interesting characters that had believable developments are pushed to the back when characters that are one-note, irredeemable, and drag down other characters with them are brought to forefront for the sake of drama.

I fundamentally disagree with two of these claims. I think Mahiru and Kiku were dislikable characters with depth, and I believe that this arc served a real narrative purpose - it wasn't done "just for drama." Text wall incoming.

IMO, there really isn’t anything mechanically wrong with the arc, at least from a storytelling perspective. The characters, with some exceptions, are well written.

In my assessment, people couldn’t enjoy the story for what it actually is, because it isn't what they wanted. So they call it bad. But I don't think it's actually poorly constructed. Take Kiku. Many people saw her as a devil and were upset she didn’t get her comeuppance. But that’s just it - she wasn't just a devil. She was low empathy, but she still had her reasons, as all humans should. Monstrous as her actions were, she still had human motivations (love, and ending her long life). You don’t have to like those motivations or like her, but she was a well-executed character concept. She was objectively good character writing – in that she was thought through and felt human. She felt like a bad human, an uncaring and hypocritical human, but still human. People like her exist: I've met some. I think most people wanted a two dimensional villain, and they wanted the other characters to hate Kiku like they did. But instead they got a monstrous human interacting with other, less monstrous humans. Humans who were willing to put aside their ill feelings towards Kiku out of consideration for Mahiru’s romantic feelings - or at least out of respect for Kou, who wanted to trust in Mahiru. You can say they were wrong to do so, but I'm not sure they really could have done much different.

Mahiru, too, was very human. And I don’t see how he could have ended differently – perhaps, if Kiku had never involved himself with him, he might have survived. But as it was, he didn’t open his heart to anyone. Not even his closest friend, Kou. It was only once he met Kiku that Mahiru began opening up to Kou about his feelings of envy, and the more unsightly things which dragged him down. Mahiru was the kind of depressed person who smiles right up until his suicide - and he did. Kiku accelerated that trend by giving him another thing to lose: first his brother, then his family, and finally Kiku, his lover. He had a rough life. As someone who’s stood on that precipice before, I understand his decision.

Kou and company caught a lot of flak for not intervening, too, and for letting Kiku have her way. But that’s considering Kiku in a vacuum, and it’s denying Mahiru agency. Kou and Akira are Mahiru’s friends. Friends trust one another. They wanted Mahiru to be happy, and Mahiru communicated what he wanted very clearly. It wasn’t known whether it would even kill Kiku, let alone Mahiru, and Mahiru reassured his friends that he would see him the next day. They had misgivings, but that was all they had. What were they supposed to do? Pin Mahiru down, throw him in a strait jacket, then kill the woman he loved? Wouldn’t that constitute an enormous breach of trust? Do friends really just disregard the will and agency of each other like that? No, they don’t. Sometimes, when you’re worried about a friend, the only thing you can do is support him, trust him, be there for him, and hope for the best, even if you don’t like the choices he’s made. They travelled to Hokkaido for him. They worked hard to find him. They did their best to talk to him and help him – as friends. That’s the most they could have done.

This whole arc was a tragedy. And one of the key pieces of tragedy is that it is unavoidable due to the defects of, or constraints on, the characters at play. If Mahiru didn’t make the decisions which led to his fate, he wouldn’t be a depressed, lonely, misunderstood boy, hiding behind a smile. Which he was. If Kiku made any different decisions, she wouldn’t be a person with monstrously low empathy, desperate for death and love in equal measure. Which she was. If Kou and Akira took more forceful measures instead of trusting their friend Mahiru, even in spite of their doubts, then they wouldn’t be Mahiru’s friends. Which they were. Nobody can be anything other than what they are. And sometimes, when people mix together, circumstances produce tragedy.

Then there’s the assertion that the author is tacitly approving of this romance, or that Kiku was somehow "redeemed." It seems like the claim is, because he let it happen, because Kiku was humanized, and because Kiku got away with it, then it’s somehow acceptable. That’s not how it reads to me at all. I don't recall anybody forgiving Kiku - I think the closest we got to that was the detective basically saying she'd let Kiku off the hook (mostly because Kou and company beat her and made her abandon her revenge) which is very, very different from forgiving Kiku. Everything Kiku did was self serving and reprehensible, and readers are right to be revolted by her. But sometimes, bad people do get away with it. If we were supposed to think that this was okay, healthy, and romantic, I don’t think the author would have worked so hard to portray it as literally anything but that. Whatever you want to call this, it’s definitely not okay. And I think the fact that everyone agrees about that is a strong indicator that the author does too. But the author has no obvious mouthpiece in the story to spell out his feelings to the readers, and I think the readers are also missing how the relationships between characters influenced their decisions and made this outcome inevitable. Maybe that sounds pompous to you, but I really don't feel any sense of superiority here - how am I suppose to disagree without explaining why I think someone is wrong? That doesn't make me feel like more of a "true fan."

So, in a large part, I don't think the hate is founded on bad writing, but how this totally adequate and even good writing was interpreted by the audience. It’s a well-executed train wreck in slow motion, it provides a foil to the relationship of Nazuna and Kou, and it raises the stakes of their budding romance. I think most of the complaints are rooted in the fact that this is a tragedy. They find it frustrating because it is not what they wanted from the story. They believe it’s out of place, that it's "unnecessary drama," that it doesn’t belong. But this is a story about misfits and the nature of love – people who are socially on the fringes of society exploring what it means to be in love and fall in love. A Romeo and Juliet plot, a display of the kind of frustrating, retarded, self-destructive, lethal love which people sometimes experience – that feels completely on brand for this kind of story, if you ask me. The detective's arc was also about love - about the betrayal of love (her father's actions, and her own betrayal to Nazuna), and the ugly kind of hate which takes the place of that love. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next arc focuses on two other ugly aspects of love – envy and unrequited love. That's totally on brand.

Like idk man. I don’t really see the point of getting into an autistic internet shouting match over this. You can have your opinion, I’ll have mine. But I disagree with the overwhelming majority of people on this one, and that disagreement is genuinely rooted in my own analysis of the story, not any feelings of superiority.

Edit: I've reread the story. There's some parts of my analysis that I'd change - Kou is initially dead set on basically kidnapping Mahiru IF Kiku is lying to Mahiru (Ch. 111 pg. 7). And part of the motivation for keeping Kiku alive was so the detective could question her, Kou wasn't doing it just for Mahiru. Despite this, on a reread, it's even more obvious how everything was building to this arc. The foundations were laid in some of the earliest chapters. And the different philosophies of Kou and Mahiru towards love were established and contrasted early. This was something that was always building in the background until it escalated into a full boil. Give it a reread, a serious reread, where you actually take the time to soak in the dialogue instead of breezing through it. While the minute to minute writing probably wasn't done until not long before the chapter was serialized, the plot was and major story beats were clearly fleshed out before hand. You can tell from all the offhand comments that foreshadow later plot developments, or depictions of characters in the background before they're properly introduced. Kotoyama wasn't just winging this. Love, and all the forms it takes, has been at the forefront of this story since the beginning. This arc definitely belongs in this story and exists for good reasons. Not liking this arc is fine. But it's not bad storytelling. It's just not the kind of story or characters that most of the audience wanted. Maybe the only reason I enjoy it because I'm happy to relax and go wherever the author takes me. I want to see what the author has to show me, and my only stipulation is that it be well written and thought through. This was.

 

[CheeseLoverMax]

What he opens to “I wanna draw apartments” and “I like vampires” (chapter 8.5 page 11) this shit is getting worse and worse by the second.

 

[DLRevan]

Instead of actually tackling someone's grievances head on you try and make a woeful overgeneralization about people's feelings. You then attempt establish yourself as a true fan who knows better than others, and tells them to read works so pitiful they barely count as written fiction. That's not discussion, that's thinly veiled grandstanding. I hope you consider actually talking to others in the future.

I did try before though. And I get the exact same type of response as what you're giving me right now, which is an ironic turn of your own grandstanding, implying I don't know better, throwing shade on my general referral on "other manga", that you 'get it' and therefore my points are invalid.

The next poster has described all of what I did before, and possibly better and far nicer. But it is more than most of you people deserve honestly. You don't like me calling you all out? Don't try and unabashedly do the same then, about me, other readers who actually like the arc, and the author. For context I was already done explaining why this arc wasn't bad in previous chapters. Which turned into devolved discussions about crap taste, and even psychoanalysis about the author. I guess it's ok to shit on and make assumptions about the author's feelings, because they aren't here? But I can't about the people whose very words are here for all to see on this forum where anyone with half a brain can follow and point out the inconsistent narrative of their arguments. What bullshit. May I point out as well, while you interpret my words as "grandstanding", it's clearly not my main intention, even if it is at all, and is directed at nobody in particular. You, however, decided you wanted to come scrap with me specifically with your own "grandstanding". Take a bloody look in the mirror.

The fact is, I think most folks are wrong because they aren't seeing the seeing through the right lenses. They don't understand the story. Let's assume that's a fact for a second. How else am I supposed to point this out then? This is not then fundamentally a conflict of ideology, missed information or other literary criticism, even though inevitably people will make use of such things to justify their stance. How do you otherwise challenge mis-matched preferences?

 

[Sammael_6109]

The more I read these comments, the more I feel I was right before in discussions on earlier chapters. Most of the people raging about this past arc were totally blind to the darker undertones and commentary of this series that was there since the start, with a kid with obviously anti-social and even suicidal apathy. And only saw it as some yozakura quartet-esque slice of life that had some maybe shonen elements.

They feel blindsided now because they were willfully blind. And the more chapters go by capping off this arc, the more the same commenters (I went out of the way to check usernames) went from vaguely criticizing the arc, to outright blatantly stating they are here for the SoL, not any other themes, and certainly not any that isn't all rainbows and sunshine. Granted, its published in WSS, but that mag has always had a history of not shying away from such things.

I get that not everyone wants to read such almost-non-fiction. But I do feel like people should recognize that and get off the boat in that case. You probably got the wrong series. There's loads of manga out there, and just because you like some of what a manga is, doesn't mean you may like all of it. And it's not really the manga's fault.

Thank god the mangaka and publishers don't give a crap about those whines. Or we will have a shitty, boring story.