I rather liked this story. It's so messy that it sprints past realism and into that realm of uniquely fascinating dysfunctionality that begs you to write a giant analysis. We've got codependence, emotional manipulation, identity issues, repressed emotions, unfulfilled dreams, unsatisfying realities, and two very screwed-up people who simultaneously keep each other afloat and agonized. While it'd certainly be nightmarish in a real-world scenario, I think one of the biggest advantages of fiction is to take the roiling chaos and ugliness of reality and lend it a symmetry, positioning pettiness and negativity in fascinating contrasts that play off each other in wonderfully tortuous ways. Make no mistake, there is a genuine cycle of vengeance here, a depressing spiral that's half good intentions dropping into hell and half-gaslighting that'd make a mad scientist flinch.
These two girls feed each other's egos by starving each other of affection- Emi keeps Yuu from achieving the love she's desired for so long, and Yuu refuses to give Emi the perfect romance she wanted because it doesn't line up with her own beliefs. In the end, they finally have a Big, Dramatic Conversation, and this would be the point in a standard romcom where the leads who've tortured and spat at each other for most of the film finally admit that they were actually in Love all along. But not here- this story's too self-aware for that, too intelligent to wrap a trainwreck up with a pretty little bow.
These are two broken, obsessive people who've spent their entire lives telling each other blatant lies, each assuring the other that she's perfect in order to avoid realizing her own brokenness. And now that they finally reveal the truth, it's every bit as ugly as the rot that's festered underneath the adorable façade for years. Cathartically, inelegantly, they purge out all the love and resentment that's churned into a toxic mix, and is it any wonder that it doesn't look like candy and chocolates? Love charms are prayers and manipulation all rolled into one- Yuu, when she was a kid, fervently placed her hopes in them, and Emi, even as an adult, uses them to hex her way into success. But ultimately, love charms are just shams and pageantry, delusional when used in private and pathetic when revealed in public. There's no magical ending, no fairytale acceptance- just a pair of twisted idiots realizing that they'll never be straight (no pun intended), and chuckling hysterically about it.
That's precisely why I love the ending- Emi and Yuu start off as parasites and end up bizarrely symbiotic, too conjoined in their possessiveness to ever let go, even if they can't stand each other. For them, a union wouldn't be heavenly, because it's exactly the kind of hell they deserve- a Sisyphean slope of ever-rising intimacy that's doomed to always come apart when they reveal too much, only for them to pick themselves up again and push on, because what else is there to do? Stories like these are important as well, because for all the fluffy vignettes of adorable lesbians present on this site, there's still nothing quite like a peek into the theatre of the damned.
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