Just saw this on Reddit, it's strangely relevant
https://www.reddit.com/r/YagateKiminiNaru/comments/ac5kc0/without_yuu_vs_with_yuu_just_a_cool_thing_i/

Just saw this on Reddit, it's strangely relevant
https://www.reddit.com/r/YagateKiminiNaru/comments/ac5kc0/without_yuu_vs_with_yuu_just_a_cool_thing_i/

This reminds me of the, "Your pupil expands when looking at something you love" meme.

I'm half-wondering now if Koyomi's rewrite of the play was meta and Nakatani originally intended for Yuu to enable Touko and Sayaka to get together, but rewrote the script to pair her with Yuu.

It's not likely but it's fun to consider.

Called it first: the play WAS meta, which means the ending is already set: Touko chooses the 3rd path and end up with neither Yuu nor Sayaka. Everyone moves on happily as friends. The end. No hot makeout scene ;__;

I'm half-wondering now if Koyomi's rewrite of the play was meta and Nakatani originally intended for Yuu to enable Touko and Sayaka to get together, but rewrote the script to pair her with Yuu.

It's not likely but it's fun to consider.

Called it first: the play WAS meta, which means the ending is already set: Touko chooses the 3rd path and end up with neither Yuu nor Sayaka. Everyone moves on happily as friends. The end. No hot makeout scene ;__;

Well, no—the play wasn’t about pairing Patient up with someone but about how she would think of herself going forward.

In other words, Patient did what Nurse told her to do.

And Nurse was played by________?

(Read ‘em and weep, Sayaka lovers. Lol)

Called it first: the play WAS meta, which means the ending is already set: Touko chooses the 3rd path and end up with neither Yuu nor Sayaka. Everyone moves on happily as friends. The end. No hot makeout scene ;__;

Well, no—the play wasn’t about pairing Patient up with someone but about how she would think of herself going forward.

In other words, Patient did what Nurse told her to do.

And Nurse was played by________?

(Read ‘em and weep, Sayaka lovers. Lol)

Why I'm laughing?

last edited at Jan 3, 2019 9:40AM

"Now go straight." I hope it's not a bad premonition. >.>

I loved this chapter so much. Sayaka confessed in a way that fits her: with courage and resolution, despite her apprehension. The best part of the chap was Touko seeing it coming and telling her to stop, but Sayaka pressing on like "Don't fuck with me. I mean, yes, please do." Her gestures, her tone, her words, it was all so sweet…

It might seem to come at the worst moment, but it might be for the best. Touko now has to consider that there are two people who love her for who she is, flaws included, and maybe she'll start to see how… arrogant it was of her to think only her perfect self deserved to be loved.

I'm half-wondering now if Koyomi's rewrite of the play was meta and Nakatani originally intended for Yuu to enable Touko and Sayaka to get together, but rewrote the script to pair her with Yuu.

It's not likely but it's fun to consider.

Called it first: the play WAS meta, which means the ending is already set: Touko chooses the 3rd path and end up with neither Yuu nor Sayaka. Everyone moves on happily as friends. The end. No hot makeout scene ;__;

Yes that is totally what the play was about. Except it wasn't.
I'm really tryin' to take this as the joke you obviously want it to sound like, but there are too many people who would actually believe that at this point lol

It might seem to come at the worst moment, but it might be for the best. Touko now has to consider that there are two people who love her for who she is, flaws included, and maybe she'll start to see how… arrogant it was of her to think only her perfect self deserved to be loved.

Kinda the opposite, isn't it? Instead of arrogant it's self-loathing. She doesn't think her perfect self deserves love either, after all that is the anti-thesis of what she has been trying to do. Her sister wasn't in a relationship, so her perfect side couldn't be either. She doesn't perceive it as her real self either way, so the only part people can love is her true self, which she can't accept due to self-loathing.

(YMMV).

English, please.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/ymmv

Dammit, I was going to start an herb garden, but I can't grow anything with all this shade around here.

I think everyone's view about Yuu and Sayaka is a bit different depending on personal opinion/experience.

I see Yuu as selfless to go help out Touko out of her mental state even though she knows that Touko may not need her anymore; that she's no longer "special" to Touko out of love (yes Yuu did start out kind of just being dragged along, but once she figured out she's in love, she made a decision about it and the result was just harder to accept then she initially thought that even if she got rejected she'd still be able to stay by Touko's side). As a partner, she picked the harder choice but knowing it'll help Touko with self love. And remember that Yuu is an indecisive starter but once a decision is made she'll see it through; that to me is she's a fighter and has a confident personality just that she's not an ambitious person so doesn't have things she like so gave other the feeling that she's a pushover but really she just doesn't really care either way (if it makes you happy and I've got nothing better to do, why not?)

I see Sayaka as a more of a conflict free type and is very much aware of her own flaws and personality. She tries to not cause friction in relationships and in this case she waited until better chances with Touko; aka no conflict to have the courage to confess. That's also a step forward but she definitely didn't take as much a risk as Yuu did. As a friend/support Sayaka is a lovable character. But as a lover, she's someone who doesn't take the initiative in relationships and does not fight for love (she is moving forward now though) which means a more passive role like the role she played as the Play's girlfriend. She'll spoil you and cushion you from reality but then you'll still have to go out and figure out how to problem solve yourself (Whereas I feel Yuu will try to help you out both at home and out there in the world).

This is exactly what i was thinking when i made my post earlier, but i'm too much of a dumbass to make a comprehensible post like yours. Amazing analysis.

But just to play devil's advocate here, assume the story was less simplistic than it is. What if at this phase of Touko's life, the drive to be perfect was actually useful no matter the source of it? Maybe without it, she would be just some ordinary girl who doesn't study and is shy and lazy, which would have repercussions for her future. One cannot deny that hating herself has caused her at least two good consequences: she pushed her shyness as a child aside and became a super competent person who is a student council president, and now is also good at acting which is something she genuinely likes.

So I'm not saying Yuu didn't have good intentions, but I separate between intentions, consequences and timing. If Yuu had met Touko earlier, ironically she might well have ruined the awesome person Touko became. We like Yuu because she changed Touko from being self-hating at the right time, but still, I can't help but feel uneasy about the fact she tried to change Touko at all.

Funny thing is, Touko's Onee-chan Mio really was a bit lazy and averse to studying, so the real Touko is closer to the real Mio than she initially thought. And this fake perfect mask Touko put on... well, she didn't know Mio's fake perfect mask was a fake perfect mask, so even though she's faking it and Mio faked it, Touko ended up being like Mio in more ways than she initially knew. I guess it's why the series' Japanese title "Yagate, Kimi ni Naru" can be translated "eventually, you will become yourself".

However! After seeing the last episode, I think Nakatani's implying Touko would've killed herself after the play if Yuu never showed up. I can't be sure about this, but the way she says "I'll finish this play... and then what?" and then the shot of the dead cicada wings, combined with Touko stepping in front of that train and the "to the final destination" sign... I'm not sure Touko successfully becomes awesome and perfect whether Yuu appears or not.

Not this again.

There is no indication that Touko was ever contemplating or had any inclinations toward suicide. People are reading way too much into that.

The train and final destination imagery symbolize the dead end of her path. It doesn't mean she's literally going to deaden her end with the play.

Most people, at some point in their lives, face that moment where they don't know what's going to come after a certain milestone. Treating that like a recipe for suicide sends an unhealthy message to people.

What comes next? I dunno. Something. You'll figure it out. That's literally the entire point of that whole arc.

last edited at Jan 3, 2019 2:22PM

I opened comments expecting shitposts but essays are all i get

Yeah, but that doesn't mean that there aren't any shitposters in the YagaKimi fanbase. Just now, I found on YouTube that some Italian or Sammarinese or Monegasque shitposter made a "YagateKimiNiNaru crack" video. The reason I didn't link to it is because, while I find (what little I watched so far from) the video funny, I fear that people here may call that shitpost heretic or blasphemous.

last edited at Jan 5, 2019 6:08AM

Not this again.

There is no indication that Touko was ever contemplating or had any inclinations toward suicide. People are reading way too much into that.

Your basic point is sound—a tragic end for Touko was almost certainly never on the table—but the above is overstatement. There certainly have been at least a couple of hints with ominous overtones in the story, specifically connected to the railroad tracks.

• Chapter 10: Yuu makes her first attempt at swaying Touko from her current path:

Yuu: There are people who would accept you just the way you are. (Etc.)
Touko: I would rather die than be told that. (Train roars by directly behind her.)

Sure, people say “I would rather die than ___” all the time without meaning it literally. But given the context, there’s a depth to that statement even if it’s not literal. Touko is not being casual in her phrasing, at any rate.

• Chapter 23: opens with Touko standing in a graveyard, and the first scene ends with her question, “And then . . .where can I go?”

The last scene begins with Touko smelling the obon incense just as she enters the train station, and then she repeats her previous question, “But what happens after the play is over? . . . Where . . Can I go?” (A rather more bleak formulation than, for example, “What should I do then?”) And visually there’s both the blank space in the distance and the sign reading, “Non stop to final destination.”

None of this is evidence that Touko was actually “contemplating suicide,” and as it turns out, some people at the time (no doubt influenced by the long tradition of Tragic Lesbians in popular culture generally and yuri manga specifically) were indeed overreacting, but there’s certainly enough death/finality verbal and visual imagery to be a bit unsettling.

They say that “two may be coincidence, three is a pattern,” and IIRC, we don’t have three. So readers at the time may have been overreacting to Touko’s personal crisis, but they weren’t making things up out of whole cloth either.

It might seem to come at the worst moment, but it might be for the best. Touko now has to consider that there are two people who love her for who she is, flaws included, and maybe she'll start to see how… arrogant it was of her to think only her perfect self deserved to be loved.

Kinda the opposite, isn't it? Instead of arrogant it's self-loathing. She doesn't think her perfect self deserves love either, after all that is the anti-thesis of what she has been trying to do. Her sister wasn't in a relationship, so her perfect side couldn't be either. She doesn't perceive it as her real self either way, so the only part people can love is her true self, which she can't accept due to self-loathing.

You're right I guess… rather than "arrogant" I should have said "disrespectful", in that it shows a lack of trust in people she knows. That's also what Sayaka means by "Don't look down on me."

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/bloom_into_you_volume_6_extras#11

Huh, Sayaka and I share a birthday.

Not this again.

There is no indication that Touko was ever contemplating or had any inclinations toward suicide. People are reading way too much into that.

Your basic point is sound—a tragic end for Touko was almost certainly never on the table—but the above is overstatement. There certainly have been at least a couple of hints with ominous overtones in the story, specifically connected to the railroad tracks.

• Chapter 10: Yuu makes her first attempt at swaying Touko from her current path:

Yuu: There are people who would accept you just the way you are. (Etc.)
Touko: I would rather die than be told that. (Train roars by directly behind her.)

Sure, people say “I would rather die than ___” all the time without meaning it literally. But given the context, there’s a depth to that statement even if it’s not literal. Touko is not being casual in her phrasing, at any rate.

• Chapter 23: opens with Touko standing in a graveyard, and the first scene ends with her question, “And then . . .where can I go?”

The last scene begins with Touko smelling the obon incense just as she enters the train station, and then she repeats her previous question, “But what happens after the play is over? . . . Where . . Can I go?” (A rather more bleak formulation than, for example, “What should I do then?”) And visually there’s both the blank space in the distance and the sign reading, “Non stop to final destination.”

None of this is evidence that Touko was actually “contemplating suicide,” and as it turns out, some people at the time (no doubt influenced by the long tradition of Tragic Lesbians in popular culture generally and yuri manga specifically) were indeed overreacting, but there’s certainly enough death/finality verbal and visual imagery to be a bit unsettling.

They say that “two may be coincidence, three is a pattern,” and IIRC, we don’t have three. So readers at the time may have been overreacting to Touko’s personal crisis, but they weren’t making things up out of whole cloth either.

Considering the root cause of Touko's Major Malfunction it hardly seems strange that her thinking, especially in moments of severe self-doubt, might flit towards alarming directions. Or to phrase it differently, while she's well-adjusted and stable enough that it seems mighty unlikely for her to go actively suicidal the nature of her trauma - experiencing the death of someone near and dear at young age - is such that it doesn't really come as a surprise if she dwells on the concept of death, if only as a metaphor and abstract concept, to uncomfortable degrees.

Though when you think about it there might be some rather personal symbolism involved. After all in a certain sense her abandoning the "imitation Mio" persona she's painstakingly built up over the years and internalized - a path which both Yuu and Sayaka have been prodding her to take, occasionally somewhat unsubtly (*cough*play*cough*) - would mean the figurative death of that persona, a part of herself artificial though it may be.
And I suppose if you read the whole exercise as an elaborate coping mechanism for the grief of losing her sister (it could be argued in some ways she's trying to keep Mio alive in herself) it'd also mean fully accepting her passing; another figurative death in a way.

And teenagers being in a liminal stage of life are wont to fret over questions of their identity and future path at the best of times even without all the additional heavy psychological baggage she's burdened with; quō vādis, Touko?

last edited at Jan 3, 2019 4:13PM

Called it first: the play WAS meta, which means the ending is already set: Touko chooses the 3rd path and end up with neither Yuu nor Sayaka. Everyone moves on happily as friends. The end. No hot makeout scene ;__;

If this happens it will be the most successful troll in the history of trolling.

Touko is a fragile snowflake.

There, the shitpost everyone was waiting for lol

Touko is a fragile snowflake.

There, the shitpost everyone was waiting for lol

Oh, I know you’ve got madder skills than that, matsuri_wins.

How about, for example, comparing Touko unfavorably to Mei from You-Know-What?

None of this is evidence that Touko was actually “contemplating suicide,” and as it turns out, some people at the time (no doubt influenced by the long tradition of Tragic Lesbians in popular culture generally and yuri manga specifically) were indeed overreacting, but there’s certainly enough death/finality verbal and visual imagery to be a bit unsettling.

They say that “two may be coincidence, three is a pattern,” and IIRC, we don’t have three. So readers at the time may have been overreacting to Touko’s personal crisis, but they weren’t making things up out of whole cloth either.

I was going to go through this point by point addressing why each one of these doesn't mean what some people took them to mean, but I feel like that wouldn't really fairly address your point. Yeah, I can understand why people read it that way. I still think they were wrong about their interpretations of those things, and when you take them within the larger context and tone of the manga, I think it's silly to harbor any actual fear of Nakatani sensei going there. NOW I think there's no real justification for being wary about a suicide ending. Touko is more stable and healthy than she's ever been, she has goals and interests beyond Yuu and emulating her sister, she's closer to finding herself, she just hasn't figured out romance yet.

I also think western culture is way too enamored with suicide as a component in romance. Romeo and Juliet was not a romance, dammit!

I did want to address some cultural points in this one, though:

• Chapter 23: opens with Touko standing in a graveyard, and the first scene ends with her question, “And then . . .where can I go?”

The last scene begins with Touko smelling the obon incense just as she enters the train station, and then she repeats her previous question, “But what happens after the play is over? . . . Where . . Can I go?” (A rather more bleak formulation than, for example, “What should I do then?”) And visually there’s both the blank space in the distance and the sign reading, “Non stop to final destination.”

Chapter 23 is very much about Touko's uncertainty about what she's going to do after the play, But that isn't about thoughts of suicide, we're inside her thoughts throughout that chapter, and "what then?" is always framed as an open question. She's on a path, that path is close to it's end, and she doesn't know what she's going to do then. Her relationship with her dead sister is foremost in her actions through all of this, so it starts with her visiting her sister's grave, Hence the graveyard scene) and is bookended near the end with Mio visiting her (The smell of incense, after the time spent reminiscing about her with Sayaka) Her ruminations about what to do after the play are then interrupted by the text from Yuu, which symbolizes that Yuu is her way out of the quagmire. (This itself is later bookended by Yuu's "it's time to change trains". When you reach the end of the line? You change trains. Goddamn I love this series.)

I doubt any actual japanese person would interpret these cues in any way that hints at Touko having thoughts of suicide. Trains are a common part of everyday life, and Obon is a part of their culture and a regular ritual for reconnecting with and remembering passed loved ones.

last edited at Jan 5, 2019 8:40PM

Actually, I think Japan is MORE enamored with suicide than the west, whether it be in romance or in real life. There's the modern real-life suicide epidemic in Japan, as well as the historical "honorable" Japanese suicides, seppuku/hara-kiri. Just 3 years ago, the big (and really good) romance anime movie Koe no Katachi dropped, and in it both romantic leads were about to kill themselves in some point of the story, but were stopped.

Sure, Touko's probably not actually going to kill herself, but with the signs and symbolism Nakatani dropped, I think she's implying Touko might have killed herself after pulling off the play if Yuu wasn't there to save her or something.

last edited at Jan 3, 2019 5:16PM

Touko is a fragile snowflake.

There, the shitpost everyone was waiting for lol

Oh, I know you’ve got madder skills than that, matsuri_wins.

How about, for example, comparing Touko unfavorably to Mei from You-Know-What?

I could, but I don't wanna cause any strokes today. It's still the Xmas season, must be nice :P

^ Heavensrun, I agree with your points, and would further point out that the two scenes of Touko themselves bookend the depiction of the process of revising the play, which is explicitly Yuu’s intervention to help Touko figure out what she should do. And the chapter doesn’t end with Touko’s question, but with her wish-come-true text message from Yuu asking her out on a date. so despite that ominous imagery, the overall effect of the chapter is rather positive.

And furthermore, there’s that little, mostly unnoticed, passage just before the station scene where Touko talked to Sayaka about her dead sister, although we aren’t shown what was said or how long it lasted.

I’d also repeat a point I’ve made before—as straightforward as the storytelling in this series seems and as familiar as many of the basic tropes may be, we’ve actually had to learn to read what this particular series is up to as it has gone along.

To take an example of recent relevance, when Sayaka’s romantic interest in Touko was first introduced, a lot of people very understandably went, “Oh, shit—love triangle. Here comes Sayaka to maliciously interfere with our OTP.” But in fact, as everyone has been saying, she’s become an incredibly sympathetic character while still emerging as a potential rival to our beloved main character.

Or take Maki—the “eavesdropper who discovers the secret relationship” is an achingly familiar trope (sometimes I think that any attempt to tell a secret in a Korean drama magically produces someone to overhear it), but here the trope is used in an original way—by being introduced and then never mentioned ever again.

You can go back through the comments on the early chapters here and watch readers try to un-learn their assumptions about how the conventional genre tropes are likely to play out.

Of course, if we find out that Sayaka has an evil twin and Yuu is actually the heiress to a vast corporation that’s experimenting with giant robots, (or if Touko’s parents suddenly start forcing her go on blind dates with rich guys), all I’ve said here will sound pretty foolish.

last edited at Jan 3, 2019 5:43PM

None of this is evidence that Touko was actually “contemplating suicide,” and as it turns out, some people at the time (no doubt influenced by the long tradition of Tragic Lesbians in popular culture generally and yuri manga specifically) were indeed overreacting, but there’s certainly enough death/finality verbal and visual imagery to be a bit unsettling.

They say that “two may be coincidence, three is a pattern,” and IIRC, we don’t have three. So readers at the time may have been overreacting to Touko’s personal crisis, but they weren’t making things up out of whole cloth either.

I was going to go through this point by point addressing why each one of these doesn't mean what some people took them to mean, but I feel like that wouldn't really fairly address your point. Yeah, I can understand why people read it that way. I still think they were wrong about their interpretations of those things, and when you take them within the larger context and tone of the manga, I think it's silly to harbor any actual fear of Nakatani sensei going there. NOW I think there's no real justification for being wary about a suicide ending. Touko is more stable and healthy than she's ever been, she has goals and interests beyond Yuu and emulating her sisters, she's closer to finding herself, she just hasn't figured out romance yet.

I also think western culture is way too enamored with suicide as a component in romance. Romeo and Juliet was not a romance, dammit!

I did want to address some cultural points in this one, though:

• Chapter 23: opens with Touko standing in a graveyard, and the first scene ends with her question, “And then . . .where can I go?”

The last scene begins with Touko smelling the obon incense just as she enters the train station, and then she repeats her previous question, “But what happens after the play is over? . . . Where . . Can I go?” (A rather more bleak formulation than, for example, “What should I do then?”) And visually there’s both the blank space in the distance and the sign reading, “Non stop to final destination.”

Chapter 23 is very much about Touko's uncertainty about what she's going to do after the play, But that isn't about thoughts of suicide, we're inside her thoughts throughout that chapter, and "what then?" is always framed as an open question. She's on a path, that path is close to it's end, and she doesn't know what she's going to do then. Her relationship with her dead sister is foremost in her actions through all of this, so it starts with her visiting her sister's grave, Hence the graveyard scene) and is bookended near the end with Mio visiting her (The smell of incense, after the time spent reminiscing about her with Sayaka) Her ruminations about what to do after the play are then interrupted by the text from Yuu, which symbolizes that Yuu is her way out of the quagmire. (This itself is later bookended by Yuu's "it's time to change trains". When you reach the end of the line? You change trains. Goddamn I love this series.)

I doubt any actual japanese person would interpret these cues in any way that hints at Touko having thoughts of suicide. Trains are a common part of everyday life, and Obon is a part of their culture and a regular ritual for reconnecting with and remembering passed loved ones.

Agreed, I just saw it as a culture thing. A lot of anime had used trains as metaphor of going on a journey of self discovery or that fork on the "life road" to discover themselves. As much as Nio sensei and the directors love to play on metaphors, I think sometimes we're just over playing it. ;)

And the Obon scene, I see it also as Touko reporting to her sister of how she is doing and kind of asking her if it's okay to move on from you now (or telling her she'll be doing it anyways). It's kinda like a conclusion of her to her sister that this is the last time I'll be here to see you as the way I'm now, this is goodbye. Even though I don't know what's going to happen next. I'll be moving on from you and I should be okay? (with uncertainty but she wanted a conclusion/finish of sort I feel)

P.S. As I just remembered, I did mention before that the art style/coloring and the dusk colors of the opening animation can be made into a horror/depressing opening with just a different music. lol. So yea suicide ideas from fans definitely understandable (especially of Yuri tragedy history).

last edited at Jan 3, 2019 9:04PM

In the end I don't care about romance and I mostly don't care who will be with whom, but I want Yuu to be happy. Touko happiness is out of my concern and Sayaka is nice, but same. I hope that Nakatani-sensei is able to write a reassuring end for main character Yuu. And I want new chapter with her already!

last edited at Jan 4, 2019 1:12AM

If people refuse to accept possible triple (polyamory) ending (not treesome in sexual way, to be clear here), what about possibility Sayaka pairing with a lady from a cafe? (can't remember her name now)...

Hakozaki sensei, she already brings insecurity in her partner from time to time, and she is pretty vague in her feelings about their relationship, not to forget to mention the fact that she didn't say anything about contacting a guy from a theater (it's not clear why).
But cafe lady, she does not seem "paranoid"...It's more like sensing something (a 6th sense? potential troubles? sensing Hakozaki as half-hearted?)

Personally observing, Sayaka would fit with an older woman (her adoration for authority she found in Touko shows it). And there is already some connection between those two (Sayaka and cafe lady).

I'm seriously failing to see how do you figure this would be any better, or more palatable.