End as a whole is hilarious. His speaking font, his look, his NAME... I gotta believe he's a parody of Evil Romance Story Villain.
Also, it's kinda weird that this couple, who are shown repeatedly communicating well and working through their issues, is doomed, but in a trillion stories on this site, the characters fight over easily avoided nonsense and are True Love.
I think it has to do with the whole "purity" fixation yuri has, at least to some extent. That thing that makes a protagonist not understand why her heart races when she sees that beautiful/handsome senpai everyone admires. And then they spend 100 chapters agonizing over it, building up to a confession and hand-holding after years of angst and drama drama drama.
In a way, Saeko's life during middle-school and high-school is a reflection of this, and a demonstration of why it's awful (thanks heteronormativity!).
Idolizing innocence makes the stakes lower because it's mostly "learning" about love instead of dealing with the consequences of actually being in a relationship. The issues that practically sink a relationship in the former sort of fall apart when applied to something more grounded in reality. Problem is people are accustomed to innocence because that's basically what yuri was.
So now we have a spectrum of affection in yuri that goes from "I don't understand basic human emotions" right to "smut" with very little in between.
Also yeah, it's kind hilarious just how "badguy"-ish End is. Looking forward to when he tells Saeko/Miwa that he's gay and just wanted to know if he could with them about it. (I'm not sure if that's exactly what I hope he does, but it's kinda hard to believe that he's gonna be an antagonist after seeing how hard tmfly is leaning in on that portrayal.)
last edited at Aug 9, 2019 9:13PM