Regarding it wrapping up too neatly, and the happy ending falling outside of the range of tone the story offered up until now:
the confrontations in this chapter make sense to me because the undercurrent of the whole story is basically challenging you to trust what the main characters are saying they'll do. You're always thinking Midori will run back to Tazune and leave Maki with nothing but bitter memories. The narrative is always hinting that Maki won't be able to stand up for herself, that she'll just take it. In the flashbacks we're constantly treated to this sort of "primal scene" of the story, wherein the promises the two girls have made to one another are all piece-by-piece reneged upon by both of them. And in this chapter, you get the sense of how other people in their lives constantly think of each of them as flighty and insubstantial. Maki's mother isn't angry at Midori; she thinks her daughter won't be up being Midori's wife. The other shopgirl, the sort-of romantic rival, thinks of Midori as callously throwing away the chance she would have liked for herself. In this way, the dramatic tension of the story, which has flirted with more grounded issues of "can they tell each other how they feel?" and "is he going to hit her again?" has actually been, from the jump, about how serious the girls really are about their convictions. So I think the point of this chapter is to have the characters who have floated around the margins of the story, watching Maki and Midori from afar, serve as the audience surrogates, and answer the question that could have been on all our minds in nearly any given chapter of the story up to this point: aren't they really just running away again? And I think the author is particularly generous to us at the end of the chapter (thank goodness, because I was suffocating through every chapter of them enjoying an idyllic vacation together, convinced this was going to end in some kind of sorrow), because what we get is confirmation from Maki and then from Midori that no, in fact, this isn't them running away, but rather facing their problems head-on. It's an about-face that has been building––and I think, in micro-sized ways, developing––since the first chapter. Part of my like for this ending certainly stems from the release of so much angst over the story up until now (it really felt like it could have been a story like "The Postman Always Rings Twice" until about midway through), but I think the drama has also, in a stealthy way, remained true to itself––it's just that the story's actual shape wasn't wholly visible until nearly the end. The dramatic stakes were always the girls facing off against their own timidity and insincerity, and by sticking together, they win (at least, I hope they win; I have a feeling the last chapter will tie things up with Komari and with Midori's baby)! And I feel pretty good about it.
last edited at Jun 23, 2020 2:43AM
