While there's no real way to make the concept of going back to an abusive girlfriend work, it might have been a little more palatable if the story had taken the time to show that Serina did, in fact, miss Kanon (apart from the crying after running away, which could be interpreted any number of ways), such as by showing her talking with "Aoi" about Kanon and actually talking about happier times. As it stands now, Kanon's just the woman who threw the remote control at her girlfriend for no reason, and nothing in the story helps with that extremely negative first impression.
It works the way it works. I don’t think of this as a great story, but it is a rather different story, and the difference is that we’re habituated to stories with this particular setup being either “growth” stories, where the protagonist has learned to stand up for themselves and move beyond the loved but abusive partner, or “redemption” stories, where the partner shows that they’ve sincerely changed and will be different in the future.
This offers us neither option, and it’s a bit of a gut-punch at the end to realize that the protagonist is going back into a relationship where nothing fundamental has changed, and, furthermore, that this is probably the real-life outcome of many if not most such real-life stories.
That being said, as a general rule I don’t think of “that’s how it is in real life” as being a compelling excuse for stories that are uninteresting or that fail to adequately resolve their narrative conflicts. In this case, though, the relative rarity of stories with this kind of outcome at least sets it apart a bit. I personally don’t need lots more like it, however.
last edited at Jul 14, 2021 2:29PM
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