Do you mind spoiling the twist in Dominant? I'm not fluent in japanese but am very very curious to know what I'm getting myself into with AriSaku LOL
I'll give a general summary:
Dominant follows Seika, a high school girl struggling to find her place. Exploring behind school one day, she finds a cottage in the woods where a crippled young man, Etsurou lives. They chat and Etsurou offers to teach Seika guitar if she returns. Seika keeps coming back and begins developing feelings for Etsurou. Etsurou remains distant and unreachable. Unknown to Seika, Etsurou has a girlfriend, Miu, who he keeps Seika secret from.
One day, as Etsurou's leg is beginning to heal, he allows Miu to break his other leg with a hammer. This is a routine of theirs and the end of volume 1 twist.
Miu and Etsurou have an incredibly toxic controlling relationship where she keeps him isolated from the outside world, conditioned by pain and guilt to be dependent on her. Etsurou has been in the cottage for 5 years and never thought to leave. They both have severe childhood issues and a series of accidents and pressures warped their relationship into this.
Slowly, Seika's visits bring life back to Etsurou. He becomes invested in passing his love of guitar onto Seika, gifting her his old one. He's more animated when she reaches new milestones, always fearful she'll get bored and give up on music. Seika is deeply in love with Etsurou but can't express it, having learned about his girlfriend (not the bad parts). She still invites him to come watch her play at the upcoming school festival.
Etsurou realizes he sees his younger self in Seika and that all he's done for her was partly in attempt to save himself. He finds the courage to escape the cottage, despite being weak from captivity, going to the festival to watch Seika. Things happen, Miu comes for Etsurou and beats him again, but he's determined to leave and Seika takes him away.
Time passes. Etsurou recovers in the hospital. Seika comes to visit him every day. Before she can tell him she loves him, he interrupts with a strongly platonic "I love you." Both have changed each other, Seika becoming more like who Etsurou wished he could be, Etsurou working up the strength to overcome his trauma. Etsurou finally accepts everything wasn't his fault, but Miu's.
On the day of Etsurou's release, Seika comes to pick him up. Etsurou is gone. He returns to Miu, living alone and broken. Etsurou tells Miu how much he hates her, but that love and hate are intertwined to him. That he had to leave the things he truly cared about (Seika) because he could never bring himself to hurt someone like that with his love. Instead he chooses Miu, now acting as the aggressively dominant one in their relationship. They disappear without a word.
Seika is heartbroken when she hears. She returns to the abandoned cottage and plays Etsurou's guitar where they first met, finally expressing her feelings. But in her words, "You said you'd give me everything, but you wouldn't give me what I wanted most." Seika cries herself to sleep, dreaming of Etsurou encouraging her one last time. Seika wakes with a soft smile and smashes Etsurou's guitar to pieces, leaving it shattered in the woods.
The end. Igarashi has already compared Kasumi and Sayori to Etsurou (and Miu to Mizuki), though I doubt this will be nearly that dark. Even comparing this to Dominant's end of volume 1 scene is night and day, as heavy as it is. But Igarashi seems to like keeping the audience a little afraid.
Today Igarashi drew this little crossover: Etsurou and Miu reacting to Mizuki.
I'll be uploading collections of those down the line.
I skipped over a lot of side characters and subplots but there's some other disturbing elements too. Namely Etsurou was abused as a young child. In college, Etsurou's female classmate got him drunk and raped him (not Miu but this incident is what made Miu go full yandere when she feared she'd lose him). Seika is physically assaulted by her teacher who is protecting Miu.
It's something about the paneling and the drawing style that really evokes, not quite "horror", but a thriller of some sort, an unnerving feeling of a deep, dark lake which you cannot see what lurks beneath the surface.
Very apt way of putting it. The melancholic style does sometimes have that eerie, unnerving quality to it especially when the composition leans into Kasumi's imagination. It's a fragile sort of atmosphere and you don't know what lies beneath.
I think Abuse, Violence, and Yandere could all potentially fit as tags for this chapter. (I would include Foiled rape attempt but we don't know how it turns out yet.) I'd probably lean toward Abuse.
Might as well take the set. But I agree, it depends on how it turns out. Though my hunch is next chapter won't touch on it yet.
last edited at Aug 29, 2025 8:18PM
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