Oh, this chapter was a lot tamer than I expected (What did I expect? No clue...) and pretty sweet and hopeful on the other side. Perhaps Niji is done with her outbursts... for now...? And I keep my fingers crossed that Komugi will continue growing and become happier and more assertive and not spiral the second Meguru makes things hard for her again (this sort of development isn't linear after all).

I've been thinking about the interactions between Niji and Remu. At the start of the story Remu says she says that Niji is the first person she thinks of when she wants to be understood... but then, Azuki comes along and Remu shares a much more embarrassing secret with her. Of course, Niji says "You're my number one too", because she's desperate for Remu to love her the most.

In the latest chapters, when Remu is worried about people judging her, the people who come to mind are her mother and sister. She's hardly even thinking about whether Niji still likes her or not, just about whether Niji will ruin her reputation. In fact, when she lies and says that the dolls are for Azuki's sake, she mentally apologizes to Azuki because she hates the idea of using her as a scapegoat.

I wonder how Niji's crush originally developed. Did Niji's feelings develop before or after they became best friends? Was it something like "Niji and Remu kept hanging out, so Niji developed feelings"? Or was it "Niji kept trying to get closer, and so they ended up best friends"

It's really starting to come together now. I fucking love that the characters that represent the prescriptive idea of normalcy have their own weird fetishes and strange feelings as well. God it's getting so interesting.

@Lucca

A lot of is the manga horror panel style framing we've gotten since early on. Meguru messed up Azuki way more in terms of explicit plot events, but Meguru wasn't drawn like a serial killer or eldritch horror pretending to be human so it can eat someone. This is priming people to think "Well, Niji must simply be that bad, given nothing contradicts this reading."

We recently had something similar happen in Lose Bets. A character threw stick of lip gloss over a bridge. Then readers acted like the character had crossed the moral event horizon. The paneling made it look like the character had committed a uniquely terrible act, so people interpreted it that way. Most readers are not detached enough that they will stop to think about why the paneling was set up that way or which parts of the comic are the source of their feelings about the characters.

As for why the author would do draw Niji this way, I think it's to build tension ("What will Niji do next? How far will she go?"), as well as to pull a bait and switch and say "Of course she was another traumatized teenage lesbian all along. Like in universe characters who resent the protagonists, you didn't have all the information and decided to make your judgement based on the parts you could see despite that."

Same may happen somewhat with Remu in the other direction, if she turns out to be quite as nice and well adjusted as she acts for the sake of others' approval. Not that she's evil either, but she's biting off more than she can chew in trying to realize everyone's desires and happiness. At some point that will not go well.

Edit: To build on your point of "If Niji was the protagonist," Azuki could have been drawn in a way that seems extremely menacing, with the whole "longer who obsesses over a past lover from long ago while making headless naked dolls of them" thing. We'd have had people expecting Azuki to commit a murder in that case if we had that drawing style combined with the loss of protagonist POV and most inner thoughts.

last edited at Nov 5, 2025 11:10AM