Your comment remember me, the only reason she has to do this is because of her father, she has to do all this shit because her dad decided to do his thing and let a teenage girl have to shoulder everything. Regardless of if he loves her that is a giant dick move.
Yep. This. Very much this. For all the murderous hate I saw directed against the grandfather, people seem to give Shou a free pass. He deserted his own duties, and people seem to actually like that, but they never take the bigger picture into account. Not to get into the practical obligations families such as Aiharas have to their employees, and in this case students as well, because we covered that at length in previous thread pages, but suffice to say Shou's choice impacted a lot of people beyond just himself. Most importantly, his own daughter, who is in this predicament solely because of him. Also, his very existence is proof enough the grandfather is not that bad as people paint him to be, if he was, then Shou would never be allowed to leave, and this conflict would not exist. Still, Shou gets like, zero negative feelings as far as I have seen. He is an adult travelling the world in a philosophical search for himself, while his teenage daughter is left to pick up the duties he abandoned. Oh, and yeah, his leaving left Mei even more emotionally broken. That too seems to have been forgotten.
That is true. I've never seen anyone really complain that much about Shou. But also, I hope this means that Shou will somehow redeem himself in future chapters. Like, he finally returns after soul searching and traveling and hears about this and learns that Mei actually isn't in love with her fiancee. So, he somehow breaks the engagement off. I hope that happens. It'd be one of the few proper things he's done as a parent.
Shou pisses me off, and too many do give him a free pass. We know he was a very stern man, just like Mei's grandfather, and imprinted his world views on Mei since she was a child.
Then one day he had his sudden "revelation", made a 180°, became a hippy for the lulz (in the middle of a divorce, too) and asked a grade schooler about a decision that a little girl couldn't take. Saying that Mei should've gone with him is too easy.
All this also made me remember another thing. In the TV show Arthur there was an episode called April 9th, it was a 9/11 allegory episode. In the episode Arthur becomes overly worried about his dad after a fire to the point he skips out of doing stuff he wants to do and tries to force his dad to stay home with him to try to keep him out of harm, and his dad tells him a story where a similar situation happened with him and his mom, and he ends the story with "It's my job to worry about you Arthur, not the other way around." and that's kinda what I feel is missing from Shou, he's not doing that enough for Mei and instead Mei is the one left holding the bag when it comes to all this responsibility her father dumped on her.
last edited at Feb 17, 2018 6:38PM