I though maki may end up hurt because even if midori frees herself from Tezune she might try to be "normal" again,
Pretty sure the former isn't going to happen before she stops being delusional about the latter anyway. Pretty much Midori's whole Major Malfunction why she's stuck with him in the first place is her fetishization (in the non-sexual sense) of the superficial formulas of "normal married life"; she's pathologically fixated on the idea that if she just keeps going through the motions and "checking the boxes" of the most painfully stereotypical married-woman life path she will somehow, magically, be happy irrespective of such minor details as her hubby-to-be being a rank asshole who keeps making her miserable.
This is obviously total horseshit and it's pretty telling that she's having to engage in some fairly blatant goalpost-shifting to keep convincing herself of this BS in the face of all evidence to the contrary. Case in point being her near mythologizing of the other pregnant women she sees while getting her checkup at the hospital; implying she has on some level already given up hope on the marriage itself being the magic talisman that'll give her the emotional fulfillment she so desperately craves - and duly upped the ante by shunting those wholly unrealistic expectations onto motherhood instead. (Hopefully we won't have to see where she'd shift them next after that falls through...)
A form of sunk costs fallacy I suppose.
It's pretty clear that on some level she's painfully aware of the monstrous degrees of self-deception going on here; the issue is she's burdened with far too much emotional baggage, and altogether too insecure (and, tbf, probably also too unimaginative - by her own admission to Maki she isn't the sharpest tool in the shed), to really consider any alternatives to or critically review the vague cookie-cutter formula of life plan she's taken for granted and going with.
As an aside this kind of blindly going through the motions of some behavioural formula with the blithe assumption of automagical positive end result is something that keeps coming up again and again in manga (and its mainland analogs) in remarkably varied contexts; pretty sure that's not coincidental at all and likely reflects the tendencies for form over function, tradition and heavily ritualised conduct still quite prevalent across East Asian cultures. Though it's probably a good sign that such rigidity tends to be portrayed as problematic one way or another.
last edited at Mar 2, 2020 5:48PM
