A) Aggressively pursue someone who broke up with you for cheating while expressing no contrition whatsoever and despite the fact that they are in a relationship and they have made it quite clear they don't want to get together with you

I think everyone is forgetting the ages of the girls involved here. They were in middle school when they were going out. "Cheating" at that age constitutes what - kissing someone else? Sure, it's emotionally impactful, especially during those hormonal years, to feel "betrayed" by the person you like. But she's not a homewrecker, she's a kid who is very immature. Also, Shizuka is not in a relationship. The two of them like each other clearly, but since the early unrealistic chapters (where they're taking their shirts off in school) they haven't done more than flirt and hold hands. That doesn't make you "taken."

B) Touch that person in sexual ways with no respect for their boundaries or consent

You are absolutely right here. In real life this would be absolutely unacceptable. This is ecchi manga world, though, where unfortunately "no" usually means "yes." That is its own set of issues, one that you just end up kind of ignoring if you like adult manga but aren't into nonconsent. I don't feel the groping was drawn because it was particularly in character or realistic, I think it was there for service value. As OnT has gone on the service factor has gone way down, but every so often Kishi decides he has to spice up a chapter to keep the fanboys happy or whatever.

C) While at the same time taking advantage of the emotional vulnerability of a different girl solely for the sake of stroking your own ego

I don't think she's taking advantage of Mayu. Mayu is a straight girl who was hurting because she was broken up with and Kaoru offered to be her friend. Mayu admires her in the standard crushing-on-a-cool-sempai way.

PLG - You're just trying to pick a fight at this point. You are exaggerating everything I said and then belittling my communication skills, so I'm done with this. I have already made the points I wanted to make, which was purely and simply that I don't think Kaoru is being given a fair shake. You are taking this FAR into the weeds now.

Majere - I am sorry if you found what I said insulting. I did not mean it that way, as I indicate above. Your comment just seemed very idealistic and naive to the ways all people are fallible.

You are still dealing with absolutes that are not found in what I actually wrote. I never said "everyone always," I said that it does happen. And when it does happen, it is possible for a reasonable person to decide that the relationship is salvageable or more valuable than the broken trust, and give things another shot.

Cheating is also not the only way to hurt someone - I seriously doubt anyone in a long term relationship has never hurt their partner in some way, or been on the cusp of a decision of whether to stay or go over their differences. Saying something cruel in an argument, doing something out of spite, being neglectful of something important to them, to name some examples. There is no such thing as two people who are perfectly compatible. To paraphrase my wife, "falling in love is about finding someone whose bullshit you can tolerate, who can tolerate your bullshit." Everybody has some. Can the pair see all of each other and still make it work? That's what makes it last.

The way I began my original response to Majere had nothing to do with condescension - being young and naive is not to be less than anyone. It was my perception of the place someone is likely to be coming from when they say something like the line I quoted.

That line that Kaoru says certainly is not a point in her favor. But remember that the things people SAY are not always the truth or what they truly feel. She may actually be an open book about this and really be a narcissist. Or it could be a story she tells herself and now is telling Shizuka to romanticise and justify her prior behavior to smooth out that roadblock. She may think (obviously wrongly) that if she humbles herself and isn't a cool and collected goddess she's unlovable.

All it is is that I think she is a more complex character than the people who are all "Nooo~ Shizuka x kohai 4 ever!!!" are entertaining. Her introductory chapter frames her and Shizuka's current relationship on very friendly terms and she is capable of being very kind and supportive to the underclassmen. I also have the benefit of having read her chapters in vol. 6, which I won't spoil here.

If I had to personally speculate on where Kaoru is coming from, I would say, based on the Cleopatra story she tells Mayu, after the breakup she decided she would double down on her ability to charm every girl around her, to be beloved but never love so she couldn't be hurt again. She did not, however, find that as fulfilling as she hoped, and as time has gone on has decided to see if the door is still open a crack for a reunion with the love that she ruined, that she clearly misses. I don't think she's thought about the terms of that reunion much, but has to know on some level that giving up her harem of adorees would be part of the deal, and maybe sees that as a bargaining chip. In reality she's not half as mature as she thinks she is (no teenager is), nor is this love half as important as she thinks it is (really, as much as we d'aww over these pairings, how many people really should be life partners with their crush from when they were 16?)

last edited at Apr 22, 2016 12:38AM

Purple Library Guy, I have no idea what you're talking about. At no time did I say anything about angst, brooding, or cynicism at all. Majere expressed a belief that because Kaoru hurt Shizuka in the past that she is branded a cheater and has forfeited all right to try to re-establish a relationship. To wit, "you do NOT get to do this to them. It is not okay, it is not fair, and it is incredibly cruel and selfish." And my point was, in the grown-up world, people hurt each other, people do fucked up stuff. If messing up badly denied people the "right" to mend fences, the way a lot of people with starry-eyed views of love and romance believe (I was in that boat myself once, as a teenager), no relationship would last.

You may feel that her stripes haven't changed and that Shizuka should not fall for it, and that's ok. I'm not saying they should or should not be together. It's an intriguing storyline that I am interested to see play out. I just feel like a lot of the kneejerk hate for Kaoru is coming from an uninformed place.

last edited at Apr 21, 2016 7:19PM

So you admit that she's literally just toying with Mayu for her own amusement and you're still trying to defend her behaviour as totally acceptable? If you hurt someone so badly that they break up with you you do NOT get to do this to them. It is not okay, it is not fair, and it is incredibly cruel and selfish. I don't root for cheaters. You don't get to have someone back after you spent your entire relationship with them showing how much you value your own immediate gratification above their emotional well being.

I'm not sure how old you are, but based on this comment I'm going to guess you are fairly young and naive about the way people and relationships work. People, especially teenagers, make mistakes, they change, and especially after something like a significant breakup may find their values, wants, and needs no longer match their lifestyle. I have had many friends who got back together after a breakup due to mutually re-evaluating their priorities and behavior. "Don't know what you've got 'till it's gone," as they say.

I'm not sure why you think "get to do" and "fair" enter into this. She doesn't automatically get anything, and she's not prevented from doing anything. If she still wants Shizuka she's free to pursue her as she sees fit. That doesn't mean Shizuka has to accept her advances or return her feelings. There's no "one strike" rule in relationships; if there were, pretty much every relationship ever would be over before it began.

Kaoru isn't toying with Mayu in any malicious way. She's just flirting, because she likes the control and the admiration. Some people like to flirt. She's not doing anything different than any other "ultra-cool upperclassman" character, dealing with campus celebrity and making the underclassmen feel good. Also, Mayu is straight. It's strictly akogare with her, as far as we've seen.

I'm not saying you have to "root for" her. Like whichever pairing you want! I was just expressing an opinion that I think people aren't giving Kaoru a fair shake because they are invested in the established Shizuka/Mio pair, whereas if the story were told differently - i.e. starting with the Shizuka/Kaoru relationship and then breakup, some might feel different.

last edited at Apr 21, 2016 10:51AM

I feel like most of you are biased about Kaoru because you got invested in the Shizuka/Mio pairing from all the earlier chapters with just them. Yes, she is absolutely abusing her effortless charm and BWOC status to try to seduce Shizuka again, but why not? She knows that the woman she loves got away due to her selfishness and feels (right or wrong) that a direct push past Shizuka's barriers is the way to get her back. In her mind Mio (Ichinose, The Kohai, whatever) is just a distraction, a plaything, a little girl who's not playing in the big leagues with them.

Now, it's pretty clear we're supposed to read deeper feelings than that for Mio on Shizuka's part, but I feel like in a different context you'd be rooting for Kaoru. Shizuka and Mio aren't married or even dating, and Kaoru wants her woman back. :3

(I mean, we know that won't happen, because this manga doesn't deal in that deep of drama if the younger girl is spurned... but then again, Kaoru will bring the drama herself if she's ultimately totally rejected, and there's no one else on the horizon for her - I don't think she'd seriously consider a relationship with Mayu or any younger girl, she just likes to exercise her powers on them)

(And yes, I think the Kaoru character is fantastic - she is bringing a lot to the table here. Although my favorite pair is Mari and Yuu and my favorite character is Miyoshi. :D)

last edited at Apr 21, 2016 1:30AM

I share the sentiments of others that found Kuroko's action's in School Destruction to have been vile enough to damage my "connection" to her (as well as, IMO, out of character for her). I had to think for a bit on why that is, given the way this manga works and what we know about her. Here's how I explain it.

Up until that point, we never saw Kuroko take deliberate (as opposed to negligent) action to murder someone who wasn't a serious direct threat to her life or safety. Basically, the "big bad" of each arc, with outsized superpowers who absolutely was attempting to kill her at the same time. Under no circumstances can you say that three schoolgirls with baseball bats posed any kind of threat to Kuroko. Her role, by the "rules" of the story, is to execute those that the state is unprepared and unable to handle. No matter how awful the delinquent girls were, as terrible as what they did to Minako was, the state is capable of dealing with normal human battery and sexual abuse.

Even if she wished to mete out some measure of vigilante justice, it's hard to argue that brutal execution is the fit punishment for that crime. And, aside from the umbrella violation which was gross and unnecessary, she also is a participant in the rape of Fuuri by Minako. Even if Murcielago is an "eye for an eye" world, as someone else said, there is a particular resonance behind sexual violation that is not generally there for people watching cartoonishly gory violence. It really damages my ability to sympathize with or support Kuroko (choosing my words carefully here, because, as noted, she is not a hero or a good person even if she can behave in good ways and is the protagonist).

The fact that Kuroko's backstory is that she killed 715 people on her way to death row is largely irrelevant - it's a meaningless number thrown out to aid us in understanding early on that "this is a bad woman." We relate to the character's actions that we see, as they unfold, not to that number. A lot of the aspects of this manga are ridiculously exaggerated, to enjoy it you just have to accept that here it's possible for someone to be fifteen feet tall or a butter knife can cut bone or a 9-year-old girl can leap in the air and execute a man on a moving rollercoaster. It's why as problematic as I find Rinko and that story to be, I can grudgingly accept it by this manga's standards. I have a much harder time with the School Destruction happenings.

last edited at Apr 19, 2016 9:10PM

Much as I wish MahiMahi were actual twins (and much as I think Kishi-sensei wants the readers to basically view them that way while avoiding the letter of whatever editorial or other pressures it might have caused) the character summary page from vol. 6 calls them "擬似双子," which means "pseudo-twins."

Since there seems to be some question on it, that page also lists the class years for all the characters:

1st Years:
Mahiro
Mahiru
Yuu
Mari
Nao
Mayu　(Kaoru's kohai toy)
Mio (Ichinose)
Mariri
Midori (new character later in vol. 5)

2nd Years:
Ai
Chie
Michiru
Airi
Ayano
Miyoshi
Honoka
Alicia
Onoda (she isn't given a first name)
Yumimi
Mayuyu

3rd Years:
Kaoru
Shizuka
Nononon

last edited at Apr 18, 2016 11:26PM