Re: Endless, Cyclical Confusion (and again, why there's never been any point in personal speculation about the superfluous/typical soap-aspects everyone here loves so much):
A) Stated earlier {366645} (with later, added emphasis): "...in the case of Mei, you have the war of extremist personal service/duty (a fundamental aspect of Mei's type) versus acknowledged, charged, life-upheaving, mixed-bag rationalizations for "love"; this sort of situation produces hardcore emotional skeptics, hence the reader frustration and author confusion with Mei: how does one get a young skeptic to believe in the truth of young love? Without more insight, i.e., development, you "hammer" on them until they change/break." There is only so much that can be ascribed to Tropes when you're only given crumbs within a culturally clichéd context.
B) This tunnel-vision MO/impetus on top of extended, narrative presentation where "...so much (is) being seen through a rose-tinted/biased-as-hell lens" {362586} ... that's "...all coming from a highly neurotic, adult-creator POV that most identifies with Yuzu." {365218}
C) There really shouldn't be such outrage over messages regarding abuse because 1) this is uberniche (and Japanese niches have a huge tolerance/allowance for all flavors of violence and perversion). And 2) this is the fault of someone choosing a cross-genre where the deeper comprehension of Drama lags far behind skill with Comedy; without much any comedy, Saburouta wasted a lot of energy flailing about in what just might be a polluted, shallow/kiddie pool instead of actual dark waters. (The wasted sex-blackmail sitch is now an annoying setup; an idea cherry-picked for its intrinsic, high-Drama/adult-like? value, not because she had any real comprehension of the emotional mess that it would have entailed; cheaply used and discarded.) In comparison to other yuri publications that I've come across, Citrus has been hilarious for a good part of the run, which (again) undercuts a lot of what might be deemed serious, dramatic material. I was willing to overlook at lot as long as it continued to be funny, but alas, what may had started off seeming like she wouldn't squander potential {361909} has become just that... and it's due (IMO) to point E (below).
D) There is zero historical, commercially published proof that Saburouta is even "capable of writing a better ending than this", and also no evidence of the author truly "phoning it in", as a few would like to believe with recouched ideas. Saburouta has already announced that she's been exhausted {370179}: the delayed releases have been proof.
E) She's had enormous creative problems handling the feedback for Ch 36: the WTF chapters post-36 have been in direct response to this, i.e., lots of emo-dithering (and true to her sense and use of emo-logic {362063}), with reliance on surrounding family/friends to bounce around feckless or overly redundant ideas that give no real insight into much anything since it follows Yuzu around, i.e., all that Saburouta truly comprehends in full. When emo-logic really only applies to Yuzu, you can't have friends/others taking on the burden that would destroy the "purity" and drive of Yuzu's emotions. Mei's true (painfully predictable) reasoning for the letter/break-off took forever and a day for a quiet reveal, but via a third party, and was still executed indirectly since it had be described/paired with Yuzu's face in the frame. The very tedium of this MO (see also pts A and B) while trying to keep things "light", for the hybrid genre-- why do folks keep forgetting this?, is near impossible without venturing into more mature, darker territory. This is nothing but blatant examples of intellectual floundering in an exploratory work that's covered (skillfully) with the high degree of visual art, i.e., if Saburouta's unsure, there's intentional, uber-precise use of ambiguous character expressions and layouts in hopes of covering her ass; it's the only way of saving some face in a losing battle.
F) Now, with this penultimate release in the aftermath of YET another announcement--but one of complete and utter Exhaustion, i.e., only enough steam left for one more chapter, it's nothing BUT in-your-face Proof that the creative well has run dry (for this particular IP).
Work long enough with different types of artists, and these trends crop up ad nauseam...
Saburouta is valiantly, sincerely persevering to the series' end--partly as a cultural thing, partly due to the media-based attention--without completely shitting over the rest, so I'm guessing there's going to be continuation of "meh" comedy for the finale. (It's where she used to shine, and really, what else can be expected for a forced Happy Ending even if there's a high probability the skill level of featured "funny" will be Basic/Easy/Default? If you've ever witnessed out-of-shape, casual joggers, and seen the part of their run where they look like they're about to faceplant, but "persevere" anyway--in exceptionally bad or questionable athletic form--for the sake of finishing the workout... that's where Saburouta appears to be, on multiple levels, from a creator-perspective.)
If for whatever reason there's a dramatically-skewed conclusion with next to no comedy, so be it--the work's finality speaks for itself and the true mangaka mindset, so I definitely won't be interested in her later endeavors, but it's clear for the time being that she's forgone trying to explain the hell out of Mei. It seems beyond her to consider much beyond her status as a cultural trope.
