Am I the only one who loves the cover pages? Just looking at all those wonderful outfits. (Well, I'm the one who's enjoyed fashion-oriented manga in general.)

I'll be honest. Asuna may not be the greatest of people and she has problems to work out.
[...]
Do you see where I'm going with this? A loop-styled plot hole that has no place existing as the conclusion to their story.

Except that the kind of stuff Asuna is describing isn't exactly trivial. Honestly, she sounds like she has mental issues of the sort that aren't exactly easy to deal with (and Japan doesn't exactly have the best attitudes toward therapy). It's like being on a train and knowing it's going to end up in a wreck but not knowing how to change its course. (I can relate to that, even if my own issues're completely different than Asuna's.)

More to the point, sticking together doesn't necessarily mean that it'll work out. At best, it would've been a rocky coaster roller ride until they managed to smooth things out. At worst, there would're been a lot of tears and frustrations for nothing. Sometimes, even if you want it, hell, even if both parties want it, a relationship just isn't going to work out. Sometimes staying together and working out the problems is worth it, sometimes it isn't. Relationships are complicated things you have to go with your feelings on.

I mean, yeah, they could've tried to work it out, but in the end they decided to break it off and free themselves up for hopefully better relationships (well, less hopefully for Asuna...). If the chemistry'd been a little different, they might've decided to stay together and work it out, but they didn't.

And sometimes clinging to something too much can be unhealthy. Plus the way their relationship was, I honestly don't blame Fue for walking away. Hell, in some ways continuing to stay with someone with the kinds of issues Asuna has would've been the more questionable decision. That doesn't mean that I don't wish that Asuna could somehow find a way to deal with those issues and improve, but... realistically too many people have stayed in relationships with people like that and got burnt very badly.

In the end, what Fue walked out of was a kinda toxic relationship, even if both of them did still care about each other.

@Kaja Rainbow

The stuff they've been signing in the story, were there any gestures that were similar (similar gesture, similar meaning) to the sign language you know (American, Chinese sign language/whatever sign language is used in your country, or was it totally different (for example as different as Japanese Spoken is to English Spoken)?

What I know is American Sign Language, which's pretty different from Japanese Sign language. But I still recognized the signs in the manga as clearly sign language, if sign language in a foreign language. There seem to be certain universal elements, like the general kinds of handshapes people'll be making--gestural stuff using easy to make finger shapes. Some of those handshapes're ones ASL use, but in different ways and for different words. Overall, I'm fairly certain that was actual JSL in the manga.

last edited at Dec 27, 2013 4:28PM

To chip in on the whole forgiveness debate: I am a deaf person. Do you know how many people I know have told me they wanted to learn sign language? Many, many, many. How many got to a point where they could actually hold a proper conversation with me? One person outside my immediate family. That's right. One. Learning any new language's hard work, and many give up. At this point if someone says they want to learn sign language, I assume they won't actually accomplish it. I don't really judge them negatively for it; I simply don't have high expectations for their success, it's far more easy to say than to do after all. Hell, you see a glimpse of that in chapter 16--the two girls saying it'd be cool to learn sign language. Spoiler: they almost certainly won't actually do it. I hear that kind of thing all the time from others.

Now, remember, in the manga it's been years. If someone came to me after years and apologized for something like that, I would probably forgive them--that's more than enough time to mature and realize your own crimes. But then again, I often give people the benefit of the doubt (though not as much as Shouko seems to do). But even putting that aside, learning sign language just to apologize would leave me outright dumbfound. I would really appreciate that, let's be frank, absolutely amazing and unbelievable gesture. I'm being serious, it really isn't a trivial gesture doing something like that.

last edited at Nov 26, 2013 8:41AM