And re-reading the arc... I have the sensation that most people had been so hard on Kase, even unfair.
She was coerced and forced with everything that is important for a Japanese:
-Personal debt with Fukami, fore leaving her the room task and find out her leaving from third parties ("on" and "ogi")
-Social pressure for her classmates ("sekentei") and Keep the group harmony ("wa"), colleagues whom she has to continue seeing every day and working with them. They aren't flatmates that you leave and never see again.
-And a direct order for a senpai, who didn't even ask, just said "it's decided". A relationship what implies respect and obedience, Disobeying her is not only not contemplated by you, but you also discredit her position of authority compared to the rest.
Making her literally impossible to refuse. That's why Yamada didn't get angry about the race, she did when Kase told her that it was Fukami's idea.
And despite this, it is implied that she was also going to leave the dorms eitherways:
https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/yamada_to_kase_san_ch32#10
She prefers to leave on good terms, but here she is clearly preparing to face a direct conflict, something terribly violent in Japan.
I'm pretty sure that the japanese readers understood this arc way different than mostly of us.
I think this is at least a partial misreading of the overall reaction to this arc. Experienced manga readers are quite familiar with the Japanese cultural emphasis on group harmony, on subordination to senpai, etc.
The problem was that those elements were insufficiently justified in the text by the author in developing this specific situation. As I have said again and again, this was not Kase’s misstep but the author’s.
There was no previous indication in the story that there was an any problem with or resistance to Kase leaving the dorms—in fact it was quite explicit that students were allowed to live off-campus after their first year.
Except for Fukami, there was very little previous specific development of Kase’s relationships with her teammates or what their expectations of Kase were. And Fukami’s demand that Kase stay also seemed to come from nowhere. Although readers were aware that Fukami had feelings for Kase, on the surface she was markedly reserved and distant with Kase, not someone who was in any position to make her roommate continue to live on campus.
Most egregiously to me was that the “order from a senpai” business was a blatant violation of the previous character of Inoue, who from the beginning of the series has been developed as Kase’s ally and a consistent wingwoman who approved of and facilitated Kase’s relationship with Yamada.
So the fact that Japanese cultural values made it “literally impossible to refuse” the race did not grow organically from the way the storyworld had previously been developed but was obviously a function of the author loading the dice to get to the desired plot points.
(The further fact that Kase was never going to lose that race in a million years made the whole thing even more pointless.)
last edited at May 29, 2024 11:16AM
My cute baby Yamada is gonna try and cook curry! And it isn't just instant curry, she's gonna make it from scratch!! Will she be okay? She's too nervous and anxious about it, that's a bad omen! And how good was she at cooking to begin with?!? I can't remember! 
