Happy ending doesn't change the super sour feeling left by the queen-focused chapter. Momo gets to be married happily, but the author still decided that another character was forced to break up with her girlfriend and marry some dude she didn't know.
But hey, it's okay because "look, she's happy now anyway". It's what's annoying me the most (and making me very uncomfortable), that it was shown very positively and the forced break-up didn't matter. I guess it was just a phase.
No one was forced to do everything. Stop projecting. The chapter is so long passed, it's silly of you to bring up now. We had this argument long ago.
Following your traditional and familial responsibilities is not being forced. She chose to do it, it even showed that in the chapter in question.
If anything, the only 'forcing' happening around here is you trying to force your cultural preferences onto the author and the characters in their story.
I'm not sure how you read that chapter and got the impression that she was making a willing choice. Maybe this is so old that I shouldn't reopen an argument but here I go. I'd also hope that the entire argument isn't hanging on the use of the word "forced" because that would be semantics.
Had our current princess' parents been different and they'd actually chosen her a marriage partner against her will to be with Aki, you would also call that not "forced," or if we're sensitive to that word, how about "pressured" etc? That would be a happy ending, after she's protested and ended up broken down crying behind the door like her mother did? You would describe that in the history books as just a child who chose to follow her familial responsibilities? Simply, her choice?
It's funny because that's a documented phenomena Japan has dealt with in its recent past (decades ago) with these kinds of young (especially pre college) sapphic relationships and arranged marriages and likely is part of the allusion this story is making. But I guess all those women also just "chose to follow familial responsibilities too?" How would you characterize that?
The mother lucked out that her husband ended up a fine person but she did not hold her head high and break up with her love on her own, "for duty." She and her dressmaker went along with expectations, being powerless to do otherwise (just as our princess would have had to do). They have lingering feelings, clearly but have ended up alright, all things considered. It's pretty straightforward that the mother and daughter's stories run parallel, are meant to comment on each other but also to contrast the "old times" from the "new age," after lessons had been learned. It's a super cute story but it's cute because of how the mistakes of its past are rejected on the second go around precisely by those who felt the pressures of these imposed decisions "chosen by our parents" on their own childhood (the great art and all the funny, helps too).
Maybe I'll go reread these arguments to understand the logic. Edit: read them and they don't make much sense to me, logically, and certainly not narratively. So I'm glad I missed that discussion here then. Just wanted to add my piece so I get it out of my head.
last edited at Oct 5, 2023 8:04AM
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