I stand by what I have said before: Those girls bullying Kotonoha are far worse than Makoto and Sekai. Sekai has a core of good in her, and Makoto is merely callous and uncaring. These girls actively go out of their way to cause harm. Installing that camera would normally be a "Moral Event Horizon" moment, but for these girls it is just business as usual.
Yurusenai. These girls are true monsters. They deserve to suffer and be destroyed.
Otome deserved to be humiliated, though. She is shit.
Sekai deserved to see Makoto having sex with Otome. She deserves to feel what it is like to be cheated on. (I don't hate Sekai; she still has a core of good in her. But she deserves punishment for her part in the crimes against Kotonoha.)
Makoto is growing more confident and less fearful:
- In episode 8 at around 8:45 he keeps groping Sekai (until she knees him in the balls as punishment).
- He forces himself on Otome when she resists. He did something similar to Sekai during the first "practice" session, but that was different. Back then he was caught up in passion and lost control (it was his first time seriously groping a girl). This time he was fully aware of what he was doing: He wanted sex; she resisted; he wasn't going to let that stand.
- After the confrontation with Kotonoha and Setsuna, he shakes off Setsuna and walks away. Previously he was too afraid of Setsuna to defy her. Now he doesn't fear her so much anymore, so his anger wins out.
- At the end he forcefully hits on Setsuna. He used to be afraid of hitting on girls; now he has grown comfortable with it.
Note that this does not invalidate my hypothesis that Makoto has no spine or character. He is still, as always, completely ruled by his base urges: Lust, guilt, fear, laziness and so on. It is merely that the fear in him (which used to be very strong) has weakened, so now he is more dominated by other urges such as lust and anger.
He is still saitei.
Setsuna... oh, boy. There is something seriously wrong with her. First off, what is with the melodrama? She talks as though she is going to die and must leave a proper legacy. You're just moving; get a grip of yourself! But now that I think of it, I suppose it is not implausible for a teenage girl to view "moving away from a friend" as the end of the world.
She is a huge hypocrite. She is obsessed with Sekai and will do "anything" to help her - and then she sneaks in to kiss Makoto and later have sex with him. She somehow rationalizes this as "helping" Sekai.
She is a piss-poor judge of character. She wants Makoto to be there for Sekai and support her. Have you MET Makoto, bitch? Makoto is completely untrustworthy. Given how much he wavers around Kotonoha, how easily he lets Otome seduce him and how unwilling he is to commit to Sekai on any level, Setsuna should have realized this. If nothing else, she should have realized it when she kissed Makoto (in front of Kotonoha, no less) and he barely objected at all. Is this really the guy you trust to protect your fragile and precious friend, Setsuna? Mattaku.
Setsuna can be seen as a sort of mirror-image of Makoto. Where Makoto is an aimless drifter on the currents of life, Setsuna is a tunnel-visioned fanatic driven by obsessions. She is hysterically protective of Sekai, and she lusts after Makoto. Like Makoto, however, she has no real morals and is perfectly willing to sacrifice others (mostly Kotonoha) to satisfy her desires.
She is a subhuman freak.
Kotonoha.. Oh my god. Poor, poor Kotonoha. She is so deep in denial. She deserves so much better. I so badly want to hug her and rescue her. Mamoritai...
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