Atri: My Dear Moments Episode 7 Discussion

YordaTrico said:
Certain Japanese story telling continues to frustrate me, on one hand this episode was full of sweetness and in some ways felt very satisfying...but on the other hand - how am I supposed to not feel in anyway conflicted about this romance when up until now MC has acted like a guardian figure to ATRI and then we get frames like this:



This is how an adult interacts with a child. I am sure this won't be a popular opinion but when has anyone every seen a real life couple who have romantic connections act in this way? Then to make matters worse ATRI stands talking about all of it to a bunch of 10 year olds and doesn't look out of place in that group - all while the guardian/ authority figures look on.



I just don't know how to feel about this show, there is so much I love about it and with a few details tweaked I could have seen it being my favourite of the season....but at the same time I think ATRI looking so much like a child is utterly dumb, in terms of maturity she should be closer to Minamo and there would be no issue.

I also think all the side characters spending so much time talking about the MCs romantics interests is lazy story telling, those characters should be getting their own development, but instead they just exist now to talk about MC and ATRI's possible romance, can we have some agency for these characters?

Rant over lol

YordaTrico said:
I just don't know how to feel about this show, there is so much I love about it and with a few details tweaked I could have seen it being my favourite of the season....but at the same time I think ATRI looking so much like a child is utterly dumb, in terms of maturity she should be closer to Minamo and there would be no issue.

YordaTrico said:
Certain Japanese story telling continues to frustrate me, on one hand this episode was full of sweetness and in some ways felt very satisfying...but on the other hand - how am I supposed to not feel in anyway conflicted about this romance when up until now MC has acted like a guardian figure to ATRI and then we get frames like this:



This is how an adult interacts with a child. I am sure this won't be a popular opinion but when has anyone every seen a real life couple who have romantic connections act in this way? Then to make matters worse ATRI stands talking about all of it to a bunch of 10 year olds and doesn't look out of place in that group - all while the guardian/ authority figures look on.



I just don't know how to feel about this show, there is so much I love about it and with a few details tweaked I could have seen it being my favourite of the season....but at the same time I think ATRI looking so much like a child is utterly dumb, in terms of maturity she should be closer to Minamo and there would be no issue.

I also think all the side characters spending so much time talking about the MCs romantics interests is lazy story telling, those characters should be getting their own development, but instead they just exist now to talk about MC and ATRI's possible romance, can we have some agency for these characters?

Rant over lol

YordaTrico said:
Certain Japanese story telling continues to frustrate me, on one hand this episode was full of sweetness and in some ways felt very satisfying...but on the other hand - how am I supposed to not feel in anyway conflicted about this romance when up until now MC has acted like a guardian figure to ATRI and then we get frames like this:



This is how an adult interacts with a child. I am sure this won't be a popular opinion but when has anyone every seen a real life couple who have romantic connections act in this way? Then to make matters worse ATRI stands talking about all of it to a bunch of 10 year olds and doesn't look out of place in that group - all while the guardian/ authority figures look on.



I just don't know how to feel about this show, there is so much I love about it and with a few details tweaked I could have seen it being my favourite of the season....but at the same time I think ATRI looking so much like a child is utterly dumb, in terms of maturity she should be closer to Minamo and there would be no issue.

I also think all the side characters spending so much time talking about the MCs romantics interests is lazy story telling, those characters should be getting their own development, but instead they just exist now to talk about MC and ATRI's possible romance, can we have some agency for these characters?

Rant over lol

YordaTrico said:
Certain Japanese story telling continues to frustrate me, on one hand this episode was full of sweetness and in some ways felt very satisfying...but on the other hand - how am I supposed to not feel in anyway conflicted about this romance when up until now MC has acted like a guardian figure to ATRI and then we get frames like this:



This is how an adult interacts with a child. I am sure this won't be a popular opinion but when has anyone every seen a real life couple who have romantic connections act in this way? Then to make matters worse ATRI stands talking about all of it to a bunch of 10 year olds and doesn't look out of place in that group - all while the guardian/ authority figures look on.



I just don't know how to feel about this show, there is so much I love about it and with a few details tweaked I could have seen it being my favourite of the season....but at the same time I think ATRI looking so much like a child is utterly dumb, in terms of maturity she should be closer to Minamo and there would be no issue.

I also think all the side characters spending so much time talking about the MCs romantics interests is lazy story telling, those characters should be getting their own development, but instead they just exist now to talk about MC and ATRI's possible romance, can we have some agency for these characters?

Rant over lol

YordaTrico said:
@stevejawbs

I agree, this romance did not feel at all like a pay off or something properly earned by the events that proceeded it.

I think a great example of how it is done right is Plastic Memories. They really built the relationship of the MCs and take them slowly from one dynamic to the other. The two are also not framed as being far apart in maturity, sure Isla looks young and can act silly but her character is also very well developed to show some mature sides of her personality too like

In this show we have a robot looking and acting like a kid being talked down to by an older guy twice her height for 6 episodes then suddenly BOOM romance.

And the other characters now just existing to talk about this romance is terrible. The electricity plot times were so much better.

Making Atri less of a literal child by aging her up and having her act less like a child would make this show really easy to recommend as a low-vibe chill type of show but right now it's too weird for me to bring up enjoying without people giving me side-eye for it.

YordaTrico said:
Certain Japanese story telling continues to frustrate me, on one hand this episode was full of sweetness and in some ways felt very satisfying...but on the other hand - how am I supposed to not feel in anyway conflicted about this romance when up until now MC has acted like a guardian figure to ATRI and then we get frames like this:

This is how an adult interacts with a child. I am sure this won't be a popular opinion but when has anyone every seen a real life couple who have romantic connections act in this way? Then to make matters worse ATRI stands talking about all of it to a bunch of 10 year olds and doesn't look out of place in that group - all while the guardian/ authority figures look on.

YordaTrico said:
I also think all the side characters spending so much time talking about the MCs romantics interests is lazy story telling, those characters should be getting their own development, but instead they just exist now to talk about MC and ATRI's possible romance, can we have some agency for these characters?

WatchTillTandava said:
And as for the teaching her things in an almost parental or guardian-esque manner, look, even humans' lives and relationships aren't all identical and resembling one another. There are intellectually challenged and emotionally and developmentally regressed or stunted people, people who were sheltered their whole lives, those with other disabilities, war refugees and other survivors with trauma, etc. People who never attended a school or don't know how to dress and talk and act in public so as to not draw attention to themselves. Or, alternatively, a robot with theoretically high computing capacity and cognitive ability hardwired into them but who didn't grow up in an average human social context or society, and weren't seen or treated by humans as a person and part of society necessarily, but more as a tool/product. Of course their relationship won't resemble the norm. Why should it? But I don't think that means they should be deprived of love and affection - familial, romantic, or otherwise, if they so desire it and can come to understand and appreciate it.

Nor that either party involved has any negative or nefarious intentions simply for doing what comes naturally and trying to establish a relationship with the other person in terms comprehensible to them. Honestly, what it may "look" like to some is a superficial consideration. We can see from the way the story plays out and how everything is written that the two are only slowly coming to understand both themselves and each other, and possibly in the long-term developing genuine care for the other, and that is what actually matters.

traed said:
Social isolation does it too but yeah there is a lot of ways people will act completely different. That does seem to be the case people wanting to deny others of love for weird reasons like because of how they look or because they arent confident to a cocky degree or because they have a mental illness or disability.

WatchTillTandava said:
And neurodivergence, also sometimes coyly represented with non-human humanoid entities like androids and certain alien species in fiction (which could alternatively be classified as mental illness, but in each and every case it's straying into a heavy medical science, political and ideological, and philosophical debate), in general or in parallel to or as a cause of social separation/isolation.

Romance, sexual attraction, and sexual relations are always the big inflammatory red button issues, but even for familial and platonic relationships with family and friends this mindset is applied. It just gets tiresome hearing that because one's relationship with their close friends, parents, girlfriend, sister, neighbor, uncle, second cousin, dog, goldfish, or whatever isn't like 95% or 98%+ of other people's that it's therefore automatically inherently wrong and broken and something that needs to be corrected and fixed.

Right now there is seemingly a particular, what seems to me as just an observer, Gen Z-driven moral panic about imagining groomers and every other person around every corner being a predator if the relationship doesn't fit or conform to a standardized ideal and preconception worked out in their heads. I think this is just a rehashed more secular-liberal version of the Satanic Panic 1980s and 90s-era moral panic and groupthink. But even outside of the context of romantic relationships, I notice it can be applied to all manner of relationships and human experiences, and I'm just saying that it's ultimately a very rigid, intolerant, binary black-and-white view of the world which is being pushed. The real world is messy and uncertain and every individual and individual relationship should be evaluated with the unique particularities of their own situations in mind and on their own merits, not generalized.

traed said:

Goldfish? I dont know where that comes into play. But yeah. You could say that non human but human formed beings could represent any kind of different way of a person behaving,

Ive also noticed a huge bias in media where the viewer primarily focus on looks too though that is a bit different than where you were going.

People really should stop trying to use psychology terms they clearly dont understand and turning them into buzz words. I dont think it has a specific political lean it just appears different depending where it comes from. I dont think it is a generational thing it is mass brainwashing and societal decay from social media algorithms and design where hardly anyone actually thinks for themselves even remotely anymore just having everything spoon fed to them told what to think and how to act by the algorithms and operant conditioned with likes and reposts and forced engagement through negative emotions till billions of people all act the same setting up excuses for more government mass surveillance because that is the only way you can thought police people. We are getting at this level of crazy . We are living in a true dystopia, wont be long till our world looks like any dystopia anime but without the cool stuff.

It is like there is no effort for people to explore the world and different ideas anymore. It just happens to effect younger people more often because for many they didnt even get a chance to form their own identity to begin with with current state of things and they have been victimized by the increase of infantization breeding depression and identity problems in them so they try to justify it as a coping mechanism. It has actually gotten to a scary point of severe compliance where so many people dont even act human anymore.

Hazel_196 said:
Also. What's up with the comments moral panicking over Atri's appereance? This romance has been set up since episode 1 with that underwater kiss, and since then we've had characters teasing up this relationship. Not to mention that Natsuki is still a teenager too.

At this point of the story, it's kind your fault watching this just to get uncomfortable despite all the foreshadowing we've had (ep 1 underwater kiss, Atri teasing Natsuki and they hugging at night, Minamo not confessing for noticing how Natsuki thinks about Atri).

Didn't that gatekeep you enough? These anime tourists I swear. I guess I knew this would happen when I played this beautiful VN in 2023. Now I understand other readers not eanting their to works get an anime adaptation and getting popular.