Interesting work, this revisitation of Romeo and Juliet. Because even if the characters are called like Romeo (Romio) and Juliet, they are nowhere like their dramatic counterparts. And rightly so.
Romeo and juliet entered the imaginary as "immortal true love" while for anyone reading the original work it's really clear that their relationship was too hasty, and based on looks more than knowledge of each other. All the story takes place in lesss than a week, and Romeo was one of the most vain characters ever, ready to die for his former love, Rosaline, and changing idea just looking at Juliet. The idea of "suicide
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Jan 17, 2021
Domestic na Kanojo
(Manga)
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Not Recommended
*Spoilers inside*
So, what to say about Domestic Girlfriend? Art is good, story is the sickest one out of there. About the story: I get what the writer was trying to say (true love wins against all odds) but here comes the issue: what she pushes for true love is not love -at all-. It's the immature view of love a hormonal teenager could have. The "I cannot live without you" is the most abused cliche and for sure the wrong way to look at love. Because if it's "I need you" for *my* emotional needs, where is the love for you in that? Nowhere to ... be seen. If you cannot love yourself, you cannot really love others. And in fact, that is the impression about Hina - an immature character always lecturing others but not capable to apply one of her "lessons", and seemingly affected by a dependant personality disorder, suppressing her identity for pleasing Natsuo, destroying her life and dreams in the process, obsessed with him but treating him like a kid during the whole manga, having zero honest communication with him, forcing on him several times (not wanted gifts, not wanted help, pushing herself in his apartment against his will) - but the author says this is true love. Lol.. Oh, and don't forget that she declares she wants someone who can die for her ( the very act of starting a relationship with a minor and a student of hers is something she knows it will damage both, but it is plainly wrong from a love perspective, like love can accept to endanger the object of your "love" - this is not love, it's need to have her emotional needs satisfied). And she never regrets her actions (I am not speaking about falling in love, I am speaking about what she did wrong) always rationalizing them (other indication of mental issues). Oh, let's not forget that every one of her "sacrifices" is simply pointless as there would have been other solutions if there was even basic communication. And many are not even sacrifices as she does these clearly to get Natsuo's attention (this being a selfish reason). In fact, if all she wanted was Natsuo's happienss she had wished him and Rui the best after learning of the child. Instead, she went crying to Marie - all she did was to keep alive the hope of getting back with Natsuo - selfish reason under the mask of selflessness. In the end, she even admits that practically she saw Natsuo as her only salvation after her dreams failed (she made those fail). Purest dependence here. But no one asked her to take responsability for her actions, the author first. She gets everything by crying and praying the heavens. Like when returning home from her "exile", she cries about being s lonely without her family. An "adult" woman. When it's full out there of people going to work alone far away, possibly abroad. Cringe. On the other side, we have Rui, that starts with communication problems, improves, then (because also of her sister's continous interference) becomes a jealous bitch. Then she tries to improve again, she seemingly reaches an equilibrium and rekindles her relationship with Natsuo, they even seem happy in waiting for their daughter, but then she gives up it all because "her sister has nothing". Yes. Right. Like her sister has no responsability in her "having nothing" by constantly neglecting herself. She even thinks that her sister "loves more" Natsuo than her, because she would have not been capable to throw away her life down the drain pointlessly like Hina. Riiight. Like love could be quantified in "how many idiotic things you do in order to gain praise from your partner" and not in "properly building a relationship annd taking care of each other". Moreover, she interprete Hina not showing her feelings and not declaring her love, plus her dependence from Natsuo that was clearly SHOWN during the whole manga as weakness and fear of abandonment, as "strenght". Wow, said from the same character who understood as her big emotional dependence andfear of abandonment was an obstacle to their relationship. Destroying her character in a couple of chapters. She makes then the only true sacrifice of the manga (because in opposition to her sisteer she HAS something to lose) but for the author that's irrelevant. Passing TEN years watching the father of her daughter fawning with an idiotic face for the person who almost destroyed his life - thrice. But this is "banal" love according to Sasuga. Lol. When she was good, she had an approach which is the direct opposite of her sisters': she speaks directly, she is truly caring (instead of wanting her SO dying for her, she wants Natsuo to take care of himself, because "if you die it's the end of it all, no more speaking, no more seeing each other"), she faces her responsabilities. Her relationship with Natsuo at the end should be what a sane relatioship is: caring for each other but keeping personal spaces of growth, depending on each other but not overly so, and communicating. But then drama is not there anymore, right? Natsuo is bad as well. He starts as an hormonal teenager (who doesn't?) and is simply a mess, he seems to improve by learning that actions have consequences, then he is bad again (people focuses on Rui's jealousy but he's quite bad in this regard as well - and one time he even goes to a brothel - the quintessence of an idiot), then he seems the could learn finally through several interactions with the people around him, and then again he is not even capable to keep the commitment he should have reflected upon a lot, he basically comes out as a self-centered pathological liar that "saves" people only for his personal self-satisfaction instead of true selflessness, and in the end he puts even a woman before his daughter (and no, the pathetic attempt of the author about the "happy enlarged family" is simply cringe). He (in the end and only in the end) says he loved Hina above everyone else, that is probably why he went for Rui basically everytime from chapter 145 onwards even knowing Hina still loves him (even if he conveniently seemingly forgets it every now and then - but when he goes to the USA to meet Rui and propose to her he certaily knows). And Rui told him time after time that if he did not truly love her it was better to part ways, but he reaffirmed again and again she was the only one for him. Oh, let's remember that When Natsuo went to the USA it was him proposing first to Rui to marry, because "with her at his side he felt like he could go everywhere". Then, without any clear internal process, he seemingly prefers someone who destroys herself by trying to please him in every way instead of a true partner, and he is happy about Hina being so self-destructive because of him (true love, remember, according to Kei Sasuga you need to damage or endanger your SO and his/her well being is true love, if you really care for him/her the author says it's only "banal love" - riiight again). This, and the several self-harming behavior he keeps during the whole manga. It's not a case he admires Osamu Dazai: the problem here is that Dazai was a great writer, but humanly he had a lot of issues about depression, alcoholism, several duoble suicide attempts. Not certainly a model to have in life. But Natsuo seems right on the path for following his idol's footsteps. And that's the problem. The author privileges pointless drama over everything. Psychological constructions of characters? Gone. Character growth from teenagers to mature adults? Gone. After telling us for hundreds of chapters that delving on the past is bad, that excessive emorional dependence is bad, that filling an inner void with relationships (Momo) is wrong, that self-destroying yourself is bad (and I am speaking about Togen arc and drug arc - especially the latter, with the clear correlation between dependance on drugs and dependance on relationships), the final answer of the author is "fuck them all, let's give this a ending respecting the idea a 5 year old could have about love".With the result that the "ending couple" is not even a couple after 3 years after the marriage (the author herself writes that), they did not even seemingly seriously communicate in all that time, Hina admits she went for Natsuo because she was desperate. And this situation, which in real life means a no-go relationship, is called "good ending" by the author. If this is not bad, I don't know what is. This is justified as "fate" but this "fate" requires several characters acting like irresponsible morons and twisting their very nature. i.e. it's inrcredible that Marie, who acted for 3/4 of the series as a mature person, could tell Rui she's obsessed but then he did not say nothing to Hina, who is much more obsessed with Natsuo, does not sleep because of him, treats him like a kid, thinking she knows better than him what's better for him without even talking, forces herself on him. He knows what Hina is doing is unhealthy but then instead of stopping her he consoles her and then - he goes to push Natsuo to feel responsible about Hina's one-sided actions. And this after HE (Marie) had a unrequited love for a guy and he kept the memory but he did not interfere in his life or did idiotic things for him, knowing that it was better for them to stay apart. Wow. Consistency here. The moral message coming out of all this is simply aberrant. The author says it is OK to destroy your life for someone else without reason (because there was ALWAYS a better option). Self-harming behavior is OK. Absolute emotional dependence is OK (if you are called Hina, of course, if you are called Rui is bad - double standard at its best). Honest communication does not matter if there is "true love", true love being pointlessly throwing yourself in dire situations without thinking about whats really better for you and your SO, preferrably fucking the lives of other people involved as well, including your daughter/nephew. Essentially, everything love is not. So I am even generous in giving this a score at all (it sould have been a negative number). Let's hope the author at least learns from her mistakes but looking at her comments later and even the afterword of the last volume (where she admits Hina cannot live without Natsuo - being totally dependent on him and thus -by psychological analysys - demonstrating it's not true love) she will not as it seems that in her eyes she wrote Natuo as an "ideal man". What horrible opinion about men. Interesting, because she complains about people praising Yuusuke Godai from "Maison Ikkoku" (because he went out some times with Kozue and he never told her he lover her) and shitting on Natsuo (who lead on Rui for three years, got her pregnant, told her she was the only one for him, and then told Hina "he always loved her"). Consistency, I was saying. Summing it up, if you are a new reader, avoid it. It's made for fucking up your mind, it's not a romance, it's a collection of psychiatric cases going out of control. Or, if you are a writer, try to read it for understanding how NOT to write a story. Afterword: for those who think this story is so awkward because it is written by a Japanese for a Japanese audience, you're plainly wrong. Good japanese authors are aware about psychological traits and that dependence is NOT love. You can find examples of that in most of manga that have a respectable author.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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