#for both shima AND mitsumi

[bataranqs]

this chapter of skip and loafer is so real (a statement apply to every chapter of skip and loafer)

[ajwalkerartblog]

flowers :D

[irlmitsumi]

(volume 7)

(volume 10?)

i really cant stand EITHER of their simp asses

[cloudbends]

Delightful skip and loafer chapter I feel like we're back to the good old days after so much sorrow. they're all so cute

[humanoidtyphoons]

i just. it's how the laughter comes easily to shima sousuke when he's around iwakura mitsumi? he's rarely laughing at her, in a mean way? she's so ridiculous at times, but it's just. light, you know? she's funny to be around, and he likes being around her, bc she is endearing and silly, and she's just. his past doesn't matter to her, and i think that must be a relief to him. i think he admires her drive and ambition, and how she still gives it her all even if it's not very good, she's still going to try?

and as much as he likes that, there's a little bit of envy, there's insecurity bc he feels aimless himself, but getting swept into her pace, that's usually fine by him? he's good at being easy going, he's gently teasing her to watch her face go red, but he's also.

he kind of feels he doesn't deserve to be with her. doesn't quite get why she's starry eyed around him, refuses to let himself see that she's perceiving him that way tbh. and that wall he has. where he tries to keep a seal shut on his issues, and not talk about himself too deeply. i like that even then, he tries to meet with her a little. open a door, bc unconsciously he wants to reach out to her too.

and i'm just. so charmed by them.

[reineyday]

oh man not me crying over this week's skip and loafer 😭😭😭

[turnaboutstar]

I am the number one shima defender but mitsumi was valid for breaking up with him!!

[muninnhuginn]

having a growing appreciation of character dynamics that involve pedestals breaking. where a character thinks another character their god, only to realise that they're human after all.

sometimes that leads to heartbreak, betrayal. but other times, they grow from it and build a stronger relationship as a result. a more mutual one.

[yuukei-yikes]

dude have you seen skip and loafer. dude. harutakacore. dude,.

DUDE WHAT THE FUCK THIS FREAKED ME OUT I LITERALLY FINISHED READING THE MANGA LIKE 2 HOURS AGO actual reply in tags

[yancriilu]

i think mitsumi would listen to fifty fifty

[ququoquaw]

it is vry hard to resist the urge to be a mitsumi hater

im sry but im a shipper first and foremost and whenever i see her and shima im only thinking 'this wouldve been better if it was egashira instead of mitsumi'

[anarchomitsumi]

okay so stl 61 !! this chapter has laid out ujie's worldview: there are those in this world that are liked, accepted, popular, —and those that will always be shunned. only a limited amount of people may be the lucky ones.

and turns out, shima's worldview isn't so different. for him there are those who take, and those whose things are taken away from.

either you are born a shunned monster or the doctor that created it. no nuance is accepted. it's essentially a reaction to being socially shunned, you end up resenting the people you deem guilty of your misfortune so much that you deny them their own depth of being. they are the fortunate, they could never understand your suffering. it's a feeling quite common among teenagers, i think.

if i were to point out something, it'd be that for ujie this classification into fortunate-unfortunate is unmovable. he has no hope of changing his social fate. for shima, however, it isn't set in stone. he's determined to get out of it and get back the things he's been robbed of.

ujie just seems...very bitter about the way he's been treated. when both mitsumi and his unnamed classmate say 'you shouldn't criticize someone who's giving it their all', his eyes just seem to say yeah, but who's gonna empathize with me? no one gives me grace when I'm giving it my all.

he's essentially jealous of the good treatment he thinks shima is getting from their peers. to him, shima's fortune is the cause of his own misfortune.

but along the way he's denied shima any humanity, shima cannot have any depth or trouble in his eyes. i think this is especially easy to see in the ending pannel, after shima confronts him, when he says so that guy is human too — implying he thought before that shima wasn't human because he couldn't understand struggle.

it's a type of ideology that, though an understandable defense mechanism, is very unfair to the people around you.

what specially gets me though, is that ujie tells shima he's ARROGANT for taking the monster role. this is shima, we know he has been behaving against his wishes to please others since he was little. we know he performs to be liked, but despises the attention he gets because they like him for his appearance, his performance, never truly him. when ujie calls him "arrogant", he's implying shima enjoys the empty attention he gets from his peers. and to be told that you enjoy the very thing we know troubles shima the most...i can understand why he got mad.

here's the thing though — ujie understands that the attention shima gets has nothing to do with what he actually does or with who he truly is. he understands it's an empty sort of acceptance, but regardless to ujie it still looks more desirable than his own situation. it might be impersonal but that also means it's unconditional. shima will always be liked because he's attractive.

(to shima though, it's not unconditional at all. he thinks the moment he starts acting truly like himself everybody will despise him)

so yeah. closing thoughts. i think this was truly a beneficial encounter for the both of them. for shima, it helped him get out of his self pity spiral for a bit and acknowledge ujie's point of view. and also he was assertive for a change ! shima exhibiting an emotion that isn't a fake smile or resignated indifference?? what?? i can't believe he actually....got things out of his chest for a change.

and for ujie, i think this has broadened his worldview. he understands know that people as seemingly perfect as shima can indeed struggle as well. the world isn't cleanly divided into Blessed By God and Doomed Forever.

i also hope this helps him get rid of those awful thoughts that he'll never be accepted. if shima is an anomaly, —like he found out today — maybe he can be too. if that little smile in the last pannel is anything to go by, his bitterness might just start to crack :)

[mapoeggplant]

skip to loafer chapter 61 analysis // spoilers

between monster and doctors, the ones who are fit to survive are the ones who are ready to bare their souls to the world — and sometimes, the one to do so it’s the one we expect the contrary.

at first, when i started to think about this thread, i was about to say “we have a chapter with two extremes: one character who’s ready to speak his mind and the other who’s afraid to do so”. but, as fast as this thought came to mind, it also slipped away because…well..they are not that different from each other, are they?

ujjie is tired. tired of people who do nothing but bring other’s down for their own benefits — and tired of being on the other spectrum of things. after all, what gives the right to some to step on others but act with superiority as soon as they taste their own poison? after a long time of being rejected and having his opinions denied, ujiie starts to speak what is on his mind without worrying about any retaliation — after all, what could harm him when he is someone who has nothing in the eyes of others?

having this power allows him to express himself more and fight for his place in the world, as well as serving as protection. this causes him to block himself from relating to other people who are not seen as equal in his eyes. if they didn't listen to him, why would he listen to them? why do they have this right and he doesn't? (and this becomes much more explicit when he has the argument with mitsumi, someone who is really the opposite of him and who tries to see everyone's heart before anything else.)

however, ujiie doesn't realize that he ended up falling into his own trap: what ends up slipping through his fingers is the opportunity to realize that other people also hide much more than he himself imagines.

then shima enters and the concept of appearance starts to suffer a shock. well, in a world divided between monsters and doctors, who knew a monster could have a soul after all? unlike what ujiie imagined, shima is much more like him than he thinks. after all, both were silenced several times and had their desires denied in different ways. while ujiie suffered from the hypocrisy of those around him, shima was forced to accept a desire that was not even his, but that of everyone else around him. both were created by a doctor, but in different laboratories.

and it's at this moment that the second monster has the chance to show its claws: shima is finally fighting for something he likes and for a role that he admires so much. this gives him the courage to feel like he does have the right to play whoever he wants, because he will do his best to make that possible.

shima is starting to change and come out of the glass dome he had previously been placed in. it is now becoming clearer to him where his desires stand in comparison to someone else's that were forced upon him. he is starting to fill up all the things that were stolen from him and is taking them one by one, with his own hands.

of course, not all change comes with serenity: it is still very difficult for shima to understand who he is taking the reins from. even though he now understands that he needs to make his choices alone, the shadows of all those who helped him begin to creep in. "if i have the right to take what's mine back, who should i take it from? if taking back what's mine would mean hurting those who helped me, would i still have the right to do it?"

it's still very difficult for him to see himself in any position other than the fine line between doctor and monster. he can see parts of himself with his character and his battles, but he also finds himself carried away by the speech of others, making him see a little of the doctor, who denies the monster a free life, in himself. that’s why ujiie’s right in his opinion, but that doesn’t mean he will accept it that easily.

compared to all the chapters focused on shima, this is a big leap towards conquering his identity. it's very beautiful to follow shima's growth and see him abandoning the silence that has always accompanied him. sensei chose to give him a chance to find his own voice in a very gentle way, without generating any other trauma that would put him back in a dark mindset. all of this could have taken another form and shima could very well have been forced to take risks that he had never before thought of taking — but that is not the way she chose to write this story; skip to loafer is written on the basis of love, and there is nothing more tender and painful than the struggle for self-love.

in the end, we had a chapter that wanted to show two very different characters but, in fact, ended up showing how the similarities are found in details that would most likely be ignored or overlooked due to the behavior or the way the characters were developed.

this is a technique that i really like in sensei's writing. it always tends to put into combat two characters who, on the surface, have no similarity at all just to then unravel them and make them connect in the end. i don't think this means that we will see a big change in the relationship between shima and ujiie (but i, personally, would love to see the two being friends or at least colleagues), after all habits are difficult to break, especially after just one event. but i believe this showed us readers new ways of reading them. now we have a more in-depth idea of ​​ujiie and his interpersonal relationships and we have a new shima who prefers to face what eats at him instead of absorbing everything for himself.

i'm very glad sensei chose to write this chapter and not jump straight to the trip. we do need a little more ground to stand on before facing what comes next, because that will take a lot from shima and his new power and confidence he found. he would not be able to face mitsumi if he didn't face himself or people who don't believe in him first — he needs to find his own strength to fight this new battle.

as always, thank you for reading 💛 hope you guys liked the thread and the chapter as well!! remember: if you can, please help sensei by buying the chapters or the volumes. also sorry for any mistakes. thank you thank you!!!!

[skippenloaf]

Transactions

I think something I really enjoy about Shima's character and the writing of his arc is how he has conceptualized wants as something that are beyond him - not necessarily because he doesn't have them, but because he believes they are not within his reach unless he is able to offer something of himself in exchange. Especially if that want is affection.

While Shima was definitely deliberately avoiding thinking about his feelings for Mitsumi, I do believe he had some understanding that he liked Mitsumi as more than a friend - that he wanted to be "special" to her.

While he did not (prior Vol. 9/10) conceptualize that "special" connection as necessarily romantic, he was definitely aware enough of that desire to be willing to ask her out.

While Shima has been pretty deliberate about not thinking about his and Mitsumi's relationship, he is incredibly aware of his attractiveness and place in the social hierarchy. From his perspective, romance is not necessarily a connection between two individuals as much as a part of a social politicking system.

This is definitely somewhat just me enjoying #problematic dynamics but I think that there is something very romantic about saying "I'm okay with being used if it's you" haha.

Since Mitsumi broke off their relationship, obviously, a big part of the development that's Shima has been going through has centered on him being able to confront even having desires, but I think they do such a good job with this of showing how his previous disappointments and rejections - largely from his mother - have led to him automatically assuming that others will not be amenable to his wants unless it benefits them in some way.

I think others might have another interpretations, but even this scene:

Is so funny to me because, yeah, obviously Mitsumi wanted some space to cool down, but also would have definitely said yes if he had just asked if he could tag along with her. His tendency to both be indirect and to show the "need" for him to be around are things that ultimately, don't work with Mitsumi.

Mitsumi beginning to move on from prioritizing him as a romantic interest, going back to just treating him as simply a friend - combined with him feeling unstablilized by not being wanted for his role as an object of desire, which he sees as the "value" he offers in exchange - is really what spurred his ask in Ch. 60 imo.

Still cannot conceive of a world where he can just ask for what he wants without needing to prove that he deserves it - or in this case, framing it as almost being "owed" it.

Tl;dr Shima is growing and healing but still definitely still in the torture cube

[piratadelamor]

skip and loafer ch. 53

shima seems to see romantic love as a combination of different attraction factors, where liking someone as a person (for their personality) can be compensated for other things, therefore your standarts are lower when you're romantically attracted to someone. the way he sees it, the highest form of steem you can have for someone is to like them as a person, where these other factors don't matter and what you truly value is solely their personality.

i think it's interesting how mukai introduces this conversation by building a hierarchy of feelings, where romantic love stands on top of the feelings of friendship and of liking someone as a person, because that's one concept i've been personally focusing on deconstructing in my life. it's precisely by differenciating these types of feelings and putting them on a hierarchy that so many people end up in romantic relationships with people they don't really like, or why so many people drift away from their friendships when they start dating someone.

through everyone else's eyes, shima's feelings are romantic, and he doesn't feel like they are, because romance to him means something else. the lines between liking someone as a person, as a friend and as a lover are blurred. and listen, that's how they're supposed be. to love someone as a lover is supposed to mean you love them as a friend and as a person as well. a friend and a lover shouldn't be too different, and liking them as a person is supposed to be the core of both feelings.

i don't think shima is being innocent, like i've seen so many people saying on twt since the chapter came out. i think he's touching something very deep about relationships in our society that so many stories that focus on romance fail to address. in most of these stories, romance is the final goal. that's where most of them end. that's not the case here. i was already surprised when mitsumi and shima started dating, and even more surprised when they went back to being friends. that's not the usual narrative for this kind of story. because here, it doesn't seem like this hierarchy matters. and i think it's beautiful and i think it's HUGE how both shima and mitsumi value their friendship above everything else. not only them, because friendship is one of the main themes of this story. both as a dynamic and as a type of love as well.

but people have different perspectives on love and how love feels for them. it's different for mitsumi, for shima, for mika, for fumi. the way you're taught about love in your family or as a child in general has a big role on shaping that. we saw the matter of mitsumi having received lots of love in her family and childhood friends being brought up before as an explanation for her confidence. then, on the other hand, that's why we see shima acklowledging this on the next panels:

we know a few things about shima's family and their complicated relationships. shima never realized his little brother liked him because he saw his behavior as coldness or indifference, when he was actually being considerate of the distance shima was putting between them himself. he felt the need to please his mother by acting in order for her to love him, or for him to be worthy of her love, because their relationship was too anchored on exploitation. his father was having an affair, which not only made shima watch the failure of his parents marriage but also perceive romantic love as something superficial (as in "people break up and move on to the next person") and possibily as something that pushes people away. then shima's first girlfriend only liked him because of his looks, and so many others confessed to him without barely even knowing him. how could shima trust his own feelings after all of that? if he spent most of his formative years in an environment of appearences where love was tied to selfishness, interest, volatility, coldness, pain? shima learned to supress all his feelings and be a people pleaser as a survival mechanism. don't get too attached, live up to others expectations, keep your distance, smile and wave, bottle it all up. he is a kid that doesn't know a single thing about love and is scared as hell of it. love feels as if something is about to break.

that's why liking someone as a person feels more important to him. and that's not only the highest feeling he can have for someone else, i think this is the highest form of feeling he thinks someone could have for him too. it's the kind of feeling he thinks his own mother couldn't have, because acting was more important to her than who he actually was. it's the feeling he unconciously doesn't allow others to feel for him, because he never shows people who he truly is. so shima understands mitsumi's words as a love confession back in chapter 41. she didn't say "i love you", she said "that's what i love about you". and he asks her out, not only because he already knows mitsumi is different, so it seems more reasonable to give it a try, but also because he thinks this is how it's supposed to go. this is what he thinks it's expected to give her in return.

when society puts romance on the top of the relationships/feelings hierarchy, it builds an insane amount of expectations around it. i think it's crazy how friendships feel so free while romantic relationships feel so enclosured. they have too many rules. you're supposed to do this, and that, and behave in certain ways. if you start dating a friend then suddenly your friendship dynamic changes. a boyfriend or a girlfriend have responsibilities that friends don't have. it's a weight. i can't imagine a person like shima feeling any other way about a romantic relationship. for him, this is a big, big weight. that's why he puts an emphasis when he says "i thought that i could be a 'boyfriend' too". a boyfriend is a social role. when he phrases it like that, he's using the word "boyfriend" as an outside concept: he doesn't know what it means to him, he only knows what it means for everyone else. and that's not something he can do.

mukai is absolutely right when he tells shima he shouldn't be going out with anyone. shima isn't ready to be that close to anyone, not even his closest friends. i can't even describe how sad i felt when mukai said this to him:

shima is just so, so lonely...

but this doesn't mean that shima's supposed to become ready to be a "boyfriend" on those terms. i just think he's still trying to figure out what all of these things mean to him. and the good thing is that mitsumi is also trying to figure out these things too. the difference between them is that mitsumi is a few steps ahead, because she already understands what friendship love feels like. and when it comes to that, she gave us one of the most special love confessions i've ever seen.

so many people talked about this scene already, but now, in the light of chapter 53, her saying "i really like this person" has a whole new meaning. this is the most honest love shima has ever received from anyone. no romantic confession could top that. no romantic feeling could heal his wounds the way these words from mitsumi can. this is a treasure shima can't afford to lose.

we're taught that romantic love will save us. that it will make us the happiest, that it completes us. we grow up believing that we can't survive without it. what we really can't survive without are our friends... skip and loafer is putting friendship above everything else, but more than that, it is questioning how romantic love is supposed to feel. some people feel it, some people don't. i think most of us don't really know what it is. we think we do because we read enough, we saw enough movies, we listened to enough love songs. i think i felt it a few number of times in my life but everytime i felt it for someone new i asked myself, was it really love before? what is it, really? if i never read those books or saw thoses movies or listened to those songs. would i recognize it? would i know it better? would it even exist?

aren't shima's feelings for mitsumi already valuable enough? big enough, true enough? would they change if he called them romantic? mitsumi has SO much to teach him about love, about himself, about others. their encounter is so beautiful and so rich. we see how much he's changing, how many new things he's finally starting to understand about himself, how many important steps he's taken since they met. is finding romance at the end really the most important thing for their story?

[sebbyisland]

A One-of-a-Kind Affection: Skip to Loafer 53

This chapter revealed a LOT about Shima’s character so let’s break it down because oh my god. OH my god.

As was implied in the last page of the previous chapter, Shima is seriously put off guard by his conversation with Fumi. He can’t get over her comment: “Mitsumi-chan isn’t good at anything besides studying, is she?” She directly contradicts how Shima views Mitsumi, and thus prompts him to reevaluate his feelings.

To him, Mitsumi “has this image of always being right.” Keep in mind, Shima has already seen Mitsumi at her worst— from the very beginning, when she got lost in Tokyo! Shima has been there when Mitsumi failed, struggled, or was embarrassed with herself, and each time he only saw the girl who could pick herself up and run towards her goals, loafers in hand. He not only watched these things happen, but tried to give her a helping hand when she needed it, whether it was to encourage her, or help smooth out an awkward social situation. When Shima says Mitsumi “has this image of always being right” he doesn’t mean she is literally always right, but something with much more depth. Shima thinks Mitsumi, as a person, is fundamentally always right and good. Even when she fails. Even when she struggles. These are all things that make up Mitsumi, and therefore are always good (this guy. i can't).

The thing is, Shima himself is not even aware of just how highly he thinks of Mitsumi. He can acknowledge Mitsumi’s strengths and weaknesses, but unlike, say, Fumi, her closest and longest friend, he can't conceptualize objectively seeing Mitsumi's traits as anything other than positive. He likes her personality to the point it borders on putting her on a pedestal. This discrepancy between his opinion on Mitsumi and another close friend of Mitsumi causes him to question who IS Mitsumi, if not what he's been thinking this whole time?

To verify, he asks his friend Mukai, who basically repeats Fumi's words. Now Shima knows this is not a question of who is Mitsumi as a person, but who is Mitsumi to Shima?

(Shouout to Mukai for really helping Shima reach this critical break-through!)

When Mukai brings up the possibility of romance, Shima leaps to reject it because he is uncomfortable with romantic attraction itself.

Besides Mitsumi, romantic attraction always came from people who didn’t really know him and/or didn’t really care to know him. This had the opposite affect, and made Shima feel lonely and unloved. Unlike the most of the people Shima has dated, he actually really likes Mitsumi-chan as a person. There's an emphasis on liking her as a person because these are things he sees as absent or optional in romantic attraction. To describe his feelings for Mitsumi as romance discredits Mitsumi and what she means to him, which is why he asks with a frustrated expression, "Why does it always come back to romance?" Why does "liking someone a lot" have to be romantic?

Mukai hears this and recognizes that Shima seems to see “liking someone as a person” and “liking someone romantically” as separate things, so he tries to compare notes as to how he views romance vs how Shima views romance. On a scale of liking someone "a lot" to "not really" Shima places romance at the very bottom! Romance doesn't mean shit in comparison to friendship, or whatever it is he feels for Mitsumi. This makes sense because, again, Shima understands romantic attraction at best as a surface-level understanding of a person, and at worst as a detriment to the relationship(see: his parents). So there's no way he can like Mitsumi romantically AND as a person.

Mukai explains to Shima that he sees "liking someone as a person is a baseline," which aligns more closely to the common social perception of relationships. You start with liking the general vibes someone has, and then you becomes friends, and then becoming lovers is like the peak of a relationship's level of intimacy and affection. What's interesting is that both boys are correct about their perception of love. Even though Shima doesn't fully agree with Mukai, talking with him provides a new perspective on romance that Shima didn't consider before. Now he can finally consider that romance can add to a realationship's existing intimacy, not detract from it.

For most of the people in the story, as well as the audience, this might seem obvious, but for Shima this is incredibly novel and important, because it means that

Liking Mitsumi romantically doesn't mean he stops liking her as a person

Romantic attraction is another form of intimacy, not a performance or surface-level interaction.

When Mukai describes Mitsumi's feelings as a "one-of-a-kind" affection, he means it in a conventionally romantic way. Shima, on the other hand, understands Mitsumi is one-of-a-kind because he's never had a relationship or feelings like he does with her. He knows Mitsumi cares about him as a person, but before his conversation with Mukai, he didn't consider how romance can be another way of showing that you care for someone.

Romance between his parents only showed how much his father didn't care about his mom. Romance with the girls from school only showed how much they didn't really care about him. But Mitsumi fell in love with Shima because she cares about him, not despite of it. This is completely foreign territory for Shima. If romantic love is also a form of intimacy, then how is that any different from regular platonic love, or best friends? What does romantic attraction even look like?

As Shima recollects all the moments with Mitsumi that are dear to him, he wonders if what he viewed as "caring for someone as a person" were also romantic. Is it romantic to save extra food for someone else to have? Is it romantic to bring someone a souvenir when they go out of town? Is it romantic to teach someone how to hold a crab? These questions don't really have clear cut answers. Only Shima is able to decide what these things mean for him.

I want to bring your attention back to this crab, though. Besides being an adorable little crustacean, Shima's interaction with the crab directly parallels his journey trying to recontextualize romance.

In this scene, the crab is symbolic for romantic attraction. Shima awkwardly holds the crab Mitsumi gives him and expresses that this is an unfamiliar situation for him, just as receiving romantic affection from Mitsumi is a new and concept for him. Mitsumi is content with being able to share the crab (her feelings) with him and getting an honest answer back. The large panel that zooms in on Mitsumi looking down at the crab in Shima's hands draws attention to how content and happy she is spending time with Shima. It further emphasizes that their relationship, romantic or platonic, is about simply enjoying each other's company.

Even though Mitsumi tells Shima how to hold a crab, he ends up agitating the crab, which then pinches him and leave. I interpret this as when Shima initially started dating Mitsumi, he ended up treating it haphazardly, which caused Mitsumi to catch-on and break up with him. Finally, when Mukai, the person Shima was recently discussing romance and Mitsumi with, asks him about the crab, Shima responds in a daze, "I don't know," mirroring how currently, Shima doesn't know how he feels about romantic attraction, or how it might apply to him.

Furthermore, through the depiction of Mitsumi in Shima’s perspective, it’s implied the reason the crab pinches him is because he was focused on Mitsumi, and not holding the crab properly. This reflects the critical miscommunication from when they were dating. Shima was so concerned with protecting his prior dynamic with Mitsumi that he didn’t consider what committing to a genuine romantic relationship would require from him. He didn’t, or rather couldn’t, commit to a relationship as much as Mitsumi did. Mitsumi knew that she didn’t deserve that kind of stress, so she asked to remain friends.

Thanks to Mukai, however, Shima can start to understand that romance is a real option for his own feelings about Mitsumi, and it won't detract from their friendship if it is the case. It's this level of self-awareness that allows Shima to get flustered by Mitsumi getting physically close to him as they look at the crab.

I would even argue that it was the panel I have pictured on the left, with Mitsumi's smile, that is the moment Shima started getting flustered, since that panel is positioned to be in Shima's eye-line point of view, and takes up the majority of its page.

What is Shima thinking in this moment? He has 0 thoughts. Brain empty. Only one-of-a-kind feelings for a girl who he thinks is always amazing<3

I wanna reiterate this is truly such a special moment for Shima because while Mitsumi has always been a special person to him, he now understands that he thinks so because of his PERSONAL feelings. In caring for Mitsumi, Shima is able to care more about his own feelings. It’s a lovely payoff to all of his progress in understanding himself as an individual. He can discuss his personal life with Mukai, a friend who he previously kept at a distance. He can l stand up for himself when he thinks he being mistreated by an old friend. And he can even defend the people he cares about when other’s are inconsiderate to them. This is all part of Shima’s growth into becoming a fully realizing individual, and I’m so glad he’s been given the space to clumsily process all of this while remaining a true friend to Mitsumi.

TL; DR:

Shima truly adores Mitsumi and has only just realized that he likes Mitsumi to a different degree than what would be expected from a friend

Shima has been nonchalant about romance thus far because he didn't think romance was really about genuine intimacy, especially based on his past experiences

The narrative presents Shima's interest in Mitsumi as romantic attraction while taking great care in showing how romance has different meanings for different people and is not always the most important or intimate aspect of a relationship