#loved the new chapter btw

[swallowerofdharma]

Following the discussion from here. Hoping you don’t mind if I make a new post so that the other one doesn’t become too heavy. I’m answering some lingering questions, but I am also saying that I won’t be dissuaded from treating this manga differently. As said recently*, Yoneda takes such care to give details and context to the story, that it is intriguing to look into things with analytical eyes and I can’t see the problem with it. For those who maybe feel like “the story isn’t that deep”, that is more offensive to the author tbh than to me or others in fandom who write commentaries. * @dragomfry said: “It makes our analyses of her work hold extra weight because there are things that she wants us to look for and derive meaning from (rather than us trying to derive meaning from nothing to begin with)”.

So to clear this first.

I can’t quite see why this story would be distorted into something it’s not intended to be if we approach it under a romantic lens.

I am not debating people for approaching the story romantically, but - because some troubling arguments were made about the recent poll - I will say this. Rape culture takes some arguments from romantic and patriarcal views to defend the aggressors and blame the victims instead: this isn’t romanticism’s fault, but the very fact should be at least taken into consideration. [More on this below**]. So several of the reflections I was writing about framing the manga as romance rather than literary realism were prompted by this issue. And reading your thoughts about the story, I can understand where we differ so much: and that is in how we view Doumeki especially, rather than the rest. Maybe you are not romanticizing Yashiro and his trauma, but you are especially romanticizing Doumeki. For example:

I allow myself to indulge in the romanticism of it all; both of them falling in love at first sight, depressed Yashiro finally finding someone who truly cares about him, Doumeki who doesn’t back down when Yashiro rejects him, Doumeki still having feelings for Yashiro even after he shot him in the leg and pretended not to remember him, etc. There’s so much in this story that’s blatantly romantic, almost corny.

There are many aspects of the manga that I do find realistic in it’s portrayal, such as the CSA, what I don’t find realistic, however, is the portrayal of love, the romance. I find it very idealised and romanticised for the most part (i.e the falling in love at first sight (I’ll get to that), Doumeki being Yashiro’s exact type, Doumeki happens to be impotent which allows Yashiro to develop feelings for him, the fact that Doumeki is completely accepting of everything Yashiro does regardless of how Yashiro treats him, the fact that Doumeki is still in love with Yashiro after he shot him the leg, maybe he even stayed in the Yakuza world just to be near him (although who knows why exactly he did that?) Idk maybe it’s just me but I find it very unrealistic. It’s this romantic idea of „there is this perfect person out there who accepts you just the way you are and you don’t have to do anything to keep them happy, you can even shoot them in the leg and they’ll still love you, they’ll stick around no matter what it takes to be with you“.

I can’t pick and choose what I want to romanticize or not, I have chosen to look at things differently, and I am keeping the same approach when looking at characterizarion. When I look at Doumeki, I see as many problems as those Yashiro has. He is the one depressed imo, at the beginning of the story, he is in much worse shape than Yashiro. Yashiro has a support network, Doumeki was isolated in prison and kept family away when he was released. Doumeki isn’t this strong and stoic person who is in love with Yashiro and is therefore shouldering a burden or enduring abuse in the name of love. I have been misunderstood before on this, but I want to say that I look at these characters without romanticizing either of them. I am not so much interested in looking at who is right or wrong, or to paint one character in a better light and bashing another: I want to understand their differences and how they came to be, how the relationship is affected by those differences. This is why I don’t take a shipper’s approach either, I am not solely focused in their relationship, but in the story as a whole.

There are several posts where I talked at lenght about these characters, because Yoneda gave a lot of backstory, and I encourage who may be interested in checking further. Doumeki has trouble facing or recognizing reality, until reality kicks him in the face, and that is happening to him since the nurse and Aoi. So he is only observing when it suits him. Yashiro established his emotional boundaries plenty of times, and Nanahara is there to corroborate and reinforce Yashiro’s prefereces. Here are some examples, and these are from volume one alone. It is a pretty clear situation, and Doumeki understood it.

I know that people are objecting to the very idea of framing Doumeki as the aggressor in this case, but the power dynamics had already shifted at that point when things went down in ch 24-25. It is the result of an escalation that sees Doumeki hiding his feelings and his arousal, and becoming more aggressive and unhinged towards others during the investigation into who ordered the hit on Yashiro. Yoneda was painstakingly building towards that scene, while also painting a bigger picture and external plot, and there are so many details that I haven’t even touched upon yet, but nothing is filler. And the parallels between Doumeki’s arousal and his violent behavior can’t be easily ignored.

Again, I feel quite powerless and unequipped to persuade those who already formed their opinion. But when given arguments in favor of dismissing Yashiro’s right to object or arguments that shift the focus away from the simple topic of consent, then I have to ask myself why this is happening. **Rape culture does play a role, and as I said, rape culture can and does weaponize some romantic ideas about love. Or against the autonomy of the person, against choice and so on.

I find it very important that Yoneda chose to put those words in the mouth of an ex-policeman, while dressed up as a policeman, and of another abusive detective with the police. Or the fact that Inami commented on Doumeki’s father building a career to cover up his crimes. See these statements from the Wikipedia page on rape culture:

With how difficult has become to search on the web for unbiased results, I am just giving the Wikipedia page not as a source of authority, but as a peer reviewed summary that provides a starting point for research and some bibliography on the subject. For example:

I want to add that I don’t agree with the way the article frames “men” as perpetrators and “women” as victims. That should be corrected and can be misleading. Men have been historically and consistently discouraged to speak up about being victims of rape themselves and often the law didn’t even consider them. And the gendered approach contributed to make so many victims invisibile. There is so much we have to learn.

Again, this post is solely for the purpose of answering arguments or points made directly to me about how we interpret the story in Saezuru. These are my observations and reflections, the links I see, and it is possible because these things are in the manga. And last, I love love-stories. But romance - especially romantic tropes, often reinforced by fandom shipping culture - don’t always equal love to me.

[remynisce]

Love to see the evolution of their dynamic in the latest chapters

[calmparticles]

like glue ?

[artepti]

Fanart for @purble-turble 's DKR/TIme Travel AU! Read it here or look at their art for this AU here!

I always pictured Wukong looking downright terrifying when he found out his successor had been kidnapped, so I wanted to try my hand at illustrating it. :]

[dimeadozencows]

I redrew rambs sprites is there a power strip emoji

🔌 does this count

The descriptions I gave each expression are what they're called in the files :]

Like and subscribe if you'd shed a tear for a bloke who does fuck all

[sapphicfandompirate]

Oof, I cannot fathom the amount of psychic damage Zoro just got dealt by Gaban's dressing down lmao

[tianhai03]

behold. my collection of arthur morgan doodles i kept telling myself i would post (some of these are almost a month old now)

[kulai]

DAY 24: First Date

check this out on twt ! based on ch16 of "between the shadow and the soul" on ao3. ANOTHERR heavy recommendation!

[smiuffzo]

kris!! kris kross applesauce!!

i doodled this on a really small canvas and realized way too late

this is actually a redraw of a piece from like late 2021 or something, old version under the cut (shivers)

everyone say booooo i have no idea what they're even supposed to be doing here lmao that's why i gave them the knife in the new version

[qoldenskies]

torn between wanting to continue writing the next chapter and making another part to that crossover comic ....... cause the next chapter is LONG so it might be better to get ahead

[sunfloweraro]

I’m by no means a seasoned artist, but my lovely friend @tiredgaytheatrekid drew Bunny and Wolfie snuggling and I was inspired to draw this! I hope you all love it as much as I do <33

Also tagging @thatonecrazysidekick (legally I couldn’t not!)

[moonlightmantras]

as someone who used to be a kris knight truther before chapters 3 and 4 released this is genuinely the first time I've ever had a theory about a game be SHATTERED into millions of pieces infront of my eyes and its so funny because i was so confident in it too. usually when I play games that are still getting updated to add on to the story/even when im watching a show that has episodes or seasons come out in an extended period of time i don't even try to make theories I'll just be like "wow that was a very good piece of media can't wait to find out what happens next" and move on but with the kris knight theory I was just like oh yeah this is canon. this is so canon to me Nothing can ever shake this theory. and then here comes THE FUCKING KNIGHT FIGHT IN CHAPTER 3 and it's like. God Damn It

[charcoaledrocks]

guh i hate gay people

[chidoroki]

June 14th, 2025 - Chapter 181's 5th Anniversary

(celebrating with one Emma + one quote from almost every chapter)

[its-all-papaya]

firecrest (overwinter chapter two)

landoscar | 2/17 chapters | ~100k complete

It isn’t on the straight that Oscar makes the move. It’s on the exit. A beautiful, smooth glide around the racing line until he’s clear through the corner. Lando watches his name marker swap places in the standings with Sainz’ and the feeling in his stomach blooms into something near to what he probably would feel if it were Max. Different, though. Pride, probably, but also a twisty category of excitement, a little embarrassing, a little thrill. Like a crush, Lando’s stupid brain supplies, even though he most definitely did not ask.

“He did it!” Emma’s clapping, looking up at Lando to affirm her excitement.

“He did!” Lando bumps knuckles with her when she offers. Oscar did it, he thinks.

[deer-watcher]

"For both bonobos and chimpanzees, the bodies of the dead evoke many emotions. Even if the process often begins with trauma and confusion, typically corpses shift to a liminal status; not alive, but equally not a lump of meat. They're more intensively manipulated than hunted animals, and carried for longer. In some – if not all – cases, the eaters must know what and who they're consuming. Cannibalism is very probably a powerful means by which individuals and groups process the impact not only of killings carried out on emotional impulses, but other deaths too. In other words, it's about grieving. [...] "Shift these scenarios to Neanderthals, and add into the mix their far greater cognitive sophistication, and lives that revolved around using lithics. Suddenly it's not difficult to envision how skills in carefully taking apart hunted carcasses might be transposed into a grieving process that involved butchery and cannibalism as acts of intimacy, not violation."

Rebecca Wragg Sykes, Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art