#ritsu x masumi

[dokukoi]

"Would you please fall in love with me again?"

Bokura no Micro na Shuumatsu (The End Of The World, With You) EPISODE 07

[respectthepetty]

Ritsu is the devil.

And because he is shaped in only the way Japan can create a character, Ritsu is truly terrifying. If this was horror (which I will always argue everything Japan does has a psychological horror aspect to it), Ritsu could be a killer or a cult leader, easily.

He is selfish. He is manipulative. He is sinister.

Yet, like Masumi, I want Ritsu to pay attention to Masumi. I want him to touch Masumi. I want him to smile at Masumi.

Because when Ritsu is charming, Masumi is lost. He puts his head down to shield himself from Ritsu's intensity. He turns away and hides his face. He caves.

He tries to create boundaries, but each second he spends with Ritsu is like watching a cat taunt its prey. The moment Masumi turned around in the library, Ritsu had him.

I'm sure Ritsu has his reasons for being this way, but what I feel this show is doing well is showing us that all those reasons don't matter because when all is said and done, Ritsu still became the devil. Masumi seems to have had a a traumatic childhood, yet chose kindness and hope in contrast to Ritsu. Regardless of what happened in Ritsu's past, he still decides every day to disregard people and their emotions. Even as an adult, he doesn't ask Yuma's name before offering him death because it's not important to him. Nothing is.

There are only seven days left before the world ends, and Masumi may very well forgive Ritsu for all the baggage he left him with, but the audience will remember the way Ritsu was casually cruel to Masumi and indifferent with his feelings.

And that's probably why they cast this other devil.

[mysterygrl20]

The End of the World with You Ep2 - Can I have a sip?

[negrowhat]

Spotify Wrapped BL Couples Edition

Rules: Put your top 100 songs on shuffle and assign the first ten random songs you get to a specific BL couple, doesn’t have to make complete sense to anyone but you. This is harder than it sounds, trust me.

Credit to @theflagscene

Clearly this was meant for the end of the year but I've never seen it before today and I wasn't tagged but I want to do it lol. I'm just going to put my favorite playlist on shuffle.

I Don't Know by Seventeen

Alan and Wen from Moonlight Chicken

Time of Our Life by DAY6

Ritsu and Masumi from The End of the World with You

Thinkin Bout You by Frank Ocean

Tan and Bun from Manner of Death

Round & Round by NCT U

Li Gong and Ze Shou from Plus & Minus

Special by GOT7

Tinn and Gun from My School President

Guard You by Young K

Shen Wei and Yunlan from Guardian

Eighteen by KEY

Pat and Pran from Bad Buddy

Dangerously in Love by Destiny's Child

Kinn and Porsche from KinnPorsche the Series

Come Over Tonight by WONHO

Da Un and Si Won from BLUEMING

Can We Talk by Tevin Campbell

Pluem and Kevin from Ghost Host Ghost House

[how-to-be-a-tree]

For the little life we have left, you and I should only do what we want to do. How's it gonna be, Masumi?

[alwayspining]

First kiss things in Bokura no micro na shuumatsu/僕らのミクロな終末 (2023) l ep 2 l dir. Miki Koichiro

[orangemocharaktajino]

[theoncomingchaos]

About Ritsu

I just finished binging “The End of the World With You” and I want to share some thoughts about why I think Ritsu is a really realistic and well made character with an intentionally unfinished, but positive character arc.

When Ritsu was growing up, he experienced love as conditional. When he was successful, he was loved by his mother. When he was compliant, he was loved by his father. That means there are a lot of things about relationships that he never really got a chance to learn growing up.

Some things people from messed up families don’t learn as children are things like how to set and follow healthy boundaries (people tend to have no walls or walls that are too high), how to compromise, conflict resolution, and they also tend to have a more flexible sense of right and wrong because they had to be flexible in order to get by as a child.

Examples of this from the show:

-He doesn’t have a strong understanding of what most people would consider pretty basic rules of relationships. This is both romantic relationships and friendships as seen in the way he wrecks every circle he joins. Even by the time he was 30 he has still not been able to do any of this.

-He was willing to give a high school kid a pill to kill himself and doesn’t see a problem with that. Plus, he was ready to drag Masumi into disposing of the body...

-When the fight happened about his sleeping around, he ended it without trying to talk about it or figure anything out. No compromise. No conflict resolution skills.

He grew up always compromising and doing everything as perfect as possible to please his parents, but in the end it didn’t work. He still ended up tossed to the side in favor of the less capable step brother. This would have taught him several lessons unconsciously. Primarily, that this is the way the world works. People are good to you when they want or need you, but they can’t be counted on besides that.Trying to please them is pointless and hoping for unconditional love is pointless. Thus, he developed his philosophy that you need to take care of yourself first and foremost because no one else will do it.

Based on his actions, we can see he does naturally want to be appreciated and loved. Even the fact that he has a keen eye for when people love him is probably because he is so desperate for it he has a lot of practice looking for it.

Sleeping around with different people, serves his needs in more than the obvious way. Besides sexual gratification, he gets shallow, but instant emotional gratification. He knows these relationships are conditional and short term. He isn’t expecting or even seeking love, so it’s easy. He is nice to them, says the right things, does the right things, and is rewarded with attention the same way he was as a child. (I won’t even get into the father complex he has where he is sleeping around like his father did and is potentially trying to prove his worth or get closer to him by becoming him...)

Of course, all of this is different with Masumi. Both Masumi and Ritsu enjoy spending time together. They were friends first and foremost. For once in his life, Ritsu had someone who cared about him for him- not for what he did for them. It was so comfortable and easy- but of course Ritsu can’t trust or even hope that it’s going to be forever or unconditional. He has never had an example in his life of a loving, equal, or lasting relationship. It’s all transactional.

So that leads us to two big questions:

Why did he need to sleep around?

Because he hasn’t dealt with his issues is the easiest way to put it. He’s only 20, he’s fresh out of his messed up household, he has been needing love and attention so badly for so long and been playing the good boy his whole life for nothing. He’s angry, and he’s tired of playing by other people’s rules. He wants so much (love, freedom, sex, to send a huge fuck you to his parents, etc.) and he’s finally ready to say fuck it and get it all with no care to the consequences because what has the world ever done for him anyway. He needed this time to rebel and go a little wild. He wasn’t ready to face the truth of himself or his trauma.

Why did he break up with Masumi if the relationship was so good?

Unfortunately, he met the right person at the wrong time. He wasn’t emotionally ready for a real relationship with Masumi. The minute Masumi had expectations for him it entered transactional and conditional territory. He wasn’t ready to put himself back in that kind of situation again. Since he doesn’t have strong conflict resolution skills, the best solution was to run away.

His Development in the Series:

After 10 years of living this empty fuckboy life, it takes someone platonic who genuinely seems to care about him and enjoy being around him, to point out to him that the longest relationship he ever had is also the only one he seems to hold onto. No one else has ever loved him as honestly and unconditionally as Masumi.

As Ritsu said, no one was going to be there with him at the end. His philosophy of putting himself first put him in this place where even the only real friend he seemed to have died partially because he was too busy getting laid to be there for her when she needed him.

The fact that he starts trying to find Masumi again shows that he doesn’t want to be alone anymore. He also mentioned that this time he wasn’t going to mess it up. In other words, he was ready to try for real to let him in and to work towards having a real and meaningful relationship.

Masumi’s Trauma:

Another part of what makes it even more painful for the viewer is that we know Masumi has his own trauma where he grew up abused and feeling unwanted. He is also desperate to be loved unconditionally which is something Ritsu just doesn’t know how to do yet. Unlike Ritsu who went out and took everything he wanted, Masumi retracted in on himself and shut himself in to keep himself safe- even doing everything he could to please his abuser. (They are the no-walls and too many walls ends of the spectrum of people with childhood trauma).

The road forward- some people are saying this was an open ending, but it seemed pretty hopeful to me. If the meteor really hit, they would have felt it, plus then there is all that sunshine when they opened the curtain and all that lead up to Yuma’s powers probably being the source of the meteor in the first place. Anyway, on the assumption that they live, their relationship is going to need a lot of work.They are going to need to have better communication about their needs and boundaries. I think Meguru and Yuma will actually be really helpful in being their support group.

As many have pointed out, Ritsu wasn’t really “redeemed,” in the sense that the audience could completely forgive his behavior- and they shouldn’t. It was unhealthy behavior brought about by an unhealthy childhood. The tone used in the series never suggests that we should just forget about it. However, he is making better choices and is finally ready to face his issues and do better- and really that's a huge step.

The theme: The main point of the drama is about overcoming trauma and pain instead of running from it, and finding the beauty and joy in life, love, and the world around you.

Ritsu’s story is unfinished and that’s intentional. He still has a lot of work to do on himself, but he is ready to do it. He is finally able to let go of the pain of his childhood and face up to what he let it do to him. He’s ready to face his mistakes and try to be better. He wants to explore the world and experience it in a new and better way with Masumi. Likewise, Masumi is ready to put his hurt and pain behind him and stop letting fear rule his life.

[thedooristhebluecushion]

Did anybody do this?

Because somebody had to do this.

[saintgabrielqueers]

kind of love that masumi and ritsu took the phrase “went out with a bang” literally and fucked the night before the supposed end of the world was going to happen

[conscbgb]

I had a conflicted rs with this series: I hated Ritsu character and his behaviour so much! I didn't believe in his redemption arc because what he did to Masumi was so heart wrenching painful and unfair...but 👇

The spin-off manga can give you some kind of "closure", "after-asteroid" Ritsu is really different from the ha$$hole he was and it ends in a nice way for them

[chicademartinica]

The way I wanted to push Jae Won in a nearby trash can in ep.03 fam. I had Ritsu war flashbacks.

[respectthepetty]

Can I have a sip?

Japan is showing its true colors with The End of the World with You.

Happy to witness it.

[mysterygrl20]

If I was given another chance, I told myself I wouldn't make any mistakes.

[towardthehurricane]

So far both Masumi and Ritsu were only good at fucking.

They absolutely suck at relationships and basic communication. Also, body disposal? 0/10

Let's see if they will be any better at dying ☄️

[how-to-be-a-tree]

We've come this far, how can I not stay?

E05. "The question that occurs along with chaos"