it's rare to see a sound review from the mangago comment section lol. i hadn't even considered some of the themes you've mentioned about the story while i was reading it on my own, so what you wrote made me appreciate it more than i already have. i guess it's time for a reread.
You just summarized everything i was thinking about which was too complex to say in words.
I really loved this manga and everything about it
oh my god this is beautiful. and YES agree to everything you wrote
how does it fee to be the most correct person ever
I like this manga so much, especially the way it almost satirizes typical yaoi plotlines/tropes/semes etc.and emphasizes the value of normalcy. I think there’s just a really interesting quality to the main duos’ relationship that’s present in a lot of Asada Nemui’s works. All of her relationships she writes about have some sort of atypical romance element to it, and I think her choice of including a very typical yaoi relationship in Ma-Kun’s past was really smart, and shows his evolution and what he values.
Ma-kun’s earlier relationship is so yaoi—it’s dramatic, he’s the ultimate seme with the ultimate bottom, the sex is amazing and there’s this grand overarching plot. But ultimately he doesn’t find fulfillment in that role, and we as the reader don’t either. There’s an element of artificiality, we’re More drawn to the unfolding basic story of him and Hitoshi. And ultimately so is Ma-kun.
The ultimate lesson is that a non-dramatic relationship, with all its quirks and idiosyncrasies, is where the real interest and fulfillment lies. He tries to do his classic, like, ultimate seme shtick in the first few chapters but it doesn’t work; the “sex” isn’t good for either of them and Hitoshi is just scared. Their relationship develops when Ma-kun stops being a seme and starts being a person who has interests and can meet Hitoshi where he’s at, which is ultimately why I thought the ending where they didn’t have sex and had all these safewords was good