thank you for the explanation, though a grown man falling for a child while he's growing up still feels weird
I see your point... valid!
you said it right!!
Idk. Tatsumi literally wrote a whole love novel as a love letter to Subaru that was a kid in his mind. He couldn't even accept Subaru being grown up when he came back. And the cherry on top was the novel is literally titled "A Lonely Old Man that Fell in Love with a CHILD". That's enough to constitute as pedophilia, regardless if he touched him or not.
Perhaps, we interpreted things differently. I mentioned that the story does indeed starts a bit weird, and this is also the way that characters see it as well, especially tatsumi. He does think that this started a bot weird and thus he chose the title for the book, he even shows at times that he feels ashamed, perhaps even worries that he somehow manipulated subaru and he is better off without him. These mixed feelings and the picture of the child subaru that he first met, makes him hesitant to move forward in their relationship and so see subaru as a grown adult who is responsible and intentional in their relationship just like him. Because of their age gap, he often sees himself as the only one responsible for everything, even the way subaru feels about him. I actually don't believe pedos care and overthink about all this.
Also, let's not forget that they were in touch all those years, so technically he doesn't fantasize about him being a kid and absolutely didn't write the book for the child subaru.
Things can be interpreted differently and some bls have some weird themes and stuff, so personally i draw the line where those weird stuff don't become uncontrollably uncomfortable stuff that seems like is normalizing stuff. So, this was actually Ok for me.
Well, Tatsumi never actually showed sexual or even romantic attraction to Subaru when he was a child... but as time passed he began to understand the anticipation he feels for Subaru to come back and he understood that this unreasonable longing that has last for so long is love.
But, after this realisation, he still didn't fantasise about the child Subaru he had in mind, and he was fully aware that he has grown up and became an adult.
Eventhough, it is briefly shown in the manga, these two have been in touch for years by emails and stuff... so the emotions haven't grown only because Subaru was an important presence in Tatsumi's life in the past. It is more likely that it has developed over the course of years.
So even if the story starts a bit weird, i liked it and it wasn't off-putting for me. It is not pedophilia as many people have mentioned it, cause that term has specific things associated with it that we don't see in Tatsumi's character.