i don’t know what’s caused the sudden influx of comments lately but i’m glad so many people are discovering pittosporum! this is just. a story i can read again and again and again without getting tired of it, the author managed to create something very hard hitting & visceral in how it portrays their feelings and inner conflict. i’ve posted in these comments before talking about odajima’s self harming through sex but it really is portrayed in such a miserably apt way. like
the way odajima and yano are portrayed against each other is really good. odajima, who’s traumatised by his own attraction to men & keeps forcing himself to engage with women to “become normal” to the point his inner conflict makes him throw up, who so desperately wants to keep the boy he’s in love with away from him that he keeps going out of his way to attempt to sabotage their relationship and scare him off while constantly undermining his own efforts through being kind because the idea of yano hating him upsets him even if that’s his goal…. yano, whose issue isn’t his realisation that he’s attracted to men specifically (because he mentions that isn’t the issue for him + the scene in ch1 where it can be interpreted that it was seeing odajima, not the girl he was with, that caused his reaction & he didn’t realise, as well as his reactions in ch2/3 to odajima propositioning him in ch2 and playing it as a joke, suggest that he is very much attracted to men in general) but instead it’s the idea of actually being attracted to someone and dealing with love that freaks him out because this is something so entirely new for him, ESPECIALLY with how he gets roped into odajima’s own internal struggles because those are what create all of his own inner turmoil….
they’re both absolutely terrified to have feelings and are scaring themselves trying to navigate things & odajima is going out of his way to try and scare yano as well as self sabotage, and it’s a very well-told and well-portrayed mess with such a well-deserved happy ending for the both of them. happy and healing.
i really do wish this series got a timeskip volume because of their exchange with the whole “i won’t be able to accept it if you end things after high school” / “i didn’t come here with halfhearted feelings”. like i need a timeskip volume of them in college w odajima learning how to approach the world now that he’s in a new place free of his past burdens w/ yano at his side and i need them as adults discussing getting married or something. Anything. need to see their long-term happy end because they’ve fought so hard to achieve it
i don’t know what’s caused the sudden influx of comments lately but i’m glad so many people are discovering pittosporum! this is just. a story i can read again and again and again without getting tired of it, the author managed to create something very hard hitting & visceral in how it portrays their feelings and inner conflict. i’ve posted in these comments before talking about odajima’s self harming through sex but it really is portrayed in such a miserably apt way. like
the way odajima and yano are portrayed against each other is really good. odajima, who’s traumatised by his own attraction to men & keeps forcing himself to engage with women to “become normal” to the point his inner conflict makes him throw up, who so desperately wants to keep the boy he’s in love with away from him that he keeps going out of his way to attempt to sabotage their relationship and scare him off while constantly undermining his own efforts through being kind because the idea of yano hating him upsets him even if that’s his goal…. yano, whose issue isn’t his realisation that he’s attracted to men specifically (because he mentions that isn’t the issue for him + the scene in ch1 where it can be interpreted that it was seeing odajima, not the girl he was with, that caused his reaction & he didn’t realise, as well as his reactions in ch2/3 to odajima propositioning him in ch2 and playing it as a joke, suggest that he is very much attracted to men in general) but instead it’s the idea of actually being attracted to someone and dealing with love that freaks him out because this is something so entirely new for him, ESPECIALLY with how he gets roped into odajima’s own internal struggles because those are what create all of his own inner turmoil….
they’re both absolutely terrified to have feelings and are scaring themselves trying to navigate things & odajima is going out of his way to try and scare yano as well as self sabotage, and it’s a very well-told and well-portrayed mess with such a well-deserved happy ending for the both of them. happy and healing.
i really do wish this series got a timeskip volume because of their exchange with the whole “i won’t be able to accept it if you end things after high school” / “i didn’t come here with halfhearted feelings”. like i need a timeskip volume of them in college w odajima learning how to approach the world now that he’s in a new place free of his past burdens w/ yano at his side and i need them as adults discussing getting married or something. Anything. need to see their long-term happy end because they’ve fought so hard to achieve it