Responses
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What the hell kind of friend would you kiss in front of everyone and have the nerve to never explain anything to your lover and never felt sorry for kissing another guy in front of him? Everything about their relationship became worse when Alex came, and Jin said Hamura was being ridiculous. This is messed up. I don’t want to say it, but fck Alex and Jin. They’re fcking crazy, they should just leave.
What's really derailing this story, for me, isn't that Jin has a close friend he relies on who's secretly in love with him, if that was all this was. That's not the problem, it's a bog-standard cliché plot but meh, we all read plenty of that. The massive and overwhelming problem/mistake is that Jin and Alex are way, WAY too physically intimate. If it's that ridiculous "Foreigners are more touchy-feely" thing, the mangaka is just doing that trope plain wrong. Yeah, friendship can have much more physical contact in 'Western' countries compared to Japan, but not like this. There's a huge difference between friendly physical contact, and intimate physical contact like Alex and Jin. Why the fuck would you have them hugging and holding hands and getting so close to kissing distance ON A BED, if you weren't deliberately giving them a romantic, sensual physical vibe?? It's way beyond the realms of, "Oh look, what a typical yaoi misunderstanding where Jin has no idea of his touch-feely foreign friend's feelings, and jealous hijinks ensue!" The mangaka is making Jin so unlikable with this, and it's understandably turning readers off Hamura and Jin's relationship. If it's not deliberate, then it's a pretty bad job being done on this story.
Edited to add: And actually, if it IS deliberate, then for gods sake, why??