I rereading the chaters and while Ririko is still a... Unique character to say the least, the possibility of Meguru being the child of the mafia guy does make a bit of sense for the "not DNA test" thing from chapt 1. It's played off as a joke in her will but I wonder if it as her way of protecting Meguru from her actual bio dad... Or maybe I'm giving her too much credit lol.
But it seems Ririko did care about her daughter and probably rather entrusted her with our main characters rather than a mafia boss, which, yeah makes sense
On another note, I'm really enjoying the character developpement from the last few chapters, great story!
how did you figure that out ?
I didn't really figure it out, it was more of a theory, but after the recent chapter it seems my guess was correct! ^-^
What ticked my off was the same scene that Touma remembers in chapter 10
got it
In my opinion (that engages only myself and you do not have to agree) at the end of the day, many stories and this one in particular, are "fantasies". Of course not all of them are, there are a lot of great stories out there that stay grounded and I love them too
.
But Define The Relationship falls into the category of "fantasy", where the perfect man will find himself to the protagonist and love them unconditionnaly... And they have logic defying sex.
I admit that I was not the biggest fan of the latest chapters myself (got a bit long in my opinion) and a content warning would have been welcomed seeing all the readers who where put off by them. BUT, this comic is still a fantasy and thus, do not HAVE to adhere to all the green flags of a relationship. It doesn't own it to you
If you are put off by this, you are well withing your right! You just unfortunatly discovered that this story is not what you thought it was. There are plenty of well thought out Omegaverses out there which discuss the issues of consent that comes with the genre. This is simply not one of them, this one indulge in the "fantasy" of being too horny to reason. Maybe it's not your thing, you don't have to apply morals to this. Fantasy doesn't care about morals. I mean you can, I'm not gonna tell you what to do. But as it's not what the comic was written for, it's not really going to change much.
Non-Consent or Consensual Non-Consent is very prevalent in media because the story is the "scenario" or the "scene", these characters often don't discuss consent because the consent has been established by the reader engaging with the scenario. I don't know if I'm making much sense but once the fantasy started you don't want to interupt it because the fictional characters have to check-in on each others right ?
That's the conclusion I came to after thinking about the recent chapters.
I think I liked it much more upon reread (nearly 3 years after my first reading)
The first time around the ending was so not satisfying to me that it kind of tainted my whole experience of the manga.
Now, I am looking at it with much kinder eyes, it's a very touching story with a lot of great and insightful moments that rings very true. Althrough, and I would preface this by saying I am a queer reader, I would still criticize the ending and the, how do I say this... Lack of queer voices? Despite it being a queer story with queer characters we too rarely see through their eyes, and most importantly we don't get to see their story play out. A lot of the story is "tell not show" and a lot of emphasis is put on the straight characters. It's pretty interesting to have the two side of an argument but it fails to aknowledge that some issues are fondamentally not equals due to society expectations.
That's pretty much all I wanted to bring up, I hope I don't come out as overly criticizing, it was overall a very nice read on the second try but there were just some things that holds me back from loving the story completly.
If you're looking for something with similar themes of queer experience, I would recommand Shimanami Tasogare and Dear Gene (the later being more explicit as the characters are adults, be warned)
I haven’t read this yet but this was a really thought provoking comment. Will come back to it after I finish the manga.
A very nice story, the ML read as very aroace spectrum coded until chapt 7 but with the backstory and the quickness of the conflic resolution I'm not so sure anymore, still it can just be a headcanon :>
Still it presents very nice concepts and I loved how domestic the couple was!
I'd still say he totally is!! It's a spectrum for a reason! Though if the author says otherwise then it's also agreat headcanon.