muse ✨'s manga / #time travel(3)

I've read this as part of another story on this site. This is the first part, where two men - Amano and Takano - who haven't seen each other in 20 years go out for drinks. They're interrupted by Takano's ex-lover, who mistakes Amano for Takano's current lover and punches him. When he wakes up, Amano is back in high school, in Takano's bed, and believes he's in a dream. He and Takano form a close relationship before he's taken back to the future, to find himself in the current Takano's bed. And Takano is angry, because twenty years earlier, after they'd slept together, Amano seemingly forgot everything about it. Also appears in http://www.mangago.me/read-manga/dorobou_to_hatsukoi/

I don't know how I feel about this story. I understand it from the dad's point-of-view to a degree. He had no idea of the actual identity of the person he fell in love with when he was 15, and he has stayed in love with the idea of that person for 22 years. But the son always knew the identity of the person he was with, and he was a few years older at the time because of the time travel so his seduction of the 15 year old felt off. I don't know anyone who would seduce a younger version of their parent; most people would be horrified by the idea. It says a lot about this person's character that he did not. Unfortunately, I didn't feel the writer developed the story enough in order for me to understand why the bond this person wanted so desperately with his father turned into romance within just a couple of weeks. I would've liked more development there. Maybe the son had come to believe he was delusional, that the future he thought he'd come from didn't exist, or that there was no way home. My true wish is that they'd both been using false names, and that neither of them had known. Putting all of that aside and returning to the present where they're in love, this was a story about two people who had once been together for a brief time and found an immense joy and happiness with each other. After they are reunited and their identities are clear, there is a three year gap. They are both unhappy without the other. They make the decision to live together as lovers knowing the relationship can never be revealed beyond the two of them. I wonder if the intention of the story was to explore whether love could be fulfilling if that love can never be revealed to a third person. Is it enough that they live together and have a life together in private? I do not feel this was written in support of this sort of relationship. I think the author chose this taboo subject specifically because it is so taboo. It's the ultimate taboo, isn't it? I think she chose it to force it to stay completely private. There is no one they could confide in. The only option they would have is to move somewhere no one knew either one of them, and hope that because of their different names and the fact that they do not resemble one another closely, they will never be mistaken for father and son. This would have been just as effective as a time travel story without the romance — a chance for a man to get to know his father, and a chance for them to then have a relationship as equals when he returns, minus the sexual content. I would have actually liked to read that.

A foreigner out of time ends up in modern-day Japan and takes up with an office worker. Everyone was pretty but I didn’t feel drawn into the relationship.