#duckmetas

[mapoeggplant]

skip to loafer and the "i love you as a person" message

skip to loafer general spoilers

one thing that i'll always be very grateful of skip to loafer is really how they highlight so much the "i love you as a person" mindset — and how that is present in all the narrative, not only on shima and mitsumi's relationship.

this is not only important for the story's target audience, but it also opens the door to a discussion about the value of platonic relationships, which are often "denied" because they are not as "important" as romantic love. and this happens not only when mistumi tells shima that she will like him no matter what happens or who he is — the message spreads to other characters as well.

one of the examples i love most is the moment mika confesses to shima. throughout the chapter, all of her insecurities are exposed and she tirelessly hurt herself saying things like how she doesn't deserve to have someone who likes her in any way (a reflection of the way she was treated throughout her adolescence). this dissolves when shima refuses to throw away the valentine's gift she made especially for him and thanks her for all the care she took with it — an affirmation that her hard work has been recognized and appreciated. this shows mika that she is a person who deserves love and to be valued. for the first time, mika understands that she is being seen as a person, as someone who deserves to be treated well and be recognized.

i know that many people must be thinking that there was an intention for a romantic development in this scene and yes, i agree. after all, mika went to him to confess her feelings. but the way in which the scene was handled makes me think that being seen as a valid person to have feelings was worth much more to her than having her romantic feelings reciprocated — and this, in my opinion, comes back to prominence in chapter 54, when nao, once again, recognizes her pain and connects with it (the appreciation of the "self" when you find someone who understands where you’re hurt).

(...)

(this part wasn't included on the original analysis, but later on I decided to add:

oh my god i was so focused on some very specific scenes for mika that this one slipped my mind and i feel so bad for that! this moment is one of the most important for mika’s development and it also highlight the first time she was seen as a person (by no other than nao). since that day, mika holds nao to a very important place in her heart. i feel that she, at that time, said exactly what mika needed to hear to feel validated and to feel comfortable enough to just go back and spend the night with the girls. if it wasn’t for nao at that time, mika would probably go home and regret ever making this decision — and this ties directly to chapter 54.)

(...)

the second character i want to talk about is yuzuki and all the times he had his identity erased thanks to other people's selfishness.

since the opening of chapter 38, yuzuki talks about how she was always seen as someone whose time was numbered: there was a countdown until the day she achieved "true beauty" and began to be an object of desire, no longer a person. this not only happens thanks to the disgusting adult men that surround you, but also thanks to the friends she tried to make in middle school, one of the most important times of a child’s life, phase where they are beginning to recognize themselves as a person.

yuzuki is simply seen as a object of status to the boys in her class, while to the girls, she’s someone who was only interested in "diminishing others with her beauty" — something she never did, but never even had the chance to defend herself. 

Thanks to that, yuzu is forced to grow up without having an identity of her own, but one forced on her, causing her to rebel and refuse to open up to new people. she had her feelings denied, being defended only when there was a sexual/romantic interest in the mix and forced to believe that she was being selfish for denying such a privilege of being "spoiled" and "admired" by everyone, all the time.

yuzu gets her chance to be valued as a person when she enters high school and meets mitsumi and the other girls. she is, for the first time, seen as a person, seen as a yuzuki, seen as someone who has the right to impose herself and be selfish, something she has never been able to be before. her feelings are not diminished or seen as "not valid enough” but most importantly: she’s finally heard. 

and then, i think we have one of the most important “i love you like a person” moment: the breakup chapter. chapter 46 is a huge twist to skip to loafer’s romantic narrative, which i myself appreciate a lot. kind of a personal twist here, but it’s a breath of fresh air for someone like me, a demi girl, who always had a little trouble with understanding love when i was their age — and now, basically ten years later, mitsumi’s words not only reached shima, but it also reached me and other thousands of readers who needed to hear something like that.

but well, let’s get back on track. chapter 46 is one of the first times we see shima talking about his past relationship with other people and going a little more in-depth with his relationship with his mom. the core message of it all and the core line that guides all of his personal connections is very simple and highlight why shima have so many trust issues: no one ever saw him as a person, but only as a status object, as someone who was there to be used for their own benefit. shima was used by his mother when she forced him to keep on acting, was used by his peers in a situation a little similar with yuzuki (ofc not completely equal, because we need to remember that gender roles also have a huge influence on how both stories developed (see ririka, for exemple. i have a whole thread on her as well, but this is another topic), when both felt like they were nothing but puppets to the ones around him. 

when shima is sitting by mitsumi’s side, he starts to wonder if he really deserves all of that, if he really deserves someone like mitsumi near him. he doesn’t understand his feelings as a whole, because he was never given the opportunity to really explore them and try to dissect it all — this is brought up once again on chapter 53, when he starts to discuss with mukai what it means to love someone in a romantic way (and why loving them as a person isn’t enough on society’s eyes). 

he’s not, at any point, using mitsumi or making fun of her feelings. imagine if you were never allowed to think for yourself and then, suddenly, you have the freedom to do so. how does one express something they never had? how does one understand what it means to have a feeling, any feeling, if all they ever felt was guilt?

and that’s when the bigger bomb hits the scene: mitsumi, seeing how troubled he is, shows how important he is and how she values him as a person. it might seem silly to a lot of people, but just hearing someone saying “i will always like you as a person, no matter who you end up being” when all you ever heard in your life was how useless you were, makes you whole world crumble on the spot. he was seen, he was heard, he was understood. mitsumi valued him to the point of assuring him that a romantic relationship wasn’t more important than the platonic one they had. isn’t that beautiful?

to finish it off, i think the conversation the girls have on chapter 57 is also extremely important to the narrative and to the overall message. by not wanting the girls to see shima in a terrible light, mitsumi is, once again, putting their relationship as friends above any other romantic relationship they could have. she shows how much she values him and how much he is important to her — she sees shima as a person, not as an object. 

and then, makoto comes to picture with a beautiful speech about how loving someone (any kind of love, not one or another) is to hope that they are happy, content, being taking care of and being comfortable with their own feelings. by forcing someone to feel anything you selfish want, you’re not valuing them as a person with their own feelings and insecurities, but only seeing them as a way to satisfy yourself.

of course, i’m not here to defend everyone and say that they never hurt anyone. yes, shima did hurt mitsumi and she still not completely over it, but she’s way worried with losing him as a friend than forcing something out of a relationship that both don’t feel very comfortable with. mitsumi herself is also someone who is slowly understanding her feelings and understanding what it means to love romantically — but never putting the platonic side aside, since there is no right way to love someone.

thank you so much for reading!! i hope i was clear about the points i was trying to bring up, but i'm always open to discussion!!! 💛

[mapoeggplant]

skip to loafer chapter 60 analysis and brief character study on shima // spoilers

a light and fun chapter that hides something between the lines: how frankenstein's loneliness and revolt becomes a mirror for shima's feelings

(since the translation is very fresh, very very close to the release of the chapter, i will try to use the raws more. this is a way to make you curious to read the translation and also to support sensei in a way! hope you guys understand)

it's actually funny how much i'm surprised by every skip to loafer chapter. of course, some things i feel were expected to happen, but others appear suddenly and drive me completely crazy — that's the gift of takamatsu, who’s able to have fun with her own characters to the point of unfolding a delicate writing, that's much deeper than it appears to be.

i think it's cute and fun how shima's jealousy starts to be used as a comic relief in the story. it's something very innocent, which doesn't harm either party, but rather makes something new bubble up inside him, a feeling he wasn't familiar with before. he knows how it hurts to see mitsumi with other people and how he wants to be close to her, but he still doesn't have the necessary repertoire to express exactly what he feels.

and then, to add an additional element to the plot, sensei chooses frankenstein as the play for the school festival, shima's second great performance. she chooses a story of loneliness and desire, of a monster made of scraps of other people who tirelessly seeks his space in the world while being denied by his own creator — doesn't that sound a little familiar to you?

shima is, whether we like it or not, a fragment of other people's expectations. he is everything his mother wanted him to be, but also his broken expectations. he’s also made up of all the desires he represses and the times he was used by people as an object to be displayed. shima is a monster made of other people's expectations who seeks in other people's warmth a way to find a cure for his own loneliness.

and this ends up being even more explicit when he shows that he is truly happy and fulfilled when acting in the play. for the first time, he's not doing this for his mother or any adult's validation: he's doing it in the name of himself, his wants and his own way. he is slowly making peace with acting and his complex feelings surrounding it.

but, like it or not, shima still hasn't gotten rid of all his traumas, and this becomes slightly clear when sensei chooses to make a game with the lines of two different characters: shima and his internal monologue versus ujiie, a person who has slowly been causing him some complex feelings.

"i thought to myself it would be nice if i could perform this role better than anyone else" followed by "isn't that the bare minimum?". it's as if ujiie, unintentionally and through no fault of his own, was embodying a mixture of shima's personal ghosts and all the expectations that were thrown at him throughout his life.

isn't that the bare minimum? you've lived your whole life playing the role of someone who wasn't you, of a puppet. so...isn't that the least you could do? facing the scientist who created the monster, wouldn't that be a way of being able to face everything that was built in its place?

i think it's beautiful the way that sensei plays between shima's old feelings and these new ones that he's been discovering little by little. yes, he is finding happiness in acting again, finding his space in the world, but he is also developing a new feeling that he has never felt for anyone before. seeing mitsumi surrounded by so many other people gives him a somewhat irritating itch, which he himself doesn't know how to resolve — after all, he's a teenager, no teenager really knows how to resolve such complex feelings.

this makes him expose his neediness. seeing mitsumi, the girl he likes so much, surrounded by people who aren't him, makes him act like a needy teenager who doesn't know how to ask for attention.

different from what the girls thought at first, i don't think shima tried, in any way, to manipulate mitsumi. i really agree with yasaka on this part and i'll add even more: i believe that even he doesn't really know what he's doing. not even he knows exactly how he feels about mitsumi. but what he feels, at the moment, is an enormous desire to be with her and have her all to himself. he just needs to find a way to express his feelings in a clearer and more rational way (but i think that will take a while). It’s almost like the monster on his journey to find his beloved.

now about the other parts of the chapter: seeing the girls come together to discuss something that mitsumi was so afraid to tell before makes my heart fill with joy. seeing a group of girls so unique, so concerned about each other and so comfortable opening their hearts to each other makes me happy in a surreal way. i love, love, love the way in which sensei develops their friendship and how she always, always tries to show how much the girls are willing to help mitsumi even without knowing exactly how.

reading "yeah, none of us have that much experience with dating" is so cute to me. they are teenagers, they are also, for the first time, facing a wave of new feelings, new challenges — and the great luck is that they have each other to support and seek help.

i'm also very happy how yazaka is, little by little, gaining new friends and opening up more. i confess that in the past i didn't know exactly how to interpret her character, but now i want her to get more and more involved with girls. she deserves to have a group of friends who count on her to express doubts and seek help, just as she also needs that same support system.

well, as the girls said "all we can do is watch over them" and that's exactly all we can do too. i believe that this journey of self-discovery, for both shima and mitsumi, still has a long way to go and i think this is extremely special. this just shows how much they both love each other as people and are willing to try to meet each other halfway so that all their feelings are equalized.

once again, we have an amazing chapter in our hands. sensei keeps getting better and better, surprising us every damn time. i'm just so happy to be able to read such beautiful story and lucky to experience all of this. we're so damn lucky. remember: please support sensei if you can, by buying the chapters (via comic days or the online version of the magazine or the volumes). thank you SO MUCH for reading!! will love to discuss more with you all 💛

[mapoeggplant]

nao and her new teenage years

the greatness that nao's presence has in the girls' lives is undeniable, but we also need to remember how she is finally receiving a second chance through them, how being by their side allows her to find peace with her own adolescence.

she did voice her feelings before, about how conflicted she feels when she sees mitsumi living the teenage years she never had. on one hand, she’s extremely happy for her niece, but on the other, it’s hard for her not to feel any kind of pain for her teenage self, who was denied of so many things. it’s a very understandable feeling, even more understandable when she shares how guilty she feels for having them. it’s not that she resents mitsumi for having what she once wished, it’s just hard to brush the loneliness that followed her.

however, what i find it beautiful of it all is how mitsumi and her friends are allowing her to experience this adolescence she once wanted, and she even chased that forgiveness by taking them with her to her hometown, a place she never came back to. she’s taking care of them and making sure they are safe and healthy by taking care of them at a certain distance, having respect for their feelings and need for personal space. all she offers them is a hand to hold and a place to go to, something she never had for herself.

nao is not only teaching them, but she’s also learning. she’s not only bringing mitsumi’s friends to her hometown to find a reason to go back, she’s showing her past self how happy she is now and how she can guide the ones around her to be as happy as they deserve.

i think this is one of the beauties of skip to loafer: how gentle it is to its own characters and their own experiences with youth. it respects each characters own trajectories without making them collide; instead, their own trajectories serves as a way to impulse other’s.

BONUS (just a little thing I noticed after someone replied to my thread on twitter):

also about this, i just thought about how nao finally had her talk with her mother while she was working on her garden, something that she always admired, as she once told mitsumi about how beautiful her grandma’s (nao’s mom) hards are

[mapoeggplant]

shima’s development and character core // skip to loafer spoilers

if you’ve been following me, you know i like to pay a closer attention to shima’s growth and development, specially related to his relationship with mitsumi. that being said, i want to talk more about how much he changed after the breakup.

since chapter 46, i’ve seen a lot of changes in shima’s reaction, focusing way more on him double questioning himself and his feelings related to the way he treats mitsumi.

it’s painful. mitsumi was his first female friend and the first time he ever felt like taking a step further in his own, not accepting what it was given to him. and he lost that. and he thinks he lost it because of his own mind and insecurities, blaming himself for everything.

mitsumi, the person he loves the most (platonic or not), is distant from him. and this creates a whole new book of feelings: jealously, guilt, self hatred and impulsiveness. and that can be seen when he stands up for people he love, something he would once just not and smile.

but does he really has the right to do so?? is it honest for him to correct someone when he was the one who was once “using” with mitsumi without knowing his feelings first? is it fair for him to feel like this? is it fair that he be heard?

yes, he is hurt. it’s clear in his eyes, specially his last scene on chapter 50. he’s hurt but not by the things people did to him: he’s now the one who inflicted pain and doesn’t know how to get back what he lost. that’s because he doesn’t KNOW or even ALLOW himself to it.

what does it mean to love someone romantically when he never once felt jealous? what does it mean to care so much for someone when he was never cared to? what does it mean to give up of someone you love so dearly if he can’t even let it all go? how does one stop making excuses?

shima is a character written beautifully, specially because of his slowly but steady growth. he’s learning, finally having a life away from his trauma and away from people who chained him. he’s finally allowing himself to feel pain, now he needs to finally allow himself to be loved and to be heard. to build one’s confidence is hard and tricky, specially for a boy who never had a life of his own. to build a castle with only sand, one needs to be open to have it all crumble. he just needs to learn how to build it again.

what i love the most is how he never blamed mitsumi, not even once. i know there’s nothing to blame mitsumi for, but i’ve seen over and over again romantic stories blaming the girl for the male insecurities. but no. not right now.

his battle is his own, so his soldiers are the ones going to war, not mitsumi’s. he’s not the one to be pitied, nor is she, nor anyone. blame isn’t something to be shoved at someone, specially not to the girl who has nothing to do with HIS traumas.

i like and admire this about takamatsu-senpai’s writing. she doesn’t shift the blame or even makes shima the “good guy”. mitsumi isn’t a monster for standing up for herself - in fact, she should be celebrated.

shima is his traumas. shima is his mom’s expectations. shima is the empty house he comes back to everyday. shima is the boy who’s trying his best to finally understand his feelings and go after the girl he loves the most.

🌟 thread originally posted on twitter!

🌟 this is a flux of conscience! please forgive my gramatical mistakes

[mapoeggplant]

skip to loafer chapter 58 analyze // spoilers

takamatsu-sensei continues with her beautiful and delicate writing, respecting her characters so that they themselves come into their own at the right moments — extending even to the secondary characters.

when i first opened the chapter and saw kazakami, i confess i was a little surprise. on one hand, exploring more of his character was something i was waiting for so long. on the other, it surprises me how she chose such moment to explore him a little further, but now I understand why she did it.

while we see the ending of the summer trip and mitsumi opening up to her friends as a closure to a long storyline, we do have to keep in mind that it only opened another door, way more tricky to explore. to dive deep into that right away would give her little to no time to explore the other characters that englobes the narrative and makes it function. it’s such an intelligent way to keep the plot flowing and adding more details to it.

well anyways, i digress. let’s focus on kazakami for now:

i’ve seen a lot of people often calling him a little selfish or self centered before, since the little scenes we had with him, his posture were always nonchalant. for me, it always felt like something was off, something he was hiding. not that i was sure about it, it just felt like “hm…this comes from a place of defense”. giving up soccer and focusing on being the president, for exemple, gave me an impression of him trying to find a distraction and a way to keep boosting his curriculum. and now, with more information, i have my doubts.

for kazakami’s backstory, sensei uses a plot she’s been using for a while: the “show not tell”, where she explicit give us a little of said character as a way to keep us going — for shima, the scandal; yasaka, her bedroom; now for kazakami, it was dive. opening the chapter with him pretending to be the main character was a very smart idea. that instantly broke the image we had of him, as this serious, ironical guy, specially after how ch 57 ended. now, we clearly see he’s just a boy with his own story and interests.

that brings the reader closer to kazakami (specially since us, the readers, also love anime and such lol). and she keeps on “showing, not telling” when she choses to show how kazakami is on school first to later expose his life at home.

that wall he build, that nonchalant attitude, it’s all a result of strict parents. it’s not that kazakami doesn’t want to be a normal teenager with interests: he was raised with the mindset of productive rather than pleasure. he was repressed into this box and feels guilty to break from it — by doing that, he’s afraid to sound ungrateful and selfish; that’s why he just swallows his food and accept his fate. the next day, a little more gasoline is added to the fuel. kanechika is the exact opposite of him, the perfect description of “freedom”.

but he also is someone who’s fighting for his dreams, someone who have his parents approval, someone who never let go of his interests and still have a bright future ahead of him. it’s frustrating for kazakami. he had to let go of everything in order to have the same future of the the “authentic” guy who never let go of anything. it’s a slap on the face, specially when kanechika holds dear the same thing as him: dive. the contrast between both characters is amazing and

i’m glad sensei chose to explore both at the same time. yes, we do focus more on kazakami, but we know a little about kanechika’s future and we also know a little more of his personality (i mean, he ran after kazakami just to talk about anime. he is observant, he can see that there is something more there). it’s a balance between narratives to maintain the equilibrium and use kanechika’s kindness as a way to tell more of kazakami’s backstory. but this is a conversation we will only continue when the next chapter is out…

thank you for reading it!! i’m sooo excited with what sensei have in store for us and can’t wait to discuss more with you guys

[mapoeggplant]

skip to loafer chapter 59 analysis // spoiler

the battle between who you are, who you want to be and what people think of you: who do you trust to form your identity?

when i read chapter 58, i had this whole idea in my head for the next chapter. i thought kanechika would get closer to kazakami and help him get a little more comfortable with himself. well, i wasn’t entirely wrong. what i forget to consider was how sensei always have a card on her sleeve, ready to surprise us at any time. and this time, the surprise came in form of a teacher.

but first, i want to start with the obvious: the conversation at the beginning of the chapter. after having so many internal battles, kazakami is left with nothing but shame of himself, his hobbies and his recent outburst. he’s feeling defeated and alone, with his internal voices giving more and more power to his parent’s. and suddenly, a boy with dreams as big as the world stop him on his tracks and break his walls.

for the first time on the chapter, kazakami receives his first confirmation: yes, it wasn’t right of his parents to do that to him. just having someone outside of his personal zone blasting this out loud made it clear to him, made it easier to see. that’s why there was no need to go grab his figures back — all he wanted was a confirmation of his pain, someone that would be brave enough to say “this is wrong and you have the right of being hurt”. there was all he needed; nothing solid, but words as concrete as the burden on his back.

i love how kanechika was left surprised because of it. for him, it was easier to just go and resolve the misunderstanding. that’s the contrast between them: one who moves thought actions and the other who moves through words. and that was the best opening for the next scene, with the ace card sensei pulled: hanazono.

i don’t think i’m wrong when i say that it wasn’t surprising to see how everyone was acting when they found out she was pregnant — the prejudice, the side eyes, the judgment. and kazakami wasn’t innocent in all that: he also had a previous image of the teacher on his head, having it a little shaken after hearing her words. he’s once again grabbed by the neck and forced to look outside of his box, once again having to face his own past judgments.

hanazono isn’t the type of person he thought she was. she’s bolder, more assure of herself and with strong convictions. she’s someone who manage to look at herself in the mirror and ask the hard question: who are you? who do you want to be?

contrasting with what kanechika had to say (as in, giving voice to a feeling he already had, but couldn’t put a name to it), hanazono challenge’s him to see everything from another perspective. “the person i thought i was isn’t the right one so…who do i want to be?”. he’s now left with more questions than he had before. so…is it right to give up on everything he loved just to seek the future his parents want? the “self” he seeks to find, is it the one who’s a proud diver fan or the one who has nothing but someone else’s dreams?

this is very, very confusing for an adolescent who had it all stripped from him. kazakami thought he had an idea of himself before, but it’s all proving to be wrong as the time passes. he wasn’t someone that get sad about figurines — but now he heard his feelings out loud. he wasn’t someone who would lose his time with football, girls and other frivolous things — but is he the one who his father want him to be?

sensei has a talent for portraying confusion and deep, weird emotions we all felt as teenagers (the seek for our identity, the chance we need to be who we are), so it wouldn’t be different now. what we’re seeing of kazakami is only the beginning of his journey of finding who he is and who he want to be. and now, to make things even better, we have a new mother who’s ready to show the world how strong and capable she is without all of them.

thank you for reading!!!! what a nice feeling to have another amazing chapter, huh?? hope you guys liked it, will love to discuss it more with you 💛

[mapoeggplant]

skip to loafer chapter 56 analyze + brief shima study // spoilers

summer vacation is over, which means we’re all coming back to tokyo. for some, it’s time to bask in the memories they created, however for others, the harsh reality comes creeping in again.

one thing that i absolutely love about takamatsu’s way of constructing a chapter is how she easily mixes the youth of the characters (the girls talking about crushes) with the obscure subplot she has been creating up to now (shima’s backstory). the change between subjects isn’t harsh or out of place: everything happens in a simple flow, ending in a calm scene to tie it all together.

so, let’s start from the youth: it’s amazing to see how mitsumi was the step that the other three girls needed to finally be free enough to be a teenage girl, something they prevented themselves from being before. she’s the one who manages to ease their worries and let them be free to talk about things teenage girls should be talking about — and they decided to choose one of the cutest subjects ever: crushes!! makoto being the one to bring this subject up just shows how she grew and how much she trusts the girls, since she was always apprehensive to touch on certain subjects. and this talk was the perfect opportunity for mitsumi to get a little more courage to talk about her relationship with shima with the girls, and choosing to do that in tokyo shows how much she cares about shima, since she doesn’t want the girls to think badly about him at any point.

ok, now let’s jump to the subplot, the one that i love to analyze so much. well, we all know that i had a gut feeling that shima didn’t say anything about the trip to his mother — first because we saw nao-chan talking to all the parents, minus shima’s, and second because, by the little we know about shima’s mom, it’s easy to say that she would never allow shima to go there empty handed. so i can’t say that i was surprised by the outcome of the confrontation. 

i think first i have to focus a lot on shima's reaction towards his mother. the scene opens with shima entering his room and noticing that things were not the way that he left before the trip, showing from the beginning a breach of trust. even if his mother had the best of intentions (like, for example, keeping her son's room tidy), it is difficult for shima to understand this act as something affectionate and not as a way of showing that she doesn't trust him.

after that, we have the big showdown. there is no way to defend shima in anyway with the way he acted and what he did. he traveled miles from his mother, without her having any idea about it. this is extremely dangerous, any parent would be desperate to receive news like this after days. i don't blame her, on the contrary: i think she’s more than correct in confronting him about this.

but for shima, this concern doesn't come from a loving side, from a worried mother. shima still sees his mother as that manipulative and controlling person he grew up with and had so many conflicts with, so hearing all of this only a desperate need to get out of this situation as fast as possible. she already broke her son's trust as soon as he entered the house, so it's very easy for him to assume that this is another one of her controlling attitudes.

but there is an interesting point in all this. after the fight, shima begins to reflect on her mother's changes and asks a very important question: am i still mad at her or am i just being stubborn, like a child who expects something in return?

this shows a maturity in his character, as it is the first time he stops to analyze what all this means inside his chest. would it be rebellion? love? distrust? a cry for help?

shima's relationship with his mother is still something that requires a lot of growth and development for it to make a significant change. in my opinion, it won't happen now or in 5 chapters, but much later, something like an ending to shima's arc, a way to embrace all of his growth. it’s as if she represents the beginning and end of his journey.

aside from his mother, now we have two new pieces to this puzzle: the unknown man and a very new image of shima (the image of him walking with other boys, on the panel where he thinks about his feelings towards his mother). what we have left is to have an idea of how many pieces we still need to assemble the final image. what happened? who was responsible? is this the man who ruined it all? or he was just another victim of the circumstances?

(something that is not related to these questions but that made me think was the fact that ririka sent him the photo. could this be a form of provocation or just a way of finding comfort?).

crabs are no longer shima's only concern at the moment. his harsh and difficult reality came back to the surface with full force. and i, who thought we were close to the climax of his arc, am shocked to realize that we are nowhere near halfway there.

to finish: mitsumi's speech about how tokyo is finally being a new home for her. this is something that makes me so happy, that brings me so much peace, especially with nao-chan's happy and relaxed face next to her. tokyo is finally mitsumi's second home, and she's happy to be able to return to it.

another month and another amazing chapter, another reason to be so excited for what's to come. this is takamatsu-sensei's power. thank you for reading me rambling and for all the nice messages you guys have been sending me 💛 it means the world!!

[mapoeggplant]

skip to loafer chapter 53 // spoilers

the analogy of between a crab and falling in love: what’s hidding in between all the sand that shima hides himself in?

this chapter kinda encapsulates a lot of unresolved plots and bring back things that were discussed before, as a way to, little by little, start to close shima’s arc on understanding his feelings. and, for my happiness (and for a lot of you guys reading me, i supposed), we finally had a confirmation that shima doesn’t quite understand or can’t even separate his feelings inside him, all because of his history with rejection, broken family, and the coldness of the ones around him. the boy, who tries to grasp his sandy feelings, who stubbornly kept slipping between his fingers, is finally dipping his toes in the ocean.

what mukai and shima discussed at the sauna is very important for a lot of things. not only for the present narrative, but for a context in general about how skip to loafer deals with feelings and love. instead of approaching a safe solution and going for the “she was the one who could save him”, takamatsu-senpai chose to go through the more complicated and bumpier road: she started to make her own characters question the idea of romantic love that was shoved down their (and ours) throat since they were born. 

is not that shima doesn’t love mitsumi — he just doesn’t understand the concept of romantic feelings or how everything “ends” with it (it was interesting to me how he said “ends”, the never-ending idea that romantic love is the final goal. it never “starts anything; it’s always “the end” of things). for him, everything falls in the same blurry and messed up category and end as easily as it started. however now, after years and years of being shutten down and used for people’s own selfish desires, shima is finally free to think and act for himself. but we don’t learn to swim at the bottom of the ocean: we need to start at the beach.

mukai telling shima that he’s often shutting people down and pushing people away without noticing was there for two main reasons, in my opinion: one, show a little more about mukai himself and his own feelings in relation to shima, a friend that he holds dear and wants to see opening up a little more, warming himself towards others; and two, to make shima start to question “what am i doing to the people that care about me?”. this is a trigger that sensei used to bring back a lot of important moments between shima and mitsumi and connect the dots inside his head. what i didn’t expect was that she would such beautiful analogy: a crab.

by swimming around their past, shima starts to ask himself: how does mitsumi feels about me. it’s funny how, even after all that conversation with mukai, he didn’t start with the obvious and questioned himself. he was thinking about her — about the other. what brough him back to his own heart was the girl herself, without both even realizing it.

grabbing the crab in the middle of it is the safest option. you’re protecting yourself of a possibility of being hurt and are able to maintain a safe distance from all the dangerous attributes of the crab. by always staying in the middle of his own feelings and never really going for the claws of his own mind, shima maintained his safety and “never got hurt” (and here i strictly mean hurt by his own ghosts, who he tried to deny instead of facing it). i mean, if he doesn’t move, they won’t be able to attack him. if he stays protected, there won’t be a necessity of changing what you know so well.

but…there’s always a first time, right? and i don’t mean this only for the act of holding a crab: this might be shima’s not only first time doing so, but also the first time he ever felt something different for someone — something more. something he never met before. 

and mitsumi, on the other hand, appear serene on his eyes. she did have her first time already — and was bitten by the crab. she was the one who put herself out there and risked being hurt. and, unfortunately, he was the one who made this happen. 

by shima’s reaction (the full-on blush), it’s easy to interpretate that he had some kind of realization and that…well...yeah it involves the crab. and mukai. and mitsumi. and the beach. and the ocean. and the sand, that he could never grasp before. what did he realize? he himself isn’t sure, as he tells mukai (“how was the crab?” “i don’t know). and, well, how can someone who has never seen a crab be so sure that what they are seeing is, in fact, a crab?

sensei made it clear, with all the words, with mukai being a sensei for a day: shima is, for the first time in his life, having to deal with a feeling that’s completely new and scary for him. romantic love isn’t easy. for a kid who grew watching his own understanding of romantic love (his parents) be so broken and twisted, romantic love is something that can only cause harm. so no, it’s not that he doesn’t understand love per se: he just doesn’t know how to approach it within himself. it’s up to him, now, if he's going to sing his hands in the sand and find the answer for all the questions he’s dealing with. 

as for my last words, what i want to remind everyone: no, it won’t be resolved so fast. not next chapter and, maybe, nor the next. i mean, why should it be? love, be it platonic or not, isn’t something to be forced out of someone. it’s something that requires more than a simple “yes or no”, something that doesn’t grow overnight. none of them are wrong. mitsumi never imposed something on him, she only did what her heart told her to do. shima never wanted to hurt her in some way — in fact, this is one of his biggest fears, up to now. they both are trying to understand themselves, the world, and the universe. they are in the apices of their teenage years, in the apices of committing mistakes for dumb reasons and for sealing peace with simplicity. they all have lot of different crabs with lot of different meanings hiding inside their particular beaches. it’s up to them if they are going to start digging it or not. 

and, as always, thank you thank you so much for reading what i have to say and my crazy rambling. i hope that we can now start a great discussion about it 💛 oh and people!! don't be afraid of talking to your crab — sometimes they know more bout us than ourselves 🦀

🌻 this analyze was originally posted on my twitter

[mapoeggplant]

skip to loafer chapter 57 // spoiler

skip to loafer once again reming us that romantic love isn’t the only way to love someone wholeheartedly.

i’m extremely happy that we finally have the girl’s reaction about shima and mitsumi’s relationship, but what makes me even happier is the way mitsumi is treating the whole break up and the way she’s always taking care of the people she love.

we all know how hard it was for her to open up with the girls, afraid that they would, somehow, treat shima differently. for her, what mattered the most was her friendship with him and how much she cared for him and his well being, not romantic love or anything like that.

to see this on a teenage slice of life series is SO meaningful and SO important. it really highlight the importance of platonic feelings and how valid they are, about how it’s important to love someone for who they are, and not something exclusively romantic.

exactly what makoto wanted to say: to love someone (with “a capital L”) is to hope they are happy, content, being treated right and comfortable with who they are, whit what they are feeling. that what it means to love someone, not something only based on romantic feelings.

why does it matter so much if they broke up if they are still friends that care a lot about each other? why would they risk losing something so important for them when their own feelings were so hard to understand? why not love someone platonically?

i’m just so overwhelmed with happiness. it means so much to me that mistumi was able to open up and REALLY get in touch with her feelings and her ONW well being. she’s not being selfish, she’s not playing with anyone’s feelings: she’s focusing on what she believes is right and what makes her and the ones she love happy. do we really need something rather than their own joy? if any romantic feeling is to grow, it has to come calmly and with clear feelings. i’m extremely happy for her.

other thing that brings me immense joy is how important the friendship between the girls are and how celebrated it is. to see them together, ready to share everything, making friendship bracelets, loving each other endlessly…how gorgeous this is. how meaningful. how strong.

i hope the message of “loving someone for who they are” that skip to loafer loves to emphasize will continue for a long time — and hope that it will keep on growing. i’m proud of my darling girl, proud of how wonderful she is. wish nothing but happiness for her.

well, it would be weird if i didn’t talk about shima, right? i mean, this is my thread and all…i need to talk about him. it’s clear how shaken he is after his talk with mukai over the break and how he’s still thinking about his own feelings in relation to mitsumi and himself.

it’s hard for him to understand it all and i hope he keeps on swimming on this feeling for some time until he’s confident enough with it. i don’t want to see him making the same mistakes again and hurting himself and other people. i want him to get truly in touch with his heart.

this will be an amazing and incredible adventure to read. i can’t wait to see love flourishing between all of these amazing kids. can’t wait to see them growing, to see them sparkling. wish them nothing but happiness! 💛

this was a very small and fast thread, but i’m thinking on writing a bigger one in a few days. right now i’m enjoying my time with my family, with my cousins that i haven’t seen in a while. hope you are all happy and having a great time too!!! i also wish to write a thread about mika’s reaction and her feelings about all of it. but…in a few days, not now. need to study more.

anyways, thank you as always for reading and for the kind comments!! will love to discuss with you guys one more time. 💛💛💛

[mapoeggplant]

skip to loafer chapter 55 general thoughts // spoilers

it's crazy to think that takamatsu-sensei would be able to condense all the points of what makes skip to loafer special in one chapter alone, but surprise: she did that, beautifully — as always.

like a hot summer night, everything about this chapter feels warm. I can also compare it to a hug. what I want to say in the end is that there's a lot of empathic points and moments on this chapters that brings out the best on sensei's writing and how she build her characters.

giving mika a chance to share her point of view right after so many chapters that focused so much on shima's struggles was a great move. the reason why I say this is because I can see mika as someone who's personality and character construction is very similar and linear to shima's. both of them have this scar of their past that keeps coming and going up to their adolescence and they are trying to find a way to surpass is — and both of their worries lie on loneliness, but a different kind for each one.

while shima fear loneliness as in disappointing everyone around him, mika feels it as in never finding a place she could really be who she wants to be. yes, she found a safe space with the girl group, but she still feels like she can't tell them everything, and I don't think she's wrong for that. even tho it's comforting and they make her happy, it's hard for her to really break this wall she took so long to build. it's not something you can change overnight.

and following this with nao connecting the dots from her past to present was amazing. that's because it was easily an introduction to nao's feelings about her hometown and all the pain she still feels in relation to it. even though she's living in tokyo with a new happy life, there will always be that teenage sitting on the beach, crying and feeling lonely in the back of her mind. by relating to mika's pain and loneliness, nao can finally find a way to put an end to what hurts her so much and make peace with her past. as i said before: she looks at mika and sees a second chance.

different from grumpy mukai, I don't think mika was in any way making that moment about herself. liking it or not, her crush on shima was the reason why her relationship with nao started, so it was the best way for her to make that bond stronger (and find a partner in crime).

now for the one!!! the one we never could imagine had thoughts: mukai! exploring a little more of mukai on this chapter elevates more the complexity of the scenes around them. and also, when he starts to think about mika's feelings and shima's complexity, we're transported to the beginning of the chapter, when mika is asking herself basically the same questions.

mukai realized how sharp and precise mika is, but something inside him still wants to deny. that's because she's "the type of girl" he thought he knew and didn't liked it, but now he's seeing a side from her that is challenging him on his own believes. it's a way for him to break a little out of his shell, to break from the stereotypes he once thought he knew.

there's a lot to come, specially because he's very curious about her — always had been. she's intriguing, beautiful and much braver than he thought she could be. for now, I'm happy that that's all that we have: a little "I notice this but I don't want to think about it" from him.

takamatsu-sensei relies herself on human connections, and here we are again, having the privilege to experience this. the whole chapter is a callback to relationships, bonds, the complexity of one another and our own. it's about connections, forgiveness, moving forward.

it might take time, but mika will find her peace sooner or later. I mean, if someone ever told teenage nao that she would be calling her boyfriend and inviting him to visit her hometown, do you think she would believe it? we're always moving on our own pace 💛

as always, thank you for reading, sorry for any mistakes (I just follow my stream of consciousness basically) and I hope we can talk more about it, together 💛

you can also find this thread on twitter

[mapoeggplant]

skip to loafer chapter 54 analyze // spoilers

how nice is to have a summer vacation with all your friends, your inner demons and your self doubt!! on this chapter, we're once more diving inside shima's mind, exploring the climax of his self discovering arc.

as I've said before, one of the ideas I had for this chapter was a little more of shima's arc, but I'm quite surprised with shima's reaction with everything. not that I was waiting for a big change, because that's not realistic, nor that I was waiting for him to realize things in the blink of an eye (again, impossible). but to see him swim in an ocean of self pity is very surprising to me. and it is because before, when he got something wrong or when he felt like he was being a nuisance, shima would normally shut down all his emotions and ignore everything he might have to deal with.

now, with this new big wave of emotions, it's hard for him not to see himself as a villain or as someone who's ungrateful. this because mitsumi is someone he admires to the core and someone that made him question his own feelings and his idea of love, even tho it's still hard for him to *really* understand what it all means.

I can see a lot of people getting annoyed with him or seeing him as weak, but in my opinion, this just shows how much he grew and how much he's changing. don't get me wrong, he's still stuck with the same demons of his past. but now, he's facing it differently and with a more "I need to change" attitude. this guilt of not understanding himself is corrupting him little by little, something he never felt or faced before.

it's sad to see, specially because seeing him hurt makes me very sad (he got a tummy ache!!! he's a giant baby!!!), but I do feel that it's needed for him to start question his own actions to find a way to change it. and, surprise, surprise, mutsimi is the one to make him not only question his own feelings, but question his own questions of said feelings. he's still facing her back, which is nothing new, since even on chapter 46 he's walking slightly behind her, even holing hands, because he feels he isn't worth it.

shima still have a lot to understand about himself and a lot on his plate to digest. he doesn't understand his love nor understand his annoyance towards himself and other people (the last panel is funny and cute, but I can see him thinking "I'm not deserving of feeling this way").

well, besides shima, I'm happy with everything that is happening around them. this vacation feels amazing and so fun, it feels like a privilege to be able to experience with them as well!! love to see nao comfortable with her own skin in a place that hurt her so much.

love to see mukai and shima playing with kippei, who's so excited and eager to have new people around him (and, who knows, maybe this will inspire shima to play with his own brother!). I'm also happy to see the girls so comfortable around each other, so full of love for each other. they are so happy to be together, so happy to be able to experience the life mitsumi had when she grew up. they are amazing friends. also, to finish it off, I'm happy that mitsumi feels safe enough to introduce her childhood friends to everyone. it's not easy, since you never know what's going to happen, but she's so loved and appreciated that I can't see anything else besides everyone becoming friends.

well, waiting for 2 month for a chapter was worth it. I'm so excited to see what's shima is going to do with all this voices inside his head and excited to see how sensei is going to write them from this point forward. I also hope that we'll be able to see a little more of mitsumi's pov, specially since this is her hometown.

a lot can happen still and this makes me extremely happy. takamatsu-sensei is reminding us again how wonderful and well written her story is. I admire her narrative more and more with each chapter.

thank you for reading 💛 see you in chapter 55!

[mapoeggplant]

ririka: how the world turned against a child only to create a villainess

skip to loafer general spoilers

before we continue, i would like to remember you all that this thread will talk about subjects like underage drinking, cyberbullying and child abuse. if you're sensitive to one of those topics, please don't keep on reading this analyze.

tall, gorgeous and with a career that would leave any teenage girl jealous, ririka is the one everyone envies, the one everyone wants to be. even with a turbulent past, she managed to turn everything around and capture everything she had lost just to be on the spotlight again.

everyone who stumbled upon her story would be surprised to know how full of resilience and strength she is to surpass all the rumors that people created about her and the prejudice. so why would said girl be seen as a villain when all she ever did wasn't in fact proven at all?

ririka is a character that rips the scene with fierce and presence since day one. her arrival at school caused a turbulence on a peaceful moment, opening a can of worms of what was hidden between the lines of a boy that the whole school considered to be perfect.

however, up to this day, all we can do as readers is to speculate, same as the ones who broke her career in the first place. all we have from her is an image of an unbalanced girl who looks down on everyone just to build herself up. but what is she silently trying to tell us?

from the crumbs that were given to us, what we know about ririka's past is that she was shima's cast partner and childhood friend, who grew up under the same circumstances as him. and that, one day, she was caught up in the claws of a scandal, assuming that she was drinking while underage and partying. but, if we pay attention to what she's saying, we can see a common denominator in all of this, a boy who she once thought was her friend: shima, with the same age as her, was at the same place with the same people, but she was the one to get caught in the eye of the storm. why so?

we can speculate a lot of different reasons, like shima had a better pr team than her or that he was also under fire but, since he gave up on his acting career, his evolvement in the story mattered nothing to the public. however, denying the sexist society that we all live in is to deny the trauma that ririka went through. we all know why she was the one to be at the cover of every single newspaper ever, knowing the full picture or not: she's had the audacity to be born a girl.

a girl, who had it all, who could conquer the world, was leaving it all behind just so she could enjoy the "wrong" side of life. but...was she? from what we can gather, neither her nor shima were part of it all, but little does that matter for tabloids and for people who wanted to see ririka fail. so the damage had been done: she, who once was a rising star lost everything for a rumor. can you imagine what it meant for a little girl to be seen as a monster, when she couldn't comprehend what was happening in the first place? why was she the villainess when all she ever wanted was to be by her friend's side? and what about this said friend...where is he in the overall picture?

from what we know by ririka's side of the story, shima wasn't there when she needed him, being due to his mother's influence, due to pr or anything related to that. what it matters is that she saw herself alone when she needed the most. that can be confirmed based on shima's guilt and reaction on all of the trauma that was left on her shoulders: when he asks for her forgiveness and do anything she ever asks him to just to seek for a form of redemption, we can guess that he had a bigger influence on ririka being at that party than it was revealed for us. yet, I won't be here trauma dumping everything on shima's shoulders — after all, he was a child himself and couldn't know better.

both were caught by the circumstances thanks to naivety, but the world won't ever forgive a girl for making a mistake. and that's what ririka have been dealing with since day one. now, distancing ourselves from her career, I want to talk about her relationship with shima. ririka has a strong need and codependency on shima. maybe because he's what is left from her past, maybe it's because he was her first friend, maybe it's because she wants him to feel guilty — anything is reasonable in these circumstances.

however, I don't think ririka meant bad or that she hates shima in any way. in fact, what I think is happening inside her, is that she can't really dissolve or understand how she feels exactly about her relationship with shima and his influence on her drama. she know his mother is the one responsible for all that shima went through (and she's the only one who's brave enough to say it) and she knows all the scars that acting left on him. deep down, ririka knows that shima is as hurt as she is, but in different levels and places.

she's not trying to compete or to traumatize him back — she's just trying to find her place in all of that. she doesn't hate shima or wants to see him break, she just thinks that being harsh on his is the only way she can keep him on her life. by making himself feel guilty, ririka is fooling herself thinking that that's the only way he will care for her. her trauma makes her blind for affection and for the true meaning of her forgiveness, making it hard on herself to understand where shima lays on her life and her heart.

is she happy that he's sad or she's heartbroken to see her childhood friend suffering? is she mad that he's living the normal life she ever wanted to live or she just feels lonely that she has to deal with all of this alone? is she bearing her trauma up to now, trying so hard to prove she's not what the tabloids said or she does in fact love her life as a model/actress? why she was the one to deal with all of these while shima is the one to enjoy his normal life as a normal teenager? why does the world hate her so much?

ririka is a complex character that bears the guilt and the trauma that billions of female child actress have to endure — she's the perfect villainess that the world want to gossip about. she isn't bad or cold, she's just someone who never had a chance to heal because she had to prove herself constantly to the ones who hurt her the most. for now, all I can wish for her is that she can heal and the she has the chance to tell her side of the story, now that she finally has someone that will listen to her.

thank you so much for reading it!!! i hope you guys liked my analyze on ririka! 💛 you can also find the thread of this analyze on twitter

[mapoeggplant]

skip to loafer chapter 52 // spoilers

this was a chapter dedicated for the one we had to leave behind. fumi came full of love to show us how mitsumi grew with so much love and care, with someone who would be there for her no matter what.

different from what we thought previously, fumi gave us the beauty and delicacy that she has to offer. where we though was jealously was, in fact, an undeniable love and appreciation that she would carry with her all her life. not only that but we had a beautiful finalization for maharu’s arc. as i suspected before, there’s a lot going on inside maharu’s mind, which is extremely normal for someone her age. while she open up to fumi, she doesn’t even have a proper reason on why she wants to go to tokyo — is purely a scream for attention.

maharu wants tokyo because she thinks tokyo is the answer to being an adult and also the answer for her parent’s attention. when we compare her reactions here with chapter 51, it gets even clearer how she’s begging for everyone to see her and ti listen to what she needs. and she’s not wrong for feeling like that, as fumi herself stated. she’s feeling alone and she miss mitsumi a lot, which just shows how much she adores her sister and how much she wishes she could be a little bit like her.

fumi was the perfect person to talk to maharu, because she’s the only one who actually KNOWS how maharu is feeling, since she felt it too. fumi blown out at mitsumi because she wanted her friends attention, wanted that mitsumi to know how hurt she was.

and, if we do the math, maharu is closely the same age as fumi and mitsumi were when they had their first “fight”. both girls saw mitsumi as this bright, incredible human who was seeking for something even bigger than they could offer and so they begged for her attention.

it’s normal, it’s something teenagers constantly feel: the need for attention and for someone who hear them and show them that yes, they are right for feeling like that, is extremely important and essential for a adolescent. and that was fumi for maharu, and maharu for fumi.

the beauty of it all, for me, is how fumi opens up this whole bitter moment of her life just to be surprised by mitsumi’s love later — mitsumi have new friends from tokyo and she loves them, but her best friend will forever be fumi, doesn’t matter what.

and why not give fumi another little confused teenager for her to have a little chat?

there’s a little big thing that happens in shima’s talk with fumi that really needs to be highlighted: when shima talks about how mitsumi’s sees HIS feelings, fumi gets confused. and i understand her!! can you imagine if a boy came to talk to you and say that your best friend doesn’t think he loves her “like that”, when in reality, not even himself knows it?

when fumi says “it’s your feelings were talking about”, makes it even more obvious to me how shima doesn’t know how he’s really feeling and how to deal with all these new emotions inside his heart. it’s not that he likes her or not: he doesn’t UNDERSTAND what this feeling means. that’s EXACTLY why he always says “mitsumi thinks i don’t like her like that”, AND NOT “I don’t like her like that”. when he puts his feelings on someone else’s hands, it just shows how he always had someone dictating how he had to feel rather than he himself dealing with it.

i do believe that put a big question mark on his head, such as “what did she (fumi) mean by that?”. after all, fumi was the first one to say “YOUR feelings”, the first one to point it out to his face rather than just think to themselves.

aside from all of that, the chapter itself is delightful. it’s a chapter that screams summer break and it just shows how much this kids love each other and how they desperately want to know more about mitsumi (look how the girls ran to fumi!!!!!!!!).

i just love to see all of them having fun and enjoying their youth the way they deserve. now they don’t have to fake personalities, hide their bodies or act cold towards anyone. they found their safe place, and my heart is at peace

a little more on shima and his feelings:

if you read one of my shima character study, you'll remember when i said the following:

what does it mean to love someone romantically when he never once felt jealous? what does it mean to care so much for someone when he was never cared to? what does it mean to give up of someone you love so dearly if he can’t even let it all go? how does one stop making excuses?

i keep thinking about this and thinking about chapter 52 and how devastating it is for a 16 yo boy who has absolute no idea whatsoever about his own feelings and how navigate thought them because he was denied his autonomy for years and years.

if we think about it, much like any other child stars, shima never had a chance to have a normal and healthy childhood. when kids his age were playing, making friends and scratching their knees, he was bearing his mother’s trauma, committing huge mistakes which would lead to one of his best friends to almost lose her career, having to keep his family life in check and having thousands of people saying how he should act, feel and behave. because of that, it’s no surprise that he would act the way he did when he started middle school.

when someone inflicted their feelings on him, he doesn’t know how to deny them, since he was always the one to accept and bear other’s emotions. he never had someone asking “but how do YOU feel?” or “but do YOU like me?”. it was always someone blaming him for it all.

chris was the only friend (before fumi) who tried to talk to him about it all and to show how much he needed to connect with himself (ririka did try, even tho people want to deny it, but she’s also extremely hurt and traumatized, ofc it will be abruptly). but it’s easier said than done. even tho he’s trying to leave his past behind, he’s still saying “she think i feel like this” — and that’s not mitsumi’s fault AT ALL. she’s just a girl who wants to be loved and wants her friend to be true to his feelings.

what she experienced with him when they both were dating told her something that maybe wasn’t what shima was trying to say, but it happened. she’s just trying to cary the world on her back, which is causing him a lot of damage.

shima is someone who still needs a LOT of patience from us and a lot of time. someone who was abused all his life won’t change in a blink of an eye. what i’m extremely thankful, tho, is that now he’s surrounded by people who love him deeply.

💛 thank you for reading it!!!

[mapoeggplant]

skip to loafer episode 6

i think people might find it funny for me to say that, since they are chapters that definitely have a romantic undertone to it, but this weeks episode covers one of my favorite moments of shima and mitsumi, in terms of their platonic relationship.

first of all, we start chapter 10 with mitsumi and fumi talking about love, giving us a better in-depth on mitsumi's view of the matter. like any other teenage girl, the curiosity is still there, but the fact that she just instantly thinks about exams is so dear and funny to me.

mitsumi is demi coded for me in many, many levels, which brings me a great sense of comfort. yes, we do have her running away, heart on hear sleeve, fumi on her ear while she questions about love — and that makes my demi hc even better. that's because she found her person, so love became something that can start to flourish. i just find all of that beautiful. but anyways, we're here to talk about platonic love so let's all focus on platonic love:

when i say that this chapter is filled with platonic moments between them, i'm most referring to mitusmi's worries about shima and, later on, her prejudices towards him based on what people told her. were they saying the truth?

this creates a little doubt on mitsumi's mind and, since she was always the girl who knew everyone, who knew their parents and such, she starts to question how much shima, the guy he considers her first ever tokyo friend, is opening up to her and really wanting to be her friend.

well, if he's her friend...why he's hiding so much? why he's missing school? why do people say those things about him? mitsumi starts to get worried about her friend and, in a clumsy, very mitsumi way, tried to help the best way she can — which it didn't turn out great.

while, on shima's side, he's being confronted by similar feelings. the bright golden girl he met and got so enchanted to was starting to believe on rumors about them, like all the other people on his life. that makes him lash out in a terrible way to her, regretting instantly.

and then, we have the conversation with chris, that is number one of many, many others. chris is, somehow, the safe connection between his past and future, the one he can be the most honest with (and we'll only find more about it later on. right now, chris is only his quirky funny friend. can't believe we had no idea what was coming at us!!). and that's how we manage to see a crack on shima's walls: he's terrified of losing a friend he considers dear. he's afraid of making the same mistakes over and over again, a circle of regret.

and it all comes to light on the famous scene at the stairs. shima, who would once again run away from his problems, pretend nothing happen, is suddenly confronted by a girl who won't back down until things are settled. mitsumi won't lose her friend, she'll fight for him.

that's the chapter where we start to see their bond being created. it's not about romance, not about their romantic feelings (that didn't even start to grow): it's about not wanting to lose the one who means so much to them, about the chance of being completely open with someone.

yes, the chapter 10 starts with the discussion love and chapter 11 ends with it, i won't deny that. but what we have in between are two friends who are still learning to navigate around each other, who are exposing themselves little by little. bond is about love, platonic or not.

[mapoeggplant]

skip to loafer chapter 46 // spoilers 

hello! this thread was previous posted on my twitter, but i felt like sharing it here :) hope you all enjoy!

_

“isn’t the world more grotesque than this”, shima wonders as he remembers everyone who once treated him like an object, like someone without emotions. by his side, a girl who sees him for who he is, doesn’t matter what.

this is the chapter i was waiting for, the chapter that reminds me why i wrote all those thousands of threads. we finally have a confirmation of shima’s feelings about HIMSELF, about how he sees himself, how he was aways used as a tool and how he acted all his life.

he doesn’t think he has any worth, he doesn’t understand his own feelings. he’s a manipulation, an object of everything everyone always wanted from him. and now, at the peak of high school, he’s finally being seen, he’s finally having peace. and why’s that?

it’s because he finally found friends who care for him for who he is, who love him for what he is below the surface as he’s slowly discovering that. i know the question “so why did he asked mitsumi out if he wasn’t aware of his feelings?” will surface and i tell you: because that was the only way he could always express and deal with the feeling of love. if he’s feeling loved, he starts to act like his old self, like the “status symbol” he is. NO ONE ever looked at him and said he was enough the way he is, but they all used him.

no, he isn’t playing mitsumi or using her. he’s acting the way he was teach, the way he grew to understand. but, as nothing will ever go the way he thinks, he finally face someone who’s not there for his face, for his popularity or who expects him to do things she wants.

she’s there for him, she’s there for who he IS, for his CORE. she’s the one who will show him he can be loved, he can have a happy life, he can think about HIMSELF.

and mitsumi? mitsumi is living for what she believes, mitsumi is seeking her future. she doesn’t need to be in a relationship that isn’t going to bring her happiness, a relationship that will only worry her. she’s not there to CHANGE him, she’s there to think about HERSELF.

the impact mitsumi have in shima is not about what she’ll do to change him, but the way she seeks for her true self above everything. as i said million times before, shima is facing someone who’s completely different than him, he’s faced someone who thinks about themselves.

this chapter is here to prove how a bond and a special relationship doesn’t need a bigger status to be huge. they already have something huge; they already have themselves. the world isn’t cruel anymore because they have themselves to hold each other’s hand.

<3

after thoughts:

i know that the possibility of shima and mitsumi ending up together in the end is very very high and, don’t get me wrong, i love them as a ship. but what makes me so connected and so emotional with skip to loafer is how their relationship is constructed and how their friendship is *never*, at any moment, diminished or seen as “waste of time fir the plot”.

their relationship being the way it is is the whole reason why the story embraces so many people and so many enthusiastic: it’s real, it’s respectful and it’s what a healthy relationship between two teenagers should be.

they are not pressing each other for anything or waiting for the other to act like they want them to act. both of them are respecting each other’s time and growth. this, the need to be friends again and not in a romantic relationship, is the biggest prove. mitsumi sees shima and his needs, shima sees mitsumi and her needs. there’s respect, above anything. no romantic relationship existis without partnership and understanding and that’s what they are building together.

[mapoeggplant]

skip to loafer chapter 51 // discussion

since the chapter is out right now, being raws and the translation, i won't be posting many screenshots as i usually do in respect of everyone. there being said, i want to talk about some things that happened in this chapter!!! also, i'm not calling it an analyze because i think i want to discuss about it more than analyzing it, if that makes sense. anyways, here we go!

this chapter really feels like a road trip, doesn't it? the pacing, the excitement, even the car seats arrangement. there's such a summer and youth vibes to it and that makes me so, so happy and excited for what's to come! i think that, in the end, two characters were the star of chap 51: maharu and nao.

want to talk about maharu first. at first, i was really surprised by her reaction, but wasn't the narrative building up to this? maharu has been showing signs of insecurity since some chapters ago, so it makes total sense, in my head for her to act like that, for a lot of reasons the most important one is the insecurity of being a small town girl when surrounded by people from the city. maharu is a girl who's starting her teenage years, so it's normal for her to see everything as "cooler than her" or that her traditions are less than people from tokyo.

and, hidden underneath this insecurity, she's facing two weird feelings. 1. the idea that her sister is changing and starting to become "a city girl" (since she was the only one who was "well put" while having lunch). 2. her sister's friends, which i have a little suspicious that she knows that them are helping mitsumi to buy her things that would suit her better. and finally 3. the jealously of having all the attention focused on her sister. i mean, she's also having problems! she's also changing! she's a teenager, she wants attention!!

mitsumi is changing, so is maharu. she's feels like she's losing importance, that mitsumi is no long part of their life style and that all her friends are "too good to be there". it's a ride, specially for a girl who's starting to feel the teenage hormones acting up.

and now, the other character that needs a spotlight: nao. it was widely known that nao hasn't come back since she transitioned. her hometown brings her a lot of dark memories and dealing with her family wasn't all that easy. who can imagine what's going to happen when she's finally back? and well, would you look at that: not only nao received a pleasant surprise, but us as well. that doesn't mean the scars are healed or that she's feeling 100% fine and safe there, but just the small step into recognition means more than words can explain.

general thoughts about the chapter:

mika being the one to first realize that something is wrong between shimamitsu really came as a surprise to me!! i know i made a lot of jokes about this before, but i was sure fumi would be the first one to catch that, and not one of the tokyo girls.

this makes me feel like we're closer and closer to mitsumi finally opening up to the girls and shima facing some criticism aside from his internal ones. this might result in a loot of outcomes, but i know that sensei have the perfect one hidden on her sleeve.

about shima (since we all know i'm a shima maniac), other than that, my suspicions about him not telling his mother about the trip is starting to grow. i mean, we never really saw nao talking to her, he didn't brought a gift (we know that his mother would never let that happen), so it all feels so sus to me...but also, on a lighter note, it's the first time he's visiting a friend's house (that isn't chris or mukai, people he grew up with). i mean, he never had that!! he never thought it would be possible!!! how amazing is that for him!!! (aside from the heartbreak scene he saws...)

the wallet scene is a focal point of the chapter, and this opens a lot of future resolutions involving shima. it's kind of a smaller moment in the bigger picture, but his face after seeing maharu storming out tells a lot to me, in a way. he can clearly see how hurt mitsumi is, even tho she's trying to fake it. all i wish right now is that he takes a step further and talk to her about this, give her some sort of comfort. he knows how important that moment (buying the wallet, i mean) was to her, and now he just saw with his own two eyes what happened, so i really hope he takes a step in. i truly do.

this could lead to a more mukai focused chapter, hear me out: with shima and mitsumi relationship being weird right now, it's obvious that, even if shima comforts her, things won't be normal for a while. they will both hide what happened and i have a feeling that mukai will be the one to caught on that. why? because he's the one who can have a better grasp on shima's bullshit. it won't give us a huge mukai lore but hmmmm...idk it's just a feeling. i can be very very wrong and that's totally fine, but my mind is twirling around this...

now if we're talking about fumi...:

i think a lot can happen, honestly. if sensei is thinking about focusing on maharu a little more, i can see maharu thinking fumi isn't by her side as well, which is a plausible outcome given the feelings that maharu has been dealing with.

if fumi takes maharu side, many different outcomes can happen. mitsumi and her can have a little discussion (nothing too hard, but it would make both feel very sad ofc) and mitsumi would have a little self conscious moment that she isn't giving the proper attention to her family and old friends.

if we think about fumi also being jealous, it can still have an outcome like the scenario i mentioned above or the meeting doesn't go as well as we were expecting. it's a thought moment to really focus on, since we didn't had any fumi thought yet, just a little glimpse.

can't wait to see what's waiting for us, can't wait to see all of them at the beach. i had a little bit of interaction between nao and shima (which you all know means A LOT to me) and now i can finally have my baby fumi meeting all of them. i'm so happy it feels surreal, in a way

thank you for reading it 🌟