#in a way which made me think he really didn't have a coherent causal explanation

[tanadrin]

I feel like there's this reactionary centrist narrative that "oh, center-left parties would win big if they just stopped talking about trans issues and immigration and all that other icky stuff" that's the reactionary centrist mirror to the leftist "oh, center-left parties would win big if they just adopted strongly redistributive economic policies and followed a non-interventionist foreign policy," and I just don't think either of those things are true. I think the reactionary centrists want a center-left party that doesn't make a big deal out of progressive social issues because they don't care about those issues, and leftists want a party that, well, governs leftistly, but neither have any data to support the contention that their preferred vision of center-left politics is actually popular, and I think that in fact many center-left parties (especially the Democrats, who have to navigate a stricter two-party system than most) are in fact triangulating a set of positions that brings together--or attempts to bring together--a maximally viable electoral coalition. And parties that explicitly try the left-populist-economics-sans-progressive-social-politics like the BSW are in fact comparatively fringe--because the slates of policies that tend to be linked in center-left politics are not in fact a randomly chosen grab bag. They're historically and causally connected.

And I think purely cultural explanations for educational polarization are insufficient. It doesn't help that many of the people who posit that explanation don't seem to distinguish between, like, the "elites" as in "celebrities whose name the general public knows" and the "elites" as in "people who actually control major political and economic institutions." John Roberts and Jeff Bezos are much more elite in terms of "wielding actual power and influence over society/politics/the economy" than, like, Alec Baldwin or Jamelle Bouie, but for some reason "elite" seems to encompass the latter and not the former. I believe some people feel more aggrieved and oppressed by the latter "elites," but it's also clearly true that these people have in some real sense been duped, or at the very least have some kind of misfire going on in terms of their understanding of power structures, and I think examining the political dynamics of that process are going to be more informative than trying to argue that (essentially) people are being negatively polarized by the writing staff of the sitcoms they watch.

I simply do not think that “political polarization across the western world is driven by people with college degrees infiltrating media and talking about LGBT rights” is especially compelling as an explanation, and I’m pretty surprised that there are people who find that plausible. Like. Media and government and such have always been disproportionately dominated by people with higher educational attainment and wealth; surely the biggest story there is that educational attainment has been becoming more broad-based for decades; and even if it were true this thesis wouldn’t explain why educational attainment correlated with increased social progressivism in recent years when it didn’t as recently as a couple of decades ago.

[twig-tea]

You're both so correct, @lurkingshan and @bengiyo. The part that's extra frustrating is that the manga did give us Taichi's interiority, and his actions were ordered in a way that made much more sense and made the delay in Taichi and Kohei getting together understandable! I've been confused for awhile because I remembered reading the manga years ago, and loving it, and I've been watching the show thinking to myself that I remembered this all happening but in the manga it didn't feel like this! I couldn't decide if past me was just used to less coherent stories, or if I was misremembering. So I gave up and re-read the manga to be certain. And while the high-level beats are the same, the changes in the series adaptation have made the story in the back half of the show no longer make sense, and drag in a way the original manga does not.

Maya is different too, in the manga she is carefully nice to everyone (keeping herself causally distant) except for Taichi, who she shows more of her real self too and who she yells at a lot, and Taichi yells at her in response a lot, so it feels even and not so much like she's being rude to everyone needlessly. Her story in the manga is actually as much centered around her relationship with Taichi as it is with Kohei, because he's the one person she is vulnerable with (and she eventually gets to the place where she's comfortable enough to be vulnerable with Kohei too). It feels like they tried to combine her character with another character in volume 3, but the problem is that these two characters are representing different experiences of being disabled. I don't like the choice they made to take out the part where she felt just as ostracized by the Deaf community as she did by people who have average hearing, and to have her focus that discomfort on our existing characters. It made her so much more unlikeable.

I'm extra frustrated because there were other clear options. If they wanted to cut out the part in this arc where Taichi tells Kohei that wouldn't mind being kissed, but then when Kohei gets closer to confirm what he said was true, Taichi gets nervous and punches him and then runs away, so that it makes sense that Taichi is embarassed and avoiding Kohei, and Kohei thinks Taichi is uninterested and so also gives him his space (and also means that their relationship isn't just spinning in place for the entire arc, but is instead getting closer and then further away), then they should not have dragged their heels remaining in volume 2 for half the series. There are some really important parts of their arc in volume 3 that I was hoping we'd get to in a 12-episode series, and I'm disappointed we're going to end at the end of volume 2 again (which is also where the movie ended, it just cut more from the middle). And it's a strange choice to give us some internal narration, but not the explanation about how Taichi is so confused by his feelings for Kohei, and afraid of them, and afraid he isn't good enough for him, or how he does not want to continue going to school to rack up student loan debt when the only reason he was there was to find something he was interested in doing. It feels like all of the things that people are finding inexplicable about the show are present and handled better in the manga.

And just to say, the manga isn't perfect, and I'm not a person who thinks the original source material is sacrosanct. I loved the addition in the show of having Kohei call Taichi out for not explaining once Kohei said he couldn't hear him and Taichi was embarrassed about what he said. And there are plots I didn't love in the manga, especially the later volumes. Some of the conflict in volumes 2 and 3 is still a little silly and drags a bit in the manga as well--it's just overall more coherent and also less of a burden in something you can read in the time it takes to watch one of the episodes of the show. But I'm disappointed in the choices in this latter half to keep Taichi as moody enigma rather than just a loud mess, and Maya an angry misanthrope who clings to Kohei rather than a girl going through it whose (very different) friendship with both Kohei and Taichi helps her open up to her possibilities.

One day I'll get an adaptation of this work that includes the third volume, where they actually navigate their ongoing issues while in a relationship, tackle head on Kohei's concerns about being a 'burden', and Taichi's feelings of inadequacy, and Kohei considers whether or not to get a cochlear implant. ONE DAY.

Man. I don’t know what the show was thinking with this narrative structure. You have a tight focus on the development of a romance for the front half of the show, then do a time skip, regress their relationship and have them stop talking to or understanding each other, and essentially put their relationship on ice for the back half to change focus to a new side character.

Regardless of who that side character is and what their story is about, of course it’s going to inspire frustration and resentment in the audience. I see the thematic purpose of the Maya story but I can’t enjoy it because I am constantly stuck waiting for anything to move on the core story. They needed to structure and pace this whole thing very differently if they were determined to give Maya this much story focus.