Kazuya, in his underwear, racks his brain over the mystery of Chizuru. She has done something undoubtedly unprofessional, and yet after that, she has acted like everything is normal. All Kazuya knows is that his feelings are even harder to resist than ever before. Sound familiar?
That’s right, it’s chapter 165, “The Girlfriend and Tears (Pt. 1)”. Wait a minute…
The parallels are striking, which means the differences are instructive
We've been here before, Kazuya. (Ch. 232 vs 165)
Run down the events we’ve seen so far of this new arc, and the parallels are too strong to ignore.
- Kazuya in his undies, pondering
- Kazuya can’t get Chizuru’s actions out of his head
- The fish makes some snarky comment
- Cue flashback to something that already happened but we didn’t see in real time!
Pretty simple, right? Kazuya moping and trying to make sense of the kiss vs trying to make sense of her crying thanks to his support.
So if we extend the comparison, now what? Remember in 165, Mini Yaemori showed up, and it’s been widely speculated that she could make her return here, having not been seen since that arc. Mini has a relationship with both Kazuya and Chizuru and could give them feedback about the situation.
But I’m not here to idly speculate. Let’s go further here. Even back in 166, Chizuru didn’t give Kazuya the answers he was searching for. She wouldn’t do that, even indirectly, until she set up their lunch date, but this time, the jig is up. Kazuya knows, or soon will know, that Chizuru is deliberately avoiding him. Chizuru won’t be able to navigate this issue on her own terms like before.
Miyajima’s self-referential streak continues
It’s nice that Miyajima continues to draw heavily upon continuity as a tool for his story. He used a lot of the previous canon to craft 218, for instance, but what’s in question now is how much he’s using those tools in isolation vs. how much they serve to help deliver something more meaningful. Repetition can help draw contrasts, as 218 did. Kazuya took Chizuru’s rejection much harder than Mami’s, and in the end, he bounced back without the same destructive tendencies that plagued him in chapter 1. Here, the reason for the parallel is far less clear, and as a result, one gets the impression that we’re merely running in circles, doomed to repeat cycles of misunderstanding and internal questions until something actually gives. I remarked last week that the entire Paradise arc felt like a bombardment of forces designed primarily to make Chizuru’s resistance buckle, with no greater engagement in the questions of Sayuri’s attitude toward truth or the real differences between Chizuru and Mami. Whether this new arc does something beyond confront the question of what it will take for Chizuru to let go remains to be seen, but I think it’s a crucial question to look at going forward.
Chizuru continues to be wall Kazuya out
We've been here before, Kazuya. (Ch. 232 vs 16)
As the manga has progressed, it’s become more and more about Chizuru’s coping mechanisms and her love-hate relationship with attachment. Time and again she’s walled herself off from him when it suited her:
- She refused to face him when he promised to pay her back for acting like his girlfriend at the beach. (16)
- She accepted a near-total severing of their relationship once Kazuya started seeing Ruka. (29)
- She said they should keep their lives more separate going forward, once she thought he’d slept with Ruka. (66)
- After they worked out details of the movie, Kazuya offered personal support to her, which she brushed off without facing him. (104)
- When Sayuri told her Kazuya was the perfect match for her, she acted coolly toward him the next time she saw him… initially. (112)
- Chizuru slams the door on Kazuya, shortly after Mini insisted his feelings were love. (122)
- Of course, multiple times Chizuru dodged and avoided Kazuya’s confession attempts leading up to and during the Paradise arc.
To be sure, Chizuru has opened up to Kazuya quite a lot. She told him about her family and her parents (61); told him she saw him as a great guy after all, just moments after she’d been shutting him out in 112; confided in him about her grandfather’s death and what the movie really meant to her (136); and more.
But a recurring trend in these moments is that Chizuru often has to work up the courage to make herself vulnerable. It took most of the “Last Scene” arc for Chizuru to be able to articulate her feelings. She was standoffish even with Sayuri in 145, but ultimately she thanked Kazuya once again, difficult as it was for her. It took a lot for her to ask Kazuya for their lunch date, essentially seeking permission to shed her iron lady pretenses in front of him and accept his support (171).
The ice wall separating Chizuru from Kazuya will melt at some point. The question is whether it will be treated as a no-brainer—“of course Chizuru would be happier if she opened up!”—or be recognized as something more serious, something that takes time and effort to erode, that may never be fully brought down, and that was built in the first place to protect her from the hardships of life she’s endured, the root causes of which have to be dealt with.
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