The Lungfish Diaries

This week, we get a long overdue interlude with Kazuya confronting the fallout with Kibe after Paradise and the now-revealed secret of Chizuru’s true identity among their friends. This is a great opportunity to look back at Kazuya and Chizuru’s attitudes toward their friendships and how both sets of relationships have something lacking. Let’s take a look. Kibe saying he’ll gut Kazuya is supposed to be a sweet moment. Mmkay. Kazuya and validation The big thing to remember about Kazuya is that his friends and family constantly doubt him. Recall that when Kuri and Kibe saw Kazuya with Chizuru, they immediately assumed she was trying to sell him something (or trying to get him involved in a cult). Played for laughs as this was, it is a constant theme in Kazuya’s relationships, as his family couldn’t believe Chizuru could be his girlfriend, either, and his father once assumed Kazuya could only be giving Chizuru money because he must’ve borrowed some from her before. In...

This week, Kazuya once again found himself handling a piece of undergarments he believes to be Chizuru’s and trying desperately not to get caught doing so when it was through no fault of his own. Everything about this, from the clear chapter 40 callback to the way Kazuya’s mile-a-minute thinking intentionally distracts from deeper thinking about CHizuru’s state of mind, is Miyajima in a nutshell. These are his bread-and-butter techniques to get ideas across. Kazuya, in a compromising position? No way! Did you forget the panties? It’d be easy to forget chapter 40. Up until this point, it seemed like a meaningless gag chapter. The anime didn’t even bother adapting it, but there is a long, pregnant pause there in which Chizuru seems ready to back off in deference to Ruka, something that would be easily overlooked while Ruka is jumping on Kazuya to try to figure out what he’s got in his pocket (you should be careful, Ruka: that’s one way to get saddled with a Ring of ...

This week, Chizuru came out with her most blatant act of flirtation yet, promising Kazuya that she’d give it all she had to find him an answer and implicitly saying that she wouldn’t allow it to take long. This is tantamount to saying that she is almost there, and the content of the chapter bolsters this argument. They have hung out together for at least the second time (after their time at Saizeriya) in a completely casual way. They enjoyed each other’s company without further pretenses or objectives behind their time together. She’s givin’ it all she’s got, cap’n! But all this leads us to believe that what has kept Chizuru from reaching this point is no great misconception about love or a hitherto unknown interest in it. She hasn’t articulated any kind of hangup about what love really is (which would’ve been understandable but also deeply stupid , along the lines of many a simpler romcom). What it takes her to get to this point is simply the luxury of spending more tim...

There’s an interesting moment this chapter, building off of Chizuru’s previous request in 239. Chizuru asks Kazuya to bear with her and wait for her answer. Some people may be frustrated that Chizuru hasn’t come to a decision yet, but to the contrary, I think this is a positive development for Chizuru. The main point of friction during the Paradise Arc was that Chizuru felt trapped and unable to begin to figure out how to answer him. She couldn’t bring herself to ask for time, space, and understanding. The fact that she can do so now means she is freer to look into her own heart. Chizuru would ask something of him, rather than put his needs first at the cost of herself. Chizuru’s natural tendency is to agonize Chizuru has often seemed paralyzed when the moment mattered most. She became frozen on the spot in Paradise, when all eyes were on her (223). She didn’t have the heart to tell Sayuri on her deathbed when it became clear the end was near, prompting Kazuya to...