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EP. REVIEW: O Maidens in Your Savage Season

Megiddo wrote:

Even if the wording of Izumi isn't particularly clear, the fact that he boldly steps directly onto Kazusa's shadow before his declaration should easily cement his intentions. There's no possible to way to perceive that as a 'friend zone'.

He wants to keep Kazusa at arm's length least she ruin that image of a sister he has in his mind.... which is how the episode ends, Kazusa in tears and running... perhaps toward or perhaps away but there's no payoff has in this episode, it's just implied.

rizuchan wrote:

She had basically no idea Izumi existed until she found out about Kazusa's crush. Then she starts wondering what's so great about Izumi that would make Kazusa like him, fixates on him, until she develops feelings for him too. Then she spends time with him, all while telling Kazusa there's nothing between them, and even pretending that she's trying to help them. And when Kazusa calls her out on it, Niina plays the victim, like Kazusa is misunderstanding her just like everyone else, when really, Kazusa is seeing exactly who she is.

At first Kazusa thought she was seeing something that wasn't really happening, it was really a misunderstanding. But just in the beginning. Then Niina started to do on purpose and you can say "fair, she didn't wanted to be developed feelings for Izumi", the problem and that got in this race and lost. She lost but still didn't gave up, the problem really for me is from here on. After this episode she has no excuses, she is just being a shitty person and not only with Kazusa.

Not that I approve of what either of them are doing, or particularly enjoy watching people actively be jackasses, but the walking-on-clouds first love aspect of Kazusa and Sonezaki was also incredibly irritating.

Irritating? Spending time at your loved one's home should be positive relationship development but if you did that beforehand, going outside in public would have more meaning, generate actual excitement over basic feelings of comfort. Again, does Kazusa really know if she's not doing anything or is she just floating on Cloud Nine because she feels she earned what she got?

I think this really is turning into shoujo romance versus shonen romance; The shonen romance would end at that lame confession in a "target has been acquired" sort of deal, but the typical shoujo romance goes beyond that to make a point, commonly reinforcing whatever point the author wants to make.

Next thing you'll tell me, it's her fault that he placed his hand on her butt rather than move her around so she'd be in front of the door. She told him to do it and, well, Why did Edmund Hillary climb Mt Everest? Because it was there.

Panino Manino wrote:

rizuchan wrote: snip.[/i][/b] snip.

I think you are both being harsh. What Niina’s doing is wrong, but 1. She’s not entirely acting on her own accord, she still has her abuser literally telling her to act like a “bad girl” and rewarding her with attention when she does and 2. Kazusa broke her heart first. Kazusa was literally the one of the first platonic female peer friends she has ever had after *years* of being rejected by female peers because of her looks and the attention she got from males—something she can’t control at all. Niina entrusted Kazusa with some of that painful history.

That bath scene was painful to watch, because I was thinking that every time Kazusa looked enviously at Niina, she was hurting her. Niina had years of trauma—isolation from peers, grooming (which is abusive even if it’s not physically sexual, look it up) from a man old enough to be her grandfather. What’s Kazusa’s excuse for treating Niina as a criminal before she did anything wrong, and judging her for the traits she has no control over, despite knowing it was a sore spot? Teenage insecurity?

Still episode 8. I guess I'm alone in not seeing cram school kid as being creepy. Momoko hasn't exactly shut him down, and while I understand her lack of clarity with him, he's a normal stupid teenager without the experience to read between the lines (as do many adult men). He doesn't strike me as predatory, or not caring how she feels -- he doesn't know how she actually feels. He's made some unwarranted assumptions, as people do, and so is more focused on impressing her than testing the truth of those assumptions. Yes, it was good that she was finally clear, but it seemed kinda cruel to do it in front of his friends without giving him any way to save face with them. He still has to hang out with them, even if she's (hopefully) washed her hands of him.

Btw, I cringe every time Izumi tells his little story about how he realized Kazusa was a girl because she couldn't throw a ball.

I’might have agreed ithat the abuse is an excuse from Niina’s past if the guy wasn’t literally telling her exactly what to do, which he’s basically been doing since he “chose” her from her acting group. Framing it as him “disposing/rejecting” her isn’t quite right. She had no choice in him picking her out or isolating from her peers, and his rejection after years of grooming was just as confounding to her as him picking her, and nothing about their “relationship” was her choice. She was used, but children don’t recognize when they are being abused, or that it’s not their fault, and they certainly don’t get over it quickly. In fact, most people who were abused as children don’t come forward for decades.

Her trying to reconcile her experience by confronting him? Normal. Him using that as an opening to manipulate her again? That’s on the adult, who explicitly said he was doing it to entertain himself,. Her still being vulnerable to it makes a lot of sense. The only support she’s had in the matter is Izumi, another kid.

If Okada wanted us to see Niina as acting of her own accord and simply making bad choices, she wouldn’t have written the director calling her, visiting her school, meeting her at a restaurant and *telling^ her that in order for her to be “interesting “ to him, she should pursue a boy sexually and disregard her friends.

It gave us confirmation that neither she nor Milo-sensei was acting with any sort of actual desire, but instead out of anger, confusion, and self-loathing.