ms word ms excel and ms powerpoint are all snooty disagreeable ladies who wont speak to me due to my meager dowry but then i meet their beautiful sister ms paint whos clumsy but charming and we fall in beautiful love. and i become mr paint
just saw some screenshots of some of THOSE poorly animated scenes in haikyuu s4 that felt like heavy war flashbacks thats why i dont rewatch this season i prefer to reread the manga 😭😭 inarizaki they played u so dirty………
there’s so much to say about this chapter so i’m gonna get a a bit sentimental here bc. augh. i love nao-chan to death. other trans people and me have said this hundreds of times already but her character is truly so wonderful. not only she’s a full-fledged character, intricate and complex and human like all the other characters in the manga, she’s a character other people look up to. she’s a character other people need and seek. and it’s not just things like mitsumi asking her for fashion advice, it’s also how mika feels safe talking to her. i loved their conversation this chapter so much bc it’s a bit different from the previous ones. it’s not like the time they talked in the zoo or the elevator by chance, this time mika goes out of her way to speak alone with nao-chan. it’s not every day that you see a well written trans character in manga, and there are even less trans characters that are mentors, role models or simply adult figures that kids trust and rely on. but nao-chan is all that. their relationship is so important to me. there’s mika who’s been bullied and shunned and has rebuilt herself from scratch just so she could fit in and be accepted and loved, but still doesn’t feel any different inside. and there’s nao-chan who, many years before, different location, different circumstances, has thought the exact same thing. and she can see that same pain in mika, she can see herself in her. mika tells her she felt a bit lonely and she cries for her. when nao-chan tells her she’ll definitely find someone who loves her, she’s not saying it to make her feel better, she’s saying it as fact, bc nao-chan herself has found people who love her. i know their conversation is mainly about romantic love, at least on the surface, but bc it’s sukirofa we know that’s not all there is to it. by opening up, mika is slowly letting other people love her, letting other people see her. the girls, nao-chan. man, even mukai. she’s letting herself love other people too. and if all that wasn’t enough to make you bawl your eyes out, the chapter ends with nao-chan calling goro, her boyfriend, and inviting him to her hometown. “i got a bit lost but being with the kids helped turn it around”. it’s not only nao-chan who’s influencing mika, mika is, unknowingly, giving nao-chan a little push as well. takamatsu couldn’t have said it better: “I would like to carefully depict a school life where you can’t tell who will save whom, who will get noticed and who will be moved into growing”. nao-chan is saving mika and mika is saving nao-chan. they, and we, are saving each other all the time. and it makes me even happier to see a trans character, a trans woman, be at the center of this, because trans people have saved me
we joked so much about mukai being the guy that gives us nothing that now every time he has more than 3 lines of dialogue we get a chapter that feels like a punch to the face
go girl give us overwhelming emotion to the point we cant breathe
the way mika took her step with shima knowing she’d be rejected but it *has* actually let her move on. she still has some conflicted feelings but she sees the way the wind is blowing and does wish both mitsumi and shima well.
and the way that sometimes having people outside of your typical friend circle lets you be open in a different way. her friendship with nao-chan has helped her self-confidence just as much as her friendship with her peers, just in a different way.
but also like, she was able to speak to nao-chan about all this *not caring that mukai was there*. the fact that she’s admitting this stuff not caring he’s there is so huge on her part because she’s spent so long trying to appeal to everyone in her age group and “fit in” but she’s finally letting herself move past that. she always wanted a romantic relationship because she wanted a relationship in which she was seen and accepted for herself (and she didn’t think those those two conditions were compatible due to her low self-esteem). and because of that she wasn’t actually in the position to have a healthy romance. but now she’s no longer actively seeking that acceptance if she does now start dating someone it won’t be *for* the acceptance but because she wants to be in the relationship and likes the other person. but nao-chan still gives her that reassurance she will “definitely find someone” because she knows enough to know they’re alike in that aspect.
and mika’s so relieved too the entire time she’s sharing this. mukai actively calls her hyper and obviously he doesn’t have the full context but even he knows this is rare for her.
