Isn’t it just like Tohru to see someone else who uses a winning personality to hide their inner turmoil and, rather of recognizing herself in them, doubles down on trying not to be a burden to them?
“It’s almost like he’s protecting something by hating Yuki.”
God, this fucking scene. I’m not sure what secrets Kyo might be hiding, but just from his body language you can tell how deep the scars they left in him are. Tohru’s right; for all his tough talk, his heart is as delicate as glass. Him and Yuki alike.
Can we also just, like, appreciate how casual this representation is? This is a manga from, like, the late 90s, and it prominently features an unambiguously bisexual character who isn’t ashamed of proclaiming how much he loves another dude. Get on this level, shounen.
I think Hatsuharu’s backstory is a really fantastic representation of the cycle of abuse. The other Sohmas made fun of him for being the Ox, an animal that’s supposedly slow and stupid. That complex manifested in an aggressive split personality that he used to take out his anger on Yuki, since the Rat is the animal that tricks the Ox in the old fairy tale, thus giving the Ox its reputation for stupidity. In other words, Haru’s family stereotyped him based on an intrinsic part of his being, and not only did that leaveHaru himself with lasting trauma he’s still working through to this day, it caused him to lash out at Yuki with the same harmful assumptions. He was hurt by being shoved into a box, and it drove him to try and shove someone else into a box in the exact same way, because that was the only way he knew how to process his anger. Pain passed down from person to person, perpetuating itself in an unbroken chain until someone’s finally able to stop it in its tracks.
listen the whole “aggressive hot boy defends his pure crush from creeps” is the tropiest trope to ever trope but god dammit this one really worked for me
