While I’ll personally never read this again nor recommend it, I do like how this manga explores the relationship between a person feeling smothered/suffocated by love affects and the person that suffocates with love. It’s a relationship that doesn’t allow either person to grow as individuals and appreciate each other as they change. Instead, it’s an ego-driven dynamic where each person has to play their role to survive another day. It’s a common relationship between a parent and a “good child” and ultimately leads to distance as child grows into an adult. You can only play the “weak” role so long until you’re numb and you hate yourself for it, so you keep operating on auto-pilot just to get through the day.
I think the solution to that dynamic is for either person to stop playing their role and show up as an individual in the relationship. The “smothered person” shouldn’t act helpless anymore and should try to figure it things out on their own regardless of if they are good at it or not. The person who smothers should step back and allow the other person to make their own choices, but that doesn’t mean you have to abandon them. Of course there will be resistance to the change of the relationship but it’s important to try to live your own life and not abandon yourself.
That’s the realest part of this manga imo. The MC’s obsession with predator and prey, elite and the common people, is just rooted in the fact he feels no power or autonomy in his life. He would have achieved more emotional/mental/etc freedom and development just by facing the reality in front of him (His family and friend at school) than going off and killing two random people. It’s funny how the mind deflects from the issues in front of people.
I really wish the manga made the MC realize this during the story or at least at the end but he’s not even close to it. Though he’s fictional, I found myself wishing him the best on his journey to self-reconciliation.
Anyways, if you got this far in my paragraph and found it interesting, I recommend you read Homunculus. Make sure your search up the trigger warnings before reading.
This was so ass but good at the same time.
While I’ll personally never read this again nor recommend it, I do like how this manga explores the relationship between a person feeling smothered/suffocated by love affects and the person that suffocates with love. It’s a relationship that doesn’t allow either person to grow as individuals and appreciate each other as they change. Instead, it’s an ego-driven dynamic where each person has to play their role to survive another day. It’s a common relationship between a parent and a “good child” and ultimately leads to distance as child grows into an adult. You can only play the “weak” role so long until you’re numb and you hate yourself for it, so you keep operating on auto-pilot just to get through the day.
I think the solution to that dynamic is for either person to stop playing their role and show up as an individual in the relationship. The “smothered person” shouldn’t act helpless anymore and should try to figure it things out on their own regardless of if they are good at it or not. The person who smothers should step back and allow the other person to make their own choices, but that doesn’t mean you have to abandon them. Of course there will be resistance to the change of the relationship but it’s important to try to live your own life and not abandon yourself.
That’s the realest part of this manga imo. The MC’s obsession with predator and prey, elite and the common people, is just rooted in the fact he feels no power or autonomy in his life. He would have achieved more emotional/mental/etc freedom and development just by facing the reality in front of him (His family and friend at school) than going off and killing two random people.
It’s funny how the mind deflects from the issues in front of people.
I really wish the manga made the MC realize this during the story or at least at the end but he’s not even close to it. Though he’s fictional, I found myself wishing him the best on his journey to self-reconciliation.
Anyways, if you got this far in my paragraph and found it interesting, I recommend you read Homunculus. Make sure your search up the trigger warnings before reading.