I didnt read the manga yet, but i think he has Stockholm syndrome
you read my mind!!!
I think it wasn't that Utsumi "fell in love out of nowhere" after 6 years, it was that he realized that he 'loved' him after 6 years. He probably developed a crush after a little bit of kindness was shown to him at the company party, and after the incident, he was going through mental turmoil, and his rapist forgetting it even happened probably rubbed even more salt to his wound, making him fixated on Akimine even more since he felt so wronged. Since his revenge plan required him to center his life around Akahime for it to work, it likely caused him to genuinely become attached later on since his life developed meaning: seeking revenge. Life after revenge would become unstructured, as he would have to rebuild his life and find new meaning. Change can be scary to people, especially to people who have trauma.
Imo I don't think they should've become a couple; the perfect ending would've been Akamine reflecting on his crime for life after atoning, and Utsumi finally moving on after his revenge. But I suppose the author had other plans :/
my biggest issue was with how the author chose to build the backstory actually. the past (before the rape) and the present where compared A LOT. the brief moment where he showed a slight interest in akamine at the company party was used as a source of internal conflict for akamine's current character, almost as if a significant connection and trust were established and then broken between them back then when... they barely knew each other? if the consequences of trauma were so severe that they led to several years of seeking revenge i seriously don't understand how tf these crumbs of kindness he showed once when they were strangers were relevant enough to influence his attachment to akamine, unless utsumi had been completely infatuated with him since day one, which that makes no sense. i could buy it if it were really just for the reason you mentioned but there were too many implications that it wasn't just that which feels very out of the blue to me.
i agree that they shouldn't have been together but bleh some ppl hate reasonable endings even in obvious tragedies like this one lol
I've had friends who would fall for strangers at first interaction just because they were shown a bit of kindness despite the other person being an asshole later on. My friends would know they were wronged but excuse the other person's behavior because "they're not always like that!" or "most of the time they don't act like that!". At some point I just gave up trying to reason with them, but I think it just said more about their unresolved childhood trauma and how they approach love more so than anything else. I couldn't blame them but I wish they knew better.
Because I have had friends like that, I viewed the story as plausible yet fucked up, but that's just me. It won't ever truly make sense to me, but a lot of things happen around me that don't make sense, so I just concede.
i heard that the rape wasn’t romanticized, but if that were really true, they wouldn't be so infatuated with each other after everything that happened from the very first chapter. but that’s not my issue here.
my issue is that utsumi had to be the one yearning the most for akamine for a stupid and completely underdeveloped reason. how the hell did he have YEARS of hope for a stranger who helped him ONCE during a slightly inconvenient situation only to then do something way worse? "you're better than those people." who? the asshole who brutally forced himself on you is somehow better than some guys forcing you to drink some bitter stuff? talk about false moral equivalence.
and now you're telling me that after six motherfucking years, where he’s looking for revenge and supposedly has the upper hand, he falls in love out of no fucking where, gets HEarTbRoKeN by akamine's pathetic platonic crush (which was a very wrong move btw, it diverted utsumi's trauma to look like mere jealousy on his part) gets used by him again, and then goes back on his revenge to rescue his ass several times? all because of the same braindead claim that this mf is a good person??? he wanted to distinguish the good and bad in akamine when HE BARELY KNEW THIS BITCH!!!
meanwhile there's akamine who took wayyy too long to express genuine regret for what he did, and only did it out of horniness, unemployment, and despair (but obv we have to pretend it was for some other dramatic reason instead teehee). and he even gets to be forgiven by his own victim just like he wanted. what a happy ending ig..
art is majestic but this dumbass plot does it 0 justice