To explain more about your ending note,"You can be sexually attracted to someone you don’t love and love someone your not sexually attracted to."
That's exactly what the series was portraying. Jun can never be sexually tracked to Miura, but his love for her was real. Meanwhile, Makoto is just somebody that couldn't. In the manga he uses the word 'aisuru', which compared to 'suki' that Jun and Miura used exclusively, it means directly love. He TRIED to love her. He really did. But unlike Jun which couldn't get hard for Miura but loved her, Makoto managed to get hard but couldn't love. He was actually missing that ROMANTIC element to keep himself faithful. Granted I'm sure the sex wasn't as enjoyable, but the main factor here was the romance for him. Probably wasn't as clear...
But overall, the series' main theme was indeed the split between sexual attraction and romantic attraction. Sometimes, a couple can co-exist with only one aspect. For Miura and Jun, there is something in the back of my head that if Jun choose to stay, they probably would've gotten married and achieved his dream I translated from the novel in chapter 7. The one where he was watching his song playing catch as Miura, his wife and bearer of his children, laughed. It didn't have to be through sex, but artificial insemination if they couldn't find a way to get it up.
But Jun needed to find out who he was, and so they did the right choice and break up while he still had the youth to explore. Maybe in the sequel the two will get back together, but as of right now he is exploring more options on the homosexual end.
Okay, thank you for clearing that up for me with it being intentional! I understood that the author was trying to portray the difference between love and sexual attraction with Miura and Jun’s relationship but I wasn’t sure about Makoto as he always pissed me off ╮(￣▽￣)╭.
Although many people are saying this story was very undefined and messy, I believe it had a strong theme it wanted to explore and it achieved its goal. Not everyone will like the characters but I think the portray of the different facets of love and lust is interesting enough to make it a worthwhile read.
I personally very much enjoyed this manga and the tidbits of novel we got by the translation team!
At this point I’m left with feelings of pity and hopefulness to everyone in this series. I’m very glad that Miura and Jun remained good friends and that he now has the confidence and support he needs to accept himself and his sexuality in a society that isn’t kind to those like him. The character I feel the worst for is Mr.Fahrenheit’s mother. I believe she actually loved him and said some very insensitive and rash things in the heat of the moment that she never got to resolve once the weight of it sunk in more. Now she’ll never have another chance to try and understand her son because he’s gone.
Ono (is his name that black haired friend) is a character with good intentions that went sour due to his self righteous anger. He wanted to set up his friend with the girl he liked, his friend dates her first, and then found out that that guy was cheating on his friends crush with another guy. But his actions done in anger were disgusting and I hope he learns from this experience that words can do more just hurt.
Makoto is a disgusting and pitiful man and I hope he gets the help he needs. It seems implied that he stopped seeing other men once his son was born but started seeing Jun after he had “that incident.” Pedophilia is actually a medical condition and people can seek treatment. I wish he just saw help instead of acting on it. I hope that now that he’s done with Jun he will seek real help and not prey on minors anymore.
I wish Mr.fahrenheits cousin waited until Mr.Fahrenheit was more of age before they acted. He was an adult and by not acting responsibly he not only damned himself but also his lover. I have very complicated feelings about their love. Sometimes who you fall in love with isn’t controllable but it’s actions that matter and I find his severely irresponsible.
The only real issue that I had with this manga on the plot level was the way they made out “love” and “like.” You can be sexually attracted to someone you don’t love and love someone your not sexually attracted to. Love and even romantic love aren’t so narrow that you have to want to have sex with them for it to even qualify. That’s what made me partially disgusted with Makoto. He could love his wife but not get sexual gratification out of it which caused him to look for side gigs but he did not seem to not love her at all, at the end saying he would save his wife felt more like a choice being made to keep with the social norms than real love. I could be wrong on this tho and would greatly appreciate if someone told me otherwise. Being gay does not mean you cannot love the opposite gender, it just means you don’t find yourself sexually attracted to them.