It was either “betray my friends and indirectly cause them to likely get killed” or “get a third party and the legal system involved” so everyone lives and Miri goes unharmed. The legal system here being Misaki’s birth rights to Miri trumping Kazuki and Rei’s feelings.

Misaki’s change of heart doesn’t feel fully genuine to me. With her whole life going down the drain, I think she’s just lonely.

Misaki didn’t wanna be a mother in the first place but powered through (which I sympathized with). I can’t really see her feelings suddenly changing. The year without Miri might’ve done some good to her mental health, but parenting isn’t something you can just take a vacation from.

This will probably backfire on her. Especially once Miri starts asking questions about where her two Papas are. She’s a little older now and a little more observant of her surroundings.

Also really interesting to note that while Miri obviously loves her mother, she’s never really expressed displeasure about her mother not being there. I’m curious if we’re gonna see a situation where Miri misses Rei and Kazuki and Misaki will realize she was a bit in over her head. The Miri she has now is different than the Miri she had before. The emotional attachment is no longer what it was before because Miri’s not fully dependent on her anymore.

Idk man I can’t see this ending without Miri going back to KazuRei. A permanent separation would just undermine the whole message this anime has been trying to send. “Two men can totally raise a child together...until a real mother comes along” would be a horrible take.

In episode 7, there was a lot of frustration mixed with sympathy towards Rei for his lack of ability to help carry the load of parenthood, leaving Kazuki to deal with it all. It’s so refreshing to see that wasn’t just a one-off instance and he actually is learning and growing from it. We see it here when he offers to help with the food, something he would’ve previously just left to Kazuki.

Also Kazuki: [cleans it on the regular, keeps track of the bills, stocks the fridge, buys all the furniture, has literally been there for 3 fucking years keeping Rei alive]

Weaponized Incompetence is when a person will deliberately pretend to be helpless or not know how to do things in order to get out of doing things they don’t wanna do. (”You do it better than me, though”). In this case, Rei is not doing that. It seems like he’s just deliberately dropping the ball, but once Kazuki is out of the picture, it’s pretty obvious that Rei just literally doesn’t know how to do things and absolutely fumbles on his own. He’s not intentionally trying to shift the load onto Kazuki. He just has no life skills at all and grew too dependent on other people (mostly Kazuki) doing the basic things like cleaning, cooking, etc. for him without realizing it.

But as we see at the end of the episode, he’s willing to learn. He is stunted in his development through no fault of his own, but he is still an adult and not just any adult, either. An adult in charge of a child. This was kind of a wake-up call for him. So while yes, it’s frustrating in the beginning watching Kazuki bear the brunt of the load and not get much appreciation for it, Rei is still sympathetic in that he genuinely just doesn’t know better.