avi!86

For some reason, I don't see as many people talk about Mizuki's story in the context of being a story about the failures of the general school system and it's approach to bullying specifically. I actually have some experience in this field, having been bullied all throughout school for different reasons and at varying seventies, so I feel like I can do this subject some justice.

So, let's start with Mizuki's relationship with school outside of the bullying.

Mizuki is the sterotypical gifted kid, down to the highschool burnout (albeit for far different reasons that the usual attaching too much worth to something adults no longer find special or noteworthy which, wouldn't you know it, isn't all to great for your self esteem and overall mental health, leading to less motivation to do things) She arrives at the correct answer without being able to understand or explain how she got there, she does well on tests without even trying or being in class most of the time (iirc it's implied her grades are slightly below Mafuyu's, a gifted kid who actually does try, so I'd say high 80s to low 90s range), she outright says that she just absorbs information faster than her peers, and she fundamentally does not understand how anyone could struggle with schoolwork, to the point where when Akito and An try to talk about their struggles with studying with her, she essentially says 'I don't get it bro, just read the textbook'. Brutal.

I start here, instead of with the bullying itself because it paints a picture of what could have been. Outside of the bullying, Mizuki is a smart kid who gets good grades and has the same thoughts about school as the average highschooler (ie. she thinks the schoolwork is a boring thing she has to do before she can move on with her life) In fact, the only thing that's really holding her back from having a Mafuyu level academic record is her frequent truancy and the fact that she isn't trying. Which brings us to...

Now, the extent of the bullying isn't exactly shown. All we ever see of it is in the way people talk to and about her, treating her like a spectacle instead of a person with feelings and emotions, as well as Mizuki's fear that people will see Niigo as 'guilty by association' if they're seen hanging out with her (which may well be irrational or at the very least, blown out of proportion. Mizuki's anxiety is through the roof basically at all times, just look how she reacted to the idea that she may have to leave Niigo to pursue her career) For all we know, the bullying could stop there, the only thing that may suggest otherwise is how fast she is (there is no way she runs like Usain Bolt for no reason, and we all know there's simply no way she does runs track) We could argue this gives the school some plausible deniability, but with the sheer scale of people gossiping about her, there's no way the school doesn't know about it. Hell, even if you were to entertain the idea that they don't, I can guarantee they at the very least know that Mizuki would be a potential target for bullying.

See, bullying doesn't come out of nowhere, in fact it's just a reflection of the issues of society as a whole. Bullying happens because your peers deem that there is something 'wrong' with you and they aim to fix it. How do they determine if a person is 'defective' or not? Simple, from a young age, kids are taught general guidelines for how a person should be, both by parental figures and society as a whole. It is for this reason that people of color, religious minorities, disabled people, and queer people are more likely to be victims of bullying. Society has deemed that there is something wrong with these groups, and so the seeds for bullying are planted in children's heads.

Mizuki, as a trans girl, neatly fits into one of these categories, and we can infer with confidence that the school knows this because she wears the girls uniform (though we can reasonably conclude through context clues that they still made her wear the tie until An traded it for her ribbon).

So then, why hasn't anything been done? Schools generally agree that bullying is bad from a moral standpoint as well as a logistical one, considering bad mental health often leads to falling grades. Mizuki's grades are surely good enough to mark her as someone who should not be thrown to the wolves as good student performance reflects well on the school as a whole and often directly contributes to funding (at least in America, I'm not sure if this applies in Japan)

So then, why has Mizuki been thrown to the metaphorical wolves?

And here lies the disconnect: while society generally agrees that bullying is bad and must be put to a stop, it doesn't necessarily believe the aforementioned frequent targets deserved the same respect as any other human being. This is why (at least in America) almost every anti-bullying presentation depicts the victim as someone who doesn't fit into any of these catagories. It's also why the insults thrown at the victim are so lackluster and shallow in comparison to what actually happens. In the presentations, the victim is called a 'loser' instead of a 'freak' or a 'weirdo'. This, in theory addresses the problem without implying that minorities deserve respect...

Except it doesn't actually, because in most cases bullying happens to someone because they're deemed as one of these minorities, not because some child woke up and decided to be mean. Furthermore, just like most surface-level 'just don't do it' preventative material, this presents and inaccurate, or at the very least, very surface-level, idea of what bullying is. Now, kids think that if they aren't doing exactly what's shown on screen, they aren't bullying anyone. But here's the thing, I was never tossed into a dumpster, or given a swirly. I've never had my lunch money stolen. I've had my hair pulled, been excluded from groups, and had things thrown at me.

So going back to Mizuki, assuming there are measures in place to prevent bullying, they very clearly aren't working. Actually, her bullies don't even seem to recognize themselves as such, saying things such as 'she should just be normal if she doesn't want the attention' which lines up quite nicely with what I've already described. But now, I fear I must bring attention to the elephant in the room...

It's very likely that the school is transphobic. Earlier, I mentioned that they allow Mizuki to wear the girls uniform, but there's nothing that implies that this is the uniform she was initially assigned. Actually it's likely her family had to fight just to get her that uniform. Sure, to our knowledge, she hasn't been dress-coded for it, but in the end, that doesn't really mean anything. Kamiyama has been stated to basically let the kids do whatever with the uniform. Akito wears earrings to school, An wears a tie (which again may have originally been Mizuki's) and Rui regularly brings in things that explode for crying out loud, so in comparison, Mizuki's uniform is pretty standard, actually, because everyone at Kamiyama is doing something insane.

Actually, the most likely option, unfortunately, is the Kamiyama is, at best a neutral party, and at worst, quietly condones the bullying. Remember, society doesn't necessarily believe trans people deserve basic respect, and the school system is a major part of said society.

I think this is part of the reason why the extent of Mizuki's situation is never shown. Whether she's just being excluded or the bullying is at K-drama levels doesn't really matter. At the end of the day, Mizuki is a well performing student who could be doing better if something was done about the constant bullying. But even though doing something will be objectively beneficial to all parties, nothing will happen, because that's simply not how society works.