Ro :D

this Fucking Family. i have to admit i wasn’t really expecting the seimei brocon reveal, though that definitely explains some things in retrospect. was the grooming part of your orders too, soubi? the two-sided nature of him with regards to how everybody sees him is also very interesting, especially paired with ritsuka and all the audrina shit he’s still going through with his mom rn…

speaking of which, the one thing i’m still really dubious of at this point is the fact that ritsuka’s explanation of his relationship with seimei still seems biased towards the last two years that he can remember. was their family dynamic really always like that? and also, on top of that, how long have these other people known seimei/how long has he been involved in septimal moon? i was also pretty caught off guard by the reveal that nana (OHH cuz it’s 七. oh my god i just got that fuuuck. duh.) was the only formal SM member and nagisa and ritsu aren’t involved, that’s. Huh. just gotta wait for the slow revelations about all these relationships and how they interlock, i guess… (the nagisa incest comment from ritsu is standing out to me too…)

extremely heartbreaking what’s going on with the mother by the way. as obvious as the abuse is, i’ve been finding it difficult to really understand her as a character these last few volumes since she only ever seems to show up in-story to be a danger to ritsuka or point of angst in his life. her outright refusal to kill ritsuka, and her justification of wanting seimei back almost entirely so that she can feel controlled and like she’s not a danger around him, is such a great and painful wrinkle of interest to add to that character, i really appreciate the way that whole section was written.

the way the zeroes & that nisei guy or whatever talk about them so frankly and rudely also makes a really interesting contrast, like you can just Feel how much they’re not getting it before you even intellectually understand it. the writing in this series is really crazy good at capturing nuanced emotions like that what the hell

it’s the mixed feelings that ritsuka has around his mother too, affection and pain and desperation to believe in her all wrapped up together into a confusing mess. i like how he tells himself not to believe her when she insists that she never should’ve given birth to him, like he’s denying her current self as truly Her, just in the same way that she’s been denying his present self as the Real Ritsuka. the comments from soubi about generational trauma (???) also make me curious if that aspect of the family history is actually going to become relevant or get revealed later… or if it’s just gonna be seimei at the center of it all. i’d be open to it going either way

back to the named antagonist pairing too!! lessee, i guess thus far all the names pairs we’ve gotten have been: beloved, loveless, breathless, fearless… (and the zeroes). um, one of these doesn’t quite look like the others, huh? i think i’m reading the later viz translation rn (rather than the tokyo pop one), so i’m gonna guess that’s not just a translation error thing. we’ll see where the pattern goes, i supposeee