How to emotionally abuse your child: comparing and contrasting Mafuyu Asahina and Toya Aoyagi.
There are two actively abusive parents in Project Sekai, and both of them are emotionally abusive in similar ways and for similar reasons. But the treatment and development of Toya’s father and Mafuyu’s mother has been very distinctly different over the course of the story so far. Why has Toya’s relationship with his father stabilised and even marginally improved over the course of his events, while Mafuyu’s relationship with her mother hasn’t just deteriorated but actively crashed and burned?
I believe the difference lies in intent and perspective.
(Before we begin in earnest, I want to note that, at the end, I’ll briefly touch upon some other parents, specifically the ones who might also be worthy of criticism. Most notably, I’ll discuss Ena and Akito’s father and the (many) flaws in how he has treated both of his children. Refer to that if you’re interested.)
Toya and Mafuyu have a lot of similarities. They’re both emotionally repressed, they’re both exceptionally skilled (Toya more specifically being a musical prodigy, while Mafuyu has a more general kind of exceptional competence), and they both have very difficult relationships with their parents (their father and mother, respectively). They’ve both slowly but surely come out of their shells and recovered thanks to the help of their groups (VBS and Niigo, with an emphasis on Akito and Kanade, respectively). Because of the connections they’ve made, both of them have received the support needed to directly confront their parents and choose a new path for themselves, regardless of what their parents think.
Toya’s father and Mafuyu’s mother also have a lot of similarities. They’re both overbearing, controlling parents who pile pressure and expectations on the shoulders of their children, both have isolated their children in an attempt to focus their attention on the things they deemed important, and they’ve both rejected the paths their children have decided to walk in the end.
Both of them have claimed that their behaviour was motivated by good intentions, that they truly want the best for their children and want them to be happy, and that everything they’ve done has been in service of making life easier for their children.
Both of them have failed, but only Mafuyu’s mother is lying (including to herself).
Toya’s father has been a successful classically trained musician his entire life, and has raised two other boys to be successful classically trained musicians. Neither of Toya’s brothers live in Shibuya, but small mentions of them reveal that, though they might have shared Toya’s current attitude in the past, both of them have told Toya they now agree with their father, despite going through the same kind of upbringing by the same man, with all the horrible things that implies.
Because Toya’s father, more than anything, loves classical music. It makes him happier than virtually anything else in the world. Toya’s father loves classical music, and has loved classical music for his entire life, as much as the most passionate characters in this story love music. Toya’s father loves classical music as much as (or maybe more than) Toya loves street music. Toya’s father loves classical music as much as Akito loves street music.
Both of Toya’s brothers have claimed to share this love. The reason Toya’s brothers can now look back and say that their father was right is because classical music has made both of Toya’s brothers happier than virtually anything else in the world, too (or, at least, that’s what they told Toya).
The reason Toya’s father raised Toya the way that he did is because, from his point of view, there is nothing that will make an Aoyagi happier than classical music. He has made the mistake a lot of parents make. He has assumed his sons are the same as him. He has assumed what would make him happy, would make his sons happy. And nothing has given him any indication that this is false. Not Toya’s brothers, and not even Toya.
Toya has also loved classical music his entire life. The reason Toya rebelled and quit classical music isn’t because he doesn’t like it, or doesn’t like playing it. Toya rebelled because his father was suffocating him, isolating him and controlling him, and the association with that suffocation made Toya’s relationship with classical music strained, but it has been stated again and again that the reason Toya has avoided classical music for a while now is because it brings up unpleasant memories, not because he doesn’t actually like the music.
The crucial difference between Toya and his father is that classical music does not make Toya happier than anything in the world. He might enjoy it, and he might even love it, but Toya will, and would, never be able to look back on the trauma and isolation he endured and believe it was worth it. Toya would never have willingly sacrificed his childhood, his social life, his freedom for classical music. Not when he was a child, not now, and according to everything we know about him, not in the future either.
But Toya’s father would have. Toya’s father believes the suffering he endured was worth the happiness he now feels. Toya’s brothers have both told him that they believe the suffering they endured was worth the happiness they now feel. And Toya’s father thinks the suffering Toya has endured and would have needed to continue to endure would be worth the happiness he’s convinced he would feel in the future.
He does not understand Toya’s switch to street music. Or, well, he does; Toya switched to street music specifically because he knew his father would hate it more than any other type of music, and Toya’s father is aware of this. Toya didn’t have it in him to quit music entirely, but the reason he chose this type of music specifically is for no reason other than “my dad would hate it”.
The thing that Toya’s father doesn’t understand is that Toya may have started street music to spite his father, but that’s not why he does it now. Toya fell in love with street music, to the same extent that his father fell in love with classical music, and it shows when he performs. That’s why, when Toya’s father went to see Toya perform for the first time at the end of his first event, their relationship changed for the better. Because Toya’s father wants his son to be happy, and the reason he’s been such a bad father is because he’s stubbornly convinced that classical music would make Toya happy, despite all evidence to the contrary. And when he saw his son on that stage, Toya was happier than classical music had ever made him.
His father may despise the music Toya makes, and there may be a pretty big part of him that thinks Toya would, someday, be able to fall in love with classical music in the same way he has, and maybe he even believes that Toya would be happier in the long run if he stuck to classical music. But first and foremost, Toya’s father wants Toya to be happy, and that performance showed him that street music made Toya happy. Their relationship softened because Toya’s father was able to understand, in some tiny way, that Toya wasn’t ruining his own life out of spite. Even if he thinks Toya would be happier in the long run, that performance showed Toya’s father that, if nothing else, Toya wasn’t going to be unhappy.
He still wants Toya to quit street music and return to classical. But the dynamic has changed because the stakes have changed. Previously, from Toya’s father’s perspective, it was either “continue performing this drivel and be miserable for the rest of your life” or “return to classical, push through the hardship and be happy”. Now, it’s “continue performing this drivel and be happy” or “return to classical, push through the hardship and be happier”. Those are entirely different stakes.
Now let’s talk about Mafuyu’s mother. What makes her different? Why does nothing get through to her? Why is Mafuyu’s mother portrayed so much harsher and so much more negatively?
It’s difficult to really pinpoint Mafuyu’s mother’s perspective and intentions, because Mafuyu’s mother is a manipulator first and foremost. Almost nothing she says can be taken at face value. But there’s a couple of possible interpretations, some more charitable than others.
Right off the bat, I don’t believe the most charitable explanation: that she genuinely wants what is best for her daughter and is simply misguided. If this was true, she wouldn’t have constantly invaded her privacy to snoop on whether or not she was still making music or talking to her friends. If this was true, she wouldn’t have thrown her synthesiser away behind her back. If this was true, seeing Mafuyu break down into tears and beg her mother to allow her even the tiniest amount of agency would have made her do more than blink. If this was true, she would have been rightly horrified that Mafuyu said she’s been unbelievably miserable for years instead of being mildly nonplussed, then immediately trying to guilt trip her by crying and repeating her spiel that this is all for the best. More than that, she wouldn’t have stopped crying immediately when she noticed her guilt tripping wasn’t working.
On the other hand, there’s the least charitable interpretation of Mafuyu’s mother: that she’s a narcissist who wants to live vicariously through her daughter’s success. She wants Mafuyu to be a successful doctor, not because she wants her to be happy, but because being able to say that she raised a successful doctor would make her feel successful by proxy. This isn’t impossible, or even improbable. There’s a not insignificant amount of parents who do, genuinely, feel this way, and the consequences of that are often severely traumatic for the children.
However, I don’t think this is accurate either. She’s too often portrayed as insisting everything is for Mafuyu’s sake for it to be entirely a lie, or at least a lie that she’s aware of. Instead, I think what’s happening is a little more insidious.
I believe Mafuyu’s mother has, at some point, decided who Mafuyu is, and that is the Mafuyu that she loves. And she does love that Mafuyu. But she loves only that Mafuyu, and a version of Mafuyu that deviates from the Mafuyu that she has decided to love isn’t the true Mafuyu.
Mafuyu’s mother has created a cardboard cutout of her daughter in her own mind, and when Mafuyu doesn’t fit it, it’s not the cutout that’s wrong, it’s Mafuyu that has somehow been altered.
This is why, when Mafuyu’s mother says her actions are for the sake of Mafuyu’s happiness, it’s simultaneously completely honest and entirely wrong. Because Mafuyu’s mother does genuinely believe that studying hard, getting into a good school, and becoming a successful doctor and a respectable adult who makes a lot of money would make her Mafuyu happy. She’s completely honest when she says it, which is also part of why she’s so good at manipulating Mafuyu.
The problem is that her Mafuyu doesn’t exist. And she has never existed. Her Mafuyu was, from the very beginning, an act that Mafuyu performed to make herself fit the shape of the cardboard cutout in her mother’s mind. The cardboard cutout was never real. It was a fake, a fake that Mafuyu tried desperately to pretend was real because she loves her mother and wanted to make her smile.
Why does her mother constantly deny Mafuyu’s real feelings? Why does she fail to understand anything, even when Mafuyu herself breaks down crying and shouts it out loud? Because the person Mafuyu’s mother loves is the cardboard cutout in her mind. Because the person telling her that she’s miserable isn’t her Mafuyu. That's a deviation that needs to be corrected, a corruption that needs to be removed, an infection that needs to be excised. The real Mafuyu would never say these things. The real Mafuyu is a good, kind girl who works hard, studies diligently, is always polite and does whatever her mom tells her to do.
The version of Mafuyu in her mind isn’t miserable, so Mafuyu can’t be miserable. If Mafuyu is miserable, then something must have changed her. Because her Mafuyu can’t be miserable.
This is why she so consistently blames Kanade and the rest of Niigo. It’s why she’s so insistent on Mafuyu quitting Niigo. It’s why she says things like “if Mafuyu wants to make music, she can, but she should prioritise studying first, and come back to it once she’s secure and stable”. It’s why she’s all for her being a member of the archery club, but constantly tells Mafuyu to stop making music.
It’s not about the activity. It’s about the people, putting ideas in her head, corrupting her, making her deviate from her real self. It’s about the discrepancy between the Mafuyu she sees and her Mafuyu.
If Mafuyu isn’t behaving like what she expects, it’s not her expectations that are wrong, it’s Mafuyu that’s wrong.
If the cardboard cutout doesn’t match reality, then reality is wrong.
Mafuyu’s mother loves a fantasy. More than that, she chooses to love a fantasy. The reason Mafuyu’s mother is portrayed so negatively, and never receives any of the positive development that any of the other parents do, is because she’s denying reality.
Project Sekai is about embracing your true feelings. Toya’s father didn’t understand Toya’s true feelings for a long time. When he eventually did understand them, though, he acknowledged them. He didn’t agree with them, but he acknowledged them. He understood, at the very least, that street music made Toya happy.
Mafuyu’s mother doesn’t just not understand Mafuyu’s true feelings, she denies them outright. She wants to kill them, in Kaito’s words. There is no reality where these are Mafuyu’s true feelings. There is no version of Mafuyu that isn’t her Mafuyu. She has one daughter, and she loves that daughter, and only that daughter.
Nevermind that that daughter isn’t real. Nevermind that her real daughter is absolutely miserable, begging for love and affection that isn’t predicated on her putting on a mask and playing a character that she can barely recognize herself in.
That is the difference between Toya’s father and Mafuyu’s mother. Toya’s father, for all his flaws and abuse and self-centred outlook, actually loves Toya. Mafuyu’s mother only loves the version of Mafuyu she created in her own head.
Alright, to cap this off, let’s look at a couple of other characters who are, in some way, questionably effective at being parents.
There’s probably a not-insignificant amount of people that were surprised when I said that only Toya’s father and Mafuyu’s mother were actively abusive. Ena and Akito’s father is also an almost exclusively negative influence in his childrens’ lives, so what makes him different?
What makes Ena and Akito’s father different is that I don’t think he’s actively abusive. I think he’s incredibly neglectful.
There is a massive difference in how often Ena and Akito’s father shows up and how often Toya’s father or Mafuyu’s mother show up. He appears very rarely in Ena’s events and barely has any lines even though the few lines he does have are incredibly important for Ena’s character. He doesn’t show up in Akito’s events at all. The only thing he consistently does is be a constant shadow hanging over Ena’s head, and he doesn’t need to be present to do that.
Ena and Akito’s father is barely a part of their family. He doesn’t try to control his children, or isolate them, or even criticise them outside of the rare instances he bothers talking to them. He’s a presence that sets Ena on edge constantly when she has to leave her room, but the amount of times Ena actually talks to her father can be counted on one hand. He’s profoundly and exclusively unsupportive, entirely emotionally (and often physically) distant and basically fully absent from Ena’s life outside of the two or three times he tells her to give up on her dreams because she has no talent and will never be successful.
And yet, in a weird way, Ena somehow has the better relationship with their father out of the two of them, because Ena has any relationship with their father at all. It’s very much negative, but they do very rarely interact. Akito’s only, only, conversation with the man is in Ena’s first event, where he tries to make their father understand that he’s, well, being a fucking terrible father to Ena. I scoured through every event story, every card story available in English. Nothing. There’s not even a mention of him talking to his father offscreen. Please correct me if I’m wrong, maybe the JP events/stories have something.
The only time he talks about his father is in the first side story of his card for Toya’s second event. He talks about a camping trip his family went on, and -- surprise surprise -- he paid barely any attention to his family, mostly just sitting there and painting the landscape. The closest he came was when he painted his family, until Ena pushed him in the river for not paying attention to her.
So yeah. No less of a bad dad than the other parents. Pretty terrible person. Just not in the same category as Toya’s father and Mafuyu’s mother, even if the influence he had on his daughter in particular ended up being just as negative and scarring. Also, thank god Akito met Ken because by all accounts that boy has spent most of his pre-RAD WEEKEND life without a father.
Tsukasa and Saki’s parents.
Saki was in the hospital for most of her early teens. In hindsight, their parents could have spent more time with Tsukasa, but it’s entirely understandable that they prioritised their sick, hospitalised daughter, even if it was the wrong choice. There are no bad guys here.
Tsukasa spent a fair chunk of his childhood lonelier than other kids, and in an ideal world, with perfect parents, that wouldn’t have happened. We don’t live in an ideal world. There are no perfect parents. I genuinely believe they did the best you could reasonably expect. That’s it.
The man had what was probably a stroke from overwork and stress. Normally, telling your incredibly musically gifted daughter that she should keep creating her own music and that a lot of people will enjoy her music is nothing but good parenting.
What happened was tragic in practically every way, but it would have been tragic regardless of what he said. Whether or not he emphasised that Kanade should continue composing her own music, Kanade was severely traumatised and would have spiralled into something unhealthy anyway. That it became this particular brand of unhealthy isn’t something I can blame him for.
(I can, however, blame child protective services and mental health care in Japan, who dropped the ball so fucking hard by letting a girl barely into her teens not only live by herself with no actual support because her grandmother continued to pay for the house but have consistently neglected to, y’know, actually check up on her. Ever. Even when she’s literally in the hospital. The closest they ever came is some of the random nurses being mildly concerned about the grieving 14-15 year old crying next to her comatose father’s hospital bed.)
Kanade’s saviour complex is a result of what her father said to her, yes. I don’t think that’s on him.
Mizuki’s parents and sister are fantastic, I just wanna shout them out for being the only healthy family in Niigo.
Anyway that’s it. Stand by for other stuff at some point in the future. There’s the beginnings of an idea about contrasting Mafuyu and Haruka, but take that with a grain of salt. It’s just a thing I noticed after finally getting around to reading some of Haruka’s event stories.
I think about characters other than Mafuyu, I promise. This is just a coincidence. Really.
