#bmm

HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Short answer: he would malfunction BADLY. Longer answer: it totally depends on when he actually catches them, but across the board it hits every single one of his unresolved issues like psychotic whack-a-mole.

Picture him coming down the hall and hearing two different kinds of laughter: Max’s sharper, younger one, and Mechanic’s lower, throatier, surprised one. That alone is weird, because Max doesn’t laugh like that around this house, and Mechanic doesn’t laugh like that around anybody. His hackles go up before he even knows why.

Then he hits the doorway and sees Max sitting cross-legged on the bed, tongue between her teeth, painting Mechanic’s nails or trying eyeliner on her. Mechanic is muttering under her breath about how “this is never coming off” but very obviously letting her (because Max wanted to practice after Snowball). There’s polish bottles or cheap drugstore makeup scattered everywhere, maybe a cassette playing quietly. It’s intimate, domestic, aggressively normal.

First reaction is defensive and mean, because that’s his default when something makes him feel small. He’ll lean on the doorframe, click his tongue, and say something like, “What, you two starting a beauty salon in here?” or “Didn’t know you came with a pink setting, princess.” That’s him trying to shove the whole scene back into a box he knows how to handle: teasing, control, getting a rise out of them.

Taiga Hirasawa x Yuu Arima, Boy Meets Maria, 10-12-25

(TW: csa)

reread boy meets maria for the third time after three years. here are my ramblings.

yup, still my no. 1 all-time favorite manga of all time. I KNOW ITS CONTROVERSIAL AND THE REVIEWS ARE MIXED BUT IT MEANS A LOT TO ME NO OTHER SHONEN AI HAS AFFECTED ME THE WAY BOY MEETS MARIA HAS (well, minus Hidamari Ga Kikoeru/I hear the sunspot BUT STILL)

god taiga and arima are so painfully relatable it actually hurts.

taiga always running away from his trauma and thus learned to not think about it at all as a coping mechanism and instead view the world in delusion to feel comfort…

arima unable to feel truly himself with any label given to him and feeling like he has to conform to gender norms so that he could be socially accepted only to realize that he will never fit the standards of what society deems as masculine and feminine…

taiga trying to understand arima and finally did when he faced homophobic comments from his classmates, realizing that arima isn’t happy because the world will only assume you to be what you present yourself as instead of who you really are on the inside…

im such a taiga and arima kinnie, it used to be just taiga but gah now it’s both of them fight me I love them so much

and also I know a whole lot of people really disliked the sa scene for very valid reasons, but personally I felt like having such a horrifying scenario be drawn so vividly and terrifyingly emphasized just how serious arima’s trauma was. the way it was eerily illustrated and distorted reminds you that arima was just a kid when it happened, that it that was the way he experienced it.

it was intense, absolutely, it hurt so much to read, but I felt like having such a scary scene be put in the manga when everything up until that point (minus taiga’s backstory) was very comical sets the shift in tone of the story as well builds up the climax. but yeah I do agree that to some extent it could have also been for shock value.

anywho, as an unlabeled person who resonates with arima and his journey to self discovery and gender identity, I feel like saying he is a representation of trans and non-binary people isn’t doing him or anyone in that community justice.

arima isn’t inherently trans or enby, but he isn’t exactly cis, either. (“you don’t have to be a boy or a girl, you can just be yuu.”) his experience may be relatable to a lot of people, but in the end, he represents the idea of rejecting conformity and labels and instead learning how to be himself, learning to embrace both his feminine and masculine side but not letting that define who he is, he’s just yuu :) and GOD as an androgynous person I FELT that scene.

speaking of that scene, the only chapter that I’m most confused with is chapter 6, especially when arima re-enacts his rape experience with taiga. I’ve been trying to analyze that scene for a while now and while I feel like I understand some bits of it, I still can’t seem to understand the full thing. doesn’t help with the fact that it seems like really nobody talks about that scene.

-> here’s what I got so far, arima became jealous of taiga because he began to view him as a caricature of what a hero is in his eyes, which was exactly what he had been working so hard in his life to try to be and yet failing to because no one truly accepts him the way taiga does, no matter what he tries to conform and be accepted, everyone will always assume this and that about him and his gender.

-> arima has no one, whereas taiga had his friends and other people who supported him and his masculinity. arima resented being seen socially female and thus worked hard to be as masculine as possible, thinking that his femininity is what makes him a half-assed man (when in reality both is what makes him truly his authentic self)

-> thus, he begins to blame his trauma for making him become the way he is. had he not been raised the way he was or raped, would he be struggling as much as he did now? he wondered. That’s why when taiga came to tell arima that he wasn’t alone and that he wants to be like him and cares about him, to arima it felt invalidating because at this point he viewed taiga not as a person but an idea of social success, while he himself was far from it. how could a caricature begin to understand what he had been through when it was perfect, after all?

-> in a fit of rage, arima demonstrated to taiga his sa experience to show him what it was like for him, how his trauma completely changed him for worse. Because taiga spent all his time trying to understand him, maybe this was arima’s way of doing so all the while suffering through a breakdown and ptsd.

-> it was clear arima never wanted to hurt taiga and most likely never planned to, he even profusely apologized after taiga expressed his side of things too. god the panel where arima looks down at taiga who was crying as he said he didn’t need to be a boy or a girl was so heartbreaking, the way he sort of snaps out of his thoughts and sees how he had hurt the person he loved the most, while not exactly doing anything in the end, all the while reminded how he felt when it happened to him. Chills.

my understandings still a complete mess rip it’s so frustrating cuz I want to understand arima, he is such a beautifully complex character, but I’m not analytical enough T-T if anyone has any thoughts about it do share please

Anyway, tl;dr: I fucking love boy meets Maria, it was one of the first shonen ai I ever read and set the bar HIGH for every other shonen ai I consumed ever since.

Hay it's ripple ignore the cat (or don't, cats r pretty Kool) I keep getting oof'ed off tt so uhhh