This chapter I'll mostly be analyzing Mizuha's behavior. There's been a huge shift in her treatment towards Fushi since the last time she talked to them, and I wanted to take the time to consider why this happened because I know many people find Mizuha difficult to understand. Not me though. I understand perfectly.
Mizuha starts this chapter with a plan, and that plan is to pressure Fushi into admitting they were wrong to meddle with her school life. As we can see when she prepares to abandon the feather hairband early in the second page, she's not actually upset that they wrecked the symbol of her friendship with Hanna and Tonari, so there's another, greater purpose to this confrontation. All of her questions are deliberately worded to make Fushi look bad, she gives them orders to follow, and demeans them. The first part of this chapter is just her asserting power over them, and it's super effective.
This isn't to say that Mizuha's done a complete one-eighty since Chapter 140.2. The sequence on the very first page of this chapter captures her internal conflict very well; she initially reacts to Fushi's words with the same affectionate smile she usually gives them, but then she covers it with a calculating expression. It's not that she hates Fushi now, it's that any happiness she gets from their care is drowned out by the sting of rejection.
Mizuha's desire to overpower Fushi didn't just come out of nowhere either. Like Izumi, Mizuha has always strove for perfection in herself and others. The reason she likes Fushi so much is because they're the embodiment of that perfection, and her goal was always to obtain them in some way. But Fushi appeared in her life as someone who was really, really eager to help her in any way they could. Mizuha quickly became emotionally reliant on them, meaning she could expose her imperfections in front of them, and that experience was better than putting on an act all the time. In a sense, she was controlling them already, but in a way that Fushi accepted, so it was fine. At least until it all came crashing down in Chapter 139.2. A quick recap:
In this scene Mizuha has, again, killed someone without remembering it. Fushi knows, but instead of treating her with kindness like they did the first time, they're angry and scared of her. For the first time Mizuha trusted someone to know everything about her, and they abandoned her. In Chapter 145.2, Mizuha's bubbling resentment at Fushi bursts out. Everything she does is designed to tell Fushi, "you thought I was controlling before? No no no. THIS is controlling, motherfucker!" Yes that's verbatim.
But Mizuha's perspective didn't shift immediately after they left her alone. For the disrespect she displays in this chapter, she'd have to lose the belief that they're a god first. So let's take a look at Chapter 140.2, where she pleads with Fushi to leave Izumi's knocker alone. From Mizuha's viewpoint, they've gone from hating her to going on revenge trips in her name. There is something really obviously wrong with this, and more than that, Fushi tosses aside their weak try at heroism in favor of attacking Izumi's knocker in a cruel and inhuman way. To her, they're still a god, but not the benevolent kind that'll grant wishes. Although they ceded this time, Fushi is now an unpredictable nuisance in Mizuha's life. There's no way that she can coexist with them.
And then some dumbfuck took this mess decided to enable it. If the left hand happened to tell Mizuha that Fushi usually hates Hayase's successors actually, but made friends with one of them who killed himself and that's why they care about her, that would explain their contradictory actions, and it would taint all of their well meaning gestures. And if the left hand then told Mizuha how cool her ancestors were and how they were meant to take charge of Fushi? And that they could take Fushi in a fight and one time even managed to kill them (with its help, of course), and that actually it thinks she's special, and even better then all the other successors? Yeah. With the left hand around to boost her confidence, Mizuha is free to manipulate Fushi without any repercussions.
Which brings us to the kiss. In the Jananda Arc, Hayase used her tongue to try and claim Fushi for herself, and there's a similar thing going on here. Mizuha doesn't express her affection with kisses. In the past she's only ever wanted company and a hug. So this kiss isn't a loving kiss, it's the ultimate proof that she can control Fushi: they hate her, and yet they make no attempt to stop her. Dominating her would entail an intimate relationship, and by combining that with her power trip Mizuha reduces it to another form of control.
Obviously, that's not all that's going on here. The one who tried to kiss Fushi (in Chapter 139.2 too) was the left hand—not Mizuha, although I analyzed it as such because the two are beginning to blend together—which has all sorts of weird implications I can't even begin to understand, but it does probably mean that its goal is different than what Yuuki predicted, and maybe different than the other knockers'.
Funa appears and Mizuha is faced with the consequences of her own actions. She's not the one who killed Funa, but she's cooperating with the one who did. If your cold medicine murders someone, can you be held responsible? In the second half of the chapter her cold act snaps and she freaks out completely. Mizuha hates to have people judge her, so Funa knowing her secret and just existing in general is terrifying. Her reaction got especially intense after Funa said she saw the inside of her room, so I'm wondering if there's something in there we don't know about.
And that's all on Mizuha! Back to Fushi, who didn't really do much this chapter. There's something very fucky about them saying "well I tried my best" when they haven't done anything at all. @eko-thoughts (hiya) noticed—and I'll paraphrase here—that Fushi sounds resigned to failing because they can just try again with the next reincarnation. Directly after that their speech bubble cuts Mizuha's head off which is just—exquisite framing. I love it when mangakas fuck around with that.
Anyways just so we're clear, Fushi knows what a kiss is. They know what a romantic relationship is, they know that Mizuha is in love with them. I just find it strange that they didn't react negatively to her touching them at all, because they have in the past. Hell, when Kahaku hugged them they had to throw up. Now they're just completely neutral. And I'm done with Fushi's part.
I don't have much to say about Funa, other than I thought her knocker was just dicking around when no one was looking but I guess she's like that all the time so it must have been method acting. "Horndog." "Skeeved out." I want her to appear more just so the translators can get more of her dialogue. She has good bitchy energy.
Two more things I'd like to point out: (1) Yeah that's a collage of Mizuha in Kasabe's room. If she doesn't have a crush I don't know what the hell that's for. (2) Mizuha dropped her hairband on the way out of the room and she's going to talk to Hanna soon. Whee.
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hii i was wondering if u could explain a little about chapter 146! like why funa was there in the start and what is going on between mizuha and hanna, its all confusing to me but im still curious to understand this chapter. im terrible at keeping track of the story which is why i read your analyses!
Sure I can explain! Actually, I'm going to explain a lot just in case. Let's start with what Funa was doing on the first page.
Fushi started Chapter 145.2 in Funa's form and then returned it, knowing that if no one else is occupying an empty body the ghost who it belongs to will be automatically sucked in. Their intention was to make sure the knockers wouldn't be able to repossess Funa's body, and ideally they would have recreated her body somewhere far away from Mizuha. But the school is fairly well maintained and any roots Fushi left lying around would be torn down. So with nowhere to reconnect to Fushi only had the duration of their conversation with Mizuha to stretch their roots as far as they could, which was not very far. I have helpfully pointed out Fushi's roots going in the same direction that Funa is coming from below:
Because they put her in a spot relatively close by, Funa assumed that Fushi wanted her help and came back. There was no real reason for her to keep quiet, but from what we've seen of her personality I'd say she wanted her entrance to have an element of surprise.
Hanna was out in the hallway because in Chapter 145.1 she saw Mizuha go up to Fushi to talk about something related to their matching hair-ties. She probably intended to intervene earlier, but then heard some things that made it very difficult to step in. After Funa shushed her, she decided that fantasy battles weren't something she was equipped to deal with and that there was nothing she could do in that situation that could help Mizuha, felt useless, and left. From a narrative standpoint, that's why Funa was there at the start of the chapter.
Now I'm going to try to boil down the conflict between Mizuha and Hanna to its essentials on both sides. Hopefully, after reading this you'll have a better idea of what's at play during Chapter 146.1 as well as in future chapters.
Mizuha and Hanna's interactions have always been formulaic: Hanna reaches out to Mizuha to lessen her physical and emotional burdens, and Mizuha reaches out to Hanna to test her friendship and to maintain their distance. They're caught in a loop where both of them want to be closer, but fundamentally misunderstand the intentions of the other. Let's start with Mizuha's part:
Mizuha wants a relationship with someone who will accept her weaknesses, but that wish has been altered by a childhood with Izumi, who can't handle anything less than perfection. Because of that, she's divided all of her relationships up into the person who's perfect and the person who's not, the one being controlled and the one doing the controlling, the trophy and the winner. Because Hanna lets Mizuha dictate the nature of their relationship, she must be the perfect friend Mizuha's been searching for.
But Mizuha—who like Izumi, prioritizes perfection—finds Hanna disappointing. She was hoping for someone who would center themselves around her like a planet orbits a star, but that's not what Hanna thinks friendship is. For the most part, she follows Mizuha's lead, but when she sees Mizuha in distress and reaches out, it's an infringement on the pattern they've set. Ultimately, Mizuha's more comfortable with someone who'll follow whatever instructions she gives them, like Fushi. But more than that, Hanna can't give Mizuha the second thing she's been searching for: immortality.
So she's not the perfect friend. If her friend is perfect then Mizuha will have room to be imperfect, but Hanna isn't so she can't so logically Mizuha should sever their relationship like she has with everyone in the past. Despite this, Mizuha still makes a feather hair-tie to give her so that they can share their prize and proof of friendship. This is Mizuha's first and final attempt to explain that Hanna might not be unique or perfect, but she's special to her.
Fushi drives a huge wrench in this because they're everything Mizuha has been looking for in a friend, no matter how unrealistic those expectations were. It's why she confided in Fushi almost immediately after they met while it took her over a year before she began testing Hanna. Compared to the bright, shining Fushi, Hanna's dullness is obvious until it becomes apparent that Fushi isn't as perfect as she first thought, and was using her like a trophy too. So Mizuha is emotionally all over the place and in Chapter 146.1, her thoughts about Hanna explode to the surface.
Hanna thinks that being Mizuha's friend is more of an obligation than something she does willingly. Mizuha is a pretty fish and Hanna is the dirty bucket: she needs the bucket to breathe but she's meant to be in the ocean. She didn't know that Mizuha valued their relationship at all, so when she asked Hanna if she would be sad that Mizuha died, Hanna didn't know how to respond.
After that, Hanna realizes that her hesitancy has hurt Mizuha quite a bit, and when they find her and Hanna gives her a hug, it's proof of her resolve to change. Even if Mizuha says she's fine, Hanna's learned that that's not necessarily true, so she's decided not to take Mizuha at her word anymore. Ironically, following her without question was exactly what Mizuha wanted Hanna to do.
When Mizuha tells Hanna this in Chapter 146.1, it comes as a shock because Hanna stopped putting her on a pedestal a while ago, and she tears off the hair-tie she gave to Mizuha because she's angry at herself that Mizuha still assumes she thinks of their friendship like it's nothing.
