#ons 112

Dude, WTF? WTF did I just read? I hope people that are reading this manga can realize Yuu's words and actions are NOT ok. Look, I'm the first one to raise the forgiveness flag, because I believe in the power of forgiveness. I've been taught to forgive since a very young age. However, what Yuu is doing by "forgiving Guren" is not in the slightest my conception of forgiveness. The power of forgiveness comes from realizing what the person did is terrible, horrible, but you decide to leave the hate outside and move forward. You decide not to dwell in the negative feelings and evolve. And that's also why just saying for a victim to "forgive" when the victim is not ready is so toxic. Very well. What I get is that Yuu is forgiving Guren because "Guren is family". This is BULLSHIT. I'm sorry, but it simply is.

Guren KILLED his family and then RAISED HIM, replacing the family figure in his life. This is SO FUCKED UP. I wish I had better words to describe it! Yeah, Yuu is the victim, but he CAN'T SEE IT. He NEEDS Guren so badly, he is willing to overlook the most absurd of things he's done. He NEEDS TO SAVE Guren so badly, he is willing to accept the most horrid things that man has done! This sounds like a severe case of codependency (+ emotional dependency). Actually, it screams stockholm syndrome ("Stockholm syndrome describes the psychological condition of a victim who identifies with and empathizes with their captor or abuser and their goals").

Yuu has a distorted conception of the term "family" and he's been using this to move forward. I get it. I can sympathize with this boy's long suffering. But it's SO tiring to see him stuck inside this abusive relationship, where he is willing to let people do with him what they please, as long as he is being useful. He is so empty inside, is so damn sad. I want to see him outgrow this, I want him to see that he has value no matter what the closest people to him think about him. And I definitely don't want to see him forgiving people just "because they are family". This is so triggering to me. It's suffocating seeing Yuu choosing this BS over and over again, that degrades him.

Yuu forgiving is not the problem, the problem are the circumstances and his motives. I still can't believe he forgave Guren after Guren sliced Mika in two and sent him (Yuu) into a spiral of despair to the point he didn't want to live anymore. Guren didn't save Yuu. He is the ultimate reason this boy suffered so much, and I don't care for Guren's reasons and explanations. I really don't. From my POV, he is NOTHING but an abuser. Guren may have developed feelings for Yuu, but that doesn't make this guy any good. You shouldn't stay with your abuser. You shouldn't forgive your abuser and stay by his side.

Yuu's character deserves better than this.

There were some cute moments tho. I enjoyed the parallel between Guren calling for Mahito and Yu calling for Mika. And the split panel of Mika & Shinoa watching Yu. As well as the extra dose of gay that was Mahiru bringing up Shinya’s admiration for Guren (they really aren’t slick with the queer subtext at this point). Plus I always love seeing Krul, Ferid, & Crowley interact, even if it does kind of have that bittersweet tone to it.

The ending was sweet, but I’m kinda iffy on the whole forgiveness thing though like… maybe we should hold off on that until Guren actually comes through in resurrecting the thousands of ppl he promised to 🤨. Call me cold or whatever, but I believe in cutting family members off for things such as murdering your childhood family. I get that relationships can be complex and if everything works out in the end, fine I guess. But unless that happens, me personally, I’d be holding revenge in the back of my mind at all times. I would not be afraid to go out with hate in my heart 😌

What do you think about this release?

Hello Anon!

I'm glad to hear that you're feeling neutral/pleasant with this chapter. I saw a lot of hate for this chapter from a large portion of the community before the chapter dropped and while I didn't really read any of it since I don't read leaks, it left me worried. I understand why some people don't like the chapter though, but I'll get into that in a bit. Yeah, it's not surprising that we'll have to wait another chapter before we get answers. I'm pretty sure last time I said we should start getting some answers, but we were always going to have to wait for this fight to wrap up before that happened so idk what I was thinking lol.

Yeah! It was actually the small character moments that make me like this chapter a lot. I love that Yuu's just out there headbutting Guren while everyone watches. It made me laugh imagining it play out in real time. The things I really liked though were on Guren's end and the vampires. It's interesting to see how Mahiru's changed. I don't think it really marks a progression in her character necessarily, but up until this point, she's always semi, or straight up mocked Guren for his weakness even though she, as she says, likes that about him. Here she's supporting him. You could swap Mahiru out with Shinya and not change the lines and it would fit perfectly. On that note, I do love that Mahiru mentions Shinya because their admiration really does stem from the same place. It's why they understand each other so well back in C@16. Also yeah, as you mention, we gotta have that subtext. Love to see it. But I digress. On top of all that, Guren looking at Yuu squad and seeing his own friends is just perfect. It hurts (me at least) and is bittersweet. Krul, Ferid, and Crowley were just perfect. I love seeing nigh immortal characters getting beheaded for humor reasons. Always funny, and I've honestly quite missed Ferid's "nothing in life matters :)))" attitude. He really is out here like "haha I've been alone all my life :D". It does have that bittersweet feeling to it like you said. I hope we get to see more of them interacting as we go forward.

Another small thing I wanted to mention before we move into the bulk of what I wanted to briefly talk about is the return of magic. Not going to lie, I often forget that there's this whole realm of rarely tapped on power (as in ability, not strength) in OnS while reading Vampire Reign. It gets used so infrequently since demon weapons are just so much better. I love to see it make a return for trickier tactics like this.

Okay but with all that out of the way let's get into the biggest problem with this chapter, Yuu's forgiving Guren. Again, I didn't read all the posts bc spoilers, but from what little bits I gleaned before I figured out they were spoilers, people's big dislike is Yuu forgiving Guren easily. I get it! It's unrealistic for a normal person. As you say, I'm quite sure everyone reading would hold a grudge against Guren. I would too, but here's the thing. For Yuu it makes perfect sense. It's consistent with his character. Did we forget how Guren killed Mika, and Yuu was perfectly fine with forgiving him once he learned that Mika could be saved? Did we forget how Yuu (indirectly) forgave Ferid and is willing to work with him because he learned that there's a way to bring his old family back? Not only that, but Guren is one of the most important people in Guren's life, and Yuu is WILDLY sympathetic towards him because of that. Guren's whole motivation is protecting the ones he loves, even if he has to hurt them (much as he hates that) to do it. Yuu is really the same way. Guren sort of instilled that ideology in Yuu (I ish have a meta on that here if anyone is interested in hearing more about that). They parallel each other in that regard (and a lot of others) and because of that, Yuu understands Guren more than a lot of other characters. Yuu can see where Guren comes from even if he doesn't agree with it. I won't delve into it too deeply here because of length reasons, but there's a disconnect between what Yuu, our protagonist, would do bc he feels is right and what we the audience would want, bc we feel it's right, and it's been there a while. That's not great, but it's not like it's a sudden thing this chapter. But anyway, for that reason, personally, I'm okay with it, even if it is, again, unrealistic. Do I love it? No, but I didn't expect any different. I don't fault anyone for disliking it though.

I also see why they were/are upset. I still hold that Yu’s decision is pretty unhealthy, but that boy has ~been~ making questionable decisions regarding himself and others. It’s definitely not ooc, especially since his conflict between avenging his former family and helping his current family has been a recurring element. If one of those things had to give, it’s perhaps less satisfying/interesting but honestly far more productive to side with someone who can help him achieve his goals.

And as far as the kind of blind faith he offered, it may lead to him getting blindsided later, but he also doesn’t gain anything by refusing the info from the only person capable/willing to give it. Sometimes we as fans gotta just accept that he is in a pretty difficult post-apocalyptic situation and that he has his flaws. Even MCs can’t be the best ppl all the time when it comes to hard choices.

The good thing is that he does have other more discerning friends in his group to balance these things out. I also laughed at the rest of said group just casually spectating the fight, as the reader, I really related to them in that moment. Good to see that the majority of them are more cool headed than Yuichiro lmao

I need to rectify that as I've been informed that apparently, it was most of the other communities too lol. Reddit and Facebook apparently didn't like it much either. I don't personally keep up with those communities, so I wouldn't know. I barely keep up with Twitter and Tumblr. It'd actually be fair to say I don't. It's not that I'm afraid of leaks really, but I just enjoy reading the chapter when it properly releases. I used to read leaks, but I stopped about a year ago. Maybe it's bc I feel less pressed to throw out my gut reactions to stuff or something. Idk, but I digress.

On the note of productivity, it works better for the narrative in a meta sense too. Vampire Reign is meant to be Yuu's story and as such, he has to be the character the story is told primarily through (ofc he doesn't have to be the only one). Because of that, Yuu has to find out all the answers to the mysteries the story has. There are lots of ways this can be done, but with how OnS is set up, there's no great way to do it other than through other characters. Guren is arguably the best way for Yuu to get these answers. True, Yuu could just force the answers out of Guren and then abandon him and that'd still sort of work for the way the narrative needs to go, but that won't happen for a few reasons. As mentioned before, it goes against Yuu's character, but there's also the fact that Guren is very important to the narrative. He's one of the key driving factors at this point. On top of that, at the present time, Yuu and Guren want the same thing. When you consider all that, having Yuu and Guren be separate could (and I think would) needlessly complicate the narrative. You'd either have to split off to show Guren's side of things every now and then or have him keep reappearing to help drive the plot forward. Doable, but again, sort of needlessly complicated since that's already happening with other characters. Now, that being said, I won't lie and say that it doesn't feel like this is a bit of the easy way out. It almost feels like Kagami wrote himself into a bit of a corner. Like he only realized later how mad Yuu should be at Guren but then realized that that would create a whole slew of problems/complications and decided to just avoid those problems through quick forgiveness. However, since, again, it's consistent with Yuu's character, I don't think it feels forced if that makes sense, and like I said in my last post, I'm personally okay with it because of that.

I'd say Yuu's been blindsided by his blind faith a few times now, but you're right. Really, I think that unless Guren decides to hurt Yuu again with no prior warning, Yuu won't be punished for his blind faith anymore. Guren really does seem to have finally reached that breaking point, so I imagine he's going to be relatively straight forward from now on. Maybe he'll hurt Yuu again because the plan calls for it, but I think Guren would now give proper warning. Who knows though? It's hard to say.