Magical Catgirl

9 & 10 have carried on the 7/8 structure, with the individual files being less self-contained and there being an overarching narrative, but now they are no longer backed by story climaxes. It's given 9 & 10 a very meandering feel - Sorawo and Toriko aren't really progressing "towards" anything, their story isn't "going" anywhere, there's no monster to find and kill. Ostensibly Runa getting let out was the climax of volume 9, but it was... understated. I'm not even really sure what volume 10 is leading towards. Kozakura taking in Kasumi is a big change, but it's not been one with a lot of drama, just a lot of domestic moments and ominous portents.

They got together and now the Otherside is less a part of their story.

On a meta level, is this progress in their relationship, or is this Soratori getting pulled in to the gravitational well of domestic romance?

I think a neat thing vol 10 is doing is subtly pulling the reader into the structure of ghost stories. The first file was pretty neat because Kasumi's little contribution is more of a direct communication with the reader about what Sorawo's dream meant. The structure of the second sort of mimics the structure of hypnotic induction; Tsuji describes how the puzzle box induces a hypnotic state while Sorawo's narration kind of mimics that technique, only for Tsuji to abruptly break the trance at the end.

But the structure of the story itself has something to say about it. How the story progresses, the things it uses for drama and conflict are romantically coded. It's asking the question, "How is the Nue different from lovers?"

Idk if I'd go so far as to say that it "objectively is." Inasmuch as there is a singular way of defining romance, Sorawo's relationship goals are missing several of the important features for the platonic ideals of romance.

I can't find the exact post I'm thinking of (or I'm hallucinating several posts & ideas together), but I once read an essay discussing & dissecting the ideas of what, exactly, a romantic relationship is, and what separates it from other concepts, with the goal of using that to provide a coherent definition of romantic attraction. I think it was by rotten-zucchinis? Or possibly by asexualagenda, this post of his is a reaction to that discussion and links a lot of stuff I remember around then.

Essentially the idea is that, while there's no 1 definition of romance that is perfectly coherent and universal to all things people call "romantic," there are several key concepts that are being gestured at by the term. No romantic relationship fits all of them, but when people talk about romance, those are the ideas they're communicating.

One of those is the escalator relationship. Romance is a relationship that "progresses" from friendship to dating to sex to marriage to children. The Nue is explicitly not that, that's the one that's most been discussed within the story. Sorawo's not following that path, and Toriko is no longer doing so as well.

Another is the nebulous idea of a shared life. Things like cohabitation, shared finances, "in sickness and in health." The Nue is, obviously, still a fairly young relationship, not at a point where those are serious considerations, but you can't tell me that you can look at the way Sorawo reacts to the idea of "family" and say she'd describe that as what the Nue is to her. As yuriskies says, that's probably the exact thing that Sorawo is running away from, whether she's articulating it to the audience or not.

The potential definition I remember most prominently from that essay was the idea that romance was a relationship that had the "potential to be sexual." Regardless of the couple's actual sexual status, a romantic relationship is one where, interpersonally and societally, sex is a real consideration. This is the only definition where the Nue maybe fits. Like, they settled on the name and the idea because of their first sexual experience together. Obviously, that first experience was much more supernatural than most sex, but it remains that the difference between Accomplices and the Nue is, partly, the sexual component.

Realizing Toriko's not sociable and Sorawo's not dense is, like, the #1 reading comprehension check for this series, and it's one I see people fail constantly. It's really impressive the way that Miyazawa manages the twist, manages to build these character traits up so well and then make you realize they're not true, and they only seem true because of the filter of Sorawo's perspective.

Which is part of what makes the meta-story interesting. Miyazawa's done this before, built up the story in a way that the audience is projecting their expectations & ideas onto it, only to reveal something that changes the foundational idea and invalidates those expectations.

9 & 10 have carried on the 7/8 structure, with the individual files being less self-contained and there being an overarching narrative, but now they are no longer backed by story climaxes. It's given 9 & 10 a very meandering feel - Sorawo and Toriko aren't really progressing "towards" anything, their story isn't "going" anywhere, there's no monster to find and kill. Ostensibly Runa getting let out was the climax of volume 9, but it was... understated. I'm not even really sure what volume 10 is leading towards. Kozakura taking in Kasumi is a big change, but it's not been one with a lot of drama, just a lot of domestic moments and ominous portents.

They got together and now the Otherside is less a part of their story.

On a meta level, is this progress in their relationship, or is this Soratori getting pulled in to the gravitational well of domestic romance?

I think a neat thing vol 10 is doing is subtly pulling the reader into the structure of ghost stories. The first file was pretty neat because Kasumi's little contribution is more of a direct communication with the reader about what Sorawo's dream meant. The structure of the second sort of mimics the structure of hypnotic induction; Tsuji describes how the puzzle box induces a hypnotic state while Sorawo's narration kind of mimics that technique, only for Tsuji to abruptly break the trance at the end.

But the structure of the story itself has something to say about it. How the story progresses, the things it uses for drama and conflict are romantically coded. It's asking the question, "How is the Nue different from lovers?"

Idk if I'd go so far as to say that it "objectively is." Inasmuch as there is a singular way of defining romance, Sorawo's relationship goals are missing several of the important features for the platonic ideals of romance.

I can't find the exact post I'm thinking of (or I'm hallucinating several posts & ideas together), but I once read an essay discussing & dissecting the ideas of what, exactly, a romantic relationship is, and what separates it from other concepts, with the goal of using that to provide a coherent definition of romantic attraction. I think it was by rotten-zucchinis? Or possibly by asexualagenda, this post of his is a reaction to that discussion and links a lot of stuff I remember around then.

Essentially the idea is that, while there's no 1 definition of romance that is perfectly coherent and universal to all things people call "romantic," there are several key concepts that are being gestured at by the term. No romantic relationship fits all of them, but when people talk about romance, those are the ideas they're communicating.

One of those is the escalator relationship. Romance is a relationship that "progresses" from friendship to dating to sex to marriage to children. The Nue is explicitly not that, that's the one that's most been discussed within the story. Sorawo's not following that path, and Toriko is no longer doing so as well.

Another is the nebulous idea of a shared life. Things like cohabitation, shared finances, "in sickness and in health." The Nue is, obviously, still a fairly young relationship, not at a point where those are serious considerations, but you can't tell me that you can look at the way Sorawo reacts to the idea of "family" and say she'd describe that as what the Nue is to her. As yuriskies says, that's probably the exact thing that Sorawo is running away from, whether she's articulating it to the audience or not.

The potential definition I remember most prominently from that essay was the idea that romance was a relationship that had the "potential to be sexual." Regardless of the couple's actual sexual status, a romantic relationship is one where, interpersonally and societally, sex is a real consideration. This is the only definition where the Nue maybe fits. Like, they settled on the name and the idea because of their first sexual experience together. Obviously, that first experience was much more supernatural than most sex, but it remains that the difference between Accomplices and the Nue is, partly, the sexual component.

9 & 10 have carried on the 7/8 structure, with the individual files being less self-contained and there being an overarching narrative, but now they are no longer backed by story climaxes. It's given 9 & 10 a very meandering feel - Sorawo and Toriko aren't really progressing "towards" anything, their story isn't "going" anywhere, there's no monster to find and kill. Ostensibly Runa getting let out was the climax of volume 9, but it was... understated. I'm not even really sure what volume 10 is leading towards. Kozakura taking in Kasumi is a big change, but it's not been one with a lot of drama, just a lot of domestic moments and ominous portents.

They got together and now the Otherside is less a part of their story.

On a meta level, is this progress in their relationship, or is this Soratori getting pulled in to the gravitational well of domestic romance?

I think a neat thing vol 10 is doing is subtly pulling the reader into the structure of ghost stories. The first file was pretty neat because Kasumi's little contribution is more of a direct communication with the reader about what Sorawo's dream meant. The structure of the second sort of mimics the structure of hypnotic induction; Tsuji describes how the puzzle box induces a hypnotic state while Sorawo's narration kind of mimics that technique, only for Tsuji to abruptly break the trance at the end.

But the structure of the story itself has something to say about it. How the story progresses, the things it uses for drama and conflict are romantically coded. It's asking the question, "How is the Nue different from lovers?"

So why end by denying that arc? Why decide to keep your character's story as plausibly deniable? Why leave it up to viewer interpretation, when you gave the they/them no doubt, no argument?

You made everyone use he/him. You denied her transition in the real world. The only character who knows studiously avoids using pronouns at every point past her finding out. You set up that reveal as the culmination of her arc, of the arc of the story, and then left it up to reader interpretation.