on a more serious note the way that nanami frames her dislike of touga’s relationships guts me without fail every time. immediately after this she says ‘you deserve better than this’ which is. So Interesting. and touga replies ‘are you implying you’re the better choice?’ which. my head is in my hands. there’s this horrible intense close-up of his face when he asks that and it’s just soooooo. oh it is So. me when touga has an incredibly fucked up relationship to sexuality and desirability.
but i digress, top ten things about nanami that make me love her more than anyone else in the world ever is the way that she’s so concerned with touga’s well-being and him not being ‘swarmed’ by girls, and at the same time. so wonderfully selfish and entitled. and at the same time. so horribly insecure and guilty about all of that. you know nanami was a terribly lonely and unnoticed child, her only ‘friends’ are lackeys she’s met within the show’s current-day timeframe, her parents ignored her (we dont need to get into whether or not that’s fortunate for her), when she says touga’s ‘smile was for me and me alone’ she really means that. like i believe her!!!! and i understand why he’s so important to her, because it’s like he’s the only person who has ever seen and loved her. and she’s so desperately sad and insecure because she killed his cat and he’s been cold with her ever since and oh god oh god i just need someone to say no one else will do it has to be you just once.
the guilt that nanami feels about Existing. being alive being born taking up space being a (weird non-)person at all. especially the guilt about killing that cat, especially the guilt about Changing her brother (which she has entirely accepted as something she did btw, always wondering why he’s so cold to her nowadays and reasoning that’s it). you know she’s repenting she’s saying over and over again i did this terrible thing and i regret it every day and im awful and terrible and selfish because i still want this one thing i need this one thing. maybe i can get it if i make sure nothing like this ever happens again. framing all these girls as ‘vermin’, a ‘swarm’, worrying herself about their intentions or uncleanliness or whatever. her brother sat catatonic in a room for who knows how long and she’s not supposed to try and fix that for him? try and make sure no one ever puts him in that state again?
i think. maybe. what im getting at here. is the princeliness of the little sister, princehood exercised by a sister. princehood here is the desire or ability to save someone, to exert control and power over them. as i said above nanami is guilt and insecurity and shame and entitlement all bundled together, and that’s partially imho because she has this idea of touga as her prince and she’s his princess, but touga rarely and minimally plays along with it and instead purposefully exacerbates this tendency of hers to. well. get possessive and defensive. and this makes all of those negative feelings they both have worse! it’s like theyre always playing this fucked up game of chicken where they just keep on expressing sentiments that almost get at how they really feel about things and then at the last second they both just regress back to these equivocations that obfuscate The Truth (not pictured here).
like, ‘you deserve better’ = i want you to be happy i want you to love me i want you to forgive me i don’t really think you should. ‘are you implying you’re the better choice?’ = i feel stifled by you i need you i need you to need me i wish i didn’t. their whole egg episode convo is a similar thing. all of their convos are like this. neither of them can say how they really feel and touga purposefully says things that makes the whole thing Worse but often not in the way he thinks he’s making it worse, and nanami often unknowingly says things that make it worse. tldr they cannot communicate on the same level whatsoever wow it’s almost like they’re profoundly alienated from one another and unwilling to change their flawed perceptions of the other. and i am so normal about all of that btw :)
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