Analysis on Touko’s obsession to be Mio and her relationship with Yuu [Yagate Kimi ni Naru]
An extremely lengthy post. Spoilers alert. You have been warned.
Well, for starters, YagaKimi is a one-of-a-kind manga, for me at least. Because this is the first time I read a manga that focuses in romance, but the main character is an aromantic, meaning someone who doesn’t experience any romantic feelings. Many yuri manga/manhwa I read so far are very “physical”, or at least very quick to become “physical” and let’s just say, overdramatic, or just too happy and easy-going. Even if there were some milder drama, the drama is too common like, the struggles of being in a homosexual relationship such as being afraid of being judged by family and friends, . And there’s also another common drama like a very uptight family or love triangles that prevent some relationships to bloom. I get that these problems are real but they’re becoming bland due to being overused.
Let’s also talk about the art first. YagaKimi has one of the best art styles I’ve ever seen in yuri manga. While I also like Citrus’ art style, YagaKimi’s art style has a sense of innocence and more diversity in terms of the setting. In the manga, we get to see different types of settings, ranging from the school, Yuu and Touko’s houses, the camp, the aquarium, and the fateful train road railway. By being exposed to the world of the manga, we can feel more connected to the story, which I think Citrus kind of lacks. And when it comes to the character designs, I can’t help but adore the way they are drawn. While most characters’ face shapes and hairstyles/colors are more or less the same, there are still subtle differences like some have plump cheeks and some may have narrower face shapes. There’s just something in Nakatani Nio-sensei’s style that makes me say “Awww…” and melt.
(Touko always makes my heart melt when she blushes and smiles. AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH Y U SO DAMN ADORABLE!!!)
So the story mainly revolves around the main character, Koito Yuu, a freshman and a second-year student, Nanami Touko, who is a student council member. At first Touko claims that she also doesn’t feel anything when she gets confessed to. Because of this Yuu finally feels like someone is related to her. But after confessing her aromantic tendencies to Touko, Touko suddenly confesses to Yuu.
This is why I love about YagaKimi. It covers so many real things such as aromantic topics, self-loathing, and identity crisis. Not to mention the level of melancholy in the this manga is what I’ve been looking for (angst is my cup of tea!). Touko and Yuu’s relationship’s complication and trying to figure out what’s in both of their heads and predicting the ending of this manga is what makes me so invested in this series.
We’ll start with Touko first. At first glimpse, Touko appears to be your typical Student Council President-type; beautiful, kind, smart and hardworking. But it turns out this is a façade that she decided to take after her older sister, Nanami Mio, died seven years prior to the series. Throughout the series, we are told by Touko herself that when she was a kid, she was very shy, had no many friends and always hid behind someone, and to put simply; normal. Meanwhile, she saw her sister as the perfect role model, both at home and school. After Mio died, she was told by people to live for Mio’s sake and be like her. For the 9-year old Touko, who was clearly still in shock over the loss of her beloved sister, these words clearly changed her and from here she decided to stop being a nobody and then she thrived to BE Mio.
(A flashback of Mio that greatly resembles the current Touko)
In reality, Touko is still a timid person who would shake when she gets nervous enough. However, in order to not disappoint people who have high expectations from her, and to not destroy the image that she has built over the years, she keeps putting on the mask of the ‘perfect’ Touko. While most people may think that she wants to be Mio in order to be a somebody, I think there’s a more story behind it. In a dream that Touko saw, she remembers the day when Mio was about to get killed in a traffic accident. In that dream, we get to see that while the sisters were chilling in the family living room, their mother asked Touko to buy a drink (or sauce). Acting like a regular child, Touko didn’t want to go so she and Mio decided to play rock-paper-scissors game. Mio lost which resulted her to go instead. Later Touko woke from her nap because of a constant bell ring, impending the news that Mio got into an accident. This implies that Mio died because of Touko. And I believe that Touko knows this. Out of guilt, she decides to replace Mio who was beloved and admired by everyone. At the same time, she can get rid of her own identity. Touko claims that she hates herself and I think her self-loathing began when she realized that Mio died because of her selfishness. So that covers Touko’s obsession to be someone else besides herself.
Why Touko falls in love with Yuu was a very big question mark to me. Why Yuu, and why now? In Touko’s mind, she wants to be special to everyone because that’s when people praise her. But when people start to confess to her by saying something like, “I love that about you” which translates to her, “If you stop being like this, I won’t love you anymore”. Automatically she feels that if she stops wearing the ‘perfect’ mask, anyone who confesses to her would be disappointed with the real her who is a nobody. We covered from the first chapter that Yuu just can’t feel excited over romantic confessions. It’s not that she’s willingly disinterested, she just can’t and doesn’t know how. Because of this, she can’t find anyone special romantically. To Touko, this makes Yuu seem the nicest person because Yuu wouldn’t judge or discriminate her if she doesn’t have to wear the mask of perfection because she knows that Yuu won’t love her. One may think that Touko only sees Yuu as someone who she can vent out her feelings to, but not because of love. I can’t blame anyone for thinking this way because there is one time when she does treat Yuu like a friend with benefits (without the sex, of course). This happens in chapter 28 when Touko feels extremely stressed that she wasn’t acting like Mio perfectly and her own best friend tries to talk her out of it. She turns to Yuu and tries to kiss her for comfort. Not really a cool move there. But I think that Touko really does genuinely love Yuu. We can see it a lot of times throughout the story where we get to see how much she would do for Yuu, such as asking for a cheesecake recipe from Yuu’s sister Rei, after knowing that she loves cheesecakes, and in the same chapter we can see Touko fangirling when Rei shares a picture of Yuu sleeping (Rei is the best Touko supporter lol).
Now, onto the more complicated part of Touko and Yuu’s relationship. While Touko has made it clear that she loves Yuu to the point she just casually says “I love you” to her. This is pretty hypocritical from her side because she doesn’t want anyone to love her because the word itself acts like shackles to her. And she is doing the same thing to Yuu. In chapter 10, she tells Yuu to stay by her side, don’t fall in love with anyone else and don’t come to hate her. To put it simply, she wants Yuu to only stay with her, but don’t fall in love with her because she can’t stand with the idea that someone that she loves is in love with something that she hates: herself.
For Yuu’s part, as we progress through the story, we get to see her feelings towards Touko develop and change. At first she believes that she is only being nice to Touko simply because she’s too sympathetic to everyone, and not because she finds her special. But as the story progresses, we get to see Yuu’s way of thinking start to shake a bit. After Touko leaves her house, Yuu states she does want to fall in love with her. Right after this, she tries to tell herself that she doesn’t need to fall in love with Touko because it’s not she was lonely. But in chapter 10, her monologues have more conviction that she wants to love Touko.
But before she can even say these things to Touko, Touko tells her that she would rather die than being told that she can be just herself and she can stop from being Mio. This forces Yuu to say this:
But from these panels we can see how it hurts Yuu to say this. Because at this point, she can’t love Touko NOT because of her inability to feel romantic attractions, but more to she can’t afford to love Touko. This clearly is very painful to Yuu since she has always wanted to experience the excitement of being in love. As this scene goes on, Touko makes her promise to stay by her side without falling in love with her. Yuu knows that if she rejects, Touko would be separated from her, so she agrees to do whatever Touko tells her to do. Then in chapter 22, Yuu tries again to convince her to stop being someone else, only to face Touko’s stubbornness again. What’s interesting is that near the end of this chapter Yuu intercepts her own monologue for the first time.
Many of her monologues act more like self-assuring sentences, sentences that she tries to convince herself to believe. This can especially be seen in chapter 31 by the end of the play, Yuu’s monologue where she says Touko would be fine without her, thinking that Touko has accepted to just embrace herself, she keeps on repeating that it is a good thing. When she reads Sayaka’s line “I was special to you” and then shaking her head, to me is like her telling herself to let Touko go if Touko does learn to be herself which would mean that she feels she is no longer needed by Touko. Another example would be chapter 16, where she keeps convincing herself that the way she finds Touko’s unconditional love is nothing special and that the fast heartbeat she hears is Touko’s, and not hers. It is like implying that she denies herself that she loves Touko.
It seems that she is afraid to even admit to herself of her own feelings because she’s afraid that she would succumb to her feelings eventually. However, by the end of chapter 22, Yuu finally finds something she really desires; to change Touko. For someone like Yuu, who has always been the type of person who’d just get along with the flow, this is a life-changing thing to do. Here, we can see how Touko has changed her and she doesn’t hate it whenever they kiss or when Touko gets close to her.
While at this point Yuu and Sayaka share the aspect to not admit how they really feel to Touko because they’re afraid of how their relationship with her would change, I like the fact that unlike Sayaka, who is afraid to tell Touko that her obsession is a bad thing, Yuu wants to change Touko to stop hating herself and embrace the fact that people accept her for the way she is, and things that they do are for her, and not Mio. And we agree to this because what Touko does is self-destructive since she would be lost once she finishes what Mio couldn’t do when she was alive; the school play. Touko herself knows this as she questions herself in front of Mio’s grave.
At this point I can’t think of how the story is going to progress. After the play finishes, Touko tells Yuu this:
Now, I’m not so sure what this line actually means. It could mean that now that the play is over, she doesn’t have to replace Mio anymore, but her relationship with Yuu can still go on. The reason why I think this is what the line means is because of how Yuu takes the line positively as she now thinks that Touko can go on without her. And there’s also the fact that Yuu is holding the crutches that Touko used in the play. In a way, she herself has been acting like crutches for Touko. And the fact that she’s holding onto them as Touko walks away is like an allegory that Touko no longer needs her crutches aka Yuu. So perhaps there’s an incoming angst for upcoming chapters as Yuu tries to deal with being no longer needed by Touko.
While the play’s ending implies that Touko may have embraced the idea to accept her true self and stop becoming someone else, and while I think this could be an interesting turning arc for the series and development for the story, I don’t think Touko is ready to embrace herself like the character in the play. She’s just too stubborn for that and I think she still needs more push to stop her obsession. It is something that she’s done for years and it’s not going to just disappear in a snap. Also, I don’t think Touko’s going to stop relying on Yuu yet. She makes it perfectly clear that now that she knows how it feels to be in love, she’s not going to turn back. Also, when Yuu refused to kiss Touko, she looked extremely broken, like her only emotional line was snapped, and the only thing that was ‘real’ to her was rejecting her.
(Just look at how BROKEN and EMPTY she looked like after being rejected by Yuu)
