this started life as a ramble off of tumblr but i thought i would slap it here as well in order to transparently bait more people to come and yap about muji with me...
anyway. I've been mulling over what a post-muji anime HatsuSaki dynamic could possibly even look like and the thing I found myself coming back to over and over was just. as much as I love the romantic and unhealthy elements of HatsuSaki & loveeeee exploring that dynamic in a fandom space, I really hope sequel-onwards AveMuji - if the intent is for them to have positive arcs - lets them move into a space where they can properly accept each other just as family, without any romance or romantic baggage.
because like. AveMuji's usage of incest is v much in line with its status as a gothic horror story, incest as a symbol of rot, decay, and the way abuse festers inside of families, especially under the depravity of the ruling class. and both Hatsune and Sakiko are tangled up in that rot in different ways - they're victims and perpetrators at the same time, but primarily they're still victims. that's why it matters so much that Hatsune's feelings for Sakiko are specifically framed as romantic/incestuous - it speaks to both how unsafe and warped Saki's entire relationship to the idea of family is (or perhaps how horrendously Sakiko is treated by & within her family) and also to how Hatsune's desperation for belonging pushes her toward something equally unsafe.
(& on that note, I do think it's super fascinating that part of the envy she expresses as a child is not just towards Uika for being friends w/Sakiko but also towards Saki herself - she's almost like a mirror image of Hatsune, living the life of a daughter of the Togawa family that Hatsune is explicitly denied - I do rly think you could read a lot of Hatsune's initial curiosity about Sakiko, and why it spirals into fixation, as emergent from a desire not just to be with her but to be her. but that's a tangent I'll save for another day lol.)
the point is: if incest is standing in for the corruption inside their shared understanding of "family" then the only positive narrative direction left for them is to actually try to reconcile that. for Hatsune, that means accepting that Saki doesn't and can't love her the way she wants her to, and learning to widen her world beyond Sakiko so she can find other people to anchor herself to.
at its core the foundation of her fixation on Sakiko comes from something really simple: she just wanted a family member who she knew cared about her. and I think it's really telling that what pushes her to break down and run away in search of Saki isn't some big romantic impulse, but her dad's death - and Uika lashing out at her about him not being her "real" dad. she gets rejected so utterly and completely that she goes looking for “family” elsewhere. and yet when she actually goes to Tokyo and tentatively, desperately tries to test the waters of belonging to the Togawa family, it ends up completely destroying Sakiko's life.
idk if I really necessarily have a conclusion to this but. i just think that within the context of AveMuji as a psychological horror piece about how terrifying and objectifying it is to be a child at the whims of the institute of 'family', there would be something really powerful about Sakiko & Hatsune reclaiming that concept, purging it of the rot that's festering inside of it and to have a proper fresh start together.