Okay. I'm prefacing this with a full disclosure that honestly I like any combination of Niigo ship-wise. The appeal of Mafuyu with Ena and Kanade with Mizuki, as well as many other combos including poly ones, are good options, I like them. They're cute.
Now I'll move on to the reason I'm about to make this post. My basic bitch genes, my attachment to characters with immense personal problems, and how I look at KanaMafu. This is a lot of words. It's going under a cut.
First of all I haven't been into this game long enough to be talking about all this but oh well. It's not my first rodeo with a pair this messed up!
Maybe that's why I'm so surprised at how many people simply default to disliking the idea because "they're only toxic yuri and will only ruin each other over time." I do see the point of that argument. They absolutely are not living on a sustainable method of living right now, and if it stayed that way then they would both be doomed.
However, they're not like. They're. They're young. They also have other people in their lives. Friends, family (not entire families but at least family members that are still there for them), etc. I think some of the view might be coming from the idea that a relationship must mean the people in the relationship ONLY must rely on each other. Which is....yikes, please don't ever handle a relationship like that, if you love yourself.
Kanade and Mafuyu have a lot of huge, very dangerous personal issues. Oh my god do they. They are so fucked up, oh jesus, oh man. Though when you're at that point in your life, having anyone around at all, even if it's someone else who's just as bad off, is better than shutting yourself from everyone entirely. As long as things don't STAY that way.
That's my next point. They're like. Only 17/18. And actively surrounded by people who want to show them better. They're still clawing through life. I'm like, fairly certain the storywriters aren't out here thinking "I would like for these miserable girls to never learn and never get better about their behaviors," so I would want to think it is safe to assume it's not impossible for them to gradually learn to be better. Just because they aren't in the best shape right now doesn't mean they're going to be that way forever. Their problems literally take, realistically, years to recover from. Project Sekai ain't got that kinda time.
Fan interpretation is what you rely on in this case, and it's a little surprising to see so many people just default to "they'll never get better like this, they'll tear each other apart." Well that's your interpretation, and I guess thats fine and all but it's a little shallow, no offense. Maybe I'm already showing it in the way I try to write them in my fics, but in my head, given time and the right influences around them, they can definitely actually learn to lean on each other.
I've gravitated towards pairs like this before, and that's how I like to see them. Mafuyu and Kanade have no shortage of support outside of themselves. They just have to learn to accept it (a big issue with Kanade right now because that hasn't yet been addressed at the time of writing all this, canonly). But with the right support and a slow but steady road to getting a little better, they don't have to be destructive to each other. They can literally be supportive of one another. One can understand what the other is thinking. One of them can know better than anyone else who isn't quite as bad off, how to get the other to open up and actually speak to them. They might know when someone else wouldn't, when it's time to put a foot down and take action (again, something they have trouble with, but I see at least Mafuyu being willing to do that with Kanade, which I've already depicted. it was quite a satisfying scene to write).
I dunno. I've seen a lot of people just label them as the toxic yuri of the fandom and something about that really irks me, I think. Maybe it comes across as a little shallow, or disregarding the actual reality of everything involved in mental health recovery. It's a bit hard to put into words.
