Nov 29, 2023
I mean... maybe Jun's just dumb, but I don't know if the onus of figuring out something is wrong should always be on any one party. I get the message here is that listening is key, but I think it's framed in a needlessly gendered way, where the guy must 'listen' to figure out, but the girl literally said 'Yeah, I mean I don't mind'. Sure, you can argue that he should've asked, "How about a movie?" rather than "We could do a movie," but these are such minute semantic differences that it's really a question of why she didn't just say, "Yeah, or we could go to XYZ instead". I can appreciate in the current cultural climate where women are readily viewed as trophies and their opinions disregarded this could fly, but whilst the lesson tracks, I don't think you set it up properly. Like if he said something like, "I got us tickets for the movies," then I would've agreed with the assertion that he made an imposition and didn't listen for whatever feedback followed. But when he used a (albeit strong) modal 'could' and she just said a half-hearted, 'sure', then I'm not sure if the point holds as much water.
But on that end, I think the thematic context here is very blurry. If we boil it down to the essentials, we have a guy who got dumped by a girl and tries to get better and the presented solution is to just give him a do-over because he loves her. Now there are a lot of nuances that get added, so I'll do my best to interpret them in good faith.
The new love interest is *not* the same girl, sure. We cannot call it a real do-over, because she is someone else, but! We are made to understand that she is *exactly* like the original girl, ("the same personality"), and that idea is further encouraged by how Jun's past failures are paralleled with his new ones. And I'm not sure how well that gels with me.
Furthermore, there's the idea of 'destiny' here. Now, I appreciate that his chances go from negative 1% to 32% here, so we can argue some fortuna labilis is at play. We could also attribute that increase to the change in factors – environment, the isekai'ing itself, the makeover which increases his status (which is also rather odd, like why not have him still be himself, why make him a 'revered' class?) – at which point, I feel like the message is probably going to be 'fate bad'. But then, why talk about it in the first place? Why make the proverbial voice of authority here an agent of fate?
I get the message is wholesome and there are valid interpretations one can glean that stay true to that. That you should always aim to be better, that fate is dumb and we make our own destinies (possibly?), that love is not a status to be gained but a beauty to be shared. But what I'm getting at is that the way you framed it, well, invites untoward mentalities. I think, and this is surely me, that the way you framed your story it both tries do distance itself from, and yet still embrace some tried and true, and unsavoury tropes. So my question is, why not just be more direct? Why not create some clear examples where we cannot reasonably admit doubts unless we ourselves are bad-minded? Why invite the contrary through unclear nuance?
