Honestly, I felt so conflicted reading this. At the start his fantasies and everything really gave way into Kurosawa's perversion, it genuinely scared me how no one in his classroom realized the kind of person he was but worst of all this kind of people are everywhere in real life too.
I felt super bad for Kithara, the resentment she was harboring was the only way she could manage to stay afloat and even Kurosawa said her motives for revenge most of the time were childish, which is true. It seemed like she was looking for any reason to keep being hateful since it was virtually the only thing keeping her going. Kurosawa owning up to his mistakes was presented as this huge powerful movement, which in part it was but is acknowledgement enough to make up for his victims pain?
While most things he did weren't harmful, they were meant to humiliate, degrade and chip away at the sense of security of the girls. We can see this perfectly with Sugawa, who only for falling in love with Nagatsuka ended up being a target and even seemed to be on edge for a considerable amount of time after the incident. These are long lasting wounds she endured and that even though in the manga, they were forgiven since he was "changing" doesn't change the fact that Kurosawa did something vile only because he was hurt.
And even after confessing the amount of bullying he received, according to what was shown in the manga, was considerably less severe than Kitahara's. Which brings me to raise the question, is it okay for a boy that suffered bullying from doing awful things truly have the right to try and make a girl, who was bullied more severely than him for no good reason other than being weird, see the "good" in life? Overall, I understand the message the story tried to highlight but I felt like it took away from the severity of what Kurosawa did and of the harsh bully have to endure without having committed any wrong doings.
Also I find it unbelievable that he was forgiven by Nagatsuka and Sugawa, he harassed her for no good reason and they just decided to forgive him? Like an apology is not enough, what he did was a violation of trust, of boundaries, it was a betrayal of their friendship and for them to only forgive after a few weeks in which he did nothing else than isolate himself to atone for this, which in my opinion is not enough. On this topic, I also felt myself digusted when of the other male classmates talked to Kurosawa and answered that he had forgiven him because he had done nothing wrong to him, like sorry? Are you fine with him only because you weren't the one on the receiving end of the harassment?
It is shown throughout the story, how other male characters are lenient towards Kurosawa, the teacher planned on not calling his parents because he came forth on his own, Nagatsuka said to Sugawa that it seemed like he was changing, which I basically interpreted as him saying she should forgive him because he was trying to change but then again, we don't see any of these so called attempts of chasing other than letting himself be bullied. And that is one shitty way to prove he's "changing" because one he's supposedly allowing himself to be bullied to atone for his mistake but never is he shown apologizing to most of the girls he harassed and two he's doing this to feel better about himself to feel more righteous and a better man, which can be witnessed when he talks to Kitahara basically saying that she could push through like he had.
But really think about it, he was dealing with the consequences of his actions, but what about her? What sin was she atoning for? Was simply inviting her to an outing enough to ease the pain and hatred she bore to others and herself? Kitahara's character was reduced to one of a victim, nothing more, someone Kurosawa would "change" for to later "save". Only for her to never be mentioned again in the story, once his conscience was cleared and he felt as if she was no longer sad or hurt.
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