Magerarenai Onna Reviews

[iaria]

Episode 1 - 5

Episode 1

• “Masato you once told me ‘Whatever others call you, don’t give up. No matter how tough it gets, just clench your teeth and follow your own path.’ If that’s not true in marriage... then I don’t need it.” Saki isn’t rejecting marriage with him straight out. In fact before that she stated that she thinks she could be happy married to him. What she is saying is that she refuses to give up her dream to be a lawyer in order to get married. She’s just telling him that she doesn’t just want to stay at home and support him. That seems pretty damn reasonable to me! I think if he’d told her that his feelings on what he’d said before were still true and that he would continue to support her in her goal but that he still wanted to get married she would have said yes.

• I’m having a hard time with two things:

1) That Masato would take what Saki said and her handing him back the ring and just accepting that as a no to his proposal. They’ve been together for ten freaking years! That just blows my mind. Ten years! I can’t get over it. But that’s what’s stated which means he has to be very devoted to her and he clearly loves her if he’s stayed with her that long, and what she quoted back as something he said was wonderful and supportive. So where the hell is that? Why would he just accept an end to their relationship so easily? Especially since it was such a qualified no (in which she didn’t even say no). He knows her personality and he knows her devotion to achieving her father’s dream so why would he give up? And if he has been so supportive this long why not continue to be supportive? Why not say ‘keep fighting and I will support you as your husband’? This really bugs me.

2) They’ve been together for ten years! What the hell? I could buy a year, maybe a couple but ten? I am just not seeing it. There is really no warmth between them and certainly no passion. She doesn’t even let him sleep over - the first time being ten years into the relationship. Have they had sex? They had to have because I just cannot buy a guy giving up sex for ten years (from a guy who hasn’t specifically chosen to).

I really like Saki already and we get to see what makes her wonderful in this episode (largely her interactions with the female client who tries to commit suicide) but with Masato every scene with them, even when they are alone, is stilted and cold and it leaves me wondering what he sees in her that he would stay with her for ten years. I wish we could have seen them companionably sitting and studying/reading together, or having dinner/a drink or just something to indicate that there is a softness and ease between them. I guess I wanted to see what Masato saw in Saki that he would stay with her for ten years. Yes, this is from her point of view but I want to know because their relationship is falling flat without it.

• I like that the first smile we see on her is after her boss informs her that the woman she saved said that ‘no matter what happens she won’t run away’.

Episode 2

• I love that Saki is uncompromising in her ideals and convictions. Masato wondered why she couldn’t just swallow her pride and accept that in their line of work they have to make decisions they don’t like or agree with but it seemed obvious to me that her having to leave the firm wasn’t just about pride but that she no longer respected their boss and thus couldn’t continue to work with him. Kou then asks about the meaning of what she does, of sacrificing her own life and opportunities to help others, but it’s not about others it’s about her. It’s about not sacrificing who she is. She says it really well “Even if it brings me money and a boyfriend if I have to sacrifice myself for them can that be called living? Can that be called happiness?” I just really love that. And I love that she learned it from her mother.

• I love Saki’s relationship with her mother. I love that while her father is her motivation for needing to be a lawyer and refusing to give up it is Saki’s relationship with her mother that has truly made her who she is. It’s the most important relationship in her life. That makes me very happy. I like how we see just how much they are the same and I love how supportive of Saki her mother is.

• I liked Masato apologising. If he’s fine still working with her because they make a great team why would he be so against continuing that way after they got married? He was in a very difficult position this episode and I was actually expecting him to end up quitting to start his own firm with Saki.

• They specifically showed Saki’s fellow paralegal – the one with a crush on Masato who is bitchy to Saki – when she left the board meeting and her expression was interesting. I think she was suddenly hit with shame for how she’s treated Saki (and perhaps not being someone strong enough to do what Saki did) as well as suddenly respecting her a lot. I could be reading a lot into one look though. Still I really hope we keep up with her because I’d love if she and Saki become friends.

• I love that while Masato was whining and angsting about his friend coming to him for help and how he didn’t have time Saki researched and put together a huge binder full of precedents in the case. Seriously how the hell hasn’t she managed to pass the bar yet?

• Riko got a lot more depth and I felt so sorry for her. The scene where she returns home with a couple shopping bags and she enters her closet and it’s full of shopping bags that she hasn’t bothered to unpack and she just looked so dejected is the moment I really connected to her. She is just so unhappy. She wants to be wanted and to have a purpose in life. It was supposed to be a mother and housewife but her mother-in-law (and the housekeeper) have usurped those positions, and since she has no real relationship with her husband it’s left her with nothing to do. At the end when she tries to regain control from her mother-in-law, inspired by Saki, but then ends up chickening out I wanted to hug her.

Episode 3

• This episode was really sad. Saki’s relationship with her mother wasn’t quite what I thought it was – it was much more distant and had deeper issues – but I still really liked what we saw of it. I liked Saki finally confronting her mother and I liked that her mother asked Riko and Kouki to watch over Saki and be her friends. I just wish we could have gotten a last scene between them. The scene with Saki and her phone and her calling her mom and then starting to erase her number (because that would be the logical thing to do) but being unable to really got to me.

• Masato says that he wants to get back together with Saki and yet he’s having dinner dates with co-workers? I would understand him wanting to date again but not if he’s doing it while trying to get back together with Saki. I liked that he called Riko the next day when he couldn’t get a hold of Saki. He was clearly worried about her. And yet he didn’t leave work to go be there for Saki.

• I find Riko’s situation with her family really sad and depressing. Her daughter would rather be with her mother-in-law than with her and she’s clearly losing her kids so I hope that she manages to speak up for herself soon.

• What we saw of Masato’s behaviour at the wake didn’t seem out of bounds to me and certainly it didn’t come off as him flirting with the women like Kou accused him. IMO, Kou really came off worse in that confrontation. Why did he confront Masato right then and there? Who was he doing that for? Because it certainly was not for Saki’s sake considering she was mourning her mother. That was just so rude. He could have at least confronted him in private. In the end it really was his own anger and jealousy coming out. As far as Masato being there for the funeral it was clearly to support Saki though a difficult time and I think that’s as viable a reason as because he was mourning Saki’s mother’s death. He was in a relationship with Saki for ten years after all. I do wonder about his relationship with her mother.

Episode 4

• I am finding Saki’s little encouragement rants a little hard to watch. They keep hitting my embarrassment squick.

• Riko’s glee over the guys fighting made me grin. Her telling them ‘I’m sorry, you should stop’ probably would have come off more sincere if she hadn’t been laughing when she said it. Then it’s revealed that she set the whole thing up by inviting them both over. I love her. I also really loved Riko confronting Saki about not crying since her mother died and her telling Saki that she’d help her to grieve. I am really enjoying the friendship between them.

• I don’t know why Masato keeps allowing himself to be chased away by Kouki. It’s actually pretty aggravating. First he just left her apartment without talking to her and then on the roof he left again. I can certainly understand him putting away the ring because it really wasn’t the time but not him leaving her when she’s clearly upset and finally grieving. For someone who stuck to her side for ten years he’s really given to abandoning her now. It's almost as if now that she has friends he doesn’t know how to deal with it.

I’m very torn because I kind of ship the two of them together except... not. I guess it’s just that I feel like they should be the pairing I should ship – him being by her side for ten years supporting her, the fact that Saki does care for him – but that TPTB don’t have them as end game so they don’t get the support needed in the present. Instead we get Masato walking off and then kissing another woman. And yet I still kind of want them together in the end. *hands* I don’t know.

Like, I love that he apparently comes over and makes her food when she gets sick (a lot), that he apparently never pressured her or looked down on her for her quirks (no sleeping over, for example) and how when they first met it was because he stopped on the way to class to help her look for a contact lens even though it would make him late. These are all very sweet things. They’re things that make you understand her calling him a ‘really gentle and pure person’. I just wish that we saw that, and his support of her, more in the present. The fact that Masato did in this episode what he should have done when Saki returned the ring – i.e. tell her that he does support her and that he doesn’t want her to give up her dream, and “I want us to do our best together again” – also really annoys me. I kind of want to shake him.

• I feel like the show wants me to ship Saki/Kouki but I just – don’t. I like the friendship that’s building but I don’t ship it at all. If anything I ship Kouki/Riko.

• God, Riko has the worst life. I felt so horrible for her. I was surprised when she actually confronted her husband about his affair but when she tried to bring her mother-in-law into it it was no surprise that she would take her son’s side. Riko really did approach the whole situation badly. Considering how both her husband and mother-in-law treat her, ignore her, it seems obvious that directly confronting them like that would have no effect. I really want Riko to divorce her husband and get custody of her kids.

Episode 5

• The Riko situation this episode was really difficult. We have seen that she loves her children and longs to be a part of their lives but has allowed herself to be intimidated by her mother-in-law and rejected by her children. She never fought for them. Finally she does act – she takes them from the house – but she does it in such a way that it doesn’t reflect her love and comes off far more about her wanting them because they’re hers and because she’s desperate to feel needed. It becomes less about the children and her love for them.

So when Saki admonishes her later that ‘children aren’t accessories’ it makes sense. Riko has apparently never fought for anything and as a consequence she’s lost her place in her children’s lives. Even in this episode when she takes the children when confronted by what she plans to do next she chooses to run and hide back in her old life (aimless shopping and avoiding). It was really great to see her finally decide to fight at the end and that she did take responsibility for her actions.

• I loved the scene between the girls at the end and Riko wondering what she would have done if she hadn’t met Saki that day.

• I liked Riko and Kouki considering if they were friends now and then concluding ‘nah’.

• I liked that Saki’s response to Kouki asking her for a date was to say “It’s not like I’m trying to find excuses to reject you. I just really want to become friends.” (I am still not shipping them but considering the ‘pain in her chest’ that Saki writes she felt when turning him down I’m guessing that is not going to last long. Of course then she clutches her chest, heart rate increasing and then collapses so maybe ‘the pain in the heart’ will actually be physical instead of emotional/romantic for once? I’m hoping for that.)

• Masato sulking at the end when Saki invites him to join them for lunch made me roll my eyes and it kind of supports my theory that he’s just not dealing well with no longer being Saki’s only support/friend. Then there is how he decided to end that conversation: ‘I’m dating someone from work.’ “I’m thinking we might get married.” Wait, what? OMG, Masato sometimes I want to smack you upside the head so hard! (And by ‘sometimes’ I mean ‘every episode’, will you please act your age?!) So was this little outburst about making her jealous or hurting her for rejecting him again (i.e. being down on him helping Riko get her kids)? Because clearly something is happening there and it’s not him contemplating marriage after two dates. Idiot.