Qualia Under the Snow

Aki exuding misogyny? It is a BL after all.

And he's homophobic? It is a BL after all.

I know my main problem with this story was Aki himself. He’s written in a way where the author knows he’s pretty unlikeable, kind of a dick, and that’s the point. However, they also want you to care about what he was saying, sympathize with his story, and basically redeem his shittyness by the end... Kind of hard for me to do when I wasn’t given a reason to. The guy just sucks. Throughout the whole story, he is just an asshole, an asshole to Umi, an asshole to women in general. I didn’t like how he strung Umi around even though he knew by chapter 4 that he was feeling something, and yet he was still being a little shit even in the last chapter. Him being so stand-off-ish to Umi but also dangling the possibility of a relationship in his face to the point where Umi looks more confused than happy at the end of chapter 7 made me want to scream.

Something about Umi constantly apologizing really pissed me off because he had nothing to apologize for. There was a bit at the end where Aki apologized himself for how he acted towards Umi but it wasn’t enough and it didn’t change how he kept acting for the rest of the chapters. The part where we all just... dodged the fact that Umi was almost sexually assaulted but Aki was still being stubborn despite Umi explaining what was just happening. I’m not looking over that, what the fuck? You want to make a shit character, fine, but don’t think that chapter 7 was enough to make me go “aww, that was so sweet. they kissed! aww” like I haven’t wanted to punch Aki in the face for the last 16 days.

You had 7 chapters. And for 5 of them, I've felt like we've been saying the same thing. The story hardly moved.

This doesn't make me want to read seaside strangers.