I haven’t read the manga, but in the anime the only time I remember Makoto saying they don’t want to be a girl is when they say something along the lines of “I don’t want to live as a boy or a girl, I want to live as me”. They read to me as pretty obviously someone not done with their gender journey, with a lot of internalized transphobia. And judging from their reactions from people reading them as a girl, I’d guess they’ll end up transfem (whether girl or nb).
It’s sad to see stuff end, but honestly I’m glad whenever fiction gets a real ending instead of just dragging out for a million years.
And it looks like the author is planning a new comic about gay bird boys, a topic I somehow keep finding more comics about, lol.
This art is very cute so I went to read the comic and it is also very cute!
And for once it’s some mer content that’s not full of the dreaded (by me) mermaid knees…
I am under no circumstances saying you can’t criticize art or say that the writing was bad or whatever you seem to think my position is.
Writers can and do get fired for not doing the job they were hired for and rarely get to lead the creative process (and usually if they do they’re like, writer/director, or a big name). All I’m trying to say is that a worker can do a good job within the bounds they’re given and still have the result be terrible because the bounds were terrible.
You seem to be giving a LOT of agency to writers for the stories they tell. Some stories are going to be something writers worked hard on wanted to write, and in those cases ya they should be blamed for the resulting flaws, but many times they are constrained by the instructions they’re given.
To go back to the metaphor, did the worker decide that the stuff you need goes out of your reach or are they putting it where they were told to?
“Just following orders” absolutely does excuse bad writing as long as it’s not harmful. I wouldn’t get mad at a writer of a thing a studio ruined just like I wouldn’t get mad at a grocery store worker for rearranging the shelves for the fifth week in a row. Just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean doing a stupid and pointless job makes them a bad person. If the writing is racist or whatever, sure, they’re complicit, but writers have to eat and it’s not morally wrong to write a boring script if that’s what your boss is asking you for.
Makoto did also say that in the same scene, but I largely take the “I’m a boy” comments with a grain of salt, since much of that often reads as “I’m amab” or “I’m supposed to be a boy”. I’m also not sure the egg prime directive applies to fictional characters*, though I’d definitely be using he/him if Makoto were a real person, yes, lol.
*There are a bunch of reasons for this but one of them is that the nature of storytelling is that each person’s understanding of a story is a little different because no medium perfectly relays what’s in the author’s mind into our minds, so we each get our own personal Makoto in our own heads. Mine is definitely a girl (egg) but I don’t really fault anyone for coming to different conclusions (unless they’re for transphobic reasons, lol)