thehobbem:

I don’t know if anyone has already mentioned it, but a friend and I were rewatching YOI this past weekend (you know, as you do) and she made an observation that I’d like to share now.

“It’s because you’re cute”. Does that ring a bell?

This is the good old “he’s doing that because he likes you” that society likes to tell all little girls whenever boys are mean to them – that toxic discourse that allows boys to get away with being cruel to girls, that labels it as acceptable behavior and teaches girls that abuse equals love.

So this is the answer Sara was given (Mickey, for all that he’s dysfunctional towards her, was also a child at the time, and probably had no idea how dangerous such an answer is. This was definitely something he’d heard before; children tend to reproduce what they hear from adults).

Now, most of us like to ship Sara and Mila, but who is the one person the show really hints at Sara being interested in?

The one guy who treats her with cold indifference (at best).

I’m not being shady towards Seung-gil or anything. That’s just the way he is; he keeps it to himself, doesn’t seem to want to make friends with other skaters, and is not remotely interested in Sara in anyway.

And he’s not playing games: he’s making it very clear that he’s not interested. But there’s a very strong possibility that Sara equates “being rude to her” to “liking her” when it comes to men.

Seung-gil doesn’t have 2 shits to give about Sara,

but she actively chases him.

I don’t know if this was done on purpose, but considering all the layers to YOI, and all the middle fingers it flips to gender roles, I wouldn’t be surprised. 

Funnily enough, Mickey doesn’t seem to have caught on to that? He wonders whether Sara likes “Czech men who have nothing but cheer” (Emil) or “moody Japanese men who look like closet pervs” (poor Yuuri XD). He thinks of men who are nice and polite to Sara, and not once does he consider cold, taciturn Seung-gil as a possibility.
But then again, isn’t it very easy for men to think women should only be with someone who’s nice to them? Isn’t it very easy for men to go around saying “if he treats her like that and she stays, then she must like it, it’s her fault”? To not once consider all the harmful kind of discourse girls are exposed to since their early childhood?

(I’m not at all implying Mickey thinks that – if anything, he’d never think that about Sara – I’m just talking about men in general.)

But here it is, anime proof that “he’s mean to you because he likes you!” is toxic and should never, ever be said to girls.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be in the corner shipping Sara and Mila.