The scar tissue builds up pretty fast with a series like Takopii no Genzai. It’s exhausting in that it’s like two cours worth of angst crammed into six episodes (or 16 chapters). And that may be an understatement. But also because you distrust anything he shows you that isn’t frankly terrible. So when you get an episode titled “Azuma-kun’s Salvation”, well – it’s only natural to assume the hand reaching out to comfort you has a dagger up the sleeve, that the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming train. Is there any such thing as a victim in a Taizan series, really?

Based on the evidence through four episodes, I would say the answer is yes – but “it’s complicated”. Naoki is not a perfect person by any stretch of the imagination. But in truth, he really hasn’t done anything so terrible or unforgivable. Maybe a better question would be “who’s the most twisted person in this cast?”, and that one is really a puzzler. Shizuka is seriously twisted, there’s no question about it. But she never did anything to Mariya except existing. Mariya chose to be the bully, the dog killer. I don’t think her parents are 100% to blame for that. But that said, there’s no question her parents seriously messed her up.

On that note, maybe Naoki’s mom is the most royally fucked-up individual here. I struggle to find anything redeemable about her, and there’s no obvious object of blame for the way she acts except her. I think a lesson in a Taizan 5 series is that most people are messed up and they pass on their dysfunction to others, in a kind of grotesque daisy chain. Most obviously – and unforgivably – it’s parents to their children. But the children then go on to pay it forward, often to their own children eventually. He’s not wrong about this, but it would be nice in narrative terms to get a break from it once in a while.

So context is everything is one point I’m making here, I guess. But in any context, what Shizuka is doing to Naoki is abominable. Whatever made her the way she is, she’s cold as ice and clearly has no moral compass whatsoever. I don’t know if she’s the most twisted Takopii character, but she may be the most dangerous (though Takopii would give her a run for her money). That Naoki-kun is ensnared by her partly because her double eyelids resemble those of his mother and brother – the first whose love he craves and can never have (because she has none to give), the second he aspired to be and never can – is especially tragicomic.

This all culminates in Shizuka “asking” Naoki to take the fall for her. She seals this with a kiss and a lie about “waiting for him”, maybe the most chilling moment in the series so far. Notably, Takopii could have chosen this moment to apply the lessons he seemed to have learned at the end of Episode 3, but he does nothing. And this is where Junya enters the picture. And Junya is at the heart of all the questions posed in the first four paragraphs. What’s the deal with him – what’s he hiding? When does the dark side reveal itself and the knife come out of the sleeve?

We don’t trust that Junya is what he appears to be – and why should we, based on everyone else? Neither does Naoki of course, and for much the same reason – he believes he has no one in his life who accepts him for who he is. The tragedy here is if Junya was that person all along, and all of Naoki’s abuse from his mother made him incapable of seeing it. By all accounts Junya means what he says, is fully aware of how fucked up his mother is, and desperately wants to help his little brother save himself. It took Naoki reaching the lowest possible ebb to finally put himself in Junya’s hands – which will make it an unbelievable betrayal even by Taizan standards if Junya is no better than any of these other sociopaths.