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PD: sry for my bad english <3
Honestly, my thoughts exactly.
I despise him, truly utterly despise him and his route almost made me feel physically sick. After the first attempt that lead to a bad ending because I couldn’t stomach the Stockholm-ish ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, I had to use a guide and force myself to get through it using the skip function for the parts I’d already done. Honestly, I found him and his rout to be a little triggering, having lived under the thumb of tyrants who think it's their god given right to do what they want to or with you regardless of what you want/feel. I have no words for how much I hate his rout and I wouldn’t piss on Toma if he were on fire.
He's abusive, very very abusive, but he covers it with charm and a smile, which just adds to his manipulation (which is also a little triggering because I’ve had people do that to me too). Even at the very beginning he's too controlling, he makes decisions about the PC without even asking her, while she is stood right in front of him, and it only gets worse from there. He said she isn’t a doll, but that is exactly how he treats her; he might as well have sewn her mouth shut and bound her limbs for all the difference it would have made in his rout. He is utterly selfish, him “looking out” for the PC wasn’t for her, it was for his obsession, or else he would have TALKED TO HER, and enlisted the help of others, like Ikki since he was convinced he was her boyfriend. Sure, if he’s happy, he’s fine (from a distance), but as soon as he isn’t happy he’s a ******* monster. Okay, yes, there are worse characters out there in the land of fiction, but so many of them have at least some justification: Toma doesn’t. “Madly in love” or whatever they were going for, doesn’t cut it, that’s no excuse. He’s just a psychopath with the gift of charm and good looks (or whatever, not caring to get technical here).
The PC in his rout also pissed me off no end. She might as well have branded herself on the forehead with the words “willing victim, abuse me however”. It’s almost a wonder she didn’t get off on the girls bullying. Yes she has amnesia, but given the “good” dialogue options are all ones that scream “willing victim” to me, I was just sickened by the whole thing. AND, she forgives him in the good ending as if all he did was lick her in the bathroom for ten minets, and she pines for him in the neutral one?! The hell?! God, I HATE that route! I am NEVER touching it again, its only lucky I found the bad endings first because I’d never go back for them.
The best part was the bad ending where she got thrown down the bloody well, I was that infuriated with both him and her. (Okay, yes, Toma getting flustered during shopping was also funny, but flustered guys are generally funny as a rule, so...).
The “yandere” character trope, esp in terms of romance games like this, needs to die a fiery death already…
Another interesting thing that there was no justification like "he was raised in an abusive family" or something like that, which is typical for characters portrayed as insane - there was nothing wrong about his past life mentioned. It is quite peculiar, because Shin, for example, had an excuse for being abrasive, and his behavior is not nearly as bad as Toma's. And I do not think I need one - the justification of such kind would not really change the consequences. It seems like the concurrence of events - amnesia and severe change in MC's personality, outer dangers and the feeling like MC does not understand it, unrequited love, maybe even overall exhaustion and lack of sleep - triggered the anxiety and warped good intentions - and the guilt and self-deprecation did not help him to fight his dark side. Of course, if Toma had communicated his feelings, it would have been better for both him and MC - but that would be a completely different story. He seems to genuinely regret his actions, though, even when MC says it is alright, and that is why I believe he can become a good person. It does not necessarily mean he will be such and in real life, it would still be advisable to avoid such person.
My headcanon about the happy ending is that MC did not feel much of anything till the memories returned, and when they returned, she did feel ecstatic from an overflow of them, especially remembering the feeling of falling in love with Toma - and it came at the moment when she has seen how much he also loved her, even if in a deeply twisted way. So, that is why the decision was made on impulse. It is probably different from the author's intention, but it seems reasonable enough in my head, so I do not hate MC for that.
Of course, the better ending would be if the MC forgave and accepted Toma, but on the condition he goes to therapy or something. Seriously, considering that he did regret his actions, I think it would not even be that out of character to agree to that. Also, it would be better if the ending was not triggered by a coincidence of the diary falling. I guess, in real life, the happiest ending would be not to date him at all but come on, it is intended that some people would like his character and wish the best for the couple (including me, tbh), and the happy ending is for them, not for those who dislike the pairing.
Yes! I was thinking the other day, if Toma's rout had been a pure horror rout, a play on Orion's warning of people abusing her, and NOT a true romance rout at all, I'd have been fine with it. But it WAS a romance rout where the abuse was constantly dismissed as a-okay. Just, nope, I could not with that, not at all. (Saying I was only a little triggered by that rout may have been an understatement, looking back... and, I guess, as evidenced by the fact that I still want to rant about it).
He controlled her without her agreeing to it (this is abuse not BDSM, BDSM needs consent), lied to her, withheld information just to maintain his control over her, tried to fake a relationship with her and steal her from the men he thought she had chosen, drugged her without her consent, then locked her in a cage. The man was a hairs breadth away from raping her and the only thing that stopped him was finding out that his 'doll' was willingly his anyway, so he didn't have to bother.
The yandere trope can be fun for horror (assuming you like that), but not written off as okay like it is here - and the rout ending was VERY clear that all that abuse really was being dismissed as all okay, both in the MCs attitude in the good and neutral routs, and the fact that there was no comeupance for Toma at all in the good ending. It's sick.
The main thing for me is that vulnerable people can read this and it will reinforce that this behavior is "normal" when it's not. I see this so often, people not recognizing that they are in an abusive situation because it has all been normalized. That's doing real world harm to innocent people, albeit unintentionally. That's why I think that authors have a responsibility to convey in some fashion that it's okay to enjoy these stories, but it's not okay to do these kinds of things in the real world without consent. It would be so easy in a VN, too--just have an ending where you can choose to put Toma in jail for what he did. The difference between abuse and BDSM is consent, and that should be the difference between the good ending and the "Toma goes to jail ending."