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Originally Posted by KronosPlasma
The fight then is just one last way of getting more hate shifted to Manami. She doesn't need to be there in the end. Kyousuke and Kirino know how hard things will be for them and have the "break up" already planed. Knowing all of this just seems like a cheap way of dragging Manami though the mud one last time.
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I don't think the intention of the conflict is really to drag Manami through the mud; it only comes across that way if you look at it from Kirino's perspective (because Manami is Kirino's "enemy"). But it's very important to understand that Manami is absolutely not Kyousuke's enemy, nor really Kirino's true enemy in the end.
If you look at it another way, she's the only one of Kyousuke's friends who is prepared to sacrifice her own standing with him in order to (try to) protect him from potentially making a "mistake" that could very well ruin his life. If you knew that one of your best friends was about to do something that could really hurt their future, would you really just sit back and watch? She knows Kyousuke more than just about anyone. In her view, Kyousuke is the sort of risk-taker who's willing to do crazy things for others' sake -- she's known that about him since childhood. She's been trying to protect him from
himself for years by encouraging him to accept his limits. And now he's back to his old habits, and it seems to her that Kirino might have put him up to it again (because, as she said before, he has always been seeking Kirino's praise/approval).
The central reason for the conflict is to remind Kyousuke (and Kirino) of the potential consequences of their choices, so they have to face it through her before something worse happens. And this is logical because Manami is the one who helped clean up the "mess" last time Kyousuke's crazy plan backfired three years ago, so he will absolutely remember the lesson he learned back then. But this is one "mess" that, beyond this conflict, she can't really save him from. The key message that Kyousuke needed to convey to her is that he did indeed learn the lesson she taught him -- that he's aware of his limits, that he still wanted to make this choice of his own accord, and that he's prepared to deal with the consequences on his own. That's why, even though they already knew they were going to give up their open relationship shortly thereafter, he still stood his ground and had to reject his best friend. In the end, this was the last and most important thing she could do for him as his "family".
In a way, it's not so dissimilar to how Kyousuke took responsibility for Kirino's eroge at the beginning of the story, and the Dad still had to punch him
even though he knew full well that Kyousuke was just lying to protect Kirino -- and after that, the Dad could willingly turn a blind eye to it. What Manami does here is pretty similar -- since they haven't told their parents, she has to play the "authority figure" to make sure they know full well that what they're doing is dangerous and that they (and particularly Kyousuke) are willing to take responsibility. At the end, the punch she gives him is just like the punch Kyousuke's Dad gave him at the beginning. And then she walks away because she said what had to be said. And that was particularly hard for her given that he's also the person she loved. But, in her view, she couldn't very well say she loved Kyousuke and let him go down this dangerous path without at least putting up a fight.
Now all this isn't to say that Manami was totally pure and blameless in her intents either -- by her own admission, she's just as self-interested and jealous as any other girl, and she has been hiding a little bit of this "darker" side from Kyousuke (her love interest) just like anyone might. She probably didn't want Kyousuke to know that she was resentful of Kirino because it's a bit childish and petty. But Kyousuke doesn't judge her for this, because he recognizes that ultimately Manami's primary motivation was trying to look out for him in her own way all this time. Honestly, in that moment Kyousuke demonstrates some significant maturity. It's sort of like how a child gets frustrated with their restrictive parents growing up, but later in life comes to appreciate what they were trying to do and why. She certainly wasn't right about everything, but as even the book says: she's not the real "last boss".
All this to say, there is a lot of stuff going on just under the surface in that scene that provide important closure to all the characters and cap off some major character development for Kyousuke. And in the end, I honestly don't think people should look down on Manami as much as they do. As I said before, I don't necessarily agree with everything she did, but I don't think the books were truly making her into the enemy that people want to see her as. That's only how things look on the surface from one point of view.