Quote:
Originally Posted by Julio C
Can somebody explain Mayaka's situation and why she cried at the end? I was left confused. Was the girl she was talking to, the one who did the manga? I just go the impression that it was that, but I am unsure. Still pretty emotional.
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The girl she was talking to was one of the cosplayers (and one of her seniors) at the start of the arc,
Ayako Kouchi. The one with the Vocaloid cosplayer hangers-on. Mayaka gets into a debate with Kouchi about whether or not "masterpieces" exist, and if it's possible for a work to be born a "masterpiece." She mentions a one-off work called
A Corpse By Evening and says she'll bring it the next day, so that the other girl can see what she's talking about.
As it turns out, Mayaka can't find
A Corpse By Evening, but does find another one called
Body Talk, which she thinks is good as well, and still many levels above hers.
When she tells Kouchi that she couldn't find
A Corpse By Evening, Kouchi's friends suggest that Mayaka was just doing an ass-pull to get them off her back. Kouchi tells her friends that if they hadn't heard of the work, then they should kindly STFU.
At the end of the arc, Mayaka ends up borrowing Oreki's copy of
A Corpse By Evening, and she brings it to Kouchi. As it turns out, she
already had a copy of the work, and she kindof agrees with Mayaka about the nature of masterpieces . . . so much so that she stopped reading
A Corpse By Evening halfway through and buried it at the back of her closet so she'd never have to see it again, and so she could be in denial about the nature of masterpieces.
Kouchi reveals that she knew the writer of
A Corpse By Evening, and felt a substantial inferiority complex toward the writer . . . since the writer was
not a big fan of manga . . . and yet, the writer came up with a masterpiece manga as her very first (and as far as she knew only) entry in the field. While doing this, she sketches some graffiti on the rail.
Kouchi, obviously distraught, tells Mayaka that she refuses to read
A Corpse By Evening, because then she'd be overwhelmed by how OMG AWESOME it is, and she'd be eagerly awaiting more work from the writer . . . which isn't going to ever happen.
After Kouchi leaves, Mayaka looks at the doodle on the rail, and realizes that it's the logo from the back of
Body Talk. The same manga that she'd previously asserted that, while not the masterpiece that
A Corpse By Evening was, it was still "a hundred levels" above her work.
It then hits her that she'd been debating about masterpieces with a girl whose own work was significantly better than her's . . . a girl so crushed by a non-fan manga genius that she's retreated to the safety of denial. In other words, she'd fought with a girl who'd already fought the same battle over masterpieces, talents, innate talents, and expectations that those of lesser talent hold of those of greater talent, lost miserably, and was
still light-years ahead of where Mayaka was. It's a realization that does bad things to her feelings of self-worth.