A Condition Called Love

Episode 7

We FINALLY get context and elaboration on Hananoi's behavior. It shouldn't be ignored that Hananoi has an incredibly codependent personality with a crippling fear of being left alone. This stems from his parents being the type that would rather go out and save the world than spend time with their children. I have legitimately met parents like this and seen the psychological trauma that it can instill in somebody—especially during their adolescence. Hananoi doesn't feel confident in his ability to be worthy of another person's love and affection, hence he goes hard to a self-destructive degree. In his mind, if he's not trying hard enough, then he will lose everything. I wonder where Hananoi fits his grandparents into that equation. His grandparents were the ones who more or less raised him. He cares about them a lot despite his interesting view on love. Still, even if they did everything they could to provide an amazing life for him, he is constantly reminded of and hurt by the fact his parents would rather be helping children they don't even know. That's all solid and makes a lot of sense.

I also like that Hananoi is at least self-aware enough to realize that his love is the overbearing kind. I like his response to Hotau's confession at the beginning of the episode where he makes it very clear that just because she loves him, that doesn't mean that their way of expressing love to each other is the same. He's telling her that she needs to be comfortable with how he expresses that love or the relationship isn't going to work out, which is why he gives her space to sit down and think about it. I like that a lot even though it borders a little bit on unintentional manipulation. If you spend a year joined at the hip, suddenly cutting off contact will make emotions flare up. However, at least in this case, it wasn't deliberately malicious. Besides, I like the conclusion that Hotaru comes to at the end about how they don't have to have everything figured out right away. Part of being in a relationship is learning through experience. There are moments when their ways of loving might clash and they'll have to find a workaround. Relationships are about compromise and understanding each other—not being perfect mirrors of each other. After that scene, it was the first time that I genuinely was interested in seeing how these distinctly different types of love would interact in a more intimate setting.

I'm still confused about where the show is going with Hananoi's development. I think we've established his trauma is justified and we even get a direct explanation at the end about how those abandonment issues relate to his idea of finding a soulmate. (By the way, HORRIBLE advice there grandpa.) But the show also wants to throw in a curveball about how Hananoi might be in denial about how much he cares about other people. That could work but the show treats that option like it had more foreshadowing than it did. We've seen way more instances of Hananoi validating his possessive love languages than we have seen him display a similar level of care to other people—which is necessary for that denial to work. Hotaru's development is more or less done—and I don't think we need to focus on her anymore. Now it's time to spend the second half of the series settling on a character arc for Hananoi instead of just vaguely pointing in multiple directions.

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A Condition Called Love is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.