On the one hand, I was expecting a bit more to happen with the father. But, on the other hand, if the author wasn’t going to do anything interesting with him, then I am glad that we have already moved on to the next thing. Ri-chan wanting to marry her parents after that explanation of marriage was really cute.
Yeah - there was room there potentially for more involving her father but I presume the mangaka’s decided to just keep the focus on Ri-chan and her mom and Tatsu. So that interaction with her father had to happen and some things had to get settled, and it did and they did, and we move on.
I expected she was going to run into her dad any day now. That had to happen.
I think the basic theme we’re getting here is that the problem was that Ri-chan couldn’t adapt. She had a specific conception of her family, and when her parents split up, that spoiled that, but instead of shifting to a new conception of it (“It’s papa but it isn’t - it isn’t papa but it is”), she just sort of shut down entirely. Same with her piano playing - she had a specific path she was following to success, and when that failed, she stopped playing. Now she’s playing again, and on her way to success, just by a different path.
I think that is a good take. I hadn’t really put together what was going on with those panels. The explanation of reality not aligning with her mental model of how things “should be” makes a lot of sense.
