This is a pretty lame arc. It’s just not fun. Saotome clearly doesn’t want this, but was sort of pressured into this, so this is pretty mean-spirited of Kujaku. However, despite having the guts to turn down a confession, also not saying no is so unbelievably pathetic , so it’s hard to feel bad. Similarly, it feels like the mangaka doesn’t want this either, since so little effort is put into this.

I don’t know where this is headed, and no matter how I search my feelings, I find that I just don’t care.

Looks like we are getting an election cliffhanger for a month. As someone from the US, I am kind of election-ed out. So, at least they aren’t stringing along the campaign for a bunch of chapters.