u/vandolii

This is just my personal opinion and interpretation of the scene. If you see it differently, I’d genuinely be interested in hearing your perspective too :)

They were both wrong, but I think Mikio was more at fault. It’s just easier to blame Mizu because she doesn’t visibly show fear or discomfort while he does, but objectively Mikio’s actions are worse than hers.

To start with, Mikio told her he wanted to see all of who she was. Even then, Mizu holds herself back at first because he’s also holding back. She matches his intensity.

After Mikio throws her down, she asks him to draw his sword, and he says he doesn’t want to hurt her. Personally, I don’t think this first fight initiated by Mizu was wrong because he still hadn’t actually told her to stop. He only said he didn’t want to hurt her, and she was basically showing him that he wouldn’t.

What was wrong was Mizu attacking him with an unsheathed blade while he was still using a sheathed sword.

However—

Throughout this entire scene, Mizu is mostly just playing at disarming Mikio, not actually attacking him. She’s showing him what she can do.

I noticed that most of Mizu’s attacks are aimed more at Mikio’s sword than at Mikio himself, because her goal is to take it away from him, not hurt him.

She directs her blade toward easy-to-block areas, like right in front of him, or attacks from high enough up that all he has to do is lift his sword horizontally to block.

There are a few seconds where Mizu swings her blade close to Mikio’s face, but that’s because she’s switching hands, and what she actually uses to attack is her elbow.

Then they both end up with their weapons near each other’s shoulder and neck. Mikio probably did feel vulnerable there because, even though they’re technically in the same position, his sword is still sheathed while Mizu’s isn’t.

That said, Mizu’s movements still look measured to me, like she’s trying not to hurt him. She doesn’t come across like some uncontrolled animal; she looks like someone casually sparring. He simply underestimated her.

Even when she points the blade dangerously close to him, it’s mostly aimed at his hand, and it still looks more like a move to disarm him than to injure him.

Mikio gets uncomfortable because at first he was basically like, “aww, my sweet wife wants to play swordsmen,” but then it turned into, “oh shit, this bitch actually knows what she’s doing and disarmed me easily.”

He tells her they should stop, and she mocks him by asking if he lost his skills along with his title, while handing him her own sword and keeping Mikio’s, which is still sheathed.

(This has nothing to do with the argument, but I honestly think it’s sweet that Mizu lent him the sword that’s so special to her.)

What Mizu said was wrong, and it was definitely meant to provoke him into continuing the sparring match. But Mikio is still the one who chooses to continue the fight by attacking first. If he really wanted to stop, he could’ve walked away and demanded an apology from Mizu, but his pride got in the way.

And that’s understandable. Nobody likes feeling attacked by their spouse, physically or emotionally. But we also can’t pretend poor little Mikio wanted to stop and Mizu forced him to continue when, after this point, he was the one who initiated the next attack because his ego got hurt.

Also, we have to remember that Mikio was already a grown man while Mizu was barely out of adolescence. He was supposed to be the mature one here.

Mizu raises the intensity of the fight because he does first. Honestly, the moment Mikio sees how skilled she is, his next attack toward her already becomes noticeably harsher. To me, the atmosphere feels like she’s still playing while he’s actually trying to hurt her.

Earlier he said he didn’t want to hurt her, but in this part we literally see him attacking Mizu with a sharpened blade while she’s using a sheathed sword. The only reason she isn’t scared or injured is because she’s an expert. That doesn’t change the fact that Mikio’s attacks were aimed at hurting her.

And remember: Mizu “attacked” him knowing he was an experienced samurai. Mikio attacked her without actually knowing the full extent of her abilities beyond the few minutes they had sparred before.

There’s even a moment where his attack barely misses her foot.

At this point in the scene, Mizu is basically fighting him with a stick and treating it like a game while Mikio is trying to turn her into sashimi. If anyone should’ve felt vulnerable or afraid here, it should’ve been Mizu. Mikio had a blade; she didn’t.

Mikio doesn’t look like he’s playing or trying to disarm her anymore. He looks like he’s trying to stab or cut her.

Then Mizu disarms him again and points both swords toward him, not really as an attack but more to push him back and create distance. She throws them aside and pins him down using her body, not a blade.

She catches Mikio’s sword and only then unsheathes it, finally holding it to his neck — and she doesn’t even have an aggressive expression on her face because she still isn’t really attacking him. She’s playing.

Granted, Mizu, girl… those are some deeply unhinged games. It was still wrong.

But before that moment, Mikio had already been attacking her angrily and aiming for vulnerable areas and limbs multiple times.

So he gets to do it, but when she does it she’s suddenly a monster?

Mikio also weaponizes one of Mizu’s traumas, and honestly that’s worse because it’s a trauma she shared with him in confidence during a moment of emotional vulnerability — right after they had an intimate moment together.

And then he calls her a monster for showing him the exact part of herself he claimed he wanted to know. In the end, it proves he only liked the version of Mizu her mother told her to show people, not the real Mizu.

………………

So basically, Mizu isn’t afraid because she’s skilled enough that, to her, this is just a game and she knows she won’t get hurt. She also trusted that Mikio wouldn’t harm her (even though he did try to, but I think Mizu’s own skill prevented her from fully realizing it). She never truly intended to hurt him, although the joke about his title definitely hurt him emotionally.

Meanwhile, after that joke bruised his ego, Mikio actively did try to hurt her — only to start crying about it when she responded with the same intensity.

Mizu probably would’ve stopped if he hadn’t lunged at her out of wounded pride, or if they’d actually taken a moment to talk and establish rules for the sparring match. But maybe he underestimated her so much that he never even thought that would be necessary.

I put more effort into this than into my thesis.

English isn’t my first language, so sorry if anything is written weirdly or doesn’t make sense unu