I will never respect Saiki K as a franchise nor the author, because Saiki's negative emotions are ridiculised and made into a joke. I disapprove of the way that Saiki's negative emotions are handled. This goes beyond being a gag manga, and it's not a gag manga, but that's beside the point.
I am not arguing that Saiki doesn't like his friends, just that when Saiki looks unhappy, he is actually unhappy. And I think that the way that the manga handles this lacks empathy.
This is also not a post about bashing Teruhashi. My point is that when Saiki's unhappy towards her, it's not nothing. The tsundere trope cannot justify it. No matter what you think, Saiki K is an unhealthy representation of Japanese culture, and its' way of thinking promotes the sexual harassment in Japan. No means no.
Here are the examples:
Saiki's panic attack in Chapter 108
If you look at what Saiki is doing, Saiki is clearly having a panic attack. He is clearly scared and says that his body reacted automatically, and he has a huge reaction.
Instead of acknowledging this, the fandom sees this as a joke, and this is treated as a joke and has no significance nor consequences within the story. The fandom and author have no empathy for Saiki's emotions.
The manga teaches you to ignore Saiki's emotions by using the tsundere trope. Not being able to do what he wants makes Saiki unhappy.
Tsundere trope
The tsundere trope is not just a joke, it is serious, like in chapter 92 where Saiki admits to being a tsundere.
If you look at Saiki's negative emotions, the tsundere trope is used to minimalise and ridiculise Saiki's emotions. Nobody is saying that Saiki isn't friends with them, it's just that when Saiki is unhappy, he is unhappy.
You don't have to trust Saiki's emotions. Of course he's not completely reliable but the extent that this is done is unreasonable.
Chapter 214
In chapter 214, Saiki is obviously unhappy.
Saiki is very obviously unhappy in this chapter. What Saiki does is that he threatens Aiura with threatening her if she doesn't stop. If you look simply at the tone he uses, he really wants Aiura to stop.
So who is the one who lacks empathy here? It's clearly the author, that already made Saiki's negative emotions as being ridiculous. If you look at the fandom, they justify this as this as the bullshit being "Saiki" liking people who are true to themselves.
But does this make sense? Saiki shows that he is very unhappy throughout the entire chapter. If anything, his "offu" shows that he is tired of everything that happened.
Chapter 280
Even as late as chapter 280, Saiki is very unhappy because he doesn't like Teruhashi forcing him to do things.
Sure, Saiki admires Teruhashi's abilities and working hard, but in the end, Saiki literally doesn't communicate with Teruhashi. Their relationship sucks and makes Saiki very stressed. This is literally the end of chapter 242.
Conclusion
So why do people still like SaiTeru? Because it is a fetish. SaiTeru represents everything that is wrong with Japanese culture and is the wrong way of analysing relationships. You can somewhat ignore negative emotions if they aren't serious and can be resolved, but you can't say they don't exist?
In Japan, many people are addicted to porn. In Japanese porn, it's common for no (yamete) to mean continue. Relationships should not reflect this, and Japanese culture is wrong.
So is it me that doesn't respect the author? Yes it is. But why should I respect the author when I know exactly what they are doing and disapprove it. Respect is earned, it doesn't come automatically, especially for someone who has handled their work badly and promotes unhealthy relationship ideas.
