hiii its been so long since this ask oml we got denreze in the manga too 😭😭... but yess sure bear in mind when i think of denreze-esque dynamic im not matching in terms of vibe. some of these comparisons are Made Up By Me which is. obvious. & also bear in mind that none of these come as Recommendations some may be mid and average and even bad. however afaict of rn
- alien stage - make the exorcist fall in love - itsuwari no marigold - pet (miyake ranjou) - lookalike daughter - kasane - talentless nana - kill the villainess - destroy it all and love me in hell - challengers - shihai shoujo kubaru chan
also nothing strikes me immediately on the books front so this list feels incomplete :/. but well!

ANON I LOVE YOU dont even get me started on this i've been comparing the ivantill kiss & the denreze tongue scene since like r6. i'm not even kidding when i say the firework kiss is my primary frame when it comes to ivan thoughts 😭😭😭 theyre chillingly similar kinds of expression imo i adore ivan & reze so so much. the dynamic of twisted adoration & half formed projection & ugly violence...! you forgive your own existence through this other & give it the parts of you that you have always thought empty & because of the pretense over emptiness the giving is somehow more desperately felt & believed in. reze would do really well in something like alien stage until she burnt up all at once.

i don't honestly think it's a checklist as you suggest, since fjmt often dabbles in very blurred relationship forms. it's a romantic relationship for sure, but one mired in horror — that's what makes it interesting to me... i don't see romance as a positive quality here, merely a setting stage upon which trope & history are contested & filtered. not very confident in them ending up as on friendly terms, really, either? i've said since even before the aquarium date that i think asaden's romance frame (as wholesome, uninterrogated) is suspect to me, and well: that's what ended up being proven esp w/ the later chapters — but it still makes use of this frame and locates its horror alongside "romance". ultimately, i dont often like predicting on exact details — my analysis is more just talking about themes & speculating on future ones. it's probably going to get worse in many directions, in that regard. i hope this somewhat answers your question?

i think quality-wise it's obviously complex & there's much still to learn but i'm less interested in whether it measures as dislike/like than how it falls into alien stage's idealisation-as-love aspect: because in many ways none of this is strictly "love" — the children in anakt are constructing what it must mean out of nothing & this process occurs simultaneously with their manifestation of their own selves. & i think w/ hyuna that mired sort of intimacy in their few official art is best mixed in with her own Evasion & clouding over of luka (in my previous answer where i was talking about how luka thinks about her: he does something similarly divergent from alnst's idealisation form). in her profile she says "i shouldn't have approached you from the beginning and been nice to you... shall we talk about something else?" — the evasion, the shortness, very different from the answers she uses for everyone else. she's kind of refusing to let him become her ghost lol. in the artbook, they say "from the outside, hyuna appears to be moving forward, but in reality, she’s unable to escape her past." i really like how all in has hyuna creating her own, Changed Fantasy with the lyrics about her control through which her own Free self is made manifest coming off as a Kind of proof of life against the way said lyrics r layered with flashes of luka and hyunwoo & her own desperate expression. she's not singing about luka...! she's singing about herself but he appears nonetheless and the lyrics at the points he appears characterise her further to me. like she still makes the gestures mid song, going through the motions of exhibited confidence despite her distressed expression... it fascinates me in how a stage where everyone story-ises another in order to get this individuation (see: ivan),, its not just that hyuna sings about herself,, she does this on top of a Refusal of luka. compare this with luka who always sings in a way where he's obscuring himself! i really enjoy the lyrics from drunk and party [goodbye, i'll release you / from these cold shackles / your body and soul, bruised and broken / your freedom was taken away so you couldn't fly, sing!] because of the way its directed towards Someone else, keeps herself in that area of savior. but the someone else in question is hypothetical, unformed outside their plight, unlike a lot of the other songs. and so now the hyuluka art comes off as this — frame of romance, almost. luka the blissful, blushing bride & hyuna's expression of horror. in the newest art his hand curls around her hip (the location where the brand is on his own body), like he's trying to inscribe himself onto the idea of her, and she's revolted by the idea of this and he can do this, because she's Off Stage. she's the concept of freedom he has made his own... but she's alive and kicking & that's why them actually seeing each other on the stage is such an important moment to me. like,, hyuna lives in a way where she's trying to cut herself off from the sticky connections of the past, the same ones the stage is composed of. and it's really interesting how she saves mizi because she sees herself in her? it makes me think of luka-sua parallels, lol & how sua according to the artbook wanted to preserve mizi's innocence to her detriment, so that she could live within that beautiful innocence of the "heavenly garden", to the point of becoming an obstacle to mizi's growth... and luka's obsession with hyuna's idea of freedom on the stage has me speculating that something in a similar flavour happened there. because hyuna is so obsessed with growing Past it now, in a way, and luka is like a sua who lived. i'm very curious about their past..!

YESS I WAS FREAKING OUT ABOUT THIS ON MY PRIV WHEN THE MV DROPPED [image attached on twitter];; a bit rambly but: it's that beautiful last line in the hylk anakt comic if you remember. i don't think hyuna <exists for luka> in the same way mzsua ivtl manifest themselves, since she's not the subject of his songs: while for others their loves are a manner of self realisation through other, luka obscures himself & Becomes (someone else's) Other. it's a part of the control he maintains on the stage; hyuna doesn't leak through even once other than the brief glance back when she appears in person at the end of r5. (this is something i contrast w/ how hyuna sings too, but then this response would get too long)... this is the exact control that hyuna describes to luka in the anakt comic, the sense of ownership she gets from the stage: "before we get on stage, we do as we're told... [but when i'm singing] my existence, my life.. feels like it's mine." & he responds "but your life is mine, though?" & in a way it is. because she's absent, she's scrubbed herself of any of these sticky connections but he's taken the control she once described to him & made it his, become her embodiment when every other aspect of his life is controlled by heperu. in the narrative, she exists for him & is simultaneously secluded from the audience, the thousand preying aliens, until he sees her on the stage & his easy facade falls...