[DreamSword]

Thank you very much for that response. No, really!

Thinking on it, I definitely took the word "dreams" way too literally here. In retrospect, the scene of Jiro talking about wanting to stay who he is does lay it all out.

You explaining the Repair scene also does help soften the blow a bit, but I still do feel it was imagery that really should not have been used in the first place, you know? Heck, just a few stills of Mitsuko on-screen fixing his arm with Jiro looking on with appreciation would've been enough. Including the sex imagery just raises all kinds of red flags. For me atleast.

I also took a quick skim through the manga again to make sure I wasn't misremembering anything(and man, I really should read it in full again, it's been like ten years), and I gotta say...

Very minor spoilers ahead.

And I'm sorry, but the Mitsuko of the manga and the Mitsuko of the anime are two almost entirely different characters. There are a few details that are the same, but I think the trio of writers that handled the anime realized that keeping her as the mostly damsel in distress that she is in the manga wouldn't've boded well with an at the time modern audience. And it most certainly wouldn't've gone over well to anyone watching nowadays, I assume.

Heck, without getting too into it, Mitsuko isn't even the one who repairs Jiro in the original manga. And as such there's no "sex scene" either. Infact, unless I'm just not remembering it, there's basically no romance at all to speak of in the manga, and that's something I really would've preferred, to be honest.

To go on a small side-tangent, one aspect of alot of stories that I dislike, which I even still see today, is the idea that, because they're a man and a woman, the main hero and heroine must become romantically involved. Speaking solely for myself here, I very rarely see just a man and a woman be friends in stories, and I give major props to the few I've seen that do(Folklore, to give a video game example).

But yeah, thanks for the awesome reply Fish! It legit helped!