(Okay, so you’re asking me, someone who is very against this ship and who hates Mahiru to answer this question. So I just want to say, I’m not going to be saying anything positive about Mahiru or the gure//mahi ship in this ask. So if you are in support of Mahiru or the ship, then please just skip over this. Please, ignore it. I’m just answering the question and I don’t feel like getting into an argument with anyone over my opinion. So to be blunt, don’t reblog giving your opposite opinion of what I have written) below.
Pre-demon Mahiru I don’t think was abusive as much as she was manipulative. Which can be argued as a form of abuse.
Their relationship started as a way for Mahiru to spite her family, so to begin with she was only using Guren. And to me it doesn’t matter if she ended up “loving” him in the end (which I don’t believe she ever loved him), the fact that she only saw him as a tool and a means to “get back” at her family just goes to show that her only intention was to manipulate him. And that’s what she is doing now, their relationship was built upon manipulation.
Another thing that I found abusive about her character before the demons was that she used guilt tactics (much like everyone else) to make Guren feel bad, or terrible about himself. When Guren couldn’t protect Saiyuri , Mahiru went out of her way to make Guren feel bad about it. Guren who was already dealing with shit, in addition to feeling guilty and terrible for not being able to protect Saiyuri. Literally, everyone in that school was giving Guren crap and making life miserable for him. The one person who was supposed to understand him, the one person who was supposed to be there to lift him up when EVERYONE was bringing him down, probably hurt him the most by insulting him so badly at his lowest point.
Another thing I notice, that while this doesn’t serve as an example of manipulation or abuse, Mahiru wasn’t really there to comfort Guren after his father died, though it was her fault. I realized that Shinya and the others were there to be his foundation and to help him, shortly after his father died. They were there to comfort him ad even offered to clean up his father’s remenant—Mahiru didn’t offer any sort of comfort at all. I just find that if she really cared about him, if she really loved him, then she would have been there to cheer him up. But she wasn’t, and this leads me to my final point.
Mahiru’s love for Guren was never strong enough , or genuine enough to outmatch her thirst for power. By nature, demon or not, Mahiru is a Hiragi and unlike Shinoa, Mahiru grew up around the family. This simply means that she is greedy, power hungry and manipulative and the demons are not to blame for that. Mahiru chose to get possessed by the demons, she chose to seek power rather than act like a friend, a lover, or civil to those who loved and cared about her. She chose to betray Guren’s love and trust by seeking power because she knew that in the end, he would still do whatever she wanted him to do. She knew that no matter what she became, Guren would still love her even if it meant throwing his own life away. She used him. She played with his emotions and put him in situations that made him hate himself, question if he wanted to save his friends or her, and now as we speak, she’s made him betray all he holds dear.
And this started before the demons. All of it. The manipulation wasn’t something that sparked from the demons. Mahiru had all of this planned long before she had gotten possessed, she knew that if she was able to string Guren along for this long, than no matter what, he would follow her anywhere. He almost killed himself, and his friends for her and that is what she wanted. And most of the negative and violent things happened when she was possessed by while she wasn’t, she was just focused on using, manipulating and putting Guren in his place.
Mahiru was a rotten person before her possession. She had that “Hiragi” pride, she was snobby. Remember how she basically told off Shinya after he’d just got done murdering children for her? How she told off Guren while he was already going through shit? And how she basically abandoned Shinoa. Honestly, by nature she was just a cruel person, and I really don’t think she ever loved Guren or anyone else for that matter. She’s worse than Kureto and Tenri combined.