She grows the second most of any character and is, at least imo, one of the most important characters in the entire series. She's just.. a bit extremely set in her ways ahaha.
I've been steadily going over different parts in my mind for different reasons.. and I'm coming to more conclusions about my feelings at the end. A lot of it I wind up looking towards as an inspiration point, lame as it sounds? Series like this for some reason just. Pump me full of energy and I feel like I can take on the world. I usually get really productive with comic stuff for a while too, and since I've not had ANY peace to myself lately till now, it's hitting very intensely. I've already had news ideas for things. But HOW every character handles inspiration of different kinds is amazing to me. SO I wrote up a kind of intense run-down of how the characters personalities strike me and came to the conclusion that I am mostly definitely here for the girls in this story, the dudes are rad but I am Here For The Ladies (and provisional lady) Spoiler: I Got Way Too Invested In This.jpg Sasahara manages it by being concerned, but stumbling towards the end goal even if it hurts. It just takes time to get him to that point first. He's meant to originally be the Every Man and I actually don't hate him for it. I love that part of him. He's got bits and pieces of a map and kind of stumbling around till he makes it work. Saki just launched face first at everything and is self assured as fuck, even if there's a soft core. I mean, ffs she owns her own physical shop. That takes dedication. She takes no shit and if someone ELSE talks shit, they get hit. I feel bad for her sometimes, but.. she seems happy. So that's all anyone can ever want, really. Madarame is wishy washy as shit, but not as bad as Sasahara. He takes inspiration from anime and manga and game characters to inspire his own moves, same as I do. There's still a disconnect, but he -tries- is the important thing. Spoiler (also yay canon Bi character) Kousaka is.. a special case. He's pretty self assured and is very self motivated despite seeming laid back. It makes me wonder what his life was like growing up to wind up that way. I love him, though, he embraces who and what he is wholeheartedly without using any of it as an excuse a crutch or a shield. He's his own person standing hand in hand with things. Tanaka is patient, sometimes to the detriment of those around him in the case of Ohno. But he has goals in sight and is going forward with completing those goals in his own time. Down side is he can be obsessive and outright ignorant when it comes to other people, even others who share his main interests. Dude's skilled, busy, etc.. but sometimes is a total fucking ditz in the "other people matter too" stage without meaning to. I like him a lot, he's very sweet, reminds me of an uncle I'd like to have. Kugayama is... Hm. He's very wishywashy and very "I'll do it tomorrow" about anything that requires confidence. A lot is likely due to his stutter and his size. Even if he dropped all the weight and was skinny as hell, he'd still draw a LOT of attention because of his size. Dude's tall as fuck and has broad shoulders and then a stutter he works to control. That's a lot to deal with. He's able to buckle down and do things that are NEEDED like finding a job, but anything needed reliant on his own skills and abilities in a non-main-goal-of-lifetime-achievement way is VERY hindered unless someone lights a fire under his ass the entire way. Ohno is an obsessive ball of sunshine and I love her. She takes cues from media she takes in as well, but in very different ways. A lot of her plans and ideas hinge on people joining her for them to happen, sometimes even cosplay itself, something that means the world to her. She spent a few years in the US and then came back. ..and I'm wondering how much that may have affected her as well. Why she clings to people so much for plans, and why even when she breaks out and does intense things on her own they're all about putting on another persona. She's a huge fangirl, and she's got a huge collection, but we don't see as MUCH of that as with others. There's a reserved, embarrassed edge to it, but it gives her power when she overcomes things. Pulls personas on over herself readily to fulfill actions. AND all that while dealing with people treating her like she's some bimbo just because of how she looks. Love her so much. Kuchiki is. ..Hm. Well. He is annoying incarnate. The dude's definitely goal oriented though, he gets through his shit, does a lot of things he wants to do, even if it's the most awkward way possible. Uses quotes and media and references to try bonding but just... falls so flat. I do think he's a good person under it all and actually kind of really like him, even if he's super misguided. I just wonder if nobody's ever sat him down and explained why parts of his behavior are so off-putting, because when he was sat down and talked to about acting out to get choked out, he apologized and stopped. I think he's just the brand of annoying/offputting from the get go that nobody WANTS to put that effort into him. Any scrap of kindness motivates him to the point where he'd ride or die for the person who was kind to him. Ogiue is like. The Top Changer. Trauma in past led to bitter, shut down, kind of vicious persona to survive the years of PTSD afterward that I'm 100% sure was never addressed in any way by anyone but herself. She dealt with the friends who did that to her, because you cannot convince me that The Event was spontaneous, because they were all she had left, and then dealt with the reappearance of the saboteur. Girl's got AMAZING talent and crazy amounts of drive, but lacks self confidence, which is completely linked to the PTSD. I resonate so much with her even though I've never gone through the same things, just. Spite and Anger fuel her along with straight up self determination. She doesn't know herself very well, but learns, and expands and grows as a person so much that her personality slowly starts to morph as she lets people in. Any time I see her smile, I STILL melt a lot. Susie is a nutcase but damn if she doesn't know what she want. She keeps people guessing, keeps trying personalities to see what one might fit, which one will let people like her and get close to her. And.. it works. It works because people just recognize and accept that part of her and protect and care for her without telling her to change. They let her keep communicating that way and never once ask her to stop or change aside from "hey maybe this isn't the place to be talking about that" or "plz watch the volume". She surprises everyone because she's always listening, always watching, always ready to react. FFS she knew conversational Japanese well enough that when suddenly put to use she shocked people. Girl's brilliant and eccentric, but. ..Shit I love her so much. anime and manga are her special interests and she excels at them. Older obscure things are her bread and butter, but she knows all the NEW stuff as well. I wish I could be like Susie and Ogiue's lovechild, like. Damn. Yoshitake is batshit when she gets hyped but again, special interests like a motherfucker and they form her very soul. She's even aware of how much damage she could do if given much power, point blank says "nah, when people like me are in power, kingdoms crumble and dynasties fall". She wants to be #2, and shows that in every single action she performs. Never once does she try to further her own long-term gains, she tries to further the gains of the group, or her friends. And even by wanting to be #2, she doesn't just step back and act wishywashy, no, she is one of the strongest characters since Saki arrived when it comes to stirring the shit pot and trying to arrange things and do things and get people involved and doing their part. Inexperience makes those fall apart sometimes or come on way too strong but. I love her so much for it. She doesn't compromise who she is. Yajima has a lot of room to grow and starts doing it on screen. She's settled into the "THIS IS WHAT I AM SO YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO QUESTION IT" thing for so long it took ages to get out of it at all. Again though, super loyal to her friends. SUPER loyal, even to the point of point blank giving up on a crush to help her crush be happy. She will stomp herself into the dirt to help people she loves. I love seeing that no matter what her skill level with her art, SHE KEEPS TRYING, and she keeps learning, and practicing. She's starting from the ground and is continuing to go up and forward at all times, and I'd love to see her published because she's got the natural knack for catching readers and gags, she just needs to hone the technical skill to present her ideas cleaner/bigger/brighter to an audience. She's such a heavy handed person she came across as a bit uncaring when I first read her but.. I came to love her a lot. Yajima for life, man. And... Hato. Hato, Hato, Hato, one of my favorite characters ever in any media. Traumatized when he was younger, very repressed when it comes to his own abilities, very self depreciating when he's himself. Literally pulls on a persona that CAN do all the things he wants to do, who CAN achieve and accomplish and excel, and does it. Dressing like a woman can come across as very extreme, but it's where he's most comfortable being himself for the time being because he's convinced "girls can like this, girls can do this, it's weird for boys" even when it comes to his own talent. Dude can talk himself into a fucking frenzy but not be able to do anything unless he's presenting a certain way and that is complex as hell to me. I'm genderfluid and sometimes I feel the same way. "I can't do this as a girl, I need an extra oomph, I need my more masculine bits for this, something is wrong". Add in romance and.. again, it was handled very well? Hato is extremely aware that he's potentially pigeonholing himself, yet he doesn't halt. He's aware he relies on things for the wrong reasons sometimes, and launches face first, but he also points it out to others. Spoiler When he's trying to romance Madarame, for instance, he lets him know that he understands the fantasy that he's embodying.. but reminds him of reality and that it would potentially be very hard if he followed through with him in society, dressed as a girl or not. I want him published and I want him succeeding, he seems so peaceful with his choices now. Honorable mention: Yabusaki. SHE IS SO FUCKING PRECIOUS AND I LOVE HER. If people stop patting her ass she'd excel so much, and I wonder if she and Ogiue and Hato and eventually Yajima ever compete with sales figures in the future. She is the sassy, bossy, Take No Shit bitch we all should aspire to be, because even when she's trying so hard to be tough she's kind of reaching over and going ".... hey uh, was that too far?" and making sure her friends are ok. Other honorable mention: Angela is self assured and kind of bossy, steps on people's toes. She's Very American and I love her for it. Because even if she comes on strong as shit, she has such a wonderful heart and is such a sweet person. She'd kill for Susie, she'd kill for any of her friends. She's a mother hen persona in a bombshell figure who's a little bit Much but not obnoxiously so. I respect her a lot.
It's definitely a running gag in a lot of series aside from just this. I looked it up and since the legal smoking/drinking age is 20 and with that coming of age day stuff as well, it's a Big To-Do. Doing it before then is.. apparently super common still, but it's one of those tongue in cheek "tee hee being naughty" ways far as I can tell in comics usually? Like if a 16-17 year old has a beer in the states: not a good thing bc illegal but it does happen a lot. Just not something to call the cops over. Again tho that's just what I can piece together tbh 8U I think a more recent reference that mentioned Twitter was bc twitter's been trying to enact bans on people showing underage drinking? I think?? I'm not sure.
I'm glad you're enjoying it! :D I look forward to screaming with you as things change and shift around and evolve. Ahhhh it's really rare for me to find other folks into it/getting into it, I'm so excited.
I giggle at Saki a lot bc apparently her name and the meaning of it was a really otaku oriented name, and she's now aware of it, but her grandma picked her name so she can't help but whine a bit at the belated effect.
also unrelated screaming to the story, but about the art specifically: :drools forever on the backgrounds of this damn series because they just keep getting better over time:
I realized when I flipped through an earlier volume in the tub to pass the time, that Saki DOES actually explicitly ask Kuchiki why he does things. Why he's annoying, or rude, or really just.. strange even by American standards let alone in Japan. .. and he says he's aware the behaviors are bad, but he can't help himself at all. Dude also quotes thing incessantly, albeit in a very different way, but this near total lack of impulse control once an idea gets in his head that's even acknowledged and is unstoppable 90% of the time. .. Hm. I forgot that reasoning. He's still very strange and hard to tolerate, but I think I like him a lil more.
The fact that's it's written all in English (or originally Japanese I guess?) made this hard to parse. ALSO SAKI IT'S OKAY YOU DON'T HAVE TO HIDE YOUR LOVE FOR OHNO
:D I think that's another gag too! Massachusetts crops up in a lot of different places because it's hard as shit to say, like a tongue twister. So Saki being able to say everything so easily and fluidly, and then going on about having teachers that are foreigners, actually shows she knows her shit and worked hard at it instead of just saying "oh yeah I'm good at it, totally, yep". She's pretty fluently bilingual and instantly uses it to bond sometimes, so closing the gap with Ohno on something neutral is really cool for her.
