Sorry women. No matter how much better adapted (because the bar is low) Courier is than the other popular contender I just cannot ship Courier with Swindler because he is so incredibly aroace.
He obviously reads that way to me - but I'd also sooner buy that he's gay than straight. Courier is shown rejecting women, never men, but it can't be ignored that none of the men around him were ever close enough to be a consideration. In fact, the surrounding cast doesn't pay that much attention to Courier - the cat and subsequently Brother seems interested in his work ethic, Swindler obviously cares, and Doctor tries to mess with him a couple times. It's not that he and the others ignore each other, but there's never anything close to a bond being presented.
So, again... I think Courier shows no care for women, in a way that makes him read, to me, as a clearly aroace character.
Early on, for no other reason than she is Doctor, Doctor offers him a "go", and when he shows no interest whatsoever, she asks if he's gay. Being Courier, he doesn't catch the bait, and shows no care whatsoever.
Plot twist, I wrote this from memory, before grabbing a screenshot. It's very quick, but he does grimace.
...I will keep this in mind as I keep rambling.
To continue with Doctor's casual antics, she comments on his being "too much of a feminist" (whatever that means...?), and also makes comments such as "it's easier to drive with a sexy woman on board" when she hops onto his bike. This is pictured in the manga in this panel I posted in May, and honestly, you can see that I do believe in Courier's equal vision of Doctor and Cutthroat in this situation. Note, for the sake of my incoming point, that in this scene in the anime, Courier does stay completely neutral and doesn't flinch or click his tongue.
When she points out that he's a feminist, Courier also has a quick negative reaction...
(It's rather discrete, but more obvious when animated. He closes his mouth, frowns, and makes a lil' hmpf noise.)
In this case, there's a pretty significant implication that Courier is in fact significantly a "feminist" - in the loosest definition of the term - as his warmest memories are those of being taken care of by a woman who adopted him off the street. While he shows a complete lack of romantic or sexual interest in women, the slightest reading between the lines shows that he does have a soft spot for them.
...But wait. If what I'm demonstrating here is that Courier reacting to Doctor's remarks in this exact manner means "touchĂŠ", doesn't that mean that my thesis is falling apart? Am I accidentally proving that Courier is in fact gay???
... ...I do have something to say to that. I do believe that there is no proof that he isn't, in fact, rather attracted to men. However, in any scenario, once we acknowledge aroace as an existing orientation, we simply cannot assume that "no attraction to women = attraction to men". Using his simple grimace when Doctor asks if he's gay as proof that he is, is in no way sufficient, when there are so many potential other reasons why he may have reacted this way. (To list a few - not liking that she poked fun at him. Casual homophobia, often depicted in men in anime, which is something I'll come back to, and is usually presented in the form of said masculine character reacting negatively to the suggestion. Knowing that there is something to be said about his sexuality, and not liking that she's going there at all.) There is nothing to show, at any point during the anime, that Courier may care about looking at men at all.
This is noteworthy because that is not the case for everyone else.
In any case, my greater reading of his characterisation is that he is aroace, but what I am here to prove is his lack of attraction towards women - because that is something I think I can prove.
Back to Swindler. His relationship to her is completely void of romance or sexual attraction. Not only does he never reciprocate her interest in him (whether hers is platonic or romantic doesn't matter for the purpose of this post) - the man only cares when he's given a job that involves it, and his bike is his girlfriend - but his interactions with her completely lack the heterosexual interest usually omnipresent in masculine characters in anime.
I don't know if you've watched anime before... or played or watched Kodaka's/his team's works before... but they normally bathe in amatonormativity. No matter how respectful or serious a masculine character is presented to be, there is usually a point at which he will blush, or look away, upon seeing the Girl Character resting, or having fun, or wearing a nice outfit, or whatever. Despite his close relationship with Swindler in the story giving him every chance to react this way at any given point, it just doesn't happen.
(^Me when I totally like women and I brought a women to my house.)
Courier didn't bring Swindler to a bed to rest until she woke up, accept her bogus job offer, and then allow her and Sister to eat his rations because he didn't care. In fact, anyone who watched and enjoyed Akudama Drive can tell you that Courier and Swindler have an interesting bond. He cares, their destinies are linked, but he never looks at her with any hint of attraction.
(This is just becoming an excuse to look at Courier...)
I genuinely think it's important to note that this isn't usually how anime presents relationships between major masculine and feminine characters. Swindler has her moments of acting cutesy and interested that could read either way, but Courier doesn't. Of course in real life it could always be that he has other shit to think about right then - but knowing the practices of anime, how Kodaka's stories are constructed, and being aware that this is a short story being told, it feels important to point out that usually, if a character is completely uninterested in women, it's a Whole Thing. Because the norm is heterosexuality.
And just in case anyone felt like bringing this up as an argument, Courier is not emotionless. He definitely shields himself from emotion, but he's not "too cool to visibly react to hot wahmen" - that's not the character he's written to be. If he'd been seduced by Swindler, he would have looked away from her.
Because when he feels something, seeing Brother give up in front of his sister, his feelings are obvious. And as much as he tries to put on a front, they're also obvious when he grimaces at Doctor's comments.
But it's the following scene that's at the heart of my thesis:
Courier's immediate reaction to Swindler sitting on top of him is to tell her to get off me, you shit.
Of course, this is a very dark and serious scene. I'm in no way trying to imply that this was the right time for a casual fanservice-y moment in which he would have blushed of expressed any sort of joy. What is important here is how immediate his reaction is. Not only that, but this is one of the most disgusted and angry expressions I've ever seen on Courier. Courier has an extreme negative reaction to being touched or held.
It tells us a lot about him - but to only focus on one thing it says, it's that he does not look at being held by a woman as something of interest. It's that he feels nowhere near sufficient comfort with Swindler, despite the time they've spent together, despite caring about her, to be comfortable letting her hold him down. This isn't a situation in which he's "hiding his care for Swindler"; on the contrary, this is an instance in which his feelings came right out of him before he could decide against it.
Like this is straight up insulting.........
And of course, Swindler's words reach him. But this final look isn't that of a man discovering the feelings of romantic love for the first time.
At no point during the time they spent together did he look at Swindler "this way". A want for this type of closeness is not part of his view of her. At no point, no matter how hard she tried, did he feel any sexual attraction to Doctor, either. Of course, they're only two women, and realistically, it could always be that he has a completely different type for women. But in the framework of a short story being told to us and to be taken for what it is, Courier acts, for all intents and purposes, as an aromantic and asexual character.
Courier is not characterised as experiencing romantic or sexual feelings. Whether realistically he could matters very little - for the duration of the only story we have with him, he doesn't.
I decided to focus on Courier for multiple reasons. One of them is that I love him to bits, another is that he's the only character whose sexuality is at any point pointed out (we can thank Doctor for that), and the main reason is that because of his important bond with the feminine protagonist, he tends to be seen as the default proper love interest. There's Cutthroat to ship with Swindler, of course, but it's made pretty clear that that didn't work out. I think a casual fan will easily tell you that if they had to pick a ship, sure, Courier and Swindler seem like a good idea. With this post I intended to demonstrate why it's not as plain as it seems - how straightforwardly Courier comes across as lacking romantic and sexual feelings towards Swindler. It's not that their dynamic is bad or anything of the sort, it's that this character is presented to us as not caring for women.
Still, I wouldn't be the only one to say that the majority of the cast could read as aromantic, asexual, or both. One of the reasons I find such comfort in Akudama Drive is in fact the absence of amatonormativity in its plot and storytelling. Cutthroat falling for Swindler is one thing - not even presented as healthy or truly loving - Hoodlum falling for Brawler is one thing - but none of these overtake the rest of the storytelling, and neither are ever presented as feelings that could or should be reciprocated in any major way, at any point during what makes the story what it is. The characters have other shit going on, other goals, other needs, other wants - and because of that, for the snippet that we have, are largely presented to us without romantic or sexual needs or attraction. For the reasons I presented in the previous paragraph, this characterisation feels most significant to me with Courier, but it is noteworthy that other characters can be comfortably viewed as aroace with nothing in canon to contradict it.
