in the kitten mines

So, disclaimer: I usually take a pretty “Death of the Author” approach to analysis. I’m not always sure how to fit meta-commentary made by the author about actual story details into my perspective, and I’m also lazy, so I kind of just go, “eh, whatever.” And I probably get everything Urana-sensei says way out of context anyway, since I only hear it secondhand. Thus, I usually ignore all of that and just go off of the text.

That being said, I find this an intriguing statement, because you’d ordinarily think that it would mean they aren’t really each other’s true friends, and that they have other people in their lives, right? But here, I doubt that’s the case. I think they don’t really hang out with each other like that because two of them don’t hang out with anyone at all.

Riyo has been shown to have no close relationships with anyone outside of maybe Enjin. She seems to have some interest in Rudo as a person, but shares nothing about herself with him. We also don’t see too much of her relationship with Zanka. I noticed that she was the one he came up to during Rudo’s welcome party. I also liked their back-to-back moment during the Doll Festival arc; I thought it showed how they genuinely trusted each other and moved as partners. Nor does Zanka mask his pain to her at the arc’s conclusion; granted, he might have just not been able to, or he figured that she already knew everything anyway — but that second thing in itself is also closeness, for weird, emotionally isolated people like them. However, it’s not particularly reciprocated. Riyo doesn’t show anything of herself to Zanka at all, not that we’ve seen.

I would argue, though, that she does feel quite some personal loyalty toward him. She did shoot Jabber a bunch of times. And she lugged his stupid ass back with her, even though no one would have known if she’d just left him. As I recall, her dialogue in the Noerde fight makes a lot of references to her motivations being wanting to help her friends. It’ll be interesting to see what that means to her in the arc I desperately need her to get, oh my god. It makes me wonder how much she values herself.

As for Zanka himself, I think it’s safe to say he’d never had a real friend in his life. Riyo seems to have cared deeply for someone at some point in the past; that may have been reciprocated. But Zanka had never had the experience of caring about a peer by choice. I don’t think he knows how to do it. He’s so weird around Rudo — much like how Rudo can’t smile, Zanka can’t do genuine peer-to-peer connection. It always has to be either fake (like we see in his introduction) or weird and stunted (like we see in the scene where he advises Rudo to talk to Remlin <-and totally talks out of his ass, just like you said. Zanka, you don’t have friends). He loves Enjin, but Enjin is not his peer! He puts that man on a pedestal probably because it is the only way he knows how to have a positive relationship with somebody like that in his life. He’s Rudo’s mentor probably because he couldn’t handle being around the kid without a power structure like that in place.

Thus, for Zanka and Riyo, I think the situation is that Zanka does not know how to be friends, and Riyo either won’t or can’t. The implication is that she suffered a terrible loss, and that she blames herself. During her Amo hallucination, I think she said something like, “I’ll protect you this time.” Now she’s in a new place with new rules, more powerful but with less access to her tried-and-true skillset, and… you want her to have another friend? Of course she won’t.

But that doesn’t mean she wouldn’t be devastated if Zanka died on her watch. Not only because it would be a repetition of her past mistakes, but also because… they are well-suited for each other. Both strange, both withdrawn, both lacking experience with normal relationships… Strong enough to stand back-to-back with each other, but not strong enough to cry on each other’s shoulders. Lonely together.

Meanwhile, Rudo actually is hanging out with other people. Despite being naturally the worst at it, the way he was raised and the effort he puts in have made him the best at it! His heart is open. He doesn’t have the same peer-to-peer hangups, and because of his past inexperience, every situation is new. He can learn and grow without having to un-learn. For this reason, if anyone is going to be the “glue,” it’ll probably eventually be him. He’ll grow into the role as he matures. Gachiakuta seems to want to be about human connection, and as a shounen, its main character should be the avatar of that theme. It’ll be interesting to see how everyone develops going forward.

Anyway, in fanon, I’ve kind of extrapolated off my read of Zanka and Riyo to give them the kind of friendship where they’re just really comfortable with one another. I think they sit in a lot of rooms together and don’t talk.