searibbon

i know some people hate how “slow” her development is but i truly have never thought that. it feels real, and i imagine it must be frustrating to watch it from an outside perspective, but it’s just as frustrating to live it. i think it’s important to show a character who’s flawed. who is affected by all the negatives of mental illness. who finally gets better one moment and then spirals again the next. who forgets things easily. who zones out to protect herself. who says she understands one thing but seems to contradict it. because she’s blocking off the trauma that’d allow her to learn. who can’t care for herself because of how much she’s spiraling. who can’t clean her room. who relies on other people because she doesn’t know who she is without helping someone because she’s never consciously worried about herself in her whole life. who still doesn’t want to be alone. who focuses so much on others because she can’t stand herself.

her composing isn’t a silly quirk she just needs to stop and then it’ll all be fine. it’s a compulsion. it’s an irrational action to bring herself relief and keep her thoughts at bay. it’s a form of self-harm. to me, as someone with severe debilitating and trauma-induced OCD, it’s something really relatable to me. plenty of people are just like her. some people struggle feeling behind in life because they grew up isolated like her. it’s more than you realize. when you call her incapable, or frustrating, or the like, there’s someone who painfully relates to her out there reading that.

she spirals in a quiet way. she’s been in that “crashout” everyone wants to see from her, but it’s not a big explosive moment (yet). it’s quiet. it’s hard to see for outsiders, but she suffers all the same. she’s losing control, she’s scared, she feels alone. but she’s not going to ask for help. and maybe she makes mistakes as a result. maybe she’s too attached to mafuyu, to niigo, to anything to save her from the unknown that lies beyond her compulsion. maybe she won’t “just get better already”. but that’s all connected. it’s all part of these issues plaguing her brain. she’s so truly complex and interesting and it’s sad seeing her reduced to nothing more than a joke, or infantalized, or demonized, or just hated on for something that’s just so real.

i went into sekai blindly for just the vocaloid rhythm game aspect and connected with niigo in the first place because seeing all these characters with these, for the most part, stable independent lives in clean rooms and nice houses with friends felt so distant to me, but to see a girl keeping herself in the dark, up late, living off cheap easy to make food in a messy room in lazy clothes, who didn’t even go to a school, had already made me feel a little better. leo/need gets credited as being “the most realistic”, and i adore them, they’re my second fav unit, but they aren’t to me. but nightcord is, and painfully so. and that’s okay! there’s so many kinds of people out there that there’s a character for someone, and they’re all important. they’re all important to someone. it’s okay if you’ve lived a dysfunctional life. you’re not doomed.

you’re not doomed, and neither is kanade. neither is mafuyu, ena, or mizuki. it’s okay to be behind. it’s okay to have “wasted” years to trauma because it wasn’t wasted. you were surviving. it’s okay to be like her, to recover slowly, to not be able to care for yourself, to have issues so quiet no one can see them, to feel like you don’t have “a reason” to be like this, it’s okay. it’s okay if you relate to kanade, mafuyu, ena, mizuki, all of them, it’s okay. the world is tough, and we’re all just trying to make it through. it’s more human and common than you think. and we’ll make it through this, i believe in you!

"you and me!!" - ena, also with her hermit untrained

also @ kanade of course

pov ena's imagination

now, don’t take this as they never fall into those characterizations. i think mizuki flirts. i think we see this in canon even, with all her teasing, sometimes bordering on romantic or like she’s testing the waters to see how romantic flirting would be taken. like she’s setting out to get an embarrassed reaction. she’s outright compared nightcord’s bond to romance before.

(mafuyu’s “looking up at the same moon” side story, second part)

however, i think she can’t take being flirted with back. we see she can easily be flustered or thrown off. and evidentally, she’s a yearner.

(pre-timeskip area conversation)

(secret distance, chapter 8)

i personally think for someone who spent so much time alone and told she was somehow gross, a freak, and weird for just being who she is, she ends up being easily flustered and taken aback when someone shows genuine affection for her. like she doesn’t expect what she feels to be returned.

likewise, i do think kanade can get embarrassed. we see this in her awkward early conversations with ichika, in some conversations with mizuena, and in the wedding event with honami. however, i think there’s a balance. when she doesn’t know what to say, is really happy, is being lightly scolded, or is in an unexpected and sudden situation, she gets flustered. all the same, we’ve had minori gushing about how cute she was in spojoy and mizuena constantly gushing about dressing her up, and she’s been unbothered and casual in those instances.

i think she’s also someone who is loving and devoted to her core. she’d been surrounded by love in her early life and it shaped who she is as a person now. how she speaks and acts is always so warm and considerate. she aspires to be like her parents, to share the love her father gave her mother to other people. as a result, she has no problem confidentally saying loving, caring words directly to someone, always taking initiative to hold someone’s hand, and can look said person directly in the eye while doing so, all without faltering once.

(mirage of light, chapter 5)

(kanade’s “still not knowing anything” side story, second part)

(meltdown translation, world link 2 final chapter)

it’s very important for her, someone who doesn’t want people to feel alone or to lose anyone ever again, to convey directly how she feels about someone. there’s a reason so many characters feel so safe and happy around her and want her to smile too.

it’s important for her to share the love her parents taught her.

(carnation recollection, chapters 6 and 8)

and for mizuki, she’s still getting used to the sheer care and unconditional love (platonic or otherwise) that niigo have for her. we can see how vulnerable and taken aback she is in ena5. i think her teasing and play flirting is just as much a defense mechanism as a lot of her other jokes and behaviors are.