#nopsi meta

😬 This is a tough question @hardcore-solangelo-19 , for like. Depressing reasons.

I think we can safely say that Makoto doesn't qualify. We have NO idea what her relationship is with her parents, but she never once imagined taking Saiki to meet them, so I'm guessing they're not top of mind and probably also don't qualify.

Yumehara is Teruhashi's first friend so I would WANT her to be the answer... But we just don't get many scenes with them and I can't recall any moment where Teruhashi shows concern for Yumehara's well-being. I mean, she didn't seem to notice at all that Yumehara was dying during the mixer, and when Yumehara defended Teruhashi on the beach, Teruhashi didn't seem to react to that at all??? I think the problem is that Teruhashi is just not used to caring about other people and everyone always bends over backwards to help & entertain her, so she hasn't quite understood the meaning of friendship yet. She'll hang out with Yumehara and Imu when invited and talk with them fairly freely, but she doesn't seem to think about them when they're not around or invite them to do stuff. 🤔

Finally, there's Saiki. He seems like the obvious answer because Teruhashi is obsessed with him. But does she actually value him? That's hard to say, but the evidence kinda leans me towards "no". While Teruhashi makes a big deal about throwing her chocolates out the window to avoid Saiki getting killed by the Kokomins, she later gives his name and descriptions to the Kokomins so that they'll find him for her, making him a HUGE target. She never puts much interest into getting to know him either, taking ages to even figure out his name when they're literally in the same class, and basically only knowing that he likes sweets and says "good grief". She does not seem to react at all to Kokomins almost killing Saiki and Nendo in the library?? She was literally there?? IDK. It seems to me like she values the idea of Saiki in her head a lot more than the reality of Saiki, and I really doubt that she'd value his survival above hers. I mean, she's happy to go to a mixer very late in the series to try to meet dudes of higher social status and wealth than Saiki, and then she wishes he was there instead of thinking that maybe she shouldn't have gone to the mixer at all. He's a comforting presence to her at best, and entertainment at worst, but she just doesn't show much consideration for him. She thinks he's dying of shyness over his love for her and wants him sitting in the corner while richer and handsomer men flirt with her?????

There's Teruhashi's cat but considering she never seems to think about it and it doesn't show up on episodes at her house, she can't love it that much. And if it's Pushy, as the theory goes, then she really can't value the cat too much since she lets it go outdoors unsupervised all day!!!!

First of all, there's apparently no consensus on whether hypersexuality is a thing.

Second of all, it doesn't really matter if Toritsuka is that horny due to a medical condition or not. The problem is that he thinks women are objects.

If Toritsuka was hypersexual but respected women, he'd just be caught masturbating all the time instead of peeping & stalking girls.

Third of all, it's kind of yikes to try to explain away a character's bad behavior by blaming a headcanoned mental illness. Because in real life, mentally ill people are assumed to be violent criminals even when statistics show they're much more likely to be the victims of crime.

Plenty of crazy horny teenage boys make it through to adulthood without committing sex crimes. We just have to accept that Toritsuka isn't one of them. Not because of some nebulous maybe-disease but because he's an asshole.

Most controversial​ question right off the bat, huh @blizzardprincess ?

Yeah it's terusai. I've actually spent soooooo much time trying to find the tiniest scrap of chemistry in this ship and have come up empty time and time again...

Like, I need to be able to see a reasonably healthy long-term dynamic with minimal (or at least canonically reasonable) changes to each characters personality to ship them, and I just can't come up with a way for this to work with Terusai.

Honestly, I don't think terusai fans have had much luck with this either, considering that almost everything I've seen keeps the same unhealthy dynamic from canon instead of looking towards their future.

And there's plenty of good reasons for why there's not a lot of terusai fan content post power reveal:

Teruhashi never got anywhere close to completing her character arc (most she got was admitting to herself that she had a crush on Saiki, and starting to maybe think she shouldn't risk her life to memorize the social security numbers of random dudes in her school), so it's hard to imagine what her personality might be like after that development.

If you keep Teruhashi's canon personality, then post reveal there's really only a few ways you can take this:

Teruhashi is deeply affected by the power reveal and the knowledge that Saiki can hear her thoughts, leading to both Saiki and Teruhashi endlessly trying to mind-game their way into accommodating each other because they're both allergic to open communication and are doomed to over-analyze every social interaction. Ex. Teruhashi wants to go on a date, Saiki hears the thought and offers exactly what she wants, Teruhashi knows he heard that but wants him to pick something HE also wants, but he'd never pick something she doesn't want even if that's what he wants, and Teruhashi knows this so she worries she's coercing him, but Saiki doesn't think he's being coerced so he tries to reassure her, etc etc etc.

Teruhashi is not really affected by the power reveal and decides she's perfect as she is (or uses a telepathy canceller), which is great for her but means Saiki will spend the rest of his life bending over backwards for her while she has no idea, because we see in canon that she's not naturally considerate (ex. crab scissors for Mera) (probably because she didn't have a single friend until age 16). And again Saiki is allergic to communication so he'd never make it clear that he's having a bad time, plus he cares about her, so he'd cut off his own arm before purposefully making her unhappy.

Add this to the fact that Teruhashi thrives on public attention while Saiki naturally needs to keep on the downlow, I just cannot see any post-canon situation where they can both thrive.

Either Teruhashi has to change significantly to reject the unhealthy pursuit of perfection and work on learning how to better connect with other people, or Saiki has to become significantly more aware of and assertive about his own wants and needs.

The secret third option is even worse:

Saiki's powers get deleted for real this time, which means he's now extremely vulnerable to getting killed by literally any guy who sees him with Teruhashi. The Kokomins organization can do nothing about this, as seen by the bookshelf incident, and the only effective solution would be for Teruhashi to no longer be extremely attractive or for Saiki to basically never be seen in public with her while she pretends that she's single.

And any of those changes would make them practically unrecognizable as the characters they're supposed to be.

They are, maximum, friends-with-benefits to me. And considering how much sense lesbian Teruhashi hcs make, the occasional Kokomi x Kuriko date night sounds perfect for them. I'm a poly Saiki truther!

Thanks for the ask!

However, in the Saiki universe, the soulmate connection seems to lack pretty much all of those problematic elements.

We have to do a little extrapolating from what we see in canon since this aspect of Aiura's powers is not covered in detail, but:

Soulmates do not seem to be guaranteed to ever meet, considering the fact that Aiura specifically looked up her soulmate and that one guy who was linked to someone in a remote African village that would almost certainly never cross paths with him.

Being with your soulmate is completely optional, otherwise Aiura wouldn't bother providing relationship scoring and just tell each person to go find their soulmate. This allows for a lot of narrative opportunities to explore why someone would consciously choose to not be with their soulmate, and also opens up the door for polyamory.

Soulmates do not instantly fall in love, and are not forced to stay in love by any supernatural powers. Aiura didn't think anything of Saiki until he flawlessly saved Yumehara's life like 10x in a row, and Saiki certainly didn't fall for Aiura right away either. They fought over their values strongly enough that it would've been a breakup if they'd ever been together.

Soulmate status just seems to indicate particularly good chemistry, and like the rest of Aiura's powers, is purely informational and not determinative. Presumably soulmates have the highest possible compatibility scores, and it's kinda cool that it seems guaranteed there's at least 1 person out there who will jive with you, but also plenty of other people you can connect with to various degrees.

With Saiki and Aiura specifically, it's shown that Saiki can change the future Aiura sees as soon as he hears about it. It may even be possible for him to change the soulmate determination, and he certainly could've used Time Leap to fool Aiura into thinking someone else was her soulmate if he was really opposed to the concept. She had scryed it recently, so the butterfly effect shouldn't be a challenge.

But they do work so smoothly together with their powers complementing each other, and Saiki is kind of a lonely romantic tsundere at heart, so it makes sense that he would let the soulmate thing play out and yet test the connection by pushing Aiura away as much as possible.

Actually, considering that Saiki can't control people's actions directly (and that he sucks at trying to control people indirectly), the strongest noncon/dubcon force in the Saikiverse shockingly appears to be Teruhashi's beauty.

The only male character that doesn't seem at all affected by Teruhashi's powers is Hairo, most likely because of his heavily implied homosexuality. Women attracted to other women are also impacted by her power, as seen with Aiura.

While Saiki says that married people aren't affected by Teruhashi, Kuniharu does actually show several signs of being affected by Teruhashi, and so does Kumagoro.

All affected people instantly fall in love with her on sight, no exceptions.

Critical thinking ability appears to drop precipitously when it comes to her, with her fans accepting that she had a secret child with Saiki despite being in school with her every day and that she can just choose not to poop for a week. More effective mind control than anything Saiki can do tbh.

The instant Saiki loses some of his powers, he starts being affected by Teruhashi's beauty.

The narrative supports Saiki's theory that Teruhashi is literally favored by God and can affect reality just by hoping for something. The implication that God is (physically??) attracted to Teruhashi and does whatever she wants is.... yikes on several levels. If she asks for someone to love her, do they get a choice in the matter??

Anyways, there are way more elements of noncon/dubcon with Teruhashi ships than there are with actual canon soulmate mechanics in the Saikiverse and that's just such a wild choice by the author lol.

He is not his quiet-maxxing normalsona.

Not quite what I've said, let me explain it for you.

All the Saiki K characters have been through 6 time loops.

The time loops revert most physical changes but DO NOT affect memories. It is shown that all characters fully remember all 6 previous years even though their bodies still look 16/17yo.

Saiki uses Mind Control to make people just not think about the fact that the past year has been several years long. They'll just automatically change topics whenever they run into that thought.

A 16yo with 6 extra years of experience is basically 22yo. They lived 22 years and have 22 years of life experiences.

Some people have argued "they may have lived extra years but in terms of brain development, they're still teenagers".

The prefrontal cortex generally develops most rapidly in your early 20s, improving your executive function and ability to delay gratification in pursuit of goals, but it still grows in teenage years and continues to change slowly in adult years. Unless you drink a lot of booze, which damages your prefrontal cortex. Don't do that.

However, memories are actual physical changes that affects the layout and function of braincells. If the memories are unaltered then it doesn't make sense that any other brain development was still reversed somehow.

There's no way to functionally know how living more years but having your body reset each year would affect the rate of prefrontal cortex development if your brain is largely unaffected because that's fantasy fiction and we can't exactly test that IRL.

"Maturity" isn't directly linked to age, and in fact can be defined a ton of different ways depending on context. I'm sure we've all met extremely immature adults in our lives that prove age ≠ wisdom.

I'm no neurologist but from my understanding, experiences are what build the brain, which lines up with the easily-observed phenomenon that people with more diverse experiences tend to be more "wise"/"mature" than people whose lives have barely changed over the years.

So if the government just decided to make 16yos repeat 11ᵗʰ grade 6x, the 22yos would undoubtedly be more wise/mature than they were at 16, but probably less wise/mature than if they'd gone on to college and/or the working world at 18, which is a different type of experience with more independence and decision-making.

Claiming that TORITSUKA is Aiura's soulmate is just straight up stupid. Are his initials S.K. as well??

I feel like most of the hate against Aiura is due to things that end in -ism plus the usual slut-shaming. How dare she acknowledge her own sexual attraction instead of buttoning it up forever in an attempt to be a chaste perfect image of femininity?

Actually I've seen so many claims that not liking Teruhashi is indicative of misogyny when she's like. Trying to be the Japanese version of a tradwife. Like that's her entire goal in life, she has no aspirations beyond this except according to all the alternate universes, if she doesn't get her perfect tradwife happy ending she immediately starts a cult. ?????

She's a good character and her personality is reasonable, as in, anyone raised in a filthy rich celebrity household and chased by men of all ages since birth and who never had a real friend for their first 17 years of life would probably be like that.

But she is not exactly a paragon of feminism or a character that defies the patriarchy, and to claim otherwise is ridiculous. Her "girlbossing" is spending her entire life performing for the male gaze and occasionally manipulating men with her beauty to perform small favors, which is exactly the role of beautiful women in the patriarchy.

Like, there's plenty of room for her to grow out of this and break the hold of comphet and the male gaze but this never happens in canon, and for whatever reason (🙄) 99.9% of her fans never think about or explore this at all, from what I've seen.

Teruhashi is also unfortunately not that funny on her own, so Asou had to introduce Makoto, the Kokomins, Saiko, Rifuta, and the Newspaper Club to try to keep her relevant and avoid repetition, and even then there was a repetitive terusai episode in which literally nothing happens (milkshake stealing). Her problem is that as wild as her thoughts are, she has to act normal on the outside, which limits a lot of the comedy you can do with her.

Meanwhile Aiura is wildly funny all the time and immediately establishes fun dynamics with everyone she meets, but she's a slut and that's wrong-bad for ???? reasons plus a lot of people already invested themselves in terusai so they automatically hate her for existing and have to pretend the canon soulmate bond is "platonic" or just ignore it altogether.

I mean, from a real world perspective, no one because he's the shonen protagonist of a gag manga.

From an in-universe perspective, inarguably Aiura.

The narrative states and validates the fact that Aiura's predictions are NEVER wrong. While Saiki can use knowledge of her predictions to change the future and alter the timeline, it's extremely unlikely that this is affecting his actual soul enough to break a soulmate bond, if that's even possible.

And let's be real. 99% of the world understands the concept of soulmates to be explicitly romantic in nature, so to claim the soulmate bond is purely platonic in this case even though Aiura obviously has romantic attraction is kinda bullshit.

Back to the real world perspective though, it wouldn't make any sense to introduce Aiura as Saiki's canon soulmate and make them have instant chemistry and have her be instrumental to him saving the world if Teruhashi was meant to be the end-game romance option.

I think Aiura was specifically introduced to avoid having to do a romantic endgame at all, since Asou himself says he's not good at writing romance, but the fans would be expecting it if Teruhashi was still in love with Saiki and had no competition.

And making Teruhashi fall out of love with Saiki would kill one of her two jokes, making her extremely difficult to use as a gag character because the "perfect pretty girl" angle has already been beaten mostly to death. Plus, by the end of the series, Saiki has never been his real self around Teruhashi (except when he stole some of her milkshake) and Teruhashi still struggles to think of literally anything positive to say about Saiki to his grandpa. Not exactly very romantic...

So yeah, if there was to be a love interest for Kusuo, it would have to be Aiura, no contest.

Which I prefer anyways because they have a funnier and healthier dynamic by far and have been shown to enjoy each other's company in canon. Aiura won't compromise her morals for Saiki, Saiki trusts her enough to be open and vulnerable with her, they know they can always count on each other in an emergency, and they work together flawlessly to save lives.

And all that in such a short time! Aiura only shows up halfway through the second season and yet the very first time she interacts with Saiki it's just so perfect and awesome, Saiki being a badass and sarcastic mfer while Aiura puts aside her shock to help save her new friend over and over. Like, Aiura probably was not expecting to fall that deep in love so soon but who wouldn't under those conditions??

On top of that, Aiura is chill and flexible with her romantic approach, switching tactics when she sees that a "lucky feel" technique isn't going to work for Saiki, asking for permission to kiss, and immediately getting dressed when she realizes she misunderstood his request.

Clearly Saiki trusts her to be cool about her interest because he easily agrees to going out on a dessert date and basically tells her she doesn't have to ask, while he usually has to be forced by 3 different kinds of social convention to go anywhere with Teruhashi and he's looking for an exit the whole time.