#pp.

as a purely vibes and dynamics watcher i wrote this pretty lengthy breakdown/interpretation shortly after my second attempt of watching this movie (the first time amc canceled my showing when i got there which was soooo dumb)

and it was basically me trying to give the writers the benefit of the doubt of what they were trying to do w kou in this movie and the State of the Akane and Kou Dynamic as a whole but the more i read it the more i think im just reaching for the sake of seeing my boy totally not get shafted into irrelevance here bc im sorry but he really felt extraneous like it just seemed like he was written there like logistically bc we gotta go from A to B and they had to fill the Action Punch Scene and Fan Favorite Showcase quota but like conceptually? holistically? thematically? spiritually? at the beating emotional burning heart of this series? for the amount of screentime you got what are you still doing here kou? what are you serving? really giving major how ya doin fellow kids energy and it HURTS 😩

long story short i think this is a culmination of the writers flailing on what to do w him after s1 and on a more generous reading, what happens when a person outlives their purpose. i wrote a season one kou-centric fic for the 10th anniversary zine (which i still need to post lol) with an epigraph by anne carson: "to live past the end of your myth is a perilous thing." that was all i could think about.

anyway other thots

this was akane's movie through and through. she has always felt to me the most complex and most complete character of this entire series and this movie proved that and then some. girl did that shit. makishima WISHES

saiga's ending? mixed. still marinating on it

i did overall enjoy the movie in the wider context of the series as it did make me appreciate season 3 more for making it more cohesive in retrospect

gino ponytail/manbun apologist 4evs. love my boy wish he got like some real meat to chew on but at least they gave him emotions and shit

akira "nooo don't you're too sexy to die"

mika tsun to her senpai. CUTE 😍 if i didn't also feel so conflicted on the general writings treatment of mika i would have enjoyed this without qualms

I’ve been running since my father went blind at your fall from grace and you’re still burning though the fever broke weeks ago count to 36 before you snap the picture please we’re too close to becoming something near whole

Hey! I hope you’re doing well!

Oh man, I love the entire Thanksgiving/Christmas meal that my mom makes, but it’s not like, a regular American turkey dinner. We make chicken, and rice mixed with veggies, and an egg and potato salad, and I’m not kidding when I say they’re the two meals I look forward to every year. Like, there’s no singular favorite food, the entire meal is my favorite.

aw anon thanks! so glad you’re still enjoying my works

i have dabbled w kou’s jealousy in another fic (ft shizuka as one of the sources of it lol don’t mind my indulgent plug 🙈) and considered kou/akane/shizuka dynamics before here. my answer’s still kind of the same.

in short kou would just be wary. whether we’re looking at this with a shinkane lens or not, shizuka is an unknown factor with considerable influence in this society so given kou’s natural paranoia towards potential threats and his general disregard for authority, that’s already a sizable mark against shizuka. and he’s in akane’s confidence for unknown reasons, so given kou’s dislike for being left in the dark and his protectiveness towards people he cares for, that mark has turned more personal.

speaking more generally, i like to think that age and experience has tempered his rasher impulses towards following his passions. kou probably does get jealous like any other person with emotions but i think even as a less disciplined youth, i doubt he’d let jealousy irrationally direct his business or his conduct with people. he’d probably just take it all out on a punching bag then leash himself into work mode later. not to say he’d never slip (he is human); just that it seems uncharacteristic for someone so driven and intentional. if they were in a relationship, they’d probably tease each other about being jealous of other people but nothing serious.

but ultimately, any discontentment towards seeing her be romantically pursued by someone else would be more rooted by his frustration towards their circumstances (eg societal, their timing, other factors beyond his control). because where we’re at now, kou’s reached a point where he’s phased out of the transitory period of his exile and become more open to the idea of making a future rather than surviving the present. he’s honest and direct (sometimes too much lol) with what he wants.

so whatever is barring him from throwing his hat in the ring would be purely external. kou would probably concede that there are better people for her than him and not that he has a healthy or great opinion of himself but i do think he’s selfish enough to not give a shit or indulge in any insecurities if there’s even the slightest chance he’s reciprocated. we all know kou’s the type to fight even if he has a one percent chance of victory. he’s a man who would rather lose honestly than regret being a poor contender to begin with.

You know, there are so little of them in S3 reunited that who knows is they didn't meet for the first time in dad's old bunker house accidentally and totally had to make up and Kou professed his love? And they've been shagging ever sin-Anyway, I'm writing that fanfic soon

Cheers, let's stay in touch

thank you! happy to provide 😌

kougino is so underrated. ive always been a fan of people with shared complicated history esp when they live in that really interesting tension of knowing each other the best while also knowing very little at all. i always hc kou and gino as kind of being each other’s unspoken first love that never came to fruition—in the sense that they never explicitly spelled it out but the potential was always there until they were too estranged to acknowledge or really do anything about it. like one of those things where they’re young and getting drunk with each for the first time and in a vulnerable moment gino confesses that he’s never been kissed and kou drunkenly states that he can fix that. gino’s reluctant at first, they get a little too into it, nearly cross a line but kou passes out and then the morning after they pretend it didn’t happen. until it happens a second time. then a third. but they NEVER talk about it once. yknow… basic platonic best friend activities lol

and you are so right. in my ideal kougino world they are definitely friends with benefits and wearily pretending they don’t love each other until they both realize they’re too old and tired to continue playing an insecure young man’s game and are finally honest in a very soft way that’s completely opposite to how they’ve treated each other in the past. the alternative is that they are very toxic and refuse to be vulnerable with each other and i just like that for the angst factor

realistically, im hoping that the upcoming new movie does spend some time exploring their current dynamic. as with many of my ships for this show im not daring to hope for anything explicitly romantic but i do want to see some genuine care in how their characters and relationship are treated. doesn’t have to be much lol i can do plenty with just subtle implications alone but the worst thing the writers can definitely do is paint them as indifferent to the other. i don’t think i can abide by that