.

Hanzawa is looking at you like he’s forgotten to work his limbs along with his eyes. This does not bode well.

Nonetheless, you soldier on. “Have you thought about joining the ping pong club?” 

“Ping pong…?”

He’s a clever kid, this Hanzawa. He doesn’t resist interrogation, but he does resist elaboration, so you know that he has three siblings and good grades and dyed hair and a birthday that’s only one day after yours, but you don’t know how he feels about any of that. He’s still a kid that’s a whole school year your junior, though, so after he dutifully repeats your question his eyes dart to the side in confusion, nerves radiating plainly through him.

“You know, with the paddles,” you say, and at Hanzawa’s blank stare, add, “Like this,” and mime a swing. A beat of silence, and then—

He cracks a smile. “I—I know, yes.”

Ha, still got it, you crow, but only in the steel trap of your mind. You’re smart like that.

“I’m going to join the disciplinary committee,” Hanzawa offers, which lesser upperclassmen would see as refusal. You, on the other hand, know that he’s lowered his guard, and only a fool wouldn’t take advantage.

“No reason you can’t do both,” you say. This is true. “It’s pretty easygoing, too.” This is a lie. The current captain of your club is ridiculously intense about ping pong, and the team goes all out during competitions. But you think that easygoing might mean something different for Hanzawa, who makes faces at his green peppers but still methodically eats every one, and who has started the school year with a perpetual sort of readiness, like he’s just waiting for classes to kick into high gear. This is a brand of impatience you’re well-acquainted with; that scary kid in your year, Ichinose, studies like his life depends on it.

While Hanzawa is restless but measured, Ichinose will study at his desk for hours and forget to eat. It is so effed up that he’s the dorm head, and you would file a complaint were it not for the fact that he actually seems to be doing pretty well at the whole thing. Even though he’s so strict with himself, he’s never uppity towards his fellow peers, and as a dorm head he’s been nice, if a little distant. You can respect that, and respect him, and still wish he’d look you in the eyes more than he does. Last year, after you’d conned him into playing ping pong for the sports festival, he’d gotten red and angry and tired and real, so that’s your favorite look of his, now.

You and Ichinose, you suspect, are made of the same stuff. You’re both meant to have a singular, driving focus in life. His just happens to be on the incredibly valuable academic front, while you’re currently devoting yourself to a sport you don’t really plan on playing after high school. Your vision, unlike his, is as forward-thinking as it is narrow. This is what makes you a ping pong genius—the ability to think about nothing else but the game, even while you’re thinking ten moves ahead. The captain, upon hearing your speculation, had said that ping pong wasn’t chess, and basic reflexes and technique matter a lot more, but your win-loss record against him is basically tied, so there.

“We’re still in the trial period for clubs, and it’s easy to leave if you decide it’s not for you,” you add. This is unfortunately true. You have a lot of ideas for how to up retention, but they’re probably the kind that would earn the captain’s unyielding ire. What a bizarrely serious and no-fun guy… there’s just no way to win him over.

Hanzawa, at the very least, is giving you polite consideration. You can work with that, even if you figure he only needs this kind of sweet talk to trick himself into thinking it’d be fine to try things out. When you’d mentioned the possibility of doing both ping pong and… whatever the disciplinary committee does, his expression had eased, not tightened. And it’s nice, to see that happen. You think that a kid with this much brimming nervous energy deserves to loosen up. You want to see this kid play ping pong. You want to play ping pong. The rest of everything, you’ll probably only think about in the winter of your third year, because to you it just won’t matter that it’ll be over until the very day that it’s over.

Hanzawa, still fidgety, asks, “Um… so you play?”

You blink. Okay, maybe the bug-eyed nervousness is less the sweet innocence of a first year, and more your inability to say anything about yourself. “I know,” you boast, “the basketball team would love to poach me, but I’m too loyal. This is the future captain you’re looking at, here!”

Hanzawa perks up. “That’s cool,” he says, and crap, he seems to actually mean it.

To cover your butt, you add, “It’s a secret,” which is a cover like tissue paper is a blanket.

Still, now the kid is properly contemplative. He’s chewing on his lip and everything. Finally he asks, “Is it fun?”

“When you’re good, yeah,” you say. “It’s nice to move around, and when you get in the zone during a match, it’s like…” You make a vague gesture to your face. “Your whole field of focus sharpens. You can’t think about anything else.”

“… Maybe I’ll try it out, then,” Hanzawa says. He’s got a funny look in his eye. You like that kind of look. You’ve always liked it. It’s the way people look when they want something, but they haven’t quite realized it, and the way they look when they’ve gotten it, but haven’t noticed.

This might be why Mister Stick-in-the-Mud dislikes you. The handling a kid’s dreams like it’s a fun game, and all that. But you love games; it’s why you play ping pong. So you guess he’s just going to have to fall for your charms, or something, because you’ve just promised this kid that you’re going to be captain, and as member of your captain’s ping pong club, you are everything he looks for in a player—competitive, driven, and hates to lose.

Come to think of it… Hanzawa has adjusted to the dorms remarkably well. Maybe it’s because of his siblings, but he’s already managed to get on friendly terms with most of the residents, so he’s definitely good with handling people. He’d probably make for a great successor… you still aren’t thinking about what you’ll do after ping pong, but the idea of leaving some kind of legacy behind feels… nice, in a way you hadn’t thought of, before. Maybe it’s the funny feeling you like. But if you knew exactly what the feeling was, it wouldn’t be so funny.

“We’re going to be great roommates,” you tell Hanzawa, and Hanzawa’s face goes funny again, but a different kind, the kind where he’s only just realized that you could actually be a bad, bad roommate. A second later, though, that expression clears into perfect calm, and he nods, smiling as if to placate you.

This whole thing was mainly brought on by two things, one is my non-ssmyverse friend dming me a twt screenshot with the most bland and uninspired description of tashiro's character ive ever read, signaling to me that tumblr has really spoiled me with the good tashiro takes. the other thing was that i got inspired to bring the first and second years novels with me on my previously mentioned long drive, which means that i got the pleasure of rereading both and, most importantly, rereading Tashiro Love & Passion. safe to say i had a lot to think about afterwards.

The whole thing really reminded me of the aspect of tashiro that i've always found interesting: his observant nature. And i dont just mean how he views others, but also how he views himself. How this perspective breaks the most of what we'd expect from a character like him, something Harusono loves to do with their characters.

From the first couple of pages in L&P alone, we get a lot of insight on how tashiro sees himself and how he bases much of that on how others view him.

He mentions a lot of clubs that he was a part of in the past or helped out with, describing his tendency not to stick around one club.

"The all-rounder." A "pinch player" anyone could call on.

I feel like this is an important place to start because just from this we see a bit of how Tashiro breaks from the mold of what an unassuming reader may expect him to be.

In the Sasamiya manga/anime, we dont really have too many chances to really view tashiro for who he is as an individual. with our limited perspective of him, we get to know miyano's friend tashiro, a bright, fun, and earnest character who says whats on his mind and is apparently on the ping pong team with hanzawa which is neat.

and if you werent a bit unhinged like myself and some others, this would be a fair assessment of his character. but ohhh boy once Love & Passion hit the towers there was no turning back.

there have been some posts getting into the themes of this chapter that i feel analyze it better than i ever could, so i wont do that, but i do want to talk about how tashiro's character is portrayed throughout the chapter.

And by far the main part that i want to focus on is how hardworking he is, and his and other's perspectives of him are effected by this.

Because tashiro is someone who wants very very badly to win, as he says numerous times throughout the chapter. Even under the guise of someday getting to quit the ping pong club, he pushes himself to get better; even going as far as practicing against the grannies and grandpas at the bath house that totally didnt adopt him.

For all his complaints, it would be easy to push off his actions as comedic. maybe, and im just making stuff up as i go, saying that he is only behaving as a stereotypical fun-loving slacker would. that his only motive truly is just to leave the club and drift through the rest of his high school days.

But then, that just isnt true is it? what kind of slacker would put so much time and effort into a club that he never even wanted to stick with in the first place?

This my dear friends, is how the Tashiro brainworms Fucking Get You.

Because why indeed, why is tashiro, who drifts through life wondering if he'll ever find his purpose, his Passion if you would, so impressive to the Previous Ping Pong Club President (prev pres) that he finds himself in line for future president?

While tashiro never really seems to figure this mystery out himself, we can take a few guesses.

While we will probably never see prev pres' thought process here (unless we get those 10k words of hanzawa lore that he'd probably be a part of) his actions speak for themselves in a way.

Afterall, this is the same president that got him stuck in this club to begin with, the same one who watched him complain, the same one who'd help drag him back whenever he would try to skip.

He's also the same president who watched him keep to their deal instead of just trying to find a way around it and quitting anyways. the same one who played against him at every practice, watching him learn and grow as a player. who saw him work hard, determined to not bring the team down, even if he wasnt as into it as the others. who saw him stick around.

in his perspective, tashiro takes multiple chances to not how he feels different from the people around him, that he has never known their "love" and never felt their "passion".

He finds himself surrounded by the Passion of others each day. His teammates, his friends, his bath house grandparents, just about everyone in the whole world. but what about him?

i mean, its not as if he's not interested in anything, he has things he likes. hobbies he enjoys. he just... never got that burning Passion, that unabashed Love for something like everyone else seems to have.

I think prev pres understood this part of him. that he saw what tashiro, for all his insightfulness, couldnt see for himself.

because for all tashiro believes that he doesnt have Passion, he sure does love to watch others indulge in theirs.

he takes note of what little he can catch while kuresawa and miyano talk BL, just so he can ask questions later. he gets to know the people at the bath house, listening as they talk about their lives and interests. and while he may not be "super into" in the ping pong club in general, he still wants to see his teammates succeed. he may never have stuck with a club for very long, but he still made himself reliable enough that he's seen as someone they can call to step in when needed.

in my mind i think that is what prev pres saw in him, how tashiro's dedication to see the Passions of others flourish assured him that the club would be safe in his hands.