#revale

As we all know, Yuki is wearing his earrings pretty much constantly; in his youth during the days of old Re:vale up until the present day - which makes the few times he does actually take them off even more noticable and interesting (and by that I mean... completely taking them off, and not just swapping them for a different pair of earrings for the sake of a stage outfit).

One of these occasions is school. I noticed that every time we see Yuki in his highschool uniform, he doesn't wear his earrings - he only wears them with his casual clothes. There's several instances for that both in the anime and Re:member.

It's not officially explained, but there's a very easy and obvious interpretation for it: The dress code at Yuki's school very likely doesn't allow piercings and earrings, which is common for Japanese schools. So, really not the most earth-shattering reason for the missing earrings, but a very nice detail (seeing how the creators pay attention to such tiny things makes me weirdly happy...!).

The other time I noticed that Yuki's earrings are missing is after Banri left. In the whole time when Yuki tries to look for Banri on his own and fails, stays inside his apartment and repeatedly gets visited by Momo, we don't see him wearing his earrings a single time. Again, this is pictured both in the anime and Re:member.

I'm interpreting this as Yuki being too depressed to put the earrings in. He doesn't have the motivation to pretty up, not the energy to stick to his habit of wearing the earrings - for what? For whom? With his current state of mind, feeling lost and hopeless, Yuki doesn't care about how others perceive him - nobody sees him anyway, holed up in his apartment - and he doesn't care about himself or his appearance either.

He does eventually put them back in though, and the first time we see him with his earrings again in Re:member is after he agrees to team up with Momo and they sort of have something like their "first official meeting" to discuss how Re:vale is going to move forward from now on. There’s a very similar shot of this in the anime too.

In my interpretation, Yuki does that because now there IS someone who's seeing him, and it's Momo of all people too. Yuki cares a lot about how Momo perceives him and he doesn't want to disappoint his long-time fan and now new partner. So for Momo, he goes through the extra effort of putting the earrings back in, maybe even in an attempt to regain something of the former Yuki - the Yuki before the incident, the Yuki who was a star in Momo's eyes, the Yuki Momo fell in love with.

I suppose there's a few instances that "debunk" my interpretation/behave a bit inconsistently:

For example, in the anime, Yuki starts wearing his earrings only after doing his very first idol performance with Banri - we can first see them on the 3rd anniversary flyer Ruri hands Momo. This means that for the entirety of his band era, we don’t see him wearing earrings a single time (and while we’re at it: the same can be said about his white strand of hair - again, we first see that one on the aforementioned flyer. But back to the earrings).

Re:member, however, is doing that differently, as we can see Yuki wearing the earrings from the first second on, including his band era. I don’t know the reason for the two different approaches, but I might as well just point them out I suppose…!

Furthermore, we have a panel from Re:member where Yuki is still with Banri, wearing his casual clothes but weirdly enough not his earrings - another instance that doesn’t fit the usual pattern.

And then there's a short flashback scene in the anime that must be set around the time when Yuki is trying to search for Banri on his own, and he's still wearing his earrings there (as opposed to Re:member).

With all of these little differences and inconsistencies being pointed out, I'd like to come back to the observation that stuck out most to me and is consistent between the anime and Re:member: Yuki taking off the earrings after the stage light incident. I am certain that there must have been some intentional meaning when the directors of the anime/Arina-sensei decided to show Yuki without his characteristic earrings while he is at the lowest point of his life and only made him put them back in after finding hope again in Momo and starting anew with him, because as we all know, idolish7 as a whole loves to pay attention to subtle details and I think that's beautiful.

Or maybe I’m really just reading too much into it. Haha.