#sunnfish.ask

so its like. tashiros first impression of sasaki is that hes Scary. hes tall hes got bleached hair a resting bitch face and piercings hes really intimidating. and then his second impression of sasaki is that hes gay as hell for miyano. which i think is probably the funniest swing ever. so he already thinks sasaki contains multitudes.

and i like to think he eventually finds out about sasakis bakery, and they develop Something in there. in a world where sasaki isnt crazy obsessed with miyano. maybe a little obsessed but Whatever that doesnt matter right now. tashiro and sasaki dont see each other much at school but for one reason or another tashiro visits his bakery at least once a week and all his coworkers start to recognize him too and start calling him gon-chan/kun and giving him freebies and Uh Oh hes everyones grandkid again. And sasakis watching this happen in real time like What the hell is happening. his own parents are being nicer to tashiro than theyve ever been to him. how is he doing this. and little does he know hes also being pulled in by the good grandchild charm.

meanwhile tashiro is genuinely just in it for the baked goods. at first. they might be the kind of bakery that has those like collectible reward stickers or whatever Doesnt matter. tashiro likes his little treats. and #supportinglocalbusiness. but he does like sasaki too. hes got a weird knack for always catching sasaki off guard and surprising him. and his reactions are cute. and i thiiiink. tashiro recognizes the kind of loneliness and lethargy that he kind of has as well. and gets that same desire that hirano gets to just. be the one to pull sasaki up. and maybe he selfishly thinks If he can see sasaki Do It (succeed, find passion, find a goal) then he can too...

so its like. the juice here is that they both start at a point where theyre just kinda floating through life. and it presents in Very different ways for them. but they recognize it deep in each other. the way you can expertly skirt around conversations about plans for the future. a hand wavey "I dont know" and a blank career path sheet.

buuuuuttt i think they could also help each other. while tashiro is aimless, he Is very good at living in the moment and having fun ! he drags sasaki around and makes it a personal challenge to make him laugh. sasaki tests sweets recepies on tashiro and makes him slow down and think things through a little more often. maybe in this kind of relationship, tashiro wouldnt be hit so suddenly by the deaths of his bathhouse friends. he'd have been able to notice the signs sooner. sasaki makes him a little quieter. a bit more introspective. less able to unreliable-narrator his own thoughts. maybe he realizes he Does care about winning at ping pong against that damn president, and not just so he can quit This isnt about them. anyways.

but then its like. the thing is. sasaki Does eventually have goals and aspirations and all that. college economics major and all that. i think its to be able to help his family bakery ? in canon ? i dont exactly remember. whatever. so anyways i think tashiro eventually feels like. gap moe ? gap moe but not for cuteness. iuuuhhh contrast ? of sasaki Looking as aimless as tashiro feels but actually having his shit together. like If this guy can do it then so can i. and sasaki being inspired by this seemingly very passionate tashiro but its like this funny reverse situation. tashiro Looks like a very passionate person with goals and aspirations in life and all that but he feels very directionless inside (and the thing is hes very Aware of it. his directionlessness. whole other can of worms). and sasaki Looks like a very apathetic lethargic kind of guy but he does have these passions internally. to be clear i dont think sasaki has much passion at the start. he develops it after knowing tashiro and feeding off his supposed passion. cause he doesnt recognize the gaping hole in tashiro for a While. falls for the facade and all that. i dont think im explaining this part very well. whateverrrrr i think ive accidentally crafted a whole timeline to myself for this while writing this response. maybe ill make something of it. eventually.

OKAY WAIT DID A LITTLE REREADING AND RETHINKING AND SO WELL ITS MORE LIKE. tashiro Thinks he is very dispassionate (which he is in some ways) but sasaki is able to recognize all the things he Is passionate about. and its like that thing thats like Well it doesnt matter what you think its about what you Do. so even if you think you dont care about ping pong and winning, you're still practicing off the clock at that bathhouse and trying to get better. and if that isnt a passionate person then i dont know what is. even if you dont cry when you lose you still try your best and support everyone as best you can. you dont have to act like everyone else to be just as passionate. and its that part of tashiro that inspires sasaki in the same way miyano does. boom. its all come fuuuulll circle <-no clue if any of this even makes sense voice.

first we are all going to look at this excerpt from the Sasaki and Miyano: First Years Novel:

“So you’re never coming back, President?” I said. “I ain’t President anymore.” “Not the point! I haven’t beat you yet…” I clenched my fists, a yawning, lonely feeling of loss opening within me. “Ahh. You mean the thing about getting to quit if you win? The next president’ll keep that promise. Don’t you worry.” “What?” I don’t get it. What happened to the loneliness? The new president—in other words, Hanzawa.

a bit of context just in case you're here and you don't know yet: Tashiro's chapter in the first years novel deals with his joining of the ping pong club, which he initially did as a joke kind of but couldn't leave until he beat the club president (really good at ping pong). so he's downright stuck. and he doesn't like to admit it but he dedicates a lot of his time trying to beat the president. and he never does win. and then the president graduates and hanzawa is the new president. so it's like. for a moment, all that time and dedication and well. friendship. was being taken away from him. i think the previous president was maybe one of the closest people he had. takes two to play ping pong, and all that. it's a conversation. hurts to have your partner taken away.

and then we get the second guidebook extras. where fucking this happens:

and afterwards miyano thinks about loneliness and Sasaki graduating but we're Not Going To Get Into That. sooo funny you're comparing hanzashiro and sasamiya harusono shou Sorry. this isn't about that. anyways. we see it here again. Tashiro's president is graduating again. and he feels lonely. and this time there's no one to replace it. that yawning, lonely feeling of loss. (<-just. a really insane way to describe it. insanely profound. harusono shou and hachijo kotoko Answer my calls.)

so those kind of set the stage for me being completely totally insane. even before these, i kinda always had the feeling of like. what I've mentioned in my other posts. about how hes Friends With Everyone but not close with anyone. he's quite surface level. and those he Was rather close with, the prospect of losing them makes him lonely so easily. even just graduating. not getting to see them every day. and like. when he does let that feeling slip in the guidebook extra, everyone is kinda. stunned. like that show of vulnerability isn't normal at all from him. the way it's also framed as rainy and gloomy, and especially that dim panel of him smiling but thinking "it feels like not even half of them are still around…" its ominous as hell. he's so melancholic about it. but he still puts on that smiley facade. and looks around like it's a ghost town when nobody's looking.

another facet of it is his sharp insight. he's really good about noticing things about other people. and he's a really good listener. so i think a lot of people just. end up telling him things. but he doesn't really tell other people things. which is what i mean by friends with everybody but not close with anybody. people open up to him, but he doesn't open up to them. and the only people he was getting there with go on and graduate. leaves him lonely.

so it's all kinda like. he's very surface level social. in a way that nobody thinks he's got anything else going on. hes a Fun Guy!! nothing wrong over here! not that he necessarily has anything Wrong. just the feeling of like. he could have like a dead parent and nobody would know something was amiss. thats kinda dramatic but. yknow. he doesn't really talk about his feelings. anyways.

last aspect of the loneliness i wanna touch on a bit is his relationship with his parents. we. don't get much. one mention of them in his miso soup conversation:

“Man, that makes no sense to me! For one thing, we don’t even have miso every day at my house. If I want some, I just grab a packet of the instant stuff and boil up some water—on my own. I guess sometimes my folks ask me to make some for them, too, and I grab two packets.” “Huh! Wait, isn’t it actually expensive to make two people’s worth?” “Sure is. If that goes on for a couple days, my mom is like, it would be cheaper just to make a bunch at once! She always says laziness is the root of wasting money. And I’m like, I know that! But I keep making that soup.”

we'll get more into all that again later. focusing on his folks here. we can infer here that his parents don't seem to cook that often. it falls to him to make dinner for them all sometimes. and. i dunno. something about this makes them read as kinda distant. not in a neglectful or hurtful way... just. they don't care about what he does. like. I don't think he told them or asked permission to bleach his hair. he just Did It and came home and they were like Oh! well thats cool i guess [thumbs up]. i don't think he's very close with them either. like. he doesn't know How to open up, maybe. didn't grow up with it. that may be stretching it a bit though. whatever. either way, he keeps making that soup (miso soup metaphor for love. we'll get into it later).

so it's like. he does love his friends. he just sucks at opening up about his #feelings. and nobody could tell if he was truly upset about something. and everybody wants to hang out with someone else. it's played off for jokes but kuresawa and miyano often abandon him during breaks and holidays to hang out with their #lovers. though everybody note that shirahama is probably the exception to most of this. but he's also bad at talking about feelings so they don't really Talk about it. but he Knows. and they like to #hangout. (and thats part of what makes shirashiro so good to me. shirahama can ask a "hey are you okay" in a way that no one else can. #bestfriends) anyways.

as for anyone i wished he interacted with in canon. is it a cop-out to say Everybody. i could watch him talk to literally anybody. lately though i have been invested in tashiro-ogasawara kouhai-senpai cute friendship relationship. singularly based on some voice lines that came out when the graduation movie dropped in which all the senpai and kouhai had little messages for each other. and Ogasawara had a part to Tashiro talking about how Tashiro was the only kouhai to go out of his way to talk to Ogasawara when he saw him. AND THATS CUTE AS HELL!!! Ogasawara appreciates it a lot…. and i think they could be really cute friends… let me see their interactions harusono shou….

As for anyone that he Hasn't interacted with at all in canon.... who even would that be. Kagi or niibashi? Hm i think him and kagi could be fun sports friends. As for niibashi.... im not really sure.... maybe niibashi would bring out a more sarcastic side of him. I can't imagine him being his cheerful persona around niibashi. I dunno. Maybe i could dive more into all that some other time....

and Oh my god pokemon team. brother you dont know how much i think about this. okay. here's two separate brainstorming instances i could find where i funnily enough came to about the same conclusions. which is huge for me.

anyways Amalgaming these lists:

Politoad - look at that color scheme man. friendly frog

Alolan Raichu - i think a psychic type is fitting cause of his shocking insightfulness. and alolan raichu is quite cheery like he is.

Kecleon - 1. green 2. hanzawa has the purple one from mystery dungeon 3. i think Tashiro is like a chameleon. not gonna elaborate unless anybody wants to ask further :3

Ambipom - aside from the fact that it's one of my favorites and i'm biased, ambipom is canonically good at ping pong

Jolteon - biased. i heart eevee. could be shiny for that epic bright green color - if not jolteon then Rotom. jack of all trades type thing

Pawmot - wanted a fighting type for his Every Sports Guy persona

so as i was finalizing that list i realized. thats like. his Vibes team. his persona. pokemon that make me think of him. so then i was like. Well what pokemon would he actually catch. so here we are. team part two:

Hatenna/Hattrem/Hatterene - hatenna are like. notorious for needing a calm and level-headed trainer. and i think he could vibe with one. they would have a cute episode about befriending and catching it

Pichu/Pikachu/Alolan Raichu - yeah this one carries over. he is basic enough to catch a pikachu. maybe even his starter

Rockruff/Lycanroc Dusk - Cool Dog…

Buizel/Floatzel - vibes. trust me

Flygon - classic cool pokemon. and him befriending a trapinch would be cute

Zorua/Zoroark - could be a fun episode about Tashiro being able to see through its illusions…

overall theme is like. i think he'd get along with cheery pokemon but would also really like the cool ones. I think rockruff, buizel, and trapinch would be the ones he would like. actively Want To Catch. while the others are cute Oh we are friends now.