The fact he is so sadistic and hurt my baby Kiyoshi is why I would detest him if he were a real person, but he's still incredibly well written.
I definitely feel like I get where his obsession with being around stupid people and basically wanting a dumb, innocent girlfriend comes from.
Like I said in my headcanon about him, I think he is academically bored, it's something I've also experienced as a kid. But I feel like, with Hanamiya, this was a deliberate choice.
Let me tell you about my secondary school experience, because it's relevant:
In the Netherlands, upon secondary school you're basically sorted in three different academic levels depending upon your academic scores.
VMBO- average level of intelligence, 4 years of education and most bachelor and master degrees require taking up the 5th year. The people graduating VMBO will generally end up as the average Joe of society.
HAVO- gifted kids, 5 years of education and the minimum for those aforementioned higher diplomas. They typically end up producing tech nerds, bussiness people, lawyers and the average authority figure like teachers.
VWO-the extremely gifted, 6 years of education. Because their curriculum includes things like Latin, they have an adventage at highly scientific degrees.
There are also various forms of schools for people below average intelligence and the mentally retarded, but we generally don't include those in the conversation.
My general academic results were a mix of HAVO and VWO scores but the seeds of my PTSD were already present and the elementary school teacher of my final year was a bitch who had it out for me.
So she sent me to VMBO for my first year. My teacher saw I was academically bored, so she had it arranged that I would transfer to HAVO for my 2nd year onwards.
Hell erupted right then.
For a bit of context: Because VMBO typically produces the average Joe, they are often mocked. There's a big culture of academic snobbism going on in this regard. No matter how good and fancy your VMBO school was, you're always worth less then a HAVO student who attended school in a backwater village.
It's the Dutch version of how you have certain posh British secondary schools like Eton. With us, it's less about the school you've attended and more about the level you've attended. Which is why we don't include the schools for those below average intelligence in conversations as there's a slight stigma against them for being 'so stupid'.
And precisely because I was attending a special needs HAVO, which was a predominantly male student body, I could exactly see the seeds of frat culture in the HAVO student body.
As the kid who was bullied for being new, but also being the only attractive girl in my class with only one other girl in our school being good looking, I was very much the subject of most of the misogynistic jokes. Once I moved away, a girl from my class who always pretended to be nice to me started cyberbullying me, one of the things she bullied me for, was calling out the misogynistic jokes in our class. Very calculated, because now that I moved and had to go to a different school I could no longer report her to the teachers.
And at my new HAVO school, my new teacher always consistently had it out for me, and there actually was a conversation or two where she questioned me about my roots and exotified me considering my Roma heritage is so strong. I definitely feel like her problem was coming from a racist angle, and it's one of the rare times where I'm happy non-white cultures talk less about mental health and that it was an all-white school as a result of that. No one deserves to be stuck in a racist school.
The point of this story is:
I wish I never left VMBO.
I was bored, but happier there. There's a certain value in the average Joe that most people don't see because they don't have fancy jobs and they're less likelier to become part of the elite.
Hanamiya actually sees that there is value in the average person, and he chose that climate for himself over a more toxic but prestigious enviroment that he could have went for with his intelligence.
He is a surprising commentary on how some gifted kids are unhappy in more prestigious enviroments, like Akashi for example is as well. Hanamiya is one of those gifted kids who's just better off in a more average school.
Hanamiya chose better for himself, and I'll commend him for that wise decision.
