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miyaio · 7 years

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desu2!!

desu 2 meta brings out the tl;dr beast in me b/c i’m always thirsty to talk excessively abt this game.

My favorite parent-child relationship

- i think otome and koharu win by default, tho io’s brief scene w/her mother and the background we get on her relationship w/her parents is v heart-wrenching. i love the way otome’s single mom status is depicted–it feels very nuanced and sympathetic, without shying away from the way having parenthood thrust upon her would realistically impact otome’s life and koharu’s. when otome mentions in tri arc that she misses being koharu’s mother, despite how selfish that would be (as it would come in exchange for her cousins’ lives), i teared up, ngl. koharu herself is also really precious, tho i wish we had a consistent appearance for her–it seems to change between vanilla desu 2, ds2a, and tri arc?

runner-up goes to airi and her dad, despite the fact that she thinks he’s dead. the dera-deka sub-arc is well-worth doing at least once, imo. it made me bawl, and it’s also necessary for 100% compendium completion.

My favorite sibling relationship

- can i say saiduq and the other septentriones? yamato and miyako are the only sibs we see onscreen (tho airi mentions having a little brother), but tbh, i’m more interested in miyako’s side than i am in yamato’s. what goes on in the septentriones’ minds–if they even have “minds” as people would perceive the concept–is fascinating to me, and i really wonder what saiduq thinks abt his former “siblings”. does he simultaneously pity and envy them for lacking his autonomy? does he see them as extensions of polaris’ will that deserve to be beaten down by humans? the denizens of the akasha stratum are one of my fav aspects of desu 2′s worldbuilding, so i’m always hungry for meta on them.

My favorite family relationship (other)

- airi and ronaldo in a found family situation……… i love the way their dynamic develops, w/neither one aware of how strong a connection they really share. i do wish we’d had more of them bonding over their memories of airi’s dad (which i’ve always hc’d as happening at least on egalitarian route), but seeing how similar the two of them really are is always cute. airi loves her gay uncle 2k17

My favorite friendship between two people

- uffff this is so hard b/c i like a lot of my ships b/c of their friendships…….. ig i’d make it a tie between hibiki + daichi and jp’s trio’s dynamic as a whole? even tho jp’s trio isn’t two people, haha. one thing i really like abt hibiki in comparison to like, every male protag ever, is that it’s p heavily implied that he’s not popular at all. the one thing ds2a did right was hibiki’s backstory, which i think still fits in w/gameverse!hibiki’s description as someone w/a “blank” past. his friendship w/daichi and the relationships he forms w/the main cast mean a lot more in the context of daichi really being his only close friend at the start of the game, imo. s/t i love abt hibiki + both daichi and io is that their friendships are based on equity, abt hibiki supporting the others and working w/them as equals to help them realize what wonderful ppl they are in their own right, rather than him being the ultra-charismatic authority who’s always Cool and in control. like, this is the guy who has such Serious dialogue options as “RAINBOOOOOOW!!” and “tell everyone yr gay for yamato”. hibiki being really isolated from most ppl aside from daichi feeding into his decision to pursue the human admin end of br is a meta for another time, ig.

jp’s trio’s various relationships are all v interesting, in terms of the spokes of the triangle and all three of them together. it’s really refreshing to see that kind of dynamic between adult women who are professionals–their bond feels a lot less?? transient than it might between yet another group of high schoolers. you get the sense that all three of them being adults is what lets their friendships bloom and be so important to them, as the people they were in high school are hardly the same people they are now. the event in tri arc where fumi and makoto take care of a fatigued otome and tell her that she can lean on them, too, really made an impact on me. all three of them play off of each other so well in a variety of settings, and it lends a v mature, multifaceted air to their dynamic. otome taking a different faction than fumi and makoto, and how different fumi and makoto’s own reasons for joining yamato are, is also worth mentioning in that the three of them aren’t always in agreement, and that’s a part of friendship, too.

My favorite friendship between a group

- team nagoya……… i’ll be the first to say that i dislike both the extremist routes. whether or not the writers intended to make the player feel that way is subjective, and may well depend on where a player falls on the smt alignment continuum, or even on desu 2′s version of that continuum. either way, i at least liked egalitarian better than meritorious b/c team nagoya has such a strong rapport w/one another, compared to the cognitive dissonance-riddled mess that is team osaka. based on their dialogue from any daichi route, the members of team nagoya definitely know they’re not necessarily vying for the best solution to their very legitimate concerns. they’re a lot easier to sympathize with b/c their grievances are very real–as joe says in “dream’s end”, while society may be growing less prejudiced over time, for many people, there is no time to “wait for things to get better”. the problem lies much more in going thru polaris to make a change, as the ending p clearly (and horrifyingly) demonstrates that polaris just uses team nagoya’s passion for its own ends.

at any rate, the interactions between the four of them are great, from ronaldo and airi’s aforementioned dynamic, to joe and otome’s complimentary playful attitudes, to how airi represents the future that all three adults are fighting for. it’s really telling that team nagoya consists of three adults and one teenager–otome puts it most clearly in her post-defeat dialogue on daichi routes when she says that she was fighting desperately (yet short-sightedly) for the future of the world’s children. imo, airi really represents that future to the three adults, as a teenager who has already had so many doors closed in her face due to inequity. airi’s own stubbornness, selective self-flagellation, and issues w/moving on aside, schooling in particular really is s/t that can shape a child’s entire life, and i’m sure ronaldo, joe, and otome realize that. so seeing how well all four of them interact w/each other and how airi represents both the best and the worst of team nagoya’s ideals def makes them my fav faction.

My favorite mentorship

- speaking of airi’s interactions w/the adult cast, makoto + airi is so good….. i love how constructive makoto is w/airi, giving her the tools she needs to move forward in life w/o telling her to get over it, or denying that airi’s been screwed over by forces well beyond her control. makoto’s not a perfect mentor, but (as her name suggests), she’s honest w/airi, and owns up to it when she reacts too harshly. i think it’s great to see makoto helping someone in a way she knows for sure is right, in contrast to how uncertain her cognitive dissonance abt other issues in sep arc must be making her feel. on the flipside, airi gets to begin moving forward w/life again, which in turn contributes to helping her reconsider her own alienating abrasiveness (can you tell i like airi b/c she and severa are so similar……). the moral of airi and makoto’s mentorship isn’t “never ever give up on yr dreams b/c you can only ever have one True goal in life”, nor is it “there’s no need to challenge injustices done unto you b/c if you don’t rock the boat, life will move on eventually”. airi’s sub-arc comes to a more nuanced conclusion, and i don’t think she could’ve gotten there w/o makoto’s influence.

My favorite rivalry

- does hinako and yamato count? i love how often she calls him out, and how she’s not afraid of him in the least. while i doubt yamato sees hinako as much of consequence, she makes her beef w/him plain, w/o going “DIE HOUTSUIN MY JUSTICE IS SCREAMING” ala ronaldo www her voice is much-needed in a lot of situations, too. her confrontation w/yamato over whether or not he cherrypicked the results of the medium compatibility tests to get rid of io is really well-done, esp if you infer that hinako knows abt io’s own disastrous confrontation w/yamato earlier on friday.

My favorite hatred/antipathy

- while i know miyako and yamato don’t straight-up hate each other, their dynamic as enemies (or at least in opposition to one another) is great. i’m not just saying this b/c i love seeing yamato get dragged, i promise–there really is just s/t satisfying abt miyako not taking his shit at all, despite her own cognitive dissonance and his valid points abt the futility of her plan. yamato -> saiduq is also fairly interesting, tho ds2a bloated itself so much w/a tepid exploration of how their dynamic could potentially be explored that i’m not too keen on meta-ing it more. yamato is kind of a hate sink amongst the cast, tbh www saiduq’s own rebel angel-turned-usurper dynamic w/polaris is p unambiguous hatred, but it’s v interesting, given how saiduq feels he has no choice but to die as polaris’ sword on every other route. really seeing him shuck that alcor designation (ppl who call saiduq by that name when he explicitly says he dislikes it still drive me bonkers in 2017) and take up heaven’s throne is v satisfying.

My favorite potential relationship between characters who never talk in canon

- do u have a moment to talk abt how we were robbed of more io-joe interactions……… if anyone’s actually read this far, you probably do lmao in any event, i think this is mostly a limitation of how the fate system is constructed, and you can see the writers stretching and experimenting w/it in tri arc. if future desu games expand into s/t like fe’s support system, where you can see the fate system-equivalents between all characters, sometimes w/o the protag even present, i think that’d be a great step forward. i bring this up for one area in particular where i really wanted to see more joe-io interactions: on tuesday, after io’s parents die. joe has a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it line in his own fate system w/hibiki abt how his own parents are dead, but it’s not framed in a more genre-typical “tragic orphan backstory” way. it really raises the question about when someone whose parents have died is too old to be called an orphan, given that joe is only 25.

this dialogue suggests that the losses are then fairly recent, tho joe writes them off w/his patent-pending brand of escape-avoidance. for all his flakiness (his term), tho, joe really does try to fill a big brother role for tokyo trio, and this is where i think he and io could have some v fruitful interactions. i think that most of the cast isn’t really faced w/the immediacy of the high likelihood that their families are dead, w/the exception of chars like joe, jungo, airi, and keita, who all lose parents prior to the game. io, on the other hand, watches her mother die in her arms. she displays astounding resilience and focus in how quickly she draws herself back together after the loss, despite her r5 confirming that she had pretty constant suicidal ideation throughout the rest of the week (and quite possibly before the game, too). as joe is the closest to io out of the four aforementioned characters at that point in the game, i really, really would’ve loved to see his take on providing her comfort and guidance in the wake of her sudden loss. i think it would’ve been a good set of conversations for both of them, especially if you buy into the reading that both joe and io let themselves die should the player fail to prevent their death clips. in this respect, i’m interested in the similarities between joe and io, and i think a good heart-to-heart between them early on in the game would’ve led to a variety of other interactions.

#usamimi desu

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