New wt chapter after decades yipeee (it just HAD to release on my exam week not that I'm gonna complain tho)
THREEE WHOLEEE ILGARS??? Chill out 😭 drink a cup of tea 😭 I loved how Chika was called a "natural predator of Ilgars" though lol
Very great question Arashiyama
Maybe they're trying to lure the Ilgars in by making their spot noticable? Trion soldiers (at least the Neighborhood ones) go after big trion signatures by nature and idk if they have that function in this simulation as well but it'd be very cool if Chika and Nino utilized their high trion amount to make themselves a bait. There's obviously the risk of them bailing out bc of the Ilgar bombs but if Chika is truly the natural predator of them I don't think there'll be too much issue. The main problem is the A-Ranks rn
Which speaking of! Konami's new blades were so cool they reminded me of a beyblade ngl. I loved the fight between the provisional squads and Tamakoma 1 as well.
Central battle 👀 central battle 👀
Peak chapter I hope we won't have any breaks next month
considering there are multiple rabits near terminal A1 right now, it seem like chika is also seem to targeting those rabits to slowdown a-ranks from getting around!!!!!
New wt chapter after decades yipeee (it just HAD to release on my exam week not that I'm gonna complain tho)
THREEE WHOLEEE ILGARS??? Chill out 😭 drink a cup of tea 😭 I loved how Chika was called a "natural predator of Ilgars" though lol
Very great question Arashiyama
Maybe they're trying to lure the Ilgars in by making their spot noticable? Trion soldiers (at least the Neighborhood ones) go after big trion signatures by nature and idk if they have that function in this simulation as well but it'd be very cool if Chika and Nino utilized their high trion amount to make themselves a bait. There's obviously the risk of them bailing out bc of the Ilgar bombs but if Chika is truly the natural predator of them I don't think there'll be too much issue. The main problem is the A-Ranks rn
Which speaking of! Konami's new blades were so cool they reminded me of a beyblade ngl. I loved the fight between the provisional squads and Tamakoma 1 as well.
Central battle 👀 central battle 👀
Peak chapter I hope we won't have any breaks next month
My dear nirei, so caring and protective of your friends, you shouldered them all, and you cared so damn much about the both of them. Protecting sakura, holding on to suo, keeping it all together. I wonder if you’re okay.
so! hi! it's been a bit since my last proper meta post, hasn't it? most of you probably won't remember the poll I ran to pick what my next topic would be, because it's been... a while (six months?! that can't be right). but here's the winning option! finally! right as we're heading into a new major arc! yay! who else is scared!! so before we do, I wanted to finally dig in to one of my favourite characters in the series.
I love nirei.
he gives off a very typical set of first impressions—oh, this is the coward archetype, oh, this is the exposition dump guy, so on and so forth—and while it's true he's both A) anxious and B) possessed of a great deal of knowledge, those are far from the only things he has going for him. so I wanted to talk about all the ways in which I find nirei an appealing character; where his strengths lie, where they don't, and what might be in store for him in future chapters of the manga. needless to say, spoilers enclosed.
strength of mind
this is the first and most obvious of nirei's strengths. he has a memory that at the very least borders on photographic (lest we forget he memorised an entire school's roster of students in a single evening, which is insane—based on the estimated number of students in his class, that's well over 400 individual names and faces).
he also seems data-oriented in general, having collected information on a few dozen people's heights, weights, hobbies, likes, dislikes, the list goes on. this is data that could potentially be very dangerous if misused, but even the concept of this seems so far from nirei's mind that it's almost comical. the only way we've ever seen him use or plan to use the wealth of information at his fingertips is to help sakura find his way around, and aside from that, he's purely in it for the love of the game. he just likes collecting trivia on his blorbos. who happen to all be other guys who are good at fighting. normal things 👍 (he's not normal about it. and to be clear I love that for him)
strength of morals
nirei is someone with an exceptionally strong moral compass. he won't sit back in the face of wrongdoing, especially towards those he cares about, and he'll always do his best to protect those who can't protect themselves, even if it means he gets hurt instead. he would literally rather die than let perceived injustices continue, and I think that's a deeply admirable trait, if one that also frequently causes his friends to worry about his safety.
strength of charisma
I'm not talking about the typical kind of charisma, here. nirei isn't smooth. he isn't suave. he isn't especially persuasive or eloquent. what he has is a more subtle kind of charm.
something I've noticed in a lot of the japanese marketing material surrounding nirei is that he's described as the "moodmaker" of his class, and I think this is an apt description for him. he's the one who sets the tone, and his enthusiasm is infectious. it's hard not to be swayed by him, as evidenced by both sakura and suou letting him physically drag them around from place to place. they absolutely could resist him if they wanted to. but emotionally? imagine the toll.
in addition to this, despite his anxious demeanour, nirei is actually a skilled performer when engaged in his area of interest. after recounting the history of fuurin's unification, he was met with a round of applause, and his storytelling was compared to that of rakugo. I think this is a great example that, although timid, nirei is still very much a people person, and an entertainer at heart. in a series defined by the strength of its bonds, that's a very significant talent to have.
strength of devotion
once you've earned nirei's loyalty, he will do his best to move heaven and earth for you. and though he shows a great deal of willingness to help everyone around him, and obviously holds a deep affection for all of his friends, I think this is best exemplified through his relationship with sakura. I'm not saying this as a shipping thing:
nirei loves sakura.
I don't mean romantically (not necessarily, at least). but I do mean deeply and intensely. nirei is the first person who promised to help sakura achieve his goals, and to be by his side every step of the way. when sakura told nirei, "I don't think you're all that pathetic", it might not have meant much to sakura—but I think it meant everything to nirei.
though it's never explicitly stated, it's likely that, in this moment, sakura was the first person to give nirei the kind of validation he needed most. so I can't help but feel like... yeah. of course nirei would want to pay that back. of course he'd commit himself to sakura's goals. one person who sees something valuable in you, after years of being treated like you're worthless, of feeling like you're worthless? it's hard not to fall a little bit in love with that.
strength of will
nirei is always moving towards his goals. it doesn't matter how many losses he may face in the process; though he is hard on himself, he learns from past mistakes and is constantly, relentlessly working to improve so that he can become worthy—if only in his own eyes—of standing by the people he cares so deeply for.
nirei's core strength is not in his ability to deal blows, nor in his ability to take them, but in his ability to be knocked down and get back up every single time. however, while that unshakable determination is a strength in most cases, it can also be a detriment.
when someone is overly focused on a single goal, it's very easy for them to become ignorant of their surroundings; when this happens, they can end up making a faux pas that otherwise could've been avoided if they'd slowed down and taken a moment to think first. this is a flaw of nirei's that's been played off in a joking manner in recent chapters, but could easily turn into a more serious issue if left unchecked—which I'll discuss more in a moment. but first...
on weakness
nirei isn't just physically weak, though that's the thing that stands out most when we first meet him. it becomes obvious very quickly that the boy also has a devastatingly warped sense of self-esteem. he puts the safety, wellbeing, and even the success of others far above his own, and is constantly second-guessing his own place in the world he inhabits. he also constantly downplays his own achievements, acting as though feats which are objectively genuinely impressive are only worth as much as the bare minimum.
he has so much love for other people, but it seems less important to him that that love is reciprocated, and more important that he can be useful.
nirei doesn't think he needs to be loved; he thinks he needs to be needed. and that is tragic, really, because it sometimes seems to blind him to the ways in which he is loved, the ways he is seen and known and cared for, the value he has which is inherent to himself and not what he can do for others.
this is an internal conflict I'm all too familiar with, not just because it's something I've seen in many other fictional characters in the past, but also because it's something I've seen in myself—the desire to be useful to others is an extremely common one, but it can also be extremely damaging if not managed carefully.
what next?
I currently see two potential paths for nirei's development in the future. the first option: nirei experiences a conflict between his morality and his loyalty. I don't see this as very likely, because in order for a conflict like this to exist, someone nirei is close to would have to act against his moral compass, and nirei's morality is very closely aligned to that of boufuurin. the best avenue for this currently would be if suou did something that nirei found immoral, which I find unlikely, but it's at least more plausible than sakura or one of his other peers doing the same (of course, anything's possible with the right setup, which nii-sensei has proven time and time again. somebody stop them).
the second option, which I consider much more probable: burnout. as I said before, once you've earned nirei's loyalty, he will move heaven and earth for you. he also has extremely low self-esteem and craves the validation of the people he cares about. this is not a healthy combination of attributes if left unchecked.
I think, in the upcoming arc, without suou's balancing influence present to help keep nirei's neuroses in check, it's very possible he will work himself into the ground and start making otherwise avoidable mistakes. I think he's probably going to exhaust himself trying to either A) find suou B) get suou back C) fill in for suou or D) all three, and I think his other friends are going to have to intervene to prevent him from crashing and burning completely (this might also be a good opportunity for sugishita to take a more active role in helping out, since he and nirei now have an established rapport, but I digress).
looking further ahead, I think in the future nirei will also need to find his own goals beyond just helping sakura, though that might be more of a post-canon problem (considering the likely logical endpoint of the story will be sakura's ascendance to the top of boufuurin). but I dunno, personally, I like the idea of nirei needing to grow more into his own person and rely less on the validation of others. I think it would be a good and healthy development for him.
no matter how things turn out, I'm incredibly excited to see what the next arc brings, both for nirei's development, and for the development of the other cast members who will inevitably be affected by suou's absence (not least of all suou himself). this ended up being pretty long, so if you're still with me, thanks for reading, and I'd love to hear your own thoughts on everyone's precious sonshine! ☀
After 218 dropped I've started seeing some people that wished the story didn't jump to Sakura right away and focused more on Nirei's side of the things as he was the one that had to endure Suo's beating and departure that night. And I think that's completely valid to think!! I want to see Nirei's side too! But I feel like we're forgetting that Nirei is a character that bottles up his emotions and doesn't address them unless someone directly asks him about them (e.g. we saw in the post-KEEL fight chapters that he only folded after Suo more or less cornered him and asked what was wrong.) This combined with the fact that he always puts others before himself (e.g. #2 him still talking about Suo in 212 until Kiryu tells him to prioritize himself first) AND his low self esteem that makes himself think like he's a burden to others tells me that we still have a while until we get to how he really, truly feels about this whole situation and what Suo did to him.
Right now, in Nirei's eyes, Sakura is visibly shaken and left heartbroken while Suo himself has something happening in the background and is suffering, and adding his own feelings to the mix would only make things worse. So, following this logic, he's shifting his priorities and doing what they and their class needs the most right now as "a worthy vice-captain" which is pulling Sakura out of his misery and getting Suo back. Someone has to be strong and it just so happens to be Nirei apparently
LOOK AT THEM OH MY GOD!! WINHERO'S EVENT NAME IS LITERALLY WINBRIDAL!! JAPAN'S INFAMOUS AMD IMPORTANT JUNE BRIDE EVENT AND ITS SUNI!! ALSO IN THE FIRST FUCKING WEEK OF PRIDE MONTH!! SUNI SAY HAPPY PRIDE!!😭🫖📝🏳️🌈!!
that aside! This is the hanakotoba of yellow tulips! I like to think that if the "unrequited love" meaning is considered for nirei's yellow tulips, it's simply cuz he believes he's not worthy of suo. He's got very low self esteem and insecurity issues so he thinks his feelings will always be unrequited but! Little does he know that suo fell for him ages ago and he's the most worthy and precious person to him ever so all that "unworthy" stuff is nonsense! Suo is using red roses in the same event and literally himself says that they mean "I love you" in flower language!
Here's my translation of suo and nirei's lines from the teaser:
Suo: "which is the real groom? Can you tell? The flower language for roses changes depending on their colour. For example, red roses mean "I love you". Right~" (he ends his sentence with "Nee~" so I translated it to "Right~" because that's as close as I can get the nuance of that word to fit in with the tl!)
Nirei: "to be able to stand side by side like this, I'm very happy!"
Suo: "Well then. let's overcome this together!~"
Also linking the official winhero teaser from Twitter here if anyone wants to see and hasn't yet! Suni are very beautiful in matching wedding red yellow tuxedos! (They're getting married agsfsvnk)
READ WIND BREAKER: IT'S BEEN TWO FUCKING YEARS AND I'M STILL HERE
...and since it's been two years since I posted my original powerpoint (to the day, at the time of writing this), I wanted to make a revamp in hopes of getting even more people interested in the wbk manga! please. it unironically changed my life and it could change yours too if you let it. this is both a promise and a threat.
additional note: I wanted to focus on the manga specifically for this presentation, but there is also a currently-two-season anime that's available to watch in full on crunchyroll, with the first season also available on netflix (and probably other places, if you know where to look). I do enjoy the anime too; the manga is just closer to my heart :>
Togame: Upholding a system you know is wrong, but having reasons™ for not abandoning it just yet that are likely related to another person within the same system
KEEL arc:
Nagato: Being forcefully kept away from support system due to some kind of threat. The person that gets hunted down by their other two friends + is The Sufferer
Gravel arc:
Shizuka: Wanting so desperately to stay in the life and comfort you’ve found, but wanting to sacrifice yourself to ensure the people around you don’t get roped into your problems
Noroshi arc: I literally do not know.
Kiryu arc:
Kiryu: Complicated family dynamics masked under a veneer of jokes and smiles. (Though it must be acknowledged that they deal with said dynamic very differently)
if you guys got any more, feel free to point them out
Currently imagining a Nirei with the mixed fighting style of graceful self-defense and aggressive attacks due to the influence and training of both Suo and Sakura/Furin boys
I'll be an avid shipper of something until someone walks in and says "there is NO platonic explanation for this" and suddenly I've never shipped it before in my life and they're just friends and I can't lie i can't really see them being in a romantic relationship with each other yeah sorry I just don't see it
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