I just remembered that Alora has a lot of houseplants back at home. I feel like she'd want to keep them all when moving. Thus, their apartment is now green
Not only that, I imagine her doll collection has moved in too. I haven't drawn it, but she probably keeps it in some top secret cabinet..
And more curious about the other cast in the non killing game Au what happened to them
Oh they're just going on their lives as normal. I didn't really think about the others to be honest I just wanted takalora slice of life shenanigans. Though I like to think that the cast will meet each other somehow, in a roundabout way. Some bonds are fated to happen
But as for Sugi. They're still at the circus, but Taka probably runs in on them at some point. If he ever ditches showbiz, maybe he'll join the circus, like in that AU Rippilie posted
I don't think they'd get along for a while, considering how Taka was in his normal life pre-lockdown. He still thinks he needs the audience. Maybe he'll change his mind one day
Taka finds himself in big trouble as he gets cancelled on social media once and for all. He's forced to quit his career, and infuriated by this, he makes it his mission to get back into showbiz and make a name for himself again, no matter what. In the meantime, he's job hopping and apartment seeking, which brings him to Alora– his new roommate, who was frankly under the impression that she would be living alone and is not very glad to know him. At least, for now.
Alora is pretty much the breadwinner among them two. She is also appalled by Taka's incompetence in housekeeping, so she makes sure he at least learns the basic skills (for her own convenience of course and nothing else).
These previews made me think STAT was kind of a crazy girl but actually she's just a completely normal homeless girl and the elevator is the crazy one here.
one of my favorite things about shins backstory is how empty it feels. not like there's nothing tragic in his life but it's just so unfulfilling. a lifetime of inferiority. a man who came, loved him, hurt him, changed him, and left. a lack of closure in everything he's ever experienced. constant doubt with nothing to lose
the nicest thing you could ever do for him is kill him, and dying is the most important thing he'll ever do. everything in his pitiful story screams hopelessness. its all so bleak and inevitable
Shin and Midori's friendship was for sure unhealthy but it's also much more complicated than "Midori is pure evil and exists only to cause Shin misery" and there's so much to analyze about it. I use both "Midori" and "Hiyori" for Seaweed-head and Shin is just Shin. There's a little bit of Kai analysis too for comparison. Be warned because there are a LOT of words beneath the cut as I ramble about these characters in a somewhat organized fashion!!
Yes, the Shin AI called Hiyori scary, and he recognized that his friend liked to see him anxious. Shin panicked when Sara accidentally imitated Midori, and he felt that his friend had some kind of darkness inside of him that he didn't want any part of. Their dynamic is absolutely concerning considering that when Shin took on the name Sou Hiyori, he adopted a cruel and manipulative personality—something he learned from experience. Shin freely admitted he feared Hiyori, and Sara said that Shin knew “how scary Midori can be" far before the Death Game occurred. Those feelings absolutely matter, but they are not the whole story.
What also matters is that alongside the bad parts, there were good parts, too. Shin is smiling in the lost memory and the photographs we see of him. He's comfortable enough to "playfully say good morning" and call Hiyori selfish and laugh with him. He's comfortable enough to tell him that he's like a big brother to him. He's distraught reading the test data because he learned that Midori got close to him just to hurt him. Because they were close!! Close enough for Shin to idolize his intelligence, to think of him as an anti-hero, to call him family, and to grieve his absence. The relationship was bad enough that Shin confessed he would've been relieved to learn that Hiyori died, but there was enough good there that Shin was desperate to see him again and did "all kinds of things" in an attempt to make that happen. Those feelings can coexist, and the war between them is a critical part of his character.
And Midori is a difficult character to figure out, but I think in his own messed up way, he genuinely did care about Shin. Midori, however, thinks that breaking people means loving them. He thinks killing Shin with his own hands is affection that no one else can understand. And it's horrible, but it's definitely a product of how he was raised. Kai's mini episode heavily implies this without mentioning Midori at all.
Also!! It's fascinating to compare and contrast Kai and Midori as children of Asunaro. Kai's computer files lovingly record everything Sara likes, which is similar in sentiment to Midori's book of test data on Shin filled with diary-like entries and poems. They both have an unusual dedication to a specific participant.
In Kai's mini story, when Sei asks Kai to kill him because he’s already dying, he can't follow through with it. Kai knew the pitiful love of a father, even if that love came to him in scraps wrapped up in so many layers of suffering. He knew the love of a brother unrelated by blood, even if that connection was fleeting. He later experienced the peace of cooking and cleaning and living a mundane life for the people he cared about, and he admitted he didn’t know what true affection was until then—that it was changing him, that it scared him. To him, even though he was raised as an assassin, killing someone was not loving or merciful. He got the chance to experience the world outside of the darkness he grew up in, and he slowly learned what it meant to take care of someone and be cared for in return (even if, in the end, he's betrayed by the same hand which gave him that peace).
What was different for Midori, similarly a child of Asunaro, that made him believe killing is a loving act? Or that hatred allows him to satisfy others? How can he say that he loves humans, but also call them toys, as though people are just possessions created for his own entertainment? The few lines we get from the woman who's likely his mother don't paint a great picture.
From the vague details we get in the lost memory scene, it seems like Shin lived in Midori's house for a while. Or, at the very least, he had access to it on a regular basis. Half the shelves contain Shin's items. He has a heater that he can only use at full blast when Midori isn't there, meaning that he stayed in his house even when the man was gone. The exact reason for why Midori was so disproportionately obsessed with Shin isn't defined, but I wonder if, similar to Kai, he was intrigued by what "normal" life felt like. The Shin AI says that you could find people like himself anywhere. Midori is destructively curious about people and their emotions, so I think that if he's given something he's never experienced before—like living a comparatively mundane life alongside Shin, who genuinely looked up to and admired him—then he's going to pick it apart until he understands. And he's going to love doing it, even if in the pursuit of that desire, the people around him suffer.
In spending so much time with him, Midori might have grown to care about Shin on a deeper level than most, like how Kai slowly grew to care about Sara. It's just that while Kai wanted to keep Sara out of the darkness, Midori seemed thrilled to drag Shin into it. Unlike Kai, who distances himself in fear of tainting other people's innocence and happiness, Midori "loves" people until they can't handle it anymore. He exhausts them, and they break down or die.
It seems like he was constantly in Shin's space or crossing acceptable boundaries. He had his hand on Shin's shoulder in the flashback, he always stared and shot glances at him, he excessively took photos and put them on display. While Kai's love is quiet, distant, and secretive, Midori's love is loud, obsessive, and intrusive. It's a fascinating contrast.
Shin was right to fear him. Even if Midori did actually care for him in his own distorted way, Shin didn't owe it to him to reciprocate something that hurt him—something that was always going to get him killed in the end. But Shin did care about him to some degree. He was lonely in Hiyori's absence, with nothing to remember him by but the confused emotions the man left in his wake and the memories of the abnormal adolescence he experienced alongside him.
Midori may have cared, but his affection definitely messed Shin up. That's what makes their interactions in the game so fascinating and painful. They're on completely different wavelengths, from completely different worlds. Shin grew up without the sibling he should have known, and he might have latched onto Midori as a substitute. However, Midori's twisted concept of love could never have done anything but hurt him in the end.
People can genuinely care for you and still hurt you so much, and YTTD depicts that concept so well.
andulkaphoto
blakekathryn
tangentwithtanner
snowghoul
turnnoffyourmind
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