003 WA KA BA (and/or anthy)
How I feel about this character: I like Wakaba a lot although she made less of an impression on me than usual on my most recent rewatch, which is still “a strong impression.” She occupies an odd space in the show inasmuch as she is like, a protagonist’s protagonist or an audience insert’s audience insert—these phrases don’t mean anything, I’m really tired. RGU takes an unusually dry tone with the envious inner life of wallflowers; a lot of fiction that wants to put a spotlight on NPCs does so with great portentousness, like, “mediocrity can be just as corrosive and soul-destroying as outward hardship, guys!” And RGU is willing to take all pain seriously but has some followup questions.
All the people I ship romantically with this character: Utena unrequited for sure—is that shipping? oh well—I also like, uh… I mean Wakaba has a nasty capacity for getting crushes in general, which is fun. She has the double-barreled thing of identifying curiosity and admiration as necessarily romantic if attached to an appropriate object, but also being a little bit aware of the gap and compensating accordingly, and she develops similar incomplete feelings for ineligible objects and doesn’t know what to make of it… anyway I don’t have Wakaba ships but I like how her crushes function in the show: first as like, tender place worthy of loving defense, then as gnawing disappointment that eats up lots, then later as plain border-patrolling—being “boy-crazy” in a naive deniable way that offloads scrutiny on the person next to her.
My non-romantic OTP for this character: Anthy in your award winning comic series
My unpopular opinion about this character: Not “unpopular” but I’m skeptical of innocuous Wakaba/female student council member ships, although I bear them no ill will. Like, Nanami and Wakaba are both separately excellent, but the lessons they’re unlearning are sort of diametrically opposed, and not in a flirty way… maybe. I can see Wakaba/Juri only in a “making the same mistakes but faster” sense.
One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: I kind of wish Utena outright rejected Wakaba’s help/curiosity/etc. at some point in arc 3 or 4; I think the background disintegration of their friendship is good but wouldn’t suffer from one point of direct contact, and obviously it’s like, all opportunities for direct contact are mediated through Akio because that’s how isolation tactics work—but isolation tactics have help when friends get pushy and possessive under cover of protectiveness. Nanami semi-fills this role instead, and I love those episodes, but they’re about Nanami more than Utena.
My OT3: Wakaba—>Utena/Anthy isn’t really a threesome??
