#echos personal rambles

[nageki-the-friendly-ghost]

A fun part of living past being a teenager is my view on Nageki shifting from "he's just like me fr fr" to "move aside Hitori, that's MY rude little brother"

[echo-of-a-person]

There comes a point where nothing fits

Your skin too tight, your smile too fixed.

No words apply when everything's adrift,

So you shed your body till your spirit lifts.

[nageki-the-friendly-ghost]

Hot take maybe

While I love Yuuya being alive and what we get to see of Hitori and Shuu's fucked up dynamic I kinda... prefer the ending of BBL without the epilogue? I really love the bittersweetness and ambiguity of Ryouta being frozen right before the credits roll

[nageki-the-friendly-ghost]

obviously the main appeal of sakuryou is funny detective partners but have you considered

Sakuya becoming estranged from the Le Bell family to become a musician like in his ending, but having to work a customer service job to make ends meet. And immediately gaining 100x more respect for Ryouta and apologizing for every classist thing he's ever said because "this is what you've had to live with? You work MULTIPLE of these jobs?"

[nageki-the-friendly-ghost]

I don't think anything will shape my personality as much as pulling my first ever all nighter at my dad's house when I was 13 to finish BBL and sobbing so hard i nearly threw up lol

[nageki-the-friendly-ghost]

Continuing my long tradition about writing about Hatoful on real assignments that I turn in to be read by real professors

[nageki-the-friendly-ghost]

Need to advance my colorwork knitting skills so I can make my own hatoful boyfriend merch...

[nageki-the-friendly-ghost]

Also, like. Hiyoko is SOOO important, not just plot-wise but also tonally. When she's there the story moves forward, at pretty much the same pace in every route. She and whichever bird you focus on are able to move forward too, in whatever way that looks like for them. She is self-assured, bright and bubbly, funny, not at all serious, but also very emotionally aware and able to land some impactful moments.

And then she is gone. And the game freezes on one awful day that lasts longer than any of the years she experienced in other routes. The birds are stuck dwelling in the present mystery, and in their individual pasts that lead them here. And her narration is replaced with Ryouta's: straightforward, panicked, confused. Moments of levity still exist, but like her spirit, all we get are glimpses. The ghost of a "normal" life.

Her death isn't just for shock value (though. It is also that), it is the interruption of all that she brought to the world. Everyone else spirals when they're out of her orbit, but, though it gets worse before it gets better, her influence is not gone. Her death forces Sakuya into an actually important leadership position where he has to work WITH people rather than above them. Her (probably unintentional) actions as Labor 9 force Ryouta to the library, which leads Nageki to recover his memories faster and in more depth than his route. Killing her was part of Shuu's plan all along, but Ryouta's reaction to it is finally what makes him stop chasing Ryuuji's wish. Because of Shuu's plan for her death, the medical center is finally opened and Hitori stops lying in wait. Anghel and Okosan, the joke-route characters who Hiyoko fit right in with, are both given more narrative weight while still providing the humor found in their otome routes. And of course, EVERYTHING Ryouta does in BBL is because of Hiyoko- she is the one he is so desperate to find the truth for, finding out his own role in her death emotionally destroys him, he's is brought out of his violent mindless state by her ghost telling him that it's not what she wants. If we follow BBL's motif of chasing shadows, she is who Ryouta is chasing.

Hiyoko Tosaka is the heart of heartful boyfriend, and at the center of hurtful boyfriend's hurt.