do you mind telling a bit about haneina guys? they seem very interesting from their descriptions in relationship chart and all, but I wonder what their role in the story is, especially with how many things happen in the 3rd volume. but they really do seem fun at least
They're indeed very interesting and fun characters, but they don't show up much. And when they do, the focus is on Eddie and You. These two are fascinating. I gotta admit that everything about them is very sudden and very rushed, like the rest of this volume in general, but I really like these boys and I like the different ways that Ayano uses to make each character very unique, although it sometimes gets out of hand. In their case, this duo has some memories of their past lives.
You must be wondering if shit's about to get crazy here. Yeah, it is. I think we're all used to it by now. And that's why the whole thing doesn't seem too ridiculous. It's a big plot device that comes in like a bomb, completely unanounced and with zero foreshadowing to it, yet it manages to not be a shift in tone. I won't say it doesn't feel out of place or weird, because it does. It just doesn't feel out of the possibilities of the Tsurune universe.
Make no mistake, though. When you read volume 3 and get to this part, it's gonna slap you in the face.
Anyway, long story short, Eddie and You were samurai in one of their previous incarnations and they fought alongside each other. They remember some of that, so they were pretty surprised when they first met in high school. This moment felt like the Spider Man meme. There's a lot more to this than it seems, I promise, but I'd have to explain a good chunk of volume 3 to get the message across and that's probably beyond the point of this ask.
Their dynamics resemble Hiroki and Daigo's friendship a lot to me. Their whole deal is that they're partners, and one is just your friendly neighborhood guy while the other is kind of an oddball but also very nice. You is always helping people out and Eddie is always helping him. The two also have that Tsurune thing going on for them where they complete each other. They're described as "having the colors of the Sun", as in Eddie is blond and You is a redhead. And they're very non-conventional practicers of Japanese archery, which earns them disfavor amongst older people, but they're really just doing their thing and not caring about what anyone else thinks.
When you add Ena to the equation, the whole point of these guys is to raise questions about kyudo and Japan's conservationism. About who should have the right to practice traditional Japanese culture and who shouldn't, as well as what's considered to be the "correct" way to do it and who gets to be taken seriously when doing it. After all, what you've got here is a foreigner, a Japanese who identifies more with the West and a woman. All of them represent repressed minorities within Japanese society and it's very thought-provoking to see the callbacks that the author brings up through them.
The other members of the team are quite unique too, such as Matsuda, who is visually impaired, and Igarashi, who loves gardening and has a bow with flowers and birds carved into it. Like all the other teams, they're a bunch of weirdoes and I love them.
