Iori and Takeru
Send me two names among the following 12 and I’ll write a short analysis post about them:
Taichi Yagami | Yamato Ishida | Sora Takenouchi | Koushirou Izumi | Mimi Tachikawa | Jyou Kidou | Takeru Takaishi | Hikari Yagami | Daisuke Motomiya | Miyako Inoue | Iori Hida | Ken Ichijouji
Disclaimer: I won’t claim this to be a conclusive/definitive analysis of all of the ship’s aspects. Ship dynamics vary depending on which parts of the series/timeline or media types you are looking at. So this is going to be my personal take on it and just a personal interpretation of how I perceive them.
Whether canon provides input on them or not:
Okay, this has been sitting in my queue for a while now, since my brain couldn’t really focus on anything and still somewhat can’t, but I wanted to give this a shot. Digimon Adventure 02 didn’t manage to focus on each and every jogress combination with the same attention distribution, but, obviously, there was still a focus on the relationship between Takeru and Iori. First of all, they’re paralleling each other in quite a few instances - they’re both the youngest members of their respective Chosen Children groups and, due to their more or less visible trauma regarding loss/death, also struggle with their value systems to at least some degree. As I have pointed out before, I haven’t fully watched 02 in quite a while, but I still remember that Iori tried awfully hard to make sense of Takeru’s contradicting behaviour, to get closer to and understand him better. Takeru on the other hand wasn’t projecting as hard onto Iori as he could have technically have, but he still acted very much brotherlike towards him, tried to encourage and cheer him up - while still upholding quite a mask of smiles and (fake) confidence, despite all the wrath and angst he still hasn’t been able to resolve and/or open up to yet (towards the power of darkness, towards his familial issues, the black/white mentality between good and evil, etc.). The closer these two get to their jogress transformation, the more they try to (mutually) support each other. Again, it may not be as deep as it hits you with Daisuke and Ken, but you can still tell that these two care about each other, are both pretty passionate about what they believe in and are thus more similar to each other than what meets the eye. The age difference may have made it a little bit difficult for them to get closer on an even deeper level - but who knows, maybe the 02 movie will show us how these two have progressed throughout all these years.
Whether I think why and how they’d work:
As pointed out in the previous part, the age difference makes it somewhat difficult to estimate how a closer relationship between these two could look like - they do give me quite the brotherly vibes due to how they’re set up and how similar they actually are regarding their moods, even if someone has to look beyond Takeru’s mask of smiles to see that. However, once Iori DOES get through to him, once they’re old enough to be able to face their own demons more openly, I feel like these two definitely could provide emotional shelter for each other. Generally speaking, there are so many things they could potentially bond over, starting over the lack of direct father figures in their lives (even though Hiroaki is certainly not the worst dad out there, he’s just not very present in Takeru’s every-day-life - and both of them have a lot of indirect dad figures among the Chosen Children, ESPECIALLY in Jyou, whom both have a bond with, heck, it’s not even surprising to see how Iori interacted with Yamato quite a few times). Iori actually strikes me as a person who will get in touch with himself a lot more quickly than Takeru, so he might actually end up as the one who’d confront him at some point, asking him to rely on him more and once Takeru realizes that he CAN rely more on others without being considered weak for it - the healing opportunities could be endless.
Takeru would also definitely be among those to watch all of Iori’s kendo tournament (alongside Mimi and Jyou) and they’d absolutely spend study sessions together. Plus, I’d love the idea that Iori would proofread Takeru’s stuff for him later on (Takeru may have asked Hikari and Koushirou before to do that, but both of them were too extensive in their feedback, so while he still asks for their advice, he prefers talking about his ideas with Iori, since he enjoys his calmness about it).
Whether I’d prefer them as platonic or romantic ship:
Again, it’s difficult for me to see either of them in a romantic relationship with each other, given how we only witnessed them as VERY young, even if the age difference wasn’t that big. As outlined above, I do believe that they could be very good and very soft with each other, once they’ve realized that their black/white way of judgment wasn’t the right track (which they already somewhat managed to do throughout 02), so I am actually looking forward to see whether they really remained personally close throughout all these years. Kizuna didn’t give much of an indication, just implied that the whole 02 group spends time together. For now, I can definitely see them as brothers - but I’m not completely ruling out the idea that they could be nice romantic partners for each other as well once they've reached a certain age. Like with many other ships, it’ll depend on how honest they can be with themselves and each other - as jogress partners, the groundwork is definitely there, but they still have a lot of work left to do.
