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pearlina week 2024 - day 7: side order reunion! 🪸

Lots of talk about how much Marina gushes over Pearl, which she does, but not enough talk about how protective Pearl is over Marina (including just being very attentive to her needs in general), and how feral she goes when she thinks Marina has been threatened. A few examples (including one from Octo Expansion in Splat 2):

Pearl wears a crown and goes by the stage name MC.Princess, but I think she acts much more like a knight, and treats Marina like the princess she wants to protect, in all senses of the word. 💜

splatsvilles-fashionista

It is very funny of Marina to fall madly in love with the very first person she met on the surface, but in her defense if I had just left the dreary underground military regime that I had lived my entire life in, feeling the sun on my skin for the very first time, and there, on that mountain I, as if fate ordained it, met a tomboyish heavy metal princess with a voice that shattered glass? I'd stand no chance either.

pavlover-boy

part 2

caffstrink

I pray to you please draw the lesbian thing as pearlina it’s so them

if u feel like it ofc!!!

Making my own dreams come true, just for u anon

azuremist

Can’t stop thinking about princess and knight Pearlina.

Pearl is MC Princess, and her Japanese name literally means “princess”. Marina was an elite Octoling soldier. Superficially, they are a princess and a knight.

Personality-wise, though, it’s the other way around. Marina wants to be a storybook princess, atop a tower, waiting for Pearl to rescue her. She wants to be protected, and Pearl wants to protect her, in turn — only ever scared when she fears for Marina’s safety.

Pearl, “MC Princess” from a rich family, aggressively defends and protects her princess Marina without fear, and Marina, once an Octoling soldier, gets to rely on and swoon over her beloved “brave Pearl”. Like…

Do you even get it. Do you even get it…

splatfest3ever

I’ve seen some people complaining about the remix of Color Pulse, but I think it’s really interesting on a meta level. Time in the Splatoon world is still moving forward. Both Pearl and Marina have aged in the game AND in real life! Pearl is 26 now! She’s nearing 30! Of course her cadence and rhythm will have changed! Same for Marina! And behind the scenes the voice actors have aged 7 years too.

That’s a novelty of Splatoon that makes it feel so realistic and vibrant! Things do change over time! The hub worlds change, the shops change, the characters change… this new remix reflects that change.

But what’s more interesting to me is how their new song “We’re so back!” shows how much both of them have matured. Pearl in particular is less energetic and bouncy than she is for Color Pulse. Don’t get me wrong, she’s still spitting bars and doing high kicks… but there’s now a much more refined and reserved attention to her dancing than we’ve seen from her in the past. It’s almost Squid Sisters level of choreography. I think that reflects her maturity.

Likewise with Marina, she’s much more active than she was in Color Pulse. She’s no longer stuck in the background occasionally going back to her keyboard during the song, now she plays a keytar and dances in sync with Pearl. It seems like she’s less shy and much more comfortable with herself. And that makes sense narratively too since at the start of Splatoon 2 she was sort of hiding her Octoling roots, and by Splatoon 3 the Inklings and Octolings are living their best lives openly together!

I’m not saying you have to enjoy the remix. Personally I prefer the energy of the original song better. But I don’t think that the new version is terrible either. It’s just different. Because they’re different! You can really see how much they’ve grown in these past 7 years. And that’s ultimately a good thing!