Fall 2018 Grab Bag Week 12: Yagate Kimi ni Naru
Published on December 21, 2018
It feels weird to talk about this show for the first time right as it's get close to its ending, but I'm not really in a mood to comment on Sword Art Online. For the most part, I've generally stuck this series on kind of a middle-level. I think it's interesting because of how it seems to truly explore character thoughts and motivations (rather than using generic, flowery language like other romances), but I haven't been overly enthusiastic about it. The series does look great, though.
That being said, I do like the general idea of personas in this series, especially with the recent episode's shift to exploring the assumptions we've had about Touko's sister. Even without having younger siblings, I'm sure it's not hard to understand the desire to project the appearance of reliability to someone who looks up to you, so it's a nice development.
If anything, this episode made it sound a lot more like Touko's sister was actually a bit opportunistic, having gained a positive image as the hard-working student council president purely through the support of her friends. I'm actually quite curious to see how this affects Touko's view of herself and her sister, since it seems to shatter a lot of her preconceptions.
Still, part of me wonders if Touko has always secretly known this about her sister. In an earlier episode, Yuu was trying to find out about Touko's sister, only to find that many of the records related to her had disappeared. At the time, it was suggested that Touko was the reason behind it, so it's possible that she already had an idea.
To take a step back, the recent episodes haven't focused as much on Yuu, but she's part of the primary focus in the series. I wanted to note that I find her intriguing as a character. She seems to take an analytical approach to "love" as an emotion she doesn't understand, and I find that cool.