Quote:Less Peter Parker and more Walter Ddollneazz, the way I look at it. And it's slightly disturbing how firmly my subconcious has been trying to latch onto her personality, especially since a lot of what it's trying to do actually marches a little oddly with the things she does and says...
Looking forward to your Nao-arc, then. She was a pretty neat character in HiME, what with her plot-twisty backstory and all - plus, I consider myself a Spidey fan, or used to, so there's that angle. Speaking of which, if you ever have the characters throw a birthday party for her, there's your answer as to what to give her right there. Though I suspect her commentary on the comics would be 'is this some sort of hint that I should start wearing spandex? major turn-on of yours, huh?' or something in that vein. Hehe.
Yukino seems like a weak person when you first talk to her - obviously shy and retiring, and perhaps also indecisive and sheeplike. It's an impression that's got a good basis, since her public face seems like it'd be exactly that.
First impressions, as the cliche goes, can be decieving.
I won't try and say that she doesn't have a tendancy to second-guess herself, but once comfortable with a course of action she's got nerves of fucking tungsten carbide, and is one of the quickest thinkers I've ever seen. Not book-smarts, although she's certainly got a good share of those, too, but the kind of mind that can analyze a situation and hit exactly the right button to make it go the way she wants it to, or make up an entire backstory and rattle off the excuse for why she was in that secret Searrs lab anyway just as confidently as if it was really true.
She never became the kind of tactician that Akira and Midori were, but I think that she might very well have been the best at handling people.
Case in point: seeing her and Haruka in action, live and in-person, was fascinating - not because of the comedy value, or how much time Haruka spent, um, bouncing, but because, if you really, realy watched, and looked close at what was going on under the surface, it wasn't Haruka who was doing most of the controlling. Sure, if you looked just at how they ended up handling crises, it seemed like Haruka just put her head down and charged like a bull in a china shop and dragged the quieter HiME behind in her wake, but frankly those were emotional moments, and I don't think even the Lord God Almighty could get Haruka's attention once her dander was up.
The rest of the time? Little Miss Tornado was so straightforward that deception really wasn't something you could imagine from her, but every time she opened her mouth in the Council meetings, she glanced at Yukino first.
You sometimes hear talk about people who can know each other so well that they can have an entire conversation in no more than the space of a glance, with twins being the favorite example. I used to watch my parents do it, and Yukino and Haruka could manage the same trick.
Frankly, it was what made me start taking Haruka seriously as a person - that she could recognize her own weaknesses the way that kind of interaction required her to, and rely on someone else to do something so obviously important to her when she knew she couldn't. Now, that's not to say that she didn't have - and follow - her own ideas and opinions, since the idea of that woman being anybody's puppet is ludicrous to the point of comedy, but just that she was a good enough leader to know, and follow, good advice when she heard it.
Interestingly, Shizuru couldn't do the same thing if her life depended on it. She could delegate, yeah, and she certainly listened, but I never once saw her really let what she heard affect a decision she had already made.
Shizuru had been eating lunch with Mai and Mikoto when the whole Orphan attack mess kicked off, on the pretext of wanting to pick up a recipie she and Mai had discussed the night before, and, with the killer kitty around for backup, hadn't even needed to summon Kiyohime.
Interesting tidbit: the thing that Shizuru's Element has always most reminded me of is the weapon of a Soul Calibur character named Ivy. This same character is also, in properly skilled hands, one of the most dangerous in the game, and the reasons that would be intuitively expected to explain that hold quite, quite true in real life.
Our dear Miss Fujino's hands are very skilled, indeed.
I never got a clear description of exactly what the Orphan she fought looked like - the best guess I've been able to work up from the fragments she, Mikoto, and Mai were willing to part with seems like something straight out of one of Calvin and Hobbes' Spaceman Spiff episodes - but apparently it didn't stack up against an opponent who could produce dismemberingly powerful attacks at considerable range in less than the blink of an eye any better than, say, J. Random Security goon would.
Mai likely could have helped out a bit even considering all that, but at that point, she was quite thoroughly busy meeting Kagutsuchi... among other things.
Ja, -n
(bed. sleep. now.)
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"Puri puri puri puri... Bang!"