Short but delicious~ Classic Kodama, messed up characters, lmao! Akane decides to show her feelings by jumping the main character while said character's boyfriend is sleeping in the same room, and Kotori herself is genuinely messed up. I think Minalinsky's analysis was the most accurate one regarding this.
Thinking more on it, I would not be so quick to label Kotori as twisted or messed up too quickly. While her feelings certainly could be seen as dubious, I argue that it in a sense is only natural to feel what she does at the end.
As indicated in the oneshot, all her life she's put herself down and been put down by others. Everyone's always passed her up for Akane and she's always seen herself as inferior, but finally, someone's told her that she's the one they love and want the most - and it's the very person she's always believed to be unreachable and untouchable by someone like her.
Perhaps it's not the most innocent reason to fall in love, but is it so unnatural or wicked to fall in love with someone because they're the only one in your life who thinks you're worth loving unconditionally to begin with?
And from the start, I do contend with the idea that she doesn't actually care about or love Akane in addition to the above feelings. Kodama doesn't shy away from showing her characters' darker thoughts and yet Kotori is, within the span of the oneshot, shown to not harbor a single negative thought about Akane. Even when her walking-human-refuse of a boyfriend makes that shitty comment to her because of Akane's beauty, all Kotori really thinks is that she'll never match up to Akane, not that Akane is some boyfriend stealing b-word or something like that. The closest thing to a bad thought she thinks is that Akane is her friend but sometimes being around her just makes her feel like she'll never be good enough for anyone. Which is totally reasonable given her position and even speaks positively of her character, that she can resist the temptation to lay blame on a blameless Akane.
In other words, Kotori did nothing wrong and she loves Akane from the start, at least as a friend.
last edited at Nov 25, 2019 10:40AM