#I don't see much working in Hayami's favor to improve her character

[shidoukanae]

Out of curiosity, why don’t you like Hayami?

I’m curious to know what prompted this but I guess I’ve made it a bit too obvious somehow that Hayami isn’t one of my most liked characters out of the entire VRAINS cast lol

(if you don’t want the specific reasons/examples on why I don’t like Hayami, there’s a summary at the bottom that tries to sum my feelings up properly without all the explanation attached)

But, to put it into simpler words - I really, really want to like her canon character but I can’t. 

There are a variety of factors for this but, to me, it just feels like she’s a near cardboard cut-out. When she was first introduced, this was actually kind of impressive: we had this sweet girl who was clumsy, loved to leap to conclusions, had maybe stalkerish tendencies towards Akira (as well as her obsession towards him which…*sigh*), and seemed to know a few things about SOL to the point she knew/paid close attention to the fact that Akira was formerly head of security. For a debuting character in episode 14, this was intriguing and I wanted to see where our new female character would lead us. I’m a fan of all the female characters the show had so far at that point (Ema & Aoi) so I hoped her rather peppy personality would prove as an interesting contrast to those two.

…Except, it never did. Hayami hasn’t improved past her initial character debut, has only had like maybe a running total of three minutes screen-time in which she’s shown talking. She hasn’t grown and, rather, it seems as if her character potential has shrunk to the point she’s dull and people actually seem to forget she exists because she’s that forgettable as a character. 

I mean, contrast her to Kitamura who also debuted the same time Hayami did in episode 14. Kitamura is not easily forgettable not just because his character isn’t attractive looking but because he’s interesting in a despicable kind of way. 

Kitamura is a very selfish man who’s been put unfairly into a position of power another character deserved. He’s very greedy, very backstabbing, his abuse of his “minions” and his lust for more money makes him an interesting character to watch especially since he totes himself as this big and grand power and is really just a coward. 

Not only that, but we keep seeing Kitamura over and over again, keep seeing him act as a villain to thwart Playmaker’s plans, to fight against Hanoi with the three masterminds, to abandon SOL to earn a place at Hanoi’s feet as data. He’s been so relevant to the plot that, without him, Playmaker would have had smoother sailing into the data bank (thus rendering Ema’s and Akira’s sneaky plan either ineffective or they get there too late for Akira to try and “Talk things out” with Playmaker). He also made the masterminds of Hanoi a credible threat with his bot army being defeated (and looking back at the duels with Playmaker and Blue Angel against the bots the fact that these 100 or bots were defeated so quickly is simply astounding) and his duel with Spectre leads to not only SOL being powerless in this time of crisis (bc they have no head of security now to try and figure out a way to fight back) but it also gives ample warning to the public about why to stay away (thus explaining why 99% of VRAINS players are not present along with the fact that Kitamura manipulated the news channels so no one would “interfere” with Hanoi’s plans). 

If we erase Hayami, however, there’s not much that can be said about her impact on the show. The only two major things I can think of that she’s done are: telling Akira off about wanting to control his sister and by apparently notifying him every time a Link VRAINS broadcast is on. Ema already did the first thing by telling Akira he has to let his sister go (so Hayami is literally just repeating the message) while the latter means that apparently Akira doesn’t care about Link VRAINS (even though it was part of his former job and involves his unpredictable sister a majority of the time??) so he needs someone else to pass him along information on the news even though Hayami probably shouldn’t be doing that while she’s working??

Like, the only new things we’ve learned about her since her debut is that she is a fan of Blue Angel and that she, like Ema (albeit in a less familiar way), doesn’t want to see Aoi controlled by Akira. She doesn’t really do or say much that impacts the plot and even if you go so far to say she serves a love interest to Akira (the only valid purpose I can see Hayami having at the moment for the show in its entirety aside from walking information booth), then she’s a very poor love interest especially when you compare her to Ema (and not just because I ship Akira with Ema. I would love to ship Akira and Hayami too but there is utterly nothing substantial there that doesn’t currently scream unrequited or borderline obsessive while with Ema it’s more unsaid intimacy and full of mystery and intrigue).

Not only that but, aside from the fact that Hayami works at SOL, it literally seems as if her entire life revolves around Akira. She doesn’t have any hopes or dreams or outside connections that don’t lead back to Akira some way (meaning being Aoi Zaizen’s fangirl doesn’t count. If she liked Playmaker or Go it would be more credible but liking Akira Zaizen’s sister…nah, that’s just a cheap excuse for an “outside” interest). Hayami frankly doesn’t seem to exist outside her office with Akira. Hell, she might as well live in that office of theirs for all we know because there’s no mention of family or bills or her dreams or her hobbies or anything that isn’t somehow related to Akira or giving him information. 

So, in the end, Hayami’s strictly a flat character in which her only purpose seems to be act as Akira’s way to get information on Link VRAINS/his sister while he’s at work. She doesn’t really push the plot in any meaningful way that couldn’t be negated by another character (or, hell, Akira himself) and she really doesn’t do much either outside of spilling coffee in her debut episode and simply just sitting around and talking or clacking away the keys at a keyboard. 

And, as she’s one of only four female characters in the cast, it really hurts me to see that she’s lacking any true substance in her character, especially when there’s so much different from the other three! She’s the only one of the cast who lives a “normal” life and yet we don’t hear anything about what that life consists of?? Like, Aoi and Ema and Vyra each seem to burdened and troubled by something either subtly or not and yet here is Hayami, who is care-free and an everyday citizen, and the best we get from her is obsessing over a character instead of actually getting to know a member of the female cast who’s not troubled? 

I mean, when you think about it, she’s technically Naoki’s counterpart in that while Naoki is a normal person who interacts with the main child - Playmaker - on a near daily basis, Hayami is the normal person who interacts with the main adult (as, when you compare Akira to Ema or Shoichi or even Dr. Kogami Akira has clearly had more relevance and plot importance than any of them so far). Yet, in comparison to Naoki who even gets his own VR form and mini sub-plot, Hayami is still a poorly-done character and hasn’t done much for the 16+ episodes since she’s first shown up.

And, while I admit we’re still early in the show and there is plenty of time for Hayami to shine just like Naoki or Kitamura or any of the other female characters of the cast, it sure as hell isn’t looking that likely. I get that she’s a side character but, as far as side characters go, she is absolutely the worst of them. She doesn’t have the personality or that Naoki or Vyra or Faust or Dr. Genome has, she doesn’t have the mystery and intrigue that Dr. Kogami and the Chess Pieces have, and she most certainly does not have major bearing on the plot like Kitamura had. She has potential to show us what “normal” in this world means, to give us insight that the other three female characters (+ most of the other cast) cannot and yet, as it is now, she’s been reduced to this rather flat and Akira-obsessive fangirl with little to no weight on the story of the show.

So, yeah, I want to like her but there’s just a variety of factors that accumulate in my disdain of her. Her episode 14 debut gave me hope but, after that, it’s hard not to admit she’s forgettable and literally just a pretty face in a cast that boasts itself on personality and mystery. Maybe, in the future, I’ll come around to actually liking her canon character but, as she is now, it’s really hard for me to like the show’s interpretation of her or even hope that she’ll get better.

Super short version if you don’t want to read my giant essay: I want to like Hayami but it’s hard to when her character is reduced to an Akira fangirl and, in comparison to other side characters, she falls really, really flat and almost has little to no bearing on the plot itself as of current. She feels like she’s there as a possible unrequited love interest but more so she feels like she’s only there to reinforce messages other people have told Akira and to give him information that he could probably find out himself about. She has potential as a “normal” character to show off what “normal” means in VRAINS and yet, outside of Akira, she seems to have no life, dreams, or anything that really makes her a living, breathing person like the rest of the cast VRAINS boasts. The show is in its early stages, I know that, but 16+ episodes in with only ~3 minutes screen time for Hayami in total does not bode well for her character nor does it give me hope that she’ll improve beyond being a character who practically seems to exist so long as Akira exists at SOL.