#anyway asahi is awesome shes silly and neat my silly little daughter

[oozmium]

My current run of smtiva has me thinking about Asahi a lot. I still have gripes with certain facets of her writing, but I've come to truly appreciate her as a character and understand how integral her relationship with Nanashi is in the game.

Her position as his childhood friend gives her a pre-established relationship with him, when compared to a good chunk of other smt heroines (iirc, nocturne's chiaki is the only other heroine who knows the protag prior to the events of the game, though the framing of nocturne doesn't leave a lot of room to utilize it to its fullest extent imo). There's a certain level of familiarity between the two that I don't think other smt characters have (there's comradery being built from a journey then there's having been together your whole life), as seen best in the prologue where she drags nanashi to get their own demons and become hunters. There's also her side story, where she clearly has a lot of faith and trust in him despite a seemingly hopeless situation.

And it's clear that Nanashi returns the sentiment. He trusts her to help him execute the plan to take out Dantalion in the side story. A lot of Nanashi's comments on relics goes back to her, and the DDS title captions are very explicit in saying that Nanashi thinks of her highly, despite her own perceived weakness (starts crying whenever I remember that her 2nd DDS title calls her irreplaceable). You can also interpret that certain canon events play out the way they do because of Asahi's influence on Nanashi, such as Nanashi choosing to make his deal with Dagda to resurrect and save Asahi from dying or how Nanashi could embrace the idea of killing the rest of the group once Asahi is out of the picture (almost like she was his last tether to humanity) (this is why i don't subscribe to the idea that Nanashi would be annoyed at Asahi or happy that she's gone bc the slivers of commentary we get from him outside of dialogue options +story beats shows that he very much does care for her).

It is just frustrating seeing her general reception with fans over the years hasn't changed. I get that she can be annoying, but she's nothing compared to how grating stuff like the Persona navigators can be. She has a decently written character arc (not the best, but when it comes to Apocalypse you gotta take what you can get) too. Really, the only thing I could not defend when it comes to her writing is those damn love triangle shenanigans between her, Toki, and Nanashi because it's so jarring to see it happen in a mainline smt game. (also bc it adds nothing to her character and you can still have Asahi distrust Toki w/o it being romance related but whatever I guess).