#i really want to like you aoi zaizen i just wish this show had given me more to love

[lia404]

For the Yu-Gi-Oh Asking Meme thing! :>

What are your opinions on Aoi Zaizen?

Guess who's late with her answers to ask meme! I promise I absolutely did not leave this post drafted for weeks and then forgot to complete and post it and only remembered just today. Nope, not at all. Who even gave you this idea.

OKAY. Maybe it is what happened—that, and also the fact that this is actually the ask that gave me most trouble answering. I would have never expected it to be so hard to write about Aoi! Please don't hate me

Answers under the cut!

----------- And I'm keeping track again here so I stop getting lost in my own blog: The original Ask meme Seto Kaiba Yusaku Fujiki Spectre I still answer for other characters so long as they're from DM or Vrains!

Why I like her/why I don’t

Full disclosure: I started answering the questions from the bottom and am thus concluding with this one. Because, see, this is THE question that gave me most trouble. Why do I like Aoi? For her potential as a character. Why don't I like Aoi? For what we're given of her character in canon. It is so frustrating.

I usually love the trope of the withdrawn girl with a colourful persona, it lends itself to really nice character development in general. So Aoi was off to a good start with me: her IRL personality and its contrast with her Vrains avatar just delighted me. I liked the premise of her awkwardness, and of how wary she was to trust people; it made sense.

But then, she became this strange plot tool, used to develop other characters, or advance the plot in a weird way? And her characterisation became so confusing, with the only remaining traits the most grating ones. Now, all that remains of her in my head is this idea of a girl who is a little too righteous, thinks she can understand things she can't, put herself in harm's way without good backup or good reasoning.

There's a lot that could be taken from this, and there are many readings that could make it make sense. By the power of transformative works, it could even be turned into something really good. I realised as I was answering all these questions that it might be interesting to do some sort of introspective, chara-analysis piece about Aoi, but I'm not sure this is something I could fully dive into. She's just too all over the place, and I'd need weeks to nail what I want to bring out from the pieces we've been given. We'll see what 2025 brings us, I guess.

I promise I want to love Aoi. I love the Aoi in my heart. I just... don't like the one we've been given.

What I like about her appearance

I actually really like Aoi's design! Be it her subdued RL self, or any of her avatars. To me, Aoi's designs make her one of the most emblematic characters of Vrains. I love how cohesive her Vrains avatars are, tying together aspects of her real life self (including her younger self, with the ponytails), with lots of tiny details and patterns that evolve along with her designs (the clover, wings, hearts, and colours!)

But my absolute favourite detail is the fact that her Vrains avatar has eyes the same colour of her step-brother.

This, to me, is a statement from Aoi that even if IRL they don't look alike, Akira and her are brother and sister, even if not fully by blood. While I am not overly fond of the way her characterisation often falls back on the fact that Aoi needs to prove herself to her brother, I still find it very wholesome that she keeps this trait in all her avatars.

Do I prefer her dub names or original names?

I learnt about Skye Zaizen really late, so much so that in fact, I didn't reconcile it with Aoi Zaizen. The same happened with Takeru and Kusanagi, actually. I was genuinely baffled at who we could be talking about. In my defense, I had sort-of forgotten that the tradition of "occidentalising" names was still going, I genuinely thought it had stopped after Naruto. Yes, that's how on top of US-distributed anime I have been in the past 20 years. Woops. For real, though, I don't have anything against Skye Zaizen, if anything it's a nice pun on her name (even if, wrong "Aoi"). As I said, I just can't reconcile that name with Aoi Zaizen.

Long story short, I prefer the original name because that's the one I'm used to.

OTP

Noooo this is SO difficult ;-; The thing is, it's really hard for me to think of a romantic ship for Aoi, because I can't headcanon her as anything but aromantic. That said, there is a lot of potential with so many characters. I already mentioned I like Blueghostshipping a lot, and I also like the average Zinniashipping, it writes itself with canon. Angelmakershipping is nice too (even if this ship name is really weird to me, Angelmaker in my language is something very different), because the awkward interactions between Yusaku and Aoi could lead to very interesting dynamics as they develop a relationship.

BUT if I may, and please don't cringe too fast: my OTP might be Altarshipping. I'm seeing this as purely platonic, but in a nice, two-ways relationship in which Aoi learns from Ema, and Ema learns from Aoi. Just let them be roommates and drive Akira crazy. They can have cats, too. Or dragonflies.

NOTP

*whine in why-are-these-questions-so-hard* Any romantic relationship? I just can't see it.

OT3

I... frankly have no idea. I swear I really tried to think of one, but nothing seems to work. I'm so sorry.

Favourite card she uses

HER ENTIRE TRICKSTAR DECK. I love the Trickstars so, so, SO much. Listen, even back in 2004 my favourite way to deal damages was from card effects. Watching Blue Angel's first duel was like a dream come true. Her cards are so cute. The effect damage is so delicious.

And you want me to choose only one? Really? Then I'll go with the one I like most having on my field, because it's so adorable (and a bit mean <3)

Not only it allows for a nice combo when summoning it, but the 200 damage for each card added to the opponent's hand is just a delight.

That said, if we're talking pure visual design, I'm going to be very un-original.

Holly Angel is just so good. She fits Blue Angel so well. The whip, the hearts, the flowers, this card is so pretty. I want to have it IRL so much. I don't even have a deck to play it, but it's just so beautiful. She's the perfect fairytale-themed idol and I love her. I am very normal about Holly Angel.

Favourite moment she was in

I think it might be her duel against Baira? Maybe I was just very happy to see Aoi win ;_; It's nice to see a full duel with her deck, and I also really like Baira, so the interactions were enjoyable (or at least, the potential of them.)

Least favourite moment

I'll start with every moment when she acts as if she "understood everything" without realising she's probably projecting, not questioning the situation well, and overall being "that character who's here to allow the characterisation of others to shine". I covered it partially in my answer for Yusaku and Spectre, already.

Another moment I really dislike is when she duels Soulburner. It just doesn't make sense for her to get this nice evolution into Blue Gal, only to fall back into a situation of "I must do this for SOL and my brother". Even Ghost Girl finds it unreasonable. It just makes me sad.

And finally, her evolution into Blue Maiden. This one is a me-problem, I just really liked Blue Girl and her incredible potential, and seeing Aoi going again through a pattern of "this is my true me!" while falling back into what people expect her to be... I have a personal beef against Blue Maiden. Why did they do this to you ;_;

Would I fuck, marry or kill her

By elimination, I would neither kill nor fuck, so that leaves marry. Honestly, that would be a fun marriage between two very unbalanced girls. I could see it as a "wedding between roommates for pure practical reasons." We would most likely kill all party mood ever. Be the Jane to my Daria, Aoi. (Seriously though I'm already happily married, someone else take care of Aoi she deserves it.)

[flydotnet]

Tango à Trois - Chapter 1: Hollyhock

Next Chapter (TBA)

Summary: Aoi Zaizen is a confused bisexual girl with two crushes at once and who doesn't know how to cope with that. Miyu Sugisaki is Aoi's best friend with a crush and doesn't know how to cope with growing another crush. Yusaku Fujiki is a confused teenager with a crush on his classmate and doesn't know how to cope with having a crush at all.

Chapter Summary: (N/A)

Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS Pairs: Aoi/Yusaku/Miyu (subsets: Zinnia, Angelmaker, future Moonlight), secondary Kiku/Takeru and Ema/Akira

Chapter Count: 1/?

Notes: If everything feels kind of weird, it's because it's all set in a no-LI, no-Link VRAINS-ish AU for VRAINS I've come up with like eons ago in Internet time.

I came up with this ship on the fly (haha pun) in a group chat on Discord and stuck with it for some goddamn reason, and now I can't let go of it. In case you were curious yes I actually have some semblance of plan for this despite having this rushed, shitty first chapter because this is literally a random outlet for when I'm less inspired by my actual WIP novels lmao. While I know nobody is really gonna give a shit, I'm still posting it to show there are other ships than DSS around this hell of an Earth

xoxo, Fly

AO3 version available here.

Aoi had always been a rather confused girl when it was about romance. She used to blame it on her brother’s overprotectiveness, but seeing as she was still confused when he started dating Ema, her current future sister-in-law (there was no way they were getting split up, they were the perfect awkward couple in her eyes), that had clearly been a wrong hypothesis and, needless to say, she felt dumb because of it.

In fact, Aoi was confused enough by what love even was to begin with. It was about finding people attractive and wanting to spend something like eternity with them, right? So why did she find everyone attractive? Why were girls cute and boys handsome? Wasn’t she supposed to be like her brother Akira and find either boys or girls attractive? He had told her it was fine if she was into girls, but he had never said anything about being into both, if that was the term for it. What if that wasn’t natural? What if she was never meant to find both attractive? Was she defective? So many questions…

 So she turned to her childhood best friend, Miyu. The latter had always been more in-touch with relationships and socializing, she’d have an answer, right? So they sent each other messages on one night, because Aoi was way too shy and intimidated to bring up such a sensitive topic in a public setting like school (someone could hear them, and it’d be catastrophic). Sure enough, Miyu told her it was called being bisexual, and it was perfectly normal.

Aoi’s heart strangely fluttered when her best friend, her most trusted confident, confessed to her that she, too, was bisexual and into both girls and boys. Was it relief or excitement, she didn’t know. She couldn’t guess or make a solid supposition, she couldn’t know.

 On another evening, she took it to Ema to make sure it was normal. Her brother’s girlfriend, recently turned fiancée, had truly become the big sister figure she had never gotten: Ema was the best person to confide something to and yet make sure her brother would never be aware of it unless Aoi told him herself. Ema had taken the topic seriously yet lightly, never overdramatizing everything like her sister-in-law had the tendency to do. However, even after confiding that she, too, was a bi lady (there really were a lot of bisexuals in her circles, huh), the flutter in Aoi’s heart didn’t appear again. She put it on the behalf that it could have just been her relief making her heart be all weird, but… there had to be something more to it. She knew it.

Aoi’s next step was talking it out with a long-distance friend she had met right before her brother had gotten his current job at SOL: Kiku. By that point, she knew she was bisexual and to distinguish romantic attraction from platonic feelings (mostly by using her brother and Kiku as references), but she still wanted to talk it out with another confident. Much to her fortune, Kiku took the news very well, wording huge words of supports and wishing her all the happiness in the world she could muster. The encouragement would have not been this overwhelming would Kiku’s boyfriend Takeru not have heard her happy squeals and joined in on the fun. Aoi was pretty sure she was radiating red when she got showered with an entire dictionary of nice words.

Eventually, she told her brother about it. Even if he was the one person she trusted the most in the world, the one she’d no doubt count on would something ever go wrong, the man who had raised her instead of their parents since she had been ten, she was still tense when telling him about it. He had shown distress at first, mostly because of how nervous she was when asking him “big brother, can we have a talk, please?”, but quickly untensed when she spat out the information. A pat on her shoulder and a hug later, her ears almost went deaf when he told her he was proud of her for being brave enough to tell him and wished her the best of lucks. Her entire being destressed with all of this behind her, but that didn’t solve another issue that had risen.

 The fluttering in her heart.

 The thing was, Aoi had ever only felt her heart flutter in this strange, intense way around two persons: Miyu and a boy from her class that she had eventually befriended. She wasn’t surprised to figure out she had a crush on Miyu: it only took her a few days to get over it, strangely enough. Perhaps it was because they had known each other for years; and knowing her best friend was no stranger to being attracted to girls comforted her into getting over it and acknowledging her romantic feelings. They had always been very close, always holding hands as children in the park and indulging in it when nobody was looking in middle school: there was nothing weird about what they were doing, what she was feeling.

Perhaps there even was a chance for Miyu to be in love with her too.

 However, the boy was another question altogether. Yusaku Fujiki was his name: he had always been rather quiet, not overly shrouded in mystery but never proactive in group conversations. They had shared classes for a few years by then, mostly subjects where she rather preferred teaming up with someone as discreet and apparently socially awkward as Fujiki rather than anyone else in the classroom (it also allowed her to escape from alpha bitchy popular girls and guys trying to hit on her as soon as they crossed gazes). Eventually, they became comrades, then friends, hanging out in most classes and between those to pass the time. Miyu had never been in the same class or workgroup as her: but it wasn’t too grievous when she had someone to rely upon, her now-trusted Yusaku.

Oh, that phrasing may have been too forward.

While Miyu and she had always been on a first-name basis, as calling each other by one’s surname was not a thing in kindergarten times, it hadn’t been the same with Fujiki. Getting to know each other as classmates passing papers off to each other to pass the time, helping each other in subjects in which they absolutely sucked (hers was Maths, his was Literature, and they were fine with that), joking about shared teachers were how they bonded, different experiences still retaining value to them: but they had to grow comfortable with the other and being close to them.

It wasn’t an easy task for someone like Aoi, who had always been “the SOL Security Manager’s sister” and trying to be profited upon (and, usually, her brother could immediately tell and sent them off): but Yusaku wasn’t like the others. He had never given a single damn about her brother’s job (or her brother at all, now that she thought about it), had never seen her as anything other than a classmate he liked to hang out with even outside of classes.

 And that was where it hurt, in a way.

 She was convinced Yusaku only saw them as that: friends. Considering their respective characters, it was already a miracle they had befriended each other and texted the other so often (as in, every day, and she was always excited to see what next trivia he could send her about his cat Ai and his friend Jin and his online best friend Takeru… Wait, that name was familiar), she couldn’t ask him to do much more than that. They were too introverted to have a mutual crush on each other…

…oh wait, that was even weirder.

Okay, finding both genders endearing and attractive was perfectly fine. Aoi was bi, her best friend was bi, her sister-in-law was bi… but falling in love with two persons at once, if that was her case, had to be abnormal. No, her feelings for Yusaku had to be something else… Perhaps she saw him as a twin brother? No chance, it was different from how she felt about her brother… Perhaps she saw him the same way she viewed Kiku, a trusty friend? No, no luck there either, there was the flutter and the weird pulses to hold his hand and maybe kiss him passionately against the wall… But then, what did she feel for Miyu?

The same thing, yes. Oops.