#mikasa tenji

[ambigirl]

Tomodachi game chapter 125 spoiler

He who'd go against the world to save his friends

His friends who don't deserve it at all💔

[libretitamortal]

Also why there's still no tenji?? They promised me the tenji back i want him back 😭

[ova-kakyoin]

yuuichi: you need to starve to death to prove you're in love with me

tenji:

[froggos-are-superior]

Shout-out to anime that throw in random homosexuality out of the blue as a plot twist, gotta be my favorite genre

[itoukaiji]

Kiss Scene from Tomadachi Game R4 because I couldn't find the full clip anywhere online and I am a completionist ok

[lilium-dragomir]

[electric-eulogy]

Thoughts on the Tomodachi Game Manga: Yutori Kokorogi

Wanted to put this out here because my friend told me that my thoughts were interesting, haha. Several months out from when I finished the manga itself, but my motivation to post things online isn't exactly great... Regardless, Tumblr is the only place to get my thoughts on the media I consume at the moment (as this is the site that I find has the friendliest UI for me).

Anyway, this is more like a character analysis for a few of the characters than any kind of story evaluation for the most part. I'll put the actual analysis under the cut for people who don't want to read it.

Keep in mind that I've only read the manga, so I don't know anything about anything that's (presumably) only in the anime.

I want to talk about the main cast here... Yuuichi Katagiri, Shiho Sawaragi, Tenji Mikasa, Makoto Shibe, Yutori Kokorogi, and Kei Shinomiya. I'll likely touch on Yuka Katagiri, Taizen Shiba, Masakazu Shibe, Yutaka Mikasa, and everyone else that comes to mind with that list more briefly… Not individually, but in their relation to the others and the parent/child parallel in the story.

This post is for Yutori, though.

Please note that there will be spoilers for Tomodachi Game below.

Yutori Kokorogi

Starting with Yutori, as she's one of the ones I found the most interesting by the end of the story....

Her character is rather... interesting, and feels similar to D'arce from Fear & Hunger to me. They're both... incredibly bold and opinionated individuals, but their whole world revolves around one man. For D'arce, it would be Le'garde, and for Yutori, it would be Yuuichi.

Yutori doesn't read to me as though she has a particularly cohesive sense of identity. From the beginning, her personality was an act (which I thank every star above for), but she's not actually that stable of a person once that facade falls. She's obsessed with Yuuichi.

But before we get to that, I want to talk about her beginning personality in the manga. The classic... moe air-headed klutz girl. Honestly, this is one of my least-liked tropes in the media. I don't like it. But I do think that it's worth mentioning as her facade of choice. I wonder if it's because that's the kind of personality that can be effectively utilized to elicit sympathy and pity points if not exasperation and/or a sense of protectiveness... if only because she acts so much younger than her age.

It'd be easy to get close to people that way, and she'd also be filling a niche in the group that they didn't have filled yet. In the most surface-level, distilled way of phrasing it: Shiho is the upright law keeper, Yuuichi is the glue that holds everyone together, Makoto is the rich kid who's... constantly wavering on the borderline between "normal guy" and "creepy pervert," and Tenji is basically the upright law keeper 2.0 (male edition). And Yutori can step in as the "cute nieve klutz that everyone steps in to protect."

It feels like she made the personality explicitly to target that protective instinct in people who have a concious. She's the sad, wet cat on the side of the road with the big eyes that everyone pities, but only a few will actually step in to help. And she's made it so that Shiho, Yuuichi, Tenji, and Makoto will all step up to help her.

But once that mask drops, it does get painfully apparent that she doesn't know what a real friendship looks like. She'll act out the fantasy of one, but I don't think she knows what it actually is. But it's not about the friendship to her; it's about Yuuichi.

Rounding back to my idea that her entire sense of identity is dependent on Yuucihi: When she talks about him, she talks as though he's a god, and she also quite literally refers to him as one (if memory serves). She sees him as a sort of arbiter of divine will-- if only because of how fucked up he and Taizen ended up making her family situation (although I'll talk about that more when I talk about Yuucihi. Because I'm not sure that Yuucihi is the one that should shoulder that blame).

Anyway, she has this... obsessive, perhaps religious, view of Yuucihi... And similar to how some people make things like Being a Christian (TM) their whole personality, her entire personality is dependent on her perception of Yuucihi and what he's done. I phrased it to my friend as follows: She spent so long pinning things on Yuuichi to the point that it's become a fanatical, cult-like obsession for her. Her sense of self is tied to that. Her sense of self is innately connected to her sense of "past" and not a (her) sense of "like/dislike" or "hobbies," so the idea of what she "knew" being wrong would naturally fundamentally shake her sense of self.

Her entire personality is based on her personal worship of, and eventual vengeance upon, Yuuichi. So it's only... normal that learning or realizing that things were at least a little different from the way that she initially pictured it would destroy her. The idea that Yuuichi isn't the sole incarnate of pure, true evil and that there were more factors to blame than a child no older than her would also be something that I think wouldn't be pretty for her.

Because that's her obsession. That it's Yuucihi who did it, it's Yuuichi who did it, it's Yuuichi who... well, you get the idea.

But, in the end, she's also aware that she's no better than he is. An eye for an eye makes for an endless cycle of vengeance; somewhere in there, you will eventually become that which you hate. In an attempt to constantly get the better of, or win the battle between, you will sink to their level and worse because there are just some things that you can't feel like you've won/been vindicated by if you don't throw away your morals. Fire can only be fought with fire sometimes, and sometimes that means being worse, or at least on the level of.

And it could be said that Yutori is worse, just like it could be said that Yuuichi is worse. That's all a matter of personal perspective. But they're both not good people. And she knows that. So, by the end of the story, when everyone decides whether or not they want Yuucihi to live, she doesn't say anything until Makoto does because she knows that she's sunk to his level, sort of like the idea that her horse in this race is weaker than the others.

She's almost on the level of Yuuichi when it comes to manipulating others or at least pulling an act in front of them. This can be seen in how long she's able to fool everyone, including the cult leader Saika Kamishiro. However, it could be debated whether or not Saika was actually that perceptive to begin with.

Doesn't change the fact that she manipulated him so successfully, though.

Regardless, I get where she's coming from, but I don't necessarily sympathize. I can't condone her decisions and behavior, especially towards her mother and friends in the story (even if that's rectified in the epilogue).

I also want to mention what her name means: 心木 ゆとり... With 心 (kokoro), meaning "heart" in a sort of cutesy way (though it can also mean mind and soul). And 木 (ki/gi) meaning "tree/wood". ゆとり (yutori) all together can mean something like "space/affluence/time/reserve," and it'd be used as a noun that way, but broken up ゆ (yu) would mean "hot water" and とり (tori) would mean "bird".

I'm sure that I'll have more thoughts bite me later that I'll regret not expanding upon here, but this is it for now.

[bishonenlover]

Yuuichi and Tenji - Tomodachi Game episode 06

[weibenwolken]

Me, just start reading Tomodachi Game: So the glasses guy is the traitor I see, huh yeah he deserve that

Me, several chapters later: YUUICHI PLEASE MY MAN TENJI IS DYING

[nigesakis]

yuuichi and tenjis relationship development is so good (btw you cant tell me yuuichi had his gay awakening when tenji kissed him. that man fell in love)

[lune-legerement-ebrechee]

[libretitamortal]

So it's a family thing. Good to know

[ova-kakyoin]

*guy with a cripple yaoi addiction voice* hey guys whats up

[shingerion]

tomodachi game

[gumisgirl]

Tomodachi game

[vinxus]