#poor momo t.t

[stefnova]

Happy Summer Valentine Day Special 2021 ~

Fuente: Youtube

[yoolee]

Yukimura Act 2 Thoughts

SPOILERS, spoilers EVERYWHERE and yes this is under a read more but ugh, mobile tumblr, so, be careful. Not edited from when I wrote it June 22 XD

OH MY GOD FEELS EVERYWHERE AAAAAAH

Okay

So

What I loved about Yukimura’s Act 2, more than anything, is that it wasn’t just a story of two people in love – it was a story about an era, and how it ended, and the heroes and villains and ultimately humans who brought it about, and how even when it arrives it isn’t some magical, cure-all divine moment it’s just work and more of it to be done, and real, and horrible, and sad, and uncertain, and hopeful. It was a story about family, found and carried over generations, by choice and blood, and just, ungh. It was a story about love. Romantic love, familial love, the love of a country, the love between brothers and comrades and mentors and just, people. Contrast that with Nobunaga’s route – which I also enjoyed, but was ultimately more the story of a single man’s tragedy. A great man, with echoing impact on an entire country’s history, but it was his story. A GOOD STORY but a different kind. An epic tragedy, very Shakespearean, but like, different

Yukimura’s story isn’t just his. It’s the end of Nobunaga and Mitsuhide and Shingen and Hideyoshiu and Mitsunari’s stories. It’s also MC’s, and Ieyasu’s (oh gosh IEYASU. In this route. WOW feels) and the Sanada’s, etc and so forth. So many supporting characters have to make choices for Yukimura’s story to be told. Nobuyuki, Masamune, Saizo, Masayuki, Ieyasu, Sakai, Kanetsugu, Shingen, Toramatsu, and the MC they all had these beautiful, critical moments where they made a choice that sent Yukimura barreling down the path he ended on. This story wrenched every, EVERY single POSSIBLE scrap of emotion and meaning from every appearance of supporting characters that it possibly could. It all mattered, it all landed. (KUDOS WRITERS)

Nobunaga’s story felt like a cresting wave of his own making that finally broke. Yukimura’s has a similar sense of overwhelming push towards something, but there are countless hands causing it, placing just a moment of faith in this one man who has earned that faith through his own merit, and carries it through the only conclusion that can give them all hope for what they sacrificed for. He wasn’t born or destined to play that role – to fight, yes, but not to be the last lynchpin, the final puzzle piece that had to fall – he was never fighting to have what everyone else was fighting for, for himself. He became the person that had to play that role, by virtue of his strength, by virtue of his pride, by virtue of his, well, virtue, by being someone people built up and put stock into because he could, and he accepted it, and it wasn’t for himself, not in a falsely righteous way, just this deeply grand, quiet, very Yukimura way of feeling compelled to do what he could to help the people who needed it of him. Of doing what, in the end, he believed was right - not Shingen, not his brother or his father, or Saizo, or his wife, but what he felt, with all he was, was right.

By virtue of how much and how deeply and how strongly he was loved, and loved in return, by so, so many.

Now, obviously there’s the whole, born to be a sacrifice thing, but I think his understanding and belief in that changed in a really powerful way. He always believed he would die to bring glory to the Sanada name, and he set that aside out of love for his family. In the end, he didn’t die for the glory of a name. He died so that with his death, with his defeat, no one else would seek him out because of the past glory, hoping to go to war. There is a really, really interesting line I wish I had screenshot where, towards the end, there’s mention specifically of death counting because it is going towards a victory, which is so very odd considering it’s an obviously losing battle, but (and UGH aside – Yukimura is smart. He is. Yes he’s a dumbass in some of the early chapters but in the end we finally get to see that beautiful brain that comes out when he is calm and certain and I was SO HAPPY TO SEE IT) the victory his death is going towards is outside of a single battle. The glory of his name is going to a cause that he has to see through, that he has to do his best for, one way or another. Ultimately, he really, truly dies for love. And glory comes with it, because that is the one cause his death is worth giving for.

And after all that you wonder, you wonder, maybe it really was his fate all along maybe he really was born for that, maybe that’s how it was always, always going to be, just like he said, just like his family built him for, maybe it had to be that way, despite his choices. Or, in fact, BECAUSE of his choices, because he had to be defeated, because he had to choose life, and going home, and family, and hope, and love, to be able to make the sacrifice of his life on the battlefield this one. The last one. For that reason.

There is a sense they ALL had to fall. Nobunaga and Shingen, before the story starts. Hideyoshi, we can assume too, once Mitsunari is on his own his own (assuming, per history, the Toyotomi Yukkins rallies to is the son), the Uesugi are mentioned but not Kenshin. The Maeda too. Yukimura really is the last of his era, he has to go for the new one to have a chance, and he pins all that hope on it being a good one.

The supporting character feels just killed me. Watching Ieyasu barely hold it together as he went on his own arc from mustache twirling villain to broken child to uncertain victor to uneasy ally to source of hope for the future and holder of a dream worth sacrificing for , watching him react to Momo and the MC and Yukimura – that one line ‘Bring him alive’ was so perfect, because Nobunaga wouldn’t have hesitated (we saw that in Shingen’s route, right? In his own Act 2, Nobunaga would get what he would have to do) but Ieyasu couldn’t get there yet and that was beautiful to me – AS was the fact it was all moot anyway, and ultimately, Yukimura’s headband was in his hands at the end of it, as it had to be for the crashed wave to recede, and Ieyasu is left standing there, and there’s no triumph. He’s done this thing that everyone, EVERYONE has died for. He has it. It’s over. REALLY OVER. And there’s no joy in him at all, and that’s just a footnote, that’s a whole nother story just going on alongside and intertwined with Yukimura’s. But he’s human at the end of it. He feels. He wants. He maybe even hopes. He’s trying.

And there is an UNDENIABLE impact there - of MC and Momo and Yukkin on him, on the guy who finally does it. On the monster who is has been cracking into human chapter after chapter and has it all, has the entire country, and has to live with it now, after glimpsing something that made something in him respond with a peach ribbon and a desire to see a man live. Seeing this family stand up, steadfast, time and again and again and again, and love, and trust, and hope, and believe and fight and never, ever feel foolish for it because they know what they have and how precious it is and he just maybe, maybe is starting to believe them that it’s precious, just because nothing seems to convince them otherwise.

Masamune’s respect, Kojuro’s little ‘oh you again’, Kanetsugu as ESTEEMED SENSEI IN PARENTING, Saizo’s soft head tilt smiles all over the dang place and then immediately taking Momo all those times, Big Brother Sasuke, Nobuyuki, Masayuki oh my gosh Masayuki. So much love in all of his scenes. That generational sense of family was so powerful too.

And Saizo SAIZO I was about ready to SCREAM when he missed the wedding and then all of a sudden, there he is, with Yukimura’s spear and I was like darn you writers the emotional whiplash is just, unbearable. And he was with Yukimura in the end (and do you think he couldn’t have stopped that poor kid? But he understood it all too. He had to save Yukimura from Ieyasu because Ieyasu was going to let him live, but this kid, this scared, shaking kid with a sword doesn’t know that) and he carries out his last mission, and his flippant farewell – there are so, so dang many Saizo-loves-them-so-much moments, I’d have to screenshot the entire route to capture them all

AND HE SHOWS UP IN THE PRESENT DAY, BLESS.

AND MY SMOLSUKE FEELS. T.T finally got to hear MC say she loved him, and Nobuyuki call him a Big Bro, and Yukkin ALMOST say he loved Saizo RIP my heart, and Yahiko and Smolsuke in the same scene (SMOL SQUAD) hg;g;sdg;gesdghjtre

OVERALL I thought the pacing of the story was really, reaaaaally good (esp compared to Mitsuhide) with regularly placed emotional beats and surprises that made sense, and enough humor and love to make all the hurt bearable.

I have. Exactly two gripes. Two.

1.       Their wedding night, Yukimura is CLEARLY sloshed and yet they have all kinds of passionate love going on, like. Alcohol, folks. It interferes with ability to perform JUST SAYING.

2.       I wanted more of MC remembering than one single line about a promise T.T don’t give me sobbing Yukkins DON’T and then not make it all better HORRIBLE PEOPLE

Ugh I just

There is just so, so so much love in this route. LOVE. Not just romantic love, though it’s there and beautiful, but LOVE. Pure, freely given love. Between Masayuki and his sons, Masayuki and MC and Masayuki and Momo, Nobuyuki and MC/Momo/Yukkins, Saizo and Yukimura, Sasuke and Momo, Sasuke and MC/Yukimura/Saizo, Saizo and MC and Momo, Ieyasu and Momo and Sakai and Ieyasu and Yukimura and Shingen it is everywhere. It is absolutely hard coded into every sentence, every choice, every moment in this story just filling it up and bursting at the seams, and it’s unstoppable. It transcends an era. It transcends not just one man’s death but several - Masayuki, Shingen, Yukimura.

I have a lot of feels

This is probably exactly 11.6% of them.