#using my english minor to analyze an idol gacha game like its a piece of literature

[infernaltenor]

a second niki shiina analysis

i dont have a snappy title for this just know its on rinne and niki

ok so! im actually gonna start with a disclaimer that this post is meant to be taken platonically if only because i interpret their relationship as platonic and will use this lens for the whole analysis. for a quick run down as to why, mostly i think its ooc for both rinne and niki; rinne since his go to with any character younger than him by a few years (hinata, yuta, kohaku, just to name a few off the top of my head lol) seems to be to go into "older brother mode", and niki largely since he doesnt rise to any of rinne's flirty bait/joke with anything other than annoyance.

that out of the way. i think theyre silly.

realistically, i think their relationship chart sets it up perfectly; niki and rinne have known each other for five years and probably lived together for most of it, meaning the most important thing is that niki absolutely knows all/most of rinnes tricks. thinking back to the honeybee story with kohaku, while both himeru and kohaku wrote niki's knowledge of the situation off, he brings it up with rinne right at the end. more than likely, this is the sort of thing niki's sort of.... used to with rinne.

also a major portion of their relationship is rinne's weird flirty/jealous moments. i think what drives a portion of the friendship is that niki is rinne's first actual friend. he's weirdly jealous (fs1 niki scout story, for instance. also funnily enough, niki calls him an overprotective father) because of that importance in the relationship; im not sure how to explain it without knowing someone for a long time and not having that experience of not having many friends before, but let's just say. i get it. i get rinne. i get the overprotectiveness/jealousy. but rinne does by and large flirt jokingly imo! it's not just niki who gets hit with it, as iirc himeru does occasionally too, meaning that its likely meant to be taken as a quirk of his personality. personally, i think niki gets hit with it the most because of their familiarity, at one point or another in a relationship interactions tend to boil down to poking fun at one another, and what is rinne and niki if not that?

niki's a bit harder to nail down, if only because i think his character is meant to be written as someone who intentionally puts himself down and tries to lower peoples expectations of him (for instance, the idiotification, intention to only think about cooking, etc. he has layers. i need to see him have a breakdown); with rinne he's both at his softest and most brash, given that most of rinne and niki's outward relationship is like watching two cats hit each other over the head. in the main story he is uncharacteristically nice (at that point) when rinne's distressed over the situations, offering to go back to rinne's hometown with him, and well. i cant blame him! five year friendship, probably living together, they're genuinely attached at the hip, especially considering that niki was both 14 when they met, and his parents had left him alone following the controversy that hit his father. i can't help but think that niki especially doesn't think rinne would survive on his own, hence the offer that he extended.

i also just think this level of depth in a relationship, especially when taken platonically, irregardless of gender is vastly under represented in media. rinne and niki read to me as incredibly close friends who have been stuck with each other for years and cant imagine the other one without them, which is something that usually gets pushed romantically; but i think in many ways that its a detriment, especially with these two. yes, that's partially because in general it feels occ, but also since the depth in it, imo, lessens with a romantic context, and it erases a large part of both of their personalities.