#was listening to my aib playlists and started thinkin

[miraofhearts2point0]

i cannot stand the fact adap Chishiya is a Hearts player, sowz. it's clear to me the adap writers completely misunderstood what makes someone a Hearts player in the first place and ran with it.

Chishiya can read others emotions to some extent, sure, but not in-depth enough to sympathize.

you wanna know why Chishiya (and Niragi) are Diamonds players? because they don't care enough to truly understand the hearts of others. they manipulate situations, not (usually) out of desperation, but because it's all they know. they lack a genuine understanding with others.

(adap) Arisu being a Diamonds player also completely misses the point: Arisu is so similar to Chishiya and Niragi that if, at any point prior to the Borderlands, he had one more thing go wrong, he could've ended up like the two of them; but he didn't because he refused to be like that.

Arisu is a Hearts player because he's both smarter than he gives himself credit for, and emotionally mature enough to take to heart (wink wink) the emotions of others and actively put himself in their shoes to get through a game.

that last reason is why Matsushita Enji is such a lousey Hearts player, because, like Chishiya and Niragi, he isn't emotionally mature enough to truly be good at Hearts. he has great setups, sure, but he's too proud to acknowledge other players and their inteligence, which is why he was ultimately defeated by Yaba and Banda.

Yaba and Banda both come from backgrounds where they need to read others to some extent: Yaba, a CEO who climbed the corporate ladder by reading others and using those emotions to his advantage (as we saw happen with Arisu when he was confronted by the militants), and Banda, a misogynistic murderer who got into the houses of women he killed, needed to be agile enough to get them to trust him by manipulating the situation in his favor, all while keeping in mind the emotions of those he killed.

Hearts games are not won by sheer manipulation, as we saw with Enji and Urumi; there needs to be a level of connection with others if you want to survive, which is also why Mitsurugi's defeat was so upsetting; ideally, he did everything right, but ultimately was a bit too confident in his plan and thus, refused to acknowledge the power the other players had. he was too good of a person.

Mira is a bit of an outlier, not because she was bad at the games or anything, but because she's the perfect mix of both understanding and master manipulator; if she went up against any other player in the Borderlands, they would easily lose. Arisu almost lost too, but as we've established, Hearts games are built off connections with others and Usagi was needed in order to make it.

I'm sure Mira was well-aware of that fact, especially with Arisu, but her ulimate failure was the same as Mitsurugi's: she ended up downplaying the connection between him and Usagi. Hearts games need love, level-headedness, mild manipulation, and an open mind if you intend to win.

going back to my main point, that's why Chishiya either avoids Hearts games all together, manipulates people during them, or turns to violence; he lacks the emotional maturity and agency to clear one the way they are meant to be cleared, why Arisu is a much better Hearts player than Chishiya will ever be, and why the adap writers completely misunderstood that point.