Picked up 2.43 again because I have been Consumed.
I’m over a quarter way thru the volume now. I’m p sure the only new character we’re really getting development for in the latter half of this arc is Asano, so if I want more Yumikake I’m gonna have to hurry up and finish this volume and move on to next4years. I like Asano and all, and these last couple subchapters were good ones (well, they all are) and made me feel for him, but I adore Yumikake.
rambling/gushing as usual
idk, there’s just something about players who are “too short” for the sport they fell in love with but persevere anyway. He’s never used his height as an excuse, but he still wishes for 10 more centimeters. Can’t he wish for just 10 more centimeters?
And then he can be a good kouhai… to everyone except Sasao. Sasao’s 2 yrs older and when they first met, all of Yumikake’s teammates took a shining to him and thought he was cool and stuff, but Yumi immediately saw through him and was like, “This guy is even more of a child than I am,” and decided he would be the most annoying, disrespectful little brat to him specifically. He refuses to use keigo or honorifics for him. But he still looks up to him in his own way, and he wanted to go to HS with him, but then Sasao went off to Tōkyō. When their HSs had a practice match, he said, “I’m not the one who left Fukuoka crying,” but like! You headbutted him in the chin bc you didn’t want him to leave! You broke skin! He was bleeding! He still has the scar! Though this was in response to Sasao slipping back into Hakataben a bit despite completely forsaking it for Standard once he left, and Yumi loves Fukuoka as much as he does volleyball, so, ouch. That was just one betrayal on top of another, for him.
Sasao had a girlfriend in MS and they broke up when he left, and he still has feelings for her. The only thing Yumi has to say about her is “She’s cute, sure, but way too much of a gyaru,” like she’s not good enough for Sasao. Sasao, whom he dislikes for being more immature than him.
They’re like a couple of cats. They act like they hate each other, but they care about each other more than they usually let on, which I guess makes them basically tsunderes toward each other. Yumikake does follow him to college though (which iirc correctly is in Tōkyō! Or at least not Fukuoka), and like, I need to know what they’re like on the same team together.
I basically know what happens this arc (vaguely. I know the tournament results, at any rate), but I know zero about the final arc except like everyone gets at least a couple cm taller except Ochi lmao he really did stop growing in MS, and also allegedly Oda and Aoki show up at one point and Aoki says something about them interrupting his date with Oda. What. Like, that’s really gotta be on purpose at this point, hasn’t it
(In the first arc, Oda thinks to himself, “What am I, his girlfriend or something, oi,” and it’s really not gay in context. But then there is also Aoki’s utter devotion to him, to the point where he’d straight up lie to him about trying to get into KyouDai bc he knows if Oda knew he’d try to convince him to retire and focus on his studies and he knows he’d do what Oda asked of him no resistance, and he wants to keep playing w him—except Oda does know and he freaking lets him lie to his face. And then I’ve used the line “this man whom the sun lives inside” in a fic to describe Oda before, and that’s taken directly from a line in the second arc, from Aoki’s POV. They think they’re not friends outside of volleyball but like, Oda will go home to change into casual clothes then walk into Aoki’s house like he lives there and Aoki will cook dinner for them and then admire him gayly in the streetlights as he sees him off from the front stoop. In the third arc, Aoki stays up in the hotel lobby for him when Oda can’t sleep and goes for a jog, and then Oda turns off both their alarms in the morning and when Aoki doesn’t wanna get up determines that they’ve still got a bit before they really need to get ready and tells him he’ll wake him up then. And then in the fourth arc, Aoki apparently actually-factually calls their outing, when they haven’t seen each other in a while since their unis are in diff prefectures, a date. They’re basically as canon as Kanno and Ibara, and Kanno actually confessed.)
I have too many characters who make me insane in this series
(actually I did try reading a bit of The Hobbit a while back… It was cool, but way too much description, which is how Tolkien rolls of course)
I had the ebook, but I’ve used so many different providers over the years I’d have to track down which one I used back then… Kind of curious how it reads now though!
But I finally had to share my grievances with the author!
