This post will contain lots of spoilers and it will be very long, don't force yourself to read this post if you don't feel like reading a wall of texts,.
Don't read if you didn't watch the show either
I know I know …a lot of you are properly wondering why I made a topic about this useless character because you think that She’s a shallow character and nothing about her stands out, she’s properly the most useless anime character ever .
This character has to be one of the most misunderstood characters in this anime, literally everyone think she’s useless, but I made this thread because i want to remove some of the misconceptions about her character and why I don’t think that she’s a useless character.
There have been many discussions and analysis on this series in the past and they were mostly about the three main characters, especially the two main girls. Side characters like the mother, Noe’s brother, Mc’s friend and Mc’s father were also deeply discussed as well but I noticed that there haven’t been any discussions on Aiko’s character. Majority of the people didn’t really care for her character and almost everyone counted her out of the story when she got rejected and dropped her out of the plot.
Majority of the viewers (even majority of her fans) think she’s irrelevant/ /one dimensional and adds nothing to the plot, people also say that she is only in the show just to add more drama, they say that she has no development and is a basically a filler. They ask questions such as, why is she in this story? /why is she considered the third girl? /why is she listed as a main character? why is she considered a love interest if the Main character doesn’t even like her? / what’s the point of her being a love interest and being in a relationship if she’s not even effecting Mc’s and Miyokichi friendship.
Everything about her is a mystery. We don’t get to know anything about her character other than her being a childhood/sister figure to MC, they don’t even show a back story with her and the MC and she has very little screen time, this is the main reason why people think her feelings are not genuine and that she’s only added to the anime to make it a harem, these reasons made her character seem irreverent and very detached.
I asked myself the same questions too when I watched this anime for the first time and I didn’t understand the point of this character, I remember that I rooted for Noe when I watched this anime in 2008 and I was against Hiromi but then I decided to watch this anime again for a second time (in 2013) and I understood things much better and I liked Hiromi much more than I did the first time and rooted for her to end up with the MC but …I still didn’t understand the point of Aiko’s character .
But one of my friends who watched this anime with me mentioned something that caught my attention, he said ''‘I like Aiko’s character a lot, but why is she always by herself?, ''It’s like she’s in a totally different world than the other characters''and this made me think just how strange this character is because nothing about her made sense to me, her character felt extremely artificial and out of place and a lot of questions came to my mind such as, where are her parents? / why don’t they show her friends from her school? / why is no one working with her? /why do we see her speaking with only two people throughout the whole anime? /why is she always by herself?.
The anime gives a small a background about all the characters parents (They even mentioned something about Miyokichi’s father) But Aiko’s life is a complete Mystery and we don’t know anything about her personal life .
I then realized that this character is extremely disconnected from the world of the other characters. I decided to refresh my memory and watch some scenes from the series again in (2016) and then I slowly began to understand her character. I still don’t fully understand her character that well but I understand her much better now and I can honestly say that this character is without a doubt the most enigmatic character in this whole series and she’s the most difficult character to understand even more so than Hiromi and the mother (yes, I did say that) but let me tell you why. At first glance, this character might seem very straightforward and very simple to the point that people may think that they don’t even feel the need to analyze her character because they think of her as a very simple and cliched character but the truth is that the meaning behind her is very deep, She’s a well-though out character. She plays a more prevalent role than many characters of her type (I’m taking about the shounen harem animes) because the limits of most third/fourth wheel girls (childhood friends in particular) is to give advises to the main lead and help him realize his true feelings, only giving hints, never really confessing their feelings but they don’t go for extreme actions like Ai does. People might not believe this fact but yes, Aiko actually plays a larger role than most characters of her type in harem animes '.
All these questions above lead me to finally realize and understand one thing and I’ve come to the conclusion that Aiko is in fact a ''symbolic character'' because everything about her revolves around symbolism- the meaning of her existence (which I will explain below). She’s used for the same purpose as the story of Raigomaru and Jebita, the two chickens, to add symbolism to the story but that’s not the only role she plays, unlike the rest of the characters who all have an obvious role, Aiko plays more than one role in addition to her being a symbolic character.
The meaning of the sentence that my friend mentioned is the key to understanding this character. The reason why Aiko is so disconnected from the main characters world is because 1) her and Miyokichi are much more simple characters than the 4 main character because their relationship is something you can easily find in the real world, their drama is much more realistic, they deal with their relationship in a much simpler way, and you can find people like them everywhere but the 4 main characters (Noe, Shinichirou, Hiromi and Jun) are in contrast much more complex characters, Hiromi and Noe’s stories are extremely melodramatic, Their relationships is much more tangled and complex, They have deep issues so their story play out more like an Asian drama but that doesn’t mean that they are no people like them in the real world, they are plenty of people who have extremely difficult lives but the writers clearly intended to put these four characters in the unrealistic side of the drama, The writers wanted to show two separate worlds, The wanted to show us that Aiko and Miyokcichi were basically in a different world than the other four characters especially (point 2-) Aiko because she’s very distant from the events and locations where the main drama takes place, going to a different school for instances is a big disadvantage for Aiko and is one of the main reasons why we don’t see her that much, The decision to split Aiko from the main story by making her go to a different school is also intentional as well as the decision to give her a limited amount of screen time, the writers could have easily put her in the same school with the other characters if they wanted to give her more screen time but they clearly didn’t want to add her to the main plot, her being in a relationship with Miyokichi was also another huge disadvantage, The writers gave her too many obstacles to the point that her chances of being a love interest for the MC became realistically impossible, they sidelined her too much to the point that the reasons for not including her to the main story became completely justified.
The locations for all the events that happens are also very important to the characters, the restaurant symbolizes the world for Aiko and this is in itself is a symbolism since she spends most of her time alone in that restaurant and it’s shown in many scenes throughout the anime and her loneliness became even more apparent after she admitted her feelings to both Miyokichi and Shinichiro, the friendship between the three of them became understandably strained for a while and the two boys stopped visiting her restaurant.
Aiko is basically a standalone character because her story doesn’t affect any character but herself, her story and (entire character) requires the person to fail against the spot light, unlike Hiromi and Noe who are always in the spotlight and both get their moment to shine, Aiko should stay in the dark and never be hit by the spotlight
Not showing her family or friends is also another form of symbolism and that’s because we are not even supposed to know anything about her personal life .
Many people think that Aiko is only in the anime just to prove that Shinichiro is not the typical/indecisive male lead and that’s…true in a way but this is not her only purpose. I also noticed how deeply flawed this character is, even though she falls under the characters with the unrequited love category and those type of characters are always sympathetic, Aiko is quite Manipulative, She is a very refreshing example of a third wheel character,
You could says that Aiko basically represents the flawed version of Hiormi while Noe represent the ideal version of Hiromi and another role that Aiko plays is that she can also be viewed as antagonist in a way because she’s there to mess things up for Shinichiro and Miyokichi and is a testament to their friendship.
I realized that the reason why people think she’s superfluous to the plot is because they are looking at this anime as a harem anime and I personally think that Harem animes ruin the romance anime genre and give them a bad name. They are so many harem animes being made these days to the point that people can’t differentiate a harem anime from a normal romance anime. Shipping has become the main reason why fans watch those harem animes in the first place, a lot of viewers seem to focus on shipping more than they focus on the story, they get attached to a character and root for her to win at the end even if she doesn’t have a chance in hell. That’s why so many harem anime have bad ratings because the MC chooses the girl that the audience don’t like. In my personal opinion, in every Harem anime I’ve seen so far, the MC always chooses the girl that makes the most sense including this one (I don't watch harem animes that much because I think they are very stupid) but every romance anime I’ve seen (Toradora, clannad, KGNE, true tears) had great/logical endings even if many fans disagree
I can also view Aiko as kind of a tragic character, not tragic like Hiromi and Noe but tragic because of her story, her character, her position in the story and the mistakes that she made that led to her failures because unlike other characters, Aiko is not even supposed to end up with the MC and you could see her rejection as a punishment.
As you all know, this anime was written by the famous Mari Okada who’s known for her extreme use of melodrama and we all know how she treats her characters, she likes to over use troupes especially when it comes to unrequited love, she always likes to sideline one of the main characters in all of her shows, Okade is very uneven when it comes to writing her scripts and developing her characters, she tends to develop some of her characters but she always leaves one or two of them out. Eg (Zessica from Aqurion Evol , Kaname from Nagi no Asukara, the dark blue haired girl in Anohana) and in this anime, this character happens to be Aiko.
What makes Aiko different from the three examples above is that she’s much more flawed character than the majority of them. Ami from Toradora, Kaname ,Zessica and almost every character similar to the them are very sympathetic/selfless characters because they barely make any mistakes and you genuinely feel sorry for them because they are in a very unfortunate position , Aiko’s is not like them because she’s an extremely selfish character and most of her problems were her own doings, she created many obstacles for herself and ruined her chances. She made a huge mistake by accepting to go out with Miyokichi while having feelings for Shinchiruro and on top of that, She used Miyokichi to get closer to the former so technically she doesn’t really deserve to end up with Shinchuro (and Maybe even Miyokichi) after what she did so she kinda got what she deserved.
The writers did a very smart job by making the best friend of the mc date the third girl, because of this decision Aiko got a much stronger story than most of the other characters of her type because she had the whole situation with the best friend and the best friend was much more developed than most side kicks in other animes and not just a comic relief, If Aiko was just another girl who's in love the MC and not dating anyone, Her character would've been so useless and less developed than how she's is now plus her situation is hard because she has so many obstacles especially with her dating the best friend so it makes sense that she got rejected and wasn't involved in the main story unless people wanted this anime to go the school days route. Therefore, Rooting for Aiko to end up with the main character shouldn’t even be a choice in my opinion.
True tears is not the typical harem anime, The reason why people think Aiko is useless is because people wanted this anime to go the typical harem route where MC has to dates all the girls, They thought that Aiko was just another love interest when she is not. Adding Aiko to the main story would have ruined this anime completely. it's unrealistic for a main character to waver between three girls.
Many people who call themselves Aiko fans (I don't think Aiko has any genuine fans to be honest) want to her to end up with the main character without understanding her situation, If the writers chose to go with the Aiko route, it will be a very risky thing to do and it could ruin the whole anime because the story will become too dramatic since her story revolves about ''Friendship and Betrayel''. the only way to make an Aiko ending is either for this anime to become a tragedy or create a whole new story line.
Some people consider the resolution to the Aiko’s story to be unrealistic but I partially agree, I think that Aiko is a very believable and realistic character a part from her having a restaurant by herself( which is mostly intended only for symbolism), Her situation is just so real and I can totally see this scenario happen in real life, Many people think that Aiko only decided to settle for Miyokichi and I don’t entirely disagree with them, some people believe that you can only fall in love once (I don’t agree with this opinion as I believe that you can fall in love more than once but it depends on the person). I honestly didn’t see it that way, I believe that she was very sincere because Aiko didn’t love Miyokichi at the beginning and agreed to date him only because of Shinichirou which means that she was actually using him and she didn’t really care about him at all at the beginning ( many people think that she dated Miyokichi to try and forget Shinichirou but this is completely false) so her going back to Miyokichi isn’t that unrealistic, it would have been unrealistic if she tried to fall in love with him before she broke up with him and couldn’t get over her love for Mc and the other reason why I don't think it's unrealistic is because Miyokichi himself is not that innocent. What he and shin did to Aiko was very unfair but that still doesn't excuse what Aiko did to him so they're both equal .
The strange thing about Aiko’s being relevant or not is that the people who think that she’s useless all have different reasons , some people think she’s useless because she wasn’t a main love interest for MC while others think she’s useless because they thought she was a distraction to the main storyline . It's kind of shocking that people think that Aiko is useless just because she wasn't in the main story but then they don't say anything about the many useless girls who only exit in aanime for fan service and to make the audience hate the MC more (the three ho's in school days come to mind) ..
Many people think that Aiko wasn’t developed at all and that she is the weakest character in this anime but I disagree, she actually got a lot of development and was completely transformed into a new person by the end, She’s probably the person who grow up and changed the most out of all the characters and she was devolved in a positive way, She started out pretty badly and she was a major bitch at the beginning but she changed a lot , Hiromi is the opposite as she started out very sympathetic but she became selfish at the last three episodes, that’s the main difference between Aiko and Hiormi
So, in conclusion, Aiko’s role is completely misleading but not in a bad way at all, she was not added to this anime to be a love interest, the writers created her for an entirely different reason, the writers never intended to focus on her feelings because her love for the main character wasn’t even relevant, that was not even her purpose, her story was about her being honest and admitting her feelings to both guys and moving on from the lie that she was living, it was about Aiko getting redeemed and fixing her mistakes and not about her being a love interest for Shinichirou .
Some of you might think that Aiko is not a well-developed character because of this reason but I disagree, I’ve seen many third wheelers who are much more useless than Aiko, they are plenty of characters like her in other animes but Aiko situation is one of the hardest. Unlike many other similar characters, Aiko has less than a zero a chance and that's because she has more obstacles than the usual third/forth wheel.
As for her being a main character or not, I consider her a main character but not on the level of Hiromi and Noe, Nobuse plays the same role as well, the two characters can be seen as foils to the man characters and without their story, we wouldn’t be able to understand the main characters, Aiko is a very very important character because she gives balance to the story and she adds a lot of themes and symbolism to the show and she portrays a different alternative reality, Aiko is a character that plays multiple roles, This is why I consider her a middle character because she’s not a love interest and she’s not a side character either.
So, is Aiko a badly written character? honestly, she is not, they are much worse characters than her in other animes, the fact that she had a relationship with the best friend made her much more interesting than the other characters of her type, the fact that I wrote this much about this character proves that she’s actually a well-constructed character and her story was well written and she played her role very well.
Maybe if Aiko wasn't a main character, people will actually understand her role better but I honestly can’t blame them because symbolic characters are the most difficult type of characters to understand
There are many things that I still didn’t mention on this analysis like the themes that Aiko adds to the anime but I wrote a lot already and I think that this is more than enough'.
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