Board Thread:Fun and Games/@comment-24187738-20170416093415/@comment-31853471-20170428145611

Settling on a best girl for Aqours was ''​hard. ''​It wasn't like μ's, where I fell in love with Hanayo at first sight - instead, I bounced back and forth between best girls before finally admitting Mari Ohara shone brighter than any of the others in my heart.

This would probably be a surprise to anyone who knows me, because when the characters were first released, I didn't like Mari at all. I thought she was bland and uninteresting, and that people only liked her because she "liked industrial metal". But she caught my eye in the anime, first with her antics (My personal favorite was when she put eye-shaped stickers on her eyelids to pretend to be awake during Dia's lecture) and her adorable voice, and then with the sensitive side that she likes to hide with her "It's joke~!" gimmick. Her interactions with Kanan made me cry countless times, and she showed that softer side to You, too, when she was hurting. I thought for a while that she was going to push Aqours too hard, but her challenges were exactly what they needed to succeed.

Her history with Dia and Kanan still makes me tear up. In their performance in Tokyo, despite her injury, she was determined not to let her friends down. She was absolutely, 100% willing to give up the chance to study abroad to stay and be an idol with her friends, even after she was so reluctant to join, even after they failed so badly, and refused to give up on that dream they shared even after two long years away. When she returned, she was nothing but supportive of the group that seemed to be succeeding them, even when Dia disapproved of their actions

I thought at first that she was going to be the character I disliked most out of Aqours. But after seeing her drop all her pretenses and bare her soul to the people she cares about, I can't help loving her - overdone accent, ridiculous shenanigans, and silly hair loop and all.



twitter: @yuasings