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Old 2012-08-07, 06:58   Link #59
Dextro
He Without a Title
 
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: The land of tempura
Quote:
Originally Posted by GalacticPulsar View Post
No offense but that seems off. Mainly because Oreki doesn't have as "fragile" an ego as you think. Oreki doesn't really care what people think of him and he's actually pretty confident in his own deductive abilities. Oreki doesn't seem to be all that interested in impressing Chitanda too. FredFriendly may be right. Oreki is only somewhat attracted to Chitanda's looks(cuteness) while tuning out whenever Chitanda talks. After all Chitanda's energetic personality is too much for the sluggish slothful Oreki. Furthermore, Oreki probably knows deep down, how talented he is but prefers to play down his deductive abilities in order to justify his laid back average life. Irisu mentions before that it is important for one to maximize one's potential and not to waste one's ability. Oreki wants to avoid coming to terms with his ability so he doesn't feel like he owes the world a favor to become the next best detective since Sherlock Holmes.

Nevertheless, Oreki , like any gifted person, is not above taking on a superiority complex,one that is however not all that apparent. Oreki values Satoshi as a database but views Chitanda as very lacking in her analytical abilities. It won't be a stretch to say Oreki doesn't really have much respect for Chitanda as he does for Satoshi or even Mayaka.He had even made a remark earlier in a show,saying how he was surprised that despite being an excellent student, Chitanda was really obtuse.

In this episode, Oreki was shown to be a bit self absorbed as well. He didn't really care that Chitanda was invited to be on an interview with the Broadcasting Club. When he was talking to Satoshi, he was very confident in his ability to solve the mystery despite Satoshi saying how it was such an impossible task. When Satoshi got a little testy over how Oreki viewed the mystery as something that wasn't that hard to solve, Oreki didn't really think much of Satoshi's emotional outburst. Oreki gives off the feeling that he doesn't really care much for Satoshi's feelings and one can even question whether their friendship is something more than Satoshi barging his way into Oreki's life. Satoshi probably feels both admiration toward Oreki and inadequacy towards his own talents or lack thereof.If anyone has a "fragile ego" in this show it is Satoshi.Why else is he so active in so many clubs(knitting?) at school and on the student council and participates in so many competition(trivia, cooking, etc)? It is because he feels inadequate when compared to Oreki who ironically does much less than him as far as school club activities goes. Oreki and Satoshi are both pretty cool characters though.
I think that what you call a "superiority complex" is in fact, as others have pointed out, a failure on Oreki's part to be able to socialize properly. He's so introvert that he just doesn't consider what other people will feel when he acts and inadvertently hurts other people.

I will however concede that he just might find Chitanda a bit annoying in how obtuse she is at times but in all fairness I would probably feel the same if I was in his position (the girl can be an apparent airhead at times).

And you forget to factor in what happened with Irisu on the last arc: she clearly manipulated his fragile ego to get him to do his biding. She picked the single thing he actually has any confidence in and placed it up in a pedestal for him to feel good about only to let him go down crashing when the house of cards she built for it was torn down. That was a as clear cut as you can get way to show that Oreki is in fact very insecure of himself despite his true abilities.
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