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Originally Posted by Rembr
I don't really watch any animes of 'this kind.' So are you saying 3rd girls usually do even less than Ai?
She was just going off by herself, kissing and confessing to Shin when he was previously completely oblivious. After the confession, he gave a straight rejection, and both moved on. And there has been nothing on both sides except straight, not complex actions.
I guess I'm saying their relationship was too little and too predictable to the point of wondering why they were even included. She was more of a sub-plot device that affected things between Shin and Miyokichi. Hell, even that was pretty much all Miyokochi, with Shin just going with the flow.
I mean, okay. Miyokichi also appears as one of the main characters, so I guess it all makes sense in that sense. But considering they didn't really interact nor affect anything between Shin, Noe, and Hiromi, why include them in the main lineup as though they play far larger, more complex roles than they actually have so far?
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Yeah, girls in the "3rd string" position generally don't really stir up the waters as much in these kinds of animes and sit around as childhood friends or whatnot, giving off hints that they like the main dude but never really doing much more than standing by as the #1/#2 chicks square off over the main male, although they do seem to be playing a larger role more recently. Many act as a kind of "elder stateswoman" of sorts who gives some advice to sort of nudge the main character to realizing what's going on around him, but they don't go for as brash actions as Ai selects. At the beginning (eps 1-3) I thought the limit of Ai's character would be to explain Hiromi's actions (as she does when she explains why a girl would want to befriend a guy's friends...), but the writers clearly had more planned for her.
Well, the only thing I can offer again is that the simplicity of their interactions and characters is meant to serve as a foil to the far more complex interactions occuring between the main characters; in a sense it gives us another window with which to view Shin's and Noe's actions towards each other, Hiromi, and Jun in light of their actions towards Ai and Nobuse, and so we get to understand Shin and Noe more. That's really the best I can offer; it might have just been a misconception of equality simply because they're listed as leads but not really in that kind of traditional sense.
There's a reason I'd generally refer to them as the 3rd male and 3rd female leads of the series; that's just a recognition of their place on the totem pole which places their relationships at a somewhat less important level than the main ones in that they're elucidating upon the main relationships in the series.