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Old 2012-07-27, 11:10   Link #39
kari-no-sugata
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Join Date: Dec 2005
Normally Japanese novels are entirely from the perspective of the main character. I dont know how closely eps 3-4 follows the novels in terms of plot and characters, but I would presume that in the novel these scenes would be 99-100% from Yuuya's point of view.

Which makes it a lot harder to guess what Yui is thinking and what her situation is. In ep 3 we're given a brief glimpse from her point of view, which shows that she's a recent arrival to the base (and the US), but we dont even know her official task or position there. This all makes it a lot harder to sympathise with her.

We see in eps 1-2 that Yui is very serious and diligent, even compared to her classmates at what feels like an "ojou-sama military school" (if that makes any sense). I thought she was surprisingly mature for her first combat experience. We also see that Japan was under serious resource constraints even before the BETA invade - I imagine it's been much much worse in the 3 years since. Everything indicates that she takes the war very very seriously.

So if we take someone in her position and move her to a country which is (comparatively!) much more relaxed about the war against the BETA we should expect to see some differences of opinion - not only are there big design/operation differences in the countries' TSFs but despite being an "elite" test pilot with a lot of experience, Yuuya doesn't seem to have done serious anti-BETA testing before ep 4. Yui considers the project to be important to her own country's survival too - it would be very unrealistic for her to be casual about it.

So how has Yui done? Well, for the most part I think she's been professional and mature, but Yuuya is very hard for her to deal with due to his "Japanese trauma" - she's not a mind-reading ESPer and asking him to explain himself hasn't been very enlightening. My general impression is that she's trying to do the best she knows how with what she's been given but hasn't been able to mask the various irritations she has.

It would be unreasonable to expect her to be perfect, but I think she has made some small mistakes in things she's said or done - or not done. For example, she prepared a training unit for Yuuya to allow him to get used to the operational differences but doesn't seem to have anticipated cultural differences. In their first scene in ep 4, she notices that Yuuya looks "unhappy" and tries to figure out why and to resolve the issue but gets nowhere - I imagine she was very confused by his general attitude and his responses but doesn't seem to have tried alternative methods to get to the bottom of the problem. There's other things, but they've mostly been pointed out already...
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