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Old 2013-03-02, 18:27   Link #59
Sackett
Cross Game - I need more
 
 
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: I've moved around the American West. I've lived in Oregon, Washington, Utah, and Oklahoma
Age: 44
Sigh... once again everyone seems to have forgotten the beginning of this story and so are missing the point.

Yozora:

Yozora is the one who created the "Neighbor's Club" for her and Kodaka. She did so long before anyone else in this band of merry misfit misanthropists joined up. Obviously Yozora has some very serious issues. She has an "air friend" in high school for goodness sake. Something really bad happened to her, and her memory of "Taka" has become this talisman for her. A symbol of everything she has lost. Her "precious" that she has to protect. This has been implied for a long time, but is finally coming to the surface.

Yozora never intended this club to be a way to find and make new friends. It was always intended as a way for her to create a "safe place" to reconnect with Kodaka. A way to control and manage re-establishing a friendship that is so very precious to her, and still protect "Taka" and make sure that her beloved memory isn't damaged.

Yozora is scared. She's scared to make friends, but aches for friendship. It's the hedgehog dilemma from Evangelion. "Taka" is the one person she managed to make a connection with and so she is exerting and risking herself to try and reconnect with Kodaka in a way she'd never do for another person. She's been failing miserably, but that she tries at all is amazing considering her personality.

Sena:

Sena is the character that ruined all that. Sena suddenly appeared and forced her way into the Neighbor's Club, ruining everything that Yozora had planned. From Yozora's perspective Sena just waltzed in and selfishly turned the Neighbor Club into supporting what she wanted. That's what the "I wish you never existed" meant. It's not that Yozora really hates Sena that much, it's just that Sena's existence keeps ruining her plans to get closer to Kodaka.

Don't forget that Sena joined because she wanted to make friends with other girls, not because she was interested in Kodaka. Although Sena later came to be attracted to Kodaka in way she isn't to other boys, in a real sense Yozora is Sena's main target. Might I ask you again, whose picture does Sena have pasted to the ceiling above her bed?

The obvious way to read the subtext of their recent fight this episode is that Sena was upset about Yozora's highlighting of her childhood friendship with Kodaka because Yozora and Sena are rivals for Kodaka's affection. However it is just as easily read as Sena being upset because she wants to be closer to Yozora, and the childhood friendship with Kodaka is getting in the way.

Was Sena telling Yozora to let go of the past and let Kodaka choose Sena? Or was she telling Yozora to let go of the past and develop a new friendship with her instead of holding onto the past one with Kodaka? Which one is it? Perhaps it's both of them at the same time.

Sena is slowly getting Yozora to think of her as a friend, and I think that scared Yozora. It's usually assumed here that Yozora doesn't like Sena because she feels Sena is trying to entice Kodaka away from her. There is some of that, but there is also a sense that Yozora doesn't like Sena because she feels Sena is try to entice her away from Kodaka.

The whole relationship of Sena, Kodaka, and Yozora is one of the more messed up love triangles I've seen in some time.

The other most notable thing here is that Sena finally achieved what she's been saying she wanted for sometime. To be the one that makes Yozora cry and run away, vengeance for all the times Yozora has done that to her. Was Sena all that happy about it? Didn't look like it to me.

Kodaka is clearly playing dense. In fact all of them are. Yozora and Sena are both well aware that their club has essential become a group of friends. Yozora will not admit it because she feels making additional friends threatens what she has with Kodaka. Sena has actually admitted it, and then took it back, mainly because admitting it would give Yozora even more power over her.

Truthfully that why all of them, even Rika, is hesitant to call each other friends and continues with the masquerade that they are "practicing" for when they get friends. Who ever admits they are friends first, loses. Specifically they cede power to the other, will they return the friendship? Or will there be a rejection? Everyone in this club has been burned before by false friends. That why no one is willing to take the first step.

Oh, and of course:

c'est si bon!

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Cross Game - A Story of Love, Life, Death - and Baseball. What more could you want?
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