SO!! SO!! I asked if people would be interested in reading my rant about kaoru and since I had a positive response, I decided to really do it! I have A LOT of things I like about her, so I don't know how long this post will be, sorry!
first of all, I don't exactly remember when I discovered bandori, but I DO remember that I thought kaoru was absolutely going to be my best girl (tsugumi too, but I am not going to talk about her this time...). I already was weak towards princely girls in anime, since I usually love all of them, even if I don't exactly like how said anime treat their characters.
a lot of ikemen girls... either don't want to be "masculine" and want to become ~~ real women ~~ or they have a trauma involving men that made them like this, or other awful reasons that I couldn't relate to, and made me feel angry and disappointed because I actually am a masculine girl who likes girls, so everytime I saw that a character similar to me was just ""confused"" and/or traumatized... I felt really bad. like there was something wrong with me. at the same time, in real life, people were telling me that I needed to grow up and start becoming more feminine and beautiful and other... not great things, and even fiction couldn't help me feel good about myself.
eventually, I decided to just ignore other people's opinions and just live my life however I wanted, but I was and still am a bit hesitant.
and that's! where kaoru comes into play. because she isn't like any of those characters.
when I first saw her, I was like "!!!!!!!" and searched everywhere information about her (the EN version wasn't even announced, so I only could rely on fan translations) and I... absolutely loved her, even though she was an absolute dumbass.
and there wasn't any single card or story I saw that made me think she would get the same treatment as other ikemen girls.
she was confident in herself, none of the girls ever thought she was a man or treated her like one... it was like... a dream. and this made me become a little more confident in myself, too.
but that's not all! when EN came out and I started seriously playing bandori, it made me discover just how much of a great character kaoru is!! yes, she's dramatic, gay and, as I already said, an idiot, and I absolutely love her for that... but... she's also very kind and a good person in general. for example, I just read her phantom thief card's episode so I'm going to talk about it; in it, she apologizes to kanon for kidnapping her even if she didn't know who the thief was (she was suspecting it, though), and when kanon says she feels bad for accepting her apologies since the phantom thief thing wasn't her idea, kaoru still takes responsibility of her actions and says that it doesn't change what she did; at the same time, she acknowledges kanon's feelings and tells her to think of her gift not as an apology, but as kaoru thanking her since if she got to perform in such a great stage, it's also because kanon and everyone else perfectly played their roles.
I mean... she's just!!! amazing!!! I didn't even think she would apologize for that, but she actually put into account kanon's feelings and...! just. she's GREAT ? ? ? ? ? ????
I would like to say a lot more, but I saw how much I already wrote and... no, I would clog up the entire feed, so I'm going to stop here.
sorry for being annoying, and thanks to everyone who actually took the time to read this post!
