I wasn't going to actually do this but I had free time so I was like 'why not?'. So for the Change My Mind Challenge I'm gonna talk about Aya Maruyama.
Before the game came out in en I did research on the game and its characters (only their names so I wouldn't spoil myself) so I'd know what I was getting into. The first time I saw Aya was during this time and I thought she'd be one of those super happy go lucky leaders who could only show happiness and was friends with everyone.
So queue to me actually getting the game and playing it. When the loading screen came up and I read Aya's description it blew my mind. She was extremely relatable to me just from reading it especially where it says,
"Aya admires idols and entered the entertainment industry as a probationary idol in the hopes of becoming one; however, she is easily nervous and cries easily when things go wrong and she's overwhelmed by her emotions. She has stage fright and so she has weak improvisation, so she has yet to achieve a breakthrough."
Now by this point she still wasn't my favorite but she was very high up in my list of characters I might like. So I started getting band stories after about 30 minutes of playing and at some moment of time I got to the PasuPare one. The story itself was amazing but the cherry on top was getting to see the personalities of the girls and how they started off.
Seeing how Aya acted was what really made me love her along with her design. Aya has a huge love for idols and wanted to be one for a long time so she did training. When she finally did get to be in a idol group, she had to fake it and she hated it. Not only that but she also had her fears holding her back but even so she fought against those fears not only for herself but for her band's success.
Plus Aya's design (to me) could be a play on how most times the leader (who usually has pink as their main color {ex.Honoka from LL!}) in idol/overall groups tend to be confident, outgoing, overall happy go lucky, and not have many flaws. But when you see her real personality you learn that she isn't any of those things. She's clumsy, has stage fright, and gets overwhelmed easily but even so tries her hardest to be good idol for her friends and herself.
Basically Aya has many flaws that gets in the way of her wish to be a idol but tries her hardest to get past them to help others and is an amazing character past her looks.
